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Random Q & A Thread - PART 2

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11:13 / 25.04.04

Does anyone know on which film soindtrack I might recently have heard (Nothing But) Flowers by Caetano Veloso? You can hear it here, if that helps - starts about 7:12 into the stream.

07:46 / 26.04.04

Equatorial Girls, you are a great way to fly

I will try to give you a happy......

To make friend with a indian girl (guess her age yourselves) working as a maid, tell her where the nearest 7-11 is. So that she will know where to get her handphone top up card. Occasionally, buy her food packets (Cause her employer don't usually give her good food). Her favourites would be ........Offer to bring her to Tekka Mall to meet her Blanga friends or to buy indie cassette tapes. Better still, put on T-shirt of Osamaasshole or OsamaAllah depending on which side you're on. Bring the older maid to Karaoke joints. Last of all, beware of someone blasting you with a rocket launcher. (I think being able to build a rocket launcher yourself is cool)

But first, you have to ask Sir Tony Blair or Sir George Bush to get serious. i.e to withdraw troops. And the only reason for this is to so that we could make friends with indian girls and nobody would have to be left feeling bored. OR left with nothing to do. And the word is, WORLD PEACE! Ain't it better this way?

If the above are revulsing, talk like a friend to a 10 year old boy until he tells you his favourite internet game, the hottest handheld games, playing cards and later, after a few days, to just have him spray your face with water. Go ahead and ask him how to play crush gears and let him teach you how to decide which crush gear win.

And has anyone receive phone calls from someone claiming to be William Hung's dad?

19:25 / 27.04.04

metallica are headlining the download festival.

whu?

05:56 / 28.04.04

Is there a website where you can, say, type in amounts in euros and find out what the equivalent in, say, australian dollars is? Or else how in general do you find out exchange rates?

06:05 / 28.04.04

There is indeed.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:45 / 30.04.04

I've already asked this in the old thread, but: If you froze blood and then thawed it out and spilled it on the floor, yeah, and for reasons which it would be otiose to explore at this point the police came round and found the blood, would any usual normal policey-type tests show that the blood had been frozen?

18:30 / 01.05.04

Mordant, I think that the act of freezing would cause the water in the blood to expand, bursting all the blood cells. The resulting goop would leave a forensic scientist in no doubt that the blood had indeed been frozen.

My mind is working overtime to think of reasons you could have a) a large quantity of blood (enough to cause an awful mess), b) decide to freeze this blood. Did you slaughter a pig/sheep/cow/other animal and want to save the blood for making blood puddings or sausages...?

18:32 / 01.05.04

Can someone please put my mind at ease and tell me that this is a joke? Please. I know that misguided patriotism makes people do stupid things, but that has to be a joke...

Whisky Priestess

19:08 / 01.05.04

Grey Area, set your mind at rest: I imagine Mordant's blood question was probably for a story ze is writing.

Um ... I hope.

19:44 / 01.05.04

LOL, I think Grey Area was talking about the link, not Mordant's blood thing!

01:23 / 02.05.04

GA: In the big one, dubya dubya two, there was many successful marriages started that way, at the dance halls with the b-girls and the USO and all.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:12 / 02.05.04

Grey Area: Well, it's ike this: I killed Noel Edmonds and exanguinated him with a veiw to creating a model crane from his frozen blood, which was to be my my entry to the next Turner Prize. (Working title: "Your Life Is In My Hands".)

Unfortunately there was a power cut and my freezer went off, causing the frozen blood to melt and leak through the floor into the flat below. The Spanish police want to deport me; the thankful British people want to give me money and a new hat and some beer, and also declare a national holiday in my honour.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

20:27 / 02.05.04

Talking of Art: I have a spiffy digicam, with which I have taken spiffy pictures. Now I want a photojournal wherein to post said pics. I want something where I can post a picture along with a little note explaining what it is, and let others comment thereon. Like a blog, but with pics. I do not need to remote link the images, I just want somewhere for them to sit so that others can swing by and say "Gosh!" With me?

