?

It is a comment in a line of computer code.

I think it has something to do with caring / not caring.

Just saw something unusual: an insect that looked like a thin black beetle about 10mm long, hanging by a thread from the ceiling. The underside of it seemed to be covered in white fluff and it was busy doing something with its front legs, almost like a spider wrapping up a fly, but it was definitely not a spider.

Using its thread I moved it to a hedge in the garden. That didn't seem to disturb it. I had to leave then so I didn't see what it did next.

I'm intrigued. Any suggestions as to what was going on? This was in North west England by the way.

This should be simple, but an extensive search has turned up zero.

I have a small plastic tank and I want to fit an outlet to it with a 1/4 BSP (or NPT) female thread. Does a part exist to do this? Preferably plastic.

There are lots of them in larger pipe sizes. Basically I want this but smaller:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Plastic-Boss-Bulkhead-Fi...

I run a business in the UK and I have a customer in the US who wants me to fill in a W8 form, something to do with withholding tax connected with a purchase of goods from me. I am pretty certain withholding tax is not applicable to a purchase of goods from outside the US because there is no tax to withhold (except maybe import duty and sales tax). None of my other customers in the US have asked for this. The only difference with this particular customer is that it is a US government department.

I've searched the IRS website for any exact definition of the scope of withholding tax to no avail, at least there's nothing that's written in understandable English. I have to say that wading through IRS forms and documentation makes me feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with them regularly!

Can anyone point me towards a definitive official document that says that withholding tax is applicable / not applicable on purchases of goods from outside the US?

In Irfan View or Gimp, or any other freeware software that might be out there?

It's too complicated to explain why I want to do this, but I'd like to know whether it's possible to perform an automatic colour correction on one image, then take the changes the program made in order to do the correction and apply them to a different image.

I sometimes get phishing emails where the link that you are asked to click points to a page with the domain name of a genuine company. I just got one claiming to be offering me a tax refund (yeah, right) that linked to a page with the domain of a genuine double glazing company in Australia.

Is it worth contacting the company to let them know? Is there anything they can do about it? Has their ISP been hacked into or does that phishing page exist on some random server in China and it's just pretending to be part of their domain?

I'd like to know whether I am allowed to publicly quote (in a web page) the reasons for rejection given by a US patent examiner, without naming him/her.

By the way, the patent has been granted now, after an expensive and utterly needless rewrite of the claims.

We're looking for a name for a new samba band and I came up with o barulho de cima - the racket (noise) upstairs. We practice in an upstairs room!

Do I have it right? Or should it be em cima, encima, or something else? I couldn't quite work out the subtleties of the different ways of saying "upstairs".

I make my own thin twisted triple cable by twisting thin (7/0.1) wires together. It works but the wires are prone to unraveling. What I'd like to do is, while I've got them stretched out and tightly twisted, apply a liberal coating of something that would bond them together but retain flexibility.

I've tried silicone RTV potting compound but it isn't very strong, it's a dust magnet, and its friction is too high which makes it hard to handle. I need something that will set to a smooth, low friction, flexible rubber.

Can anyone suggest a solution?

I got a couple of these nice clips with a piece of kit. I'd love to get a selection of them, they would be so useful. I'd describe it a ratchet clip with a screw-down base.

Anyone know where I can get them or if they have a name?

http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee34/charcinder...

Just upgrading my XP machine to adobe reader v.11. Installation seemed to go ok, if very slow. At the end it said "some applications require a reboot - reboot now?", so I said yes.

It now boots as far as a blank windows desktop then reboots. Same thing if I start in safe mode, same thing if I go to last known good configuration.

Tried booting from the XP disk. I let it run, it installed a load of drivers, then the PC shut down, I mean actually switched itself off!

Is this likely to be a corrupt program that Adobe has installed which is running on startup? If so, where do I look for it on the hard drive to delete it? Or does it sound like something more serious?

I'd like to find some thin (~1mm) woven carbon fibre cord. I haven't been able to find a supplier of it except for manufacturers in China. I only need a couple of metres.

Does anybody know a supplier of this or can anyone suggest what kind of industry / sport / hobby it might be used in so I can narrow my search?

You are on a train, sitting by the window. The train comes to a halt at a station, and you have the distinct impression that the carriage is moving very slowly backwards.

