Retired!

Oh, have I retired! That stage of life was completed at the end of last month ending two and a half years of happy employment at Codethink.

There was bread and cheese followed by a trip to Beatnitz - which had recently opened under Codethink's office. Once I get past Christmas I will (I hope) have a better idea of where things will go next!

Tiles

I wanted to have a photo of the new Codethink work offices before I retire at the end of this month to link with this posting back from 2009 of TNEI's offices in Newcastle. Here's the Dale St offices

Green and white used to be very much the fashion, I think I remember similar tiling being present in the Cussons offices in North Manchester where I worked on a project back in 1977?

Teaser Tuesday - May 15

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Shelley and Stanley passed a joint between them and we all drank tea and talked and then went out and stood crowded on their tiny balcony to watch the muted sunrise through columns of blown rain. It was a good night.

from Gwendoline Riley's Cold Water our book group book of March, I selected this having been asked for a book of local interest. This book of a worker in a Manchester Northern Quarter bar with an ex-boyfriend in Macclesfield appeared to fit the bill! I was though one of the few who enjoyed the book - a bit dank and dismal but wonderful observations!

Manchester May 2017

Again back a bit

St Anne's square Manchester after the bomb, a place for the community to honour and remember, a swift visit over lunchtime but emotionally very powerful!

Tigers and Tables

Yesterday afternoon found me in Manchester, initially for a concert at the RNCM as part of their Judith Weir festival 'Tigers Under the Table' three works:

• Judith Weir Piano Trio Two
• Tom Harrold New work (world première)
  
• Judith Weir Airs from Another Planet

I should have made notes but, for me, the Piano Trio Two was the most appealing - a meditative work for the traditional ensemble; the new work was a wind quintet (flute/oboe/horn/clarinet/basoon with doublings for piccolo and saxophone) and the final work used a variation on that wind ensemble. It was enjoyable lunchtime.
In the evening a complete change of culture for the Manchester blog meet at Common on Edge St, a very crowded and noisy affair - but good to meet lots of folk I saw at the last meeting, now new twitter feeds to follow and lots of un-tigered tables to have free drinks and cup-cakes around. Picture here - drinks kindly provided by I love to Love - there I must have been bribed sufficiently.

Attention Manchester (and area) bloggers!

There will be another Manchester bloggers meeting on Tuesday March 8th 6:30 to 8:30 at Common on Edge Street. Even if you're slightly out of the area - as I am! - you'll be made very welcome. I've only been to one previous meeting but it was well worth the trip into town to put some faces to names (and pseudonyms!). Full details are on Manchizzle - I've no idea, yet, whether I'll be there but it's tentatively in the diary!

University of Manchester

Among my Dad's papers we found this University student card - Manchester University in the 1940's. You'll see there are separate unions for the men and women. Interesting there's no mention of it being the 'Victoria University of Manchester' and the spaces for authorisation of each course by initials. The space for the initials of the lecturers being blank - did the lecturers not hold with such bureaucracy?
A written explanation was required on absence from lectures!

Steps to Lucidity

Some of you might venture to disagree with the title of this posting as it is an account of the various issues I've had (so far) with the upgrading of the laptop to the beta version of Lucid Lynx the next release of the Ubuntu version of the Linux/FSF operating system. I did this as part of the global bug jam at Madlab in Manchester.
I started off with

sudo update-manager -d

which told me there was a new release (in Beta) I proceeded and almost immediately got a python crash:

ImportError: No module named deprecation

a bit of web searching gave me the solution and I downloaded and installed python-apt_0.7.94.2ubuntu3_amd64.deb. This took me once I restarted the upgrade, a little further until it stopped with the cryptic error:

