For anyone who lives in Kazakhstan, PLEASE add this number to your mobile’s phone book, under the name of ‘DO NOT ANSWER – SCAMMER’ or something similar. The number is 701 1336 118 (or if you have all your numbers entered in the international format, please use +7 701 1336118).
A little background to the warning, three times over the past few months, the owner(s) of this phone number have called me up, claiming to be a bank. They stated that they were unable to allow a deposit to be made into my account, and needed to confirm some details. Given my very basic Russian language skills, I passed the phone to Irina quite quickly the first time. She recognised that something fishy was going on, and asked them to tell her which bank they worked for, and which branch I allegedly held an account at. As they were unable and unwilling to tell her, they tried a few different tactics to continue the scam. After the original call, they have occasionally called back, trying the same routine…
It is a bit like a real life phishing scam, but done via phone, not e-mail.
If the owner of that phone number would ever like to leave a comment, please do, I await your response with interest.
(Note, obviously very unlikely they read this blog already, though they may possibly Google their own number to check if anyone has called them out.)
Sep 05 2007
Scam Warning
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Sep 05 2007
Words That Sound Dirty…
… but aren’t
About six weeks ago, I linked to Vat19’s site, where they sell a lot of different items. This particular post isn’t sponsored, I just wanted to highlight their blog to my readers. Quite unusual to find such a personal approach to communicating with customers, without any of the normal corporate stuffiness. As an example, check out the following video they recently made…
Anyway, check out the rest of the blog when you get a chance. There you go Ira, the next time work is quiet, and you think you have looked at the whole internet, here is a new site for you to distract yourself with 🙂
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Sep 05 2007
Astana Day Concerts #9
This is it… the last four videos recorded on the evening that Astana had a concert to celebrate the President’s birthday and also that Astana became the capital of Kazakhstan almost ten years ago now.
Here we have the fireworks starting, with a message in Kazakh, and some more carnival dancing and music in the background.
The fireworks have properly started, and we also have the Rio Carnival procession finally makes its way to the stage.
Excuse the strange start to this video – I couldn’t believe it when a heavily pregnant woman stood on top of an unstable chair to take some photos, so I got a little distracted. Anyway, it leads into the 13th act with singing in both Russian And English. The track Dancing On Broken Glass has also received a fair amount of air time on the radio stations over here. The President had already left by this point. Apparently the singer is quite popular, at least amongst woman. Ira was recently on the same flight as him, coming back from Moscow, though sadly there was no gossip to report back…
The end Of the Astana Day concert, with a cameo by AlexC, testing the low ambient light setting on the camcorder.
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Sep 04 2007
In Laws Over
We recently had Irina’s Mum and Dad over for tea. They had not been here in a while (we do still see them once a week or so, though, normally over at their house), so it was good to see them. Since they last came, we have had the air conditioner installed, and Irina seemed happy that her Dad approved of it. So much so, that he did not even notice where it was at first.
First we have Karra staring into the flash, I hope we didn’t blind her temporarily…
Next we have Ira, her Mum and Matilda (the little doll in the middle), then we have Irina’s Dad.
Finally we have Irina and Muska both looking very cute 🙂
Anyway, a good meal with good company led to a great evening.
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Sep 02 2007
Ildar’s First Day At School
Yesterday we went to meet up with Ildar and Mum (Balzhan) to attend his first day at school. Dr Natalya and her daughter Sveta also came. Sveta is still a few years away from going to school, but it looks like she was interested in everything going on at least.
One of the things that really stood out (apart from the fact that Kazakh children appear to start school a year or two later than in Britain) is just how seriously they take the first day at school. There were boys in suits and girls in their Sunday best. (As Kazakhstan is, at least nominally, a Muslim state, perhaps that should be Friday best??). The ceremony lasted a little over an hour, with flags, music blasted out of speakers, the national anthem, lots of kids with flowers, speeches by those about to leave the same school, and plenty of proud relations milling about.
Anyway, on to the photos (I hope to finish editting the videos later and if I get time will post them on here this evening)…
First we have mother and son
This is the better quality of the two group photos…
However, I could not miss this one out, primarily because it has Ildar showing off his milk teeth missing – truly growing up now 🙂
Here we have the children ready lined up to be bored to sleep by the speeches. (I was really impressed how well they all behaved – I got fidgetty enough to sneak off for a cigarette half way through.)
Perhaps their good behaviour was attributable to the formidable presence of the headmistress?
The school flag was wheeled out…
Finally a quick shot of the school building itself. In times past, it would probably have at least received a quick lick of paint before a ceremony like this, but the sculptures were still pretty impressive.
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Sep 02 2007
HaPpY BiRtHdAy WaLtOn !!!
