Jul 28 2010

Flashing The Day Away!

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 10:50 pm

While Irina was not at home today, I spent most of my time flashing. Rather than calling the local authorities though, you should just nod and say “maladyets”.

The flashing consisted of SharpFin-ing (if it isn’t a verb, it should be) my Logik IR-100 internet radio, as well as my HTC TyTn II / Kaiser.

The internet radio has been unable to play BBC Radio on demand programs for more than a few minutes ever since April/May. Given that over here in Kazakhstan, the main reason I want the radio on is to catch up with UK based news programs and a little light comedy before falling asleep, the device was quickly losing any reason for using mains power up. I had wanted to apply a 3rd party update to the radio for a while, but whilst it was able to complete 95% of my requests without problem, I couldn’t justify risking bricking the thing. Not only is it no longer on sale back home, similar devices cost between two and five times as much, so had I cocked up and ended up with plastic box that did nothing, I’d have felt highly agrieved.
Now that the new linux components are installed and working OK, I can select different firmwares from Reciva (the company that runs the online access portal for it), play media files locally from a thumb drive, and even remotely administer it from my PC. There is only one (internal) USB socket on the motherboard, which is normally occupied by a caseless WiFi adaptor, however with a little brute force on a rear plastic grill, a USB hub that wasn’t used for anything important (only USB 1.1), and a few minutes re-checking procedures, Cygwin re-installation and telnetting, the radio has reprieved it’s binward journey. To get to this point, I did switch from Windows 7 to XP (problems with services blocking ports), at which point a different error appeared. Whilst fixing this DLL dependency problem, Anna decided to press the reset button the PC. When logging back in to XP, it appeared that the unscheduled reboot had caused a corrupt file. Luckily Vista saved the day (most likely the first and last time you’ll read that phrase without sarcasm on this blog.) Not only did the subterfuge of making the radio think my PC was a Reciva server, and so it could therefore accept my modifications, but it has proven the most stable and error free OS on my PC today. Obviously I didn’t actually boot into Ubuntu as I’m not comfy enough with it yet to try flashing other devices from it.
So, on to the second and slightly more fear-filled flashing incident today… my phone. As previously mentioned, the screen isn’t touchable in a few places due to a dodgy repair carried out by professionals back in Britain (need to contact them soon), and I was interested to find out what differences I could expect from the next phone we’re getting, which will have Windows Mobile 6.5, rather than 6.1. Given that I have a few backup phones that function perfectly well as phones, if not enterntainment/productivity enhnancing devices, I decided to take the plunge and see if I could hit two for two in terms of not killing lumps of plastic and silicon today. Skipping the usual routine of killing off processes in Windows to allow deeper access to the phone, I dumped the renamed ROM onto the microSD card, and told the phone to get on with it. No problems yet, though it is still very early days. The new interface is interesting, but I deliberately chose a light weight ROM with nearly all apps and bells and whistles removed. I’m slowly going through the process of reinstalling important apps (where simply re-creating shortcuts to the still present programs on the memory card won’t suffice), and I’ve not yet had to try and figure out how to text/call/live stream videos etc. in a rush, but I’m happy to know that the Touch Pro 2 from HTC will have this same OS version at it’s core, even if the interface will be bells and whistled to the hilt :)
Before I forget, welcome back home to Mum, John, Aunty Jean and Uncle Pete. Their well planned break took an early diversion, but more on that in the coming days.
Right, I’m off for now as I need to boot back into XP and re-sync contacts etc. from Outlook, so feel free to check out the rest of this page for a lot of photos and videos of Anna back when she was in Britain.

