OVER 2 YOU, 135 (24/06/03)

WATERPROOF PC

I am a professional diver and frequently work on wrecks and submerged structures, recording data and coordinates etc., by hand, on a ‘slate’, which are cumbersome and has limited storage capacity. Has anyone developed such an underwater organiser or PC, preferably with a large keyboard or touch sensitive screen (for handwriting recognition) or an illuminated display?

S Lindley, via email

An underwater PC was developed over ten years ago by a scientist called Bruce McDonald at the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). ‘WetPC’ was quite bulky; it had to be attached to the diver’s air tanks and operated using a small hand-held display and controller device. I’m not sure how far it has been developed, or even if it is still in production but I did manage to find a reference to it on the web at: http://wetpc.com.au/html/

Ken Berry, via email

The nearest thing to S. Lindley's search for a waterproof organiser is the Armor cases by Otter details can be found at www.ruggedpeak.com. This ruggedised case is waterproof and allows use of the PDA in wet and hostile conditions. It is not designed to be used underwater, but will survive immersion, and we have photos of it being used by people floating in rivers (in the Bolivian jungle!). They are very popular with outdoor and water-based professionals. Water engineers, for example, use them to protect PDA's whilst downloading data from remote monitoring equipment.
Tony Cooper, via email

ACRONYM GENERATOR

I have written a macro in Excel 2000 to generate acronyms from sets of letters. The macro generates all possible combinations of the letters and produces a table of results. I have been unsuccessful in getting the dictionary facility to operate from within the macro so I copy the table of results into Word and use its dictionary to identify incorrectly spelt words. Can anyone suggest a way to use the dictionary from within a macro, to identify incorrectly spelt words and print a list of correct ones?

Les Thorpe, via email

To use the dictionary from within an Excel Macro the code required is :-
Cells.CheckSpelling _
CustomDictionary:="CUSTOM.DIC", _
IgnoreUppercase:=False, _
AlwaysSuggest:=True, _
SpellLang:=2057

I have broken the lines (as Excel would do) for ease of reading. Language 2057 is UK English

Shades

I too have an anagram macro written in Excel and test the existence of a generated string using Application.CheckSpelling(sWord) where sWord is the candidate word. CheckSpelling will return a Boolean result.

Mike Wright

SMALL BUSINESS SOFTWARE

I run a small business and I’m looking for a program that records client names and addresses, logs orders, reports when a customer last placed an order and flags up an entry if there is no repeat business within a certain time frame. Can anyone recommend suitable software?
Monty Portman, via email

I use a package developed in Microsoft Access by a firm called Garek Systems. It covers all your basic administrative functions, client names, addresses, sales and purchase order logging, etc. and can be tailored to your individual requirements. I estimate it saves my company two days a week in administrative time. Their number is +44 (0) 1606 550691.
Gary Bartles

Monty Portman should have a look at our web-site (www.preori.co.uk). We tailor business software for companies who can't find a suitable packaged solution.

Adrian Cole, Preori Limited
 

SERIAL NUMBERS

I am looking for a way of producing multiple copies of the same MS Office document (Word/Excel), but each with it's own unique serial number. I can do this in Avery DesignPro but have been unable to find a way of doing it in Office. Can anyone help?
Ian Johnson, via email

This should be very easy, do it as a rather unconventional mail merge! In MS Word you can merge data from a database or spreadsheet or from another WinWord file. The latter is the easiest - just type in the sequence of numbers. Then merge this new data into a field in your main document, suitably titled so that it tells the user that he or she has "document number 101" or whatever. You might even incorporate revision levels.
Michael Irwin

MORE SITES FOR SORE EYES

I suffer with AMD or ARMD which stands for Age related Macular Degeneration and wonder if any of your readers know of a suitable website where I could get advice? I am prepared to take part in research and would be grateful for the help.

