Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2009 September 6

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September 6

How To Clean a Soda Cozy

First off, by a soda cozy I mean the soft cloth-like holders that keep the soda cold and your hand normal. I have a cozy that is bright yellow, and the other day it had a can of Coke in it. The next day, despite no leak in the can or anything, there is now a dark brown stain along one side of the cozy and along the bottom, and overall it has a dimmer color to it. Does anyone know how to clean this? Washing machine, a good rinse, or is it ruined forever? Thank you. 134.126.192.188 (talk) 03:40, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

The good rinse in clean cold water sounds like the way to go. Those soft drink colours are water soluble, so enough water should sort the discolouration out. The next step would be to use a drop of detergent in your water if that did not work. The stubby holders I know here are made of foam rubber, which does not sound like what you have. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:58, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

free counselling websites

can any1 plz tell me some GOOD relationship counselling websites , which can offer counselling for free , without dodging people by FREE clicks and later mentioning $$$ — 04:29, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Please tell us where you are (city and country). The answers for England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Nigeria, India and each of the fifty United States will all be different. A general answer for the United States might be the Family Services or Catholic Family Services in your city or state, which serve those of all faiths and none (e.g. Family Service of Rhode Island); you might also get good leads or referrals from your local Jewish Federation, whether or not you're Jewish (e.g. Jewish Family Services of Rhode Island), or your local United Way. Unfortunately, many of these will be closed until Tuesday because of Labor Day in the U.S. and Canada. —— Shakescene (talk) 06:04, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I AM LOCATED IN pakistan. so plz suggest online counselling,(if) available in pakistan. thanks very much for ur answer...

I thought Pakistan used rupees not dollars, anyway have you tried a google search with 'pakistan counselling'? Dmcq (talk) 23:30, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

So are you looking for someone to advise or counsel you alone, or both you and the other person(s) in this relationship together? —— Shakescene (talk) 00:12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest that you do not do online counselling. Counselling is very largely about communication: from you to the counsellor, from the counsellor to you, and from you to others. Doing counselling on the web will hugely cut down the effectiveness of communication, by losing all the non-verbal aspects of communication. Frankly I doubt that any good counsellor will do counselling on the web; which means that if you find someone who will you may well not be getting good service.

You may well be better off finding a non-professional who you can talk to in person. Are you involved in a religious community? Do you know an older, or just wise, person that you trust? DJ Clayworth (talk) 15:30, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Hanoi Hannah audio

Where might I find audio of radio broadcasts by Hanoi Hannah, Duong Thu Huong? In particular her claims of North Vietnam winning the war because the North believed logic to be superior to God as the basis for any political, social or economi system. -- Taxa (talk) 13:46, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Since you're a registered editor here, I presume you've already explored the external links at Hanoi Hannah, the Wikipedia article. —— Shakescene (talk) 21:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Since my last look the article has been improved with one external reference but none, alas, lead to an audio or text record of that particular claim. -- Taxa (talk) 04:05, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

A few here and here, though I didn't listen for content. --Sean 16:35, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. wonder how you found the first one - earth station??? The second one I know about but neither have the particualr discussion about God vs. logic I'm looking for. Thanks anyway. -- Taxa (talk) 19:46, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

It was the first hit for "hanoi.hannah audio". Interestingly/sadly, "hannoi.hannah filetype:mp3" failed, presumably due to Google trying to avoid becoming as convenient as early Napster. --Sean 20:38, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

The first radio tower icon goes to the one about GI Joe being poorly informed while others make big profit but nothing about God vs logic.... -- Taxa (talk) 21:37, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Help, please

I really need help on this. i can't figure it out.

