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FAQS!
FACTS! FAX! 199 (17/02/00)
ANY
OLD PCS?
I am a senior staff nurse on St David’s Ward at Stoke
Mandeville Hospital and we need a couple of computers for the ward. We have had
one donated recently by a local company and we need at least one more. The
computer will be used for research and teaching purposes to improve the care of
our spinal injured patients. We are also in need of peripherals, like a printer
or scanner. We would be grateful for any help received.
Alan
W, Steel,
Stoke
Mandeville Hospital,
Mandeville
Road,
Aylesbury,
Buckinghamshire,
HP21 8AL.
Telephone
01926 31500
Happy
to oblige but may we suggest that anyone with surplus equipment calls or writes
first, to make sure it is suitable. Remember, charities and schools are always
on the lookout for reasonably up to date PC equipment but it can be difficult
to find homes for older (pre 486) models, which sadly have little more than
scrap value.
TEAPOT
TEASER
How
poor is this Easter egg? (Boot Camp Tip of the Week February 3)
I'm not sure just how useful such a teapot would be, apart from having no lid,
it also has a pipe sticking out of the top and no base so pouring would be
impossible. Incidentally, the first time I saw the teapot it was a pink colour,
quite obviously this would clash with my kitchen decor - perhaps I'm just
looking too deep. More eggs please!
Chris Keller
If
I were a plumber I should be having nightmares by now -- I have just watched
almost a quarter of an hour of 3D Pipes and I think I can tell you what is
special about the Teapot, it is invisible! Have I got a special version of
Windows 98 or did you give us a Bad Egg?
G.
Mitchell
The peachy teapot seems to me to be a bit odd
-- no spout or even a handle sometimes -- and it is made of one-way
glass or china (you can see out of the gap between the lid and pot).Hannah Cook
Is the tea they contain piping hot? Apologies…
Nathan Jenkins
It
is hard to be sure, but this looks like the teapot that used to star in theAssociation of Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group Graphics in the late 70's - early 80's. At this time, rendering and surface
texturing etc was leading edge technology and the researchers wanted to compare
their algorithms. They needed an object that was just complex enough, given the
computer power at their disposal. Someone defined the surface of a teapot by
mathematical formulae. This became the benchmark object to check work against.
Peter Whitworth
Thanks
for the many ingenious suggestions about the Teapot Easter Egg. Pausing
momentarily to don our computer geeks anorak, here is the answer. Peter
Whitworth came closest, it’s actually called the Utah Teapot and it is ‘famous’
because in 1974 it was the first computer graphics object to be designed and
rendered as a sculptured surface (previously solid shapes were built up from
lots of polygons, in case you were wondering…). As Peter says it has become
something of an icon within the computer graphics industry and it even has its
own web site: http://www.cs.utah.edu/research/projects/alpha1
/man/html/model_repo/model_teapot
/model_teapot.html
We’ll
try and slip the odd Easter Egg into Tip of the Week every so often, but we
have to say we’re a little alarmed by their obvious popularity, surely you have
better things to do with your PCs?
EXIT
EXTRAS
In
response to Jean Goss's problem (F!F!F! February 3), there is an evenfaster way of shutting down using keystrokes. Simply press the Windows key, U
and then Return in succession to shut down your machine. Of course, you could
define another keystroke to link to your Quick Exit desktop shortcut by right
clicking on the icon and entering your desired combo in the Short key field.
Hope this helps!
Chris Bransden
Whilst the ‘Faster Exit’ suggestion in F!F!F! works
there is an alternative called Exits95 (which works with Win98 as well). This
will produce a shutdown icon either on the desktop requiring a double-click or
in the system tray requiring a single-click, but will do a lot more. Download
from
http://petervw.club.tip.nl
Andy Boyce
A
handy partner to the Shutdown Shortcut is one that restarts Windows
(not reboots the computer). Follow the F!F!F! instructions but change the
command line to:
"C:\WINDOWS\RUNDLL.EXE
user.exe,ExitWindowsExec"
(omit
the quotes and don’t forget the space in front of user.exe. This is usually the
only restart you need after installing a new program it means you can say no to
'Restart computer now', allowing a program like Clean Sweep to record changes
before a restart.
Ian McRobert
Thanks
for those handy tips.
CALL
TO ACCOUNT
I have two email accounts, one on Outlook Express
and another on Netscape Messenger. I want to cancel my account with
Microsoft on Outlook Express, and transfer my NTL account from Netscape
Messenger over to Outlook Express. How can I do this?
Madeleine Westlake
You
can add and delete email accounts in Outlook Express by clicking on Accounts on
the Tools menu. Select the Mail tab, then the Add button and follow the
instructions (make sure you have your NTL account details to hand). As a matter
of interest you can also set up multiple email accounts from there, so Outlook
Express will check all of your mailboxes, one by one, in one dial-up session.
It’s also worth knowing that there’s a new feature in Outlook Express 5 that
will allow you to access a Hotmail email account.
ELUSIVE
SNOOP
I
searched for Disc Snoop at Tucows, as suggested in the February 3rd edition of
Connected but got a nil answer. Where can I find it?
Stephen J Hassett
Apologies
to everyone who had difficulty finding this program, it’s actually called
Directory Snoop.
FONT
FINDERS
Are
there any fonts available out there that resemble the old-fashioned typewriter typeface, where characters are imperfect, such as some appearing fainter than others, etc., just like a typed text used to be? I know this may
seem a backward step but I would like to sometimes print documents with an
old-fashioned look to them.
John Kemp
I am desperately looking for the
Font Sprint. Can anybody help?
B.
J. Hallett
I
notice that you periodically get requests for fonts that are proving
difficult to find. I can suggest www.mediabuilder.com,
which contains a large library of unusual fonts that are free to download. My own problem is that I
can't find a phonetic font that works properly (HM Phonetic is not True Type).
Tom
Tagg
While
reading F!F!F! I noticed a recurring theme i.e. where to find various fonts. As
part of a giveaway 'Practical Internet' magazine published a supplement on
freebies on the net, including a list of font sites.
Rolston
Holas
In
fact we could devote the whole of F!F!F! every week to requests for specialist
and obscure fonts, so we’re very grateful to Rolston Holas for bringing this
very useful resource to our attention, and with kind permission of Practical
Internet magazine (http://www.paragon.co.uk/pi)
here’s that list of font sites.
www.fontsite.com
www.1001freefonts.com
www.fontfreak.com
www.justkissme.com
www.superfunk.com/fonts
www.philsfonts.com
www.fontopolis.simplenet.com
www.microsoft.com/truetype
www.fitzplace.com/foxee/fonts/fonts.html
www.abcgiant.com
www.members.aol.com/fontrageous/fonts.html
www.chank.com
http://trashed.org/sassyfonts
www.flightofthedragon.com/kyl/fonts
www.ar.com.au/~bbetiq/bb.html
http://da3.net/fontworld
www.mashy.com
www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/way/4789
http://sporkthug.8m.com
www.tyworld.com/download
www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/horizon/7531
http://members.tripod.com/~ajsfont/index.html
www.wererat.net
http://members.tripod.com/fongsfonts
http://cyberbung-creations.net/dingbats
www.arttoday.com
www.fontain.com
http://members.xoom.com/fanosity/zowie
www.ann-s-thesia.com
www.iid.co.za/fonts
www.geocities.com/hollywood/location/9163
http://members.tripod.com/poeticwolf/
fonts/fonts.html
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