Next reunion - 27 April 2003 |
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Computers and stuffSam Houliston |
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Caring for your CD’s
CD’s are delicate things, and in order for you to get years of enjoyment from them (and this includes both audio and data CD’s), you must care for them properly. This means placing them back into their jewel cases whenever you're not using them, not subjecting them to direct sunlight or other extreme weather conditions, and keeping them away from the hands of small children and ham fisted adults.The storage story As everyone knows, those jewel cases are not the most robust pieces of equipment, and they nearly always break, and if you’ve got kids, sometimes they just break all by themselves. You can, however, buy replacements from Crazy Clarks, Crazy Clints or other such emporiums, or if you're somewhere you can’t get replacements, paper or plastic sleeves are better than nothing. However, where a jewel case suspends a disc in midair, a paper sleeve is in direct contact with the surface of a disc. Dust can accumulate inside a sleeve, turning it into sandpaper, slowly yet inexorably ruining the surface of your disc.
Downside up If you're not 100 percent diligent about keeping your discs safely tucked away (who is?), then you should always place them clear side down. The labelled/printed face of a disc is actually more delicate than the bottom, clear, polycarbonate layer, and major damage to the label side will ruin the reflective and dye layers as well. This is not to say that you can scar the clear bottom layer with impunity, but minor scratches to polycarbonate are survivable, and even major ones can often be buffed out or filled.
Label issues Labels are handy for categorizing your discs, but they can also affect performance and damage your discs. A poorly attached label can cause a disc to wobble too much for high-speed reading (data). If you must use labels, use only those formulated for use on CDs. These have milder adhesives than general-purpose labels and shouldn't react badly with the top layer. If you have to remove a label, be careful. You can peel of both the reflective and dye layers with it making the disk into a pretty drink coaster.
CD marking Marking a disc with a pen is probably OK if you use a specially formulated CD marker. But the ink formulations in some general-purpose pens can react badly with the upper layer and leak through to harm the reflective and dye layers below. If you want to be completely safe, either mark your discs on the clear inner circle where no data is stored, or better yet, leave the disc unmarked and use the paper jewel case insert to list the disc's contents.
Follow these few simple rules, and you can expect years of service from your CD media.
Searching for Web Sites
There are millions of search engines on the Internet, and one of the better ones for general web searches is Google. It looks through a couple of billion web sites in a nano-second and faithfully displays what I'm looking for. Sometimes. It does a pretty good job overall, and with a little thinking I can usually adjust my search to make it find what I'm looking for pretty quick. But, How do the search engines work? They have programs called spiders or bots that spend their waking hours scanning web pages. They figure out what each web site is about, based on word frequency, placement, title, keywords, and some other stuff. They save a "score" for each important word in each web site, and they also check for links to other web sites. Sometimes they follow the links and scan new pages, and sometimes they use the number of links to a web site as weighting factors in searches.For example, if there are a bunch of links to a web site all over the internet, then it must be popular site and a search engine may display it higher on the list. They also use the number of times a link is clicked on for placement weight. Most search engines, with the notable exception of Google, use another weighting factor for search placement -- cash.
How do you get a web site listed on search engines? Most search sites have a "Submit a URL" link you can use to add your site. For example, on google you go to http://google.com/addurl.html. It's free, but there's no guarantee you'll be listed. Other search engines will gladly take your money in exchange for guaranteed listing and placement. Lycos, for example, has a huge box of information on how you can get guaranteed placement in 48 hours, improve your love life, and lose 10kg, all for the low price of $35 + $25 per URL per year. Next issue-just who were Hewlett and Packard?
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