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OVER 2 YOU, 059 (20/11/01)
TRANSPARENT PICTURES
I am compiling a Family History and, with a
selection of male photos at various ages back to 1830, want to experiment with
the superimposition of these photos to see how characteristic the facial
characteristics of the family may be. Can anyone suggest a commercial
program, which allows scaling and superimposition to generate a combined
general image?
A. R. Warren, via email
It is surprisingly difficult without recourse
to a professional image editor program like Adobe Photoshop – try using layers
with masking – but it can be done, albeit in a fairly rough and ready manner,
using PaintShop Pro and a file format called Gif89a. This allows colours to
become transparent, when viewed in a Browser window. There’s a simple to follow
tutorial at: http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/psptrans.html
Jeff Hull, Chelmsford, Essex
There’s a short article on how to superimpose
images in PaintShop Pro version 6, using layers, at: http://psptips.com/6/phoman/collage01.html
M. Delaney,
EMAIL NEWSLETTER
I regularly produce a newsletter, which is sent out
to over 250 people. Some of them have said that it would be helpful if it
were e-mailed to them. This newsletter is for eventual photocopying for wider
circulation and this is most easily done as far as I am concerned using
Microsoft Publisher. Is there some way that an attachment can be adapted so
that those who do not have Publisher can open it, producing the same four-page
layout (A4 folded) in their e mail? They can then easily photocopy in the
original layout? Those who do not have
Publisher (most people!) tell me that all they get is gobbledegook!
J. H. Brown, via email
The
short answer is yes. This is exactly the sort of thing Adobe's Portable
Document Format (pdf) file format, as used by Acrobat, can do. I have no idea
whether Microsoft Publisher has direct links to save or export to *.pdf, but
one can create a spooled file that can be converted by Adobe Distiller (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrdis/main.html)
or
simply obtain the latest version of Acrobat, which will allow the Print
function to be directed to a file. The subsequent *.pdf can be read by the
Acrobat Reader program, which is entirely free (http://www.adobe.com/),
and should the end user wish to read it from a browser there is also a plug-in
for Internet Explorer.
Rod Wynne-Powell,
I
have a couple of suggestions:
Option
1, in Publisher choose Edit > Select All, then Edit > Copy. Open your
email program - ensuring the format is HTML format, click where text should be
typed, right click the mouse and choose paste.
Option 2, choose File > Create Web Site from current location then choose
Web Page Preview. This opens the page in your Internet browser. Then either
Edit Select All > Paste, as Option 1 or choose File > Send >Page by
email.
Some experimentation may be required as to what features carry over well. The
more people you send to the more you save on postage, they can print if they need to. You can send it in one go to everyone but please remember to put
all addressees in the BCC (blind carbon copy) field, otherwise everyone gets
everyone else's email address!
Jon Webb,
CLIP
ART
I use clipart quite a bit for a wide variety of
personal and business projects (not websites). I feel I have exhausted the
resources available in my (very expensive) off-the-shelf packages, and have
turned to the Internet in an attempt to find new supplies. However, I
have found most clipart websites woeful in terms of quality, variety and
styles. Can anyone point me to some website gems with tasteful,
stylish/arty, high quality clip art available for download, free or otherwise?
Felicity Berkeley, via email
I have recently discovered "Photo Objects"
which would be the ideal answer to Ms Berkley’s problem. Unlike ordinary clipart, which is
drawn, Photo Objects are all quality colour photographs of all kinds of objects
with no background.
I first bought Photo Objects, Holidays and
Festivities from Serif UK and liked it so much that I bought the Photo Objects
25,000 from Canada, although the shipping is quite expensive! They also do
a 50,000 edition, which might be better suited to Ms Berkeley. The
web site address is: http://www.hemera.com
Ian Robinson,
CINE
TO PC
I'm seeking to input old black & white 8mm cine
film directly into a PC (rather than the indirect method of projection and
filming with a camcorder) for the purpose of editing etc. Some scanners can take
35mm film, but has anyone had any experience with 8mm movie film?
