Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2013 May 7

= May 7 =

Movie title
As a young teenager back in the early 60's I watched a moive which greatly impressed me at that time but I jsut can't recall the title. The background setting was in Europe around the 1600's or 1700's. The story centred on two small time farmers. One farmer went to borrow money from another farmer and provided two horses as surety. The first farmer later repaid the money with interest and was given his horses back but he found them to be in poor health. Enraged he demanded the other farmer nurse his horses to health or purchase them from him. The second farmer refused, citing it was not his responsibility to take care of the animals. The second farmer called upon his hired hands and threatened the first farmer with harm. The first farmer bakced off but returned a few days later with friends and attacked the property of the seconfd farmer. The seound farmer secured the help of more powerful people and the first farmer did the same. The dispute escalated and the killings begin. Various opposing parties began a systematic campaign to eradicate the other and a civil war broke out and eventually led to outright wars between neighbouring countries. After a period of time and in the midst of financial ruin and terible casualties, all sides of the dispute began the slow countdown to analysing the cause of it all. They eventually tracked it down to the two farmers in question. The matter was brought before the court which ruled in favour of the first farmer. The second famrer was ordered to nurse the two horses to good health. In the closing stages of the film, the second farmer brought a now two healthy looking horses to the first farmer, watched by court officials. The frist farmer took possession the horses and brought them to the gate and open it. He then set the horses loose to the surprise of all those present. The film was well made and the plot was believable. I also remember some high profile actors at that time although they played only cameo roles in the movie.

If there is anyone who can recall seeing this movie, I certainly like their imput on it or lead me somewhere to solving the title of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin Hiew (talk • contribs) 03:17, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Gotta love wikipedia reference... Man on Horseback. Actually, the movie made quite an impression on me as well, obviously. IMDB has more of an article on it, under its original title Michael Kohlhaas - Der Rebell. Based on the book Michael Kohlhaas apparently based on a maybe real person Hans Kohlhase. Coincidentally, remake coming out now Michael Kohlhaas (film) which makes googling the original more difficult. Gzuckier (talk) 04:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much for that imput! I never would have though the film was actually German in origin since all the spoken dialogue was in English on the big screen. I like to get a copy of the original but there don't appear to be a source when I can get it. It will bring back a lot of memories. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martin Hiew (talk • contribs) 08:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Greatest Time Difference Between a U.S. President's Birth and His/Her Child's Death
So far, I was able to find Francis Grover Cleveland (lived 1903-1995), who died 158 years after his father, U.S. President Grover Cleveland (lived 1837-1908), was born. Francis Grover Cleveland narrowly beats Pearl Tyler Ellis (lived 1860-1947), who died 157 years after her father, U.S. President John Tyler (lived 1790-1862), was born. Is there any case of a greater time difference for U.S. Presidents' birth and their child's death than with Grover Cleveland and his son? Thank you very much. Futurist110 (talk) 07:35, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I made the header agree with the question. --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  10:36, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Futurist110 (talk) 15:38, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you have a specific source that you're looking at for the Presidents and their children? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:25, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * No, I just looked at the Wikipedia articles for all of the U.S. Presidents and see whatever info these articles have about their children. Futurist110 (talk) 00:49, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I have now found this article--List of children of the Presidents of the United States. I thoroughly and extensively checked it and I could not find a time difference greater than that of the Clevelands. Someone can double-check for me if he/she wants to. If my research is correct, then this shows that the Cleveland record here is extremely hard to break. A U.S. President would, for instance, need to have a child at age 60 and then have this child of his live to age 98 or 99 (or it can be age 65 and age 93 or 94, or age 70 and age 88 or 89, et cetera). Futurist110 (talk) 01:06, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

plugs
Hello. Is there someone out there who knows what these plugs are called? They were being used on a model railroad display. Thank you. → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 09:33, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Without seeing the face, they could be anything, but are probably just ordinary three prong plugs. The wire looks like ordinary Romex, and the clamp connectors on the ends are just to keep the cable from losing its connection should someone yank upon it—a feature that more common/cheaper cables haven’t. ¦ Reisio (talk) 09:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, I found them. Thanks all. They are Cinch 302H-CCT plugs. ... Another model railroad club was using them for their modular display, and some members of our club thought they were worth looking into. Whether we actually use them is to be determined. Thanks again everyone.  → Michael J Ⓣ Ⓒ Ⓜ 15:59, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Looking for a good Flash Game to emulate about mining
Hey all, I'm designing a game in Multimedia Fusion 2 for a class, and I need to make short mini-games about various occupations, one of which being mining. Well, I can't for the life of me think of a fun minigame about mining. It's pretty tedious work. The game also needs to fulfill several requirements:

