Andy G

I want to mount a large (4ftx8ft) sheet of MDF furniture board to a plastered wall but I doubt that the wall is perfectly flat (if I hold a spirit level against it, for example, there is a 4mm gap in the centre of the spirit level in some places). I know that if I screw the board directly to the wall it will be flat against the wall but it will have buckled and bent to match the unevenness of the wall.

Is there a way to do this to guarantee that the board will be straight once mounted?

I need to take up the floorboards in a bedroom so I can run some electrical cable around the room to add new sockets. Rather than replace the old floorboards with new ones, can't I use the kinds of boards you use to do loft flooring? Is there a reason why floorboards are better?

I am writing an e-mail application and occasionally an e-mail has an attachment with a name like this:

=?iso-8859-1 ?B ?UmVtaXQtQjUyM18wOC00Ny0wNS5wZGY=?=

I know that I need to decode it somehow, but how? (Spaces added intentionally)

E-Mail application is being developed in Visual Basic - any answers which work in VB would be great!

I have written a software application - part of which, in the UK, uses a database of postcodes to roughly work out the distance between two houses to within about 1/10th of a mile.

Is there a way to do the same thing in the US with zipcodes or do they cover too wide an area to make it meaningful?

I am updating a desktop application and would like users to be able to highlight passages of text which they have written and post them to their Facebook wall. Assuming they're already signed into FB can I pass the text to a facebook.com gateway which would act in the same way as if they had entered the text into the "How are you feeling?" box - allowing them to then click Post?

When my XP laptop boots up it says "Windows has detected wireless networks - Click here to connect" but when I click the bubble it says no wireless networks were found. It used to connect perfectly but it seems that something happens during startup which disables wireless. My wireless network works fine with my iPod and mobile phone.

I've tried using a USB wireless dongle but that detects no networks either

I've tried uninstalling the wireless driver and rebooting

I've tried restarting the Wireless Zero Config service

The switch on the laptop is set to wireless ON but the wireless LED is not lit up (I can't remember whether it's usually lit or not)

My girlfriend had a minor bump in her car and called Sheila's Wheels (her insurer) to enquire whether it would be worth claiming on her insurance for the repairs. She decided not to claim but now that her policy is due for renewal they are saying that her enquiry counts as a claim even though they didn't pay any money out.

Can this be right or could it be they mis-recorded her call and treated an enquiry as a claim?

I've got a CGI script on my Linux server in the cgi-bin folder. When I try to run the script by navigating to it I get error 500, however if I call the script from within a webpage on the same server it works fine. Can anyone enlighten me why this is?

Thanks in advance.

My oldish cat keeps having a problem where she wakes up and tries to move but either one or both of her back legs won't work. It's quite distressing to watch because she just flops around and against the walls, but after a few minutes just laying still she gets up and is fine.

Could it be the equivalent of cramp, or pins & needles, or something more serious?

S?I? H?R?O

The H might be wrong...

Every alcoholic drink has a different amount of alcohol and a different number of calories. So what drink contains the highest level of alcohol but fewest calories by ratio? For example, white wine has quite a low alcoholic content and high calorific content so what's the opposite?

I'm trying to find a wireless steering wheel and pedals for using on a PS3 (for Dirt2 initially). Logitech do a wireless wheel but not pedals, and a US company called Intec do a wireless wheel and pedals but I can't find a supplier in the UK.

Can anyone out there recommend a product?

I'm thinking about buying a PS3 Slim and due to the way things are set up I'd have the PS3 in a room adjacent to the screen. I've already got a notebook in there and a bluetooth mouse & keyboard work fine despite there being a brick wall between me and the PC. Can anyone say whether the PS3 controller should also work? (Distance is about 6 meters plus a wall inbetween).

Just watched the G.I. Joe movie and was puzzled by the sequence where the ice station (underwater below the Arctic circle) was destroyed by blowing a circle of charges in the ice above which then sank and crushed the station.

I know movies don't have to obey the rules of nature but surely ice floats? I can't see how chunks of it would sink just because they became detached from a larger sheet, but on the other hand I can't think why nobody would have pointed that out to the writers, so, am I wrong?