Last night (well, a couple of hours ago) was the first night of celebrations. The reason? This city’s (Astana) birthday as being the capital of Kazakhstan. Also, the president has his birthday around this time, so it is a joint celebration. Anyway there was huge firework display with some lasers. The sights and sounds all the way from our flat window was pretty spectacular. They will apparently be repeating the spectacle each night by the river, though whether it will be to the same scale remains to be seen. Hopefully Ira and I will manage to get a little closer sometime, and I’ll try and figure out which settings will work best on the camera. Probably not tomorrow, as Dave is coming over to get drunk catch up and listen to some of his new tunes discuss deep intellectual matters.
Oh, and the car alarms? In the car park near us, despite being a good 10/15 minute walk away, all the car alarms were set off by the bassy booms from the fireworks!
Jul 02 2008
Car Alarms And Lasers
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Jun 21 2007
Monstrous Mob Mentality
A group of Texans have beaten a man to death after he accidentally hit a child, at low speed, in a car park.
Around 20 people are believed to have taken the law into their own hands when a girl was hit (but not seriously injured), and the passenger got out to check if she was ok.
The incident occurred near the Juneteenth festival, which is held to mark the freeing of American slaves.
Check the BBC Article for more info.
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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
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