1) Involve human sprites (perhaps controllable but not necessarily) 2) The player must lose if he does nothing; the game can't remain in an unsolved state indefinitely (please ask if you require clarification, Tetris and Space Invaders would fulfill this requirement while chess or Minesweeper would not) 3) It cannot involve a movable camera, the player must be able to see the entire play area from the beginning (sorry Dig Dug fans) 4) It is permissable to remake another game so long as the inspiration is credited.

So....can anyone think of a mining mini-game, or could you link me to a Flash game or something that details a simple game revolving around the concept of mining? It's the one occupation I haven't come up with a mini-game on my own. Thank you! --Ye Olde Luke (talk) 11:43, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * You could make something like a DonkeyKong clone. You start at the bottom of a 2D side-view "maze" with rolling boulders or runaway mine-carts rolling down the level parts and falling through holes...with ladders leading up towards the surface.  Let the player dig holes in the game-grid either to allow him to jump through them or to allow the rolling boulders to fall through them...he could jump into a runaway mine-cart and ride along for a while without getting hit by boulders.  Perhaps the mine is illuminated by miner's lamps scattered everywhere - but these get crushed when things roll over them - making it harder and harder to see what's left of the level...give the player a helmet-mounted light...which runs out of batteries, getting dimmer and showing a smaller area around the player - with batteries that you can find to replace them.  You could have the entire mine gradually start collapsing - blocking the way at various points...all leading to time pressures to get out of the mine.  The player could get "weapon" upgrades - from a spade to a pick-axe to a jack-hammer to sticks of dynamite.


 * Lots of possibilities here! SteveBaker (talk) 14:46, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Or, you could make it like Runescape, which has what must be the most boring simulation of mining imaginable (click on rock... wait until vaguely metallic beeping sound finishes... click on next rock), but millions of kids seem to love it! --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:07, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Maybe fiddle with Lode Runner a bit? Already vaguely mine-like, with "digging" of sorts and no camera. Put a helmet on the stickman, replace the bad guys with rolling rocks or something, replace the boxes with diamonds? One of the best digging games, in my opinion, is Digger T. Rock: Legend of the Lost City. The camera moves, but there may be some ideas in there. Here's a peek], if you don't have an emulator handy. InedibleHulk (talk) 23:51, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Motherload (Flash game) or mining flash games on Newgrounds - does the game have to be realistic to real life mining? Royor (talk) 01:14, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you're looking for Mega Miner. DOR (HK) (talk) 06:04, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Recommended animation software/programmes
This is probably not the best place to ask this type of question, but I will try to ask it here anyway to see if I can get any possible good suggestions. This question is mostly for any art and/or animation experts out there.

I want to take my artist skill further into the field of animation other than the simple frame-by-frame type, but I would want something that is easy to use, practice with, and produce video animations with, yet at the same time, can yield professional results if given time and dedication. I am trying to avoid Adobe Flash or Photoshop for now. I have tested several free/open-source programmes so far, they were all okay but I was hoping for better. The best one the I tested so far seems to be Pencil.

I have looked up the list of 2D animation software, but I do not have the time to test all of them yet.

Examples of styles that I would like to base my work on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grWUPA0MPKw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEkchEJv-H4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM3DW3w0RFc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEBUIZoxTpM

No Flash-based animation at all, or as little as possible. I can't stand Flash-based animation when it's too obvious. I would like my projects to incorporate as much hand-drawn/painted and traditional-based work as possible.

