OVER 2 YOU, 078 (30/04/02)

PUPIL SORTER

I'm a teacher, and later this term will be responsible for sorting Y6 (junior) pupils into Y7 (secondary) forms. The sorting process should take account of friendship preferences, and also prohibited combinations! The resulting forms need to be balanced in terms of gender and ability.  Does anyone have any suggestions as to a program that may help with the first
cut?
Jason Day, Sheffield

I suggest Mr Day gets his pupils to write a program with the following spec (The pupils must be assigned numerical IDs.):

Accept pairs of IDs for pupils who are friendly.
Accept pairs of IDs for pupils who are incompatible.
Accept score weightings for each pair of friendly pupils in a form.

Accept weightings for each pair of incompatible pupils in a form.
Accept weightings for each form containing an excess of 1 male pupil, 2 male
pupils, 3 etc.
Accept the number of random results to be generated. (Once debugged he could
run the program overnight.)
Accept the number of highest-ranking results to be saved.

Repeat once for each random result to be generated.
 -  Generate at random a set of form/pupil lists for the next year.
 -  Compute the score for the set using the weighting supplied.
 -  If the score is high enough save the set of pupil lists replacing the
lower scoring existing saved result.

Display or print the saved best results.
Brian Gilbert, Hampton, Middx

I’ve produced an Excel spreadsheet with a macro that sorts both individuals, and groups of friends, into forms. It takes account of gender and ability. If Jason would like to e-mail me at I would be glad to send him a copy.

Jane B,

NOISY PCS
The noise coming from the fans and whirring motors in my PC is really getting on my nerves. Is there such a thing as a totally silent PC – I have very acute hearing – or is there any way of muffling the noise?

Jean Taylor, via email

PC designers almost never consider noise as a design criterion, so the poor punter is really on their own on this. Sceptical old souls like me actually like a bit of noise; it tells me the wretched thing is actually working…

The sledgehammer solution is to use a laptop - they're not totally silent, but if you rest them on a soft mat rather than on the hard table top it's probably as good as it gets. However, if you consider the vanilla beige box pc, the noise culprits are (worst first):

The power supply fan
The processor fan
The graphics card fan (if it has one)
The CD drive when running
The floppy drive ditto
The hard disc

Only the first two are really amenable to improving by getting the bonnet up and changing components. I guess if Jean was confident about truffling about with PC hardware she wouldn't be writing to a national paper for help, but for the record you can get low-noise CPU coolers and replacement power supplies with better quality fans.

On the other hand, if Jean is a real person with a life and better things to do than rip her PC to bits, then she must fall back on secondary solutions like putting the base unit inside a cupboard, or in the next room, or making up a foam-lined box to go over the thing. Any such solution is strictly trial and error of course - you still have to get at the front panel occasionally and you must allow free airflow at the back. Try a bit of Blue Peter engineering with foam rubber and cardboard to make a sort of lagged duct for the PSU fan.

Lastly, don't ignore simple things like making sure the box isn't  standing on (or up against) a soundboard like part of the desk; check that the CPU fan is clean; check indeed that the CPU fan isn't actually worn out! (Worn bearings are very noisy.) Also obvious, make sure there isn't a vibrating panel on the case which can amplify the noise.
Kelvin Davis,

I got fed up with the noise from my PC and found Quiet PC at www.quitepc.com I bought a low noise power supply and a "Flower Cooler" they were very easy to fit with comprehensive instructions for the Cooler.  My PC is so quite now that the only way to tell if it's running is by the LED's on the front.

