It occurred to me one day last week that this month marks the 20th anniversary of my first day at University. I had intended to write something and post it on the actual 20th anniversary, but then I couldn’t remember the exact date and found I had other things to blog about last week anyway, so I forgot all about this. Until now.
Let’s see, September 1985…. I was 18, nearly 19. I had long hair and big glasses (that was the trend in the ’80′s – big glasses that is, long hair had probably gone out of fashion ten years earlier!) I had absolutely no idea what to expect on my first day, and in fact I nearly didn’t get to university at all. To get into uni here in Blighty you need to get good grades in your ‘A’-level exams. In my day you sat ‘O’-levels (O for ordinary and A for advanced) at age 15/16, then you specialise in three subjects for your ‘A’ levels two years later. For my ‘A’-levels I studied Computer Science, Pure Maths with Statistics, and Communication Studies. Yes, I know Communication Studies didn’t quite fit in with computing and maths, but the Physics class was full I left grammar school after my ‘O’-levels and went to the local technical college to study for my ‘A’-levels, and the atmosphere at college was much more relaxed than at school. So relaxed, in fact, that the grades I got weren’t brilliant.
During the latter half of the final year of ‘A’-levels students have to go through the rigorous UCAS system. I can’t remember exactly what UCAS stood for (something like University Clearing and Admissions System) but it involved applying to different universities hoping you’d get a place based on the results of exams you hadn’t sat yet. I remember I went to visit Aston University in Birmingham, Liverpool University, and somewhere in north Wales. The exams are graded A to E, with A being 5 points and E being 1 point. To get onto your chosen course, you need a certain number of points. I think the courses I wanted to get on required 10 or 12 points. I sat the exams in June or July, and the results came through mid-August. I got a C grade in Computer Studies, another C in Communication Studies and an O in Maths (an O grade means the equivalent of aother ‘O’-level, which meant I hadn’t really learned anything in maths in two years!). So I had 6 points, not the required 10 or 12. Bummer.
I had to go through the whole UCAS procedure again, this time applying to polytechnics, which were seen to be a step down from universities at the time but still provided a degree-level education. You didn’t need the same number of points to get into a polytechnic, so I pinned all my hopes on one of them accepting me. I applied to 5 as per the UCAS regulations. I got offered a place at North Staffs Polytechnic, and was all set to go there, until Birmingham Polytechnic offered me a place a few days later. They were offering a brand new Computing Information Systems degree and needed students to fill the course, so they were taking anyone! This was about a week before term started, so at the last minute I switched from North Staffs to Birmingham. I’d been to visit Aston Uni down there and liked the look of the place. Birmingham (aka Brum) is right in the middle of the country, far enough away from home to be independent, close enough to get back for a weekend, and being Britain’s second city, I thought there’s be plenty of nightlife and concerts.
It was always accepted that I’d go to university if I could. I never had a contingency plan, and the whole idea of me not going was never discussed. To this day I still don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t got in! So one Sunday we pack all my belongings into the boot of Dad’s car, and drove the 100 miles down the M6 to Birmingham. I’d never been to the Polytechnic before, so with map in hand we crawled through the unfamiliar streets to the halls of residence. I was allocated my room, and went to unpack. We all had a little look around, and after an hour or so my parents started to feel like spare wheels so we said our goodbyes and they left me to it.
Left on my own for the first time in my life, I tried to personalise my room as best I could. I went to the student union shop and bought a padlock for my food cupboard. Later I realised that all the padlocks sold in the shop used the same key, so they didn’t provide any security at all! I left the door to my room open while I got the place organised, and tried to be sociable with everyone who walked past. At no point was I nervous about anything. It was just another step in growing up as far as I was concerned, I wasn’t worried about what I’d for money (I had a grant to keep me going), and the thought of having to cook for myself certainly didn’t fill me with dread.
Let me take a moment to describe the halls. These were six or seven apartment blocks with the student union in the middle. I was on the first floor, first room on the corridor. There were five rooms down the corridor, with two double rooms at the end. The room next to me was empty, then there was the food locker/dining room, then a guy studying English, a foreign student, a couple of girls in one of the double rooms and a couple of guys in the other. On the other side of the corridor was the kitchen, unisex toilets and a couple of bathrooms. The rooms were big enough for a bed, a chair and a desk. To the right of the door was a small wardrobe, and to the left was another cupboard containing a basin and a mirror. Not bad digs at all really. The kitchen was tiner than tiny, especially since it had to be shared between up to 8 people. It contained a fridge, an electric cooker, a microwave and a sink. If you stood in the middle and stretched your arms out you could turn on both the oven and the microwave at the same time. Quite impressive, considering they were at opposite ends of the room!
