THE HULME TUNE

Why did the reporter cross the street? To buy a chicken from Aldi!

I find it strange that when an alarm goes off they clear next door. Can’t they wait until I finish my shopping?

An insider at Tesco Metro Manchester informed me that the store was closed, not because of their fire alarm, but it was JJB next door.

What? JJB has a fire alarm going off at 7:35pm, by my watch, and Tesco loses sales? Good job it’s on a corner. It’s bad enough walking around the store 5 times because they’ve moved everything around, without having to leave the store minus my bread and butter. My local inconvenience, it was. Since when did a false alarm pass through brick?

I didn’t see or hear any fire crews running to the scene. Probably out shopping at ASDA Hulme.

I hope Dave Whelan, who also owns Wigan AFC, realises that his store in Market St caused Tesco to close early and this added 10mins to my shopping trip. I did get a bigger chicken from Aldi, but I had to cross the street.

DENTIST BLOG - coming soon.

Actually it’s the link below this item on MyManchester.net

or

The Hulme Tune PODCAST 24 April 2008 

Tesco Metro Manchester on Market Street closed its doors early today due to a fire alarm. Customers and staff were told to leave the building quickly. Shopping was dumped at the nearest till. Meanwhile we stood outside just in case we could check out what we had dropped.

Some bright spark said to me, “I can’t see any smoke..” It doesn’t matter! It’s a precaution and what if it was in the storeroom and not visible in the store?

Then we were informed that it would not re-open. So, I went to Aldi instead.

That is the question that has been on people’s minds - not another English Literature lesson, but what is the future of the Adult Learning Centre, Stretford Rd, Hulme (above the library)?

I’ve spoken to reliable sources and they have informed me that over the past few years there has been job loses at Hulme’s Adult Learning Centre, run by Manchester City Council. At the moment there are moderators from Ofsted checking that each department is functioning to the set standards for local adult education.

If you remember back in the 1990’s, Hulme people were promised that Chevassut Street Primary School would not close. In 1999, guess what.. it closed. So, can we believe what officials now tell us?

I spoke on the phone to Martin Hellewell, Press Officer - Manchester City Council, about the future of the ALC, Hulme. He asked me to reveal my sources. I did not and they remain confidentially anonymous. Mr Hellewell went on to say that the merger of MANCAT & City College Manchester doesn’t effect the ALC and that in the near future it will..

..and you’ll have to tune in to ALL FM 96.9 from 10-11am 24th April for the answer.

Don’t worry I’ll post a podcast after.. for all those that miss it.

Also on the show: how to see a lawyer for free and I interview artist Camilla Lyon who is exhibiting her architectural delights at Cube Gallery on Portland St. This would be a YouTube video on these pages this weekend.

Yesterday, regulars of Afflecks came and offered their support of this icon of cheaper fashionable alternative clothing. Each were given the chance to pen their opinion and petition to keep the Palace running.

This old city centre building with five floors of over 40 stalls had been a place where up & coming designers and entrepreneurs sold their wears to young fashionable peeps. It opened in 1982 and was the brainchild of James Walsh, a local hairdresser.

The future of Afflecks Palace is still unsure, maybe this celebration was to test to see if it’s still what young people want in fashion shopping 26 years on.

 www.thehulmetune.co.uk

Paul Ridyard

I interviewed 3 ex-homeless teenagers from Accrington, who were visiting the Zion Arts Centre in Hulme, for Vicky Sinclair’s radio show on ALL FM 96.9.

Broadcast Thursday 3 April 2008

Accu Boys - ALL FM interview

I am fed up of the red tape involved in CRB checks. Every time I volunteer where children or vulnerable adults are involved the organisation has to spend more money and more of my time in obtaining another CRB check.

I join a charity - CRB check… 3 months later help a youth project - CRB check… help a school holiday club - CRB check… and so on. One should be enough for it’s duration. If another one is needed then the charity/organisation/school concerned should have that option.

