I recently came across Mod My Life, a site where you can suggest what a real person does, on the street, and watch the results with (almost) live streaming video. A bit like some sort of reality TV show, but without the ad breaks, and no premium rate calls to vote on which suggestion should be implemented. btw, this post isn’t sponsored, the site just really caught my attention. Head on over here to see what I’m talking about. Which reminds me, if you see a post of mine with a link like here, there, article or some other nondescript term, it is safe to assume I’m not getting paid to mention it
wow, just tried to find a blog category I could file this under. None to be found. Also re-discovered some I’ve not used in a long time. I think I need to tidy them up some time. Probably after the Amsterdam and UK trip. Wow #2 - I think I’ve probably managed to go a week or two without boring my readers with more reminders about my upcoming trip. Wonders will never cease…
Came across this blog, and though you might like to check it out. In the same way as pwned refers to a situation where one person or object has thoroughly bettered another, fail (a little more obviously) refers to a situation where someone or something’s endeavour has not gone according to plan.
Arguably that picture could have been in a pwned collection as well.
Took me a couple of seconds to work out where the ‘fail’ was in that one
Click the link to see more photos (otherwise the main blog page would take too long to load) Continue Reading »
Whilst searching for some online radio stations to tune into whilst in Amsterdam (assuming I can find an unencrypted WiFi spot near our apartment), I came across WorldTalkRadio.com. I remember in the early days of TalkRadio (a specific radio station in Britain, now renamed and re-orientated to TalkSport) listening to some of the phone ins, and being amazed at the spectrum of subjects covered. WorldTalkRadio has one show run by the people behind SkinHealthToday.com, strangely enough on the topic of Skin care. Take a moment to check the sites out, Ctrl+D if you are interested in the topic or even subscribe to their e-mail list (to do so, click along to their blog and provide your address). The shows are broadcast each Thursday, midday (Pacific Standard Time). Unless 12.00pm actually means midnight? In either case, should you miss one broadcast, they are archived on the site, so you can listen at your leisure. I’m going to tune in and see if they recommend anything for dry patches following alcohol the night before
Thanks to a member over at an Amsterdam forum for this video…
I can’t work out if the cigarette the skipper smokes at the end is just tobacco, or with a relaxant added, and whether she is drunk whilst on the canal, or just nervous? I do love her reasoning that it was the weather that caused problems. Anyway, we’re hoping to catch a St. Nick’s boat club trip on the canals this April, we’ll let you know how it goes.
My thanks to Cheese over at the VDF forum for pointing these out to me. The first video is Bobby Burns’ track - “I’m From Holland”. Why NSFW? It has the ‘F’ word multiple times, so if you have headphones or turn your speakers down, you should be fine - no naked ladies or anything
The second video is made by Boom Chicago, a comedy troupe based in Amsterdam, basically a parody of Bobby Burns’ vid, with a few stereotypical insights into Dutch life. Once again, NSFW due to F word usage.
If we have the time and money, I’m hoping Ira and I can go to the Boom Chicago theatre to catch their improv show, though this time we’ll eat somewhere (cheaper) first to save a little money on the tickets.
For our upcoming trip to Britain and Amsterdam, we ended up finding the cheapest deal was to buy tickets from two separate suppliers (travel o city and ex pedia (without the spaces, but I’m not giving them free keyword advertising without knowing how their service turns out first )).
Anyway, one supplier just sent an e-ticket, as is normal, however the other decided we couldn’t pick up the tickets from our airport, or have handy e-tickets, so we had to pay an extra 60/70 pounds to get them DHLed. DHL have just phoned Ira, and stated that the courier is on his way, so in a few minutes, I’ll hopefully have the tickets for TSE>FRA>AMS AMS>AMA>TSE (Astana - Frankfurt - Amsterdam and the return trip of Amsterdam - Almaty (the old capital, still better served by international flights) - Astana) in my hands. The AMS - CDF and later CDF - AMS (Amsterdam to Cardiff, Wales and return) tickets were electronic, so they are already sorted.
