It's been nearly a week since my Dad fixed my laptop for me. I like my laptop a lot - it's a nice-looking black shiny DV6000 series machine from Hewlett-Packard - but this line does seem to be a little prone to problems. It's been back to HP for repair twice since I bought it, both times for a fault with the built-in wireless. The second repair was free even though the laptop was out of warranty by then, so kudos to HP for that, but this latest problem is the third hardware issue in less than 2 and a half years. Hmm.
This time the built-in speakers suddenly stopped working after a short train journey (not so great on a machine marketed as a "media centre laptop"). After digging around on the web it seemed that this has also been encountered by many other DV6000 owners, including someone who posted an interesting little video on YouTube:
which is pretty much what I saw (except that my power light still worked).
It turns out that there's an issue with the ribbon cable connecting the speaker assembly and the power button. In my case, when my Dad opened up the machine we could see the ribbon was almost "folded" at one point, and as a result the connections were damaged causing power to be lost to the speakers. I guess if we'd left it then eventually the power button would have failed too and it would no longer have been possible to turn the laptop on. There's more info about the problem and the fix on one of the HP forums.
Luckily for me however, my Dad's a bit of a whizz with this kind of stuff. Once I'd given him permission to open it up (all the while I was having kittens watching him prise the keyboard and speaker assembly apart) he was able to cut off the damaged part of the ribbon, expose some new contacts and reconnect the cable. Hey presto, speakers (and power button) working, good as new! Thanks Dad.
In the longer term I guess the ribbon cable needs to be replaced. I found someone selling some for £7.99 each on eBay, which seems pretty cheap compared to getting a new laptop so that's good. It was also interesting to take a look inside the laptop and see how it fits together. And I think that my Dad was pleased to have been able to fix the problem, and I'm sure that he'll be very happy to know that it's still working - almost as happy as I am!
I've just started ripping (for non-geeks: recording) some of my old vinyl LPs and 10" and 12" singles into digital format. I've connected my old Goodmans turntable to the line-in on my computer via an equally old battery-powered pre-amplifier (see picture), and I'm using Audacity to do the actual recording and editing according to some great instructions I found online.
I'll admit I'm no connosieur, the equipment was cheap and is old, and I'm doing the bare minimum (i.e. check the sound level on the input, then record, trim, split into separate tracks if necessary, save and next!). Even so it's time consuming - unlike copying CDs, you have to record everything in real time - and I'm getting every snap, crackle and pop from the needle on the surface of a (sometimes quite warped) disc. Well, that's the magic of vinyl. I suppose it's like life: you can choose to focus on the hiss and crackles, or you can choose to enjoy the music instead.
It's a good excuse to go back and look at my collection of records again. It's been a while since I bought anything on vinyl, and most of my stuff dates from 1991 to around 2003. There are some obvious choices for digitisation - I have a bunch of Disco Inferno EPs that I still play relatively frequently - but it's also been nice to rediscover some things that I'd forgotten about (for example the first three Bardots singles, Bang Bang Machine's "Geek" EP, Pale Saints "Hunted", blah blah) and that Suede really did make some amazing music with some brilliant B-sides. (You do know what a B-side is, don't you?).
It's also fun to revisit of the whole rather labour-intensive process of even just playing a record, with its endless manual interventions (remove it from the sleeve - and maybe an inner sleeve - place it on the turntable, check the speed, lift and drop the needle, repeat for side two ...) - it's a reminder of an era when I suppose I felt like I had more time to just sit and listen to music, rather than having it on as background to some other activity.
Of course there's a lot of mediocre stuff in there too, and I'm not sure how far I'll get on even the good stuff before I'm completely fed up with the process. In some cases it might be easier to try and buy the tracks again on CD. But right now I'm making reasonable progress, and it's great that the music that I loved can have a whole new lease of life.
A couple of evenings ago I watched an interesting little documentary film called "City Swimmers". I'd been trying to get hold of it on DVD, until I discovered that it was available for online viewing via Journeyman on Booserver for the princely sum of a pound.
The film tells the story of the campaign to keep Hampstead Heath Ponds in London open for free swimming in 2004-5, when the Corporation of the City of London (who are responsible for running the heath) were threatening to either close one of the open air ponds or start charging people to use them. As a result the swimming assocations that use the ponds (including the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association, which the film focuses on) began a battle to maintain the free access and keep all three ponds open (there are ponds for women only, men only, and a mixed pond for families).