I believe it’s over cautious and is waisting charities time and money and putting off volunteers. Now we can ask the Priminister to just have the one.

Please pledge your support at:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/SingleCRBcheck/

NOTE: This is not a secure site to be giving private info out online. The British Government should know better. The risk is yours!

By changing the system so that the information from one enhanced CRB check is held in one central location, with copies available,this would create a more cost-effective and efficient way of updating information to ensure the safety of children and adults that CRB checked individuals are working with.

Why make life difficult for work that isn’t paid?

MANCHESTER 2015 - Part 2

Mcr 2015 video pt 2

You pay £100 for a modem from ‘3′. Read the box “System Requirements… Mac OS X” and “Features.. Auto installation and easy to use” All you have to do is to plug it in and away you go, right? Not if its a Mac!

It seems that ‘3′ charge £100 for PAYG broadband dongles and cannot be bothered to put the Mac drivers on a CD for the Mac users.

Wait, there’s more… inside on the instructions they say, “For Mac OS X software.. visit three.co.uk/usbmodem to download mac drivers and installation guide.”

OK, seems simple to me.. just go online and download the drivers. Errm.. hang on a minute, did I read that right.. “visit three.co.uk/usbmodem to…” They want me to go online and download.

How dumb can ‘3′ be? That’s why the modem was bought in the first place!

So now I have to find a pc and the page to download these Mac drivers. I went to three.co.uk/usbmodem and the page changes to something else.

No ‘3′ I don’t want to buy another stupid b/b dongle as I already bought one and would like to use it TODAY on my MAC.

Oh, yes.. I did a search for “e220 mac drivers” while I was there and found that ‘3′ never heard of it.

Here are your search results for “e220 mac drivers“. Some of the results may take you through to other 3 sites. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try widening your search.

Search this site Search all 3 sites No results found for “e220 mac drivers“

No reference to it. What? So, where are they?

Orange leaflet.. “three.co.uk/usbhelp”… which brings me back to the same page.

Eventually, after a Google search, I found the drivers on a blog and Huawei’s own website. But when I tried downloading them from Huawei.. I got an unknown file. Unknown? Maybe I was using the wrong browser, so I tried it with IE. Sure enough. Not only did Firefox not allow me to login to My3, but didn’t download the .iso file.

To save you the hassle I went through, here are the drivers for the Huawei E220 Mobile modem.

Don’t use Firefox to download drivers

This is the PDF for powermacs (G4) OS X

Config Guide USBModem Mac. PDF

One day these companies will get a bright innovative idea to make life easier for their customers and thus, not only attract new ones, but keep the ones they’ve got already.

5 hours later… and i’ve gone to three.co.uk to seek out these mysterious mac drivers/software ‘whatever’. Amongst all that advertising USB Dongles there’s a button “more info” - you’d think that would be for more about the products. Then on the right, after clicking it… “mac software drivers” - I have to pinch myself. Hidden away on 3’s website are the drivers. All under the heading:

What is Mobile Broadband?

Well, I now know the answer to that one! On ‘3′ in Hulme it’s slow download speed, seeing that they boast in ‘Turbo Speeds’, and a lot of hassle with hard to find mac drivers and you need another Internet Connection to download them. Do me a favour. Up to 2.8megs .. the speed today was 0.5 MB. In fact, the upload speed was faster at one stage than the download speed. Source was www.speedtest.net & Sunrise ADSL.

They should change the term for 3 from ‘Turbo speed’ to ‘Slow trickle’.

Then i go to three.co.uk/my3 and find that they send a “text message” with my “password” on it.. What planet are they on? They know very well that the dongle on a mac cannot receive text messages. Unless they are on my3 then I’ll just have to login with the password they send me by text. Dumb, dumb, dumb..dah-de dumb.

Is this a too harder thing to ask for that ‘3′ make it easier on their customers and that we have the speed we paid for? When they say “up to 2.8MB” I at least expect it to be over 1.5MB and not .5!!!