Phillip B

I've tried all sorts of special characters, quotes, etc - all to no avail.

Eg, "con "

I bought lightweight plastic curtain track and in the instructions it said to use furniture polish - but they all seem to have beeswax in them. I found silicone lubes in DIY and automotive shops - but there are dire environmental warnings on the cans.

So, any vegan ideas, please?

Yes, I know I've posted in Food and Drink, but there isn't a DIY section for vegans :-)

Not that I'm complaining :-)

Is it some sort of seasonal bonus? (Although that is so obviously wrong because only some of the world is Christian.)

My parents are concerned and annoyed by a near neighbour who have a dog that barks almost constantly when its owners leave it alone in the house. They feel for the dog and were wondering whether it was an issue for the RSPCA. Or whether they should just go through the noise complaint procedure with the local council.

No reason, really - I'm just curious. Might come in handy with all these Olympic visitors :-)

Do you have any alternative suggestions?

And any globally applicable compliments? Just in case!

I'm somewhat behind the times and won't have a smart-phone for at least six months. However, a friend has just upgraded to an HTC running Android and using Touch (formerly Ping Chat) [1], and is keen to IM chat for free when she's in a free (or home) wi-fi zone.

I have three devices that I could use to connect:

- laptop computer, running Fedora Linux.

- Arnova 10 G2 tablet [2], running modified Android Gingerbread.

- Nokia 6303i classic [3], with Ovi Store.

I could add something like Qeep [4] to the Nokia, but I don't have data in my contract.

I've tried a couple of chat apps on the tablet, but they seem to be designed for a smart-phone, whereas my tablet doesn't have a SIM card, etc. And I can't access the full app library, only the Apps Lib [5].

Any suggestions, please?

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com....

[2] http://arnovatech.com/products/g2/arn_10/index.htm...

[3] http://europe.nokia.com/find-products/devices/noki...

[4] http://www.qeep.net/

[5] http://appslib.com/

Or how many would you like it to have taken? :-)

http://www.utalkmarketing.com/Pages/CreativeShowca...

There's this charity office (in a small town in the UK home counties) in which I'm a volunteer, and every couple of months, in the wee small hours, the alarm goes off with no apparent cause. The control panel records which detector has been set off, and the maintenance contractor suggests that a spider walking across the detector can be enough to set it off. I suppose that the cleaner, working after the office has closed, will disturb spiders and perhaps make them wander around, but can they really do this? Hope you can help, please.

Just had the first half of an Orgran [1] pizza mix, with tomato paste, mozzarella-style Sheese [2], mushrooms, red onion, red pepper, black olives and seasoning.

So, any yummy suggestions for a different topping for the second half of the mix, please? Not tonight - I'm not being greedy :-)

[1] http://www.orgran.com/

[2] http://www.buteisland.com/

See the two examples at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/phillip.bicknell/Cam...

The camera is a Canon IXUS 500:

http://www.cameras.co.uk/details/canon-ixus-500.cf...

It's taken just under 10,000 photos. The problem is intermittent, going away after the camera is unused for a couple of weeks, then returning after a couple of hundred shots.

What I'm looking for is a method of assigning every member of our club with about three members to ring for those rare occasions when we have to cancel a fixture at the last minute.

It's too slow and unfair to expect the secretary to do all the ringing. We have a group email address, but that's not as good as actually speaking to everyone.

I'm suffering from "Internet vocabulary problem" (a term of my invention which I encourage you to adopt) - if I knew the name for the system of assigning names to each member then I could search for it and hopefully find some kind person who's posted the method for me to copy.

As it is, "phone cascade" and "round-robin phoning" both failed to lead me anywhere useful.

Hopefully I'm about to give someone a nice easy 10 points :-)

I recently took a tumble off my bike and dented my helmet on the road - better than denting my head, but I still have the headache! As the helmet was three and a half years old I decided a replacement was definitely due.

Anyway, I'm wondering if you have any good ideas for reusing it as something else, please. So far I'm pondering a hanging basket for flowers or some such, but it'll look more unique than attractive :-)

If it matters, it is a Bell Triton in black [1], although I bought it at my local bike shop, as I did the replacement in white/silver. It might not be the most technical of helmets, but I have a 62cm hat size and I'm happy with the fit/comfort of the make/model.

NB. Previously posted in Environment > Green Living. I'm hoping for some different perspectives here.

[1] http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Bell_Triton_Helm...

I recently took a tumble off my bike and dented my helmet on the road - better than denting my head, but I still have the headache! As the helmet was three and a half years old I decided a replacement was definitely due.

Anyway, I'm wondering if you have any good ideas for reusing it as something else, please. So far I'm pondering a hanging basket for flowers or some such, but it'll look more unique than attractive :-)

If it matters, it is a Bell Triton in black [1], although I bought it at my local bike shop, as I did the replacement in white/silver. It might not be the most technical of helmets, but I have a 62cm hat size and I'm happy with the fit/comfort of the make/model.

NB. It's a conscious decision on my part not to post this in the cycling section (yet!).

[1] http://www.wiggle.co.uk/p/cycle/7/Bell_Triton_Helm...

I've been passed an old Apple iMac G3 (model M5521) that my mate tried a Linux Live CD in. Unfortunately, the machine wouldn't boot from it, we just get a text message that the machine can't read the disc, and there's no hardware eject button or pin-hole for the usual paper-clip.

I've tried starting with the eject key held down on the keyboard, and the same with Apple key + E. (Suggested by my local Linux User Group.) Neither worked.

Can anyone offer a solution that doesn't involve dismantling the case, please?

Our tumble dryer seems to be the cause of interference on our Freeview digital television decoder. As the drum changes direction, we get sound and picture interruption. Both are on the same ground floor socket ring-main. What would you recommend, please?:

- Fit some gadget to the tumble dryer plug?

- Or switch to a suppressed trailing 4-way socket for the TV equipment?

Also, could these spikes be causing slow or hidden damage to any other equipment? Fridge; laptops; other circuits, upstairs, etc?

In the pub the other night for some folk music, when my mate looked up at all the pump clips on the ceiling and asked how old the "tradition" of silly beers names went back.

Now the most indicative page I found was:

http://www.bateman.co.uk/Beer.htm

From which I infer that silly names probably only really took off with the modern real ale revival of the 70s onwards.

But what names can you suggest that are older, please?

So we were watching the BBC's Three Men in a Boat, when they showed a fishing boat fitted with a fishfinder sonar. And the question arose how the screen shows a steady picture when the boat is pitching and rolling around?

I had a quick look around the Garmin website, after a search engine failed to throw up any obvious answer, but all to no avail.

On channel Five (UK TV), Peugeot "sponsor" some movies. One of the ads shows three blokes in dark suits sitting in a cafe, referring to the absence of nine others.

My mate and I can't work out what film it represents. Our thoughts are Twelve Angry Men or Reservoir Dogs.

What do you think?

I'm the webmaster for a modest section of my employer's Intranet. I'm using HTML4.01 & CSS 2.1.

I know that the standard (UK) keyboard has the ' on the @ key. However, so far I have been using the rsquo entity name because it tends to look better.

Will that entity name cause screen readers a problem?

Does the standard ' work well in all contexts?

PS. How does one get an ampersand to display in questions like this? :-)

I live in a house share in the UK - 5 people, each with a bedroom that is their responsibility, but with communal living areas. We have sort of cleaning rota, but it frequently falls behind target and the house ends up looking like a tip.