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jep
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questions and answers
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Jan 6 20:35 UTC 2006 |
This item is for questions and answers of a general nature.
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| 139 responses total. |
jep
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response 1 of 139:
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Jan 6 20:49 UTC 2006 |
I just found a coin. A co-worker tells me it's Russian. It has milled
edges and is slightly larger than a dime. It's brownish/greenish colored.
On one side it has a small circle with a hammer and sickle in it, and
this circle is surrounded by what appear to be sheafs of wheat wrapped
in something. At the top is a tiny star. On the bottom are the letters
"CCCP".
The other side says "15" and what looks like "KOHEEK" but the "H" looks
more like a tall "pi" character. It says "1978", and the entire side is
bordered by two sheafs of wheat.
Is this a 15 kopek coin? I'll probably give it to my kid, but I'd like
to tell him what it is when I do so.
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klg
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response 2 of 139:
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Jan 6 20:50 UTC 2006 |
Do you like Ike?
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kingjon
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response 3 of 139:
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Jan 6 20:55 UTC 2006 |
Is there any way to check the terminal settings on the computer I'm SSHing or
telnetting in from, in my .profile here on Grex for example?
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mcnally
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response 4 of 139:
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Jan 6 21:11 UTC 2006 |
re #1: Yes, it sounds like a 15 kopek coin.
http://www3.tky.3web.ne.jp/~jafarr/USSR.htm
A friend who was born in the Soviet Union told me an interesting story
about the 15 kopek coin, which I've found a version of here:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/russnet_pr.html
Apparently all the payphones in Russia at one time were built to accept
15 kopek coins, but when the Soviet Union dissolved and the Russian govt
stopped controlling the economy, kopek-denominated coins were worth so
little they stopped minting them. However -- they still have millions
of pay phones throughout the country that are built to only work on the
old 15 kopek coins. Consequently, such coins trade at many times their
face value because they've essentially stopped being used as a currency
unit and have switched to mainly being traded as a phone token.
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tod
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response 5 of 139:
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Jan 6 22:12 UTC 2006 |
THe phones in Romania use irdeto encryption cards just like many subscription
satellite tv receivers. Hacking at its finest, say I. 15 kopek sounds like
a jazz band.
Since this is the question item:
What is the naming convention/format to get your mp3 recognized by "album"
and "author" and "song" on a Sansa mp3 player?
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jep
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response 6 of 139:
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Jan 7 02:48 UTC 2006 |
re resp:4: Yep, my coin looks like that.
100 kopeks per ruble... and a ruble is worth a couple of cents. Heh. I
didn't exactly strike it rich here, did I?
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keesan
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response 7 of 139:
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Jan 7 03:45 UTC 2006 |
It used to be (artificially) one ruble per dollar. What looks like CCCP
transliterates SSSR - soyuz sovetskikh socialistickikh respublik- which
translates as union of soviet socialist republics, or USSR. Romania also had
15-something coins (and I think also 30s'). Do they still? I have a paper
ruble somewhere.
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gull
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response 8 of 139:
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Jan 7 04:05 UTC 2006 |
Someone based at the Auburn Municipal Airport (aka. Dick Scobee Field)
likes Antonov An-2s. There's two of them in good condition parked
there, in easy view of the street, and I recently saw a tired-looking
one having its fabric stripped off, as well. It still had the "CCCP"
markings on the wings and something in Cyrillic on the fuselage.
They're kind of unmistakable aircraft -- there just aren't that many
biplanes that size around.
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naftee
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response 9 of 139:
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Jan 7 05:43 UTC 2006 |
i had the goofiest backpack in grade 1.
once i forgot it in my classroom. i went almost home, turned and ran back
to school, and found it on my chair which was on my desk. when i walked
into the classroom, the teacher was talking to another person and i don't
think she noticed me walk in. i think i concluded at the time that she was
waiting for me to pick up my bag and was all going to be like, "you forgot
your bag!".
but now i guess she was just chilling there after school or something.
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bhoward
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response 10 of 139:
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Jan 7 06:39 UTC 2006 |
Re#3 You can insert a line:
env
near the beginning of your .profile or .login file to printout what
your environment looks like before the standard system profiles are
sourced.
A number of environment variables are or may be passed from your
local machine to grex when you first sign on via ssh or telnet.
Typically things like your TERM environment variable will be
initialized with whatever value TERM was on the originating side
of the connection.
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gull
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response 11 of 139:
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Jan 7 06:49 UTC 2006 |
Okay, here's a weird one.
When I moved from Michigan to Washington, I brought a FreeBSD system
with me. When I set it up here, I naturally changed /etc/localtime to
reflect Pacific time instead of Eastern. The 'date' command shows
times in PST, like I'd expect. However, my user account's cron jobs
still run on EST. Where does cron get its idea of an account's proper
time zone?
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mcnally
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response 12 of 139:
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Jan 7 07:48 UTC 2006 |
Is anything in your account setting the TZ environment variable to EST?
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kingjon
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response 13 of 139:
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Jan 7 16:50 UTC 2006 |
Re #11: The one setting I am particularly interested in is the backspace key.
On some computers it sends ^H, and on some it sends ^?, and I was hoping for
some way to detect which one and change it here to match.
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gull
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response 14 of 139:
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Jan 7 23:12 UTC 2006 |
Re resp:12: I don't think so, because the 'date' command produces output
in the proper time zone. But I'll try explicitly setting TZ to PST in
my .shrc, and see what happens.
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rcurl
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response 15 of 139:
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Jan 9 06:27 UTC 2006 |
What adhesive would be good for gluing wax to metal? I asked this in the
diy conf but I have discovered that the best adhesive might be that used
for theatrical makeup, in particular some version of "spirit gum"
adhesive, and the theatre people are more likely to be reading here than
in diy. I would like to be able to remove the wax pieces with some kind of
remover that would not attack wax.
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tod
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response 16 of 139:
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Jan 9 17:01 UTC 2006 |
re #15
Epoxy is your best bet but the type of wax you're using is also important.
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rcurl
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response 17 of 139:
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Jan 9 17:34 UTC 2006 |
Unfortunately, there is no good remover for set epoxy. I'm also not sure
if epoxy will seal to wax.
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marcvh
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response 18 of 139:
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Jan 9 17:46 UTC 2006 |
In general my resource for adhesives is www.thistothat.com, and it contains
much useful info. It does not, alas, specifically mention wax, which is
not known as something that's easy to stick to.
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tod
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response 19 of 139:
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Jan 9 18:03 UTC 2006 |
Can I ask what the application is where you're attaching wax to metal?
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rcurl
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response 20 of 139:
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Jan 9 19:33 UTC 2006 |
I have made carved wax models from which I will make RTV rubber molds, for
casting metal figures. The wax models must be fixed to a plate so that they
do not detach (and float) when the RTV is poured on them.
I've bookmarked thistothat anyway - may be useful for future projects. Thanks.
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gull
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response 21 of 139:
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Jan 10 04:04 UTC 2006 |
What about drilling a hole in the plate, then locking the wax figure to
the plate with a wax stub through the hole?
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naftee
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response 22 of 139:
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Jan 10 05:15 UTC 2006 |
i hope that i'm not on your twit filter, gull.
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rcurl
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response 23 of 139:
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Jan 10 06:38 UTC 2006 |
Re #21: that's worth considering, although more complicated than an adhesive,
especially as these figures are rather small.
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gull
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response 24 of 139:
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Jan 10 20:07 UTC 2006 |
I don't use a twit filter.
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