OVER 2 YOU, 105 (05/11/02)

BOOK SITES

E-Bay seems to be the only site that comes up whenever I search for second hand books. Does anybody know of either seller sites or book search sites?

My immediate interest is a copy of Access Insider by Margaret Levine Young originally published in 1993.

Roger Coates, via email

Try Biblion who claim to be the UK's largest site for rare, antiquarian and out of print books at http://www.biblion.com/

Richard Dyson

At the time of writing the book you seek was available at the Advance Book Exchange web site: (www.abebooks.com) for $9.90 plus P&P. Abebooks is a subscription service for thousands of second-hand booksellers, who load their stock into Abebook's database. It’s a great place to find books. As a seller from home though I gave up. I had 30 books listed for six months and sold one. On ebay, I sell a book a day. For a good list of on-line booksellers go to: 

http://books.interdart.co.uk/books/d_bases.html and look in the major databases page. Happy Hunting!
Andrew Wilcox

Here are some good sites for second hand books:
Alibris http://www.alibris.com/
Bibliofind http://www.bibliofind.com/
Bookfinder http://www.bookfinder.com/
Bookradar http://www.bookradar.com/
John Dean, Headington, Oxford

I suggest using www.abe.com. This has an extremely large database of the inventories of thousands of booksellers worldwide. Searching is easy, ordering and paying straightforward, but you may need some patience to handle delivery delays! My first order arrived in 5 days, but the second, processed on 24th May, arrived on 10th October by surface mail (slow boat?) from Bakersfield California. Incidentally, the book he is seeking is available from a dealer in California!

Adrian Mills

Mr Coates should look for second hand books on www.bibliology.com. Today his immediate interest Access Insider by Margaret Levine Young is not in the database though other books by Levine Young are available.  Book seekers may register a 'Want' if the title sought is not currently in the database. An email will be sent to them as soon as a dealer uploads the title.  If Mr Coates prefers to view Bibliology with a pale background, he should try the new www.bibliology.com/light.

Tom Biro, Director, Bibliology Limited

Amazon has started a service where customers can sell second hand books. I have not gone into the details but have been rather surprised to note that prices quoted for second hand books are often more than the new version!

A better bet when looking for a specific title is www.booksearch-at-hay.htm.   This site is physically located in Hay 0n Wye, which is the Mecca for second hand books in the UK if not the world. Alternatively, enter Hay on Wye into Google - this will produce a list of many other bookshops many of which deal in second hand books.

Jim Clark

Roger Coates should try Barnes & Noble www.bn.com; it has a network of dealers if it is out of print.

John Siggins

I collect second-hand books especially on the subject of Whisky and I have found the www.usedbooksearch.co.uk site very useful. You can either find the book you are looking for or leave the information on the book you want and they will conduct a search for it at no cost to you. The more information you can give on the book you want the better chance of
these searches being successful.
Douglas Woodburn

ANCIENT ACCOUNTANCY

Is there a basic accounting program designed for pre-decimal currency,i.e. pounds, shillings and pence, not forgetting farthings and halfpennies?It would be useful for historical research purposes.
Tom Hart, via email

I’m not aware of any accountancy programs as such – it seems unlikely that any exist that would run on a PC at any rate – but you can do pounds shillings and pence calculations in Excel. Assign them a column each, i.e. pounds in A, shillings in B and pence in C, in column D2 put the following formula: =A2*240+B2*12+C2 and drag it down the column and you can use this column for basic calculations, adding and subtracting and so on, giving you a result in pence. Another formula is needed to convert pennies into pounds shillings and pence. Assuming the result of your pence calculations appears in cell D6, in the pounds cell enter the formula:  INT(D6/240). In the shillings cell use the formula: = INT((D6 - INT(D6/240)*240)/12) and in the pennies results cell enter =MOD(MOD(D6,12),20)

Jennie Taylor, Edenbridge, Kent

WORD FOR BEGINNERS

I am in my eighties, my main use of my PC is to e-mail and write letters. Because of lack of use I have forgotten many of the intricacies of word processing that I was taught on a course a couple of years ago and so I am continually referring to manuals. Can anyone recommend a book with tests and exercises to keep me up to scratch?
N. G. B., via email

Forget the manuals, you can easily get bogged down with all the jargon and technicalities. As a mere stripling of 77 I found that the best way to get to know Word is to keep on using it and for letter writing and emails you won’t need to learn to use more than a very small fraction of this programs features. If there’s something special you want to do then this is a good excuse to experiment with the menus. One tip though, forget Word Help, it’s next to useless, you’ll never get an answer unless you know the right form of words for the question!

