Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2010 June 4

= June 4 =

Chrome table
I've been given a large glass topped table on a chromed steel frame which is fine pitted with rust. Any ideas please as to how I can restore this frame without the vast expense of re-chroming?--Artjo (talk) 12:43, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Consider painting the frame. During the '80s many car models that had chrome details such as bumpers restyled these to matt black with just a coat of paint. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 13:30, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Also consider treating the rust in some way. If you manage to remove some of the rust (chemically and/or mechanically, but be careful not to negatively influence the structural strength of the table) and only then apply the paint, the coat should last much longer, and its integrity will not be compromised by the rust underneath it. If you do, remember there is really no 'all in one' solution and no magic paint that will remove the rust AND look great with just one coat. Sandpaper is sometimes your friend. --Ouro (blah blah) 15:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Primer would also help your paint job last longer, much to my tables misfortune as the paint is now peeling. Googlemeister (talk) 15:56, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * A couple ideas:


 * 1) To maintain the chrome look, first remove any rust you can with chemical rust removers, then rinse, dry, and apply a thick coat of wax to fill in the pits and prevent further rust.


 * 2) For a different look, wrap the frame with strips of fabric, and use safety pins to hold them together. This may have the benefit of also making the table less painful when bumped into. StuRat (talk) 19:00, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There are such things as "electroplating pens" eg  which might be a solution.87.102.32.39 (talk) 20:22, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * I used to have a jar of a grey powder that one rubbed onto rusted chrome with a damp cloth. It removed the rust and replated where the spots were. Can't for the life remember the brand name. DuncanHill (talk) 20:55, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Possibly Bar Keepers Friend, which is a white powder that goes grey when wetted. Although our article doesn't specifically mention chrome, the label on the container (which is in front of me as I type) has a list of applications which includes "CHROME Removes rust". 87.81.230.195 (talk) 02:13, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * It wasn't Bar Keepers' Friend. I had this jar in the 80's of the last century, and it was inherited from my grandfather who died in the 70's. From what I recall of the label it would have been made in the 50's or early 60's, and intended for restoring chrome bumpers. With that in mind, Ouro may do well to look in a shop like Halfords or another auto factor, or perhaps a cycle parts & spares shop. Cars and bikes have traditionally involved lots of chrome (sadly not so much nowadays), so yo're likely to find stuff for restoring chrome there. DuncanHill (talk) 09:05, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * As a long-time antique car restorer, I can tell you that the problem isn't getting rid of the rust. There are any number of treatments that will do that.  But where the steel has rusted, it will have flaked off a small patch of the thin chromium coating.  Removing the rust reveals somewhat shiny steel - but without the chrome coating, it'll simply rust again within days to weeks (depending on your local climate) and you'll be back to square one.  It's an old used-car guy's trick - you remove the rust - and quickly sell the car before it (inevitably) comes back.  If you want to keep the original look, re-chroming is the only choice...and for a table, it's probably cheaper to buy a new table! SteveBaker (talk) 19:39, 7 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Possibly DuncanHill's Grandfather's solution is a simple (chemical) nickel plating solution (with some mild acid/ammonia or complexing agent to remove the rust) - you wouldn't be able to sell it nowadays (probably). Nickel plating isn't exactly like chrome - but it's a lot closer than rust.SF5Xe+ 14:59, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Acting : 'Mechanical' voicing
This is related to my previous question..

In relation to acting, how do you avoid (or in some circumstance excagerate) sounding 'mechanical'?

For context, this relates to live performance, I know there are countless sound processing techniques you can use on pre-recorded stuff..

17:27, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * This depends on what you mean by 'mechanical'. there are different modes:
 * classic 50's robot: use no variations in pitch or tempo - speak syllable by syllable - and speak from the back of your throat to get a growly/nasal sound
 * modern computer-speak: use a rich, full-voiced tone with absolutely no inflection - practice by trying to say the most offensive, disgusting thing you can think of in calm conversational tones (err... do that in private, or you'll scare the shit out of people - lol).
 * industrial machine: stereotypically between the previous two - very nasal, without inflection, but more fluid than the 50's preconception
 * You might also play with unusual speech patterns. computer synthesized voices have trouble with irregular parts of speech, creating appropriate tense structures, oddnesses like possessives and contractions, and ambiguous semantics (e.g., getting a computer to read a phrase like "Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana" correctly is all but impossible).


 * so let me take a guess - you've been cast as a female robot in a sci-fi version of 'Guys and Dolls'? -- Ludwigs 2  18:11, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Although not strictly mechanical something like Teen Talk Barbie might also be of relevance to this disscussion..

