David Morris – brassedoff.net

Most people that know me know I occasionally enjoy a spot of fishing. Here in the UK, that generally means coarse fishing on canals, rivers or lakes / ponds.

Most fisher{men|women} I know (I don’t actually know any fisherwomen, but I put that bit in for political correctness) are considerate for the environment. Not everyone is though.

Last Sunday, we went out to The Lockkeeper at Worksop for lunch. As its name suggests, it is next to the canal – the Chesterfield Canal, the same trust that I’m a member of. After a nice lunch, we took a brief walk down the towpath heading towards Worksop.

I was frankly disgusted by the litter along the canal…

McDonalds wrappers, drinks cans, there’s a Carling can in there somewhere as well.

Who leaves all this rubbish? My first reaction was kids and inconsiderate walkers, but I deicded to look a little closer…

Every pile of litter had something in common. Got it yet? Sweetcorn tins. Now, unless the yoofs of Worksop have suddenly taken to inhaling it, I can think of only one group that would use sweetcorn in great abundance like this. Yep. You guessed it. Fishermen.

This gives fishermen a bad name. It’s disgusting behaviour, downright idle and bad mannered. I doubt they’d leave empty cans littering around their houses, so why leave them all over the bank side to spoil the enjoyment of others? I know cyclists have been getting quite a bit of negative press recently (page may have updated by the time you read this, but it’s a common enough theme) in their use of canal towpaths, the “lycra brigade” haring around at breakneck speeds and causing a menace to other users, but at least they don’t leave their waste scattered all around the place (although don’t think I’m condoning them either).

If you’re a fisherman, please, next time you go fishing, take a bin liner or something and take your blasted rubbish home with you. Stop spoiling things for  everyone else and giving yourself and others who enjoy the pastime a bad name. If

Yet more spam. I think I’ve identified it though. It looks like it’s coming from Trackback postings, and analysing the sources of a few of them, theyr’e coming from open proxy servers. For the time being, I’ve disabled trackbacks. I don’t think that will bother the three regular readers :)

A recent cold snap has made me thank the fact that I bought a good quality cycling jacket a couple of years ago. At the time, I thought £120 was a lot to pay for a jacket, but every day it either rains or is cold, it earns its corn. Take this morning for example. The outside temperature was between 0′C and 2′C. All I had on (the top) was a light thermal long-sleeved vest and my GoreTex jacket, and guess who was nice and warm? It’s got some really thoughtful toches as well. The inside of the collar is lined with a velvetey material, so when you’ve got it zipped up to the nexk, it doesn’t scratch and irritate. The pocket has a lanyard and clip which goes nicely on my keyring so I can keep those handy rather than having to dig around in my rucksack for them. Although I couldn’t get the one I wanted in hi-vis yellow (mine is bright red), it’s got lots of reflective patches and piping on it so hopefully, I’m visible at night (which means going home from work at the moment).

Last nigt, I went to the joint trip-boat crew meeting of the Chesterfield Canal Trust. I’ve volunteered my services to help out on the trip boats and as the weather gets better, I’m hoping that there’ll be a spot for me helping out crewing the boats. I might even got to drive – you never know. I think it’s helping that I’ve already got an RYA IWHC (Inland Waterways Helmsmans’ Certificate) which I did off my own bat last year. The Trust have two trip boats. The Seth Ellis is out at Retford and the John Varley lives at Chesterfield. The JV has problems at the moment, primarily caused by a lack of water at Chesterfield due to a canal breach. I don’t know to what extent the British Waterways funding cuts will have an effect on getting the breach fixed because, being fairly new to this stuff, I don’t know whether the canal in Chesterfield (because it’s not connected to the system yet) is under BW or local council control.

