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The best I can do is point out that you are still pushing fifty - even if it's from the wrong end! Be positive. Age does have some advantages: 1) You can remember the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the original Status Quo. 2) You can tell all your children/grandchildren/nieces/nephews...

Until the summerhouse actually arrives it won't be obvious how best to do this. The general principle is to add insulation on the inside followed by a vapour barrier followed by some kind of cladding. Example: In an old summerhouse we had long, long ago the walls and roof were made of T&G...

Hi Igorian I've tried Win 98 and Win 2000 with no success. Somebody lent me a bootable CD with what he claimed was Linux on it. That didn't work either. I had some hopes for 2000 because years ago I was told that it ignored the BIOS and went looking for hardware itself. Whether this is...

Thanks lads. I'm coming round to the idea that my new(ish) BIOS, which is biased in favour of PCI, simply doesn't know - or care - how to deal with this particular modem. It's either not bothering to assign any resources to the thing or else it can't deal with something that looks like a COM...

Nstreet might have a point. A good way of removing small paint spots that have not soaked down into the pile is to carefully clip them out. The tiny hollow in the pile will never be noticed. This trick also works for tar spots - and you can split infinitives while you do it!

I have a PACE 56 voice internal modem (firmware upgraded to V90) which was working nicely in an old PC. My problem is that I can't get my new(er) PC (HP Vectra VE5 series 4) to recognize it at all. It's ISA plug and play - for which read plug and pray - but neither the BIOS nor Windows can...

How to deter cats without invoking the wrath of the RSPCA: Get a large water pistol or plant spray and keep it loaded with dirty dish water. Apart from getting wet, cats hate the noise and the smell. Ordinary tap water will do but it's not so good. The dish water sticks to their fur and...

Artex is not a substitute for plaster. It's a thick paint which can be textured into your choice of pattern before it dries. I see nothing wrong with artex except that you'll be looking at it for a very long time. Be sure it's really what you want because it's not easy to remove. One...

It's commonplace for security software to block, rename or remove files attached to e-mails. That's because so many junk e-mails have viruses attached. The usual way round this is, as Powertool has suggested, to compress the file. You can do this with Winzip (shareware) or Zipcentral...

Go to www.safer-networking.org and download Spybot Search and destroy. It's free, it contains no spyware of its own and it will not modify your home page to advertize itself. There are many extras hidden in Spybot. The Immunize feature uses a little known part of Windows to redirect all...

Your fan and pipe idea sounds like as good a plan as any. The snag of course is that heat wants to go UP rather than DOWN. Instead of launching into this with a lot of trial and error I suggest you do a few calculations first. The important detail to work out is how much air you have to...

Here's a few more useless products that some people are obviously stupid enough to buy: 1) Air freshener with no smell. 2) Battery powered air fresheners that give a little puff to prove they're working. Smells for people who can't smell them? 3) EMC kits for mobile phones. "Block...

In the hardware department you need: 1) The best record deck you can get your hands on. There is no way to recover sound that the pickup never picked up. 2) A top notch pre-amp with an input to match your pickup. The very best pickups are (were?) known as moving coil. Moving magnet (aka...

Could it be that nobody really wants to host the Olympics at all? The prestige would be nice but what about the cost? And so we all put in our bids - because we can't be seen not to - but secretly hope that they won't be quite good enough. Does this sound vaguely like the Eurovision Song...

Let me say straight away that I hate the expression 'white collar' but I can't think of a simple alternative. Calling them middle class yobs isn't any better! What I have in mind isn't thugs-turned-yuppies getting drunk and reverting to type. That's a different problem. The kind of...

The first thing you have to get your head around is the idea of a magneto-motive force (mmf). Emf is easy to understand because it exists (usually) between two points. Mmf always exists around a complete loop. There is no start and no end, an idea that confuses many an otherwise competent...

A lot of the talk about hi-fi or the lack of it is indeed personal taste but there are a few facts available: 1) The cheapest, nastiest CD player will beat the best turntable in the wow and flutter department. Its spindle speed may wander all over the place but the data is read from a buffer...

For the benefit of non-physicists here is a Dummies' Guide to Magnets --- The magnetism doesn't 'go' anywhere. An iron atom sitting in your loft is magnetic and will remain so until long after the loft has gone. What makes iron, nickel and cobalt different from other magnetic atoms (of...

An afterthought --- Since the cables are VERY close to the surface, I STRONGLY recommend marking their positions on top of the boards. Today you know exactly where they are but think ahead. Will you still remember ten years from now - and will somebody who buys the house in the distant...

This is true. The downside of moving the insulation up into the roof is that the area will be greater and so, all other things being equal, your heating bill will go up. It all depends on what you want the boarded out space for. If it's for storage only and you'll only be going up there...