Whilst randomly googling to find a way to try and insert the phrase ‘mortgage lenders‘ into a post (I didn’t have any personal news that involved finances), I came across two little gems. The first is related, in that sub prime mortgages were originally those that had favourable (below prime rate) interest rates - it [...]

Whichever type of pollen my hay fever reacts to is currently in the air here in Astana. Although the severity has dropped off over the years, I still have issues with my eyes during summer months, both in Britain and Kazakhstan. The other day I was at Ira’s parents, and some sort of dust from [...]

So, coming up to two years since this site was first created (thanks to MattG, who even paid for the domain and originally hosted it for me!), what do I now know about what to look for in an ideal web hosting provider?
Well, although a good price is often most people’s first priority, it is [...]

Whilst going through the games CDs lying around, I came across a bunch of ROMs for various consoles I’ve owned in the past, when I realised that I had not seen any news about an xbox 360 emulator on the internet yet. I did a little searching, and found there isn’t likely to be a [...]

Whilst going through ALL the posts on this blog (more on that later), I have been taking breaks by confirming all the applications and games I recently installed are actually working OK. Although some are pretty old, the playability of the older titles means I’ve not discarded them over the years. Although using the big [...]

Companies that deal with foreclosure helping those that have fallen behind in their mortgage payments, try to avoid a private individual from losing their home. Refinancing, securing new agreements with the original lender, or even bankruptcy are options to be looked at, though the law can vary from one state to another in America. In [...]

Irina and I have finally finished watching series four and five of the UK TV series Shameless. The drama has been maturing, and the writer doesn’t yet seem to have run too dry with ideas for plots. Whilst some elements have seemed a little out of character, for example Norma has become a lot weaker [...]

Our kittens (Kara especially) love to find inanimate household objects, and kidnap them for future use as toys. Whether they hide stashes of Papermate pens or lighters and coins, we eventually find them chewed up, under the sofa or bed. At first, I either tidied them up or threw them away if they were beyond [...]

I have just been using a util to check the Alexa ranks for all my web sites. Without exception, all of those that have enough visitors to actually register within Alexa’s calculations, have seen their rank increase by around 5% (so slightly less visitors were recorded). That said, at least the one on acne has [...]

Head on over to Alex’s blog (Dryadmusings DOT com) for more details, but it looks as though she will not be able to make it Britain this year unfortunately. Despite looking around for the best flight deals possible, the fact that the Olympics are in Asia this year means that her flights’ price have increased. [...]

Kazakhstan recently tightened up car regulations. For example, the main and front side windows can no longer have tinted glass. This has led to policeman pulling over even posh looking cars, with important businessmen in the back, and instructing the chauffeur he can not continue the journey until he strips off the film. Quite what [...]

Because of the geometry and colour of the elliptical shapes in the following picture, it appears as though the whole image is fluttering like a flag.
If your monitor’s resolution or browser window size means the image is clipped, just click it see the image in isolation.

Another example of such illusions is below. If your brain [...]

My back has finally settled down again after the mysterious strain it picked up on our last day in Amsterdam. Whilst recovering, I was reminded of one of the first jobs I had - paperboy. Come wind, rain or snow, you would find me delivering newspapers to people who would throw out half the sections [...]

As readers will know from past posts, I got a new phone this Christmas to replace my old PDA, phone and bluetooth GPS unit. It has already been pretty useful for the obvious things like getting directions with route finding software, finding out where I was with Google maps, and marking places of interest for [...]

So, I still officially have a little Birthday money left over, as I didn’t buy anything whilst in Britain. I thought about getting a DVD video recorder (as in a standalone AV unit, not connected to a PC), or a simple surround sound system setup. Didn’t get either, as in the first case I hadn’t [...]

If you are currently looking at the range of sitemap generators specifically available for WordPress blogs, then I can recommend the (free) Google XML Sitemaps plugin - you can download it at www.arnebrachhold.de/projects/wordpress-plugins/google-xml-sitemaps-generator . In case you are interested/concerned, it does actually generate valid sitemaps that can be read by MSN, Ask and Yahoo as [...]

Although not complete yet, I was given a sneak preview of how a new recommend web hosts site would look. Click the link to see the basic idea, where there are currently three such companies awarded the ‘recommended’ status. Had these companies not been known to me, I’d be a little weary of suggesting you [...]

If you find yourself on the lookout for tactical gear, then LA Police Gear’s web site might be just what you need. My first reaction upon encountering the term was that only law enforcement agencies would be interested, however, many of them (I liked the Jimi wallet particularly) seemed like practical solutions to those who [...]

Did you know that an anagram of ‘Poorest Genre’ is progesterone? Well I didn’t, until I went to an anagram server (just google ‘Anagram’ and click on the first result), and entered the term. Why did I do that? Because I was assigned a job to write a blog post with the word progesterone in [...]

If you are a baseball fan, then you probably already know that the Cubs from Chicago travel to Houston soon to play against the Astros again. Followers of the Cubs’ recent games will be hoping that pitcher Chris Sampson manages to regain earlier form; his recent efforts have hardly been outstanding, and some are beginning [...]