OVER 2 YOU 199 (28/09/04)

WATERWHEELS

I have a small and fairly fast flowing stream at the bottom of my garden. Does anyone know if it would be possible or even legal to harness the flow with a waterwheel and generate my own electricity? It would be very satisfying to be able to power my PC or a few lights. If so where could I obtain more information and the necessary equipment?

Douglas Skinner, via email

I have just put in a system on my small river to produce electricity.  To find out the potential output you would first need to measure the water flow, and the fall. For an automatic system expect it to cost £2,000 to £4,000 per kW output. Before installation you may need to obtain a licence from the Environment Agency, and, of course, you will need the consent of any neighbours likely to be affected.  For help go to www.british-hydro.org, www.hydrogeneration.co.uk, www.dulas.org.uk or www.itpower.co.uk

Brian Shingler, Somerset

For information on generating electricity from waterwheels, contact Evans Engineering (www.microhydro.com), Launceston, Cornwell, I am sure he will get all the information he needs.

Guy Massey, Sudbury, Suffolk

There is a very good web site at www.brit-hydro.cwc.net, which has lots of useful information on power generation by water turbines.

Martin Walters, via email

It is quite possible and legal to generate ones own power 'at the bottom of the garden'. Small water powered installations are available and info is readily achieved from the Centre for Alternative Technology (www.cat.org.uk) is worth a visit).

'Small Scale Water Power' by Dermot McGuigan ISBN 0 904727 32 7 or 0 904727 33 5

is very useful.

Legally, property owners are allowed to abstract 20t water per day for private or agricultural purposes without a licence or making any payment from watercourses or boreholes. As this water is only being used not removed then even this legal application is invalid.

Bob Foster, Aquarius Water Engineering, via email

The first thing you should do is establish the ownership of that stream.  Does it flow through your land or merely border it? Secondly, you must contact the Environment Agency in your area. They are responsible for all watercourses, private or otherwise, and their management.  They are very strict in their control of these watercourses, although they respect the individual's Riparian Rights. To establish what these are (assuming that you do not already know) you should obtain a copy of their booklet 'Living on the Edge', which spells out in clear terms what landowners' responsibilities and rights are and how these are administered.

Alan S. Hebron, via email

FILOFAX PRINTING

I have been searching high and low, without success for a way to print or export my Address Book and Contacts list, from Outlook Express and Outlook into a Filofax page format. None of the programs I have see so far are flexible enough or are able to copy all of the information. Any suggestions?

Carol Philips, via email 

I suggest that Carol has a look at ClickBook, which prints documents, books and many other items in any size or format. A trial version is available from www.bluesquirrel.com.

Dennis Evans, via email

I have done this for several years using Outlook itself.  It prints all the information that I have put into the contact, though I rarely use more than the data on the general tab.  The only problem I have is that it does not identify and separate the various addresses that have been put in for one person. 

Select detailed address cards as your current view.

Select Page Setup – Card Style

On the PAPER tab, select A4 paper type, and Day-Timer Senior Pocket for the Page Size on the right, orientation needs to be Portrait.

On the FORMAT tab, you need to select one column as the number of columns

This prints three Filofax pages per A4 sheet, which then needs to be cut up.  If you want to print directly onto Filofax paper, presumably you can set it on the Paper tab, paper type.

Elaine Malkin, via email

Filofax produces a bespoke piece of software to enable PC users to transfer contacts from Outlook or Outlook Express to Filofax pages - Filofax Address Book Software. This great product is designed to keep your Filofax address section up-to-date. Once installed, the program can store up to 10,000 names and you can easily import files from any other program that can export files in CSV (Comma Separated Value) format.

Once your database is ready, you can print out your information onto Filofax Computer Paper (sold separately), which is available in Pocket, Personal and A5 sizes.

The Address Book Software (available to download for £12.50) and Computer Paper (£8.20) are both available from www.filofax.co.uk

Matt Watson, via email

STOCK MONITOR

I monitor a list of stocks by importing streaming prices into an Excel spreadsheet. In order to analyse the price action, I would like to have a column that automatically displays the highest or lowest value that the price for each stock has reached since being included in my spreadsheet.  In a way the cell must therefore have a "memory", and only change what it displays, if a higher/lower value is achieved.  Can anyone tell me if that is possible? 

Karl von Furstenberg, via email

I think I can make a constructive contribution to this subject using Excel. If A1 is your current share price, B1 is the historical maximum share price and C1 is a Stop/Loss or Profit then apply the following:

B1 Highlight the cell, go to Tools > Options > Calculation Tab > enable the Iteration box, set maximum iterations to 1000 > OK, then enter the following in cell B1: =IF(A1>B1,A1,B1). In cell C1 enter =B1*0.9 (or any other percentage you choose). You will then have a Trailing Stop/Loss/Profit

Michael Littler, via email

CAN YOU HELP?

I am interested in German history and many documents and books published pre-1945 are in what is called Fraktur (sometimes described loosely as German Gothic) I have used Read-Iris 8 to scan and convert text, but whilst it works with modern German it cannot deal with Fraktur. Does anyone know of an OCR that can do the job?

Also, I would like to know where I could find a downloadable set of fonts so that I can type in Fraktur. Presently, the nearest option in the XP Professional suite is Old English Text, though there is no font that equates to the old German "f"-like letter "s", nor the "SZ" which has to be shown as SS or by inserting ß, but this "SZ" is a modern version of the dopple-S.

Graham Rumney

Having recently adopted an HP iPAQ 2210 to replace my old faithful Psion Series 3, I sorely miss the wonderful Psion tape style calculator into which it was so easy to enter the values and to then scroll through and amend the figures as required. Does anyone know of any software that will help me?

John Kent, via email