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Ian

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Posts posted by Ian

    Machine Screws in imperial size - in France?

    in House Renovations

    Posted

    * Clarksinfrance - thanks for the idea. Yes, it's for the base plate - I'm building a router table. Next time I'm in Leroy Merlin, I'll have a look, but I suspect your Bosch router may be metric - my circular saw is.

    * Gluestick, interesting. Didn't realise metric was so similar to something as old-fashioned as imperial. Not enough for me this time though - my 1/4" shank falls between the last two possibles.

    I've found a UK source who will ship them to France, so I think I'll just go ahead - it's about as cheap as shipping to a UK address, so save the hassle and cost of forwarding.

    Thanks for the help - much appreciated

    Cost of plaster skim coat for walls

    in House Renovations

    Posted

    "I am still in shock at these prices....."

    You and me, both.

    It's obvious I know nothing about true tradesman costs - these prices were a fair way away from what I'd imagined.

    I'm afraid that your quote, Mattstra, has come too late. Even though it's affordable, I've already decided to go with fill-and-tape, and live with the rustic finish I'll probably end up with. What the hell, it's in keeping with the rest of the house.....................

    Thanks to all of you for helping me with this. I appreciate it.

    Thanks

    Cost of plaster skim coat for walls

    in House Renovations

    Posted

    I'm not looking forward to having to tape and fill all the plasterboard joints in our house. I reckon it will take me a lot of time and work, just to get an acceptable finish. So, my mind turned to the idea of a skim coat, to cover all my mistakes.

    Assuming I can find an english-style plasterer to do the work, can anyone give me an idea of the rate (per sq.M?) for this? (if it's relevant, I'm looking at four rooms with a total wall area of around 180 sq.M.)

    Thanks

    Fuel prices in France

    in Driving in France

    Posted

    [quote user="powerdesal"][quote user="Ian"]I believe that refineries have generally been designed to favour the production of petrol/gasoline over other hydrocarbons. With more and more cars running on gazole, this is causing a shortage of gazole, resulting in upward pressure on prices.

    [/quote]

    Ian, your first sentence is certainly true of USA refineries which are mostly hydrocrackers which produce gasoline preferentially over diesel, however, the European refineries are predominantly catalytic crackers which produce a higher proportion of diesel.

    [/quote]

    Yes, I think it was a US-slanted article I read. Sorry to mislead.....

    Fuel prices in France

    in Driving in France

    Posted

    I believe that refineries have generally been designed to favour the production of petrol/gasoline over other hydrocarbons. With more and more cars running on gazole, this is causing a shortage of gazole, resulting in upward pressure on prices.

    Price of dressed oak

    in Working with Wood

    Posted

    hi OK

                      first hello Ian .....OK that's over 4 times the amount I pay for brute oak , but saying that I have all ways planed it my self after , might be less expensive to buy your own machine ??

                                Dave

    Hi, Dave.

    (This is the second time I've replied, I seem to have lost the first response)

    Yes, I did think about buying a P/T to dimension rough-cut planks, but I'd also need to buy a table (and cutters) for my router, for the T&G. A lot of expense and a lot of learning for what, at this stage, is a limited project. Given the scierie has all the professional equipment and skill to do it properly, I decided it was just easier to pay the price for convenience.

    Mind, at some time in the future, I'm planning to add some bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs. When (if) that time comes, I think I'll be able to justify an investment in the equipment

    Thanks

    Price of dressed oak

    in Working with Wood

    Posted

    Guys, can you tell me how I'm doing here?

    I want to buy some oak planking. It's for shelving, lining cupboards and window reveals and for building freestanding bookshelves. It'll be PAR and T&G, and I'm looking at 12/15mm for the sides and top, and 25/30mm for cills and shelves. Width of the planks isn't important - I can rip them to fit the spaces/designs.

    My local sawmill can do all this for me (their main business is building furniture), and they're quoting prices of around €34 psm for the 12/15mm and €67 psm for the 25/30mm. I think this is reasonable. What do you think?

    Thanks

    Computer Back Up

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    [quote user="ErnieY"]Ian, I'm an Acronis man myself and have not used Paragon but I'm sure it will have an option to verify images and if you do that and also make regular backups, monthly at least, and also double copy them to external media then it's very unlikely that you will find yourself unable to restore in case of disaster.

    I would be wary of incremental backups as corruption in one part can render the whole set useless.

    [/quote]

    Ernie, yes, it does have an option to verify the image, which I do of course.

    The reason I do double imaging, using different programs, is that I bought and until recently used a back-up (not imaging) program. Everything seemed tickety-boo till I actually tried to restore the data for real. It failed - kept falling over with a terminal error. Fortunately,there was enough of the back-up available for me to recover manually. So, now I have (I hope) two strings to my bow. One of these days, I may find out......