Finally for today, if you’re intending commenting on any of my postings and notice that your posting is going astray, I apologise. Today, I deleted 165 spam comments and approved one legitimate one. As a result of this, I’ve added a “bad word” blacklist that contains most of the words (I think) that I was getting spammed with. If this doesn’t work, I may have to turn on membership (sorry all four of you!) or look at one of the available spam filters that are available for Wordpress. Any suggestions most welcome…

It’s over a week since my last blog posting. It’s not as if I’ve had nothing to write about. Where do I start though?

Well, on the positive side, the Killamarsh forum is picking up a bit of pace. It’s getting listed on Google now which is good, just underneath the defunct one if you do a search for ‘killamarsh forum’. I’m having to delete a lot of users though. There must be a bot somewhere that partially signs up to phpBB forums for the purposes of advertising drugs. I unfortunately deleted a kosher one in the midst of them the other day :(

I’ve just spent the morning hacking a bit of PERL together to get data out of a Yokagawa chart recorder. I’ve passed that off to Steve to finish off now I’ve shown him how to retrieve the basic data via telnet using Net::Telnet which is a great way of communicating with gadgets that have a telnet server built in. He’s now on a steep PERL learning curve :evilgrin:

We didn’t suffer any major damage in the recent storms other than one roof tile on the gable end. I got my bike out on Sunday and cycled over to the allotment to pay the annual rent and check for damage. Surprisingly, we’ve escaped damage there as well. Daniel managed a day off school on Friday after the wind ripped a 2m long hole in the school roof. Mrs Woolforbrains found out about the closure when she got to school. She’s since found a site called snowday which, if you since up for between £1 and £2 per annum will email or SMS you in the event of a school closure. It’s free for the schools to register, and the LEA can block subscribe schools. She’s contacted NE Derbyshire Council to make them aware of it. Personally, I’m not holding my breathe. I can’t see the J&I School being that bothered about it… they seem to be “not bothered” about a lot of things…
I’m off to the US in a couple of weeks on business. I’m going to just outside Charlotte, NC. The Superbowl is in Miami whilst I’m over there, and I reckon the Sunday afternoon (I like to travel on Saturday so I’ve got over jetlag before going into the office on Monday) could be spent in a bar observing the spectacle. I’m not interested in the game per say, but the occasion interests me, especially being in the US to see it.

Whilst I’m over there, I’d hope I could get to see some live NHL action (on TV – I doubt I could get to see a live game). Last time I was there, the pre-season friendlies had just started, but now the league will be in full swing.

I want to geta pair of noise-cancelling headphones as well. I was going to look at getting some at Manchester duty-free , but with the Sterling to US Dollar exchange rate as it is at the oment (somewhere around the 1.9USD to 1UKP mark), I reckon I’ll be better off buying over there. After all, I really want them for the trip home. It’s an overnight flight and it would be nice to try and grab a bit of sleep.

This trip will also be a first for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’m flying via Philadelphia this time rather than Newark. Continental flights via Newark seem to have stupid times associated with them, plus they’re on Boeing 757s so they’re cramped. The MAN-PHI leg is on a A330 which I’d hope would be a better option. Also, I’m travelling with one of my staff who hasn’t travelled abroad on business before and I don’t think has been to the US before. Should be fun!

I’m going to get off now and do a bit more work.

Oh, I’m also narked that I had to delete 26 spam comments this morning. Gits. I’m glad I’ve got moderation switched on though…

One of the things about having kids is you get exposed to all sorts of different aspects of the media. Different cartoons on TV, different books, different comics. One of the better ones is Spongebob Squarepants. Spongebob, together with his daft pink friend, Patrick, clarinet-playing free-dance exponent Squidward, Texan squirrel Sandy and money-grabbing boss Mr Eugene Krabbs and his arch-enemy Plankton are one of the favourites for all of us in our household. Indeed, Mrs Woolforbrains has been known to knit jumpers for Patrick from time to time.

