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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Aug 18 2007

BBC Prime With No EPG

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 12:08 am

I mentioned the other night that Ira and I often watch some British drama and comedy series on the BBC Prime satellite channel. Unfortunately, they do not broadcast any EPG data, at least on the HotBird satellite anyway. This means that program information is not instantly available. Although a Teletext signal is broadcast, it is a bit cumbersome in comparison. However, I recently signed up over at BBCPrime.com, and now get e-mailed each day with a program guide, with the times adjusted for where I live (GMT+6). I now know that if we want to watch EastEnders, we need to get up at (or in my case, stay up until) 6.30am! Not quite big enough fans for that, so we sometimes manage to catch the omnibus editions at the weekend.
Anyway, I’m writing this post in the hope that if other BBC Prime viewers read it, they may find the site useful, there are a couple of other features there, where you can indicate which genre most interests you, and have your schedule personalised.

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Aug 17 2007

Karra’s Doppelgänger

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Pictures — ChrisM @ 8:12 pm

Ira sent me a link today to some cute kitten pictures. I’ve included one below, as it really does look a lot like our Karra, when she was young.
Not Karra

Now, we have the real Karra, back in November 2006, practising her best innocent look…
Karra Hiding
She still tries it now, when you discover her climbing a curtain, removing wall paper or being generally mischievous, but we tend to fall for it a little less.
We should be going to see the in-laws over the weekend, and so be able to check in on the new kitten (called mini-Dasha for now 🙂 ). I still haven’t got around to transferring, resizing and uploading the video from earlier on in the week, I’ll try to get it done soon.

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Aug 17 2007

CIA And The Vatican Exposed!

Category: Aware Or Conspiracy Nut... — ChrisM @ 4:54 am

Wikipedia Scanner – doing the leg work most of us can’t be bothered to go through…

As you will know if you are at all interested in Wikipedia, for most pages, anyone can edit them. This of course leads to issues when two sets of people have different views on what is reality. This leads to some pages requiring a login before you can make changes. Wikipedia Scanner is a tool that matches already existing information (the IP address of who made specific edits on any page) with the name of the company that own the IP, from a table of reverse look ups, I assume…
Anyway, Wikipedia Scanner shows that the CIA, or more accurately someone using a computer connected to the CIA’s network, edited a page relating to Iran’s president. The Vatican has also been shown to have made changes to a page on Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader.
No word from the Vatican as of yet, though a CIA spokesperson appeared to whimper a little, then trot out the flag waving, are you a patriot or the enemy style …. “I’d like in any case to underscore a far larger and more significant point that no one should doubt or forget: The CIA has a vital mission in protecting the United States, and the focus of this agency is there, on that decisive work.”
Ahhh, so thats all right then :rolleyes:

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Aug 16 2007

Photos Of The New Kitten

Category: Dasha&Kittens,Pictures — ChrisM @ 2:24 am

OK, as promised, here we have the very first photos of Dasha’s kitten. She actually weighs in at 110 grams, not the 107 I quoted earlier. The video is going to have to wait for another day, as I am feeling too tired to start mucking about and would probably start getting things wrong.

So first we have Mini Dasha wondering where mum has gone. (Dasha had in fact gone to grab some food and a drink, but was only 50cm away).
Mini Dasha Wheres Mum Gone

Now we see the box she was born in, the very same box used each year, with the birthdays written on the side. A cardboard box with some heritage 😉
Birthing box - same box used every year

This one came out reasonably well, which was surprising – I didn’t want to disturb the kitten too much, so turned off the flash, and left her in the box. This meant using the macro mode on the camera, and not actually seeing the LCD screen when taking the picture.
Kitten Flash Off Macro Mode

Here we have Ira holding Mini Dasha, followed by me holding the kitten. He/She§ looks very cute there.
Ira holding Mini Dasha Chris Holding Mini Dasha

The weighing procedure. (Mr Owen, if you’re reading this, NO ONE will want me to call it massing!)
Weighing In At 110 Grammes

A little picture to show the scale – Dasha’s Paw vs. Kitten.
Kitten Dasha Scale

Finally, dinner time.
Dinner Time For Kitten

§ – Until we know for sure which gender the kitten is, you will probably encounter a fair amount of confusion on my part. Apologies.