Before we knew it night was falling, so time to head to the bar. Six hundred complete strangers, fuelled by alcohol. Suffice to say, I had no problem making new friends. Everyone was in the same boat, and all the conversations started with “who are you? where are you from? what are you studying?” I was wearing a denim jacket which I had embroidered with the names of my favourite bands at the time, and that attracted a bit of attention, not least because I only had three of the Led Zeppelin symbols across the top (it was a work in progress, you see…)
If you’ve been paying attention (and if not, why not?) you’ll remember that I said I had never visited the polytechnic before. This fact turned out to be quite important the following morning when I had to make my way across town from the halls to the campus. I had absolutely no idea where the campus was! I had no idea where the bus stops were! How do I get there! Help!!
I had to take one bus into the city centre and one bus out again. I found some bus timetables in the student union, so I managed to find my way there. However I didn’t have a map of the campus, so by the time I found my way to the induction lecture for my course I was 90 minutes late. Seems like I started the way I meant to carry on, heheh. Getting to the campus was one thing, getting back to the halls was something else. I remember buying an Birmingham A-Z (map book) and looking at all the routes on all the bus stops, then looking up the places on the map to see if they were anywhere near where I wanted to go!
So that was it….. my first night and couple of days away from home as an independent human being. Of course, I was back at home three days later. I had to go back to my old school to pick up a copy of one of my ‘O’-level certificates so that the local authority would let me have my grant money. By the end of the first week we were all referring to our rooms in halls as “home”….
I didn’t mean to ramble quite so much here, and yet there’s so much I’ve left out. Some of the people I met in that first week became very close and trusted friends for the next ten years, it’s a crying shame I’m not in touch with any of them now. But I have my memories. The four years I spent at uni were among the best four years of my life, I’m sure I shall be writing about them more on here.

A recent comment on this very blog has given me lots of food for thought over the weekend. Certainly the climate isn’t going to put me off getting a motorbike, although the costs involved might! To be honest, I’ve often thought about riding a bike, although I’ve never done anything about it. I’ve never really been a mad bike fanatic, but maybe the older I get the more I think that it might provide an adrenaline rush, that it might actually be a lot of fun. Forget the idea about saving money on fuel, because by the time I’ve got myself trained up, bought a bike, bought all the gear and so on I’ll be spending at least as much as I would on getting the car converted to LPG. But getting a bike is oh, so much more fun! I’ve always thought that buying a bike was the sort of thing “other people” did, I was always far too sensible and responsible to go down that route. But I’ve been thinking about it over the weekend and come to the realisation that, hey, sensible and responsible people ride bikes as well, so why should I deny myself all the fun? Fuck it, I’m going to express myself, and if that means surprising (or even shocking) a few people then so be it. I’m fed up of being Mr Boring.
Step 1 in becoming Mr Less Boring involved speaking to my brother, who has ridden a bike on and off for about 20 years now, and asked his advice. We discussed my options:
1. buy a 125cc bike and ride it with L plates in perpetuity. The only problem with this is that I can’t take it on the motorway, and a large part of my journey to work is on the motorway.
2. Pass my CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) and ride a 125cc bike without L plates. However I would soon outgrow the 125 and would want to get myself a bigger bike, and that would mean extra expense. It would be better if I could get the bigger bike straight away, which leads me to….
3. Take a Direct Access course. This is for riders over 21 and combines the CBT with training on a bigger bike. After I pass a direct access course I would be qualified to ride any bike straight away.
(The laws regarding engine sizes etc are all designed to prevent teenagers getting bigger bikes until either they are old enough to handle them or they have had enough road experience to handle a more powerful bike)
My brother also took me out on the back of his CBR1000. This, I must say, was an exhilirating experience. It was only the second or third time I’d ever been on a bike and I was much calmer this time round than the last time (which was also riding pillion on my brother’s bike but was at least 15 years ago). I say I was calmer this time, however I won’t tell you what thoughts went through my head when he decided to show me how fast it can accellerate!
