Britain Freezes

According to the BBC's Teletext service I see that the majority of Britain tonight is suffering sub-zero temperatures. At this time, in Degrees C., Manchester is -6, Birmingham is -5, and even the usually milder London is -2. In fact looking at the updated refresh they are now all minus figures! Add to this there's still a solid wind blowing from an easterly direction.

Spare a thought for the people in Inverness, Scotland - their daytime temperature today was -2C at best, it's now -10! Yes they're now suffering in a temperature of just Fourteen Degrees Fahrenheit.!

'That's cold - especially for Britain!'

Happy Christmas

To everyone in Blog-land, and anyone else who knows me anyway!

My favourite Christmas song over recent years has been this one from the traditional Irish folk group The Pogues, live, with Kirsty MacColl as guest singer- who actually stole the whole show with the now increasingly popular 'Fairytale of New York'.


(Edit: 30-01-09: Link deleted. May be it will return next year?).



Happy Christmas all, and enjoy!

Some grumps and ramblings

I've just realised I haven't posted anything on here for a whole week, so I thought I would keep the Google search engine web crawlers happy by submitting an up to date grumps and ramblings post. The truth is I've been so busy at night reading other people's blogs, and dropping in the odd comment here and there, that I've neglected my own!

Plus, I've been trying to keep up with my email contact exchanges which seem to have increased due to it now being Christmas. I know, in years gone by at this time of the year we sat down and wrote letters (remember them?) to keep in touch with old friends and distant relatives, but these days it's all done by email (hence our Postal Service now delivers more fast food leaflets than it does letters. Talking of which I notice that TNT are interested in bidding for a share of a possible partial privatisation of the UK's Postal Service, but to me the only advantage(?) I can personally see is even more junk through my letterbox - including more of those silly glossy magazines from Salford City Council that always paints a rosy red picture of their actually insignificant achievements and ignores the real issues).

On top of that I had a domestic upheaval last week which has taken up time - I'll just say that nothing was taken, but that was only because I was at home at the time, and that I'm o.k. (though still shaken up). This has also highlighted the fact that in spite of the propaganda put out to the contrary, Greater Manchester Police have lost all control over crime in their region and their officers are running around like headless chickens after the fact. It also enforces my previous observations that if you live in a decent area then you Will be targeted by the rapidly increasing number of lawless violent scum we now have breeding within British society.

My "Countdown to Christmas" counter is showing that it's only one week away! Panic! I'm nowhere near ready! I called in to see a friend of mine earlier this evening and he had a very welcoming Christmas decoration display. I had to admit that I haven't got mine up yet, to which he replied "well we were a bit later this year but they've been up for over a week now"! However he did say that they were leaving picking up a Christmas Tree until at least the weekend.

Now, I can remember an old workmate of mine who used to do that 'cos the nearer you get to Christmas day the cheaper the live conifer xmas trees are. This one year he'd left it until just the day before, and well of course we had the usual few xmas eve lunchtime drinks. Late afternoon he left us with a slurred "I relly musht gerra twee!". We heard afterwards that all he could get was the bottom few feet of a tree which must have been originally at least twenty feet tall! Imagine his wife's reaction as he stumbled over the front door threshold attempting to pull behind him the remains of the lower branches of a conifer at least twice the width of the door frame!

We laughed! - She didn't!!

A Narrowboat on the Bridgwater Canal

Not sure if this is going to work. But it's a video clip of a narrowboat having just left the Barton Aqueduct (as previously mentioned in a recent post) on the Bridgewater Canal. Somewhat less than two miles further on this narrowboat would have passed through Monton Village (where I live) and would probably have made its way at least onto the next village of Worsley.

This is from my archive of pictures and video clips I accumulated for a multimedia module within a recent higher education course I took. I had merged into the soundtrack some music by Paul Hardcastle as background. (So switch your PC speakers on!)

You will need the Adobe Flash Player plugin installed, which you should have anyway. To start just click on the right arrow.




(Well it eventually uploaded, though probably taken a good proportion of my blog disk space!). Works OK here, but won't go into Full Screen which is a shame.

