May 23 2008

Tables Turned

Category: In The Media,Internet Connections — ChrisM @ 10:11 am

Long term readers/’real life’ friends will remember that Irina and I used to live in a cottage out in Bourton on the Water, a real picture postcard village in the Cotswolds. At the time, there was no chance of getting ADSL at all, which led to us having two phone lines. One was for normal voice calls, and the other was permanently (24/7) connected to Freeserve on one of their 0808 numbers. Whilst this was never faster than 51.2 Kbps, it still gave me the possibility to leave the PC downloading all day and night, and traffic shaping never seemed to hit their dial up services. Anyway, according to a BBC report, the ratio of broadband:non-broadband customers in the country has swung so far that city dwellers are now statistically less likely to have a broadband connection than their rural brethren!
The section that particularly caught my attention was:

There has been a major drive to bring broadband to every corner of Scotland, partly to sustain the economies of isolated communities where many residents can now work from home.

I really think this sort of thinking should be bought to the attention of decision makers in this country…

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May 20 2008

Multiple Happy Birthday(s)

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 11:55 pm

Following on from the last post, this one is just a quick message to friends of ours. Seb has his birthday today, and though we did not manage to cross paths the last time I was in Britain, he knows he is in our minds. Lucian, who we met through Irina’s old work in Britain (PKL) has his birthday this Thursday, and we hope he has a great day. Dave’s Natalya has her birthday the following day, and we’re looking forward to meeting her again. Finally, although Dr. Natalaya’s daughter (Sveta) does not have her birthday until next Wednesday, I thought I’d post a congratulations a week early, in case I forget next week 🙂

Happy Birthday To All

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May 14 2008

Posts Still To Come

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 4:16 am

OK, so I am still behind in updating this blog with recent events. As Irina pointed out, there is a large gap starting with the beginning of our journey to Amsterdam, all of the stay in Britain, returning to Kazakhstan, (finally) meeting Pilot Tom for a meal, and meeting up with Dave, Walton, Assel, and probably a few other things.
The holiday part will have to wait until I get round to sorting some of the pictures out, but I hope to have them for you soon…

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May 01 2008

Pirate Isolation Plan

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 7:49 pm

No, not a serious piece on the issues mariners face in many areas of Asia and Africa, but instead links to a couple of articles on plans to punish those who download and share copyrighted material by withdrawing their access to the internet.
On one hand, we have the British government considering such plans, whilst members of the European Parliament have voted against (only just) such rules, at least at a Europe wide level. Individual governments will obviously still retain the right to put such policies into practice.
Even without any actual UK legislation in place, I know from personal experience that repeat offenders in Britain can find their ISPs cancel their account. Perhaps I know from being caught downloading movies or programs? Nope, part of my job a few years ago was to trace specific users (those who didn’t use PeerGuardian at least 😉 ) that were caught by organizations who scour Peer2Peer networks, looking for illegal copies of copyright material. However, all that would happen back then was if I found a specifically named file was still being actively shared by a customer, they would receive a warning. If the same person ignored the warning, or was caught with new files we were alerted to, their account would be closed. However, as we ran more than 100 different branded ISPs, all working on the same equipment, we’d often see the same people come back again, under a new ISP label 🙂

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Apr 24 2008

That Really Happened?

Category: Aware Or Conspiracy Nut... — ChrisM @ 4:53 pm

This sort of post is perfect for the Aware or Conspiracy Nut category here at ChrisMerriman.com. Each of the following actually occurred, and are well documented. However, if your friend just bought up the topic without any sort of background info, you’d probably write them off as another internet conspiracy nutter. My thanks to Cracked.com for the original post this information is taken from.

Military coup followed by a fascist dictator installed as a president… in America! OK, so this didn’t actually take place, but back in 1933, the big bosses at General Motors, DuPont, Chase Bank and a certain Senator Prescott Bush (now whatever happened to that lineage 😉 ) allegedly were involved in planning this plot, though all those named denied it at the time. They weren’t averse to maintaining links with the Nazi powers in Germany even after America entered Word War II…

State sponsored scheme to keep citizens ignorant of their medical situation, for research purposes. Again, something like this is easily written off as just another flight of fancy from tin-foil hat wearers, but this one occurred in America. The government decided that action need to be taken to combat the spread of Syphilis, and so took unwitting volunteers, mostly illiterate black men, and carried out experiments. Those that already had syphilis were used in further experiments, not informed of their condition, and often put through unnecessary and painful procedures. For a further forty years, the patients were denied access to what had, by that time, become standard treatment regimes.

The Church of Scientology & MK Ultra. You could (and people have) dedicate entire web sites to this group’s beliefs and the (entirely separate) US experiments. Go and google if you’d like to discover what are hiding in volcanoes, and just why some people do wear tin-foil hats.