E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

and told me that I might be trying to install a beta version (gosh!). This took me a little time to resolve, did a lot of searching around broken packages and removed a few which really ought to have long gone but a look at /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log and the apt.log should have told me that the problem was the empathy package (an instant messenger) which claimed that there was a broken depends upon empathy-common (which I didn't have!) I removed empathy and it started downloading the new version of the operating system (all 2000+ packages!) this took some time but eventually prompted me to reboot. I rebooted and got to the screen where I select which operating system to run and the new version wasn't there! I tried the old version(which was still there and inevitably that crashed nastily as the only thing left of that was the Linux kernel! Fortunately I had installed other versions of Linux on the hard drive - if not I could have used a rescue disk - and from one of those edited the grub menu - which allows selection between them - to include the new version.
Reboot, select the Ubuntu Lucid and I got a black screen with a scary message about ureadahead having crashed and mountall being unable to connect to Plymouth (that's the graphical boot screen not a port in the south!). Booted back to a alternative working system to web search and after quite a few false trails looked at the /etc/fstab and spotted a line which I'd included to mount /proc/bus/usb which got Aladdin dongles working with the previous version of Ubuntu (as I no longer have the Aladdin dongle - used by my ex-work - I didn't need it). Then having edited that file (mounted the Ubuntu partition from the working OS) I rebooted, I still see that message about ureadahead but it quickly vanishes - so it was a red herring apart from telling me where in the boot process it was bombing out - and I could login to the upgraded Lucid Lynx system. Thanks to all at the bugjam for assistance. Now for testing of the running system!

There you are, wasn't that Lucid!
I meant to take some pictures of the day but, alas forgot!
Later Looks like the issue with grub was due to my having installed another version of Linux which, without asking, moved the MBR (master boot record) somewhere else where the Ubuntu system wasn't expecting it!

Another leaving do

.. and Russ
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I was at the Rain Bar with TNEI friends this evening before wherever I go next. See here for the rest of the set. (Much Later)During the course of the evening it emerged that our colleagues had been told that Gary and I left 'because our contracts forced us to' - a complete pack of lies!

To everything there is a season

My annual rail season ticket expired today

clearly there was something I didn't know when I bought it twelve months ago, but I probably won't be renewing it - at least not yet! (I hope I've removed all the personal stuff from this image!)

Manchester goes Karmic

Watch the netbook!
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

I was at the Manchester Ubuntu Karmic release party last night at the Pitcher and piano. Not as focussed as the Jaunty do earlier in the year. A good get together though! I'd upgraded my work laptop earlier in the day - just so it was ready for the evening, went slowly but smoothly - the only issues I have is I seem to be constrained to use kdm as a login manager - before the upgrade I was using gdm

sudo dpkg-reconfigure gdm

doesn't seem to do it. I shall have to try fiddling around in /etc/X11. (Later - ah this is gdm,it just looks rather different and at the monent has no, well not many, options on configuration).
Before the upgrade I was using firefox 3.5 which wasn't the 'official' version, post upgrade, 3.5 is official but the browser has my bookmarks/saved tabs and passwords from 3.0 and the ones from before are nowhere to be seen! A colleague has expereinced issues with an identical ASUS laptop and the nividia driver for the G9650M GT graphics card. It seemed to be ok for me but once I started something kde related, I too, got graphical artifacts (junk!) all over the screen. Known bug with the latest nvidia driver and that card (happens on both Linux and Windows) and they don't appear to be in a hurry to fix it. I shall try keeping away from kde and see what happens! My other photo from the evening is here.

Rachmaninov (lots of)

