OVER 2 YOU, 093 (13/08/02)

COMMWEALTH REUNITED

Does any know of a web site devoted to reconnecting long lost friends and relatives in the Commonwealth?

Dick Harrison, via email

Mr Harrison might find what he is looking for at the British Club Worldwide web site. This has lots of potentially useful links for commonwealth organisations and notice boards, for putting people in touch with one another.

Chas Deeley, via email

I suggest that a genealogical type search would be the best solution, provided you have a surname and approximate location you can find almost anyone. The best place to start is probably the Cyndi's List web site (www.cyndislist.com), which has links to databases, search engines, genealogy web sites and software.

Jill Cummings

GRID REFERENCES

I can store the National Grid References of up to 250 waypoints (positions) in my GPS, but manual entry is very time-consuming.  Alternatively, I can download a table of waypoints from MS Excel into the GPS, which is much quicker, but they have to be entered in columns of latitude and longitude.  Is there a program that will convert a batch of Grid References into separate columns of latitude and longitude?
Geoffrey Adams, via email

Your correspondent may be interested in the Global Positioning System Utility at www.gpsu.co.uk. This utility enables any map to be scanned and waypoint co-ordinates to be created simply by clicking on the map. These can then be uploaded to a GPS receiver. Alternatively, some route finding utilities such as AutoRoute or MapBlast (www.mapblast.com) can be used to find a route and create the necessary waypoint co-ordinates. Connecting the GPS receiver to a suitable laptop or PDA will display a moving map of your present location.

Derek Toft

The answer is the inexpensive mapping program Map Maker, downloadable from www.mapmaker.com. He will need the Pro version to get all the GPS utilities. However this is not expensive at £225 (plus VAT) or £55 (plus VAT) if he is an accrededited student, and is a wonderfully easy yet sophisticated system. It handles what he needs and a large number of projections one can link in directly from GPS and download data and or convert it from NGR to Lat. long. It is also a wonderful GIS drawing display tool. We have been using it in this office with a Garmin GPS for the past three years.

Another program that offers conversions of waypoints is Tracker. This is used by Cambridge University Department of Landscape Modelling (whose website has a link) to record and set up aerial photography flight paths.

Bud Young

Try Gartrip available at www.gartrip.de.  It allows editing and data inputting via serial lead to a GPS (I use a Garmin 12XL) and has provision for at least 9 different co-ordinate formats (including NGR, long and lat, and UTM amongst others) and will switch between them. A free trial version is available online with limitations on data storage (30 way points and one route).  The full version which is unlocked by a numeric code costs 30€.  It makes a tedious task much easier, especially since programmes like MS Autoroute give their co-ordinates in decimalised Lat and Long values.
Derek Bunting

BOOK PROGRAM

Does anyone know of a reasonably priced program, which will do the necessary imposition for printing say a 12 page x A5 newsletter or a 40 page x A5 booklet from a PDF file? These are printed on A4 paper and saddle-stitched. The commercial printers have their expensive software for this, which will also do all sorts of clever tricks, but it would be useful to be able to run off a few copies as mock-ups and/or drafts for the sorts of documents we put together for our local U3A.

Don Perham, via email

I'm afraid Don has missed the boat. If he has made a PDF file then all he can do is print it as is. I print such booklets for our local Family History Society usually from desktop publisher software and to prevent changes being made after the booklet is finalised I use pdf files He can solve his problem using desktop publisher software such as Microsoft publisher and set up a 4 page folded file which will produce a booklet in the form he wants. The problem is in the printer he uses - he needs one which prints in duplex which will cost £500 plus, depending on the
model.
Alex Thomson

I use Linux predominantly and came across three utilities called Psnum, Psbook and ps2pdf a few months ago. These allow one to transform and manipulate postscript files to do exactly what Don Perlham requires. Psnum converts one postscript file into another, with any number of pages per sheet. Psbook allows the page re-ordering required to complete the booklet transformation. Use one, then the other and you can turn A4 single sided into A5 booklets on A4 paper etc.

I just had a look on the Internet, and the gnuwin32 project has compiled  these utilities for the Windows platform too. See http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/

packages/psutils.htm for the download. You will probably need to get GhostScript to handle the ps2pdf  conversion. (This turns a postscript file into a PDF file, like Acrobat Distiller).