I’ve not been put off at all, in fact I’m getting more turned on to the idea of getting a cruiser and, well, cruising (for want of a better word) along the country’s highways and byways.
My boss would have other ideas about that. After being away from the office last week he’s decided he can’t survive without me, so I suggested the only way he can stop me from getting a bike is to get me a pay rise so I can afford to put fuel in the car instead!

Here’s an update to my incoherent ramblings on whether or not I should get my car converted to run on the cheaper LPG fuel. I went to see the Vauxhall dealer where I bought my car to ask about LPG models. I was told they were rarer than hen’s teeth, one guy had worked there for three and a half years and only seen one dual fuel model in that time. Vauxhall haven’t even released prices for the new shape dual fuel Astra yet, apparently they only make them to order and it can take up to 12 months. If I was concerned about saving money on fuel the guy I spoke to would be more than happy to sell me a diesel car though. Somehow I get the impression I’ve been a little fobbed off there.
The quote to have my car converted arrived this morning. £1350 including VAT, which is a little less than I thought. However, converting a car to run on LPG doesn’t mean you can ditch the petrol completely, as it needs to run on petrol until the engine warms up (apparently) and then it’ll switch to LPG. So the figures the spreadsheet gave me are at the absolute top level of optimism. It’ll still take two years for a conversion to pay for itself. Also I’ve heard rumours that the current low level of taxation on LPG fuel won’t remain low for ever (but that’s only a rumour!)
I’m currently thinking the best option would be to just not put my foot down as much…. so if you get stuck behind a silver Astra on the motorway doing a steady 56mph, that’ll be me, sorry.

With the price of petrol going up each day and looking to stay that way for the forseeable future, I’ve been doing some research today in getting my car converted to run on LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas) instead. I’ve requested a quote for conversion but apparently it’ll cost something in the region of £1500 – £1600. At the moment LPG fuel is 60% cheaper than petrol, although it is slightly less economical.
I put a spreadsheet together to help me work out the costs, and I reckon that at my current annual mileage and fuel economy, a conversion will pay for itself in 18-24 months. Less, if the cost of petrol goes up another 10-15 pence per litre.
The problem is that I was thinking of changing my car at the end of next year. This is before a coversion will have paid for itself, so I won’t see any benefits if I stick to that plan of action. So my choices are:
1. get the car converted and keep it until I run it into the ground
2. trade the car in now for a duel fuel model
3. do nothing until I plan on changing the car anyway
I drive about 15000 miles a year. My car currently has 45000 miles on the clock, and when I bought it I was planning on keeping it until it had 100,000 miles on it. If it’s serviced regularly there’s no reason why it won’t do 100,000 miles, however the maintenance bills will probably go up each year as they do with all older cars. Another slight complication is that I was thinking about buying a personal registration plate next year. I’m hoping to be able to get a plate which has my initials and my date of birth on it (I can’t buy it now, it’s not available yet due to the way the UK car registration system works) but I can’t put a newer plate on an older car. So I was thinking about buying the plate early next year when it becomes available, and then buying a 6-month old car at the end of the year and putting the plate on it. Now my LPG thoughts have gotten in the way of that, I guess I’ll have to put my ego to one side for now.
It might be more economical in the long run to get a 6-12 month old dual fuel car now, and keep that for 5 years or so. I’ll go down to the car dealer tomorrow and see what they have to say, but for now my mind is racing with numbers and dates…

It was a dark and stormy night. The rain lashed down and complete strangers huddled together for comfort. The thunder drowned out the soundtrack and the lightning scared the living crap out of everyone.
Or, to put it in a slightly different context (i.e. the truth), it was a perfect late-summer evening, with an almost-clear blue sky and just the hint of a breeze coming over the hill. I arrived at the park at 6pm, which is just as well as I had to queue up for half an hour to collect my ticket, then I had to queue for another half an hour to give my ticket to a man who promptly put it in a big black rubbish bag, and collect a wristband which proved I used to have a ticket. Ah well.
I entered the site, which was getting rather full (only half an hour to show time) and spotted the stage which was to the left of the impressively big screen they’d set up. There was quite a bit of space between the front of the crowd and the screen, which made sense really. The screen must have been about 30 feet hight and 70 feet wide – you had to sit a good few feet away from it so you could see what was going on! The side-effect of people sitting so far back from the screen meant that there was a lot of space in front of the stage as well, so when I saw people gathering in front of it I thought I’d join them. After all, I went on my own and didn’t have a blanket/picnic/girlfriend to leave watching everything, so I picked up my rucksack and headed to the front.
