Indiana Jones

This looks like it could be fun...

Plus I wanted to see if I could embed this on my blog. How cool is that?

Dave

Noisy Americans

Last Saturday we took a trip to Greenwich to see what was there. It's not far from Peckham/Nunhead, so we took the 177 bus. It's one of those fun double decker buses.

On the way, Kelly was sitting near the front with the two little ones. The older two were standing with me towards the middle of the bus where there is some open space for push-chairs (strollers) and shopping trolleys. We had both of our push-chairs with us.

Our little darlings (as my mum calls them) have some little dolls that they like to play with. Usually that involves them talking baby-talk for them. And they were doing that this day on the bus. As they were getting more and more into it, and having more and more fun, they were getting louder and louder.

I looked over at my oldest and said, in a joking way,"Noisy Americans". I didn't use an accent, but with only two words, one might not be certain if there is an accent to be heard. One nice old lady sitting right by me looked up and said,"I was just saying that to my friend here." And then she realized that I was probably their father, guarding the push-chair, joking with my daughter, and she got quite embarrassed, and said,"Oh, sorry." 

I forgave her and just smiled.

Dave

The Last Leg

I have about 7 weeks left in this adventure and I'm feeling a bit conflicted.

On one hand, I have lots of work to do and I'm very busy all the time. I'm really enjoying the work and being in London. I feel pretty comfortable getting around, which is a big shift from when I started this.

Today, I got to the train station and the computer that runs the electronic sign was down, so the sign only showed the time, not which trains were coming next. But I knew that any train that stopped and was going north would take me to London Bridge, so I just waited for a couple of minutes and hoped on. Sure enough, I made it to London Bridge with no trouble.

When I got downstairs to the Underground, though, the train that was standing at the platform was packed and clearly not going anywhere soon. Then an announcement came that there was a power supply failure and that the Jubilee line was suspended. The cool thing was that I knew how to hop over to the Northern Line, switch to the Central Line, and get myself to work. Amazingly, I was still arrived early! I don't think I could have done that 5 months ago without a lot of head-scratching and asking for a lot of help.

At work, I'm down to the "let's get this done and make a movie" part of the project. This is the part where all the research should be done, all the ideas tried and sifted through, and now it's just down to execution. I still have some researching and methods to try, so I hope to get that out of the way quickly, but in all, I'm pretty close. And we're getting lots of pretty pictures out, which is fun. 

BTW, there's a new trailer out that played during the Super Bowl. My shot didn't make it into this cut, but there's about 8 frames of the werewolf and hag from Aslan's How, which is kind of cool.

But on the other hand, I'm starting to really look forward to going home and getting back to my "real" life. I really feel as if I'm in another world like Narnia, and it's almost time for me to go through the magic door back to my world. And I also feel like Peter, knowing that it's ok. It's not really homesickness, because I don't feel that disconnected from California. But there's a longing for the familiar and comfortable.

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling at this point. I guess I'm mostly sharing this with myself; so that in a year or so, I can look back at this and remember what I was feeling at the time.

Dave

Snow Watch 2008

The BBC and The Weather Channel are both predicting snow this weekend, but they don't agree on when or how much. The BBC says it will start Saturday night, and be heavy snow on Sunday, but the Weather Channel says light snow on Monday.

We'll see. 

The salt is still in piles on the sidewalk (pavement) in front of our house, but I don't know if it's still any use. They might reuse it, I think it'll still work.

Hmm... Can you tell I have my doubts?

Dave

Jan 31 Update - Heavy rain today, but no snow.

Feb 2 Update - No snow. No forecast for any either. Oh well.

Whirlwind Tour

My parents came over from California to visit us for five days. We had the most glorious, exhausting vacation that I've had in a long time.

They arrived last Thursday around lunchtime. I had hired a driver to take us and their luggage back to our house. I used the same company that we used when Kelly and the kids came. When he didn't show up, I called the company to ask what was going on. After searching through their records, they found that I had booked the car for Friday. Oops! They found another driver, who came and picked us up and brought us home.

They spent Thursday night with us in the kids' room, while the kids moved to the extra bedroom.

