Btuckey

[quote user="5-element"] If you want to come to Languedoc because you think you will be getting away from gun crime, drugs, murders, robberies, knifings, booze, violence, rain, petrol prices, taxes, high property prices, car taxes, then I am not sure that Languedoc will do it for you..... But then I don't know anywhere that would.... [/quote] Crime has gone through the roof in our part of LR.  Having mounted six speed traps in the last two months at the end of our road, les flics finally caught a German tourist this afternoon.  He is also suspected of trafficking bratwursts...  The Mairie is accused of conducting black magic rituals.  Unfortunately, nobody could remember how the Hammer House of Horror films went and mistakenly said the mass forward and did a rain dance backwards.  As a result, we haven't had much rain over the winter.  A local squirrel was caught stealing nuts and has asked for two thousand other cases to be taken into consideration.  Where will it all end?     [:D]  

I really wouldn't waste your time with Media Player especially if you play DivX movies.  Download the VideoLAN player; http://www.videolan.org/ Cheers. Brian  

[quote user="zeltus"]Yes, I know. But I'm entitled to one and it is recommended by french ministers that I have one. So I'll bloody well have one or know the reason why. Signed Angry of Guildford. [/quote] If you are 'Angry of Guildford', you probably aren’t entitled.  Try being 'Angry of Perigueux' instead....  [;-)] Cheers!

[quote user="powerdesal"] Looks nice. Underfloor heating in the garage??????? What sort of car do you drive that deserves/needs a heated garage [8-)] [/quote] Hi Steve, The garage is actually for my model railway!  It is as large as we could make it under the planning regulations and yes, the french builders are somewhat bemused.  I think that it confirms what they thought about 'les anglais' [:D] Cheers Brian 

[quote user="jxedwards"] Brian, Looks good. I am assuming the house is in France. I have asked before on the forum but no reply so where did you purchase the UFH equipment? France or the UK? If in France can you PM me the supplier details. Regards John [/quote] Hi John, Yes, the house is in France, just up the mountains from the town of Quillan in the Aude.  We did a lot of research before we settled on a supplier and the biggest in France by far is Sofath; http://www.sofath.com .  We also found a German manufacturer, but they declined to quote for an installation in France...  Sofath in turn directed us to their ‘local’ dealer; Geosud in Perpignan.  Geosud’s owner, M. Autones,  fortunately speaks excellent English and whilst he took the overall contract we had to employ separate enterprises to lay the two chapes and dig the hole for the collectors.  Fortunately, Geosud suggested two chape suppliers and liaised with the one we chose.  After the first chape was laid covering the water, data and power gaines, Geosud laid the insulation and heating pipes.  The chape company then returned to lay the final floor.  All of the hardware has arrived in Sofath packaging.   As you can see from the pictures, Geosud have just laid the collectors in the garden.  As before the pipes and boîtiers all came from Sofath. Hope this helps. Brian    

Hi, There have been a number of threads about underfloor heating and geothermie systems.  We have gone for a reversible system on our new build with the heat collectors in the soil.  Pictures at: http://briantuckey.fotopic.net/c1410265.html for those interested. Cheers.

[quote user="Clair"] The moderators have deleted several posts from this thread, as they breached the forum Code of Conduct. Members are reminded not to post messages which: Impede or disrupt the flow of the discussions in the Forum Use the service in a manner deemed inappropriate by Archant Forum Admin and the Moderators would like to remind you that "By entering and posting on the forum you agree to abide by the code of conduct." If you have any concerns about this post please do not post them in the forum (they will be deleted without warning) but simply use the report button attached to THIS post. [/quote] Drat, missed all the good stuff again!  Clair, could we possibly have a 'Zoo' sub-forum where all of the inappropriate stuff is transferred to so that those of us of a discerning nature, and seated comfortably, could browse at our leisure?[:-))]

[quote user="ErnieY"] I've tried lots of similar test sites and Internetfrog is pretty well the worst of the lot consistently under reporting by a wide margin. [/quote] I use http://myspeed.visualware.com/ and find it very accurate. Cheers.

There is a thriving British community in Quillan and the local ‘fleapit’ (actually rather good!) is talking about screening English language films.  Watch out for the dodgy B+B owners though...[:-))] Cheers!