    Cheers

    Strong white flour for bread

    in French Food and Wine

    Posted

    Gamme Vert sell a range of flours. I've been using one called Surfina - plain, white, few if any additives. In combination with fresh yeast (from Intermarche), I can make a hand-made bread that's close to what I used to make in the UK.

    It'll never take the place of baguettes and croissants, but it's nice for a change. Also useful if you want to make speciality bread, like olive or potato and chive.

    Cheers

    Computer Back Up

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    Yes, I'd like to test my recovery procedure, but I can't think how. I could try and recover the image onto another partition, (D, for example) and see if it worked, but it's set up to boot from "C", and I'm not confident enough to meddle with the registry. Which is why I back-up two images by two different programs - I'm counting on one of them working.

    (Regarding recovery, I used to work for a large american computer

    company, as a salesman. Back in the days when computers were less

    forgiving than they are these days (tells you how bad they must have

    been...), our party trick during a demo was to pull the power cord out,

    mid-transaction, and then recover cleanly. Very impressive. I'm not sure my PC could do that....)

    Cheers

    Computer Back Up

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    Albert, I use disk-imaging software from Paragon (Paragon Drive Backup 9.0 Express). Apart from being free (the Express version is), what I like about it is, you can make a bootable CD and run the back-up and restore from that. So if your C Drive is totally trashed, for whatever reason, who cares?

    Now, I've not used it to restore yet, so it may not work..... In that case, I have another image (on the same external HDD) made using DriveImage XML. Again, available on a bootable CD (this time, it's UBCD4WIN).

    If the worst happens, I'm hoping one of them will work, so I'll not have to spend another day rebuilding Windows.

    It doesn't handle incremental (tactical) backups, though.

    Bon chance

    Voice/Picture synchronisation on satellite

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    Martin, Tim, many thanks for the swift response.

    Yes, it's one of the latest, dark-blue with yellow house, cards. It came with the box (err, sorry, I meant it was given to me by a friend in the UK), so I've no idea about its history, such as when it was last used. I'll pop it into the box and leave it overnight - if it re-awakens on its own, fine, if not I'll call Sky from the UK. Will note down serial numbers of box and card beforehand, plus anything else that looks relevant. I can't unfortunately call them from here by mobile (which would be good as it's still a UK mobile), as we don't get a signal in the village.

    I hear what you say about lack of necessity for Freesat (sorry, Tim, I got confused with all the Frees), but C5 would be nice occasionally, as would some of the secondary channels we might get (UKHistory, etc). So would a digibox that I can program in English (I still say they're anything but intuitive). Plus I needed a new box.

    Thanks again, chaps, I knew you'd have the answers

    Voice/Picture synchronisation on satellite

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    Well, I've now bought a Sky digibox from Ebay - Thomson DSI4210 - and installed it. Picture is good, lip-synch is good. Remote is an unbranded/generic, and the "SKY" button doesn't work , but I can get into the service menu by pressing a button on the digibox, so it'll do. (Would a genuine Sky remote solve this problem? Are they common to all digiboxes? If so, I'll keep my eyes open for one......)

    BUT......

    The Freeview card isn't recognised. System says I have to contact Sky.

    From some research on the 'Net, I suspect that card needs to be registered to that box, which Sky will do if I ask them. I'm going back to the UK tomorrow for a few days, so I'll do it from my UK address, just to avoid any possible unpleasantness about non-UK use.

    Or, am I barking up the wrong tree, entirely?

    Cheers

    "Request" to register for french tax

    in French Finance

    Posted

    [quote user="Sunday Driver"]

    The authorities might well argue that under the immigration regulations, having lived in the house for three months, you became resident here - and that you should have actually gone on to do the 'residential' things like registering car, applying for carte vitale, etc.....[;-)]

    Unless you can provide proof that you hadn't been living here all the time during that period (eg, regular ferry bookings to and from to the UK) then you may have difficulty in avoiding being classed as tax resident during 2007.

    However, bear in mind if you do declare here, you'll probably pay no tax on your three months earnings and you can get your UK tax refunded.  And, having missed the boat for avoiding having to obtain expensive private health insurance until you've been here five years, you need all the accumulated residency you can get.....

    [/quote]

    Well, since I can't show regular ferry trips back to Blighty, and it might be financially advantageous to change tax regimes, and I have to do it sooner or later, I might as well do it now. At least they've given me 30 days to get the form back to them

    (I don't think the need for accumulated residency applies - my wife is retired, so I currently qualify as her dependent. As long as that doesn't change.....But, thanks for highlighting that aspect.)