I would appreciate some feedback on this experiment (including if and how you got it to display full screen), and if it's ok then I'll repost. Possibly could even post some more from my archive.

Oliver Postgate, RIP.

Oh why is it that the very best people in the world eventually have to die?

Oliver Postgate was the man behind so many popular children's television animated character puppet series on British TV for many years. They were so good that even us adults enjoyed them. My personal favourite was 'The Clangers' - they never spoke, but their whistle sounds were far more expressive than human speech could ever attain!

He must surely go into the children's 'Hall of Fame' alongside Fred Quimby, who was the man behind the 'Tom and Jerry' cartoons.

For more details follow this link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7772620.stm

My home audio system

Note that when I say 'Home Audio System' I do not mean today's surround sound type systems often sold to go with an expensive domestic plasma TV set, nor do I mean the multi-unit Music Centre's as sold by many domestic electrical retail outlets. What we are talking about here is the world of good quality audio separates and their use in the crossover from home hi-fi into that non-domestic world of 'Studio Audio', which is at the lower end of the professional audio systems as used in recording studios, radio and TV studios, and the like. These Studio systems need to bring together a wide variety of sound sources, to have full control over them (including monitoring individual sound levels and tone), mix or separate them, switch quickly or fade between them, and possibly add voice commentary as well.

I've had a fascination for this professional approach to audio for many years, and it was a heavy influence on me in the building and upgrading of the various mobile disco systems I used back in my Disco/DJ years.

The lounge in my flat is only 20 feet by 10 feet, so obviously I don't need the big loudspeaker stacks I had back then (even though the last system used a pair of HH 15" bass/midrange reflex cabs and HH radial tweeter horns, mounted on stands - very compact, very loud, and very clear!). So these days the speakers are a pair of Cerwin Vega LS/8's (one pictured above) which are just as comfortable being used for playing background classical music at home as they are for blasting out the latest Disco trends inside your local HMV record/CD Megastore.

The heart of my system is a 'Dynacord MP-7' professional audio mixer with built in 200W stereo amplifier, which gives me full studio level mixing and monitoring facilities, and provides more than enough power into the Cerwin Vega's to upset the neighbours in the next block of flats! This unit is shown to the left in the photo below:

To the right of it is a Technics SL1200 turntable fitted with a Stanton 680EL pickup cartridge. It's Industry Standard! It will play any vinyl record you care to throw onto it, and with the highest possible quality sound output. Anything less and you're missing out on a lot, anything better and you'll end up listening to the dust that's accumulated in your old record collection. The headphones there are Beyer Dynamic DT931 open backed studio monitor 'phones. The shelves in the unit contain the rest of the audio (and video) equipment, note that it's mainly Technics gear.

In there are two VCR's, a FreeView box (recently replaced with an upgraded model), a DVD player, an FM stereo tuner, two cassette decks, a KAM 30 chanell graphic equaliser, a Behringer four channel stereo headphone amplifier, and a filtered mains supply to feed the lot. Alternative headphones are Sennheiser 2270 or Beyer Dynamic DT250, though personally I prefer the sound that the open-backed Beyer DT931's produce.

The one thing I like about the cassette decks (Technics RS-B705) is their auto-cue facility. In play mode you can forward to the next track, and again if needed, and when it's the track you want you just press the back button and it automatically recues back to the start in pause mode. When you're ready to play just hit Play! If only cueing vinyl records was that easy! (Though back cueing on the SL1200 with a Stanton 680 cart is probably the only time you won't bend the stylus backwards!).

Oh, and nearly forgot. I can also run a lead across from the Dynacord MP7 audio mixer into the computer at this end of the room. This enables me to add/edit customised audio tracks into video clips taken on my digital camera.

A few ramblings

For the first time this week I find I have nothing new to have a 'grump' about. Or have I?

