P.S. Using this has made it clear to me how bad most sunrise/sunset calculators actually are.

That may just be a function of how you define "sunrise" and "sunset". It is never as simple as "when the sun hits the horizon", but something about some number of arc minutes from something something.

[1] https://www.npmjs.com/package/suncalc

I've previously used the formulas on this site to calculate the altitude/azimuth of the Sun and all the planets from a given lat/long/time on Earth.

Half these customers can't be bothered by the edge cases that I've been poring over for nights. The other half puts forward edge cases that I've never been aware of. Some of which are critical to their work-flow. Many are implemented in mere minutes. "Wow. That saves us 30 minutes typing over prices, every day!".

As an engineer I love to find solutions. But as an entrepeneur I really must understand the problem and scope. that 0.1% edge cases is hardly ever part of the success.

https://www.citizenwatch-global.com/support/exterior/directi...

https://www.watchaffinity.co.uk/blog/how-to-use-your-watch-a...

This is more prone to errors closer to the equator and in the summer (https://possiblywrong.wordpress.com/2012/01/25/using-a-watch...) but should be good enough for picking a side of the bus.

(This is all in the northern hemisphere; in the southern hemisphere the sun goes the other way, so change the sign on everything.)

> The equation of time describes the discrepancy between two kinds of solar time. The word equation is used in the medieval sense of "reconciliation of a difference". The two times that differ are the apparent solar time, which directly tracks the diurnal motion of the Sun, and mean solar time, which tracks a theoretical mean Sun with uniform motion along the celestial equator. Apparent solar time can be obtained by measurement of the current position (hour angle) of the Sun, as indicated (with limited accuracy) by a sundial. Mean solar time, for the same place, would be the time indicated by a steady clock set so that over the year its differences from apparent solar time would have a mean of zero.

And this gets into a neat part of the Clock of the Long Now and a cam needed to keep track of that over 10,000 years. https://longnow.org/ideas/the-equation-of-time-cam-keeping-g...

[1] https://shademap.app/@37.75153,-119.53737,12.65679z,16416003...

This is really useful tool for photography. On Android, I also use Sun Surveyor to determine when the sun is hitting the right side of a building, but it doesn't show the shadows cast by other buildings!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_France

That's not exactly true.

South of the tropic of capricorn, the sun is in the north at noon.

Between the equator and the tropic of capricorn the sun could be slightly towards the north or south or directly overhead at noon depending on the season.

As for sunrise and sunset the sun could be just about anywhere if you go south enough and the season is right.

At the south pole in summer, the sun just runs 360 degrees around, floating slightly above the horizon, and daylight is 24 hours long. If you are standing 1km from the south pole, you will see the sun in the south direction at midnight and in the north direction at noon.

And if you go just further from the south pole, e.g. to Patagonia in summer (i.e. now) the sun rises and sets close to the south and goes around to the north at mid-day. Daylight is close to 20 hours long. It's similar to the south pole situation except when the sun gets close to exact south it dips below the horizon for a few hours and you have a short-lived few hours of darkness. But you do see the sun in the southeast at sunrise and southwest at sunset.

Bravo. :) What a great project and execution!

Just 120 min a day under a tree during childhood.

Dolgin, Elie. 2015. The myopia boom. Nature 519: 276.

Williams, Katie M., & al. 2017. Association Between Myopia, Ultraviolet B Radiation Exposure, Serum Vitamin D Concentrations, and Genetic Polymorphisms in Vitamin D Metabolic Pathways in a Multicountry European Study. JAMA Ophthalmology 135: 47-53. doi: 10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2016.4752. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaophthalmol.2016.4752

Looks like some bus companies treat their windows to block the UVA as well. Eg https://www.valleymetro.org/blog/2022/07/how-valley-metro-ke...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3427189/

https://www.who.int/news-room/questions-and-answers/item/rad...

If you are blocking UVB, you should be blocking UVA as well. The bus folks are doing some good thinking.

I feel like routing apps have completely stagnated basically since the Waze acquisition by Google.

> A popular folk etymology holds that the term is an acronym for "port out, starboard home",[4] describing the cooler, north-facing cabins taken by the most aristocratic or rich passengers travelling from Britain to India and back. However, there is no evidence for this claim

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/posh]

Not sure how much of a ball ache that would be to implement though as I guess you would need to pair a lot of APIs or pay google out the backside

PS: There might be other free alternatives to using the main osm.org API which will be more reliable.

It would be splendid if you used 24 hour format per default instead of AM/PM or at least let me choose. You correctly figured out I am at UTC+01:00, but we don't use AM/PM here.

I'm not perfectly happy with the colors in the final map. You use blue to represent right, yellowish for left and dark gray for "no sun". Your suggestion on top for preferred seating uses red. To me the preferred seating color should correspond with the left/right colors.

Time selection relies on the default settings of the browser/system.