Harry Fleming, via email

CHINESE PUZZLE

I am looking for software that will translate English and print it in Chinese. Is this possible?

Bernie, via email

I was looking for something similar a while back (I was seeking software for translating Japanese) and came across a web site called Translation.net (http://www.translation.net/index.html); this has details of all the programs available for a particular language, with links to the publisher’s web sites. I looked under Chinese and there were at least half a dozen programs listed, though none of them were particularly cheap…

Kelly Chambers, via email

NURSING ROTA

I work as a nurse 4 days on, 4 days off. I would like to be able to see at a glance, which days I will be working in 12 months time for example. Is there a program available which would do this?

Helen Lundy, via email

Your correspondent can easily work out her eight-day rota in an Excel spreadsheet by formatting cells and using formulas.
Format Column A in your favourite date format.  For Column B 'Format/ Cells/Number/Custom' and change the 'Type' box to 'ddd'.  Format Columns C to H in any Number format.  In A1 put the first On Duty date of an 8-day period.  In C1 put '=A1'.  In D1 put '=C1/8'.  In E1 put '=INT(D1)'.  In F1
put '=E1*8'.  In G1 put '=C1-F1'. G1 will then show a whole number, n, from 0 to 7.  Change C1 to '=A1-n' where n is the number from 0 to 7 that was in G1.  G1 will now show 0.  In
H1 put '=IF(G1<4,"On","Off")'.  Now highlight A1 to H1 and pull down as far as you want, then 'Hide' Columns C to G.

You will now have three columns showing the date, the day of the week and if you are 'On' or 'Off'.  Of course, if you are confident with formulas you can just put '=IF(((A1-3)/8-INT((A1-'n')/8))*8<4,"On","Off")' in C1 and pull down, but you will need to find 'n' by trial.  (Note: Do not enter the
single quotes anywhere.)
Richard Hobbs, LONDON SW16

SHARE PRICES

I would like to be able to download price histories of shares, indices etc for use in a Technical Analysis program, for as far back as possible, and to update these histories as required. Does anyone know of any suitable sites, either free or subscription based?
Peter Shelton, by e-mail

For up to date share price information Microsoft has a free add-in for Excel, which provides online share prices (and a lot of other things about an equity). It is called MSN MoneyCentral Stock Quotes and is available from www.microsoft.com/office/excel/downloads. Prices are delayed by 15 – 20 minutes (as per the rules of the exchanges), and the spreadsheet can be updated every five minutes. Coverage of the markets seems very good.

However, it only works with the latest version, Excel 2002, so you might have to buy an Excel licence again. I believe that this is Microsoft’s re-definition of “free”.

Tony Etheridge

SITTING COMFORTABLY

My physio has heavily criticised my sitting posture - which has added to the strain on my neck and the deterioration of my cervical vertebrae.  He suggests that I find some way of regularly reminding myself to check my posture when operating the PC.  Can anyone suggest a way of "posting"
reminders to my screen at regular intervals, irrespective of software I am using at the time?
Tom Busby, via email

With regard to the request for an application monitor that prompts at given intervals to take a break (I believe the HSE recommended maximum period for uninterrupted work on a PC is 20 minutes) to ease both the eyes and the spine.  I found this URL for such an application, which is not FOC, but is only £1.00:
http://www.computermarket.com/mall/

3933D451/Poundsoftware_HEALTH_48.html
Stuart MacPherson

CAN YOU HELP

Can anybody suggest how I can display a clock in an Excel 97 spreadsheet cell that always shows the current time? Updating by the second or by the minute would be acceptable. I would also need to be able to use the NOW function to do calculations based on the clock reading i.e. the spreadsheet would recalculate when the clock reading changed.

Paul Lavington, via email

I found the recent discussion on valve amplifiers and old mechanical televisions absolutely fascinating, now I wonder if I can throw in my two ‘pennoth? My hobby, which I have taken up since retiring, is collecting old telephones (pre 1960 and preferably GPO issued) and now I’m the proud but naive owner of an Internet PC, I wonder if any readers can help me track down any informative web sites or direct me to ways of contacting fellow enthusiasts?

Geoffrey Burns, via email  

I remember using the For/Next, Let, and Plot commands in BASIC to plot graphs of mathematical functions, and find solutions by iteration. Where can I find some modern software to do this?

John Bunting, via email