Can you beat Wellington?

"You can't beat Wellington on a good day"

Since I've joined a team that is predominately made up of people outside of Wellington, people now say this to me all the time to me - mostly when I'm sitting on calls at work in the office with the view of the harbor behind me, or at home with the doors open looking out over the Mt Kaukau skyline track.

And it got me thinking - if you weren't here, looking out over the harbor (or on an important call with me) how would you know if it was a good day in Wellington at any given time? So, I decided to do something about it.

Introducing: 'Can you beat Wellington?'.

Its a website that checks the current weather in Wellington and compares it to a set of rules (that I have just made up out of thin air using my extensive history as someone who lives in Wellington) and decides if it is a good day or not.

If its a good day, it'll say "NO!", coz you can't beat Wellington on a good day.

If its not (which, lets be honest, it'll be most of the time - especially this time of the year) it'll say 'YES"... because you can beat it.

And that's it. That's all it does. The site will show you the current weather and what (if any) of the four criteria meet the definition of a good day.

I might release it on it's on domain at some point - right now it's just on a subdomain under this one - the url is https://canyoubeatwellington.radomski.co.nz/

I built this with the aid of an AI dev tool, and I'll do a follow up post on my impressions of developing with AI at some point in the future. (Update: I did — two years later I asked another AI to review and refactor what the first one built.)

I've also had the song 'You can't beat Wellington on a good day' stuck in my head for the last few days while building this - so, to share the pain love, you too can hear the classic 1996 track by the Datsun Violets below.

Lets not forget that the full saying, (according to the song), is "You can't beat Wellington on a good day, and even a bad day too". So, even if the site says you can beat Wellington, I think it's wrong.

Update, 7 August 2026: Can You Beat Wellington has moved off this subdomain and onto its own home at canyoubeatwellington.nz. The old link above still works, it'll redirect you, but that's the one to bookmark now. More on the move here.