Feb 28 2009

Anna’s First Video!

Category: Anna's Videos,Videos — ChrisM @ 4:02 am

After YouTube banned my original account, (long story, the short version is I lost it due to short clips involving BBC material), I have finally got around to uploading some videos to my new account.

This post includes Anna’s first appearance in a movie (28th Febraury, on the sofa in Clydach, with Anna at just one week old), at least from Irina’s camera. I still need to hookup our proper camcorder and rip it to DVDs/YouTube etc. Anyway, enough of the text, onto the star 🙂

Click the link below to see: A higher quality version of the same video, parts 2-6 from the sofa, and also Irina in hospital a couple of days before the birth. (The ‘HQ’ embedded version appears to just be the same video enlarged, rather than the HQ version available from the video’s page on YouTube.com)
OK, just press the HQ button to watch a better quality version.
Continue reading “Anna’s First Video!”

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Nov 10 2008

House of Lords Do Something Well!

Category: Aware Or Conspiracy Nut...,In The Media — ChrisM @ 4:52 pm

Long term readers will have realised that I am not exactly a staunch Monarchist (though not necessarily a Republican – I’m happy to have a Royal family for tourist purposes, I just wish they had no actual connection (even if it is already only really rubber stamping certain procedures)), similarly I tend to view the house of Lords as being an arcane institution that is a hangover from near feudal times. Whilst those that enter the house as life peers (as opposed to hereditary peers that have a seat simply because there Great^x Grandfather owned a third of Staffordshire at one point) are often there because they have experience in certain areas (or they donated a lump sum to a political party 🙁 ), the hereditary peers are often seen as being even more out of touch with modern day reality than judges even!

Well it looks as though common sense has won the day (in that House at least, shame about the commons…) as the BBC has reported the Lords have backed an amendment to the law that would require DNA records to be deleted from the national database should an innocent person request. Of course, the House of Commons will not pass this amendment, but it is good to see the Lords actually backing a sensible idea. Whilst you can argue over whether convicted criminals should have their DNA eventually removed, after serving their sentence, the idea that innocent people who have their DNA profiled and stored should not be able to request that data’s removal does not seem right – as the article states, this is effectively a National DNA Database through the back door, bypassing any new laws that would otherwise have to be drawn up.

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Nov 10 2008

Blindly Following

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 2:09 pm

Although the BBC article‘s headline appears to be a tiny bit over-sensationalised, the very idea of a pilot a) suffering a stroke whilst at the controls and surviving, and b) Being at least mostly blind and still surviving is certainly impressive. Jim O’Neill (the pilot) had been flying along normally, when he suffered a stroke. Attempting to land at a nearby (civilian) airfield proved too difficult (not surprising given he could not see the dials in his cockpit, nor very much at all outside the plane!), despite ATC’s best efforts to guide him down. It was then decided that he should be diverted to a local RAF base, where Wing Cdr. Gerrard scrambled into the air, to guide Jim down step-by-step to a runway.
I don’t remember ever speaking to Wing Cdr. Gerrard at RAF Linton-on-Ouse in my old job (I’m guessing he never had major problems with his PC 🙂 ), but I hope he has been bought a few rounds by his colleagues, and I’m sure he’ll be happy to know the Jim’s sight is starting to recover.

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Nov 05 2008

Not Much Posting Likely Today

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 5:16 am

(OK, nor the last couple of days, but I have a real excuse this this time 😉 )


So it is 5.15am over here, and I’m watching the news channels’ (CNN, Al Jazeera International and BBC World) coverage of the US elections. The first polls have recently closed, and I’m just hoping I’ll still be awake by the time unequivocal results are officially announced, or at least until Virginia declare 🙂

To my friends who are also pulling a late-nighter/early morning to monitor the results, I hope you’ve had some sleep by the time you read this…

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Oct 24 2008

Construction Freeze & Outdated Or Incomplete Report

Category: Friends,In The Media,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:21 am

So here we have a video I recorded from the World News Report – Business Edition from the BBC World channel. (I did try to find one officially uploaded earlier in the day, but couldn’t locate one, so I used my AV card). Anyway, our friend Natalya Kim lives in Almaty, and as I don’t see her city often mentioned on the news, I thought I’d show it here. It contains information on the global financial crisis and how it effects Almaty residents, especially those involved in the construction industry.
I was a little surprised that the correspondent didn’t make mention of the Prime Minister and President’s recent speeches on the matter – you can read more on this over at EurAsiaNet’s article.

