t all makes sense now. The whole point of having a blog is that you can use it to post thoughts that are more than 140 characters long…
End of the line
I’m going to keep this brief, but at the weekend me and Hari made the decision to end our relationship. She’s moving back home to be with her family in the West Midlands, and I’m going to move back to York in a few weeks to stay with my parents while I search for jobs.
We’re hoping to stay friends, but things just weren’t working out between us.
Rovers returning to Denton?
This is a screenshot of the National Rail Enquiries website, specifically the ‘transport links’ section of the information page for Denton station in South Manchester. If you can’t read the screenshot, or if the page gets changed, it says the following:
Location for Rail Replacement Services: Outside the Rovers Return on Coronation Street
For those who are not familiar with British TV shows, the Rovers Return Inn is a fictional pub in the soap Coronation Street. Though the soap is set and filmed in Manchester, there is no such street anywhere near Denton station.
It’s therefore likely that someone at National Rail Enquiries, or whoever supplies the data, had a little joke, because it’s highly unlikely Denton will ever have replacement bus services (or at least, not in the near future). Denton station is currently only served by one train per week, currently running during the daytime on Fridays, on a service between Stalybridge and Stockport. The station itself has just one platform, and there aren’t even any signs there – just a bench and some lights.
Stockport to Stalybridge Line
It was never always like this. Back in the early 1990s, the Stockport to Stalybridge line saw a regular service. This was because trans-pennine trains from Leeds would call at Manchester Victoria, which only serves other local and regional services. Mainline services to London and Scotland instead departed from the bigger Manchester Piccadilly, and so this service allowed those wanting to travel from Leeds to destinations south of Manchester to bypass the city and connect with mainline services at Stockport.
But the trans-pennine trains were diverted to Manchester Piccadilly in the 1990s and Metrolink started operating in 1992, and so this service was seen as largely unnecessary. But because the trains on this route were the only ones that called at Denton, and Reddish South further along the line, the decision was taken to keep a minimum service running to avoid the legal processes of formally closing the stations. Thus, the service that now runs is a ‘Parliamentary train‘, to maintain the ‘legal fiction‘ that the station is open when in fact it is all-but closed.
There are at least 10 stations in the UK which are served by one service per week to keep them open. Some others have been closed ‘temporarily’, which means that no trains need call there but a designated rail replacement bus operates. A recent example was the Watford and Rickmansworth railway in North London – closed in 1996 but it was still possible to buy train tickets to it nearly 10 years later. Thankfully, that line may have a future as the proposed Croxley Rail Link.
Wikipedia names your band
Via Waxy Links is a meme called Wikipedia Names Your Band. Here’s how you do it:
- Go to a random Wikipedia article – the name of the article becomes your band’s name.
- Go to Random Quotations – the last 4-5 words of the last quotation on the page are your the title of your first album.
- Go to Flickr’s “Explore the last 7 days” and choose the third picture – this will be your album cover.
Put them all together, and you get something like this:
The components for mine were:
- Artist: Vong Savang, who isn’t a woman but was actually a Crown Prince of Laos.
- Album title: “wanting what you’ve got” is the last 4 words of a quote from Sheryl Crow’s song ‘Soak Up The Sun‘. The full quote can be read here.
- Album cover: The picture I got was this one.
There are many other covers on the Buzzfeed page, some of which are very good.
Mac Mini alive again
January wasn’t a great month for me and my 2 Macs, as I managed to get both of them to stop working. First of all, the backlight on my MacBook’s screen stopped working, which I managed to fix after about half an hour’s Googling. Then I found my Mac Mini was refusing to boot but alas was not able to fix it.
The good news is that I have now fixed it. The bad news is that I’m not entirely sure what it was I did that got it to work again. Essentially, I took the lid off (easier said than done as it requires using a thin, flexible knife to prize the shell away from the base), poked at it, put the lid back on again and it booted up fine.
