FAQ

Q: What exactly does the WeatherPixie do?

A: The WeatherPixie is a little graphic that shows a representation of the weather using data reported (mostly) by airports and aerodromes around the world. As the weather in a particular location changes, the graphic will also change. Daylight and current moon phase are also displayed. To the left are three WeatherPixies picked at random from around the world, if you refresh the page they will change.

Q: How do I put the Weather Pixie on my homepage, weblog or blog?

A: Just click here. Cut and paste the HTML code under the WeatherPixie into your HTML to get your own WeatherPixie Blogstickers or Weather Magnets.

Q: I love weatherpixie so much, I want to say thank you in some way?

A: Here is Tamsin's Amazon.co.uk wish list if you'd like to buy her something nice. She has one at Amazon.com too. If you include your email address you might just get mail saying 'thank you' too.

Q: Why is the time on my Weatherpixie an hour (or more) behind.?

A: The timestamp on the image is actually the time of the weather reading, so you can tell how long ago it was taken. Its normally around an hour behind
Some locations report regularly, some only report at weekends, some only report every few days. Sites may be down for maintenance due to weather, programming updates, or damage by wild animals.
The time on the image will =never= show the current time, so please don't mail me telling me that the time is wrong. If however, your time zone code is set to GMT then you should probably mail me and tell me what time zone that location should be in.
Check first on the weather report page, to see what time the weatherpixie thinks it is at that location (The current time, and sunset and sunrise times are displayed above the image).

Q: The current time, and sunset and sunrise times are not displayed above the image, how do I fix this?

This is becoming a fairly common question, however, you will never get the time and sunrise/sunset above your pixie because these are included on the current weather page as just plain HTML. They aren't actually part of the image. There are no plans to include them as part of the image due to bandwidth constraints.

Q: I can't find a Weatherpixie for my region?

To find your local Weatherpixie, click search or map or use the text based directory. Weatherpixie covers most countries around the world, however the weather data comes mostly from airports so if you don't live near an airport there probably isn't a weatherpixie close to you.

Q: There isn't a weatherpixie for where I live and we have an airport and everything!

A: I'm using a publicly available data feed of METAR data, and I can only produce pixies for places that have data, I have no idea why some places do Metar, and some don't. You could ask the US Weather Service if they know.

Q: Why does my Weatherpixe say 'No current report from this station'?

A: Some of the stations around the world just don't seem to report data to Noaa. If you find of another source of metar data please let me know.

Q: Why does my Weatherpixe just display my countries flag and no Pixie?

A: If there is no temperature returned from the weather station, then the pixie doesn't know what to wear and you get a flag instead. This is common with automatic stations which periodically seem to stop reporting complete weather information.

Q: Can you make me a custom Weatherpixie for my site?

A: No not right now. However you may be able to make your own custom Weatherpixies one day.

Q: I have an idea to make the site better how can I contact you?

A: Just click here.

Q: How many different Weatherpixies are there?

A: Click here to see descriptions and pictures of all the Weatherpixies.

Q: Why isn't there a pixie in a burqua for Muslim countries?

A: The whole point of Weatherpixie is that the clothes change with the weather, a pixie in a burqua isn't really going to be that exciting. The pixies aren't country based, you can pick what ever character you want for what ever location you want, some of them have more revealing outfits that others and if a scantily clad female cartoon character offends you perhaps you should pick one of the male pixies or just not use the service.

Q: Why do some of the pixies have more clothing changes than others? Why do some of them have pets and some don't? Why doesn't it work the way I think it should?

A: I think this is best answered as "I didn't write it for you, I wrote it for me". Many of the pixies are based on people I know, and their pets, hence, some have cats, some don't, some are known for always dressing the same and so don't get many changes of outfit. My original choice of weather measurements was Degrees C and Knots. Knowing that others might want them in Metric or Imperial i added choices for those. I've had various requests to change the metric wind speed from Kilometres per Hour (kph) to Metres per Second (mps), however when I had the measurement in mps people asked me to change it to kph. I've left the choices as these three, because the site caches the pixie images for each location/pixie/measurement choice and adding a fourth choice would just mean it took up even more space.

Q: What does the 'set my Pixie' button do?

A: It should set the currently selected place to be your default location, so when you return to the page you will get your local weather. Note: This will only work if your browser accepts cookies.