Strange TV colours

We turned on the TV this evening (it had been off for an hour or two) and all the colours are wrong. It seems that red is displaying as green, green as blue and blue as red. It is a fairly old CRT TV. All the cables seem to be in properly, there are no settings on the TV that seem to help and giving it a good slap didn't help either! Any ideas of what could be causing this and/or how to fix it? Thanks. --Tango (talk) 21:12, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

If anyone's been near it witgh a powerful magnet (even a powerful bar magnet) that might have messed it up. Prokhorovka (talk) 21:15, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

No, I can't think how that could have happened. --Tango (talk) 21:32, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Prokhorovka is suspecting that your screen needs degaussing - with most TV's (even fairly old ones) you can degauss them by turning them on and off again a few times - yet older ones may have a 'Degauss' button you can push to do the job - museum-piece TV's need you to use a degaussing coil to solve the problem. However, the symptoms you describe are not right for this kind of problem and degaussing it isn't going to fix it. SteveBaker (talk) 15:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Is the signal coming over a Péritel/SCART connection, or does the problem happen even with TV over the RF input? -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 22:01, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

It happens on both SCART and RF. --Tango (talk) 22:11, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Usual trick is to thump it hard on the top corner of the right hand side.--88.109.132.126 (talk) 08

12, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Actually - at this point - thumping it in various places is more likely to fix it than anything else I could think of! Old TV's are prone to getting bad solder joints and whacking them does sometimes restore the bad connection for a while. However, I'm skeptical of this because the usual symptom that can be cured this way is when the thing turns on OK then goes wrong as it heats up - or starts off wrong and fixes itself as it warms up. But you have nothing to lose! SteveBaker (talk) 15:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Is this a NTSC or PAL or digital from free to air? Is there a set top box?Graeme Bartlett (talk) 13:03, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Tango said the word "SCART" - so it's gonna be PAL (or maybe SECAM). SteveBaker (talk) 15:17, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

So the hue is "rotated". In analog TV that is basically determined by the phase of the color signal relative to the color burst at the start of every scan-line. Older NTSC TV's had a tendancy to 'drift' in hue and hence often have a hue adjustment control someplace (NTSC: "Never Twice Same Color") - and playing with that might be able to fix it for you. But PAL TV's have a more sophisticated way to do this. They alternate the way the hue signal is decoded on consecutive scanlines so that if the circuitry goes out of adjustment - one scanline will drifted one way, the next scanline will drift the other - and so small errors tend to cancel out overall. That means that there is no need for a hue adjustment control and most PAL TV's don't have them. Since you're talking about SCART - I deduce that you probably don't have NTSC but rather PAL (or just possibly SECAM). Hence no hue control - hence no easy way to fix your problem. Also, if it's a PAL/SECAM system, the problem must be happening after the hue is decoded from the broadcast stream - which probably means that other inputs to the TV won't work either. If your analog TV is being driven by a digital decoder box and has a component video or SCART interface - then I suppose it's just possible that symptoms kinda similar to the ones you're describing could come about from a bad or loose connector - but not if you are getting your TV broadcast from an antenna or via a VCR or DVD player with composite video connections.

I suppose - if you have an old VCR where you can watch TV via the VCR and change channels using the VCR's channel changer buttons - you might manage to bypass the TV's decoders that way and keep the thing running - but not many VCR's work like that - and the logic above suggests that this won't work either. However, it's worth a try I suppose.

That's all just a complicated way to say that your TV is broken and it's not worth mending...still, that's the excuse you need to get that 70" 1080p Plasma screen you've been wanting all those years.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:10, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank everyone for your suggestions. I turned it on today and it is working fine again (I had tried turning it off and on again before)! If anyone is interested (I'd still like to know how it happened out of idle curiosity - and in case it happens again) it is a PAL TV with a Freeview box (terrestrial digital set-top box). There is a coaxial cable from an aerial to the VCR, from the VCR to the digibox and from the digibox to the TV, there is also a SCART lead from the digibox to the TV. As I understand it, the SCART is used when watching digital and the coaxial is used when watching analogue. The colour was broken on both. --Tango (talk) 16:30, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

The colour error described sounds like faulty PAL phasing. If so, changing the channel is likely to correct it. The cause can be a subcarrier 4.43..MHz oscillator coil that needs retuning. There is usually a service procedure to do this using a voltmeter. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 20:35, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Changing the channel didn't help - the TV guide display from the digibox and the channel number in the corner from the TV were in the wrong colours. It certainly wasn't a problem with the signal. --Tango (talk) 00:14, 8 September 2009 (UTC)