Autumn, Seasons, and the Grey Squirrel

The two seasons of the year I enjoy the most are the Spring and Autumn. To me the Summer is the worst season as it's the most unpredictable, and it's either too hot for me or I get fed-up with being drenched in sudden downpours of horizontal rain (of the type that saturates and leaks through the left side of your jacket, yet leaves the right side stone dry!). At least in the Winter I know it's going to be cold, windy, dark, and frosty, and with surprisingly less horizontal rain than in the Summer, and it's far easier for me to wrap up warm against a cold climate than it is for me to keep cool in a hot sun-burning climate.

But there's also the transition of nature during the Spring and Autumn. Almost as though I'm not the only living being that prepares myself between the two extremes of Winter and Summer.

Where I live (In Salford) in an urban village I'm very lucky to be able to see these transitions of nature between the seasons, and in fact much of it happens right on my doorstep within the grounds of the little block of flats I live in. From the hedge sparrows, to cheeky chirpy blackbirds, and certainly to the antics of the Grey Squirrel!

Actually I took these next two photo's last Spring, but seeing as the grey squirrel is most active in both the Spring and the Autumn I guess it just about fits in with this Autumn.



I think the next photo shows just how well adapted the grey squirrel actually is to it's environment. Just compare those feet claws to those of the Red Squirrel.


Sadly this cheeky chap must have moved on. I guess it maybe due to the ground-floor tenant who used to put out the birdseed and nuts earlier this year has also moved on. However, a cheeky chirpy blackbird and some 'spuggies' are still there in that area of the garden. Who knows what next Spring will reveal?

There are computers, and there are 'Real' Computers

In the past I've obviously had a bad habit of throwing out the photo's that mattered, but keeping the photo's that didn't matter. Hence a while ago I found these two pieces of nostalgia from my mainframe computer operating days. And yes I did operate both of these computers, including the constant mag tape loading/unloading, printer stationary changing and alignment, button bashing, etc.

The first shows part of a basic Honeywell 2000 Series mainframe computer of circa 1974 vintage. It was actually from the second major upgrade of a 1968 vintage original Honeywell 200, which originally had just 8K of memory!


The photo clearly shows the punched paper tape readers to the right, the operator's console in the centre, and slightly obscured between them is the 80 column punched card reader. On the edge to the left was an online 132 column revolving cylinder high speed impact printer (probably capable at best at 30 seconds per page, but was actually much slower as the computer printed as it processed). Off the photo to the right was a row of five rather slow and cranky vacuum chambered magnetic-tape drives, one of which held the 'BRT' - the tape containing all the programs required to run each 'batch processed' job, of which only one could be run at a time and which stopped at required intervals to allow operator intervention. Octal (base 8) was used to communicate with the computer via the Teletype console on this 2000 machine as the original 200 version had a large illuminated push button console. (Push 126 into the I address, set Admode from 2 to 3 by pushing once, replace 152 in the Contents with 153 by pushing 153 in, push Enter on the Address line, then push the Run button. - And that was just to restart the currently running program!!).

The second photo is from about ten years later, the early-mid 1980's, and shows part of an ICL 2956 mainframe computer. This machine still used 'batch processing' but could run several jobs at the same time by 'time slicing' the CPU between them, had offline printing (printouts were spooled during processing), and had modem communications link capabilities for remote data input and remote print output. No punched paper tape on this computer, which is a shame as by now I had become an expert in reading all those holes visually myself.


The bottom left of the photo shows the operators console, now a VDU with a PC style qwerty keyboard, and with two higher speed (probably 2 to 3 seconds per page) 132 column impact printers behind. To the right shows part of the row of higher speed and higher density magnetic tape drives. I think we started with seven of these on the original 2946, with at least two more added later. More important to this generation of mainframes was the long row of (originally 'Winchester' style) fixed and exchangeable disk drives, one of which I was obviously sitting on in order to take this photo!

And then I moved on into a new world of PC computing......!

Edit:

For more information on both these computers, and some better photo's, visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_200
Which has a superb photo of the illuminated flashing 'button bashing' console of the Honeywell 200.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICL_2956
Which also has in the External Links some good photo's of the aforementioned rows of disk drives!

Same Narrowboat as Before, But!