I ended up on the second row, and wasn’t crowded in like I had been at other shows. I had plenty of room to move and breathe. Now, I don’t know too much about the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, so I can’t really review their set. I can tell you that I enjoyed it and would like to check out their recordings though. They played a couple of songs from the Pulp Fiction soundtrack (Rumble and Let’s Stay Together), a few songs from the new album and a few old favourites (apparently). Anyway, all very enjoyable, but only for 45 minutes. Then they thanked Stella Artios for keeping them in beer, I mean inviting them to play, and it was time for the film.
I can’t say anything about Pulp Fiction that hasn’t already been said. It’s one of my all-time favourite films, and Tarantino is now one of my all-time favourite directors. I remember going to see Reservoir Dogs at the tiny little Triangle cinema in Aston University before it was released mainstream. This must have been 1991 or something. At the time it was a quirky violent independent movie that had been creating a lot of buzz on the streets, so I thought I’d go and see what all the fuss was about. I’d heard a lot about the infamous ear-slicing scene, and was disappointed to find out that the camera panned away at the crucial moment. All this talk about blood and guts and gore, and the film didn’t seem to be any more gory than anything else i’d seen. So I was a little disappointed with that, but I liked the film enough to go see it again in a bigger cinema, and also to go see Tarantino’s next film. Which was, of course, Pulp Fiction.
If you haven’t yet seen Pulp Fiction I advise you to keep an open mind and see it. You’ll either love it or hate it, and if you love it you’ll see it again and again. It’s one of the few films that reveals more of itself to you the more you watch it. Every line, every scene in this movie is relevant to the plot. There’s no filler in there at all, which, considering the film is two and a half hours long, is no mean feat.
But I digress. This isn’t supposed to be a review of Pulp Fiction, it’s supposed to be a review of my night out. When the film started there were a few people standing up, but they sat down after being “encouraged” with a few empty plastic Stella bottles. Some people clapped, cheered and laughed along with the film. Some got up and danced with Uma Thurman and John Travolta. The biggest cheer of the night came when Bruce Willis broke free of his bonds and bopped the gimp on the nose, heheh.
As long as you could get used to a steady stream of people walking past you to get out, it was a really good night out. I didn’t mind the guy to my right smoking a joint, even though the smell does make me a bit nauseous. I didn’t mind the guy to my left occasionally shouting out the next line. I thought that all added to the experience. I’m glad I took something to eat, and something to sit on. Even though it didn’t rain, the grass was a bit damp with spilled beer!
This is precisely the sort of event that needs to take place more often in Manchester, and probably more often in the country as a whole. I had a really good time, and can’t wait for the next one. Photos on Flickr, natch.

Tonight I’m going to an outdoor screening of Pulp Fiction in Heaton Park, with a live set by the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, playing some of their own music and some of the songs from the film. I’m taking waterproofs (can’t trust the British weather!), some food, some drink, and my camera. Should be a good night out, and who knows, maybe I’ll meet someone heheh.
The event is organised by Stella Screen, and they did a very good job of not advertising it because I only found out about it last Thursday when reading my cousin’s local evening paper. They put a full-page advert in, I wonder if that’s a sign that not many tickets have been sold? Anyway, I’ve bought a ticket online and it should be a very good evening indeed. Pulp Fiction is one of my all-time favourite films, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Fun Lovin’ Criminals as well, not being too familiar with their music.
Tomorrow I’m going to with my parents as they take all the grandkids to Chester Zoo, which should also be a good day out. So look out for a report on the weekend sometime Sunday evening. Or failing that, sometime next week. Or whenever.

So I got the hard drive cloned. Took another two hours after I made my last post on the subject, but it got there in the end. I took out the old drive, put the new one in as master, put my old slave back in as the slave, and switched on.
Boy, is it ever fast now! I had no idea that putting in a more up to date drive can make such a difference to the speed of the PC. It boots up faster than it’s ever done before, programs start faster, everything is faster As the new drive is a sector-for-sector copy of the old drive, the programs and files are still just as fragmented as they were before, but since the new drive is that much bigger than the old one, they’re now squeezed into the first 10% of the disc and not spread all over the place. Maybe this will account for part of the increase in speed. Of course, the new drive spins faster, has a faster data transfer rate and has a bigger cache than the old drive, which is probably the main reason for the speed increase.
