My Wolf fan (purchased at the end of 2007) was made for Wolf by Broan according to Wolf. A few other Wolf fans were also made by Broan as of 2007. I cannot assert anything with respect to other Wolf fans or more modern Wolf fans. Contact Wolf for fan curves for their fans you might be interested in and compare them to Broan fan curves published on their web site. Basically what one buys when buying a hood and fan from Wolf is the comfort of knowing that compatibility has been established and no electrical hacking is going to be necessary to make a doit yourself scheme function. Wolf could impose additional reliability requirements on Broan, for example, but may not need to; a NuTone upblast roof fan I have used for my kitchen since the '70s is still fully functional today. So at least at one time the NuTone branch of Broan could build reliable devices. Using a circuit architecture that I am pretty sure GE published in the late 1960's or early 1970's, it is possible to control the amount of power available on a line by excising part of the sinusoidal voltage available. (The circuit actually allows part of the sinusoid.) While I can address the transfer functions and other details of triacs and diacs (once I recheck old literature), the circuitry to support them is pretty simple. This information is probably on line. These same circuits are used on lighting controls. The main difference between motor controls and similar lighting controls is that motor controls click on to full power, with rotation to lower power, and lighting controls do the opposite. More complex lighting controls also exist, such as zero-crossing switching, and have advantages in reduced electrical noise. These schemes could also be used for motor control, but are not in the case of my hood. By continuous I mean the the control rotates smoothly between full power to perhaps 10% power (have not measured this) over about 270-degrees of rotation. Ignoring quantum mechanics and grain boundaries, the resolution of the rotary potentiometer that is used for control is effectively infinite between those limits. The phase angle that turns on power each half cycle is adjusted by the control angle to fall between perhaps 5-degrees (out of 180) to perhaps 160 degrees. Turning on even later in the phase cycle would send power to the motor at too low a level for it to keep running. Is "infinite" a brand name? Induction motors of the type used by many fans can ususally be controlled over a reasonable range by phase angle control. They can also be controlled by variable frequency control, but this will be more limited as they are typically permanent capacitor split phase and designed for a single frequency. The Wolf hood control is mounted in the hood and is wired to the motor on the roof. I have seen its guts and that is why I know it is diac-triac type. Other control locations are possible, including wall controls. In that case a hood that does not contain a fan control would be appropriate. kas

I use an Epson v200 scanner. It does a great job and rings in at around $70. Pretty great price for slide scanner. It will scan slides, film, and since it is a flat bed scanner - pretty much anything. It will scan 4 slides at once. You load them in the carrier and it scans each one and puts it, each as a seperate file, into the location you choose. Works pretty much the same for film. Great quality on the scans - it will also fix dust, correct backlighting, etc., if you choose.

The Epson scanner is not up to the job of scanning slides. If you want to see beautiful photos, rent a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 professional scanner. It has features like automatic scratch and dust removal. It's not that hard to use. If you decide to rent one, email me and I'll send you a Word file with simple instructions. You can save your photo files on your hard drive (probably in "My Pictures"). Then you can copy and paste (or drag and drop) them onto your CD or DVD. The type of DVD you use depends on the kind of disk recorder that is installed in your computer. If your memory space is less than 600 meg for all the photos, you can use a CD.

The vast majority of photos I post here were taken with an 8 year old Olympus C-740 3.2MP with 10x Optical Zoom digital camera. It took superb pics but with the lower Mpixel count, terrible shutter lag and 256Mb memory card limit, it definitely had its downside. I dropped and broke my first Olympus about two years after buying it. It had been discontinued so I went on eBay and bought the exact same camera for $55. It too took exceptional photos. But, when it became so slow on a recent trip to Panama that I missed a sloth photo op (a sloth!!! for heaven's sake!), I decided it was time to find a new camera. :-) I did lots of research. I didn't want an SLR quite yet as it would be more camera than I can currently handle. I seriously know next to nothing about manual settings but I do know that I really don't want to be lugging extra lenses and the weight of an SLR around with me...yet. :-) I finally order the Panasonic Lumix FZ100 and wait for it to arrive. Low and behold there is a box on my doorstep the next day! But it was for my DH. Turns out he bought another Olympus exactly like my old one since it takes such great pics. He paid $30 for it. I've only been using the FZ100 since June but I'm pretty happy with it so far. I start a 10 week photography class next Monday. Hope the teacher can break through my thick skull and help make F-stops and aperture settings and depth of field all make sense. Well, actually in theory it all makes sense it's just they made it more difficult than it needed to be with all the wanky numbers you need to remember. LOL Oh, and I missed my old Olympus so much that I bought a new Olympus Stylus 9000 to carry around in my backpack when I hike. Jodi-