What 2-D animation programmes or software do you guys recommend I use to get such results ? I thank you all in advance. 72.235.221.120 (talk) 13:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The problem is that with 2D animation (especially if you want a hand-drawn look), the software doesn't have enough information to do much more than frame-by-frame or rigid objects moving around like most flash animations use. So it's going to be hard to get beyond frame-by-frame.
 * 3D animation allows much more automation - you can move the camera, the lights, individual parts of the object - things can easily squash and stretch.
 * So I guess I'd recommend using something like Blender (software)...although it's about as far from that "hand drawn" approach as is imaginable.
 * You're really asking to use very low-tech ("hand drawn") input to produce very high-tech animation, then you're asking a lot! SteveBaker (talk) 14:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Just looking at your first example, if you want to create Anime, there are some programs available that specialize in that, such as Anime Studio. Looie496 (talk) 14:49, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I’m no friend of Adobe Flash, but just because most people create and export their animations from that application in a particular way does not mean you have to. I’ve seen a few animations made in Adobe Flash that were obviously painstakingly frame-by-frame hand drawn wonerfulness. That said, check out Synfig. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:53, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Synfig seems to be a good choice so far. I was a little disgusted that Anime Studio is actually a non-Japanese-made product, but I will give that a try as well.


 * The question that I have remaining now is, what programmes do you guys think that the examples that I have listed are made in ? If Adobe Flash is a possible answer, I will try my best to forgive that.


 * @SteveBaker, I prefer 2-D animation over 3-D animation because I am primarily a 2-D sketch artist, so it is my most comfortable preference. Sorry ! 72.235.221.120 (talk) 11:01, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

"Sahara Cacti"
I just read in my copy of Horrible Geography ("Desperate Deserts") that the Sahara does not have any cacti, as cacti is found only in American deserts. This source concurs as well. But is it really true? I mean, the Sahara is about the size of China... So huge, and yet, not even one friggin cactus?? Why is this so? The temperature? ☯ Bonkers The Clown  \(^_^)/  Nonsensical Babble  ☯ 15:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Without looking for refs i guess cacti developed in the Americas after they broke away from Africa. The equivalent plant is probably the euphorbia which has a number of species that are what you might call cactus shaped. There are no raccoons in Europe, I mean all that country with all those trash cans and no friggin' raccoons. And kangaroos? why don't you have kangaroos in the US, all that open midwest, they'd loveit! Richard Avery (talk) 15:30, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Right. If you define a cactus as a member of the family Cactaceae, they are nearly all native only to the Americas.  (There is one exception, Rhipsalis baccifera, the "mistletoe cactus", which is also found in Africa and elsewhere.)  But if you define a cactus more loosely as a succulent plant with thorns, there are plenty of types scattered across Africa.  Many people tend to use this sort of looser definition -- for example, many Americans think of a yucca as a type of cactus, although biologically it is actually more closely related to grasses than to, say, a prickly pear. Looie496 (talk) 15:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * There are raccoons in Europe. They've been introduced in a few places. 109.99.71.97 (talk) 20:08, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * And probably before that, there were some in zoos and present as pets… whooptie-doo. ¦ Reisio (talk) 22:57, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Looie has it right, here's a little more info: the mistletoe cactus is a tropical rainforest epiphyte, so it will not be in the Sahara. It is the only cactus not endemic to the new world, probably because its epiphytic habit is complemented by zoochory, i.e. birds carried it across the oceans, perhaps a very long time ago. In Africa, the Euphorbia occupy many of Ecological niches that are occupied by cacti in the new world. They often look similar, due to convergent evolution. This is also why e.g. the Fynbos has similar communities to the Chaparral and Kwongan, though in those biomes, many of the taxa are cosmopolitan. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:14, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Our article on Opuntia (paddle cactus or "prickly pear") says that it is native to the Western Hemisphere, but has been introduced elsewhere. "In Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other parts of the Middle East, prickly pears of the yellow and orange varieties are grown by the side of farms, beside railway tracks and other otherwise noncultivable land. It is sold in summer by street vendors, and is considered a nice refreshing fruit for that season."
 * See Algerians rediscover prickly pears during Ramadan.
 * So there are no native cacti in the Sahara, but apparently plenty of introduced ones. Alansplodge (talk) 10:18, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * See Prickly Pear, Morocco. Whether this is actually in the Sahara Desert per se I'm not sure, but it can't be too far off. Alansplodge (talk) 17:04, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * 'Western Hemisphere' seems singularly unhelpful in this context, as the Sahara is partly in the Western Hemisphere. AlexTiefling (talk) 10:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * As is most of the UK, where that phrase is rarely used to distinguish Europe/Asia/Africa from the Americas and Oceania, but it seems to be widely understood by Americans to mean just that. I used to have to walk from the Western Hemisphere to the Eastern Hemisphere to get to my school in east London. Alansplodge (talk) 12:28, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I've always thought it's a damn shame one cannot stand at the exact spot where the Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western hemispheres meet. Not without sinking below the waves of the Gulf of Guinea, that is.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  12:55, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Colonel Bleep postulated a geographical feature at that point, called Zero Zero Island. Since there really isn't such a thing, maybe it could be created somehow. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:27, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm always astonished by the things we collectively know here. Off you go then, and don't come back till you've created that island.  --   Jack of Oz   [Talk]  21:36, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I sent an email to Colonel Bleep. Once he gets back to me, I'll get on that project. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:18, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * This is all sort of besides the point. The name cactus comes through Latin from Greek kaktos, a prickly plant of Sicily which was not, actually, it turns out, a cactus. The name was assigned to a group of plants (Linnaeus) which it turned out were actually all evolved in the New World, except for a recently discovered import to Africa, probably arrived on birds or birdshit, and a few recently escaped garden plants imported therefrom. The resemblance to Old World prickly succulents was one of biological convergence. μηδείς (talk) 04:21, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
 * But as pointed out above, edible cacti (of American origin) are widely cultivated in marginal desert areas of North Africa and the Middle East. Alansplodge (talk) 12:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

