FAQS! FACTS! FAX!  391 (25/11/03)

Q

My wife is the chairman of the local branch of the Motor Neurone Disease Association. Her branch decided to change their newsletter, to have it printed in colour. Professional printing was too expensive so I (foolishly?) offered to do it. Up until then my Epson Photo printer had given no trouble but when I started using it for long print runs I have had trouble with print quality. It works perfectly for a while and then the quality deteriorates - colours go funny or the black print looks like draft or worse. Sometimes it can be cured by cleaning the nozzles and sometimes it cannot. Once after a complete failure the printer was switched off for the night it worked perfectly well the next morning. Can you please tell me what is going on?

John Rieley, via email

A

The majority of home or ‘personal’ colour inkjet printers are not designed for constant use or a heavy workload. In general if you want to print more than 50 sheets on the trot or 2000 or so pages month you should consider a more durable ‘office’ type printer. It’s likely that the drop in quality is due to the printer head becoming overheated and affecting the flow of ink from the cartridges. You could try printing in batches, leaving an hour or so between runs for the head to cool down but don’t be too surprised if it curls up its toes sooner than expected.  

Q

Can anyone tell me how to solve FreeCell game 11892? I can only get one red ace out at a time - never a black ace.

Eric Atkin, Newport South Wales

A

I have it on very good authority that 11982 is the only unsolvable game discovered so far, though there is a 'cheat' that will let you win. Press and hold Crtl + Shift + F10 and select  'Abort to Win', but I'm sure you wouldn't stoop so low...

Q

A rather mysterious problem occurs when I try to show my digital photos on CD RW using a new Panasonic DVD Player/Video recorder. When I show the photos via my computer screen, they appear in the exact order in which they are listed when I view the folder contents.  However, when I put the disks into the DVD Player, the photos appear in a totally different and apparently random order.

H. Kemmett, via email

A

Panasonic DVD players with the JPEG replay feature have a fairly rudimentary file system that looks for a numerical file name or header to set the order of play, (though the manuals I've looked at suggest that it doesn't always work...). To force your machine to display images in a particular sequence you need to insert a simple three digit code in front of, or instead of the existing filename, when recording the images on to a disc. For example, if the images you want to display in order are called fido.jpg and beach.jpg, they should be renamed 001fido.jpg and 002beach.jpg, and so on. 

Q

I cannot get any sound in my headphones when I connect to the 'headphone socket' on the CD-ROM drive. I have tried all of the 'help' files in vain. Any ideas?
Ved Agarwal, via email

A

The ‘jack’ socket on the front of CD-ROM drives is an analogue output for headphones and it should work when playing music CDs in the drive. It operates independently of the PC so the only reasons you're not hearing anything are that the volume control, if fitted, is set to minimum, your headphones are faulty, or the drive/socket is faulty.

Q
In the November 11th Faqs! Facts! Fax! You ask for suggestions for remembering passwords, without just writing them down. In my case, I try to use something memorable, and then make a note of what it reminds me of. For instance, if you went to school with someone called `spotty' Smith, your password would be "spottysmith", or "SP0TTYSM1TH" if an alphanumeric sequence is required, then you write "classmate with acne" as your clue; this should prompt your memory, but wouldn't give the game away to anyone else. 

Chris D, via email

Why not file 'em on a floppy? No remote possibility of anyone hacking into them. On the other hand, I suppose you would have to remember where you filed the floppy!

James Fussell, via email

1     Create a grid 6 by 6 of letters and numbers using the full alphabet and 0 to 9 or a grid of 5 by 5 using the alphabet minus one letter or any combination of your own choosing, this grid can be written down.

2    Decide on a key word or words to give say something between 8 and 12 letters. This key word is easily remembered, mothers initials and maiden name, make model of first car etc.

3    Construct user names and passwords by spelling the key word/words on the grid but offset both horizontally and vertically e.g. 1 up 2 right. This gives a random looking combination of letters. If reaching the edge of the grid continue the count from the opposite edge as if the grid is written on a sphere

4    The passwords and user names can be written down as emails 1 up 2 right, Bank 1 left 1 down etc.

All the user names and passwords can be made unique, only the person using them knows what they are. Key words can be selected for different uses i.e. Work, Home, Banking etc.

The information written down, the grid and the password formula are useless to a third party without the key word. If the key words cannot be remembered these can easily be hidden in other text such as mobile phone directories. I know this solution is not foolproof but it does provide some degree of protection.

D J Kent, via email

A useful way of remembering passwords that I use is as follows:

Base your password(s) on a memorable sentence, longish memorable number or other such expression. Use only the first say, 9 letters.

If you want a password for say, your ISP, pick a random number based on no more than this number of digits in your expression, say, 4 or 6 or 8 or 9 etc digits.

This number will be the Nth letters in your expression.

For instance, the expression "motherinlaw". If you wanted an ISP password to be based on this, give it a number say, 51798.

The 5th letter is "e", the 1st letter is "m", 7th is "i", 9th is "l", 8th is "n". The password therefore is "emiln" and this would be entered when requested.

Another password, again based on the same expression could be for access to The Daily Telegraph website, maybe 316924

Again other passwords would be derived ad-nauseum on this basis. The beauty of this system is that you can have an open list in a notebook of each password number, detailing the list as:

ISP    127345    the password is the 1st letter, 2nd letter etc. i.e. "moi etc"

Bank    3285661

This list is secure, and as long as the memorable expression is NEVER committed to paper or file, it cannot be broken by conventional methods.

Passwords can be changed easily, all that is required is for the numbers in the notebook to be changed, and then referred to the memorable word/number/expression as required. Anyone looking into the notebook would see the list of passwords and could only ever think that they are numbers, and the use of them would be futile.

Alan Phillips, via email

A

Thanks to everyone who wrote in with suggestions.