Addresses used:

John F. Kennedy International Airport, JFK Access Road, Queens, New York, 11430, United States

Heathrow Airport, Cranford Lane, Hatton Cross, London Borough of Hillingdon, London, Greater London, England, TW6 2DN, United Kingdom

I'm not sure exactly what's going on, even if you provide a US address in the middle of the country it will only ever give you directions for the European side. If you replace Heathrow with a different continent, like Africa or Asia, it correctly says it can't find a route. My best guess is that the algorithm sees there is a water crossing, but then finds the ferry from France to England and says "ah ok all good". Maybe there is a special case to handle Europe to UK that is causing the problem? If you put in JFK to Dublin it will find two ferries, France to England and England to Ireland, but still nothing on the North American side.

Edit: No nothing to do with the ferries, I think Europe just has some special status. For example, try Brazil -> Morocco vs. Brazil -> Spain.

If you prefer the flight path, you can visit dev.sitinshade.com/flight [beta].

Secondly, does this have any difficulty with trips that encompass certain times that often serve as "reset" markers? Such as trips that include midnight, or multiday trips?

[edit: example for nothern hemisphere clarification]

[second edit: looks like it does for first question, ref Oklahoma City to Wichita KS starting an hour before noon]

Preferred Seating : Left Side 1250 km / 776.41 miles :14h 40m 33s Sun Exposure Data Left Side: 49.62% Right Side: 7.94% No Sun: 42.44%

When I read the title, I was expecting the site to give you an optimal "seat" (13A), but I suppose for this would need to know the exact bus make and model.

I'm trying a trip from the north of France (Paris) to the south (Lyon) in the morning while the sun rises. So the sun is mainly on the East (so left of the bus) and the app tells me to sit on the left side of the bus.

Parameters: - Toronto to Montreal at 3:21PM EST.

Perhaps they could split it into a free version using open street data, and a paid version with actual transit routes and other relevant data (tunnels could be marked as 0% sun coverage if they are able to find a data source for it)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erythropoietic_protoporphyria

[1] https://openrailwaymap.org/

[2] https://www.openstreetmap.org/#layers=O

Search based on the destination and departure airport. Please note that it is still in beta, so there may be some issues.

Currently, manual entry of flight duration is required.

Working on flight duration estimation, scenic side, and movie recommendations based on flight duration : - )

On the other hand though I detest window seat passengers who insist on having the windows closed for take-off and landing. I'd like to know when to expect a thud, thanks. The electric shades are nice in that aspect because they are never fully opaque.

They're more concerned that my seat back is not pushed back by the 3mm that they move.

I don't travel enough on other airlines to make generalisations.

I wish it would let me select some other cities the bus passes through, since as another commenter said it just uses the quickest way by car - though I guess that would not impact the seat selection too much, since the general direction of travel is still the same!

If you want to take it to the next level, use GIS information to account for building shadows and waiting times in stations and at traffic lights.

I just started using the metro instead :)

Todays busses don't even have heating in the winter. If I can't bike, I'm taking the car nowadays. Can't sit in a bus when it's -20 C outdoors and -18 indoors.

:-)

Reminder that not all busses are the same, and your experience is extremely localised to you - even different bus companies (or bus models used by a single company) in the same city can be completely different, yet alone different parts of the country, yet alone different countries.

Near me, for example, pretty much all busses have heating for the winter, and maybe half (random estimate) have AC for during hot weather while the other half just have windows/vents to open or shut.

Kudos for the idea and execution, it's awesome :D

Not sure if I'm the only one, in the bus I try to avoid the sun but I'm looking for it in the train/plane.

I'm having occasional problems with autocomplete of city names:

Try typing "Sacramento" slowly... it shows 0 results as you type letters 6..9, then suddenly finds it on the last letter

Another idea for a simple website would be to find the less icy side of a street. Often south facing sides of streets have less ice on them.

This must be an epitome of a hobby project!

I don't mind the Sun if it's coming from the back, for example.

Whether these journeys involve long enough in direct sun to matter is another question.

Like the bus cannot get to the same destination by taking a route where the sun shines on the other side more. (Ignoring some fringe theoretical routes where you do a massive detour over equator.)

edit: I was too fast with my reply to read yours properly. Sorry.

> a lot of shade from buildings and cliff edges for parts of the route

I don't believe sitinshade.com handles those anyway.

Drop your Twitter in your profile. Would love to give you a follow :)

These days you can tease similar information from Celestia, Stellarium, and other astro projects.

Sun angle wrt a smooth perfect ellipsoid is one thing .. actual sun angle + shadows in the presence of mountains, valleys, forests, tall buildings, etc is a whole other ball of fun.

The look and feel of the Submit button is cherry on top.

like it since im blonde

Left Side: 0.00% Right Side: 0.00% No Sun: 100.00%

[1] https://i.imgur.com/92jfFGy.png

Try “London to Edinburgh” at this time of year and you’ll see what I mean - there’s only 10% difference in sun exposure between the two sides of the bus.