As the apartment owner in Amsterdam has already confirmed receipt of the required deposit via PayPal, this trip is slowly coming together Just Ira’s visas for Britain and the Netherlands (a schengen visa) left now. If only Kazakhstan would accept dual citizenship, such holidays would have been so much simpler if we both had UK passports. There you go
Almost all the details are now sorted… We have bought the plane tickets, paid a deposit on the Apartment, now we just need to sort out a pet-sitter again. Either that or re-unit Karra and Muska with their Mum (Dasha) and younger sister (Tishka) that they’ve never met. Ira thinks 4 cats in one house would be too much work for her parents, so perhaps Mira fancies trying out living on her own again?
Anyway, see below for a map of the general area we’ll be staying in.
Sadly Alex and Mat won’t be coming this year, as was originally hoped, as their flights cost even more than ours. btw, congrats to Alex - Dryad Musings has just got an Alexa rank… around 12 million, but that is better than the dreaded ‘no data’. At one point this site almost broke into the 200k region, but since then its bounced back up to the million mark again. Which is a little odd, as my unique visitors per month have been steadily increasing, but there you go. ChrisD (who doesn’t have a blog, so doesn’t get a hyperlinked name ) can’t come either, as his new work randomly tests its employees, and he is worried about passive smoking whilst he drinks.
The apartment we are renting has internet access, but it is wired, so unless Ira’s laptop comes for the journey, we’ll in communicado for a while (my PDA/phone has WiFI and BT, but is obviously lacking an RJ45 socket LMAO)
Anyway, enough on Amsterdam for now, I’m sure I’ll be boring you with more info a lot more over the coming weeks…
Quick explanation for those of you who thought I had given up on posting here, or had no internet access - I am currently still deep in the process of setting up my other 18 sites. They were originally created as static (well almost, too long a story to recount here) pages, and whenever I needed to make amendments, it tended to take a long time. Deciding to swap hosts, I took the opportunity to also use WordPress as a CMS system for these sites. This has meant a fair amount of preparatory work; I am now manually importing each old article into individual blog posts, tidying up the strange snippets of code that snuck in here and there, and then finally tweaking the theme for each to get what I need. I’ve completed this process on about 1/3 of the sites, however in terms of work, I am only 1/5 done at max - some of the sites only have 50 or so articles to import, whilst the ones left are closer to 200
Anyway, once this process is complete, I’m hoping to start earning some money from them again (the reason they were originally created), and any future amendments will be a lot easier to carry out, be it on an individual page, or site-wide. Until then, this blog will continue to be updated less frequently. Sorry.
I still have a large back log of posts to write here, ranging from the ‘missing’ book reviews, last year’s Amsterdam trip reports, and a lot of Eating Out posts, since meeting Oz Dave, Chris2 and Eric.
Finally, although not as concrete as I originally hoped, a trip to Amsterdam and short time in Britain is still a possibility around my birthday (4/20 for any American schmokers reading this 20th April for anyone else). Since the ACD (Amsterdam Coffeeshop Directory) forums are still down, and Channels.nl is getting ever more full of trolls, I decided to source a new site for reliable information…
Virtual ‘Dam is looking good so far (Nope, not another sponsored post, just happy to recommend the site to others interested in all things related to Amsterdam.)
Nothing at all concrete yet, but it looks as though Ira and I may be going to Amsterdam for my birthday, hopefully fitting in a short hop over to Britain as well. I need to start looking at the cost of apartments, canal houses and hotel rooms, as well as the flights. Last time I went to Amsterdam, it actually turned out cheaper to buy one return ticket to Amsterdam from Astana, and then a completely separate return flight from Amsterdam and back again to London. Dialaflight have many cheap flights on offer, and if we fly to Britain first, their site could help out with the flight to the netherlands. They also cover a lot of other destinations, with a flight to Cyprus easily discovered. Whilst some may find Cyprus exotic, I prefer Holland myself, and this time I’m hoping to actually make it to the sights I missed last time, such as the Anne Frank house, the Escher museum and maybe take in a canal boat trip.