Bryan Bedwell, via email
Ambico's
Video Transfer System may be of interest. This is a self-contained optical
device, which facilitates reproduction using a DV camcorder. More details
from: http://www.ambicoproducts.com/
transfersystem/transfersystem.html
Jeff Ross, Stockport
LANDS END TO JOHN O’GROATS
I am planning a walk from Lands End to John O'Groats
with as much as possible off road i.e. on footpaths or bridle ways. Is there a
CD with printable maps or website with downloadable maps in order to avoid
buying dozens of Ordnance Survey maps (excellent though they are) of which only
a small part will ever be used? Roadmaps such as Routeplanner are not
detailed enough. I am aware that there are guides for all of the long distance
paths such as Pennine Way but this still leaves a lot of ground to be covered.
Frank Ellam, via email
When
I walked from Lands End to John O'Groats and back a few years ago I bought
Landranger maps as I went, supplemented by National Trail Guides and other such
publications. The 1:50,000 maps proved adequate except in large towns and
forests where navigation skills are vital. However I, and I believe many
others, found Andrew McCloy's book 'Land's End to John O'Groats' invaluable for
not only describing three separate main routes to use but also many variations
and detours. It also gives very detailed accounts of how to get through or
past conurbations. It is well worth buying; and if you are tempted you
could land up being diverted to so many of the interesting sounding destinations that you will never reach your journey's end. It took me 24 weeks and I walked over 3,000 miles…
Andrew Shaxson,
Mike Postletwaite's response (Over 2 You November 20th)
appears to be highly twaddlesome. You need maps at least as detailed as
50,000:1 for walking and preferably 25000:1. You can buy these maps via
Multimap, at the same price as, for example W.H.Smith. The only maps that
appear f.o.c. from Multimap are road maps and take the word of a reasonably
experienced long-distance walker, they ain't much use.
Clive Baxter,
SONG LYRICS
Does
anyone know of a site where I can find lyrics of up to date songs with the
accompanying guitar chords. My limited musical ability does not extend to
working them out for myself, and I have had to resort to buying sheet music
books for entire albums. Where they are available these are excellent, but
contain much more detail than I need.
Mark
Perkins, via email
If you are into learning guitar with tablature you must go to www.tabledit.com and try their tablature
editor. It not only reads tablature but more importantly it plays it at an
adjustable speed without changing the pitch. Even I can play along with a
'fingerstyle' Blue Grass number albeit at 10 % normal speed. It's a fully
featured shareware package ($54.95). It also covers banjo, dulcimer and many
others and can play several instruments at once (including percussion)
Huw Davies,
CAN YOU HELP?
I would like to know if anyone has any
information of knows where I could obtain plans for building an ‘analogue’
computer. I understand these were developed in the 1950s, long before the
digital computers we use today. If possible or practical I would like to build
one for a school science project.
D. Jackson, via email
I
would like to catalogue my Record/LP/CD collection. Can anyone recommend a good
(preferably inexpensive) piece of specific database software to do this?
Simon
Carter, via email
It's
infuriating when you have a song going round in your head and you can't think of what it's called. But many years ago (On Tomorrow's World, I
think) a method was shown of writing down tunes, not with the normal musical
notation but by identifying the relationship of a note in the tune with its
previous note. A note is either Higher, Lower or the Same as the previous note, so almost any tune can be identified with a sequence of the letters H, L, or S. Amazingly, this gives an almost unique signature of any tune
after only a few notes. The first few notes of the tune Pop Goes the Weasel can
now be expressed as HLHLHLLSHLHLL which can now be looked up in an index (if
you knew the tune but couldn't remember it's title)
I even recall picking a book up that contained an index of tunes in this form
and being able to look tunes up from the signatures. Have I imagined all
this? Does anyone know of a web site with such an index available?
Dennis Ellis, via email
What happens to old and out of date Internet
pages; is there such a thing as an archive anywhere? I would be very interested
in seeing what the early web used to look like.
Jenny Lister, via
email
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