They have started showing films. Currently displaying Pirates of the Caribbean. Not sure if it is #1 or #2.
Also confirmed they are using 107.8MHz FM as the audio carrier for the film. Could be ± 0.2 MHz, the radio we tuned in on isn’t brilliant.
Photo itself isn’t brilliant, late at night, with no tripod
Below we have a zoomed in section showing the film itself
Oct 30 2006
Drive In Theatre Details Confirmed
Oct 30 2006
Went Out Saturday Night
And met up with a couple of fellow bloggers. You can check their sites by clicking on the KZBlog and The Life of 2ME links on the right, under Kazakh blogs. Had a good time, and a little to eat. I appear to have drunk a bit too much, as the moment we stepped outside of the cafe (Shymkent, around City Market and Cinema City area), my memory is a little too hazy to recall the journey home etc. Tom has already posted on our meeting (direct link here), and I don’t have much to add to his portrayal. Next time, I’ll not have an evening meal at home, and eat a little bit more whilst out, to soak up the excess spirit :>
Oct 28 2006
Drive In Theatre ???
OK, so not sure if this is going to be a permanent feature, or simply for a one off event, but opposite to us, very near the entrance to Astana park there has been a sign/board/screen constructed. For a couple of months, we weren’t sure what it was for, as the angle did not suit the normal billboard advertisements targeted at motorists, nor did it look like it would catch the attention of park strollers.
However, a new sign has been displayed today, proudly proclaiming something along the lines of ‘Drive In Theatre’ (or Theater for our USA readers/spellers), and the screen itself has been warped to a curve (not sure why, maybe going for one of those 180° immersive film shows?).
I’m hoping they will not use wired speakers for the audio of any films they show, as this would mean I’d need to buy/borrow a car, and drive 150 metres to watch the film. (Yes I’m capable of walking across the road, but would you fancy sitting to watch a movie, in a car park, in the winter over here?)
Instead, I’m hoping the cinema will use short range (but not TOO short ;> ) FM radio transmitters, so people can just tune their car radios (or a radio in their flat) to a certain frequency, and hear the film’s soundtrack.
I’m at the in-laws this afternoon, but will upload on Sunday the photos I took this morning of the scene.
[edit] as promised, here are the photos…
1st we have a close up shot of the area
Now we have a shot with less zoom, to give an idea of where the cinema is in comparison to the road and our flat
Comments Off on Drive In Theatre ???
Oct 26 2006
Just Found Another English Blog On Astana
Whilst googling, I discovered TheLifeOf2Me. If you get a moment check it out…
Oct 26 2006
BBC World Report On the Borat film
This is a little video clip surrounding the London premiere of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
The audio isn’t perfect, as I had to raise the volume a little post-production, sorry. A reminder again, that FireFox users may experience a lack of audio/video synchronisation. Try viewing it in Internet Explorer for now.
Feel free to leave a note by clicking on the comments link below…
EDIT : If you find the first link to the video doesn’t work, please try This one instead. Thanks
EDIT2 : Wow, this page (well the alternative link for the vid) has suddenly eaten nearly all of my hosting bandwidth available for the rest of the month, so for now, it is the first link only. Leave a comment if people find problems with the first link, and I’ll try uploading it to youtube or something.
EDIT3 : Many months later I remembered to upload this to YouTube, so watch it all you like…
Oct 25 2006
Birthday Presents for Nick And Customer Relations
Just heard from my brother that he has received his belated birthday presents. Nothing too unusual there? Except I foolishly put the wrong delivery address for him. When the gifts were found not be to have arrived three days after his birthday, I chased them up and discovered my mistake. They decided, in this case, to re-send the goods to the correct address, which I thought was outstanding customer service. Their address is www.thepresentfinder.co.uk – Secure Online Shopping . www.IWantOneOfThose.com also did the same thing by resending the presents without re-charging me.
However, www.dontforgetyourcard.com basically took the Kazakh attitude of tough luck, we’re not interested. Whilst this approach makes short term fiscal sense to a company, in the long run, assuming you don’t have a monopoly in the market, keeping customers loyal is the key to success. Happy customers recommend your business to their friends. Disgruntled customers will say nothing, or worse, warn their colleagues off the company involved.
Oct 19 2006
Shoulder Holder
There are other photos to come, but I couldn’t resist quickly posting this one…
Karra may just have been a pirate’s parrot in a previous incarnation…
Oct 19 2006
Zanya’s Birthday
It has been a long time since I’ve seen Zanya Etheridge, and I doubt she’ll ever see this post, but just in case… Happy Birthday. Hope your life is going well, and know that you’ve always got a place to crash if you decide to visit Kazakhstan…
Oct 17 2006
West Wing Video Clip
This is Martin Sheen, playing the president of USA, explaining why he wants to make sure their troops have proper coats, before sending them in to repel invasions by Russia and China.
Made me giggle. (It is a tad inaccurate…)
PS If anyone from Text Link Ads reads this, I’ve tried to remove this page from your listings, without much success – I can’t insert the code into this post manually, and your plugin will only go site wide or on the home page. As this post doesn’t have its own template to edit, I can’t add adverts here, and you did not accept my blog as a whole to your program, so I can’t put adverts everywhere…
Oct 16 2006
Pretty Good Weekend
We took our kitten home, from the in laws, today. Not yet named her, the proposals are Pippa, Socks and a word I’ve forgotten already (Karra?) that means black in Kazakh. Anyone else think of anything? It needs to be easily pronounced by Russian and English tongues, be feminine, and be shortened easily…
The last one was suggested by KZBlog owner’s wife; we met up at the Chelsea (an ‘English’ ‘pub’) again Saturday night. Had a good time, ate a little, drank a little more, and talked a lot, their prices are definitely higher than the average bar, but the selection of food is good for wimpy westerners like me, and I tend to feel a little freer talking about life over here than I would normally…
FINALLY the PC Hardware was all fitted. For the last 5 months, I’ve been waiting (we’ll get the stock next week, next week, next week, oh we had it, but sold it to someone else etc. etc.) for a Graphics Card upgrade (nVidia 7600GT>7900GT) and a replacement 320 Gig Seagate SATA hard drive; for the last week and a half, Ucon (the PC shop in question) has PROMISED to visit our flat and deliver them (to make up for the delays) . Each day, they didn’t turn up, and each day they didn’t bother to call and let us know they couldn’t make it. Sadly, this isn’t exactly unheard of, in respect of customer service levels, here in Kazakhstan. We gave up in the end, and went back to the original plan, so we took the PC to the shop and dropped the printer off to be repaired. They laughed at the amount of programs I have running (what’s the point in a well specced machine if you don’t fully utilize it’s resources), and the lights I had fitted. Had being the operative word, they took it all out, fitted the hardware, then put it all in a bag for me. Also caught the shop assistant trying to copy some of my games. 1) Don’t do it without asking, it is rude 2) Don’t be stupid, simply copying the directory the game is installed into onto their machine will not likely result in a working application, and oh yeah 3) Copyright theft is bad hmmm. Well offered to copy my installation DVDs (only for Public Domain games, obviously…), and they could have it when we came to pick up the repaired printer. Hoping that is enough motivation to see the printer back soon…
I now have just over 850 Gigabytes of storage space, so shan’t be running out anytime soon. Especially not downloading via dial up access to the internet. Irina’s mum had ADSL installed in the last week, so I’m hoping we’ll either get that or WiMax sorted soon….
Continue reading “Pretty Good Weekend”
Comments Off on Pretty Good Weekend
« Previous Page — Next Page »