D Golten, via email

Some researchers have suggested that AMD is a yeast or fungal condition. An enforced 2 days without food temporally healed mine, which could indicate a fungal condition in need of carbohydrates.  Mr Brooks Simkins used to treat AMD, often using red light followed by blue. The latter may have anti bug properties. Red at 670nm is known to regenerate retinal cells. So far I have had good results scanning my entire retina with a bright 5 LED cycle rear light, and will shortly be trying blue. Mr Brooks Simkins used a 12-watt bulb, followed by filters for each eye. Probably less than 14% of the light reached the eye. Maximum treatment was about 25 minutes. I never exceed 7 minutes.   A computer monitor may be therapeutic if the individual phosphors could be turned on, giving red, green or blue. The following sites, though not specifically for eye problems, may broaden the outlook.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/

news.jsp?id=ns99992525

http://www.mercola.com/2003/may/7/

infectious[underscore]diabetes.htm

http://www.mercola.com/2003/may/10/ infectious[underscore]diabetes[underscore]interview.htm

http://www.iknowthecause.com/index.php

http://members.aol.com/jfoverlag/fungalbionics/

Philip R Harding

SAFARI DINNERS

I organize an annual Safari Dinner, 48 people attend and are divided in six groups of eight (4 couples) for each course.  We have three courses, and for each course each couple must sit with a different set of couples.  I've tried to find a formula or method on both Access and Excel, without success.  Can anyone help, please?

Trevor Waddington, via email

Here is a seating plan that you can use even if you become more ambitious and have 5 courses to your meal!  The couples are A, B, ... , W, X, and a set of letters such as AGMS represents four couples seated together at a table.

Course 1:
AGMS BHNT CIOU DJPV EKQW FLRX

Course 2:
CLPW DGQX EHRS FIMT AJNU BKOV

Course 3:
EJOX FKPS ALQT BGRU CHMV DINW

Course 4:
DKRT ELMU FGNV AHOW BIPX CJQS

Course 5:
FHQU AIRV BJMW CKNX DLOS EGPT

If couples A to F are English, couples G to L are French, couples M to R are Italian, and couples S to X are Polish, say, then this arrangement ensures that no two couples of the same nationality are ever seated together. If, for each course, the sets of couples are assigned to tables 1 to 6 in the above order, no couple ever sits more than once at a table having any particular number.

This seating plan was published by Dr Nick Phillips (Southern Illinois University) and myself last year in the mathematical journal Utilitas Mathematica.  We gave the plan as an arrangement for part of a four-play tournament in flat-green bowling, not for a gastronomic progress.

The fact that you mention 24 couples rather than 16, 20, 28 or 32 suggests that you may know more mathematics than you indicate. All these other numbers of couples are easier to assign to tables in accordance with your restriction.  The difficulty with 6 tables rather than 4, 5, 7 or 8 is related to the non-existence of a solution to the classical mathematical Problem of the Thirty Six Officers. So the arrangement that I have given is troublesome to obtain.
Dr Donald A. Preece, University of London
 

CAN YOU HELP?

Alderney is a small Channel Island of about 3,000 people.  It has a library of around 18,000 books a record of which is kept on a PC and which shows author, book title, category and hard or paperback.  It is run entirely by volunteers.  This apart, the work of issuing books and keeping a record of borrowers' names and date of issue etc is all done by hand and is very labour intensive.  Suggestions for an inexpensive system of, say, bar codes and a scanner would be most appreciated.

Audrey Atterbury, via email

Can anyone suggest software or a spreadsheet solution to help allocate rooms? We have a youth choir of 50 who visit other choirs (or host them). We always seek to place them in pairs in home stays. They are invited to list up to four friends with whom they'd like to share, in order of preference. There must be an easier way than named pieces of paper on the floor! Occasionally we want to allocate rooms of three so if it could cope with that, so much the better.

Phil Dunford, via email

Following on from a couple of recent enquiries on Over 2 You concerning obscure formats, two weeks ago I came across a box of Sony ‘Ellecasette’ tapes at a local church fundraiser. Apparently the tapes were snapped up by a collector for £5. Neither the stallholder or anyone I later questioned had seen or heard of this system before, and I could find no reference to it on the Internet, can anyone enlighten me?

H. Linden, via email