I say essentially because there was more to it than that. Because I was receiving the error ‘ALLOC-MEM request too big!’ from OpenFirmware while booting, I first assumed it to be a RAM error, so I took the RAM out and re-seated it, then booted the machine without putting the cover back on. That didn’t work, so I poked at the Bluetooth and Airport aerials to see if that made any difference – again nothing. So I put the lid back on and was about to concede defeat, but decided to see if putting the lid on had made any difference. And it had – the machine booted up, albeit slowly.
The computer is now running, although it does seem slow – that may just be because it always has been slow and I just haven’t used it recently. I haven’t yet restarted it so it may of course be a fluke, but right now all the programs on it seem to be working fine – no unexplained crashes and no grey screens of death as yet.
So if you have the dreaded ‘ALLOC-MEM request too big!’ error, trying taking your Mac apart and check if everything is seated correctly, and then try booting again. It may fix it. Of course, if it doesn’t, it may be indicative of bigger problems so don’t rule out a trip to the Genius Bar or a call to AppleCare.
And now it’s the Mac Mini’s turn
As many of you will know, as well as my MacBook, which I use as my main computer, I have a Mac Mini as well – this was my first Mac which I bought in 2005. It has spent the past year or so searching for a purpose – I was, and still am, hoping to turn it into a media centre but I’ve neither had the time or money to go ahead with it, and to be honest, I don’t really need to either.
Anyway, after yesterday’s shenanigans with my MacBook, it’s the turn of the Mac Mini to refuse to work. It’s actually not a problem that developed today – I noticed it wasn’t working last week, but as I run it headless I didn’t have a computer monitor to plug it into. All I knew was that it wasn’t registering itself on the network.
Today I had chance to use it with an external monitor. I heard the startup sound, saw the Apple logo on the screen, and then, nothing. No status indicator, just the Apple logo.
So, I zapped the PRAM – Command+Option+P+R. This time, the status indicator appeared for about 10 seconds before the Grey Screen of Death appeared, showing a kernel panic. This happened with subsequent boots.
So, I tried booting from the OS X CDs. Same problem. In fact, after a while, all I could do was access the Open Firmware command prompt.
This therefore means that there’s something wrong with the RAM or another component. Over the Christmas period, I took my Mac Mini with me to my parents in York, rather than leaving it in Bradford as I figured it would be safer. I’m guessing that it may have got jolted in transit and one or more of the components is out of place. It could also be bad RAM, but the RAM was only replaced in November 2006 and it was good-quality Crucial RAM. Plus, it’s a faff trying to get the damn thing apart and will probably require the purchase of another putty knife seeing as my existing one has gone missing.
In the meantime, I have a nice iOrnament.
How to: fix your MacBook screen
Had a bit of a panic this morning when I let my MacBook go to sleep, and upon re-awaking the screen’s backlight would not come on. The screen itself was working, as I could see a small portion of the desktop in the middle where the Apple logo is, but the rest was un-viewable.
It’s working now, but not after trying almost every trick in the book. I’ve listed all of the methods here, mostly for my own reference in case it happens again but also for anyone having a similar problem.
Diagnostics
First of all, make sure that the rest of the computer is working. If you have an external display handy, plug that in and use Fn+F7 to activate it (you may not need to hold down the Fn key depending on your Mac’s settings). If you can see your desktop on the external display then the problem is with the display – if not, you computer may have deeper problems. If you have VNC set up, you could try this too.
1. Set your brightness
Sometimes it’s the basic things – your brightness might be set to minimum. Use Fn+F2 to turn up the brightness (you may not need to hold down the Fn key depending on your Mac’s settings).
2. Zap your PRAM
One trick to deal with minor hardware problems is to reset your PRAM and NVRAM. To do this, power down your Mac, then, turn it on and hold down Command+Option+P+R at the same time, until your Mac makes the ‘ding’ noise again. Command is the Apple key, Option may be labelled as ‘alt’ on your computer.
3. Reset your Energy Saver settings
You may need to use an external monitor or VNC for this. While you Mac is booted, open System Preferences and choose Energy Saver. Under ‘Put the displays to sleep’, set the timer to 1 minute, and then wait 1 minute for your machine to go to sleep. Wake it up, and hopefully your screen will spring back to life.