Jul 27 2010

Opening Presents With Nick

Category: Anna's Videos — ChrisM @ 2:22 am

Still in Evehsam at Dad’s place (the same evening (12th March 2010) as the duck feeding video), Nick came over to say hello. He had a job interview in Cheltenham, so we decided to all converge at Dad’s at the same time. Roz couldn’t make it as she was very close to giving birth to Anna’s cousin at the time. Nick bought up all the Christmas and Birthday presents that we hadn’t been able to receive whilst in Kazakhstan, and Anna seemed to enjoy another paper ripping ceremony :) . I look forward to using mine in earnest when Winter once more hits Astana, and Anna still plays with hers regularly. The Big Hungry Caterpillar is also a big hit with Anna, and I’m very glad Nick and Roz got it, as it seems to be a “proper” childrens’ book to me :) The hand puppets and toys also get played with often, and Anna seemed to lose interest in the wrapping paper and sellotape very quickly…
Obviously since the clip was taken, we now know that the baby was a beautiful boy (Jack), but Nick and Roz didn’t know that at the time. PS Nick, it has been a good 15 years or so since I studied French, but I’m pretty sure they have male and female endings to words, and it is German that has neutral as well? ;-P The last of the three clips shows me trying on all my Christmas presents at the same time. It wasn’t cold in the house :)

Jul 27 2010

Portable Presents

Category: Interesting — ChrisM @ 2:20 am

Once I’ve finished writing these posts, and at least drafted a fair few more of Anna’s photos and video entries, I need to make sure I look through the list of laptops that are currently available from local retailers. Irina still seems reasonably happy with hers, and I can’t justify buying one for myself, but someone in Irina’s family has a birthdy soon. Actually as she doesn’t read English, and probably knows already what she is getting, I can reveal it is Ira’s Mum. She doesn’t want a full size desktop-replacement laptop, nor something from the limited range of netbooks that you can find in Kazakhstan. She would like something reasonably powerful, not too heavy to cart around, and it will mainly be used to access the internet and manipulate her photos, as she doesn’t get much time usually to go all the way to the top floor and use the normal PC in our bedroom. I have a basic idea of what to aim for, but I need to check which technologies have made it here to Astana, and aren’t overpriced either.

Jul 27 2010

Evesham Ducks Again

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 2:19 am

Not much to add in this post, text wise. Still the 12th of March 2010, in Evesham, around the river feeding ducks.
This isn’t combined with the previous video post as it makes running Anna’s site a little easier that way. I’ll get round to fixing that potential duplicate post importing issue another day.

Jul 27 2010

Feeding The Ducks At The River In Evesham

Category: Anna's Videos — ChrisM @ 2:13 am

Copying the activities from a week before, here we are in Evesham (I’m reliabily informed by Wikipedia that some locals refer to their hometown as Asum??) feeding the ducks once more. The river Avon winds it’s way through a lot of Britain, and you can get to the area shown in the video by walking through the old Abbey grounds.
There are some tables near there, so if we ever visit Britain in the summer, we could probably take a picnic down there, and really give the ducks something to quack about with the breadcrumbs :) However, the 12th of March isn’t really sun bathing season, so we fed the ducks and moved on.
BTW, I didn’t plan on putting Anna’s dummy in a pile of bird seed, the idea was for Anna to take a handful to feed the ducks, however Irina had just asked her to hand the dummy over, and when Anna saw a palm in front of her, just followed the request (ignoring the Mamma part).
Obviously we cleaned up the dummy at home before returning it into general circulation. Anna normally only has the dummy in as she falls asleep, but we take it when there will be long trips in the pushchair, as it works well as a temporary pacifier. Which is why the Americans call it that I suppose?
Also, I was hovering around Anna as 1) She was very close to the river bank and 2) I vividly remember a goose snapping at my fingers as a child and so, along with bees & wasps, I am convinced that they’ll attack Anna if I’m not there to protect her :) Though Anna should probably know that once she is capable of running well, and flapping her arms in the air like Daddy does when he sees something black and yellow buzzing around, she might be best to assume I’ll stop pretending that I’m anything other than a big girl when it comes to bees and wasps. I’ll jump in front of a raging bull/speeding car/other dangerous thing I can’t think of right now, but once Anna learns to run, and wants to run away from bees/wasps, she may find her Dad joining her :)

Jul 27 2010

Petals For Pip?

Category: Friends,Interesting — ChrisM @ 2:07 am

Today is Pip’s birthday (well, WAS, in her timezone down under at least), and we didn’t get our selves organized in time over here to send her a card or even some flowers. I don’t know if moonpig have a .au sister site, but I’ll go and check now, in preparation for next time. Sometimes florists offer gifts online, like a free flower calander to entice you to try them out. I wonder what sort of pretty plants are in bloom in Australia right now? I’ll remember we owe Pip a drink the next time we’re in the same country, I suspect that may be better received than some chocolates or anything too girly, anyway :)
(OK, by the time I actually published this post, it was already the next day, however, I met Pip in Britain, and back there it is still yesterday. Sort of. Except they will call it today, just to confuse me. Think I might need some sleep soon?)