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Apr 21 2008

They Didn’t Have These When Ira Posed

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 11:14 am

Hi Tech Yoga Mat

Whilst still ‘just’ a concept, rather than something for sale in stores already, I like the combination of ideas and use of technology in a traditional scenario. In case you can’t tell from the picture alone, the idea is to have a hi tech yoga mat based on electronic paper. You could have appropriately relaxing music piped through to you, whilst perhaps a visual reminder of some of the more complex poses is displayed in front of you. One of the people who left a comment at the page I found this mat on raises the issue of needing high-absorbency, low-slip material to work out on, but I’m sure some transparent compound material could be found that would act as the gripping section, with the electronic gubbins underneath.

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Apr 20 2008

Happy Birthday To Me

Category: Amsterdam,Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 7:00 am

If all has gone to plan, today Ira and I are in Amsterdam, celebrating my 29th birthday. Or should that be 30th – the day you turn 1 year old, is surely your second birthday, 365 days (or thereabouts) after the day you were born…
Anyway, despite the meandering style of this post, I’m not writing this live from our apartment in smokeland Amsterdam – I wrote most of the next two weeks worth of posts whilst still back in Kazakhstan. I wanted to keep my readers coming back for more (if you stop posting for more than a few days, you are guaranteed to lose return visitors), and as most of my friends are too lazy to guest-post. ChrisD would be a prime example – 18 months later and still no sign of his post on holidaying in Astana. So, I finally got around to clearing out all the collections of bookmarks I’d made on topics that I wanted to blog about ‘one day’.
Anyway, I hope all who read this do so in good health, to my friends in Britain, I hope to see you soon (we’ll be near Swansea 25th – 29th April (approx.) then some time in Cheltenham and Evesham, before heading back to Swansea once more, as my cousin is getting married. 4th May we head back to Astana, so if I haven’t seen you by then, you’ll have to survive until Xmas again.) To friends elsewhere, I hope things are going well, and that our paths cross again sooner rather than later…

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Apr 15 2008

Avoid Napoli Pizzeria in Astana

Category: Eating Out,Kazakhstan,Personal — ChrisM @ 6:45 pm

OK, their pizzas were so delicious, we gave them three tries, but sadly, problems persisted.

Positive points? They deliver, which is quite unusual here in Astana. The pizzas are delicious

Negative points? The soft drinks have a markup of 400%! You either need an iron stomach, or some Imodium handy later that evening/the next day 🙁 Like I said, the first time I put it down to a random stomach bug, the second time I thought maybe I had had a lot to drink that evening or something, but when the 3rd time of trying their Pizza resulted in similar issues, with no alcohol that day, it was time to sadly cross them off our list.

The name on the receipt is Napoli, but the name on the pizza box, and possibly their trading name is something a little different. If Irina can remember, I’ll update this post later, but it was still very similar, with ‘Nap’ at the beginning.

[edit]
Apparently Imodium is more often spelt Immodium. Anyway, I came across Alex Frankel’s Ode To Imodium here

Oh, Imodium,
Constipator of my colon,
Immobilizer of my bowel;
You make it possible
For me to leave
The house and take
A long walk in the
Countryside, without
Having to remember
To pack
Toilet roll
And a small trowel.

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Apr 15 2008

Posting Will Ease Off For A Few Days

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 1:52 am

I still have quite a few things I need to crack on with before Irina and I head off to Amsterdam for my birthday, and then on to Britain. In an attempt to keep my few loyal readers, well… loyal, I’ll be posting some mildly funny/entertaining videos over the next few days, as this doesn’t require much though on my part. Believe it or not, this blog, and related research takes up a fair amount of my working day!
Anyway I have already written two or three posts for each day I’m actually away (19th April – 5th May). By adjusting the timestamp, it should hopefully appear as though I’m still dutifully blogging away each day. I will try and check in here, as well as my e-mail, when possible, but if you have not left a comment here before, it is possible that approval of new comments may take two or three days.
If you have commented here before, unless you include my blacklisted words, your comments should appear immediately.
Anyway, enjoy the next few videos over the coming days, and my thanks to ChrisD’s facebook friends for originally bringing them to my attention 🙂

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Apr 14 2008

424320 Seconds To Go!

Category: Amsterdam — ChrisM @ 5:08 pm

Well it is now just 118 hours until Irina and I leave for Amsterdam 🙂
I still have quite a lot to do work to do before we leave, not least is working out what to take with us for both the Netherlands and our subsequent trip to Britain. In terms of lightweight equipment, I am trying to minimize on the gadgets and accompanying power supplies etc., and also working out the minimum amount of clothes we can take, considering we’re not likely to be using a laundry in Holland. So what am I taking? Well my HTC TyTn II is definitely coming along, as it serves as my phone, a PDA (for gaming in between flights, internet browsing whenever I can find a WiFi signal) and it also has a built in GPS device, so there’ll be no excuse for getting lost whilst stumbling from one coffeeshop tourist destination to the next.

(Yes, I know 118 hours does not equal 424320 seconds, but by the time I wrote out this post, a few more minutes had past 🙂 )

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