We went to the Bridgewater Hall on Thursday to hear an all Rachmaninov concert. I wanted mainly to hear the 3rd concerto - never heard it at a live concert (obviously excluding broadcasts) - though I seem to remember the college rehearsal orchestra may have performed it - with Nick Redding in spite of his piano teacher issuing an interdict - but it was a long time ago.
This week's concert consisted of the Vocalise, 3rd concerto and 3rd symphony, a little nervous whether I could handle so much romanticism! Cristian Mandeal, Nikolai Demidenko and the Halle.
No reviews on the internet so far that I've found - let me give a few impressions. Not sure whether it's where we were sitting - side circle - but much of the 1st movement of the concerto descended, as far as the piano part was concerned, into a high-class mush, with at one point a mis-hit A(?) emerging from the gloom. By the time he got to the cadenza, the balance problems - or whatever it was - seemed to have been sorted and the rest of the work was rather more involving - even to the bronchial audience participation which seemed to kick in at that point!
Demidenko played an encore I couldn't identify, Chopin arranged by Rachmaninov? - if it was I couldn't identify the original, lots of hand crossing and much feux-follet style fireworks. Kelvin suggested the Polka de [VW]R but no it wasn't that.
I don't know the 3rd symphony well wasn't too taken my it, lots of SR trademarks recycled, slavic sighing and rather more effect than (I thought) substance. Looks like we'll be walking near the Villa Senar where this was written this summer, I'll try to walk by! Interesting that the programme note highlighted similarities between the finale and that of the Walton 1st - both of which were written in the 30's and in both cases the composer had a block before he was able to complete the finale.
Before the concert, some hurried rearrangement, as our normal pre-concert restaurant appears to have disappeared! We'd arranged to meet outside so a quick move to another eating location!

First pitch!

Ella, Russ and Mustafa
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Just back from a trip to the Manchester Climbing Centre with folk from work, here are some colleagues, the set of photos are here. (Maybe this link is better - as it has just the pics from yesterday). An impressive place!

Christmas market

Jennifer
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Off to Manchester's Christmas market for lunch to mark Jennifer's leaving. The full set of pictures is
here

Process and completion

Read this on the way to the Manchester RNCM Stockhausen festival:

Boulez is a composer for whom the technical perfection is absolute, and this technique serves him as a basis for the formation of an unalterable personal style. His objective is the work of art, mine is rather its workings. (KHS quoted in Worner Stockhausen Life and Art)

obviously written before all Boulez' works in progress. Then in the session with David Fallows and David Horne, David Horne said something to the effect that:

KHS has written so much about his works, the exploration with the pupil is part of the process. With Boulez you're left to discover it all for yourself.

I attended the prelude and left - regretfully - before the apotheosis Luzifer's Tanz. It was an afternoon I enjoyed, particularly the 5pm concert with Piano Piece IX, Refrain and Kreuzspiel. The textures of Refrain have become common currency, what must it have sounded like in 1959!
An afternoon with good numbers in the audience, you could almost hear the listening going on! Lots of students RNCM staff and men in their 50's and 60's (stereotyping a little!)

Grrrrrr

Just noticed that this evenings Kontakte at the RNCM Stockhausen fest has been cancelled - gutted! Rushes off to the train swearing!

Abschied

(no not from here!)
I've booked - at last - for the RNCM Stockhausen day - that weekend is going to be busy for various reasons but I'm intending to make most of the events - probably calling it a day before Luzifer's Tanz - alas - but 6 hours will probably test my staying power. It's work the next day and I belong to the 'give us back our 1960's Stockhausen' clique....

Software Freedom day

Admiring the speed!
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Back from the Software freedom day event. Bit thin on the ground but I found it interesting and the speed of the elderly machines was impressive!
The Marbella cafe was good too- soup was appreciated.

Over lunch went to see the classical section of the Manchester HMV shop - I don't recommend it - they've moved it to the ground floor, not separated from the main section. So whereas it used to be a haven there's now just loud blaring pop music. They've also reduced the size of it! Maybe it was elitist before and now it is more accessible but it's a (for me) horrid environment!

Software Freedom day in Manchester

Software freedom day is on Saturday.
Manchester is organising (we hope!) The release says:

The event will take place at the Marbella Cafe on Newton Street from 11am to 4pm. Everyone is welcome and there will be plenty of people there who are learning about free software for the first time. We will be giving away CDs, leaflets and stickers. I'm also told that the cafe serves great food (veggie and vegan friendly).

We will have a number of Internet connected PCs available, which will be used to demonstrate LTSP. The Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) is designed to be used on low powered machines and so is brilliant for reusing old computers in schools or community projects. We will have information available about how this is being used successfully in schools, including one which went on to gain specialist technology status as a result.

Not seen that cakeshop yet....I hope to recify that!
Tante has a good summary of Copyright and patent issues at the Gay Bar