Except maybe that pig ignorant rough[ly] pensionable aged woman (no missus you didn't "fight two World Wars for the likes of me" 'cos you're barely ten years older than me!) the other day who stood just in front of me at a Bus Stop at Eccles Interchange. (It's officially called an 'Interchange' rather than a 'Bus Station' because you can jump straight off a bus and onto one of Manchester's marvellous Metrolink trams, assuming it's not already full, or vice versa, but unofficially it's because of the severe (private car) traffic congestion around here which prevents our excellent public transport network to run according to it's published timetables you are better off jumping on the first bus (sic: First Bus Company, the bus company which has the monopoly on this side of Manchester) that comes along that's going in your required direction, hence you will probably end up having to change buses at Eccles Interchange anyway!).

Are you keeping up? Well I did say I would be rambling! Anyway!

Did you know it's now fifty years ago since the STD (Subscriber Trunk Dialling) upgraded telephone system was first introduced into the UK? Before this upgrade UK telephone users had to interrupt the knitting of (or sometimes even wake up!) that nicely spoken lady in the local telephone exchange if you required a number outside your local area. The system works by prefixing local numbers with a unique set of three digits (now four) according to the area you wish to connect to. It's very simple, just dial the STD code number for the area you want followed by the local number. So why is it that, after fifty years, I'm still getting 'wrong number' calls from locals?

Actually, I recently read an article on t'internet about the official Royal approval opening of this system by H.M. The Queen. Apparently at the last minute someone asked 'but what if she dials the wrong number?' End result was that the entire UK telephone system was shut down but with just the one line enabled. She could have dialled anything and would still have got through!

PS. It would seem that my last posting re the 'God Damn Snow' joke fell rather flat, certainly amongst my local Salford/Manchester area friends judging by emails received. In reply, no I do not approve of foul (obscene) language - not on the Internet or anywhere, especially if it contains the 'F' or 'C' words, and is definitely not a normal part of my own vocabulary. However this was an old classic joke of American origin, I had censored it further, I had preceded it with a warning, and if you read it through properly you would have seen the joke - as it also reflects the British reaction to a light fall of snow compared to longer term heavier falls. For goodness sake! Enough said!

Actually, from that same joke website is another classic:-

"Look, I don't care what star you're following, get them blasted camels off my lawn! "

Cringe!



Edit: The Snow joke referred to above was later deleted when I did a clean-up of the site.

'S'now't worse than Snow!

I really can't believe it. Here in the northwest of England last night we had our fair share of this winter's first proper fall of snow over mainland Britain. Fair enough, according to our climate it should happen at least twice each winter, and I appreciate that some areas can potentially get hit very hard. But here in the Manchester region we had at best (or worst, depending on your viewpoint) just two inches of snow, and an overall average of just one inch. What annoys me is the number of Schools that had to be closed, sections of our main roads and Motorways closed off, and all because of a silly little one inch sprinkling of snow!

When I was a kid (in Leicestershire) I can remember walking through snow up to knee high on my way to School during the two bad winters of the early and late 1960's ('64 and '68 I think, certainly the latter involved a much longer walk across town), and I thought nothing of it other than a challenge. The local schools remained open, no matter what the weather, and absenteeism was often even lower than normal. What's happened to the kids these days, are they really that scared of a little bit of snow?

No, my view is that today's lazy British teachers take a look out of the window first thing in the morning and see a bit of sleeting snow and then phone the Headteacher, who has already had a couple of phone calls from 'concerned parents' claiming they can't get their cars off the driveway (conveniently not mentioning it's only a patch of ice!). The school is then declared 'Closed For The Day', and everyone goes back to bed for a lie-in and a seemingly valid day off work!

I'm not really that sceptical am I? Or is it that I'm becoming a realist as I get older?

By 'eck! It's cold ' 'ere chuck!

When I added the BBC Weather's RSS feed into this blog page I didn't realise just how inaccurate our weather forecasting here in Britain actually is. It's supposed to show the weather for the current day and the forecast for the next two days for the Manchester area, including Salford.

Yesterday it showed +3c for the daytime temperature, in fact it was around 0c at its peak, and for last night it showed -1c, whereas in fact it was -2c in the early evening and by midnight it was -6c and still going down (now that's cold! Especially for Britain!). Surely they can get more accurate than that!