I have noticed this many times and always thought that the carriage was actually rolling backwards. I was on a train yesterday and I noticed this, and I finally realised what it is. Your brain gets used to the scenery outside the windows moving backwards, relative to the train. When the train stops moving your brain is so used to scenery moving backwards that it interprets the now stationary scenery as moving forward. That's what gives you the impression that the train is moving backwards.

I tried googling this illusion and couldn't find any reference to it. I wondered if anyone else has noticed it?

My workshop PC is 6 years old and struggling with some websites, including Y!A sometimes. It can't run Skype at all with video enabled.

It has an on-board SiS graphics chip that uses shared memory, which is not ideal, so I'm looking for a basic graphics card to see if that helps. AGP preferably, and I only need SVGA output. Either new or second-hand, but don't want to spend too much on it. I really only need it to work with Firefox and Skype.

I'd be grateful for any recommendations and anything to definitely avoid.

I'm creating a simple html help file from a Word document. Images in the file appear very blurred when the file is viewed a browser. I've tried Firefox and IE8. The image itself is fine. I've also tried saving the image as jpg instead of gif but that didn't help at all.

Below are some screenshots showing a small part of the image as it looks if I view the image in Irfan and as it looks in Firefox. By the way the original here is from the copy of the image that Word created when I saved the file, and that's the image that is pointed to in the html code.

https://chrisdancer.opendrive.com/files?53743686_g...

https://chrisdancer.opendrive.com/files?53743685_e...

I use Labview to create programs to control equipment. I don't have the Labview application builder but I do have the Math Interface toolkit, which creates a dll file with one function which can be called from Matlab. Calling the function runs the program. I am considering buying the app builder but it's about £850(!) so I'm wondering...

Is there a simple way to create a "front-end" for a dll? Ideally I'd also like to be able to create a windows installer that will automate the installation and create an item in the Start menu, but that's not necessary for the moment.

So is it possible to call a dll from VBScript or even better, is there a simple (and cheap / free) programming language that can create executables?

I'm running a 24V DC pump from an off-the-shelf switch mode power supply (XP Power ECS100US24). The pump motor is rated 75W, the PSU 100W. I'm using a couple of mosfets to switch on the motor and I'm soft-starting it by running it for 0.5 seconds with a series resistor. I'm also using some power diodes to drop the voltage to the motor to about 20V, so it's not running at anything like 75W (confirmed by measuring the current).

However, when I switch on the pump it runs for 1 or 2 seconds then the power supply shuts down completely. It remains completely dead for up to 1 hour (thermal fuse?).

Are there known issues with using SMPS with DC motors? What could be causing this and can anyone suggest things to try?

I already have a 220nF cap and a reverse-voltage protection diode across the motor, and the series diodes should prevent the motor trying to push current into the PSU's output. I also tried putting a 2200uF cap on the PSU output.

I'm looking for a small, simple, electrically-operated valve to control the flow of air through an air line. Not a mass-flow controller or anything fancy like that. Basically I want one of these:

http://www.kiowa.co.uk/products/festo_in-line_inst...

but electrically-operated. Preferably with push-in connectors like these or small ports like M5 or 1/8.

Anyone know if such a thing exists? I've had a good search and have turned up absolutely nothing.

Actually I have seen the Lee piezo valve which might be suitable but it is stupidly expensive in 1-off quantities.

I have been getting short but very intense headache behind my right eye. The pain comes and goes rapidly in waves or pulses. Moderate to excruciating for about 10 minutes then usually fades away to nothing over the next 15 - 20 minutes. It happens once almost every day at fairly random times. It has woken me up at night a couple of times.

I thought it might be related to some new contact lenses I have been trying but it doesn't feel like eye strain, the lenses are comfortable, and I can get the pain when I haven't got the lens in.

It doesn't seem like migraine because I have none of the other symptoms. Lying still in a dark room would be the worst thing to do with this headache; it helps if I am active. Exercise seems to alleviate it or at least distract me from it. A hot compress also helps.

I'll ask my opthalmologist to refer me to a specialist but in the meantime has anyone had a similar thing or any suggestions what it might be?

Could it be sinus related? I had an upper molar taken out on that side recently; not sure if that is significant.