OVER 2 YOU, 023 (29/03/01)

JULIAN DATES

One of my retirement hobbies is researching aspects of local history. Is there a source on the web for annual calendars for the Julian calendar in use before 1752 to help me put a day of the week to the dates of events or software to create such calendars? There are ways of manually working out the days to match dates but mistakes are easily made.

Barry Redfern, via email

I can recommend "Calisto". It is freeware and does everything needed and more, calendars, regnal years, saint's days etc. It can be downloaded at; http://freespace.virgin.net/guy.etchells/Cal.htm

Russ Axford,

Can I say that the best free-standing software, which will give the day for any date, is the one obtainable from http://www.tdrake.demon.co.uk/
Peter Bilboroough,

There is an excellent page at the UK & Ireland Genealogy website GENUKI which shows Easter Day and a full calendar for every year from 1550 to 2049. It can be found at: http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/easter/#top If you look at 1752 you can see the gap for the missing 11 days.
David Wharton,
 

I think this is one instance where a book beats the web hands down. I would recommend him to buy "A Handbook of Dates" by Cheney & Jones ISBN 052177845x RRP £12.95 paperback. This book will give him the days of the week from 400 ­to 2100AD, It also lists the Regnal Years of the English/British Kings and Queens from Henry II to the present day, the Law Terms, the Exchequer Years and the Saints' Days and other Festivals that were used to date events in the past. This book is a must have for anyone interested in historical research.
Dennis Jeeps, Willingham, Cambridge

Re the request for a web based day/date calculator for the Julian calendar, I would suggest trying: http://www.nr.com/julian.txt
John Bennett, Cheddar, Somerset

I may be able to help, I have written a Quick Basic program, which gives days from 1st Jan 1600 to 2499.
A.H.,

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

Is there a software program, which automatically calculates CGT on shares, some of which were purchased some 5 -6 years ago.

Douglas Forbes, via email

I have, for many years, used portfolio management software produced by Meridian Software. Their Stockmarket 4+ and Stockmarket Investor 2 programs are reasonably priced and provide fully detailed Capital Gains Tax calculations taking indexation and taper relief into consideration. Further, this software is smart enough to correctly manage re-purchases made within 30 days of a sale, caters for post-82 and post-98 purchases (affects indexation method) and manages sales on a last in first out basis. Incidentally, these are procedures that I find some professional fund management houses are still unable to accomplish correctly.
Meridian Software can be contacted on 020 8309 5960. Product details on their web site (www.meridian-software.co.uk)
Dave Nichols.

BUTTERFLY COLLECTION

I would like to archive our Butterfly Conservation branch newsletters etc.  for posterity. They are produced on MS Word or MS Publisher and contain pictures and diagrams as well as text. The original format is unsatisfactory as files are inaccessible from anything but a PC with Publisher/Word and even a change of printer destroys the format. I have tried printing Encapsulated Postscript files but have been unable to read them on several low-cost image processing systems such as Adobe 4.01 LE (limited edition). Does anybody have a low cost answer to this one apart from the time-consuming and data-corrupting solution of reading the pages into a flatbed scanner? With writable CD-ROMS, file size is not too much of a problem.
Jim Chance, via email

Both MS Word and MS Publisher can save files containing images and text as "HTML" Web Pages, which can then be viewed on the vast majority of computers, PC or not, via a web browser such as Internet Explorer. What's more, you can print them out reasonably well from the browser, choosing colours (shades) or black and white. The only problem is that MS Word files can change their layout slightly when saved this way, often appearing slightly wider than before. So you would need to check each page if you require an exact layout to be preserved.
Chris Hester,

There is a zero-cost way for Jim Chance to create Portable Document Format (PDF) files from his butterfly conservation newsletters, which could then be read by the Adobe Acrobat pdf reader. He needs a freeware program called Freepdf available from http://over.to/freepdf, which converts Postscript files to PDF format. The setup is tricky and he might need a bit of help, but it is explained in the documentation that comes with Freepdf. Freepdf needs two other free programs to make it work, they are: RedMon (Printer port REDirection Monitor) from Ghostgum Software Pty Ltd. downloadable as: ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/ghostgum/redmon15.zip

GhostScript from Aladdin Enterprises; homepage is http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

What happens is that you create a 'virtual printer', of a type which uses postscript files. When you print your document to that printer, RedMon grabs the information from the printer driver and redirects it to Ghostscript, which turns it into a postscript file. Freepdf then takes that file and converts it into a .pdf file suitable for Acrobat to read. If you want colour pictures (which you probably do for butterflies), then a colour-capable printer driver must be used for the virtual printer (see the suggestion for this in the Freepdf documentation). That sounds complicated but you only have to do the setting-up once. Thereafter you just print your files from Word, etc. to the virtual printer and the pdf file is created very quickly. I have set it up successfully on my PC but have not tried a colour printer yet.
George Baldwin,

CHURCH ACCOUNTS

We are a Church of England Church in South London and we would like to do our accounts with more user-friendly software.  The present Treasurer is fairly computer literate but whoever takes over in the future may not be as good. We need to have a package that is very easy to learn, use and produce accurate results to send off to the auditor once a year.  Can anyone suggest a package that will suit us? We have not only the church accounts but also those of our hall and any fundraising that we do.
Sarah Bucknell, via email

It was very interesting to read all the comments and advice on church and charity accounting. Two years ago I inherited an excellent system on Excel, which broke down the accounts into great detail. The disadvantage for me was that it slowed the process down while scrolling across which also encouraged mistakes.  It was impossible to get an overall view of the accounts. I did not feel ownership of the system. I checked with our diocesan administration and could get no advice. Perhaps not surprisingly, churches seem to have missed out on the opportunity to standardise on accounting systems, and have thus lost the facility to communicate easily on finance data and to train and support their own, usually volunteer, treasurers. (Even now they don't seem to have realised this!).