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Aug 16 2007

Aunty Sveta, Sasha And A Golden Roundabout

Category: Kazakhstan,Pictures — ChrisM @ 1:06 am

Last weekend Ira’s Aunt Sveta and her grand daughter Sasha came over to celebrate Ira’s Mum’s birthday. On the Saturday morning, as we were all in the car sorting out flowers, presents and food, Ira’s Dad took us over to a monument his company built. When the sun is shining, it is truly spectacular. The whole structure is covered in gold leaf, and really does sparkle when clouds do not dominate the sky. Anyway, enough of the text, onto the photos…

Aunty Sveta Sasha Irina’s Dad And A Golden Roundabout Aunty Sveta Sasha Irina’s Dad And A Golden Roundabout 2 Chris And A Golden Roundabout

Ira, Walton, Alex and I all originally saw this statue/monument object just prior to going to the horse event around Astana Day. I’m glad to say no one seems to have tried to chip off the gold since then 🙂

I meant to add this earlier, if you want to see an interesting, (in)famous roundabout, check out this Google Maps satellite photo of the Magic Roundabout in Swindon, UK. You end up going the wrong way around the central roundabout!

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Aug 15 2007

Mini Dasha

Category: Dasha&Kittens — ChrisM @ 11:44 pm

We have just got back from the in laws, and apart from a nice meal and some time with Ira’s parents, we got to see Dasha’s kitten. Not sure yet, but Irina thinks it is a boy. His fur colour is most definitely inherited from Dasha, and not the father, and he currently weighs 107g. That is just under 4 ounces, according to my Amsterdam research. We are not certain yet, there may be more kittens to come, but without an ultrasound, and because Dasha has become quite large the last few years, we will just have to wait and see. The kitten looks so cute, and you could probably fit two or three in the palm of your hand. Coming back to the flat and seeing Karra and Muska made us realise just how much they had grown in 11 months.
Anyway, I hope to post some pictures and/or a video later on, once I have caught up with a few other things.

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Aug 15 2007

CSI Plotline Prediction

Category: Aware Or Conspiracy Nut...,In The Media — ChrisM @ 4:34 am

I enjoy watching NCIS, CSI, and Waking The Dead (the first two via some Swiss satellite channels, with the 2nd audio channel selected to retain the original English sound track, and the 3rd program from BBC Prime). Anyway, according to a Daily Telegraph article, the science behind finger print analysis has just jumped forward. Basically, it is now possible to gauge someone’s sex, race, and even diet from fingerprints lifted from a crime scene.
The good aspect of this news? The TV programs I mentioned will soon be able to deviate a little from their standardised plot lines, and who knows, maybe in real life we will even see more criminals put behind bars? The bad news? Well given the lengths police officers have gone to in the past to frame people not guilty of a crime they are accused of, if juries are presented with this sort of evidence in the future, I can see it being a lot easier to jail people who have done nothing wrong, and I’m only really considering places like Britain. In countries with less reputable policing, hard labour or even executions could be punishments handed out in cases where this method of investigation is used. That is just considering the judicial side of things, when it comes to profiling done by non-police forces, with data collation in mind, I imagine the hard core conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day with this. Forget the tin foil hats, be prepared to see people with latex gloves on 24/7, when outside the house.

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Aug 14 2007

Kokpar, QI And Apples

Category: In The Media,Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 7:19 am

Ever on the look out for mentions of all things Kazakh in the popular media, I came across the following episode of QI last week.
For those who have not yet seen this comedy quiz show, the idea is that Stephen Fry, as the quiz master, asks questions, and the panel of comedians/actors/celebrities have to answer questions. Alan Davies is the permanent contestant, who can be relied upon to supply obvious, but in fact wrong, answers. Whenever anyone supplies such an answer, a siren is played, and points are deducted.
In this particular clip of QI taken from series 1, episode 11, we have the two people mentioned above, as well as Bill Bailey (a comic genius), Linda Smith and Richard E. Grant. Click the video below to watch the clip.

So, in case you missed it, apparently apples actually originate from Kazakhstan, and the fine goat-carcass polo game of Kokpar is mentioned. See my previous post (A Day At The Races) for the last mention of this game, when AlexC, myself, Ira and Walton all went to watch it at a local racetrack. Oh, and before any smart alec informs that Almaty is a refernce to the apples, it apparently is NOT!

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Aug 14 2007

Irina Leaving in 30 Minutes

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 3:57 am

Yep, she does have to go to Moscow after all, however she will be returning in just over 24 hours. Previous trips have lasted longer, so it could have been a lot worse.
I hope she has a safe trip, and her work goes well over in Russia…

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