We finally have some good video clips of Anna walking completely solo. Ignore the date Irina gives, I’ve double checked and it was in fact the 30th of January…
It is great to see Anna happy to stand up on her own, decide where to head, and just start walking. She is just as happy changing direction mid-journey, and carrying cups/toys etc. in one hand. There are moments when she is too tired or grumpy, as she will return to crawling, but the moment she first had the confidence to start taking little steps on her own will stay in our memories for ever 🙂
Feb 11 2010
Hands Free
Feb 11 2010
Clothing selection for Anna. I…
Clothing selection for Anna. I’m nodding my head wisely to most of Irina’s suggestions 🙂 http://twitpic.com/12fee5
Comments Off on Clothing selection for Anna. I…
Feb 10 2010
Lowering Standards
This afternoon I have been resizing videos and ripping audio streams from DVDs for Anna. The Wheels On The Bus DVD is definitely a good distraction to have up our sleeves when Anna gets a little bored, tired or in need of temporary distraction. As we don’t have a portable DVD player (and could do without the extra weight anyway), I decided to put whatever I could on our mobile phones. This way, during the plane journeys, overnight stay at the Istanbul hotel, and car journey into Wales (BIG thanks in advance John!) if Anna simply would be settled by games, toys, books or Mummy and Daddy talking, we’ll have something to try. My main phone has been broken for the last seven or eight months, which is a shame as it has the best speakers and screen. However my backup phone (the C550/HTC Hurricane) had enough space left on its memory card (once I had resized and lowered the bitrate on the videos) to fit on both the video and audio-only version. The C500 (HTC Typhoon) and Sony Ericsson K700 (Irina’s old phone, and my old-old backup phone respectively) didn’t have much storage space available, but after lowering the bitrate on the MP3s, they fitted on perfectly. I’m hoping that by duplicating the content across multiple devices, that we will be able to have at least one device with enough battery power left to both play Anna’s favourite songs, and also make and receive phone calls.
Comments Off on Lowering Standards
Feb 09 2010
Furry Feline Friends
As YouTube is still not displaying the Video Upload page :(, I thought I would take the opportunity to post a picture that Irina snapped recently. Karra and Muska (sisters) are our cats, and other than play fights/chases around the flat, they get on pretty well. Occasionally, they snooze next to each other, and even if the temperature hasn’t dropped, they will hug or cuddle. This time it was on the settee…
Hugs On The Sofa
Comments Off on Furry Feline Friends
Feb 09 2010
Cleaner And Faster
Another PC fixed and out the door! Part of the problem with viruses, trojans and other related malware in this country is the lack of awareness when it comes to understanding the need for protection. Luckily, Ira’s Dad’s driver knew that since his daughter’s antivirus software had expired, no new updates would be possible. So he dropped it off with a couple of accessories (a headset and webcam) that weren’t working, and asked if I could sort things out. After a sort out for the computer (cleaning out old and broken references from the registry), I removed the old anitvirus application, and installed a new one. Eleven instances of malware were found and eventually removed, though luckily this didn’t involve anything more involved than repeated scans, attempts at partial removals, and rebooting. The drivers originally installed for the onboard sound weren’t correct, which explained why the microphone sockets weren’t working, and after testing the webcam was happily performing as expected, and a final defrag, we gained a little more space on the computer desk here.
Comments Off on Cleaner And Faster
Feb 04 2010
Noisy Smiles
Anna And Irina Smiling Together
This was shot on the 22nd of January, and is just a nice picture of Irina and Anna smiling together on an armchair. You can see the mini Christmas tree still up in the background, though I don’t think it survived until Ira’s birthday. Excuse the low quality around the armchair fabric – the original has a lot more noise, for some reason our camera, even with a decent amount of lighting available, doesn’t like the fabric/colour of our living room furniture!
Feb 03 2010
Anna Finally Dancing On Video!
The post title says it all really – after complaining earlier that I hadn’t managed to catch Anna actually grooving away to her songs, I found this video from the 15th of January, where Irina did manage to do so.
Feb 03 2010
Hands Free Walking
The 11th of January saw Anna taking her first few tottering steps between Irina and I, without a hand to hold on to, or reverting to crawling. I think she may have been doing this a few days already to be honest, but this was the first time we had thought to get the camera out. As I write this, she is now very confident walking around the room, without any encouragement, but back when the pictures were taken, Irina and I needed to be a few metres apart, with lots of encouragement for trying to walk solo. This meant I had to try and use the little gorillapod (tripod) JohnK kindly gave us, in conjunction with the shutter delay function on the camera. Unfortunately, this mostly ended up with shots of the living room instead of Anna. In the end I snapped a few shots with one hand, but obviously Anna’s well being came first, so the framing isn’t exactly perfect…
Anna Walking Handsfree!
Comments Off on Hands Free Walking
Feb 03 2010
PS3 Hacked
Finally someone has hacked the PlayStation 3, though I’m not certain whether it is the original model, or one of the newer, redesigned versions that George Hotz had his success with. The newer (slimmer) versions have some of the hardware missing I believe, that stops Linux being installed (useful for people looking at obtaining cheap parallel processing units) or it could be the firmware has modifications. Anyway, with the hack in place, home brewed software (and of course backed up/pirated games) can be run. Whether the hack will need to be modified the next time Sony pushes out updates remains to be seen, but as this is a Xbox household, I’ll not be losing any sleep over it.
Comments Off on PS3 Hacked
Jan 31 2010
. @districtoflucky Seriously? …
. @districtoflucky Seriously? Happy Birthday. We have two b-days here as well. Irina and Zhahar.
Comments Off on . @districtoflucky Seriously? …
« Previous Page — Next Page »