Jan 21 2009

Tom The Pilot

Category: Friends,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 8:21 pm

Here we have a picture from back in May 2008, when we finally got to meet Tom #2 in Astana. We’d been in contact for a while over Skype, and this was the first opportunity he’d had whilst rostered with an Astana leg in his flights. As you may guess from the facial expression, we ensured our throats weren’t too dry whilst eating at the Face Pub, by drinking a fair amount.

Tom Chris Face Pub Astana

Tom Chris Face Pub Astana

(querying the post title? The first Tom we met in Kazakhstan was an American non-pilot person, this Tom was second in line, and so labelled Tom the Pilot in our house, to simplify matters. Oh, and yes this Tom is indeed a pilot…)

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Jul 16 2008

PPP Weren’t Down!

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 2:33 am

I meant to update the situation since my PayPerPost And SocialSpark Down Again? post. It turns out the problem was at my end, as many other sites were also not available. The sites resolved OK, but they just hung with the connection established, not even timing out. After running through the obvious preliminary checks, I asked Ira to contact our pseduo-ISP, and check what the problem was. Nothing at all apparently, the fault must lie with our setup.

I sent this letter, and was happy to receive a reply, quite quickly, on a Saturday afternoon!

(his name removed),

I believe you spoke to my wife, Irina, earlier today. These are the details of the problems we have, I look forward to hearing the solution.

Are our current internet problems because we are on the restricted speed connection right now, as we’ve gone over 10Gb?

This has been happening since Wednesday, possibly one or two days before that.

Problems include…

1) The following sites not working –

http://support.microsoft.com/
http://bitcast-b.bitgravity.com/websitedown/index.html

PayPerPost – Influencer Marketing


http://socialspark.com/opportunities

None of those sites will load, it just states ‘waiting for (name of site)’ constantly. All sites load if I use a web proxy service to test them.
Other sites load ok, the ones given are just examples I’ve noticed so far.

2) MSN Messenger can not connect, but Skype is OK.

3) BitTorrents cause complete failure with the internet connection – ALL downloads/uploads, not just torrents will stop for 10-20 seconds, start again for 10 seconds, then fail again in a loop. This has always been the case, not just since Wednesday.

Attempts to repair or specifically identify the problem…

Confirmed that no proxy server is set, Automatically Detect Settings unchecked, used both FireFox, Internet Explorer 7, Pocket Internet Explorer and NetFront.
I tried the same things on my wife’s laptop, with both a wired LAN connection and WiFi. Exact same problems occur.
I tried the same things on my PDA, using WiFi. Exact same problems occur.
I obviously tried restarting the PCs & the router (a Netgear DG834PN).
I checked the MTU is not set too high (currently 1492) and therefore causing strange fragmentation problems.
I removed the DNS servers I had assigned (OpenDNS, as the ones in this country are quite bad), and used the default ones supplied by Bazis, as well as defining the router itself as the DNS server (which would only cause the PC to use the default Bazis ones anyway). This was done both on the PC and the router itself.

The problems remain.

These issues occur on three different devices, with different DNS servers set, I believe the fault lies with either your or Kazakh Telecoms network hardware.
I did not think that resetting the TCP/IP protocol stack would be worth doing, as all three devices would be very unlikely to suffer from the same problem at the same time.

I used to work for an ISP in Britain, as a Senior Technical Support Agent, so I hope I have told you all the information you need to fix this problem. If there are other tests you want me to carry out, please tell me.

If you have a modem that you want to test in this flat to confirm the fault is not here, I would be happy to help.

Chris Merriman

Once I actually read their reply, I wasn’t exactly over the moon…

Chris,

Reinstall operating system Windows
or restore her(it) with help of the load disk. Probably after attacks virus she conked…
Earlier beside me was such problem, was not opened mail on www.yahoo.com
If you want that I came to you home and has tested on my notebook, I with joy to you will come…

About 10 GB… There is quota In Kazakhtelekom to speed on loading more 10Gb.
You it is necessary to call me 688-907

Krasnikov (name removed)!

I should point out straight away that they said they didn’t speak English (not a problem, it is to be assumed in this country), but I really hoped the letter I’d sent would give them enough information to not get a ‘reinstall Windows’ reply. Anyway, at some point last Saturday something happened that caused the sites to work again. Whether it was something corrected at Bazis, or further on up the line with Megaline (the real ISP) noticing that some of their hardware wasn’t working, I’m not sure. Anyway, sent this reply…

Thanks for your advice.

Reinstalling Windows really is a last ditch ‘fix’ for any computer problem. The fact that these sites did not work on THREE different devices (XP desktop, Vista laptop, Windows Mobile 6 PDA) indicates this would not have done anything to remedy situation. All three devices are confirmed as virus, trojan, spyware, adware and, in general, malware free. I’ve not encountered any viruses in the last 15 years that prevented that sort of range of sites from loading.

