David Morris – brassedoff.net

So, here I am, sat in a hotel room in Pittsburgh, PA in the good ol’ US of A. It’s 06:44 in the morning and my body clock hasn’t quite adjusted to local time… not a bad thing really, considering I’m coming home in a couple of days.

I’m attending meetings at our Head Office in Pittsburgh. We have space in one ofthe landmark buildings in Pittsburgh – PPG place. I found out that PPG stands for Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and when you see the buildings (there are several of them), it’s easy to see why.

First off, a view of the outdoor ice skating ring in the courtyard in the middle of the buildings…

Ok, I know I could ave been closer, and you have to look twice to see the skatets. I can also tell you that it was what’s known as “brass monkeys” when I took this picture, about 5pm yesterday as we were waiting for the shuttle bus to take us back to the hotel. I was pleased I’d packed my outdoor coat. I usually travel with just a light jacket, but for once, my inner self told me to take something warmer. Well done, inner self!

Spotted why it’s called PPG place yet? Does this one give you a better clue? The building at the top  of the shot is the one that houses our Head Office. I did have another couple of photos, but having looked at them, this was the only one that had the building lines (nearly) parallel to the image frame. Quite impressive, and some of the offices have got great views over one of the rivers here (there are three rivers that come together and the city probably sprung up here for that reason.

Tonight, I’m off to a hockey game. Not in town – it’s about two hours drive away – a small local (ECHL) game in a rink probably about the same size as iceSheffield or a bit bigger. I’ve packed my Shudra game-worn Scimitars shirt. After all, you’ve got to, haven’t you?!

…I did today. I complained about the standard of food in a restaurant.

Daniel and I had gone to Meadowhall this morning. I needed some US dollars because I’m off to Pittsburgh next week on business; he wanted to buy some new Funkeys with his spending money, so I said we’d go early and have breakfast there.

After a bit of looking around, we decided on somewhere (Mrs Woolforbrains suggests I remove the establishment name to protect the guilty) in the Oasis. I ordered an espresso and a croissant; Dan had toast and lemonade. His lemonade and toast was fine. My coffee was like weasel p**s and the croissant had been blasted in a microwave so was soggy and tough as old boot leather. I contemplated letting it pass, but couldn’t bring myself to it so complained to the manager.

“Our coffee comes straight out of the machine, Sir, and we always microwave our croissants to warm them up”. I suggested (politely) that whether it came straight out of the machine or not, it was still horrible and demonstrated that the croissant was hardly ‘melt in your mouth’. (I warm my up in our microwave, but on the convection oven program, not the microwave program).

In fairness, she (the manager) refunded my coffee and croissant, but I doubt I’ll be going there again, but I did feel uncomfortable complaining. Say what you like about the Americans, but they do seem able to complain better than us, and take it with better grace. Perhaps now I’ve broken my duck though…?

We’ve also signed up to send Rupert (Murdoch) some more money. I’ve been thinking about a Sky+ box for a while since I found out it wasn’t going to cost anything extra per month, just a one-off payment. Because we have a basic package, it was going to cost us £149 plus £30 installation. I thought I’d try ringing them to see if I could scrounge a few quid out of them, but I never had the chance. Without trying, the young lad on the other end offered me the box and installation for £120.

The only thing that sticks (a bit) in my throat is that I have to leave it plugged in to the phone line for 12 months, but Mrs Woolforbrains has a  very bad habit of running over loose cables with the Dyson. Naughty of her, isn’t it?

So, by the time I get back from Pittsburgh, we’ll be able to record all the stuff not worth watching on the TV so we can not watch it at a more convenient time. I daresay the Young Master will have it crammed full of episodes of “The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy”, “Spongebob Squarepants”, “Ben 10″ and “Ed, Edd and Eddie” before we know it.

Ten-pin bowling tomorrow morning followed by a trip to Sheffield to John Lewis, a look at the continental market and who knows what else….

It was the big switch on of the Christmas lights in Killamarsh tonight. The (training) Band played festive music, the Kwiksave carpark played host to some fairground rides, all the shops stayed open, loads of people turned out. The tree was blessed by the local Vicar, the local MP counted down with the children… and the lights came on on a different tree.

Despite that, it was a fun evening. Here’s a selection of pictures…

Daniel’s been looking at animation at school today. I reckoned we could do something with a few toys and some Linux tools, so Daniel and David proudly present Daniel’s Iz Animation. (It’s a 3mb download so may take a few seconds. It’s only an animated gif, so nothing special needed to view it).

The pictures were taken with my DSLR mounted on a tripod. I moved the pictures onto my laptop and used a couple of programs from the ImageMagick suite to do the hard work.

Firstly, mogrify resized the images (mogrify -resize 432×288 *.jpg) to get them to a nice suitable size. Finally, convert (convert -delay 50 *.jpg playme.gif) converted the jpegs to an animated gif. Ok, I know an animated gif wasn’t the best medium for this, but show me a system that can’t play it out of the box.

I must remember to set the camera back on to large fine scale images though…

Saturday 17th November was a special day in Retford. It was the day Santa made a special appearance as guest of the Chesterfield Canal Trust to help them publicise their forthcoming Santa canal boat trips in which the well-loved man in red will obviously be playing a central part. Accompanied by his helpers and crew of the Retford-based Seth Ellis Trust trip boat, Santa met with local VIPs and gave some of the local children an early treat as well as taking a short trip up the canal to spread the word.

Members of the local press were also on hand to record the event and other Trust members were around to distribute leaflets letting the local poeple know how they could book places to see Santa when he comes back later in December.

The last picture in the set is the Young Master modelling his Christmas Tree Hat knitted by Mrs Woolforbrains.

These photos are also available in my gallery. If anyone wants high resolution versions, please contact me.

When we were in Dusseldorf last Christmas, one of the impressive things was the display of Steiff bears in the windows of the Galleria Kauphof. I’ve just come back from a business trip to Dusseldorf, and although Christmas isn’t in full swing yet (thankfully :-), whilst I was there, the window displays were unveiled. The least said about me banging my head against the glass whilst trying to get a better look the day prior to the unveiling the better. I felt like an over-excited three-year-old! Anyway, I thought I’d like to share the photos with you because we’re not going to be able to get to Dusseldorf this year. Each one of the window displays (there are four in all I think) is fully animated, so for instance, the frog is rowing the boat, the waterwheel is spinning, the two teddies are sawing the log… In a few weeks time, there’ll be loads of other little kids pressing their noses up against the glass once the Christmas markets swing into action.

…maybe next year… ;)

Sorry about the previous two posts with no titles… I was posting from my Blackberry and missed the title field off. Silly me…

Click on each photo for a larger version…

OK, so Scimitars won 3-2 after sudden death overtime and penalties, scoring on the last of the three penalties (all the others were saved). That despite taking an early 2-0 lead then conceding two goals. It made for an interesting finale though. We’re currently in the Arena waiting for the motorcross to start. Boys day out or what?!

Well, here I am at iceSheffield. It’s an early faceoff and Dan’s with me. The cornet has also made its second outing of the season after the very positive feedback from last week. In fact, no fewer that two mentions in this week’s programme! I think this may be becoming a part of the fun at iceSheffield. We’re off to the Motorcross after this game – a boys day out!