However, maybe my expectations are too high? Despite all these high-tec computerised thingumy whatsits available these days to the BBC, us 'old timers' still prefer to rely on our tried and trusted bunch of seaweed and pine cones hanging outside the front porch. Actually no, they're not quite as reliable as we'd like to think - but with a bit of past experience and imaginative waffling we're not too far off! And usually a lot closer than the BBC!

Perhaps the BBC might do better scrapping that expensive computer system, and replace it with a bunch of seaweed and a few pine cones. We, the TV License paying public, would probably then receive an improved weather forecasting service!

Ouch!

Where I live - 'In Salford'

I've received a couple of email comments regarding the header picture I'm currently using. Yes it is actually in Salford, in fact if I cross over the main road from my home and walk down the side of the canal bridge (designated as the Monton bridge on the Bridgewater Canal) then this current header photo is the view to my left. This footpath does narrow somewhat further on, but does lead eventually in a northwesterly direction into the neighbouring village of Worsley.

Anyway, the following is the view to my right showing the Monton bridge itself, though admittedly taken from the footpath on the opposite bank where the Victorian origins of the bridge can be more clearly seen, and the Victorian post railings on the right hand side border the previously mentioned footpath down to the canal bank.

On the other (south) side of the bridge the canal opens up into a bend, and that's where you can see a modern day 'Folly' in the form of a lighthouse!

This is still only a couple of minutes walk away from where I live but in a slightly different direction, the Monton bridge over the Bridgewater Canal is still clearly seen on the left - but unfortunately the Victorian ironwork of the bridge is obscured on this side by the more modern cladding enclosing our utilities pipework. However, this photo was taken from outside one of the many very pleasant eating establishments in Monton village, Salford - The Waterside Restaurant:

Now I have to hastily add that I have no connection with this establishment whatsoever, but it is only a couple of minutes walk round the corner from me and I have very occasionally had the odd bar meal there washed down with a half o'lager! (Note that the 'Waterside' is now actually based around an expensive but full 'A La Carte' menu in the restaurant, but during the summer they do get many narrowboat hollidayers on the Canal and so normally serve meals over the bar as well).

Anyway, I must end with this next photo. The first time I walked southwards from here on the canal towpath towards Patricroft on the western side of Eccles, where there are still many reminders of our industrial past, just around a slight bend I took one of my most favourite photo's ever:

Well, what more can I say?

Amateur Radio (Part. 1)

I always find it difficult to talk about technical things without talking technical, but here goes:

You may have noticed that my blog URL includes my Amateur Radio callsign, G8FYK, so I just had to get something posted sooner rather than later on this technical hobby which I have indulged myself into on and off since I was in my mid teens.

The first thing to note is that this hobby has little, no I would say nothing whatsoever, to do with that other thing called CB Radio. First of all we cannot make up our own radio callsigns, they are allocated to us by the Radio Licensing Authority in a strict internationally recognised format. I obtained mine in 1972 after sitting a tough City and Guilds exam (now NVQ Level 2 equiv., so I understand) which included the theory of radio transmission and reception, and the transmitting licence regulations and how the owner of a transmitter would be able to demonstrate compliance. Sounds tough, but the fact is that so many people are so fascinated by this technical hobby that they find the basics get easier over the years as the thirst for technical radio knowledge increases. (See also my link to the 'Radio Society of Great Britain', affectionately known as 'The RSGB').

The hobby of Amateur Radio is now so diverse and encompasses all forms of communication via radio signals, so much so that the morse code is now considered irrelevant in this modern digital age. I myself was experimenting with the digital modes twenty years ago with AX25 'Packet Radio' (so very similar to the Internet instant messaging and bulletin boards of today), RTTY (radio teletype, the digital version of the old teleprinters), and SSTV (slow scan television, which is probably best known for obtaining weather pictures from orbiting satellites), and all this via a Sinclair Spectrum Plus Two home computer connected to dedicated Amateur Radio transmitters and receivers.

So that this post doesn't get too long I will end this (Part. 1) with a couple of photo's of my Amateur Radio setup from the early/mid 1990's.

