FCC Database Conversion and Site Usage Questions
By Trip Ericson on Tuesday, July 9 2019, 20:42 - Site Updates - Permalink
While I moved most of the underlying FCC database-driven things on RabbitEars from CDBS to LMS about a year and a half ago, the CDBS facility table had remained in place rather than the new LMS facility table. That has now been remedied. It's not 100% finished, as particularly the Network Grid and the Statistics pages need a lot of work that I've yet to do. I'd say I'm more than 80% there, across the board, on the move to LMS. Some things definitely need some more polish, and if you come across something that doesn't work properly, please either comment here or e-mail me with a link to the page in question and a brief description of what's wrong. (I'm aware of the problem with the TSID page, just haven't done anything about it yet.)
I'm also working toward a new TVFool-like search function. I've shown a few people a new map-driven search page, and after some thought, I've decided to rewrite the actual search code as well, in an effort to speed it up. I don't know how long this will take, but I have the basic code design figured out, and it should help. I just need to implement it, which is of course the hard part.
On a semi-related note, are there people who use the Statistics page, or the various Advanced pages? I'm trying to figure out if there are things I can discontinue, as some of the maintenance is pretty hard on some of these things, and I don't really use them. So if nobody else does... (For the record, I am definitely keeping the Network Grid, just that it needs a complete overhaul as it is one of the slowest pages on the site. I want to do a complete overhaul and upgrade at once rather than upgrade it and then overhaul it.)
Comments
Great news on both the switch over to LMS and the TV Fool replacement. As for something to discontinue, how about getting rid of your NOAA weather radio database. It must take up a huge amount of space, and some information in the database is up to ten years out of date. BTW, I visit the statistics page once in a while, so don't remove that.
Keep up the good work.
It turns out the NOAA database doesn't take up a lot of disk space and while it is out of date, there isn't a current publicly-available database to work with. I've kept it up because I otherwise don't know how one would know where the NOAA transmitter sites are, notwithstanding that, as you suggest, it's at least 10 years out of date.
I added a transmitter to it as recently as a few weeks ago based on an e-mailed update.
Oh, I didn't know you were still doing updates. Then again, I haven't visited your NOAA page in a few years (until I checked it before I posted my comment). Unfortunately, weather.gov doesn't give out exact transmitter sites. I don't know why they need to keep this information secret. TV and other radio transmitter sites are public.
Anyway, I will help you with an update. Last month on weather.gov, I saw a notice that KWO35 in New York City will be moving to the Empire State Building in the fall. I hope that helps. Their transmitter hasn't been at 30 Rock, like you still show, in almost ten years. I guess not many people are feeding you any information.
Unfortunately, you're right. I'm not being fed much information. Once in a while, someone finds something out, like you have, and I make an update. KWO35 is now listed as being on the ESB, as I'm sure I'll forget by the time it actually comes to pass.
And I'm with you; I don't understand why they don't make that information public. It really should be.