There is a renovation in a nearby village to us that is in a right pickle because of this.  The guy got some of his ‘mates’ on the black to do the wiring at a suitably cheap price.  Along comes Monsieur EDF and the first thing that he asks for is the SIRET number of the contractor.  Oh dear... no paperwork.  M. EDF says “get it checked by a proper contractor”.[:'(] Guy gets a local French electrician who has retired to check and do remedial work.  M. EDF returns...  Promptly asks for various face plates and connection covers to be removed so that he can inspect the wiring.  Mon dieu!!  Still a problem, as the wiring code has changed since French electrician last did an install and some cable sizes are incorrect.[8-)]  M. EDF gives owner a right b*llocking who is told that if the next inspection fails EDF will refuse to connect the property now or in the future![Www] Cheers!           

[quote user="Bones"]........though in our village even the northern French can be referred to as foreigners. [/quote] Yes, but don't forget that we live in 'french occupied Midi'! [:D] Cheers!

Just paid €11.90 for a spindle of 100 Memorex CD-Rs in Andorra........[:D]  I waited until my tank was low, so the saving on diesel more than offset the cost of the trip.  I also bought 5 litres of good olive oil and my allocation of booze for a good price.  Altogether a good days shopping [:-))]    You are only just up the road John, so isn’t Andorra cost effective for you too?  Or apart from the fuel, La Jonquera? Cheers!