So, there we were, wandering around the local branch of Toys-R-Us yesterday (it’s a parent thing) when we espied a Spongebob-themed version of Monopolyâ„¢. We’ve got the ‘classic’ Monopoly and we’ve got Junior Monopoly, and we’ve played both with Daniel, but the Spongebob version just struck a chord and we had to have it.

Consider, if you will, the educational aspects of playing this type of game. Firstly, the strategies of the game have got ot encourage structured thinking. The money: great for developing an awareness of “you haven’t got enough money for that – you’ll have to save up” (how many parents have had to preach that line to their offspring?). The maths: “How much change do I need if I give you a £20 for £11 rent?”. Put all that together with an environment small child is comfortable with and the learning becomes so much more fun!

Finally, I’ll sign off by saying the photo above was taken using my latest gadget – a Blackberry Pearl 8100. I’ll probably write about it in a few more days once Orange and O2 have sorted out porting my old, much-loved phone number between them.

Now, I’m off to see who wants to go to Zooby’s for a sandwich for lunch.

Now I’m quite prepared to admit I’m a bit of a gadget freak ["Surely not" I hear all my friends say]. It’s true. I don’t think I’m as bad as I used to be. Maybe it’s an age thing. I still enjoy browsing the gadget shelves though. The problem I have is that the gadgets I like tend to be the expensive electronic ones, so it’s a refreshing change when I get my hands on something cheap! Even more so when there’s change from £12 (not including postage).

That was the case with this new tripod I’ve just got for the camera. Mrs Woolforbrains was looking for a tabletop tripod that she could use when taking pictures of wooly things. She prefers to try and take her pictures under natural lighting conditions to avoid colour distortion, rather than using camera flash. In the winter, it’s a bit tricky holding the subject and the camera still for 1/8sec or so, so a tripod was in order. A quick search on Amazon yielded this little beauty.

It oozes quality. It’s all metal apart from the tab on the bolt which tightens the ball joint up and the rubber feet on the end of the legs. The legs extend by a further two sections, and wonders of all, it’s pocket sized when folded up – a shade over 14cm long.

Needless to say, it’s also very stable. I checked the maximum weight which is a shade over a kilo so it will easily accomodate either of our two digital cameras – the Olympus C765UZ which Mrs Woolforbrains calls hers now, or my Canon EOS350D

Finally for today, an action shot. Not of me (heaven forbid), but of Mrs Woolforbrains doing her stuff. It was one of those photos where I pointed the camera and pressed the button, just for the hell of it. It looks a bit strange becasue it was a flash photo and the flyer was, err, flying round at a rate of knots. She’s using the Kromski Sonata (should you hit on this page whilst looking for information on spinning wheels (sad, innit!).

This morning on the trip in to work (for those of you that don’t know, I cycle the last 4.5 miles in to work most mornings, rain or shine), I witnessed an example of downright boorish and unwarranted behaviour from a motorist. Specifically, this “person” was driving a Transit van or similar emblazoned with “Steele and Holmes Joinery” finished in dark blue with silver lettering. He was jeering and edging towards me clearly with the intention of unsettling me. The thing was, I’d done nothing to provoke this behaviour. He came up from behind me in quicker-moving traffic so there was nothing I could have done to upset him – I’d been nowhere near him.

I think there are two major things these types opf people don’t realise. Firstly, it can be dangerous enough riding a pushbike on busy roads these days without behaviour like his, especially considering at the time I was in the middle of two lanes of traffic to enable me to negotiate a roundabout where the left hand lane is left only and very busy with traffic heading down the Parkway to Sheffield.

Secondly, if you’re really determined to hurl insults at someone from behind the wheel of a vehicle, don’t do it from one plastered with either your name or the name of your employer (see earlier posting about bus drivers!). In this instance, clearly the only thing lower than this guys waist size in inches was his IQ.

I can’t locate the company through Yell so I suspect they’re not local and the only phone numbers on the back of the van were mobiles, so clearly someone that doesn’t want to profess having a home base… one wonders why.