Now, being a no-money-having skankosaurus, I also want it to be free. Fotolog do free accounts; indeed, I have one. However Fotolog only let you upload one pic a day to free accounts. I want to upload a whole bunch one day, and then forget about it for weeks on end. I've looked at free image hosting sites but they all seem to toss your images after a month or so; also, they don't all allow you to add notes or comments.

Give me free stuff now, or I'll blackmail you.

22:09 / 02.05.04

Mordant -- Would it work if you were to get your free weblog set up with comments and everything and then insert html in your posts pointing to images you've uploaded to the free space your ISP provides? That's where I stick my pics (though I don't have a 'proper' blog) and it works very well, none of the problems you describe.

Also, I have a spiffy new digicam too! Rah!

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:07 / 03.05.04

It would work, but I'm on dial-up. No free web-space for me. I *could* use a free image host that allowed remote linking, but they are becoming rare these days and tend to dump your pix without warning.

Still, Rah! for digicams.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:31 / 03.05.04

Well, I found this one called Buzznet, which lets you post ten piccys a day at the mo. However, they say they're going to change the service soon so you won't be able to do that with free accounts anymore.

(See, this is why I need a job...)

10:39 / 04.05.04

Breast Cancer: what are the standard tests/examinations?

Someone I know went to the doctor after discovering a lump in her breast, and the doc has said that she'll refer her to the local hospital for a full examination - in two to three weeks time.

First: can anyone tell me - or point me to a site that will tell me - what the examination will consist of? I'm talking UK NHS, btw. Would there be more to it than a mammogram?

Second: is there any way to speed up the process? 2 or 3 weeks is a long time when you are waiting to be told if you have cancer or not.

(Obviously this isn't my only line of inquiry, but the more info I can get the beter).

18:58 / 04.05.04

Chances are, the lump will be biopsied, which I think still involves a long needle being stuck into it and drawn out with some tissue inside it.

I don't know from waits, since I'm from the "Your Convenience And Your Cash!" American system.

Good luck with this. I think there was a lumpectomy/mastectomy discussion on Barbelith a year or two ago, if you want more background.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:23 / 05.05.04

I don't know much about this myself, but have you checked out breastcancer.org? It has pages on what to expect from various tests, explanations of various diagnoses and so on.

Best wishes to your friend.

13:22 / 05.05.04

Encouragingly, that site mentions MRIs and other scans as taking place before biopsies. So science has marched on in the last 20 or so years, maybe.

They also say: It's usually a very simple procedure. In the United States, only about 20% of women who have biopsies turn out to have cancer. By contrast, in Sweden, where cost accounting is much stricter and only the most suspect lesions are biopsied, 80% of biopsies turn out to be cancerous (malignant).

I imagine the UK would be closer to Sweden than the US in this.

15:03 / 05.05.04

Thanks for the replies, guys (and for the best wishes). We've found out that the NHS appointment should be comprehensive and give results on the same day. Which is good, but it's still pretty scary as we haven't actually had a letter yet with a date. Gah! Sorry, I'm just worrying out loud now. If we did go for a private scan/biopsy, would that affect our standing with the NHS?

MC> thanks for the link, very useful indeed (though of course I hope we don't have to refer to it any more!)

15:25 / 05.05.04

Does anyone know a good place in mainland Britain or the Republic of Ireland that services old manual focus cameras? I have two Minolta x-700's and an x-300 that need to get their five-yearly checkup. After spending the best part of an afternoon on the phone, I am reliably informed that the last person in Northern Ireland who serviced and repaired SLR's has "retired and moved to Spain 'cause it's warmer". So, recommendations on where I could send my cameras to get checked out?

03:01 / 06.05.04

Can anyone explain why this might be happening:

I've been trying to create some transparent gifs in MS Paint (recently wiped my PC, so most decent software is missing). I'm running XP and certain functionality has been changed - where you used to be able to set background transparency through the Image>Attributes menu option (and, iirc, could tell the software to make a specific colour transparent), now you can only do it for the entire image through deselecting Image>Draw Opaque.

Which I did, only once I'd uploaded them to my webspace, they were suddenly opaque, with the supposedly transparent background now being filled white. Eventually, I found Gifworks, through which I was able to set the transparency again. Problem being, I then saved them to my hard drive and once more uploaded them to my webspace from there, only to find that they were - yep - opaque.