I suppose it is possible this was recorded a week or so ago, and they didn’t have time/didn’t think to re-dub it?

[edit]
OK, so that video was originally uploaded and ready for embedding in this post an hour or so ago. Then I checked it’s YouTube page, and the audio had pitch shifted down a few octave! I’d not originally had the speakers on as I didn’t want to risk waking Ira, servers me right for not (quietly) checking it before uploading I suppose. This one should be ok, and don’t blame my poor AV card for the video quality – thats down to YouTube’s conversion process I’m afraid. Better go and find out how you get those ‘Watch In High Quality’ links on your uploaded videos I suppose.

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Oct 16 2008

White Skinny Dipping

Category: In The Media,Videos — ChrisM @ 4:12 am

Head over here for the BBC report, or if you find their streaming video has problems with your internet connection, see the following three YouTube videos. On what? Well in case you missed out on the news, a British man dove into the Moat surrounding the Emperor’s residence in Tokyo. The undeniable facts are that he was naked, not likely to get cold this winter with his in-built insulation, either a litttle unhinged or drunk, and splashed water and threw bricks when the police attempted to catch him.

Thanks to Japan Probe for the following picture (and preceding videos)…
Mad Naked Brit In Japan

So why my interest?
Well I saw the following image over at Pundit Kitchen, and wanted to find out more about the background to it.
Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures
see Sarah Palin pictures

So what happened to the crude and aggressive tourist? Detained under the equivalent of Japan’s Metal Health Act? Received a good public beating after throwing bricks around? No, he had a slap on the wrists and was released! At least according to the Daily Telegraph’s article.

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Oct 15 2008

BBC Prime Not Working

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 6:33 pm

I have noticed a lot of traffic in the past few days has arrived from people googling BBC Prime Not Working, or a similar phrase. Just in case people don’t understand why this has occurred, I thought I would post a quick update.
If you currently pay a reputable supplier for a satellite subscription, you need to contact them and have your account and card checked. If you happen to have bought a receiver that had some codes pre-installed, then some channels that are subscription based (that you are supposed to pay for) will have been decoded. Similarly, if you update your satellite receiver with key codes from the internet, then certain channels will work once the new keys are in place. However, BBC Prime (on HotBird) have switched to a newer incarnation of the ViaAccess encryption algorithm, which has not been cracked by the people that publish codes. There is another BBC Prime channel broadcast on Hotbird, but that has been inaccessible ever since I discovered. It was useful for the EPG information present though.
I’ve just checked some other channels, and it looks as though the HBO channels have either been moved or taken off-air in Hotbird. I’ll post an update if the new scan in progress discovers a new position for these movie channels.

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Oct 15 2008

New Channel Found

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 3:36 am

I was updating the list of working channels in our favourites list on the satellite receiver, and noticed that Zone Club was not only working (as in not encrypted with a method our recvr. couldn’t cope with), but also has the original (normally English) soundtrack available. So far, it seems to be very similar to the BBC Entertainment channel that Irina likes, though as I write this post, an episode of Jerry Springer is playing. Not too sure if that is a good or bad thing to be honest. Anyway, once the bad weather clears and the reported signal quality improves once more, I am going to rescan all the TPs and see if there are any new additions worth of note.

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Oct 14 2008

Banjo Playing For The Doctors

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 4:31 am

For some pretty amazing video footage, head on over here. Just in case your flash plugin is playing up, the video shows Eddie Adcock (apparently well known – I guess bluegrass just hasn’t made it into my MP3 collection yet) playing the banjo DURING brain surgery. Rather than some sort of new age approach to pain management, the idea was that once his hand tremors were reduced, the doctors playing with his head would know they were in the right area.
Whilst we’re in the BBC News video genre, check out this link for some footage of a base jump that didn’t go quite to plan over in Norway.

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Oct 08 2008

Brazilian Birds

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 3:08 am

Sorry for any readers expecting to find pictures of unusual hair styles on stunning woman, but this post is about lost (or at least unusually located) penguins being given a helping hand by the Brazilian Air Force. See the BBC article for full details, but it boils down to the birds travelling way off course, probably in an attempt to find new sources of food. Hats off to the BAF (OK, I admit, I have no clue what the correct acronym for Brazil’s air force is) for helping the birds, especially as they probably didn’t find relocation of aquatic wildlife in their job descriptions when they signed up for service.

Brazilian Penguin Relocation

Well I’m off to check if the BAF exists, and whether my memories of reading about penguins in South Africa is way off-course or not.

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