Alternatively, if you are rich enough to own a big HP LaserJet, which uses PCL6 and handles duplexing, it's built into the Windows printer driver!
George Bunting

DISC IDEAS

I’ve made bird scarers with them, ‘papered’ the kids bedroom ceiling and even used a few for airgun practice (satisfying but messy…) but I’m still left with scores of freebie Internet signup CDs. Has anyone come up with a sensible use for the cursed things yet?

Geoff Belling, via email

The problem of what to do with CDs was aired by the New Scientist magazine a few years ago.  My tongue-in-cheek suggestion was to nail them to the top of fence posts to reflect sunlight back into space and reduce global warming. Also it would extend the life of fencing posts, thus saving trees.  If we had a suitable spacing we could reflect a star-code back into space to see if there's anyone out there. If we could create the reflectivity of an ice-age ice cap, it would be a means of cooling the planet. I did do some calculations that suggested that if one person in ten nailed a CD to a post, it would create a reflective area the size of Belgium.  A colleague has recently recalculated (prompted by your letter page) and informs we that it would be only the size of San Marino, probably not big enough to alter the Earth's albedo.

John Holt, Capenhurst, Chester

I have no suggestion for the CDs but the sleeves are very useful to protect bulk-buy blank CD-Rs.

Eddie Masters

PC MICROSCOPE

Having taken up geology in my retirement, I want to branch out into petrology, which involves using a polarizing microscope to examine thin sections of rock. However, failing eyesight (AMD) is an increasing handicap, albeit a slowly growing one.  Has anyone experience of using an optical microscope with a PC? I have Windows 95 PC with a 21-inch monitor, what other hardware would I need, apart from the microscope?  Being able to show the angular direction of the polarizer on screen with the magnified section is the dream, but not the expectation! If the idea is technically/financially beyond reach of anyone outside a well-endowed laboratory, is there a program simulating a range of rock sections?

Douglas Hague, via email

The Open University has a digital microscope CD available, which has digitised thin section images in plane and crossed polarized light and the facility to rotate the images to examine extinction effects. They also have a digital rock atlas to complement the digital microscope. The costs are £30
per CD; alternatively Douglas could always sign up for S260, which is probably the best course that the OU does and all the CDs come with the course (there's a total of about 5 covering various aspects of Geology).If this is not an option then the best way is to obtain an adapter for a digital camera to fit between the lens of the microscope and camera lens and
view images via a PC monitor. Either the camera manufacturer or microscope manufacturer can be contacted. Get into a college or uni that runs geology courses and see how they do it - and maybe pick up the necessary info from them.
A. Mackie

TALKING NEWSPAPERS

We produce a talking newspaper for the blind and currently record these on cassettes. However this technology is rapidly being phased out and we need to establish a viable alternative as we are led to believe that tapes will cease being available in 2004.

Does anyone know have any experience of using CDs for newsletters or similar? Any help would be appreciated including the best way of getting the recordings onto the PC for editing and subsequent distribution.
Geoffrey Thomas, via email

I think Mr Hesketh, Editor of Southward T.N (Over 2 You July 23rd) has misread the content of Geoffrey Thomas’s letter. The fact that RNIB is changing a format in 2004 is irrelevant to Talking Newspapers, although I agree, audio tapes will be around for a long time, as Frank Hesketh states. What is significant is that audio tape equipment (of the popular type) is being phased out in favour of mini-discs, MP3's and CDs. Already the market for tape playing equipment has shrunk. This means that soon our blind listeners will encounter difficulty and considerable expense in replacing worn out equipment. Tape players may well be available for a long time but as specialised items they are bound to become increasingly expensive.

Douglas Griffiths, Fareport T.N.  

CAN YOU HELP

How can I get Excel 2000 to do a countdown specified in days, hours and minutes from the current date and time to a future specified date and time? I have been able to get either days with a decimal for hours or hours and minutes but not as I would like.
I. C. Blaik, vie email

I’m a little concerned about recent reports of asteroids and comets striking the earth. Where can I find out more about the trajectories, threat assessments and hopefully some advance warning of these dangerous sounding objects?

Les Jacobs, via email

Does anyone know if the Kirlian effect, whereby using a special camera the ‘aura’ generated by living things can be photographed, can be captured on a digital camera, and if so how?

S. Woodward, via email