Luckily, at some point during Saturday afternoon, something was fixed somewhere, and the sites worked again. Perhaps Megaline had a routing problem or flakey hardware that is now fixed?
Anyway, I’ll wait until the end of the month, when I get my ‘normal’ speeds again (I understand the 10Gb limit, it is laughably small, but I understand it), before retesting to see if BitTorrents still cause catastrophic failures for all internet based traffic.

Thank you for replying,

Chris Merriman

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Apr 16 2008

Why Did No One Tell Me I Was A Dancer?

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 5:11 pm

Apparently Chris Merriman is one of the finalists in Australia’s So You Think You Can Dance competition. All with out leaving Astana! Check the online version of the newspaper article. Looks like I now have at least three Google siblings. All of these other ChrisM’s have now pushed me down so I only appear three times on a Google for Chris Merriman.
As far as I can tell, this Chris Merriman from Oz is the same one featured on this MySpace page.

Perhaps he is I am one of these?
Chris Merriman Maybe

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Dec 10 2007

Facebook

Category: Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 4:21 am

Irina’s work have blocked their employees from accessing Facebook, so if any friends of ours feel they are being ignored by her, please don’t be offended; by the time she has finished work and got home, there is not always a lot of enthusiasm for anything that requires human<>keyboard interaction.
I, on the other hand, have a very understanding boss, who can see the need for occasional non-profit based activities to balance out my day 😉 (For new readers, I should probably point out that I am my boss, and as such tend not to discipline my self a great deal…)
Anyway, here is a little Facebook badge I have created, not much going on with it right now, but a nice little summary, and you can flip through some of the photos I’ve uploaded to my profile, or just click straight through to the profile itself, should you prefer.

Thinking about it, my profile’s security settings may allow you to only see a limited version, so if you want to see it all, send me a Facebook poke, with a note explaining you found me via my blog, and I’ll gladly oblige.

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Nov 15 2007

Numbers, Numbers, Numbers…

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 2:18 pm

I still have problems accessing my CPanel interface if I don’t use the HTTPS address to connect, but as there is no disadvantage to this method, only increased security, I’m not overly concerned. Anyway, I was looking through some of the info provided by AWStats, and noticed that regular readers (at least those with a fixed/semi-permanent IP address) are increasing for this blog. Thank you to whoever you are. I also noticed that the raw number of unique visits has been getting healthier over the last few months, despite a break in posts whilst I was in Amsterdam and Britain.

Month Unique visitors Number of visits Pages Hits Bandwidth
Jan 2007 1023 2912 7232 20195 187.03 MB
Feb 2007 1192 3742 9063 19949 216.64 MB
Mar 2007 1461 3779 12002 23539 229.06 MB
Apr 2007 2526 5961 30459 73913 632.69 MB
May 2007 1941 4971 28097 81649 688.94 MB
Jun 2007 2291 4960 22749 69930 584.83 MB
Jul 2007 1807 4096 23486 73057 691.67 MB
Aug 2007 3068 6364 42041 115655 1.18 GB
Sep 2007 3046 6066 22100 93866 1023.28 MB
Oct 2007 4004 7194 24460 105741 1.14 GB
Nov 2007 1810 3072 12574 41456 462.81 MB
Dec 2007 0 0 0 0 0
Total 24169 53117 234263 718950 6.92 GB

The search terms people are using when they find my site also interests me, see below for an example of them. Free bed plans and Kazakhstan are regularly in the top 5, however I never would have thought that Hetty Wainthropp would be a source of traffic! I have checked through the top 50 (Google) results for that search phrase, and I’m nowhere to be seen, so someone, somewhere is really quite interested in the TV series…

kazakhstan, chris merriman, computers internet blog, free bed plans, triclear, tewksbury flood 2007, hetty wainthropp

Anyway, feel free to laugh at the visitor numbers, gawk at the search terms, or simply ignore this post. On the other hand, if other stats are of interest, such as the countries most visitors come from, or the OS/Browser break down, feel free to contact me.

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Aug 18 2007

Last Ali BaBa Of The Summer?

Category: Eating Out,Personal — ChrisM @ 2:10 am

We went out for a nice meal this evening. We took a stroll through the park, over the river Ishim, and then through to the area near the main square. Ali BaBa is an out door restaurant, with cover from any rain or wind that is blighting the evening. Tonight’s service was pretty excellent – the waitress was really attentive, to the point of asking if we needed anything when she noticed us looking around the restaurant. Compare this to the attitude you find in some places in Astana, where a snooty waitress will make that she is doing you a favour by wasting any time at your table at all, and you can probably understand why we were impressed. Perhaps the camera caught her attention, and she wanted to leave a good impression?
Anyway, onto the photos…

Irina had Besbarmak (a horse meat and pasta dish)
Besbarmak Ali BaBa Astana Kazakhstan August 2007

Click the link below to see the other photos
Continue reading “Last Ali BaBa Of The Summer?”

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Jul 14 2007

How Did You Get Here?