I generally don’t go in for hero workship, but many people that know me will also know that like many other members of our family and close friends, we’ve been following the ice hockey in Sheffield for a number of years – since the Steelers first season in fact. Anyone that has been following a team for that long will inevitably have their favourite players:

Tha knows, there aint been a player to match Herbert Postlethwaite in t’83 Grand Slam-winning season… etc, etc

There are a lot of people to whom Ron Shudra is that hero in Sheffield. Originally coming in as an import ex-NHL draft pick in the first season, “Rocket Ron” captured the hearts of many early Steelers fans with his trademark slapshot, sometimes even on target! Mrs Woolforbrains and I had the honour to share a the top table at one of the Supporters Club end of season dinner dances with Ron when I was Chairman of the Supporters Club and found him not only a good hockey player but also a charming and perceptive person to speak to.

After 12 years or so playing for the Steelers, the demands of the Elite League got a bit too much for Ron and he retired from playing. I can only assume that Neil Abel, coach of the Sheffield Scimitars coaxed Shudra out of retirement to play for his lower league team and I suspect there were more than a few of the older Sheffield hockey fans please to see that happen. Ron has since settled in Sheffield and has family here.
So, back to the story…

I was at the Scimitars game last night at Ice Sheffield as they took on the Peterborough Phantoms. I had intended watching that game then popping over to the Arena to see the Steelers take on Edinburgh Capitals, but the overlap of the games and the fact I was enjoying the Scimitars game meant I stopped where I was. Seeing as I was stopping, I decided on impulse at the end of the second break to spend a couple of quid on some raffle tickets, the prize being Shudra’s game-worn shirt – literally, the shirt off his back.

Imaging my surprise and delight when it was my ticket that was pulled out.

As a result, I’m now the proud owner of a sweaty game worn shirt from the man himself:

Now it’s been photographed complete with the sweat of the player (!), I feel it’s appropriate to put it through the wash!

It’s funny really, because I’ve been admiring the Scimitars replicas for some time. It’s some years since I purchased a replica, so all mine tend to be older ones. I don’t need to bother now. I’ve got the real McCoy. A game worn shirt from a Sheffield hero, complete with sweat.

We last visited The Deep in Hull pre blogging days, so it was just asking to be written about. It was also the last day of Daniel’s school holidays, so rather than moping around the house, why not do something interesting? Hull is less than an hour away, so…

As you can see, it was a grey day. The Humber Bridge is in the distance, futher up the estuary. The water was really that muddy brown colour as well. Fortunately, things were a little more colourful inside!

Last time we went, I trued to take some pictures but they weren’t up to much. Flash photography isn’t permitted in the exhibitions, presumably in case it spooks the fish, and there are some big ones in there – sharks and sawfish for instance. With the ISO wound up to 1600 on the Canon though, there was enough leeway to get some reasonable shots in the circumstances in some of the better lit tanks as the one above shows.

These fish were sharing the tank with some seahorses. Apparently hundreds of thousands of seahorses are caught annually to satisfy the demand in China and other places for natural “drugs” that are extracted from them. Everyone admits it’s not a sustainable practice, but is anything being done about it?

As well as numerous smaller display tanks, The Deep has a dirty great big one that stretches the height of the building which contains all the monsters. This one wasn’t one of them, but I couldn’t resist the shot as it headed towards me.

The Deep is easy to get to. From Sheffield, I took the M1, M18 and M62 east right into the centre of Hull and followed the signs for The Deep. Car parking is adjacent to the attraction and £2 of the £3 cost is redeemable in the cafe or shop.

Yeah, I know. Christmas and New Year and there’s invariably something better to do that update blogs. In our case this year it was “go to places”, so I’ve been out with Daniel and Mrs Woolforbrains visiting different places, mostly where we’ve been before and Had Fun.