Howie Davison,

Have a look at these two sites:

www.dwpg.com/stealth/

and

www.cool-computers.com

Peter Hall,

I find that the high-pitched noise from my PC aggravated my slight tinnitus. The solution was to buy an ear defender from a DIY store, and use it every time I'm at the console. They only cost about £10, and cut out over 90% of the noise. You can still hear the telephone if it's in the same room.
John Wright,

Red Submarine (www.sub.co.uk) do a "quiet kit" for reducing the noise of hard discs, fans etc.Paul Ganney, Head of Computing, Hull Royal Infirmary

QUESTIONS FOR QUESTIONAIRRE

I would like to be able to scan questionnaires, received through the post, into my computer and then use this to write the answers so that they will print correctly into the boxes on the original questionnaire.  This is possible with an ordinary typewriter but I have been quite unable to achieve this with MS Word.  As soon as I try to make the scanned in questions hidden or deleted, all the answers that I want to print loose their position and spacing.  Surely there must be a program for printing to spaces on a form, which will solve my frustration and save my ballpoint?

Peter Stovin, via email

Following recent suggestions I have how about a much simpler solution?

1. Scan document into Word.

2. Select whole document and change text colour to red.

3. Type in answers in black

4. "Find and Replace" all red formatting by white.

5. When you print, only the black will show!

Anthea Dore,

READING AMIGA DISCS

I have a large quantity of sound samples on Amiga (880k) discs. Is there any software that will allow my PC to read these? I don't need to emulate the Amiga completely. I used Octamed Sound Studio on the  (superior) Amiga and wish to use the PC version of this excellent program.
Alan Pywell, via email     

There is a very useful article at http://cloanto.com/kb/3-118.html, which covers this in some detail.
Andrew Parker,

OFFLINE BROWSER

Can anyone recommend an offline browser for reading newspapers? I merely want one that will work in the background – so that as I tick each story I am interesting in reading from the index – it will automatically start downloading. At the moment Internet Explorer demands that I await the full downloading of each story before proceeding to the next. An American company provided an excellent piece of software called Spoton that did precisely this but sadly no longer provide this service.

John Murphy, Bouniagues, France

You can save time using just the shift key in Internet Explorer.  My favourite solution has been to click on up to 16 hyperlinks on an index page while holding down the shift key so that each linked page appears in its own window.  While each linked page is loading, just click on the index page so
that you can click on another hyperlink.  The resource meter can help you to judge when you have reached the safe maximum number of pages.  Then display all the pages at once by cascading your windows so that you can select those that have finished downloading.  The rest download while you are reading. You waste no time downloading pages you do not want.

Otherwise, Internet Explorer 6 also allows you to add pages to Favorites and synchronise for viewing offline later.  This works for some web pages like the Telegraph's news page but not for other sites, which run complicated scripts.  It may only be worthwhile if you have a free Internet connection
as downloading only one page deep (the maximum I recommend) from an index page takes quite a time because of unwanted links.  The only problem is that pictures tend not to be downloaded during synchronisation of single linked pages.

I do not recommend free versions of accelerators like NetAccelerator and Netsonic, which are supposed to preload pages.  They offered me no speed advantage and made my computer less reliable by loading various unwanted programs into memory via registry entries.
David Hutchence,

GETTING A BEARING

It should be possible to compute bearings and distances on Ordnance Survey maps by just entering the six figure map references of start and finish points.  Does anyone know how?  Do I need a program or just a formula?
Cliff Mallinson, North Somerset

Your reader might like to test the calculator on my web page: http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/js-carto.htm#BR; if he wants to
use it frequently, he should make a private local copy.
Dr John Stockton,

CAN YOU HELP?

I would like to make a simple line drawing of my house to use on headed paper.  As I'm not artistic enough to do this freehand, is there any way that I can create an outline by tracing this from a digital photo?

Simon Foster, via email

We are moving to a smaller flat or bungalow and I would like to find a 3D interior design programme whereby I can enter the dimensions of a room, and also templates of pieces of furniture which can be resized, so as to decide what it will be possible to take and that which I will have to dispose of.
Can anybody help?

Jane Neal via e-mail.

Does anyone know of a site, which calculates percentage gains or losses of share prices? For example if I bought a share for £1.47 on February 23rd 1996, and it is valued at £2.39 today, is there anywhere I can enter these two figures and dates and receive the percentage gain over the period?

Roger Craig, via email