A wet suit (not a wetsuit)
What is the best thing to do with a woollen suit which has got wet in a downpour? Does it need to be hung close to a warm place such as a radiator, or is it OK just to replace it in the wardrobe? Does it need to be dry cleaned? Thanks, --Viennese Waltz 17:03, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I would hang it up (say over a door), not too near a radiator in case it shrinks. Leave it overnight, then feel it to see if it's dried out. (This is a process known as airing). Keep checking if it's not dry yet. --TammyMoet (talk) 17:42, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Might it also be a good idea to hang it in a "three-dimensional" way, so as to expose as much of its inside to the air as possible? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 18:24, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hanging wet wool clothes is not a great idea, as it may stretch them. The best way to dry them is to lay them flat on an absorptive, nonstaining surface such as undyed cloth or paper.  Lay them away from any heat source.  After several (or even 24) hours on one side, you could turn them over and lay them flat on a fresh absorptive layer to finish drying.  If you have a suit, I'd lay each piece separately on a different absorptive sheet to speed the drying process and minimize the risk of mildew.  Marco polo (talk) 20:00, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Aha - don't they make drying racks for sweaters, with the exact same purpose in mind? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:22, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Bath towels should work fine in this regard as well. -- Jayron  32  20:29, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you lay them along the top of a clothes horse? CS Miller (talk) 20:56, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
 * If you're referring to Clotheshorse, that's a drying rack, and its configuration could cause stretching. I think there's something made specifically for sweaters, although as I recall, what Jayron suggested is how my mother did such drying. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:26, 7 May 2013 (UTC)


 * If the suit is worth saving, then I would take it to a dry cleaners. The cleaners know how to block it so that it keeps its size and shape and so that the wool remains supple and free of mildew. Playing around with do-it-yourself is not always the best (or even least costly) option. Bielle (talk) 01:00, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Bielle if the suit is valuable. If it were an old one, I would try to find a drying screen or flat ventilated drying rack to lay it on, in a dry area (perhaps run a dehumidifier or AC) and direct a fan at it to keep the air circulating.If it is flat on a solid surface, or even on a hanger with no air circulating, mildew seems likely. Edison (talk) 03:09, 8 May 2013 (UTC)