Please feel free to comment on the the equipment in there, especially if you recognise any make / models or have any questions. The details of the antenna system will be included in a future post. Personally, I think this looks like a reasonably smart and neat setup, but look what happens when we move the camera back a bit:

Now that's a bit more like a traditional 'Radio Shack'! Even though you still can't see the workbench on the left hand side, with the maxi and mini vices, 'multiple hands', vertical drill stand, soldering 'station', abandoned Verostrip projects, total mess including buried telephone, left over bits from the disco days stored underneath, etc., all of which I must have been ashamed of to include when I took this photo!

Notice also the then newly acquired second hand ICL DRS and DEC VaxMate computers on the right hand side, not clear but hopefully may be recognisable to anyone who knows them.

A few pics of Salford - some bridges.

This is the first of many short picture sets featuring 'In and around Salford'. As far as possible I will be using photo's I have taken myself, but if I do need to pinch any from the Internet I will quote their source.

For those who may not be aware Salford is an urban city wrapped around the western side of Manchester in the north west of England, and is probably best known (apart from the TV soap series 'Coronation Street') for the Old Trafford football ground which of course is the home of the Manchester United team.

These days Salford is a mixture of its old Industrial Revolution heritage and the massive redevelopment undertaken within recent years, much of which the latter lays down a new heritage for the future. To me this makes the area fascinating to live in.

Within the boundaries of Salford there are three waterways, namely the Manchester Ship Canal, the Bridgewater Canal, and the River Irwell. I won't go into details as the three can be easily 'Google'd', except to say that I live very close to the Bridgewater Canal. The following are just a few landmarks on these waterways:




The Barton Swing Road Bridge near Eccles, Salford. This carries traffic across the Manchester Ship Canal and is one of the few remaining working swing bridges today. The road section is pivoted at its middle on a turntable (which can just be seen in the middle of the water) and can be swung around on that central pivot to allow ships to pass.




Now this really Is a feat of engineering! Probably only a hundred metres away from the swing road bridge above is the Barton Aqueduct swing bridge. This, surprisingly, carries the Bridgewater Canal over the Manchester Ship Canal. And not only that, it too can swing around on a central turntable to allow ships to pass - and remain filled with water to enable narrowboats on the Bridgewater Canal to continue their journey when the aqueduct has swung back again.




Another view of the Barton Aqueduct, as seen from a narrowboat on the Bridgewater Canal. What amazes me is how the ends of the aqueduct bridge, and their junctions with the canal, can be so effectively sealed off to allow the swinging of the bridge still full of water - and without emptying the Bridgewater into the Manchester Ship!

Another crossing over the Manchester Ship Canal, this is Centenary Bridge, which is on a more recent bypass road linking Eccles, Salford, with the Trafford Park Industrial Estate. This one doesn't swing, instead an entire section of road is haulled up into the air between four concrete tower posts. Frightening enough, but you should see the winch cables in the towers - they're only about an inch or so thick!

My first update

Well the initial setup and testing of this blog appears to have gone OK. I have made a few changes in the blogger 'Settings' options which I think improve the usability slightly. I have also noticed the differences in the display formatting depending on whether you are viewing via MS Internet Explorer 7 or Mozilla FireFox 3. This should not be happening as both these web browsers are supposed to be W3c web standards compliant. Or is it that the underlying code within Blogger.com is not W3c compliant?

In connection with my previous test posting relating to 'my dim and sordid past', I have also included a link to the website of an old friend of mine from the 1970's. John ran the Funky Parrot roadshow disco for many years around the Leics. / Warks. area, and I'm staggered to see that he's still going strong - he must be getting towards the 'big 60' by now! Check this out for 70's nostalgia:

D'y'know, I'm sure there's at least one speaker cab in there that he had off me?


Anyway, I'm now sorting out material for my future posts ( a mammoth task!). Future topics will include In and around Salford, the urban village of Monton, Amateur Radio (and my part in it!), and anything else I can think of. All interjected with comments on topical issues, like "why did you 'buy to rent' anyway when housing is the roof over someone's head which was never intended for a third party to attempt to make money out of!".

First Test

For a test, knowing I can delete it later, is a badly scanned poor quality photo of one of the mobile disco setups I had in the mid 1970's. It was taken at the Earl Shilton Albion Sports and Social Club in Leicestershire.