Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/02/21
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Three partly on-topic musings... Chinese is in fact a very easy language in which to express complex ideas, particularly where one runs out of adjectives in the Romance and Germanic languages. And making up new words or characters can be done whenever needed. A proficient typist can input Chinese characters on a keyboard in one of a dozen common systems about as fast as with any alphabetic language. I don't read or speak Chinese fluently, but as much as I learned while living in China was enough to make me understand why there was serious debate long before the Greeks and Romans about whether to use Arabic or Chinese as the standard language of science. Latin later won out over Arabic, just because they threw stones faster, I guess... My vote for the best portable tripod is the Bogen (Manfrotto) tabletop tripod with ball head that you can buy for about $35. I can always have it along, which isn't the case with even the thinnest stand-up tripod and the ball head makes it possible to use any solid surface as a support. There have been questions about where to get various camera-goring tools, vulcanite, etc. Try Fargo Enterprise, http://www.fargo-ent.com. Curt has most everything including big sheets of Leicaflex vulcanite (similar enough to M vulcanite it seems) for a few dollars, and all the special solvents, glues, unguents etc you might need. - -- David Josephson / Josephson Engineering / San Jose CA / david@josephson.com