In terms of your examples : (I've had this with telephone call centres...)
 * i) "Danger, Danger, Jimbo Wales!!" ?
 * ii) "I'm sorry, but the command is not recognised did you mean ..."
 * iii) "Wiki admin cleanup required in article 3. Vandal threat rising..."
 * lol - actually #2 is more like: "I'm sorry, Jimbo, but I am required to terminate your system at this time. Please stand away from your computer and any electrically conductive materials.", but otherwise...   -- Ludwigs 2  20:59, 5 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm sure some comedy show did some kind of 'speech synth' sketch, although I can't recall which one... Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:46, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * We did have a Q about a month back about appropriate clothing for a tranny robot from outer space...I'm beginning to see a pattern. As for robot speech, excessive formality also has been used for robots (and Vulcans): "A multi-legged insect is currently engaging in locomotion along your gluteus maximus". StuRat (talk) 18:33, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * One way they marked Data on Star Trek: TNG was to make him incapable of using contractions. This allowed for some inflection while speaking (avoiding the "DOES...NOT...COMPUTE..." tone '50s-'60s robots and computers take, usually before they start smoking and spinning their tape reels frantically) while still sounding not-quite-human.   Some jerk on the Internet (talk) 18:52, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * They weren't able to keep it up, though. Which probably advises against trying the same trick. Even in episodes where data's lack of contractions was a plot point he would still use them. APL (talk) 21:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * You can always practice by running things through a text-to-speech system, ideally not a particularly good one. The inflection and pauses a person puts into a spoken sentence are heavily influenced by its meaning.  The inappropriately steady rhythm (except for, say, pausing exactly the same amount of time for each comma) and even emphasis is the biggest giveaway for synthesized speech.  (This is why, when people write out synthetic speech they often put punctuation-between-each-word and put it in ALL CAPS or a  ).  Paul (Stansifer) 20:03, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * In the video game portal, according to the developers' commentary track, they first recorded all of GlaDOS's lines with a primitive-sounding text-to-speech program, then they had an actress mimic the incorrect inflection of the synthesized text! APL (talk) 21:39, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Or you act, Like,  Kirk , was not controlling , his own mind?  XD Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:53, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * There was a mechanical robot voice in a 1960s french film, directed by Goddard I think. As far as I recall it said each word as if there was a full stop (which means "period" for our American chums) after it, and every word was said slowly in the same deep monotone. For example "I. Am. A. Robot." You could be more extreme by splitting up each syllable: "I. Am. A. Ro. Bot." Incidently, some American accents sound robotic to British ears. 92.15.0.59 (talk) 11:42, 5 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Perhaps the computer Alpha 60 (video) in Alphaville from 1965 ? Cuddlyable3 (talk) 18:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, that was it, although I may have heard a version dubbed into english that was more as I described. Or perhaps I've merged it with the talking computer in the original version of Star Trek. 92.24.182.48 (talk) 19:04, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I may have been thinking of the computer voice in Billion Dollar Brain. 92.15.24.29 (talk) 20:22, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Chinese zodiac
What Chinese zodiac was the year 1200 CE? Exploding Boy (talk) 18:07, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That depends on what day you're calculating from. If you choose today though...


 * 2010 - 1200 = 810
 * 810 / 12 (number of animals in the Ch. Zodiac) = 67.5
 * So, it would be six 'animals' off of what the year is today.
 * Today is in the year of the Monkey, so six from that is the Tiger
 * Someone want to check my math? Dismas |(talk) 20:29, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Wolfram Alpha says 4 June 1200 would be in the year of the Monkey. (We're currently in the year of the Tiger.) —D. Monack talk 21:58, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Some wikilinks added by 2601:283:C200:4D00:BC8B:6495:87FA:A685 (talk) -- ToE 01:50, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

Time of death
I've seen on a lot of medical TV shows doctors call "time of death, ". What would happen if a doctor called time of death but the patient was not really dead? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.199.172.31 (talk) 19:44, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Sooner or later, somebody would notice. In all countries that I know the rules for, any sudden death (basically, the deaths of anyone that wasn't terminally ill) must be followed by a post-mortem examination to work out why they died. I believe the first part of any post-mortem is a check that the person really is dead. Once the mistake was noticed, the person would get whatever care they needed and I would expect there to be an investigation to determine if anyone acted negligently. --Tango (talk) 20:03, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Isn't there an episode of Qunicey in which something like that happens? I.E Post Mortem shows patient not dead.. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:49, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Not entirely true: if the death isn't suspicious, autopsies can be denied in many jurisdictions. More importantly though, is the fact that time of death refers to the time that death was confirmed, not when it occured, except in the case of forensic investigations. See here for forensic tests. If the time of death is called, but the person isn't dead, I suspect it wouldn't matter, because the person would be alive, and time of death would have only been called if the patient didn't respond to tests to confirm vitality.  You don't call death just because they "look" dead. Aaronite (talk) 20:15, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Internal autopsies (cutting them open and studying each organ in turn) can often be denied, but I believe external autopsies are far more common. --Tango (talk) 20:26, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Who is/ are your spanish translators?
Hi, I´m english-spanish translator, and I use wiki very often, I've noticed so many mistakes in your translation from english to spanish, that is almost imposible to read and comprehend some of the thing written in there. I would like to help with those translation. What should I do? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marytamburo (talk • contribs) 21:26, 4 June 2010 (UTC)


 * If you're talking about the Spanish language Wikipedia (es.wikipedia.org), they're contributed by volunteer Spanish speakers. While some articles there are translations of their English (or other language) equivalents, but many (most?) are just contributed by a swathe of people, just like her in English-land. You can edit those pages there and make fixes, just like you can here.  If you want to discuss how that all works, the Wikipedia Café page there is a good place to start.  If, however, you mean Enciclopedia Libre Universal en Español, another wiki-based Spanish-language encyclopedia, that isn't affiliated with us at all. -- Finlay McWalter • Talk 21:37, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
 * @ marytamburo, part of the concept of a wiki is that it requires, indeed encourages, participation from anybody who can contribute. If you are concerned about the level of the Spanish grammar then come on in and correct a page or two. There are plenty of pages to help you, as indicated by Finlay McWalter above. I warn you that it might become addictive;-) Caesar&#39;s Daddy (talk) 06:23, 5 June 2010 (UTC)