Finally solved by importing them back into Gifworks, setting the transparency again and FTPing them directly from there, cutting out saving them to my PC entirely.

So here's my question: what the fuck is going on? They're either changing during the process of being saved to my PC, or when they're FTPed across from there to my webspace. Anybody got any idea which of those is happening and, most importantly, why? I've got a workaround now, but I'd rather not have to go through the entire process every time I want to do something like this.

pointless and uncalled for

10:28 / 06.05.04

Grey Area - Your best bet would to be to contact Jessops who have a vintage camera centre in London and also do a running second hand trade in anything that works. They are inclined to service anything they can. Other than that I would recommend your local London Camera Exchange or a local independant shop.

Of course if your camera works fine then best to treat it right and keep using it until something goes wrong. I would imagine a technician would be loathe to do anything unless a repair is required.

14:48 / 06.05.04

Thanks Seldom...although dropping something off at the London Camera Exchange is a bit of a commute for me.

I'll see if they accept mail-ins.

16:59 / 06.05.04

E. Randy D. -- I think the problem may be that you are mis-remembering the powers of MS-Paint to both create and view tranparent GIFs. It's poo. When you save from GIFworks to your spookily-opaque hard disk, are you using Paint to view? Because I'm pretty sure it won't display the tranparent colour properly.

Do you have MS Photo Editor? That might be better. It's poo as well though really.

You can get a version of the GIMP for Windows now, not tried it myself but it looks OK and it's free. http://www.gimp.org/

15:14 / 07.05.04

What is the official difference between rounders and baseball, other than a regulated pitch-size in baseball?

15:23 / 07.05.04

Linus - Once I've saved the gifs to hard drive from Gifworks, I'm uploading them to my webspace immediately. Not viewing or opening them in anything beforehand. As soon as they go online, the transparency is lost again.

It doesn't really matter, as I shouldn't have any need of Paint once I've got around to installing everything that I lost in the hard drive wipe. Just kind of annoying and confusing. Cheers anyway!

21:14 / 07.05.04

ERD -- That is spooky though. Maybe the headers or something are getting spoilt in the transfer.

15:36 / 10.05.04

Sending vinyl through the post

What's the cheapest and most efficient way to package a 12" vinyl record for sending safely through the post? It has to be pretty robust and reliable (I'm gonna be flogging records via ebay and I'd like stuff to get to people in one, unmangled piece) but not OTT. Does anyone produce a cardboard envelope just for this purpose? One with a good track record?

15:55 / 10.05.04

Well, you’re charged by weight not size, so I’d suggest a box. A box with a little light stuffing of some kind to stop the record from jiggling around inside. I’ve had too many sheets of art folded despite being posted in stiff envelopes with ‘ARTWORK! PLEASE DO NOT FOLD!’ written all over them to ever leave these things to chance again. Boxes can’t be folded, simple as that.

19:03 / 10.05.04

I get vinyl in the mail every so often.

Record companies use stiff cardboard envelopes, Amazon seems to use boxes.

Whatever you can find, I suppose. You might try ordering a record just to see, unless you're getting rid of records altogether.

20:48 / 10.05.04

Have you thought about emailing some indie labels to find out where they get theirs from, Sav? The vinyl I've had through the post before now always came in heavy, purpose-made 12" card envelopes.

15:27 / 11.05.04

Hmm, the box idea is good... and I may well try the mailorder record companies. **aside: woo, massive sense of deja-vu! Did I ask this before on the old thread?**

Okay, next one, related to the same thing: if I were selling direct to someone and had to quote a fixed price, what would be a reasonable price to ask for:

- vinyl album (4 quid? 5 quid?)
- cd album (ditto?)
- 12" single (2 quid?)
- cd single (ditto?)

Assuming they are in decent nick and are not collectable, of course.

08:36 / 12.05.04

Next Q: I'm in the UK and I've sold something to someone in the US. What's the simplest, safest way for them to pay me for it? I imagine a standard cheque isn't going to work.

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