When HDClone was doing its business, it told me that I had about 250 bad sectors on the old drive. I’ve no idea if I’ve lost the data that was in these sectors, or even if there was data there to begin with, but all I know at the moment is that the programs I use all the time still work, and the programs I don’t use often, well, I can reinstall them if I have to.
The next step is to copy all the data from the slave drive onto the new main drive, and reformat the slave drive to get rid of Linux. Wish me luck.

This morning I went shopping, and as well as treating myself to a couple of steaks, some lamb chops and various other items of food generally deemed as being “healthy”, I went to the computer bits shop and got a new hard drive. A whopping great 250Gb hard drive. I knew it was a mistake to apply for another credit card, but what the hell. The drive wasn’t a fortune (in fact, it was less than I paid for a 160Gb drive a couple of years ago) so I can sort of justify it to myself. It’s going to replace the ageing 20Gb drive in my PC.
Now, the 20Gb drive is the promary drive, which means it’s the one with Windows on it. Since I don’t want to reinstall windows and everything else that goes with it, I decided the best course of action would be to clone the drive. I’d done some hard drive cloning at work a few weeks ago, and knew that Acronis let you have a fully-featured 15-day trial version of their True Image software in exchange for your email address. I thought this was a fair exchange, so I downloaded it.
I took out my existing slave drive and put in the new one (as a slave). Then I discovered the PC wouldn’t boot any more. What the…? A few minutes of thinking later, and I realised it must be the Linux partition I put on there. You see, a few months back I got an attack of geekiness and decided to install Linux as a second operating system on the PC just to see where it was up to these days. Linux installs a boot loader so you can choose whether you want Windows or Linux when starting the PC. So far so easy. Trouble is, the boot loader menu was installed with Linux on the slave drive, and since I’ve just taken out the slave drive and replaced it with an unformatted drive, the PC wouldn’t boot any more.
Ok, let’s see if we can uninstall Linux, or at the very least get rid of this boot loader. Since I installed Linux I only booted into it three times, so I guess I can live without it, and despite all my anti-Microsoft feelings and the satisfaction I get from getting something for nothing, it would have to go. I could always put it back on at a later date if I really wanted to play with it again.
Hiunting around on the interwebofinformation I discovered that the best way of getting rid of the boot loader was to reboot the PC with the Windows XP installation disc in the cd drive, press R for recovery, and then type in the command “fixmbr”. Ok, couldn’t be easier. Of course when I pressed R it asked for the administrator’s password, and I couldn’t remember what it was. I entered my own password and it didn’t seem to like it. So I reboot into Windows, go into users, and reset my password. Turns out I am the administrator of my own PC (I thought I was) so I must have mis-typed my own password. Anyway, once I’d got rid of that, I fixed the boot loader thing and was able to boot up the PC with my 20Gb drive as the master and my new 250Gb drive as the slave.
Now to clone the drive. I started up Acronis, went through the wizard, and set it going. Ten minutes later it told me that it couldn’t read from drive C due to a corrupt index. Bugger. Let’s try scandisk. That didn’t find any errors, but Acronis still wouldn’t copy the drive. What I haven’t mentioned is that each time Acronis decides it can’t read the disc, I have to reboot the PC. Each time I want to start cloning again, I have to reboot. Each time I wanted to try and fix the boot loader, I had to reboot. I’ve booted the PC so many times today I’m afraid it’s going to get straight on to the police web site and report me for giving it a good kicking.
So I gave up on Acronis. I booted the PC again (poor thing doesn’t know what’s hit it today) and went online to find other solutions. As I type this (on the laptop) it’s busy cloning the drive using a freebie program called HDClone. According to the article that mentioned it, HDClone is an OK program, not the most fully-featured one out there, but it will clone a drive to a bigger drive. Which is exactly what I want it to do. It’s copied nearly 12 million sectors so far, and found 115 defective on the drive. Looks like my old 20Gb drive might not have lasted too much longer at this rate, which is another reason I can use to justify the upgrade. It’s only 30% cloned so far, so I’ll have to wait a while longer to see if it’s actually worked or not. Still, it’s only taken me three hours to get to this stage, another couple of hours won’t make any difference!
But I still haven’t worked out what I’m going to do with 370Gb of hard drive space…