I saw an advert for Churchill Parish System and purchased this. Regretfully, I failed to get this working. After a year's experienced I realised that there was no value in an over complex breakdown. (If you want to examine the phone bills it is better to look at the actual bills!)  Church Councils are interested in cash flow, not accounts. They want to know, "do we have money to meet our plans or not?" Also the treasurer can use cash flow to -try to-convince the congregation that they need to raise more funds. Thus I have set up my own Excel set of accounts minimising the columns to those needed to make the report. Each now fits on one screen. (Stupidly I opened different Excel books for receipts and payments).  Thus features that I would find attractive in any system are simplicity, minimum categories, total transparency of what is happening and why, so that anyone with
minimum PC knowledge can take over, and take ownership.

The instructions are more important than the slickness of the software and should be written by or with an inexperienced treasurer not just a software designer or accountant. It should be able to show cash flow monthly, integrate Gift Aid tax reclaim -- which at present I do by hand -- handle year beginnings and ends easily, e.g. accruals of December cheques and income which are not presented till March, handle income from investments which is retained in the investment accounts, but should also appear in the receipts and payments. (This is an accounting sophistication!)

To conclude, as with all IT and other projects it is the soft issues, which are more critical for success than the hard or technical issues.
Bob Cranmore,

SHADES OF GREY

I have 60 photographs of black and white handprints. I would like to know what area consists of black and white (and also different shades of  grey)? Is there a program that can do such a thing? This is for my dissertation experiment, taking 60 Kirlian photographs. I need to measure the change in the corona electrical discharge around the handprints.

Mr.Preston Lee, via email

Whilst Preston Lee could certainly use the excellent Serif PhotoPlus5 to view BMP pixel counts, (Over 2 You replies March 15th) he might not relish having to copy down 256 readings for each of his 60 photos - in excess of 15,000 readings in all. If he is prepared to do a little programming he might be able to automate the process.

A "standard" 24-bit BMP usually stores data in groups of three bytes after the header. If the file size is exactly 54+(PixelsWide*PixelsHigh*3) then the creating program has not added any extra data and the BMP can be read sequentially, three bytes at a time, ignoring the first 54 bytes. This is a small programming task, with the raw data the being available for further processing as desired, possibly by summing each count. However, might simply the difference in the grand totals between before-and-after photos suffice, saving a lot of work? As a matter of interest Black is FF(255) and White is 00(0) with greys in between, and data seems to be stored from the bottom of the BMP to the top - I don't know why!

A. S. Goodenough,

DANCE STEPS

My wife and I go Ballroom Dancing and when we learn a new figure I try and write down the steps as soon as we get home. The problem is that, in a couple of weeks time, when I go to refresh my memory, the long hand instructions often don't make sense. Before I start the laborious business of doing them myself, does anyone know where I can get the footprint graphics that are often used in books to illustrate the steps?

Laurie Harris

I wrote such a book back in 1987 and am having it scanned so that I can put it on the Web. At the time I made a template out of plastic for the footprints, which worked well.

Roy Wiggins,

SMALL BUSINESS ACCOUNTS

I look after the books etc for my wife's hairdressing business, employing three people. This involves a serious round of calculating and 'looking up' when it comes round to payroll, not to mention the form filling. Can anyone recommend a payroll program that ordinary people can understand? I have tried some demo programs and they seem to be aimed at people who run several businesses. Also, payroll programs are quite expensive but I don't mind spending the money if it is a program I can come to terms with.

S J Rushton, Birmingham

We transferred all our payroll problems to "paybureau.co.uk" as they only charge £2 per person.
R. Percy, Cheltenham

CAN YOU HELP?

I am trying to find a website that can help me identify a family crest and motto contained within a painting owned by family interests. We believe the painting to be of Flemish origin. Can anyone suggest an appropriate website?

J. N. Davis, via email

I intend to sail -- mainly in the Med -- with my laptop and mobile phone, and wonder if anyone has any advice of how to access Internet and E-Mail on the boat?

B. H. Portsmouth, via email

Has anyone any experience of a software package, which would enable me to arrange the daily bookings for a 50-pitch caravan and camping site? Each pitch can be booked daily throughout the year. We are new to the business and have found that we really need a quick and easy system in place.  At present I use Excel but I would appreciate it if I could find a system whereby dates and pitch numbers do not need to be put in manually as at present. A reasonable amount of space if required for the visitors name and a hard copy on A4 paper would be helpful.
Joan Barratt, via email