[johnfowles]

I was gratified to see that so far no less than 47 corfiddlers had found and looked at my initial blog but disappointed that only my friend BillW took the trouble to comment
good on yer Bill!!
I am far from discouraged so here is today's blog:-

1. Metacafe and Half Windsor tie knots

for the best part of 50 years I wore a tie to school,university or work every day
I recall whilst at school being taught by an older boy hov to tie my tie in a nicely symetrical style called a "half windsor":-
from that wiki:-
The half-Windsor knot is a way of tying a necktie which produces a neat, triangular knot.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FppCJ46C31A
However since my stroke in 2000 my left hand "dexterity" now there's an oxymoron if ever I saw one isn't what it used to be so trying to recreate the once automatic manoeuvres to tie such a knot is difficult to say the least
Athough my lifestyle nowadays only rarely requires me to wear a tie and I have a selection of the "cheating" clip-on varity anyway nevertheless I do miss the satisfaction of creating a really nice half windsor.
Yesterday by a quirk of fate (see below) I found myself on the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacafe]metacafe] site
at a video helpfully entitled
" How To Tie A Tie"
sub title
"This is a short video on how to tie a half windsor knot."
at

How To Tie A Tie Video - Metacafe

at
http://www.metacafe.com/

I naturally did a search for our hero
initially getting a solitary result:-

Simon Taylor - Song For Winter's Night Video -...

Simon Taylor - Song For Winter's Night
" Simon's rendition of the original Gordon Lightfoot record. All the instruments and vocals performed and recorded by the wonderful Simon Taylor. Please Comment."
only uploaded on March 31
later I also found

Learn To Play "If You Could Read My...

"An award-winning guitarist teaches you how to play "If You Could Read My Mind" by Gordon Lightfoot. This is a sample of a 46 minute video available for download at... More» iVideosongs.com."
the video is far too short so I tried to visit
http://www.ivideosongs.com/

but my computer is feeling particularly liverish today so both Internet Exploder and Firefoxhunt took ages to open the site
where there appears to be no obvious search function
and their help file was no help at all
Could somebody on broadband please have a go and report back
I googled for metacafe and one result was the inevitable wiki at:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacafe

and which describes it as:-
"Metacafe is the largest independent video sharing web site, specializing in short-form original entertainment, where users upload, view and share video"
I wonder just what Google (the owners of youtube think about that claim?)
on that wiki I also read:-
"In October 2006, Metacafe announced its Producer Rewards[3] program in which video producers are paid for their original content. Through this program, any video that is viewed a minimum of 20,000 times, has achieved a VideoRank rating of 3.00 or higher, and does not violate any copyrights or other Metacafe community standards is awarded $5 for every 1,000 views.
As of December 2007, the top 20 producers on Metacafe have earned over $10,000 each[4], with the top producer, KipKay, having earned over $100,000[5]! In total, more than 550 independent video creators have earned more than $1 million through the Producer Rewards program."
which makes it a rather different operation to youtube of course where I would hazard a guess that the majority of videos uploaded are in breach of copyright one way or another

I am well acquainted with youtube of course but had honestly never heard of metacafe.
one very good feature was that there is a "download video" option but
"Note: Metacafe Pro is required. Free Download"
I firstly downloaded a starter program Metacafe4Windows.exe of only 636Kb
when I ran that it went into a download of the full program metacafesetup.exe a larger 7196KB (7.xMB) a seemingly never ending 40+minute dial up download
[*] Scratched CDs
recently there was a tip by I think Yuri to use car polish to remove scratches
I recently won an ebay auction for a spare box set (I would have got it at a bargain price if an idiot had not tried to beat me on the final day. all he succeeded in doing was needlessly pushing the price upway too high!)
whatever the seller one Liz had admitted that "CD3 has a set of scratches but it plays well"
I guess she had not realised that a CD plays from the inside outwards because the worst scratch is towards the outside
and originally the first 10 of the 21 tracks seemed to play allright
but I took heart from Yuri's tip
so I tried two different car waxes lying around but neither did a thing
Then yesterday I read on:-
http://lifehacker.com/software/cds/m...ste-155741.php
"a scratched CD can be recovered by polishing its plastic surface. If, after carrying out the above cleansing, the CD persists in giving reading errors, just polish the CD with toothpaste. That's right, toothpaste. It works wonders, and you won't spend a fortune buying professional cleaning kits
Having learned this trick in college, I can vouch for it. Don't expect to recover your most damaged CDs, but you certainly can work a little magic. Anyone else have any good CD repair tips that work for them? Let us know in the comments or at tips athttp://www. lifehacker.com
in googling for scratched CDs I also found:-

Repair CDs With A Microwave!!! Video - Metacafe

which appears to have been an April Fools spoof
but that IS how I discovered metacafe
Anyway I have now tried Colgate. but sad to say the results if anything was to make the scratch skipping problem even worse as just about every track is now affected. but Gord on the CD case's back inlay photo now has a brilliant smile!!
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