The Morris household is in for a noisy Christmas, despite the fact that the big surprise pressie needs not an iota of electrical energy…
Merry Christmas everyone!
(For the record, it’s a four-valve euphonium.)
Having got the go-ahead last night, I can officially announce that I’m working on a new web site.
This time, it’s www.sethellis.org.uk. We have got the OK from the Canal Trust Chairman, Keith Ayling to set up a web site dedicated to the Seth Ellis, the trip boat that I (amongst others) crew out of Retford.
The idea stems from several thoughts. Firstly, whatever is done must not conflict with any of the Trust aims or ideals, but there’s a lot of paperwork and other associated “stuff” related to the running of the boat that as crew there isn’t necessarily time to take in whilst working on the boat. There’s also crew rotas, details of upcoming trips that could sensibly live on this site. Also, for people that are planning on chartering the boat, there’s information about the local area and the boat itself that we can communicate in a manner that the corporate Trust web site possibly can’t. The example I used when selling the idea was that the Trust web site doesn’t need to have details on it of how to empty the boat toilet, but the boat web site does.
Anyway, we’re off and rolling now, so as well as building content over the coming weeks, I’ve got to build the management interface. This needs to include provision for a suitably secure area for crew-only stuff and a mechanism whereby someone else other than me can maintain content. I might borrow from some of the ideas I used on the Band web site for that where I produced a simple CM (content management) system. I’ve got some ideas about how to improve on that, and I’m also contemplating whether I can make this site predominantly database-driven at the same time incorporating all the secure and non-secure stuff I want to get in. In theory it should be possible.
Before anyone tells me I could probably go out and download an open-source CM system to do all this, yes, I probably could, but I could also learn a hell of a lot by writing one completely from scratch. If I wanted to be suitably challenged, I could write the whole lot in JSP (Java Server Pages). Now, that would be a challenge and a fantastic learning exercise. Whether I will or not, or whether I just go straight for the easier PHP option remains to be seen. For the time being, I’ll content myself with hacking the basic page design around. I’d be interested in receiving comments.
It’s been my first day out on the Seth Ellis running Santa Specials today. I spent the afternoon out on the boat; next Saturday, I’m out for the day. Here’s a couple of pictures just to give you a flavour of the sort of fun we have…
I’ve just sent an addition £10 to Sustrans under my personal carbon offsetting pledge. So far that makes £30 this year since September (you may remember I committed to £10/flight?) I’ve actually been sending £10 per trip which I suppose is what I really meant to write last time… not that I’m trying to duck the issue at all…
At least I’m keeping up the spirit of the pledge.
It’s not often I feel compelled to blog twice in a day, but here goes…
I’m sat in Pittsburgh Airport. I should have been leaving in 45 minutes, but by that statement, I’m sure you gather that I’m not. Instead of leaving at 15:35 to go to Newark then on to Manchester, I’m now leaving at 17:30 to Atlanta then on to Manchester. Weather problems in the US (severe snow) have caused havoc with the in-bound Continental flights causing, presumably leading to that standard excuse of the UK railways, i.e. “all our {planes | trains } are in the wrong place”. Fortunately, we pay a lot for a corporate travel service and my the time I’d got to the front of the queue at the Continental check-in desk, they’d already got me on a different flight and all I had to do was get the Continental desk staff to authorise the transfer on to Delta. So, two hours late is better than a day late which would have been the alternative.
The weather in Pittsburgh is pretty cack anyway. It’s still raining so the Steelers / Bengals game tonight should be a smile if you’re in to that sort of thing.
I’ve packed and checked the camera card reader so you’ll have to take my word for the next little snippet, at least until later in the week, but whatever the timing, Daniel is going to be well impressed. Recollect in the last posting that I said I’d got a car booked from the hotel to the airport? I asked at the front desk to get a cab; they said “it will be a limo”. Same price, flat rate $40 US because “we have an arrangement”. Yes, it was a limo. A dirty great big huge black stretched limo, room for about 10 people, drinks cabinet, satellite radio, TV, full nine yards (as they say over here). It’s a good job I’ve got the receipt and the pictures to prove it. Talk about arriving in style? The driver said he had to take it back to the airport anyway, so I suppose he might as well take a fare at teh same time. Marvellous!
