Amy R

For the last seven years I've been hiring a bass from my school, but now that I'm leaving to go to university, that's not really an option any more. Trouble is, the shop I got my violin from doesn't sell basses, and I'm at a bit of a loss as to where else to look. Any recommendations?

For the last few days I've had an on-off pain in my left ear and back teeth (though exactly which teeth it is varies), occasionally going down to my jaw and neck. It tends to get worse in the evening, and the area's now painful to touch.

I scheduled a dentist visit for next week before this began, but is it worth asking my GP about it as well?

Basically, I spent the better part of last year jokily flirting with a guy who left town to go to university in September. We were really good friends, and decided to give a relationship a go at a party about a month and a half ago.

Trouble is, he is actually in love with me, and thinking about this as a long-term relationship, possibly even permanent. And it's not that I don't like him- I like him dearly as a friend (despite a relative lack of shared interests- he's a conservative air force cadet, and I'm a liberal arts student), I am attracted to him, and our mutual friends think we're a brilliant match. But it's not love, his insistence on buying things for me leaves me feeling like I'm in his debt (he even insists I shouldn't get him a birthday present, after he bought me two), and he keeps insisting that I try and visit him, even though there are only two ways of doing it- one which would cost more than I can afford, and one which would involve 11 hours on a coach, and he knows that.

So, any advice? I don't want to end this yet, but I'm profoundly aware of the difference in our affections, and it's making me uncomfortable.

Ever since I downloaded the most recent version of MSN, the programme has been running so slow as to be almost unusable. When I try to type out a line in a conversation, it freezes repeatedly, occasionally for several minutes at a time. When I click on its icon in the taskbar, it takes forever to show the conversation. The rest of my computer is behaving completely normally- help please?

Whenever I try to watch a moving video on YouTube, the picture fragments like this:

http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll150/aimsme/Un...

http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll150/aimsme/Un...

http://i287.photobucket.com/albums/ll150/aimsme/Un...

The sound is fine, and videos that are just a picture with audio work well too- it's just actual videos that have this problem.

Any ideas?

I'm looking to write a story based around the Phantom of the Opera, with two competing male leads in the place of Christina and La Carlotta. Has anyone got an idea of any operas I could use instead of Hannibal and Il Mutto?

Those hanging around the Death Note fandom may have noticed the author 'bahari' has vanished, along with all her stories. A friend of mine's looking for 'Art of Falling', having not read it before, and I haven't saved any of the fics to my PC. Does anyone else have them, or know where they are?

The Help index says to click on the album cover and press the 'Delete' key- I've been doing this for the past five minutes, and nothing's happened. Can anyone tell me if there's another way of doing this, since I know iTunes is otherwise fully responsive?

My history teacher told me it's possible to guess (though the guess shouldn't be totally relied on) at what might come up in Paper A tomorrow. I'm studying Superpower Relations/The Cold War and a Divided Union/America's civil rights movements. Any ideas?

I've got my GCSE music exam coming up this week, and I was wondering if there's anywhere that puts up Edexcel past papers with the sound samples to go with them. I've searched the Edexcel website, but all I can find there is the papers themselves.

Any ideas?

I'm trying to set up an iTunes account with my debit card, but I'm completely confused. The card type (link) doesn't seem to be available, and I honestly don't know what on earth they're asking me for half the time. I'm new to this whole thing, and Nationwide's being supremely unhelpful- if anyone could help I'd be so grateful. Many thanks!

All games from Bon Voyage and beyond open up to a launcher when you click on the icon. The Launcher then opens the game up in a full window, but I've got other things to get on with while the game loads- how can I get the game to play in a smaller window, with or without the Launcher?

I based a section of my music composition around a phrase in the chorus, and I won't be able to check what key I've written it in before my deadline. Does anyone know what key the song's in?

Many thanks.

I can't find any practice papers which match my GCSE course specification. Anyone got any ideas? I've checked the AQA and Edexcel websites, but all the papers they have are for other courses. Mine involves the Russian Revolution, Superpower Relations (the Cold War and so on), Civil Rights and Vietnam.

I'm sure I've used it before, but I can't for the life of me work out where it is, and manually deleting everything from between the branches of trees for a collage I'm working on is getting a little tedious.

It's my friend's sixteenth in a couple of weeks, and I'm looking for a costume (preferably Death-Note/Sweeney Todd based) that's £30/40 or less. Anyone got any ideas? Ebay hasn't helped much.

For my history essay. I know someone said it, but I can't remember who, and googling it hasn't helped.

I've downloaded some episodes of the CGI series of Captain Scarlet from Torrent, but having fully downloaded, when I open them, all I get is sound and the Windows Media default music patterns. I've got the latest version of Media player, and the files are all in AVI format, so can anyone think what the problem might be? The only help the Torrent site offers is Media updates, and I've tried that.

A girl in my year group at school, something of a loner, hasn't showed since the Easter break. Nobody really knows where she lives or how to get in touch and make sure she's okay- we've tried searching the directories, but they all say that nobody with that name exists. She has my number, but she hasn't called and I've lost hers. Just before she left, she truanted a maths lesson and we think her parents may well have been angry about it, since she never did anything else wrong. Should we be worried, and what should we do next?

For my GCSE mock exam, I've chosen to focus on mask making and its uses in disguising various aspects of the wearer's identity. Does anyone know where I can find information on an artist who is known for working with masks?