My Tangle with Geovanni
So, I decided to give this ‘geovanni’ thing a whirl today. Heard the name floating around, figured I’d see what the fuss was about. Needed to check something simple, like recent rainfall patterns near my place. Thought it might be quicker than digging through weather websites.
First off, had to find the darn thing. Got onto their platform. Looked… busy. Lots of options, menus everywhere. Okay, deep breath. Where’s the data?
Finding the Goods
I hunted around for precipitation data. Found something that looked promising. Clicked on that. Then it wanted a date range. Easy enough, picked the last month or so. Then came the map part. Had to draw a box around my area. Fiddled with that for a bit, trying to get it right. Zoom in, zoom out. Finally got a square that looked about right.
Clicked the button to process, or generate, whatever it called it. And then… waiting. Just a status bar, slowly creeping along. Made myself a coffee. Came back. Still going. Seriously? For a bit of rainfall data?
What Came Out
Eventually, it finished. Didn’t pop up a nice map or anything. Nope. It gave me a link to download a file. Okay, downloaded it. Opened it up. It was just a plain table of numbers. Dates, coordinates, rainfall amounts. Raw data. Lots of it.
So, did it work? Technically, yes. I got the data I asked for. But man, it wasn’t exactly user-friendly for a quick look.
- Took ages to process.
- Output was raw numbers, not a visual map.
- Interface felt a bit clunky, took time to figure out.
My Takeaway?
Look, if you need super specific, raw scientific data, maybe geovanni is your tool. If you’re ready to wade through menus and process data files yourself. But for a simple query? Felt like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I just wanted to see if my garden got enough rain last week! Ended up taking way more time than just checking a standard weather map elsewhere. It does the job, but expect to put in some effort. Not something I’ll be using for casual checks again anytime soon. Back to my usual weather app, I think.
