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
--

"NE Sailboat" wrote in news2TUh.13500$Ln5.5249
@trndny06:

Larry ,, wouldn't the "screw cap" be the weak link with say a Coca Cola
bottle? Do you use something other than the
standard, came with soda, screw cap?



No problems that I know of. Screw it on tight...Seal it with marine
sealant as they're going to cut it open, anyways.

Larry
--

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

My God!
How big are your hard drives. and how big is each movie? I use DVD
Shrink for copying DVDs from double layered to single but they still
are over 4 gig.



Divx-compressed movies come off Usenet in 2 flavors....700MB, so they fit
on one old CDR, or, now that DVD+R is so cheap, 700MB to 2GB for better
resolution and a bigger picture without the computer having to expand it.

A 4.5GB DVD+R stores from 4 to 6 full-length DivX movies that look just
like HDTV in widescreen, if they were ripped from original DVDs. This
makes storage quite easy.

As there are so many available, I'm up to about 3TB of hard drives,
IDE/SATA and external 500GB USB drives, all of which are dirt cheap, now.
I just paid $US179 for a new Western Digital 500GB MyBook USB2 drive.
That's easily 500 movies with a hundred GB left for a few thousand MP3s
plugged into the laptop. No need to carry fragile CDs or DVDs,
commercial or homebrew, out with you...no storage problem at all. The
500GB drive is the size of one small book.

Never saw DVD Shrink. DivX is a much better codec. Download some movie
sets from alt.binaries.movies.divx, combine them with WinRAR
(www.rarlabs.com) and watch them with VLC, the free VideoLAN player from
http://www.videolan.org/ The VLC player has its own codecs, so it will
play many things Windoze is incapable of playing and has many portings to
other OS like Linux, BeOS, Unix, Mac, etc. It's the finest video player
on the planet. Read about the community of genius students responsible
for it. The movie industry hasn't figured out how to trash them, after
they wouldn't cowtow to the threats.

Larry
--

On Tue, 17 Apr 2007 20:30:41 +0000, Larry wrote:

Hi Larry,
Thanks for the education. Yet again your "techo" enthusiasm comes
through in your posting. I think that that is what I like most about
my job - the Techos. Even though I have worked in IT/telco for 30 odd
years I am rather ignorant about a lot of aspects of it. It is beacuse
there is just so much to know and you don't often get the time to
learn it all if it is not directly relevant to the job at hand which
always seems to be rushed. However the beauty or working with techos
is that when you find someone who does have specialist knowledge and
experience about something, they are more than willing to share it and
quickly bring you up to speed - what works, what doesn't - including
in depth how and whys. There is no-one quite as enthusiastic as a
techo imparting his knowledge. I know it is a generalisation that they
are usually open, lack guile and don't play politics, but that is
another plus as far as I am concerned. They also admit to not knowing
as well. That is one of the negative aspects of sailing and not
working - I miss the contact with some of these people with whom i
have worked, but now I have pactorIII I should be able to keep in
touch better.

You have an impressive setup. I know that i need to buy more hard
drive space and will do when I get this damned boat back in the water.

I still get amazed by hard drive size/capacity and price. I bought my
first for an Apple in 1979 I think. If I recall correctly, it was 3
megs for NZ$6,000, was the size of a printer but was it impressive. I
got a lot of visitors coming to see the new marvel. The mainframe disc
stacks - latest technology in 1985, had 1 meg per platter and were the
size of a washing machine. I saw the inside of my iRiver MP3 player
with its miniscule 6 gig hard drive - shockproof etc. It all still
zaps my mind. Packet data, sat comms and compression algorithms are so
much easier to get one's mind around.

I will try downloading movies now that I know more about it.

Larry, you have induced me into a fetish like hoarding of plastc soft
drink bottles I have so far resisted the urge to browse the local
rubbish bins in my collection frenzy lest I be taken as a bum but it
is so very tempting. I have dug out all the coins and small notes
around the boat from various countries to put in them with the
message. Thanks again for this.

cheers
Peter

Divx-compressed movies come off Usenet in 2 flavors....700MB, so they fit
on one old CDR, or, now that DVD+R is so cheap, 700MB to 2GB for better
resolution and a bigger picture without the computer having to expand it.

A 4.5GB DVD+R stores from 4 to 6 full-length DivX movies that look just
like HDTV in widescreen, if they were ripped from original DVDs. This
makes storage quite easy.

As there are so many available, I'm up to about 3TB of hard drives,
IDE/SATA and external 500GB USB drives, all of which are dirt cheap, now.
I just paid $US179 for a new Western Digital 500GB MyBook USB2 drive.
That's easily 500 movies with a hundred GB left for a few thousand MP3s
plugged into the laptop. No need to carry fragile CDs or DVDs,
commercial or homebrew, out with you...no storage problem at all. The
500GB drive is the size of one small book.

Never saw DVD Shrink. DivX is a much better codec. Download some movie
sets from alt.binaries.movies.divx, combine them with WinRAR
(www.rarlabs.com) and watch them with VLC, the free VideoLAN player from
http://www.videolan.org/ The VLC player has its own codecs, so it will
play many things Windoze is incapable of playing and has many portings to
other OS like Linux, BeOS, Unix, Mac, etc. It's the finest video player
on the planet. Read about the community of genius students responsible
for it. The movie industry hasn't figured out how to trash them, after
they wouldn't cowtow to the threats.

Larry

Peter Hendra wrote in
:

I still get amazed by hard drive size/capacity and price. I bought my


There is a receipt in my files for a 33MB (not GB) Tulin full-height hard
drive, the absolute largest drive available for the IBM PCXT at the time.
I can't believe I paid $US1995.00 for it...(c; That was serious money back
then! It would be akin to paying $US18,000 for a miniscule drive, today.

Certainly glad computer stuff DIDN'T inflate like cars/boats/houses...(c;

I have this awful image in my mind of a pair of boat shoes sticking out of
the top of a dumpster behind a pub collecting bottled...hee hee.

Larry
--
I have this little "Talking Clock" on my computer desk. It has an alarm
function that makes the sound of a rooster crowing at dawn that just went
off because I must have pressed the wrong button. My blue and gold macaw,
"Roger-Roger", was most impressed! He's still calling it at the top of his
lungs!

Living with poultry, at times, is a riot!
They're just snakes with feathers, you know....(c;

Larry writes:

polycarbonate

You mean polyethylene terephthalate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate

Richard J Kinch wrote in
:

Larry writes:

polycarbonate

You mean polyethylene terephthalate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate


http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewSc...enola/2003/200
3-0413-nalgenebpa.htm

Maybe. Some call them "Lexan". AS you can see from the webpage, if you
sell something ELSE for amazing prices they are so dangerous, of course,
you should never allow them near humans.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate

Larry
--