OVER 2 YOU, 120 (04/03/03)

WINEWARE

Can anyone recommend software suitable for recording the contents of a wine cellar?
Richard Jewson, via email

There are numerous commercial programs on the market for recording wine cellar details. One of the better ones, in my opinion, is an Australian software package - Winebase, produced by Almost Vertical Software. Winebase allows input of data for all wines and once set up the wine cellar can be searched on maturity, region, wine type, grape variety, vintage etc. Default graphs are included showing the maturation curves for many types of wine e.g. Bordeaux and these can be easily adjusted to suit the individual wine and its vintage. The software also includes the Gold Book giving details of Australian and New Zealand wines.

Wines can be tasted and their details recorded so that it is possible to search for wines to match specific foods. An outline is provided to show where wines are located in the wine cellar, which saves endless fruitless searching to locate a specific bottle. There is a web site: www.winebase.com.au and the 'author' Ken Tripp can be contacted on
KenTripp@Compuserve.com. My version cost about £25 and came very promptly.
Ken Capps

I use ‘Cellar!’ purchased from: BMT Micro Inc., PO Box 15016, Wilmington, NC 28048 USA, web address: www.bmtmicro.com. The cost, after dollar/sterling exchange, at time of purchase in April 2002 was  £50.11p

Colin Linford

Richard Jewson may find the software list at: http://groups.msn.com/BordeauxCentral/

winesoftwaresearchesandvalues.msnw

helps him to record the contents of his wine cellar in the way he wants. Some of the resources listed are free and the facilities available range from the simple to ones with powerful search and organising capability. Or, if he is familiar with Excel, he may find it just as easy to use that.
David Ling, Caple, Hereford

For managing the contents of your home wine collection  "The Uncorked Cellar" is to be recommended. You can easily add to, or select wines from, your own cellar with just a few keystrokes. It instantly displays extensive wine information including Wine Ratings, Value Guide, Cellaring Guide, Winemaker's notes etc. It includes winery details from America, Australia, Canada and details of over 9,500 American, 8,500 Australian, 600 Canadian, 1600 New Zealand, 200 English wines. There are 10,000 Winery names and addresses and information on more than 46,000 individual vintages of wines. You can modify, or add your own tasting notes on your wines, analyse your wine collection via an extensive series of graphs
A 60 day trail which is fully functional can be downloaded at: http://www.uncork.com.au/

Another more basic program is the shareware program Wine Organizer Deluxe from PrimaSoft PC: http://www.primasoft.com/deluxeprg/wiodx.htm  (I'm not sure if still in business, their site is not available today) it can also be downloaded from http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/59064.html

John Nutt, via email

A FEW CROSSWORDS

My 8-year-old granddaughter enjoys doing simple crosswords, which I have been compiling myself but it would help if I could use a software program (preferable freeware or shareware) to make the crosswords. Does anyone know of such a program? It would have to be flexible enough to cope with simple ones now but have the ability to produce more difficult ones, as she gets older.

Ian Pembroke, via email

Try Puzzlemaker http://puzzlemaker.school.discovery.com/

index.html. It can create a number of puzzles easily. Try 'Criss-Cross Puzzle' from the menu.

Martin, Pontypridd

Ian Pembroke might like to try the Crossword software at:
http://www.smartcode.com/software.htm. We have used it for about ten years, as our children have grown. We have also used - with great success the Word Search Software from the same site. Both are very easy to set up and can be as easy or difficult as required.
Chris Adam

Vocabulary Worksheet Factory produced by Schoolhouse Technologies is just what he needs. It allows compilation of many types of vocabulary puzzles/work-sheets including crosswords. The program will generate crosswords of various levels of complexity and allows the user to expand the in-built vocabulary with his own word lists. A 20-day trial is available from:
http://www.schoolhousetech.com/

products/vocabulary/download.htm

and the program can be registered for unlimited use for $30.
Roger Cain

Literate Software Systems produces "Across Lite", a freeware program normally used to solve downloaded puzzles published across the web in this format, or to print them out in an attractive format to be 'done on paper' later. A free copy of this program for various platforms can be downloaded from http://www.litsoft.com/across/alite/download.htm

It normally reads files of its own format file type '.puz', but it also has the ability to read text files if they have been created in a particular format.

John Stephenson

I can confidently recommend the software program Sympathy, which will cater for all his needs, both present and future. It is not free, but in my view there is no better program around. The website address is: www.bryson.ltd.uk

Gareth Snowden-Davies, via email

I use WordWiz, which is a powerful but easy-to-use program suitable for home or professional puzzle making.  It creates crosswords, word searches, kriss kross (fill-in) puzzles, and number kriss krosses. A free trial version can be downloaded from: http://www.wizware.com/index.html. This is fully functional but limited to a maximum puzzle size of 9 x 9 letters.  If you like it, you can go on to order a larger version from the website.

The only minor snag is that WordWiz is an American program, so you might have to tweak the word lists now and again, or compile your own.  (You can create as many word lists as you like.)  In the "standard" puzzle mode, it tries to make fully checked crosswords in the American style, but you can easily copy British crossword grids from newspapers, magazines, etc. and save them for future use.
Roberta Davies

RAPID SEARCH

I have produced separate JPEG digital images (600Kb each) with a high quality camera (Nikon 990) of every page (over 3,000) of the Minutes of a highly respected winter sporting club, going back to its inception in 1885.  Does anyone know of an application/program, which will enable the information to be presented in a format which allows rapid searches of the text (both hand and typewritten) on specific topics, for example as can be done with Encyclopaedia Britannica etc.?

Ken Newman, via email

There is an even better way of doing searches in photographed pages (Over 2 You replies February 18th) pages, and that is to scan them as Adobe Acrobat files and then use the search facility therein to find specific words.
David Dawson-Taylor

FTSE FIGURES

I used to download a set of historical FTSE figures (100, 250, 350, Allshare and Smallcap), every month or so from Marketeye.co.uk. As an amateur investor I found them very useful, and I have the figures back to 1995.  They are no longer on offer and I can't find an alternative.  The advantage of a download of "several months worth" is that you don't have to take it every day or every week.  Does anyone know of an alternative and hopefully free source?

Chris Walton, Broadstone, Dorset

It is possible to download excellent historical charts of share prices and various FTSE indices from the Daily Telegraph financial web site http://shares.telegraph.co.uk/

The Daily Telegraph computer must therefore contain all the historical figures for individual shares and for share indices (from which to calculate these charts).  Maybe their computer boffins could be persuaded to allow one the option of downloading the raw data which, for some purposes, is more useful?
Neil Campbell

CAN YOU HELP?

Having spent a considerable time renovating an 1830's Broadwood Cabinet piano, including re-stringing in the original iron and brass wires, now comes the task of tuning.  Does anyone know of any software that can be used to measure the vibrations of a string either through sound or ‘touch’?  I need to measure vibrations between about 30 and 3000 cycles per second.  It would need to be fairly accurate to within a few cps.

Alan Haddington, via email

Could anyone please help me with a formula or otherwise to select automatically the best score on each hole over a given number of rounds of golf i.e. an eclectic competition?

Paul Lawry, via email

 I run a Heritage website (www.woodborough-heritage.org.uk) and an associated Heritage Data Group, the Group has about 40 important interviews of local people, each interview lasts between 30 and 60 minutes. They are on a mixture of cassette tape and mini CD's, we wish to transcribe them as soon as possible, but the time of an audio typist is expensive and for us to do it is very time consuming. Can anyone recommend any software or hardware that will either do the job or assist in doing the job?

J Hoyland via email