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 9:07 pm

No, not a request for people to leave comments involving various birds & the bees, under the cabbage patch or stork stories…

I have recently been researching (doesn’t that phrase sound so much better than ‘trawling through my boring server logs 🙂 ? ) which terms people have been using when they arrive at my site from various search engines.

Most of them could be easily explained, for example…
Chris Merriman , Christopher Merriman , ???? ??????? & ????????? ??????? are all variants of my name that have appeared on this blog at one time or another. (I must remember to ask Ira to check my Russian spelling on those.)

Due to the way Russian people will attempt to translate my name from the Cyillic alphabet back to the latin original however, Kristofer Meryman is also a possibility. (Unfortunately, my Kazakh ID card is testament to this, so if anyone ever directly compares it to my passport, the christian names do not actually match up!) Also, I occasionally see people arriving here from using SilentlyScreaming or AntiSceptic as search terms, as these are my most often used forum/digg/social bookmarking membership nicknames.

Anyway, Kazakhstan Blog , Kazakh Blog and Astana Blog also were used, as well as Presents For Nick and I still seem to be indexed somewhere with my old blog title ( I Never Could Get The Hang Of Thursdays ), as a few searches still trickle in from variants of that Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy phrase, from search engines I have not come across before.

However, rabbit sreviews , 17 screen blockers and acid ran pictures really have me confused. The last one even more than the rest, as I can’t find any reference to those terms in any of my previous posts!

Oh, and yes, some of the above is a blatent attempt to rank a little better on some search terms, but I hope my readers forgive me, even if they do not find this information of particular interest. If you do find it interesting, first go and take a short nap, and see if you have recovered, if not, you may want to head over to my I Got Lucky page, which lists all the search terms that this site has (at some point in the past, if not currently) been at #1 when searched for through google!

Finally, if you have never left a comment on this blog before, I would be genuinely interested to hear from you, and especially how you found this site in the first place. Thanks…

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Jun 17 2007

Another Kazakh-Based Blog

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 8:53 pm

I was checking how this blog was doing in the search engines, for terms such as Kazakhstan Blog , Astana Blog , and of course Chris Merriman, when I came across a site written by an American who lives in Almaty.
She is a Peace Corps volunteer, and has recently found out she is to stay in Kazakhstan a little longer than originally planned. For anyone who has not come across the Peace Corp before, they work in almost 140 countries, trying help out local people with global issues.

Anyway, enough of the intro, check out the Kazakhstani Extravaganza blog for another look at life over here in Kazakhstan.

This post is not sponsored, nor did she ask for the link, I just thought it might be of use to some people. Which reminds me, I need to add this site to the links page – check the menu at the top to get there.

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Jun 16 2007

Humans Prove Too Temperamental To Be Good SpamBots!

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 4:44 pm

I recently have received a lot of spammy comments on this blog, particularly on my sponsored posts.

Anything that is an advert for another company is not approved on sponsored posts – otherwise I won’t get paid.

However for both reasons of courtesy, and an attempt to increase my income, I e-mail each company to inform them why there comment will not be published, and that they can always sponsor their own post here if they would like some coverage.

I have had a couple of people responding, who have taken me up on the offer, the rest I never heard back from, and a few are most definitely spam bots, fully automated, as they try and repeat the same spam comments two or three times a week.

Most of these sorts of comments are caught by the Akismet plug in, and so are all stored in the spam area of the comments admin section. Actually, most spam bots are now blocked by the Bad Behaviour plug in, so I’ve seen a large reduction in the rubbish to empty recently. (See the Extras page, linked at the top for links to all plug ins used on this blog).

So, I recently received a rather insulting response to my explanation of why a particular comment was not published, and it intrigued me. I spoke to a couple of colleagues, to ensure I was not just mis-reading the language, and eventually decided to make this post.

OK, his comments are in red, mine are in blue. I’ve changed his name, identifying details and the site he was ‘plugging’, as he does not want to take part in this post at all (see last section).

Other than that, no editing has taken place, all typos from both sides were left as is.

Continue reading “Humans Prove Too Temperamental To Be Good SpamBots!”

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Jun 09 2007

Pate’s Reunion – Class of 1997

Category: Friends,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 1:33 pm

A couple of sections didn’t scan in that well, and I had to compress and resize the picture a great deal to stop this blog’s server from going over it’s limits, but here is the Pates class of ’97, taken a year before we all left…
Pate’s 1996 School Photo

Here we have a few people zoomed in a little more, again a few faces (Tiff and Yan especially) are blurred, apologies…
Cut Outs of Pates 1997 Class
From left to right, top to bottom, we have Anne Harmer, John Harris, Tiffany Vincent, Zanya Etheridge, Chris Merriman, Miriam Hale, Chris Ramshaw (looking like an Oxbridge grad already), Michael Bavin and Yan Chee Yu.

It could be worse though, I could have followed Pate’s official site’s example, and used a 500Kb PNG image (check out the picture of the current head there to see what I mean… I’m guessing Mr Thornton was maybe involved LMAO)

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