OK guys, let’s go for it [geek]: Video on a DVD is stored in digital format, but it's formatted for one of two mutually incompatible television systems: 525/60 (NTSC) or 625/50 (PAL/SECAM).  Therefore, there are two kinds of DVDs; ‘NTSC DVDs’ and ‘PAL DVDs’ as noted by Martin.  Older players only play NTSC or PAL discs, more modern ones play both PAL and NTSC discs. Discs are also coded for different regions of the world. The aforementioned multi-standard players partially convert NTSC to a 60-Hz PAL (4.43 NTSC) signal.  The player uses the PAL 4.43-MHz color subcarrier encoding format but keeps the 525/60 NTSC scanning rate.  Most modern PAL TVs can handle this "pseudo-PAL" signal. A few multi-standard PAL players output true 3.58 NTSC from NTSC discs, which requires an NTSC TV or a multi-standard TV.  Some players have a switch to choose 60-Hz PAL or true NTSC output when playing NTSC discs.  There are a few standards-converting PAL players that convert from an NTSC disc to standard PAL output for older PAL TVs.  Because the quality of conversion in DVD players is poor, using 60-Hz PAL output with a compatible TV provides a better picture than converting from NTSC to PAL. (Sound is not affected by video conversion.) There are three differences between discs intended for playback on different TV systems: picture dimensions and pixel aspect ratio (720x480 vs. 720x576), display frame rate (29.97 vs. 25), and surround audio options (Dolby Digital vs. MPEG audio). Video from film is usually encoded at 24 frames/sec but is preformatted for one of the two required display rates.  Movies formatted for PAL display are usually sped up by 4% at playback, so the audio must be adjusted accordingly before being encoded.  All PAL DVD players can play Dolby Digital audio tracks, but not all NTSC players can play MPEG audio tracks.  PAL and SECAM share the same scanning format, so discs are the same for both systems.  The only difference is that SECAM players output the colour signal in the format required by SECAM TVs.  Note that modern TVs in most SECAM countries can also read PAL signals, so you can use a player that only has PAL output.  The only case in which you need a player with SECAM output is for older SECAM-only TVs (and you'll probably need a SECAM RF connection.) A producer can choose to put 525/60 NTSC video on one side of the disc and 625/50 PAL on the other. Most studios put Dolby Digital audio tracks on their PAL discs instead of MPEG audio tracks. DVD-Video is an application of DVD-ROM, according to the specification created by the DVD Forum.  DVD-Video is also an application of MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Dolby Digital, DTS and other formats.  This means the DVD-Video format defines subsets of these standards and formats to be applied in practice to make discs intended for DVD-Video players.  DVD-ROM can contain any desired digital information, but DVD-Video is limited to certain data types designed for television reproduction. A disc has one track (stream) of MPEG-2 constant bit rate (CBR) or variable bit rate (VBR) compressed digital video.  A restricted version of MPEG-2 Main Profile at Main Level (MP@ML) is used.  SP@ML is also supported.  MPEG-1 CBR and VBR video is also allowed.  525/60 (NTSC, 29.97 interlaced frames/sec) and 625/50 (PAL/SECAM, 25 interlaced frames/sec) video display systems are expressly supported.  Coded frame rates of 24 fps progressive from film, 25 fps interlaced from PAL video, and 29.97 fps interlaced from NTSC video are typical.  MPEG-2 progressive sequence is not allowed, but interlaced sequences can contain progressive pictures and progressive macroblocks.  In the case of 24 fps source, the encoder embeds MPEG-2 repeat first field flags into the video stream to make the decoder either perform 2-3 pull-down for 60Hz NTSC displays (actually 59.94Hz) or 2-2 pull-down (with resulting 4% speedup) for 50Hz PAL/SECAM displays.  In other words, the player doesn't ‘know’ what the encoded rate is, it simply follows the MPEG-2 encoder's instructions to produce the predetermined display rate of 25 fps or 29.97 fps.  This is one of the main reasons there are two kinds of discs, one for NTSC and one for PAL. Because film transfers for NTSC and PAL usually use the same coded picture rate (24 fps) but PAL resolution is higher, the PAL version takes more space on the disc.  The raw increase before encoding is 20% (480 to 576), but the final result is closer to 15%, depending on encoder efficiency.  This translates to an increase of 600 to 700 megabytes on PAL discs compared to NTSC discs. It's interesting to note that even interlaced source video can be rendered as progressive-structured MPEG pictures by a good encoder, with interlaced field-encoded macroblocks used only when needed for motion.  Most film sources are encoded at 24 frames per second (the inverse telecine process during encoding removes duplicate 2-3 pull-down fields from the videotape source and the remaining field pairs, although technically in interlaced form, can be re-interleaved by a progressive player).  Most video sources are encoded at 25 or 30 interlaced frames per second.  These may be mixed on the same disc, such as an interlaced-source logo followed by a progressive-source movie. Picture dimensions are at maximum 720x480 (for 525/60 NTSC display) or 720x576 (for 625/50 PAL/SECAM display).  Pictures are sub-sampled from 4:2:2 ITU-R BT.601 down to 4:2:0 before encoding, allocating an average of 12 bits/pixel in Y'CbCr format.  (Colour depth is 24 bits, since colour samples are shared across 4 pixels.)  DVD pixels are not square.  The uncompressed source is 124.416 Mbps for video source (720x480x12x30 or 720x576x12x25), or 99.533 or 119.439 Mbps for film source (720x480x12x24 or 720x576x12x24).  In analogue output terms, lines of horizontal resolution is usually around 500, but can go up to 540.  Typical luminance frequency response maintains full amplitude to between 5.0 and 5.5 MHz.  This is below the 6.75 MHz native frequency of the MPEG-2 digital signal (in other words, most players fall short of reproducing the full quality of DVD).  Chrominance frequency response is half that of luminance. Allowable picture resolutions are: MPEG-2, 525/60 (NTSC): 720x480, 704x480, 352x480, 352x240 MPEG-2, 625/50 (PAL): 720x576, 704x576, 352x576, 352x288 MPEG-1, 525/60 (NTSC): 352x240 MPEG-1, 625/50 (PAL): 352x288 Different players use different numbers of bits for the video digital-to-analogue converter, with the best-quality players using 10 or 12 bits.  This has nothing to do with the MPEG decoding process, since each original component signal is limited to 8 bits per sample.  More bits in the player provide more ‘headroom’ and more signal levels during digital-to-analogue conversion, which can help produce a better picture. Maximum video bit rate is 9.8 Mbps.  The "average" video bit rate is around 4 Mbps but depends entirely on the length, quality, amount of audio, etc.  This is a 31:1 reduction from uncompressed 124 Mbps video source (or a 25:1 reduction from 100 Mbps film source).  Raw channel data is read off the disc at a constant 26.16 Mbps.  After 8/16 demodulation it's down to 13.08 Mbps.  After error correction the user data stream goes into the track buffer at a constant 11.08 Mbps.  The track buffer feeds system stream data out at a variable rate of up to 10.08 Mbps.  After system overhead, the maximum rate of combined elementary streams (audio + video + sub-picture) is 10.08.  MPEG-1 video rate is limited to 1.856 Mbps with a typical rate of 1.15 Mbps. To answer Martin’s earlier question; Yes!  Video recorded on a DVD on a UK computer would be viewable on an American computer.  When the data is streamed off the DVD it is interpreted by a software application such as InterVideo’s WinDVD or VideoLAN (my favourite). As your computer monitor is neither PAL nor NTSC nor SECAM it has to ‘transcode’ the stream from the PAL/NTSC DVD to the resolution set up in Settings>Control Panel>Display>Settings.  (For example 1280x1024.)  I’m leaving aside here the ‘TV out’ video cards such as ATI’s All-In-Wonder as they sort themselves out.  The software also sorts out the aspect ratio with respect to 4:3, 16:9 and ‘letterbox’ etc.  Because of ‘convergence’, (how many years have we been taking about it?!) the old ‘analogue’ systems that digital TV has been saddled with are being swept away by MPEG4.  (Most new DVD players will now accept the latest DivX formats for example.)  This is all being driven by HDMI (High Definition Multimedia Interface) panel ‘TV’s, new computer video cards and ‘stand alone’ HD-DVD and BluRay players.   Brian