Jul 27 2010

Breakfast in Evesham

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 2:05 am

The next day from the previous post was the 12th of March, and we took a few shots of Anna at my Dad’s house during breakfast time. The highchair with no legs reference is to the portable seat you secure to a normal seat, and actually worked really well! Not much else to say for these photos, other than it they include a rare shot of Anna with a bib on without food being splattered everywhere. She is, of course, a lot less messy now. Usually :)

Jul 27 2010

Grandad And Anna

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 1:36 am

On the same day that we saw some friends in Cheltenham (11th of March), we had also set up camp in Evesham, over at my Dad’s house. He seemed very happy to see Anna, and she seemed totally content with the new surroundings to investigate. The year before when Anna had been there, she obviously hadn’t been able to move around really. In case you’re wondering, that is Anna’s little suitcase you can see in the bottom left hand corner there. Always have a good supply of toys with you at all times :) We were all waiting anxiously to discover whether we would soon have a new niece/nephew / grandson/granddaughter, as my younger brother (Nick) and Roz hadn’t discovered whether they were to be having a boy or a girl, and Nick came down that weekend as he had an interview in the area, and we didn’t know for sure whether we’d be able to cross paths again before our return to Kazakhstan, as for some reason babies don’t always arrive exactly when the doctors guess :)
Anyway, enough for now, I think there are some photos or videos of Nick still to come.

(My) Dad With Anna At Home

(My) Dad With Anna At Home

Jul 27 2010

From Pumping To Partying

Category: Interesting — ChrisM @ 1:26 am

When it comes to weight loss drinks that contain alcohol are sadly a no-no apparently. I guess that is why they don’t often have bars in fitness clubs and gyms, however the gym next door has the next best thing. If you have the money to pay the high price for membership, you can pop in before work in the morning, do some weights and swim a few lengths in the pool, head on in to your office, then return at night, as there is a nightclub there. We haven’t been back since they tried charging an incredible amount for a per person (non-refundable) deposit, in a similar manner to Royal Sports Betting Bar did, but I do like the fact that they have both virtuous and fun activities covered under one roof!

Jul 27 2010

Cheltenham Visit

Category: Anna's Photos,Friends — ChrisM @ 1:22 am

We did not have long in Cheltenham whilst we were in Britain, and as luck would have it, just before we left race week started, meaning travelling anywhere in the area could suddenly involve hundreds of cars on roads that were designed with about 1/10 of the traffic flow in mind. We did manage to meet up with a few people though, as you can see from the photo below, taken on the 11th of March. We were at Emma’s house and her daughter was a little star, playing with Anna and keeping her entertained :)

Emma And Ira With Families

Emma And Ira With Families

Jul 26 2010

Phones And Shiny Things

Category: Fashion,Interesting — ChrisM @ 10:50 pm

Carrying on with the mobile phone topic, we are currently trying to find the best online prices for the aforementioned HTC Touch Pro 2 and a Acer betouch E200 for Irina. The HTC device is still around on a few sites, but the Acer isn’t as easy to find a cheap reliable supplier for. You sometimes come across sites that display prices in British Pound Sterling, but ship from America or China, and as friends will be bringing the phone over for us, we need the delivery date to be concrete. I sometimes wish I had more faith in the Kazakh postal system, as there are sometimes great deals online. I imagine, for example, that if you are indeed buying wholesale diamonds would be a fair bit cheaper than just wandering into a random high street jeweller and asking for something. However anything of importance tends to be sent with people or if it is urgent, via a courier. Wholesale prices are, for now, out of our reach here.

Jul 26 2010

Arriving In Evesham

Category: Anna's Videos — ChrisM @ 10:48 pm

The 11th of March saw us visiting my Dad over in Evesham, and later some friends in Cheltenham. Apparently Anna had already had enough of being held that day, and she seemed to want to thoroughly investigate her Grandad’s house – she was barely a couple of months old when last there, so we can’t blame her for her curiosity. Anyway, we have about four videos left of Anna in Britain I think, and about fourteen more photo posts left to publish. I’ll try and complete another four or five pic/vid posts today.