4. Take out the battery
If your Mac is a portable, turn the computer off, unplug the AC power cord, and take the battery out. Next, hold down the power button for 5 seconds, and the re-insert the battery. Then boot up again. In my case, this is what worked.
Edinburgh at Night
Yesterday I had a job interview with the University of Edinburgh, and due to Edinburgh being somewhat distant from Bradford I travelled up the day before and stayed the night. This gave me ample opportunity to play around with my new camera. Hence, I bring you various night-time shots of places and buildings in Edinburgh.
I was surprised at how few buildings in the city were illuminated at night – the Scott Monument on Princes’ Street being one of the more notable structures that were shrouded in darkness. Still, I managed to get a reasonable set of pictures, although I actually took many more which ended up being deleted for blurriness (next time, must remember tripod) or lack of light.
Also, here’s a daytime shot of where I may be working if I get the job. This picture is also notable for being the 1500th image that I’ve uploaded to Flickr.
Looking back, looking forward
In the past I’ve done an end of your quiz (see 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003) but I’ve chosen not to do it this year. Instead, I’ve decided to write a brief entry summing up 2008, and what 2009 has in store for me.
2008 has been mostly a consolidation year after the big changes in 2007. Up until mid-December I was working for the university in Bradford, where I saw my contract move from casual work to a salary, my contract extended, and then subsequently finding in November that it wouldn’t be renewed. I had a couple of job interviews which unfortunately proved fruitless (and with hindsight I wouldn’t have wanted one of the jobs anyway) and I’m now currently unemployed.
Hari and I have also had a good year together. We moved in properly in summer 2007 and have been happy together – for the most part at least – in a rented house that we’re sharing. 2007 was our third year together and while we didn’t pass any other major milestones the future looks reasonably bright for the two of us.
Financially things have been a little hard, as almost everything I have earned has been spent on rent, bills, taxes and groceries leaving little left over for luxuries. Thankfully I have some savings and supporting parents so I’m not drowning in debt. This is why, as much as I’d like to buy a new computer, I’m having to hold off until I have more money left at the end of the month.
2009 is looking to be a year of change, maybe more so than 2007 was. I have already got a job interview mid-January and looking for other work as well, but as I’m not limiting myself to the Bradford area it may well mean moving; the job I have an interview for is in Scotland, for example. Hari is still at university and will be there until the end of May, so it may mean living away from her initially. We have agreed that we want to move away from Bradford – I have been here for over 6 years, she has been here for over 4 – and this would be good time to do it.
Provided I find a new job, and one that isn’t fixed-term and has a decent salary, financially we should be somewhat better off than right now, in spite of the current economic climate.
In terms of how the world will be in 2009, we’re at an interesting point in history. America has elected a (comparatively) young, intelligent, charismatic person as its next president, who is currently “talking the talk” when it comes to sorting out the problems in his country and overseas. This year will prove whether he can “walk the walk”, or whether his bark is weaker than his bite, as it where. We, once again, have unrest in the middle east, due to a minority of idiots with weapons throwing weapons at civilians (I’m talking about both sides here); we have the continuing collapse of Zimbabwe, as well as other ongoing problems in other African nations such as Somalia, Sudan and Congo; and of course there’s the world economies which may well get worse before they get better. For world affairs, it will be an interesting year.
Hope you have a good New Year celebration – I’ll be spending it with a few friends in Bradford – and see you in 2009, whatever it may bring.
Canon EOS 300D
One of my Christmas presents was a “new” camera – a Canon EOS 300D. Those of you who know about cameras will know that the 300D is not exactly a new model – in fact, it was launched over 5 years ago. This specific camera was in fact my dad’s camera, but he’s since acquired a Canon EOS 450D, so his old camera was passed down to me.
It’s my first SLR camera and I’m still getting used to it, but I used a trip to the coastal town of Scarborough today to get a bit of practice. The photos will look dull because of the weather – which was dull all day.