Biltmore again

Posted on by Ian C.

We’ve visited Biltmore House in NC once before (back in 2011) and I note writing back then that photos inside the house weren’t allowed – well I certainly took a lot of interior photos on this visit and no-one told me off!

We spent about five hours in total, walking through the huge house interior and also a lot of the grounds including the conservatory – as you can see it’s a bit early in the year for the gardens but it’s still lovely (I do however struggle with the almost $90/person cost!) …

Here’s some house / interior photos:

And photos of the grounds and the conservatory …

Hard Rock Punta Cana

Posted on by Ian C.

My company is having their 30th anniversary this year (!) and to celebrate flew everyone to the Dominican Republic for four nights at the all-inclusive Hard Rock hotel/casino … it’s quite a nice place with spacious rooms but it’s huge and stupidly busy in the evenings (multiple hour waits for dinner at many locations!). It’s also on the Atlantic side of the island and never during the time we were there was it safe to go in the ocean (red-flagged constantly).

Here’s a selection of photos I took – one morning I walked the entire perimeter (more than 1-1/2 miles) taking photos to show what it’s like; there’s also some views of my room, and the mini golf area (which has a LOT of water traps!)

And finally (thanks, Amy), a group photo of [almost] all the PGT folks at the beach (where we never got in the ocean because it was always too rough!):

Thunderbirds The Abominable Snowman

Posted on by Ian C.

More than 9 years ago I had the chance to see “behind the scenes” of some Thunderbirds episodes being created, specifically what eventually was published as The Abominable Snowman as one of three “anniversary episodes” created using audio recordings from the original Thunderbirds team combined with newly filmed footage to create a full length program!

Those videos have just recently been published for everyone on YouTube:

With The Abominable Snowman now available to all, I feel that it’s ok to put some [more] of my photos from that visit online – when I originally posted, I didn’t want to show too much in case it spoiled anything, but that was quite a long time ago, now …