Jul 26 2010

Bloated Memory

Category: Interesting,PDA — ChrisM @ 10:42 pm

I am currently installing a lot of (freeware) applications on my phone (an HTC TyTn II/Kaiser) trying to see which might be of interest when Irina and I get our new mobiles. If any of the programs cause real problems and make the phone buggy or sluggish with the touch screen interface, I’d rather have to do a hard reset and re-install on a device I’m already happy tweaking, and then have a final list of stable apps for the future, than risk mucking up the new models, and enforcing a quick weight loss program on them when I find incompatibilities with resource hungry applications. Having read 151 pages of a 162 page thread over at xda-developers.com regarding the device I would like to upgrade to (an HTC Touch Pro 2 (effectively a TyTn III)), I haven’t managed to find any insurmountable problems or quirks that are new to me. I have installed Andriod on the TyTn II to get an idea of what other handsets have to offer, but for the next couple of years, I am happy to stick with Windows Mobile 6.x . I don’t believe my new phone will be able to run Windows Phone 7 properly, Android still is a little immature for me (in terms of OS development), and I’m about as likely to get an iPhone as Bill Gates is to profess a love for all things Mac.

Jul 26 2010

Stairy Prisoner

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 10:40 pm

One of the few advantages with living in a flat when you have a baby is that you don’t need to worry about stair gates. I don’t know if you can get them easily here in Kazakhstan, but as soon as Anna was mobile and willing and able to start clambering up a step or two back in Britain, Mum got one. This turned into a great attraction for Anna who wanted to know how to open it. Despite a lot of vigorous shaking, pulling and drafting in Gwen for her expertise, Anna didn’t manage to make it up the stairs. So, here with the final shots taken on the 5th of March, Irina had noticed that Anna was looking quite cute up the stairs at her, so she grabbed the camera. I think it was Irina on the stairs, it might have been me?

Jul 26 2010

Missing Lights

Category: For The Home,Interesting — ChrisM @ 10:24 pm

Back to the topic of illumination once more, nothing as specific as wondering if Hinkley lighting have any approved retailers here in Astana, but I’ve just remembered that the EL style wire that was supposed to be installed when we moved into our flat is now approximately four years late in turning up. Whether the man in charge of initially decorating the flat was paid for the system or not, I’m not sure, but I do sometimes wonder what it would have looked like. If you’ve not knowingly come across Electro Luminescent wiring before, you may have seen it in some souped up computer cases where a distinct line of yellow, green or other pretty colour follows the contours of the case or creates pretty patterns. We have all the wiring and a switch in place, but the goods never turned up. Not sure if this was a customs problem, or if the foreign supplier just never came through?

Jul 26 2010

Soft Friends

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 10:22 pm

Earlier on in the day (5th of March still) from Anna’s box diving exercise, she had all her soft toys/teddies laid out around the flattened sheep that she loved to roll around on. Whether planning world domination, the intricacies of a double twist with three loops and a pike into the toy box later, or just have a general natter, I wasn’t privy to, but Anna seemed to enjoy having everything laid out in front of her, a theme which continues to this day most mornings; after breakfast she normally extracts most of the toys from her toy box in our flat, just ready for a barely awake Daddy to stumble over. Perhaps world domination starts with small steps?

Anna Has An Audience

Anna Has An Audience

Jul 26 2010

Fat Cats

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Interesting — ChrisM @ 10:16 pm

Despite our best efforts with Muska (one of our cats), she is still a walking billboard with the words “Does anyone knows of diet pills that work for cats?” Although Kara is nowhere near as bad, because they are both house cats (we live on the fourth floor, next a main road, and they have never been in the “wild”), they do tend to pile on the ounces quite easily. We cut down on the amount of wet food we put out each day, though the dry food is doled out when that dish is empty. Kara takes a lot longer to complain about empty bowls, but Muska will meow her most pathetic sounding cry if she is hungry, and even Anna will try and help by getting packets of the wet cat food from the cupboard and putting them (unopened) into a bowl if she hears Muska’s pitiful outbursts!