    I seem to remember much advice on here, back in springtime, on how to fill the forms in. I'd better start searching...

    Thanks, all.

    "Request" to register for french tax

    in French Finance

    Posted

    Thanks, everyone, for the info, but it's not the answer I was hoping for. I'm trying to avoid having to fill in a french tax return till next spring, out of laziness. If I have to do it now, I will, but I'd rather not.

    So, please let me re-phrase the question:

    (A) Is this request to complete a tax return mandatory (Thatcher's TINA), or can I argue that as I was not resident in 2007, it does not apply to me?

    (B) If non-resident status is a get-out, will the authorities accept I wasn't resident, given I did nothing "residential" (registering car, applying for CarteVitale, etc) till this year?

    Again, thanks

    "Request" to register for french tax

    in French Finance

    Posted

    I've just received a (standard) letter from the "Directeur Generale des Impots".

    My french isn't very good but I think it's saying something along the lines of

    "....We have not received your tax return for 2007, due by 30/05/2008. This is a legal requirement. Even if you are not liable to pay tax (?), it is in your interests to complete this, as it is proof of your status, which may help you.

    If you have not completed this return, and wish to avoid being penalised, please complete and return the form you should have received.. Or get another one from us......etc etc"

    I still have a house in the UK and have bank statements etc sent to my UK address, but as of this year, I feel I am a french resident - registered with CPAM in April, etc. - so will happily (?) fill this year's tax return, next spring. As far as 2007 is concerned though, I was a UK resident (at least, I think

    so). We bought the french house in September 2007, but the first few

    months here were really a working holiday, spent making the house

    habitable. I was still paying UK tax,  returning every so often to the

    UK.

    Can I persuade them I was a UK resident for 2007, and if so, will this remove the need to fill in the tax return as they ask?

    TIA

    Voice/Picture synchronisation on satellite

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    Well, I looked at signal strength/quality on a variety of channels on Astra 28 - there was no significant difference between them. Then, I checked the French channels (Astra 19 plus dedicated digi-box) - lip-synch seems OK there.

    Finally, I tried your idea, Martin, of using the Astra 19 feed in the Astra

    28 box. The channels I found were as badly lip-synched as BBC1 is from

    Astra 28.

    Things are still pointing to the Astra28 digibox, I think.

    ??

    Regards

    Voice/Picture synchronisation on satellite

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    [quote user="Martinwatkins"]Actually Ian now that you're something of an expert in getting the box to rescan,  I'd turn off both boxes and put the Astra 1 cable onto the faulty box.

    Then do a scan (or rather "Add channels",  "manual/transponder search") on

    11953 MHz,  (11.953 GHz)

    symbol rate 27500

    Horizontal pol

    FEC = 3/4  (only if it asks)

    and see whether these channels lose sync too.

    If they do then it has to be the box,  if not your installer should - I would have thought - come out for free for une petite revision.

    Got to be worth trying before you invest in more boxes.

    [/quote]

    I'd have replied before now, but I had to reload my PC from scratch (starting with repartitioning...), as I was stupid enough to let a virus in. No, let me rephrase that - I was stupid enough to import a virus through my actions! It took control of IE and Firefox, so I was unable to get help.

    The UK digi-box has just hiccuped, in a different way. Switched on, it didn't give me any TV channels - said there was "no signal". However, the UK radio channels worked, and if I switched between the two, it briefly showed the tv channel "information window" (strip at the bottom of the screen that shows title, satellite, channel number, type of channel, etc) before reverting to "no signal".

    (EDIT - the TV signal has just returned)

    If anyone else has just had that fault, then it's just a co-incidence and I'll have to try the above trick tomorrow. If it was just me, then I'd say that was the digi-box telling me it wanted to be put out of its misery. And mine - I hate digi-boxes - so unintuitive - plaything of the devil...

    Regards

    Voice/Picture synchronisation on satellite

    in French Satellite TV, French Internet and Telephone

    Posted

    [quote user="Martinwatkins"]Excellent.   Hope it stays that way.   It would be interesting if at some point you could update us again....

    Do try keeping it cool too if you can.[/quote]

    Well, 24 hours later and it's not looking too rosy. The lipsynch is again drifting off. I can improve it by powering off and on, but I suspect I'm just p*ssing against the wind.

    So, it looks like replacement is beckoning. With what, though, is the question. A second-hand Sky box from Ebay is easy to operate and offers more channels, like C5, UK History, etc, but buying from Ebay carries a risk. On the other hand, a Freesat box would be new, but doesn't offer these channels. Also, there's little choice - all the cheap, non-HD ones are made by the same group (Alba).

    Decisions, decisions.

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