This campaign coincided with another fight to maintain longer hours of use of the ponds in the absence of lifeguards (particularly in the winter months), which chimed with similar campaigns elsewhere across Britain by swimmers who found themselves increasingly prevented from accessing rivers, lakes and ponds. (It was interesting to see that the campaign to maintain access to Hatchmere Lake also appears in this context in the film - I swam there a couple of times last summer.) While many of these restrictions were in the name of "Health and Safety", they more often turn out to be either local councils trying to insulate themselves from the risk of legal action, or private interests trying to profit from previously public places.
By the end of the film (in mid-2005) it seems that the campaign in Hampstead Heath was at least a partial success, as the Corporation decided to keep the ponds open and institute a policy of "voluntary" charges, at the same time a judge ruled that it was legal for swimmers to use the ponds without a life guard. However I think that the longer term future of the ponds is still at risk (although I'm not fully aware of the current situation), and equally while access to rivers and lakes elsewhere is improving there is still an ongoing campaign to preserve the right to outdoor swimming in many places. (If you're interested in knowing more about the London Pools Campaign then their website has information about various swimming facilities in and around the capital http://www.londonpoolscampaign.com/, while the River and Lake Swimming Association website has more general information on outdoor swimming http://www.river-swimming.co.uk/.)
Aside from telling the story of these campaigns, the film also features images of the ponds and of the people (and particularly the grand ladies of the Kenwood Ladies Pond Association) swimming at various times of year, from warm summer days (when it is easy to imagine yourself enjoying the park) through to the icy depths of winter (probably not so much). For me these sections showing ordinary people enjoying a swim in the beautiful natural pools sums up a lot of what is great about the activity of swimming. So overall "City Swimmers" was pretty good value for a pound!
About a week ago I had a wonderful long weekend with Steve and Ingrid, two good friends from university who live near Windsor and who are just the nicest people ever. They had both taken a couple of days off from work for my visit and it was great to spend so much "quality time" with them, since normally we would only have one or two days at most. As a result we were able to take the time to do quite a few things, which included trips to Kew Gardens on the Friday and London Zoo on the Sunday.
I'd been to Kew Gardens with them a few years earlier and it was nice to go back and wander around the various Victorian glass houses - I even faced my fear of heights to wander around the "tree-top walk", which wasn't so bad (but I was glad to get back to terra firma at the end). Much of Kew's grounds are essentially parkland, so if you lived in or around London and were able to make the trip there a few times a year then buying an annual membership would be an excellent investment.
I don't think any of us had ever been to London Zoo before, and I think we were a little ambivalent about the ethics of keeping animals in zoos. However it seemed quite different to how I remember other zoos being when I was a child - there seemed to be fewer of the larger animals (no elephants here, for example), and a lot of effort seems to be going into giving those that remain much more natural (and much larger) environments. One example of this is that the famous Lubetkin Penguin Pool has been deemed no longer suitable for the penguins, and so they have moved to a new and less dangerous pool (the Lubetkin pool is a design classic however and still remains, unused); another is the Snowdon Aviary, which is an impressive wire mesh tent for some of the larger birds. (There is a great page on the London Zoo website about these and other bits of the zoo's architecture.)
It *is* amazing to see many of the animals so close up, and given that the zoo is basically in the middle of London, it seems much bigger than you might think - we spent all day there and didn't quite manage to see everything. So I'd certainly consider going back again in the future.
Aside from the day trips, much of the time was spent just hanging out at their place. I was completely spoilt by their excellent cooking (my measly contributions started at peeling some apples and ended at helping to clear the table) and by the fact that they looked after me pretty much the whole time. Steve also introduced me to a wonderful Playstation game called LittleBigPlanet, which I'd never heard of before but which turned out to be incredibly addictive (as well as being beautifully rendered eye-candy and with a great soundtrack - check out the LittleBigPlanet website, go to "Game Info" and watch the trailers to get a good idea of the game's look'n'feel).
The weather overall was very pleasant for late February, with a goodly share of sunshine - perfect for a bit of cycling around the local area on the Monday. On the way out Steve took me past Dorney Lake near Eton, which is used for rowing practice as well as for triathlons (it also has a really nice cycle track around with a surface that was as smooth as cream to ride along!). But there are lots of other nice places along the Thames too - including the pub we stopped at for a pint on the way back. I finally asked him if he would be my best man when Kyle and I get married - a big thing to ask particularly since other than the fact that it's going to be in New Jersey, we don't even know when the wedding will be yet, but luckily he said yes. Alright!
The weather had turned darker and wetter by Tuesday, they both had to go back to work, and it was time for me to return to Warrington. It was a shame to leave after having such a great time, but I know that we'll all meet up again sometime soon.