Jul 26 2010

Backyards, A Bench And Box Diving

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 10:04 pm

Moving onto the 5th of March, Anna had day filled with playing with her toys, getting some fresh air in the back yard by the utility room, and after another long walk all the way to the top of the back garden, a little chill out time on a bench. In the evening, her energy not yet drained, she decided to pull all the toys out of the toy box, and have a good look at the bottom of it. Unfortunately she was a little too eager and ended up flipping over and into the box. She recovered very quickly and after a little cry at the shock of finding her world temporarily upside-down, she stayed in the box for a few minutes. Finally deciding it was OK to take a quick snap shot of her, she decided to be upset again, so we put the camera down and gave her a hand out of her impromptu little castle setup.

Jul 26 2010

Keeping People In The Dark

Category: For The Home,Interesting — ChrisM @ 9:29 pm

I knew I had forgotten to do something back in Chubary, whilst we were with the in-laws. I tend to be the nominated lightbulb changer for the house, and although we occasioally have discussion over whether putting 100 watt bulbs in a fitting that states 60W is the maximum, and that bulbs for spotlights will not throw the light where they want, I normally get the various floors re-illuminated when they actually have spare bulbs. However I was supposed to grab a ladder to change some bulbs in the high-ceilinged living, and completely forgot. Hopefully they’ll not mind another few days without maximum illumination? Speaking of illumination, or the lack there of, remind me to post something I found out about satellite dishes and possible plans to leglislate for them here in Kazakhstan!

Jul 26 2010

Lakeside Bird Watching

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 9:28 pm

Just a little more than a fortnight since the last post with photos of Anna. Which reminds me, I need to check if AnnaMerriman.com is still picking these up automatically, and whether the plugin used will work when I upgrade her blog to WordPress 3.0. Anyway, this photo was taken in the same place and at the same time as the last video published on this blog – the 4th of March 2010. You’ll have to forgive me if I maybe skip putting 2010 for the rest of the posts today, and if you are new to this blog, and wonder why the date is included, I want Anna’s site to eventually be something we can show to her and say, look, five years ago today, this is how you looked, and what you were doing :)
So, over by the lake that was in the camp site Mum and John were previously at, here we have John and Anna looking at the birds. Anna seems to be momentarily distracted by something land based, but in general she does seem to like watching animals in the wild :)

Anna And John By A Lake With Some Birds

Anna And John By A Lake With Some Birds

Jul 26 2010

And Then On To Kazakh Photos And Videos…

Category: Interesting — ChrisM @ 9:13 pm

OK, so this week WILL be the week I catch up with a lot of Anna’s photo and videos from Britain. I have a few of the video based posts ready drafted, but I haven’t yet uploaded the photos. As I’m trying to keep them in date order, I’ll need to crack on with those. In the mean time, I have a few more posts that mention things like apidexin reviews to write as well, I just need to stay focused and write them all out. With the World Cup over now, I have less distractions/excuses to go out for a drink, so hopefully this week will see a large chunk of the backlog of posts published.

Wow.Rory=Roman soldier.Didn't C that coming.Catching up with Dr Who.Dr Who's"Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough speech".Cool (0)

Any1 else having problems with freewarepocketpc.net 's Omarket app? Randomly get "Connection failed!"etc. etc. msg. WiFi, EDGE, ActSync same (0)

Jul 21 2010

Skynet Has Your Car…

Category: Videos — ChrisM @ 12:37 am

Try as I might, I could get some flash videos/slideshows to embed properly on this site. Mainly because I was being naughty and just viewing the source code of the site they are hosted on, rather than simply pointing you in their direction

Ok, scratch the above paragraph. Someone has kindly uploaded the video to YouTube, though if you want to read more about it, or possibly see the video with higher quality, head on over to here.

Some people were complaining about the cost of maintenance for this setup, however in cities where space is at a premium, and too many buildings are landmarks/protected by law, I can see where this could be very useful. I doubt the charges are going to be any worse than Central London short stay car parks, anyway :)

Oh, and thanks to Stephen Fry for the original heads up on this system.

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