Friday morning, we got up early and walked up to Queens Road Peckham train station and took four trains to Canterbury. What an amazing trip that was. We had two suitcases for the six of us, and all of my parent's luggage and two strollers. Each time we changed trains, we had to go up a flight of stairs, across the tracks, and down another flight of stairs.

But when we got to Canterbury, I realized that I wasn't sure how to get to the hotel from the train station. I asked the gal who worked at the little coffee bar in the station if she knew where the Castle House Hotel was. She wasn't sure, but guessed that it must be one of the ones right across the bridge. After asking which bridge and where it was, I went on a quick scouting run across the footbridge that is right across from the station. It turns out that the bridge takes you across the four lane road that circles the city and over to the ancient wall of the city! I followed along the wall to the main opening (which would have been the city gates in the old days) and there was our hotel. It is where the guard house of the city would have been, and right across the gate from a 1,000 year old Norman keep. It was awesome.

The hotel was a nice little bed and breakfast. The rooms were big, but in normal English fashion, the floors were neither flat nor level. But other than that, it was fun to stay there.

That afternoon (Thursday) we walked around the city of Canterbury. The streets are exactly what you would expect of an British town, cobblestones, narrow winding streets, buildings making canyons. I was kind of excited to see the Cathedral, even though it is a big time Catholic place, but no one else was interested in paying money to see a church. I understood. And after they weren't into it, neither was I. We took plenty of pictures from outside the grounds. It is the tallest thing in the town, so you can see it pretty much where ever you go, which is the point I think. I was actually very surprised at myself for wanting to see this Catholic Cathedral. I think that just the architecture and antiquity of it drew me there.

The next day we took a quick train down to Dover to see Dover Castle. THAT was a great experience. We started with a tour of the secret wartime tunnels that were used in WWII to first extract over 330,000 soldiers from Normandy and then plan and launch D-Day from. We couldn't take any pictures on that tour, but it was a great tour.

After that, we walked up to the keep (which is the center of the castle) and walked around. Then I realized we could go in and explore all through the castle. It was so awesome! It was like walking into the book that I had read to my family just after Christmas about castles. And we could even get up on the roof and look down. What a great place.

That night we got back to Canterbury, and had fish and chips at a nice restaurant, called "The Deep Blue".

Sunday we got up and dragged all our luggage through the town because the station we wanted to use was at the other end of town. But that meant that we didn't have to change trains to get back to Waterloo station.

My parents stayed at the Marriott at County Hall, which is the most fabulous hotel I've ever been in. The view from their window was of Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, and some Star Wars Stormtroopers left over from the Star Wars exhibit that we had just missed. We ate take out from shop across the street right in their room, partly because we were all too tired to go anywhere, and partly because the view was so spectacular.

Monday we went on the London Eye. That was great. I loved seeing the city from that high. Then we went on the "Big Bus Tour" around London and had a fun tour guide.

Tuesday, we went on the "Big Bus Tour" again, but got off at Oxford Street and Regent Street. From there we walked over to Framestore and I gave them the quick tour. Then we went down to a great place called,"Hummous Bros." for dinner.

Wednesday morning, I went up and met them at their hotel before they left for the airport and sent them off. It was a whirlwind trip, but it was VERY fun.

I'll post some pictures later, but I wanted to get this outline posted since I haven't written in a while.

Dave

International Keyboards - The Undo

I got moved today into a real office. My desk is right by the window. I'm in a room with two other Houdini artists and a Maya FX TD.

But when the systems guys hooked up my computer, my newly acquired SGI keyboard didn't work. I had to revert to a British keyboard.

It was short lived, but it was good while it lasted. I may spend some time tomorrow trying to troubleshoot this problem.

Dave

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

Kelly took this one of me, just after I bought a little bag of chestnuts from a guy who was roasting them right there on the sidewalk. You can see him just behind me to the right wearing a white hat. The sign above him says,"ROASTED CHESTNUTS". 

I had never had chestnuts before. They seem a bit like small baked potatoes or very large soft peanuts. I liked them, but in the end it was more nostalgia than anything else.

Kelly and I both really like this picture. I love how everyone is swirling and blurry behind me and that I'm all lit up by the flash. This is how I feel walking around a lot of the time, just a big blur all around me.

Dave