Well, then, go to a Museum

After listening to some comments by Jack and the gang on an uncontrolledairspace.com podcast a year or two ago. I got to thinking about supporting Aviation Museums. There was a general lament that there didn't seem to be a single location where one could find a list of all the Aviation Museums.

Well, I thought a list was a great idea. I also thought, that's not something I want to get distracted with. But, I could certainly hook such a list into maps.AvnWx.com, displaying info about museums directly on the map.

Lucky for me, Adam Fast had a similar idea at about the same time. Even better, he wanted to put together such a list. His hard work has resulted in museums.aero. Visit his site and you'll see over 250 museums from around the world. There's also an interface with which you can add museums or link to reviews for existing museums.

Adam and I traded an interface and the result is his list feeds my map. As you can see in the screenshot above, mousing over a Museum icon will display some basic information. There are links to the Museum's home site, to its entry on Adam's www.museums.aero, and to the museum's entry in Wikipedia, if one exists. Some entries, such as the one above, will display a brief description.

Via the API I update a local database nightly. Therefore as museums are added, we'll get them added automatically to the map within 24 hours. So don't hold back: Visit a museum, blog a review, and link it into museums.aero.

Where's the Game?

Oops...

The mysportscal.com, a website I've been using for a couple years to download NFL and NCAA football schedules went off the air a couple days ago.

Apparently it was sold (so says flippa.com), and the replacement (currently) is simple an empty web page.

MySportsCal.com provided the data in nicely readable iCal format. I downloaded updates nightly, parsed the results and updated the Stadium TFRs for display on the maps.

Until I can find a replacement, Stadium TFRs are down <sigh>. Trying to maintain the calendars myself would be an unpleasant distraction. There is hope: NFL (and MLB) publish calendars so it's likely I be able to get a replacement for them, soon. NCAA football has traditionally been more difficult as the data is spread across many websites in different format. If you have a source, let me know!

[update:] Found www.southendzone.com, which has a good set of NFL schedules, so at least that is now updated.

[update #2:] Okay, so other than the Army-Navy game this weekend, there are only Bowl games left. I can hand-edit that list & then hope someone actually generated the the iCal files for 2013-2014!