Larry,
What a wonderful idea!. I shall do exactly that though I have never
done it before. Thanks for the details which you have obviously spent
time thinking about. It is so much better not having to reinvent the
wheel. I shall start collecting bottles today. I presume that when you
say polycarbonate you mean such as plastic fizz or Coca-Cola bottles?

It is one of my pleasures to receive emails and letters from people I
have never met but who have met me through newsletters I write. I
started writing them of our travels to my daughter and a few friends
and work colleagues. They passed them on to friends and the result is
that they are sent all over the world. I often get emails from places
that amaze me. One Chinese friend from IBM in Sydney sends them to her
brother in Shandong University, China who is a professor of English
and who uses them for his students to study colloquial English. To
avoid being iunnundated with a couple of thousand emails, they collate
the questions and forward as a couple of single emails. It is an
incredible way to meet people. The newsletters are not great
literature, are a bit nutty and focus more on the people and history
(my passion). They are only my view of where we have travelled but it
seems that people like travel stories. We have met up with several of
them as we have travelled, following up their invitations to visit.

Actually people like stories regardless of their level of
sophistication and age.

Actually your idea appeals to the romantic in me in that you never
know where your message could end up as well as to find one would be
an exciting experience for someone. I suppose that you have heard of
the many Jin (Gene) stories from the middle east whereby somebody
found a bottle on the sea shore. Why I liked the movie of the same
name is not because of the bottle, It is because I like romantic
movies of that nature sometimes - same vein as "Sleepless in Seattle".
I attended an IT conference in Boston in 1996 and made a weekend
stopover in New York on the way back, mainly to see the ship Peking at
South Street Seaport. I posted about 30 postcards to various women
from the Empire State Building - with the message that I had waited
for them, was dissappointed that they hadn't shown and signed off with
"Sleepless in Seattle" - not my name. The women loved it, many
probably still wondering who sent it.

Thanks again Larry.

cheers
Peter

On Mon, 16 Apr 2007 05:33:32 +0000, Larry wrote:

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Message in a Bottle

Ever dropped one over the side, Peter? I have a picture from an Irish
public school class, who found one of my bottled messages on a beach on
the Irish Coast, washed up by the Gulf Stream. I've also had emails from
Iceland, Spain and the Azores!

Put a nice message and picture of you and your boat in a delabeled
polycarbonate soda or water bottle with a good screw cap. I like the 40
oz sizes to get a better picture into. Make sure you have your email
address, phone number, Skype name, home port so they can contact you.
Ask for an exchange of pictures/penpal emails. It's great fun when bored
at sea offshore. Sometimes you hear from a bottle you dumped overboard
YEARS AGO! Those polycarbonate bottles are really tough! Oh, also wrap
your contents in an external layer of paper so the sun doesn't bleach the
message/picture off them. Drop some brand new coins in the bottle, too.
The kids abroad love that...or some stamps from home for the stamp
collectors.

PAINT THE ENDS OF THE BOTTLE INTERNATIONAL ORANGE WITH GLOW PAINT also
improves their visibility on a beach. I just paint them by spraying the
INSIDE of the bottle through the hole, which also helps protect the
contents from the sun.

I used to do this from Navy ships crossing the Atlantic, many years ago.
Everyone thought I was crazy until they saw some of the neat stuff
finders of the bottles sent me.....(c;

Larry

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

Larry,
What a wonderful idea!. I shall do exactly that though I have never
done it before. Thanks for the details which you have obviously spent
time thinking about. It is so much better not having to reinvent the
wheel. I shall start collecting bottles today. I presume that when you
say polycarbonate you mean such as plastic fizz or Coca-Cola bottles?

Yes, those clear plastic ones. Spray paint the inside of it on the ends,
but leave the middle transparent so anyone noticing it will see the stuff
inside and cut it open. The brighter its color, the better.


It is one of my pleasures to receive emails and letters from people I
have never met but who have met me through newsletters I write. I
started writing them of our travels to my daughter and a few friends
and work colleagues. They passed them on to friends and the result is
that they are sent all over the world. I often get emails from places
that amaze me.

I don't know if I asked you, Peter, but are you using Skype? You sound
like a natural for Skype...(c; Skype now has Skypecasts, open
conferences of people who just showed up. Some are even in ENGLISH!...
(c; Many are in Arabic, but the languages are easily seen as Skype lists
them in Arabic lettering. Sit for hours and chat with other crazy people
around the globe....for free! It's like being at a party, with a host
(moderator) who can control everyone to dump the crazies.

I met a Russian, who lives on Sahkalin Island on the Sea of Japan. He
knew I was an electronic tech, so called me on Skype one evening (my
time) to see if I could help him fix his Russian tube-type TV set. He
sent me the schematic in pdf format for easy navigation, using Skype's
data transfer feature inside "chat mode" (texting), even while we were on
the phone with full color video running. Armed with the schematic and
looking at his nice video signal pointed into the chassis, I asked for a
measurement and he made it, in realtime, and in about 20 minutes I had
found a shorted capacitor in the horizontal output stage trashing our HV
to the picture tube. He called me back to show me how nice the picture
looked (of course, showing it to me on Skype video) after he replaced the
part. Way cool fixing a TV on the OTHER side of the planet....(c;

Emails are nothing when you can video conference with a GROUP of people
on Skype, in realtime, across the planet. Skype only costs you if you
use it to interconnect with the landline/cellphone telephone systems.
Even then, it's dirt cheap to most civilized places on the planet. You
can also buy up to 9 telephone numbers in various countries. If anyone
calls any one of them, your Skype rings you...even on multiple
computers/devices. That's called Skype IN to receive calls from your own
Skype phone number, no matter where YOU actually access broadband. Skype
OUT allows you to call OUT to landlines/cellphones by precharging your
account from a credit card. Skype homeports in Luxembourgh so there's no
ripoff taxes outside the EU....yet. Most places are $US2.1 cents/minute,
no matter where your computer is connected.

Great fun! You could talk to BOTH your Chinese friends simultaneously
for free if all 3 of you had Skype on a computer!

Larry
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