We started on Bxing Day (that’s 26th December for all you citizens of the US of A) with a visit to Ivan and Barberas. They live out on t’other side of Doncaster, between Donny and Scunthorpe and they’ve got a brig train set. I’ev blogged about in the past, but we enjoy it so much, I’m blogging about it again!

You can see their train set on Google Earth’s satellite maps. I think it’s 7.5inch gauge and they have a mixture of live steam (coal fired), electric and internal combustion locos.

This loco happily pulled three adults plus the driver and two teenagers around one of the two circuits on a cold, misty day.

The railway isn’t flat though. Ivan and Barbara have developed some great features on the line including signal gantries, bridges and tunnels and some complicated intersections.

This doesn’t show the latter, but you can clearly see the tunnel, under and over-bridge, all of which the railway negotiates. The tunnel is long enough to be really dark inside as well, and from memory, on a bend so the exit isn’t immediately visible from the entrance.

Everyone I’ve ever spoken to about the railway is completely enthralled by it. Our Band conductor, Toby, looked like a kid with a new toy when he saw it for the first time.

The second repeat visit over the holiday period has been to Eureka - Daniel’s idea. We made the trip from Sheffield up to Halifax in disgusting weather conditions – fog and mist with visibility down below 100m in places.

As usual, Dan enjoyed himself though, building igloos…

…and making like a penguin…

We’d intended lunching that day at a cafe adjacent to a wool shop (yes, even over Christmas!) somewhere out in the vicinity of Denholm, but although the wool shop and adjacent camping shop were open, the cafe was closed. We ended up back in Sainsbury’s cafe in Halifax. One positive thing from the visit is that the camping shop had a pile of books going cheap and I picked up an Apache2 book for £6 that gave me the clues for reconfiguring woolforbrains.net
Needless to say, also over the break we’ve been hammering the toys we’ve had for a while. The XB360 has seen some hammer. Daniel’s rediscovered Amped 3 and we’ve both been busy unlocking new features. Neither of us realised that you could unlock a snowmobile, or that some of the other, err, toys you could unlock were matresses, sleds, bananas etc. We’ve got all three versions of Amped; 1 & 2 for the old XB and ‘3 for the new one and they all have their good bits. The snow on Amped2 in particular looks great with the way the ice crystals pick up the sun. The skidoo on ‘3 is great fun though, and some of the cut scenes are fantastic.

I got Cars for Daniel as well, but it’s one of those games that I can’t play or watch because I get affected by motion sickness. Maybe it’s the way that Dan plays it, but after ten or fifteen minutes, it makes me feel nauseous and it takes me several hours to recover. I have the same problem with Halo and other FPS-type games, and the movie froma few years ago, the Blair Witch Project did the saame for me. In fact, I had to leave the cinema before the end because I was afraid I was going to heave.

I see one of my work colleagues has been busy over the Christmas period as well. As well as getting a surprise XB360, Steve’s also landed a nice new digital camera. Lucky boy!

I’ve got the remainder of this week off, then it’s back to work. It’s going to be a busy few months as well. I’ve got trips to Paris and the US to organise fairly quickly, and it’s in to contest season with the Band. At least I don’t have to worry about Germany for a while!

Finally, I’ve eventually started editing JP’s wedding video this week. It’s not going to be an easy job. I’ve got two tapes to work with taken from different angles. One has significantly better audio than the other so I’ll probably try and use it as a master track and try and sync all the edits up to that. The challenge is going to be getting the lip sync right.

Dan’s back to school tomorrow, so peace will reign over the house for a few hours each day.

As a postscript, a few days ago, I wrote about local Christmas carols and the need to keep performing them. Funnily enough, a few days after I wrote that, I heard about this group who have released an album called “Voices At The Door” which features a range of carols from around South Yorkshire, the North East andother places. It was featured on ClassicFM where I heard it. I think I’ll be making a purchase soon!
There. I think that’s anything significant caught up with. Now, what shall we do today?