Nov 30 2006

Astana / Kazakhstan Has Internet Access Once More

Category: Internet Connections,Kazakhstan,PersonalChrisM @ 4:35 am

For the last couple of hours there was no http transfer, at first e-mail still worked, and Skype was working fine, but web sites and Messenger didn’t work.
Then e-mail dropped out.
It may have just been flaky DNS servers, as nothing was resolving, but I’m thinking it was a little closer to the back bone servers than a simple Kazakh Telecom dial up servers though, as K-Cell’s GPRS service had the same problems. Unless K-Cell use the same DNS servers as Kazakh Telecom !??
I’m guessing not a large amount of other people will have noticed, as the problems took place approximately between 2 and 4am…

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Nov 28 2006

Faces Over A Dozen Years

Category: Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 2:33 am

This might be veering towards narcissistic, but as I had downloaded an animated GIF creation package the other day, I decided to try it out.
The picture below is the first result of my learning the basics.
The filename tells you all you need to know – ChrisOver12YearsResized.gif
OK, the resized bit is irrelevant (I was working at around 800×600 originally, and so had a HUUGE file in terms of kilobytes)
From End Of School To This Year...
The file is still just under 200Kb, so apologies to anyone else on dial-up access to the internet.

[edit] Thinking about it, it was probably over the last 10 years, not 12…

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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”

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