May 15 2010

Beer, Brilliant Buddy Bears And Babies

Category: FriendsChrisM @ 2:05 am

DanC is back in town for a few days, so we are hoping to meet up on Saturday and see how his family is doing. The other Dan (DanD) will be joining us after his daughters finish their afternoon nap, by which time I hope to have had a few relaxing beers (one advantage of not driving over here), some barbecued beef, and then we’ll all move on to Bayterek to have a look at some brilliant buddy bears. Hopefully the walk will be healthy, as beer and shashlik aren’t known for their fat/calorie free content 🙂 Why all the letter B’s in this post? No idea TBH, but the buddy bears started this whole alliteration theme…

In case I forget to blog on them, or we end up not going there for some reason, here is a quick summary –

Buddy Bears Almost In Astana (Mock-Up)

The Buddy bears have arrived in Astana! There are 125 brightly painted bears standing in between Baiterek and Keyruen shopping centre. They stand at over 2 meters high painted by famous artists from all over the world, each one representing a country. They are an event of the ‘Germany in Kazakhstan’ programme and will be displayed until July.

(suggested meeting date and time information cut from original e-mail, my thanks to the Astana International Women’s Club for sending Irina this information)

Take a look at the website http://www.buddy-baer.com/united-buddy-bears/world-tour/astana-2010.html for more info and some great pictures.

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6 Responses to “Beer, Brilliant Buddy Bears And Babies”

  1. Oleg Frantsuzov says:

    I like the new design.

    (The slowpoke is sooo slow.)

  2. ChrisM says:

    Who is assigned the label of slowpoke, and they are slow in what respect?
    If you, and commenting on the new look, it has only been around a week or so 🙂
    Glad you like the design, it isn’t exactly how I want it, but a lot closer than I could get with xMark, and as the author gave up on any updates (3rd column misplaced on pages (vs. posts) in IE) for xMark, I thought it was time to switch, especially as I was purging all PHP files from the server after the infection.
    Still surprised that no updates were released for xMark, as she is the author of a respected book on WP (Dummy’s Guide To WordPress).

  3. Alex C says:

    On the theme – seeing as this is being discussed here – are you going to customize it some more? It feels like it’s missing something after the last one.

    On the buddy bears – I see now! At first I thought they were a load of people dressed up, which shows I should really read your posts in order. They are like the painted sheep that were displayed dotted around a city/town in Switzerland/Amsterdam (some foreign country I visited at some point in my life). Wow, my memory is bad but I seem to recall a similar theme with different animals and not necessarily all in the same place. I might even recall something like this in Wales (though that’s still a foreign country lol).

  4. ChrisM says:

    Missing something? I deliberately dropped a couple of widgets that didn’t provide anything for the blog, and a couple of backend plugins, but other than considering using a header image, what would you like to see added?
    More (real, the one above is a mock up) pictures of the buddy bears to come.

  5. Alex C says:

    Yes, a header image or logo or something would definitely brighten it up. Your x-mark one had an x thingy at the top. Perhaps a big yellow smiley face 🙂
    I know you are a fan of less is more but a little bit of useless funk wouldn’t hurt too much.
    Lol, it’s definitely a sign of how I take a while to adjust to change – my brain finds it difficult to accept the sidebar has swapped sides! “something…clunk…is not…clunk…quite right…clunk (clunk = cogs in brain getting momentarily jammed by confusion)!

  6. ChrisM says:

    That x in the old theme was just the default. If I get some spare time, I’ll try and find/create/bodge (more likely) some sort of header that is red-based.

    Useless funk can hurt, especially if you use plugins to achieve it. Longer loader times, more CPU throttling from Bluehost on your server, more likely visitors will close the tab as the site is taking its time to render. But yeah, a 1/2 house would be best I guess.