The Tampa Bay Area of Florida (where PCMech is based and where I reside) is recognized as "Lightning Capital Of North America", because we get more cloud-to-ground bolts than anywhere else on this continent. What I’m about to tell you is an extreme example of the situation that even if you have all the electrical protection you can get,...

In the US, Irene is coming. Maybe. It could be a Category 3 hurricane in Florida where PCMech is based. There are many write-ups on the internet describing the best ways to protect your electronics during weather disasters, however there’s a few things they don’t cover in too much detail that are pretty important. A UPS is little good to you if you...

One of the newer features on Weather Underground is the ability to see weather using a first-person-shooter style environment. No, you don’t get to actually shoot anything (if you could that would certainly be different), but you do get the 3D environment using your mouse and W, A, S and D keyboard keys. As far as the usefulness of this, well.. I’ll...

My father recently spent a little over $90 for a brand new personal weather station, i.e. PWS for short. PWSes are easy to find on Weather Underground. Just type in your city/state or ZIP, wait for the page to load, scroll down and hit the Personal Weather Stations tab, like this: All weather reports start at weather stations. The official ones are called...

Happy Monday, everyone. If you live on the eastern part of the United States, you most likely woke up to a crapload of nature’s white goodness this morning and make have been forced to stay home from school or work. Your only thought is probably, "Oh, great. (sarcasm..) When will this be over?" Here’s a few links to help you out. If you...

There’s more than a few PCMech readers that are weather geeks (and some of you even have a PWS broadcasted on the internet). My preferred weather web site of choice is Weather Underground. The best part about that place is that it remains consistent, meaning no wild new changes, no "total redesigns", etc. They have a formula and it works. Part of...

When most people plan trips they will only use the internet for the most basic of information and not much more. You may use it to print out a map, find a hotel, check flights and not much else. There’s much more you can do besides just plotting maps and making reservations. 1. Calculate your tolls. Many (if not all) US states have toll calculators so you...

Using Weather.com: 1. Go to www.weather.com. 2. Right-click inside the “Local weather” field and select “Add a keyword for this search”3. Enter the name as “weather.com search” and keyword as “w”, then click the “Add” button.4. Type “w” followed by your ZIP code in the location bar then...