Hope you do not have a too busy day, and that this coming year is a good one for you…
from,
Chris, Ira, Karra and Muska
PS Please say hello to your dearly beloved as well from all of us.
Aug 31 2007
Another Power Cut
Last night, we had another power cut in the flat around our area. Although a little frustrating, the part that really has begun to annoy is the fact that our ISP, or to be more precise, upstream of them, where Kazakh Telecom’s hardware comes into play, is unable to automatically enable internet access following suck black outs.
Normally, this would mean Irina waiting until 9am, phoning our ISP’s technical staff, and them then contacting Kazakh telecom to go and kick their server until it admits that the internet exists, and clients are wanting to connect.
However, as I previously noted on this blog, yesterday, today AND tomorrow are all public holidays. This means there are NO staff at the ISP, and no other contact methods are available. So it looks as though I will have no internet at home for a few days. I’m just hoping they and Kazakh Telecom both decide to do some work this Sunday, else it will be another day before I can get online.
In case any smart arses want to leave a comment, I am currently at the in laws, using their PC, as we came round for the day.
I really need to get on with my work over the next few days, to ensure I have some money available when I go to Britain, but it looks like I will just have to recalculate my spending money again.
It could have been worse, at least the power cut was in the middle of the night, so was not so frustrating as usual. That said my new UPS seems incapable of shutting down the PC properly, and so unless I catch it in time, the computer is just turned off; this is what caused the last hard drive to fail. I’ll hopefully trace what is causing the issue, and get it sorted soon.
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Aug 30 2007
Tima Doing Well…
These are the photos we took of Dasha and Tima last weekend, when Balzhan, Ildar, Sasha, Dr. Natalya, Sveta, Losha, Igor & his wife, as well as Asen’s mum all came round randomly on one day!
First we have the traditional weigh in, which shows he has almost doubled in one week!
Next we have a couple of close up shots of mother and son
Now we have Dasha investigating what exactly is going on with the grey plastic box these weird humans keep putting in her box…
Finally we have Ira holding Tima, to try and give an idea of scale
PS Sorry for any blog readers who don’t find kittens cute. Tough. I do 😛
Aug 30 2007
Astana Day Concerts Videos #4
OK, as you may have read from earlier posts, I have been experimenting trying to find the best way to encode videos to ensure high quality clips on YouTube. So far things have not gone well. I have ascertained that I do need de-interlace the raw DV video from my camcorder. I have tried different ways of resizing from 720×576 to 320×240, including clipping, adding letter box strips, changing the aspect ratio, all to no avail – the video quality is still far worse than previous videos I’ve uploaded. I have tried both DivX and Xvid codecs, with medium to high bit rates, but I always seem to end up with quality that would look bad coming from an old mobile phone.
For now, I shall continue posting the videos as they stand. If someone has an idea about how to achieve better results, let me know. Similarly, if someone would like to have a copy of these, let me know which interests you, and we’ll sort something out…
First we have a short clip of the lasers being tested during the 7th Act at the Astana Day concert. Why have I included it? Watch out for a video taken later in the night, that shows just how impressive the laser show was 🙂 As a small techy point, although the square and X don’t appear contiguous, to the naked eye, they were solid…
Here we have The 8th act singing in Russian…
Lastly (at least for this post), we have Alex, Ira and Ira’s Mum after the 8th act…
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Aug 30 2007
Russian Copyright Obligations Clarified
A court in Moscow has confirmed that the head of the company that runs allofMP3.com is NOT breaking any Russian laws. Prosecutors originally bought a case against him for selling MP3s without (mainly Western) record companies’ permission, nor paying them. Russian music labels are not thought to have kicked up a fuss, as they have mostly signed up to a scheme to receive some royalties for each download. Check the BBC article for further information. It would basically appear that Russia has a different approach to intellectual properties, and if Western companies do not want to sign up to schemes that undercut their retail outlets (and so be seen to approve of AllofMP3.com) Russian authorities do not care.
Over here in Kazakhstan, although software is now a little more limited (it is now rarer to see pirated MS Windows or Office products on display for example), you can still easily pick up copies of Albums, MP3 compilations of a wide range of artists, and games for most CD/DVD based gaming systems, including PCs. It certainly saves a lot of money for the average Kazakh consumer, who otherwise could not afford to pay for the original real McCoy, especially at Western prices. The pirated copies are mostly produced in Russia, and other than being sold in CD cases, rather than larger sized cardboard boxes, are normally pretty indistinguishable from the retail versions in Britain. Manuals are often included as a PDF on the disc, and the case inserts are normally above average colour copies of the originals, though the back is often re-designed to include the contact details and logos of the Russian pirates/company involved.
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