Well I'm now going against all my previous criticisms of YouTube, not least due to the amount of music I've been downloading off there recently (hint: install the latest free Flash Player package - it includes a very good .FLV downloader, and a reliable DVD burner), but also because it's become an almost standard host site now for linked or embedded videos within blogs and discussion forums. As such this has tipped the balance back towards us, the sane majority!

So here again is my previous little video clip of a narrowboat having just left the Barton Aqueduct on the Bridgewater Canal. But this time it can be expanded to full screen, and the quality is also better - even though, so I've found, YouTube loses massive amounts of detail due to its excessively high compression.



'Must go out with the camera again and get some better video clips of some of the more decorative narrowboats I often see passing by through Monton Village here.

Edit: "FLASH Player" above should have been "REAL Player".

Monton Village Fete ( 2009)

I've been intending for some weeks to take some more photo's of Monton Village, where I live in Salford, to post on here. Last Saturday, 4th July, was our yearly village summer festival/fete, so it was an ideal opportunity.

I decided to throw all these photo's into a slide show to make them easier to view.

It starts with a view over the canal bridge (near my home), goes past Monton Green and into Monton Road (the village's high street) where most of the stalls were located, and including the occasional view backwards, back up the other side of Monton Road towards Monton Green again (note the village church's spire just visible above the trees), then around Monton Green itself where the (mainly?) kiddies entertainment was located.



Obviously, like most YouTube videos, it's best viewed in HQ and Full Screen.

It's gotta go!

Ref my last little experiment with an online weather service. Well it was good. But!

Unfortunately it insists on refreshing its status every one to two seconds (and would probably have been every half second if my internet connection had allowed it!), which is one heck of a waste of internet bandwidth. Especially considering that normally the updates to the figures from the site are actually Half-Hourly!

So I'm taking the realtime facility connection off my blog, as it's slowing down my viewing of my links, and may well be interfering with the viewing of my blog by others . However I would still recommend this weather site as an alternative to the BBC weather sites.

Actually rather reminds me of a previous place of work where I helped set up a Webcam broadcasting a live continuous stream into the internet. It had only been running for less than 24hrs when a guy from our business internet service provider phoned us up and said he was very impressed with the view from our webcam, but unfortunately it was consuming so much bandwidth that it was actually slowing down the internet access to the rest of Manchester's city centre! We immediately frantically dived into the webcam setup to cut the resolution down, and cut the 24fps down to one frame per minute! A definite case of 'oooerrrrr, whooops!'

The Weather 'In Salford'

I've just added a little 'gismo' to the bottom of this Blogpage.

It's the current weather situation here In Salford.

Please scroll down to it, watch it's online updating, and let me know what you think of it.

It may seem trivial, which indeed it is. However having spent well over my spare time the last two days trying to update the calibration of my two weather indicating devices, and searching the internet for real-time information as close to where I live as possible, I stumbled upon this site. You can select your area from drop-down lists, and hopefully will be able to select an area as close to you as I was able.

e.g, For Central England you may start from this URL:
http://www.wunderground.com/global/stations/03534.html

Note that this information is not from the Met Office, it is in fact from a large group of semi-professional people who monitor the weather as a serious hobby, and release that information gathered straight onto the Internet. But the probability is that you'll find a site a lot closer to you than the more usually used BBC Weather centres.

Oh, the two weather indicating devices I have here are at the two extremes. I can't remember the last time I checked either of them in terms of their calibration?!!

The one unit (in the lounge) was purchased from a 'Pound' shop in probably circa mid 1990's, it consisting of a digital clock, a thermometer, and a hygrometer. The clock in it hasn't been used for several years, so was ignored. However I did find that the thermometer was still within 2 deg C, (which was probably the best you could read off the scale anyway), but the hygrometer was very sadly out by approx -15 to -20. (Dangerous this - humidity levels above 80% in a home in Winter will cause mould formations, at the very least that black stuff around window frames. Like I had last winter on the bottom of the glass in my balcony doors, and also white specks on the wood below. I now know that 75% humidity or below within the vicinity of those doors would have prevented this, but what can you do when the outside humidity was beyond 90% throughout the Autumn and well into the Winter!).

