response 446 of 480:

Dec 19 16:56 UTC 2003

Realone (realaudio) comes with a music CD maker that offers three settings
for realaudio quality, one of which was 160 (168?) kbps and was chosen as the
default.  So we could also make our own .ram instead of .mp3 files. I think
they also offer mp3 and wav.  Does ram sound different from mp3 and do you
know how that is encoded?    I presume what they are transmitting at 20 kbps
is encoded that way too.  Some stations send at 64K (half of 128) or 48Kbps.
Hard to tell if the cheap speakers or the encoding are what make it sound not
so good.  We might hook up a receiver and good speakers.  

This morning I woke coughing at 7:30 and got lots of blood on one of my
improvsed hankies but then no blood on the next two, which suggests my
platelets have gone up and maybe neutrophils will be numerous enough now too
to shake off this cough.  This particular virus appears to depress the immune
system though, since Jim has had mouth sores and an infected fingernail that
won't heal.  Must be how viruses help cause cancer - they stop your body from
fighting things off.  Some of them also cause mutations.  

I keep getting emails from concerned translators and agencies, most recently
from one in Texas where I used to do lots of medical translating.  She says
another of their translators died suddenly of cancer and she knows several
other people dealing with it.  The new epidemic. A library book said 43% of
men will get cancer in their lifetimes and almost as many women.  Lung,
prostate, and colon are more common than lymphoma.  You can reduce chances
of some common cancers by eating properly, not being obese, and not smoking.
This is a book on exercise that says exercise is good for the immune system
(except when you have a fever).  A library magazine suggested that you try
to get exercise while doing chores, in order to lose weight, by wearing a 15
pound vest.  Jim suggested gaining 15 pounds instead.  Chores used to imply
exercise.  Another suggestion was to pace while on the phone - it finally
struck me that the phone must not be attached to the wall likes ours are. 

SOmeone in the basiclinux mail list posted a link to WORD 5.5 for DOS,
available for free download now from MS. 3.5MB.  Supposedly makes smaller
files than WP, but since it is gui I don't know if I can use it on a TTL
monitor to translate with a gif on the VGA monitor of a 2-monitor system. 
With dosemu if I can figure out how to mount DOS drives to dosemu.  Last time
I tried to mount the C: drive under /usr/jim/ it acted like /tmp instead -
listed me all the files in /tmp but in 8.3 format.  There is a SUBST command
- how does this work?  
http://download.microsoft.com/download/Word97win/Word55_be/97/Win98/EN-US/W
in5
5_ben.exe
I have no idea why WORD 5.5 for DOS is filed under Word97 for Win98  or what
is be(n).  Someone says if you omit the help files it fits on one floppy disk.
Without dictionary.  

I will try WORD first in plain DOS, VGA and then HGC.