Help Needed To Rescue UK's Old Rainfall Records (bbc.com) 20
At a loss to know what to do with your self-isolation time? Well, why not get on the computer and help with a giant weather digitisation effort? From a report: The UK has rainfall records dating back 200 years or so, but the vast majority of these are in handwritten form and can't easily be used to analyse past periods of flooding and drought. The Rainfall Rescue Project is seeking volunteers to transfer all the data into online spreadsheets. You're not required to rummage through old bound volumes; the Met Office has already scanned the necessary documents -- all 65,000 sheets.
You simply have to visit a website, read the scribbled rainfall amounts and enter the numbers into a series of boxes. "If you do just a couple of minutes every now and then -- that's great," said Prof Ed Hawkins. "If you want to spend an hour doing 30 or 40 columns - then that'll be amazing. But any amount of time, it will all add up and be a tremendous help." If you want to take part, click here.
You simply have to visit a website, read the scribbled rainfall amounts and enter the numbers into a series of boxes. "If you do just a couple of minutes every now and then -- that's great," said Prof Ed Hawkins. "If you want to spend an hour doing 30 or 40 columns - then that'll be amazing. But any amount of time, it will all add up and be a tremendous help." If you want to take part, click here.
click here (Score:2)
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Wtf is it 1997?
Why work smarter when you could pay people to work harder?
They got the 1950s done (Score:2)
I contributed a bit to 1945. It seems they're getting some good participation.
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I found it somewhat relaxing. I found the hand writing nice, almost artistic, hinting at the dedication and care that the people invested in collecting this data in the first place.
I hope they're not using this data for anything... (Score:1)
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I think that they probably get section entered in a number of times and have it match before they consider it a good source of data.
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citizen science (Score:4, Informative)
Zooniverse (www.zooniverse.org) has a huge range of citizen science projects. You can catalog animals photographed by wildlife cams, moon craters, old shipping logs from scans of naval records, and more. It's pretty easy to navigate and can be a way to take a break from work or school while still doing something useful. I'm not affiliated with the project, I just like it and contribute myself now and again.
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This is a good case for using an AI, not to train, but validate it.
there's a shortage of cheap labor? (Score:2)
or did the world suddenly run out of money to hire freelancers over the internet? I hired a guy in Nepal for 400 euros a month. An IT guy, and he's good.
Needs a better user interface & keyboard short (Score:1)
I had a look at the interface and it's not possible to use this from the keyboard alone.
The image doesn't fit the screen and there's no shortcuts to move it around.
You can press tab to move between input boxes, but they are multi-line and
you should be able to move by pressing Enter, too: That's because the numberical
block on your keyboard doesn't have a Tab key.
So while it's a nice idea, as long as the interface is this bad I'm not donating time.
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You can use it without a keyboard--if you tab into an input box which is off the bottom of the screen, the screen will scroll up. Then when you reach the end press tab until the "Done" button is highlighted and press space to activate it and load the next page. I did several pages without touching the mouse.
As for using the tab to move between input boxes, that is pretty standard in a web form. If you've got two hands it's trivial, just use your left hand to press tab. If you're one-handed then yes, it's a