Q: Nothing happens when I change the location. Why is this?

A: Your browser probably doesn't handle javascript. The site should automatically detect if your browser has javascript if it hasn't, try clicking here

Q: My weatherpixie appears not to be updating. What's wrong with it?

A: Sometimes browsers decide to cache images and don't update them when the image has changed, refreshing the page with the shift key held down normally solves the problem. If this is happening with the active desktop pixie, then you may need to look at the cache settings on internet explorer.
Sometimes a particular weather station will stop providing updated data. There isn't anything the weatherpixie can do to fix this, it could be for many reasons, the airport closing down, or the automatic recording equipment failing. In this case the only thing you can really do is to change to another location near you.

Check the site to see if the weatherpixies for other locations are updating, it maybe that the server isn't able to get an up to date weather feed for some reason.

Q: How do I move the Active Desktop Weatherpixie?

A: Hover your cursor over the Weatherpixie for a moment, you should then get a grey border pop up around the pixie. The top border should be wider. Use this to drag the Weatherpixie to your desired location.

Q: How do I delete the Active Desktop Weatherpixie?

A: Right click on the Windows desktop (somewhere where there are no icons etc). You should get a menu pop up, select 'Active Desktop' then 'Customize my Desktop'. You should then get a screen showing you all the Active Desktop Components. Select the Weatherpixie items from the list and choose delete.

You can also try looking for the Control Panel (sometimes its under the settings menu). When you've found that try clicking on Display (it looks like a monitor with a ruler by it) and then go to the Web tab. The web tab shows you a list of all the Active Desktop items, just delete the ones you don't want.

Q: Why can't I install the Active Desktop Weatherpixie?

A: It would appear that the 'Put this location on your active desktop' link no longer works. As none of the code has changed it looks like one of the recent Microsoft security updates may have disabled this option. You can still add the url manually to your active desktop by adding a new URL to the desktop items.
If you are using XP do the following:
1) copy the link from the 'install the pixie on my desktop' to your paste buffer
2) right click on the desktop
3) select properties from the drop down
4) select the desktop tab
5) click customize desktop
6) select the web tab
7) click new
8) paste the url into the location box

Windows 2000 instructions when I get time.

Q: Why is there no desktop weatherpixie for the Mac?

A: Up until OS 10.4 (Tiger) there wasn't an easy way of providing this sort of content for Macs. With Tiger, Apple gave us the option of writing dashboard widgets, however Weatherpixie is unlikely to get a widget until I get a mac capable of running Tiger.

Q: Other questions about the Active Desktop?

A: If you are still having problems with Active desktop then try looking at Microsoft MSDN. You will need to search for "Active Desktop".

Q: Where do you get the weather data from?

A: The data comes from the US Weather Service, you can read more about METAR here. This site was partially inspired by, and still uses some of the code from PHPweather.

Q: Why doesn't weatherpixie work on myspace.com

A: Myspace appears to strip out image tags that contain links to files that aren't known images, as Weatherpixie uses code to create the image, it doesn't show up in your myspace profile. There is a way round this, but it involves me writing a bit more code.

Q: Why are you using PNGs and not GIF?

A: Due to Unisys owning the patent on GIF I can't create dynamic GIF images without paying a license fee to Unisys. For more on the whole GIF debate read Burn all Gifs. If you can't see any images and you are using Netscape as your browser then you'll need to install Quicktime.

Q: Why don't you put the location name on the Weatherpixie?

A: Some of the location names are rather long and won't fit into 124 pixels with even the smallest font. There are also about 6000 different locations, so its unlikely that I'll get around to typing in short names for them.

Q: Are the moon phases and Sunset/Sunrise time right?

A: After much hair tearing, and cursing, I got the sunsets accurate to within 10 minutes or so, and I'm not aiming for a particularly high degree of accuracy. The images now cache for 30 minutes, so the daylight data may be 1/2 hour behind for some sites. The moon-phase doesn't invert for the southern hemisphere, the moon doesn't rise and set correctly yet and there are no calculations for eclipses.

Q: How many possible combinations of graphics there are?

A: At least 8 million, possibly more.

Q: Why did you write this?

A: I wanted to do something with temperature related data and got a little carried away.

Q: Why is the cat sometimes there and sometimes not?

A: He is a cat. They're like that.