Anyway!,

My other weather indicating unit is a proper maritime device featuring a thermometer, a barometer, and a hygrometer. I purchased this unit (for the then expensive approx £30!) somewhere around 1981 from a boat-yard whilst on holiday in, I think, Weymouth. It's travelled the length and breadth of England with me on my travels since then, and the only thing I've ever done is correct the barometer occasionally to reflect height above sea level. The thermometer on it still appears to be as close to 'spot on' as you could ideally expect. The hygrometer - which has never been adjusted and was actually reading approx -5 out, which I probably would never have noticed anyway as it's located in the hallway and influenced by the kitchen/bathroom. However, after slight adjustment, and with the unit spending the last 24hrs outdoors, it can still follow very closely the humidity figures from the above web site! Not bad for a device intended for day-tripper yachts around the bay, and it being over twenty five years old anyway!

Where to from here?

As you may have noticed I haven't updated now for about a month. It's not that I've had nothing to talk about, quite the reverse in fact. It's just that I've been unable to decide whether or not a particular topic was appropriate to include. The fact is that I can't decide which direction to take this blog. Or even whether to just leave it as it is. I now have so many draft unreleased postings in here, most of which are topical issues both locally and nationally, that tonight I took the decision to delete most of them as I do know I don't want to run a political blog.

My original idea was for a 'magazine' style website of my own featuring the things that interest me and which hopefully would also interest others. The advantage of using a 'blog' is that it also allows feedback comments from readers who can agree or disagree with, or to even add additional information to my published articles. In this respect it has been highly successful, I've read so many blogs where there's no feedback comments at all.

Worth noting that I'm not a journalistic person in any way, definitely not a scholar nor an academic, I can't spell (I need an online spellchecker, and a dictionary to hand), and I fully appreciate my English Grammar is atrocious!

I'm a practical 'hands-on' technical person far more suited to building and supporting large IT infrastructures than I am to using 'Weblog' facilities . And yet, with this screen up, with thoughts of what I want to say in my head, with six flexible fingers poised around the keyboard, is it just possible that I've actually caught the dreaded 'Blogging Bug'?

Anyway, I do intend to review the postings I've made on here with the intention of deleting several of them, mainly where I'd drifted away from my original ideas. Certainly as the weather improves I will be out and about with my camera again, so there's definitely some posting update potential there. But who would actually be interested?

And my own hobbies and leasure interests are mainly technical ones (apart from my local walks and strolls along the Bridgewater Canal, the interesting 'Linear Walkway' through the originally posh Victorian area of Salford behind 'Millionaire's Row', and I have still yet to tackle the full length of the scenic re-landscaped disused mineral railway line path right up to the outskirts of Bolton). But again, given that this area is already well documented via Google searches, and given that the technical stuff could possibly go beyond the understanding of the average reader, who's actually going to be interested?

Oh, a question I'm often asked is why did I call this blog: Kevin 'In Salford'.

Quite simple, my name is Kevin, and for good or bad I live within the Salford boundary.

No, actually there's also the fact that Salford City Council wasted hundreds of thousands of pounds on changing a very attractive and meaningful crest of arms, referring to the seven original urban district towns that formed the City of Salford, into a very bland car numberplate style "IN Salford" in white letters on a Pink(!) background. Hence a local saying around these western areas of Salford, including Monton and Worsley villages: - "IN Salford? - We'd rather Not be!".

Another Salford Bridge

On a lighter note to my previous posting I thought I'd throw in another couple of photo's from my collection. (Actually not an easy task when I'm also watching the film 'Blazing Saddles' on the television at the same time! It's a Western comedy film classic!).... Anyway!

There's a section of the River Irwell that defines the border between Salford and Manchester. This photo shows the footbridge between the Lowry Hotel in Salford stretching across the river and into Manchester.

The Lowry Hotel is in the background, with the footbridge in front of it. This photo is taken from Bridge Street, part of which is in Salford (to the left), and the rest (to the right) is in Manchester. (There's even a bus lane on the Salford side of Bridge Street which comes to an abrupt end at the borderline with Manchester, which says a lot about how the two neighbouring City Councils get on with each other!).

Another view taken from outside the Lowry Hotel (on the right). Notice how the footbridge's main support is actually 'In Salford' and leans in the Salford direction!