I’ve just had a chicken teriyaki sub and a drink for lunch (it’s 14:50). I’m going to treat myself to an ice-cream from Ben and Jerries then wander down to the gate to kill a couple of hours and hope the weather doesn’t deteriorate any further causing more complications.
PS, isn’t free WiFi wonderful?
 I’m leaving Pittsburgh today. I’ve got a car booked from the hotel to take me to the airport. I’ve got my bags packed. I’m just posting to my blog with some more pictures to run off a bit of time. QVC (I know, sad) is burbling away in the background. Clearly in these politically correct, ethnically sensitive, religiously tolerant days, we’re not allowed to celebrate Christmas. Instead, QVC are gearing up for the holiday gift-giving season. Guaranteed not to offend anyone. Marvellous.
Anyway, pictures.
I went out for a walk yesterday morning. From the hotel, I walked down to Station Square and took the Monongahela Incline up the hill to take a look at the view which was, in the cold clear weather of yesterday, absolutely stunning.
On the third (north) view, you can see 1 PPG Place – the large glass building like a gothic castle. In the second image, you can see the river junction and beyond that, the (American) football stadium which is where the Steelers will be entertaining the Cincinatti Bengals tonight. It should be ‘interesting’ because the Steelers are one of the few NFL teams (as I understand it) stil playing on grass; most of the other teams play on astroturf. In the game on Monday, after a bout of heavy rain, the recently returfed pitch became a bit of a mess. The Steelers won by the odd field goal (or so I’m reliably informed). Everyone was hoping for a dry day, but guess what? It’s chucking it down!
In the last picture, there’s a train on the South side of the river. The end of it is bottom left. I wanted to get a shot with the complete train in it. The loco pair is somewhere up near the Tyne Bridge look-a-like in the distance. My hotel is on the same side near the yellow suspension bridge and it’s just visible in this shot.
That’s it from Pittsburgh for the time being. The IT head at Corporate is on about possibly making these meetings quarterly which would be a good move. It’s the first time I can remember that all the applications people have been around the table together, European, US East and West coasts. If this happens again, I suspect I’ll end up combining it with a trip to North Carolina.
yesterday, I got my first taste of real live North American Ice Hockey after 15 years of watching the sport. Whilst I’m over here in Pittsburgh, I went to see an ECHL game; the Johnstown Chiefs playing the Cincinatti Cyclones (thanks to Bob and Robyn for the hospitality).
Johnstown is a couple of hours drive outside Pittsburgh and has two claims to fame (if that’s the correct term). The first dates from 1889 when the community was devastated when South Fork Dam collapsed, killing over 2000 people in the town. The second (and more relevant to me) was that the town and its ice hockey team were used as the basis for the 1977 film Slapshot starring Robert Redford.
Enough of the history, what about the game?
About 10 minutes in to the first in a packed auditorium (3700), I’d already decided that it looked like the Cyclones were going to take the honours. They just seemed so much more of a cohesive unit than the Chiefs. I then looked at the team standings; the Cyclones were next to the top, Chiefs next to the bottom. No surprise there then?!
There were three fights. Every incident saw the the protagonists get 5 each for fighting. The sad thing was that it seemed like the fights were there because the audience expected it. There never seemed to be any real commitment to fight, There wasn’t anything serious that led up to it. It was almost as if there was a tacit agreement between the teams that there’d be three fights. Other than that, there were only a handful of minor penalties. The Chiefs got a minute or so of 5 on 3 at one stage and couldn’t capitalise on it. In fact,the first two periods were goal-less and I wondered for a while if I was going to see a 0-0. Mid way through the third, the Cyclones broke the duck to major boo-ing from the audience and chants of “Cyclones suck!”… not any behaviour I’d expect to witness at a game back home. A round of polite applause and more rousing noise for the home team is the usual course of events.
Despite the Chiefs pulling their goalie for the last 60 seconds, they couldn’t get through the Cyclones defence and the almost inevitable empty-net goal resulted in a final scoreline of Chiefs 0 – 2 Cyclones.
An interesting experience… Having witnessed it, I think I can honestly say I prefer the atmosphere we generate at our home games. It’s probably distinctly “european” (as I’ve been forced to think of myself this week as I’ve been representing the European efforts at our Corporate office), but european or not, it’s ours.