[quote user="Jonzjob"] Even if you do speed you won't get there very much quicker anyway... [/quote] The laws of physics work differently in your area do they? [:-))]

[quote user="briwy"] Having said that I have yet to see a really good database with French cameras on. Ther doesnt appear to be one that is as comprehensive as the UK one. [/quote] On the contrary, the ‘gpspassion’ site has a speedtrap database that is as good as UK ones if not better.  The site has two versions of the database; Standard and Plus.  The former is downloadable by any registered member (easy to do) and is updated every few months.  (The last was 23rd December 06.)  The Plus version is updated regularly, but you either have to contribute a new trap location or pay a small subscription.  Having said that I use the Standard version and it has all of our local traps on it. For further details check out; http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9172 and http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9582  Brian    

A few years ago I was sitting in the café in B&Q and idly noticed that on one wall was a rack of ‘pigeon holes’ for instruction leaflets.  Only one had leaflets in it which was entitled; “Maintaining your Chainsaw”.  Above it was a huge sign which said; “ALL INSTRUCTION LEAFLETS AVAILABLE IN BRAILLE”.  A cold shudder passed over me... Brian

Many thanks Nick! Brian

Clair, If you are going for a standby generator for the sewage, have you thought about catering for emergency lighting?  If you are ‘green’ and I am sure that you are[;-)], the extra load will not be that much.  The difference in price between say a 2.5KW and 3.0KW generator is not much as a percentage.  You can also go for a diesel rig and run it on bio-diesel!  To answer your question, the pump will present a ‘reactive’ load and you should therefore up the rating of the generator.  The VA rating from the information you have given is 2.047KVA.  So if the ‘spec sheet’ mentions both 1.5KW and 2.0KW it is *likely* that the latter is the starting power.  I would look for a 2.5KVA generator to be on the safe side. Brian  

Hi, We are building a new house and I want to include full media services from day one.  Does anybody have experience of purchasing the components including combination cable (2 off CAT5e & 2 off RG6), IDC patch frames and suitable ‘faceplates’ in France? Cheers!

Well done Cassis!  For others, it is very easy and well worth the effort IMHO especially if you want to share printers that are not networked.  As ever, a picture is worth a thousand words so 'google' for 'file sharing'.  You will get back thousands of documents and you can match up the 'English' screenshots with their 'French' cousins.  The Microsoft site also has some good articles. Brian  

Cal,   I had a similar(ish) case a few years ago.  The tank was filled to the top and the weather was very cold.  It turned out that because of the cold and lack of space in the tank, the liquid propane was unable to turn into gas.  Do you have a gauge on your tank?  Has it been overfilled or perhaps not at all[blink]?  I would phone the supplier in any event to be sure.   Cheers   Brian     

Dave, Have sent you a PM. Cheers. Brian 11500

[quote user="Pilot"]The A380 was at Perpignan on Monday afternoon (18 Dec) and very impressive it was too.  [/quote] Ryanair have bought three, they hope to get 8000 passengers in each. [;-)] Brian

[quote user="Clair"] They asked him to blow into the balloon, with a machine gun..." [/quote] Was the balloon over the muzzle or magazine? [;-)] Brian

Andy, If I remember correctly, this is a well documented problem on the GPS Passion site.  Maps from various releases are not compatible and installation is very much trial and error.  I have maps from two releases and it took me some time to load them all.  Again, iirc, I loaded the oldest first.  There is also a problem with Net++ which you may or may not have encountered.  (I am typing this from memory but will check my records tomorrow.) Brian