Oct 13 2009

Pinked Chavs?

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 3:06 pm

I’ve got a few videos I’ll be posting later that display some of Britain’s finest, most up standing citizens (/sarcasm) chavs choosing the wrong people to start some aggravation with. However, for now, please make do with this short piece from BBC news, that details one approach to stop troublesome tearaway teenagers from congregating in some areas. Now, yes, they could just buy some creams and then continue to hang around in alleyways. However I suspect they’ll just move along to the next dimly lit corner that doesn’t have pink lighting installed!

This reporter needs to have a quiet word with whoever edited the video – the first frame you see whilst waiting for the buffering to complete does not show him at his best, especially with his eyes like that!
[edit]
Ooops, looks like when I borrowed the embed code from the BBC website that I missed some sort of don’t autoplay function. Click the link below to see the post on its own, and watch the video.
Continue reading “Pinked Chavs?”

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Oct 08 2009

Fourth Time Lucky?

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 6:13 pm

We haven’t had a lot of luck with UPSs (Uninterruptible power supplies) over here in Astana. In three and a bit years, two have broken (one the battery definitely died, the other was never diagnosed) and the replacement one I bought a couple of days back didn’t ever work.

Anyway, to be fair to Planet Electronica, where we bought the 3rd UPS from a day before the final choice, they didn’t quibble over their product not working, nor insist on sending it back to Almaty for testing before issuing a refund. However, as the unit didn’t come with a power cable, and was supposed to, I am slightly tempted to go back in a week or so and see if the model is on sale again (it was the last of their stock), and if so look into DNA testing to check if they are simply re-selling a lemon in the hope someone won’t bother to return it.

So, this time, I’ve gone for a simple model (limited LEDs, no graphic display on the unit for exact incoming voltages etc) from a different supplier, not assumed that the big names would automatically mean a longer lasting model, and also took the opportunity to get a higher capacity unit (1250VA/~600W). Although the configuration has been set to initiate an automatic hibernate procedure when the battery gets too low (useful if we aren’t at home when the power goes out), I should get around 20 minutes to continue my work before that point is reached – plenty of time to finish off e-mails or posts and save/publish.

MGE Nova AVR 1250
MGE Nova AVR 1250

hmm, just noticed that although the powered USB hub, monitor and PC itself are protected by the UPS, the router is plugged in to the mains directly. Will need to see if I can wire up a free standing UK mains socket (the router comes from Britain) to a cable with a male IEC connector to make sure the internet connection isn’t lost either.

Kettle Lead Socket
UK mains socket

[edit]

OK, thinking about it, I need my portable hard drives covered as well, so I’ll probably just wire up a UK 4-way mains extension lead and replace the plug with the kettle lead socket (like the one your PC has on the back). The UPS is only currently running at around 20-30% of maximum load, and even if I’m using both drives and on the internet, I can’t imagine the current drawn is going to be massive.

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Sep 20 2009

Funny Links

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 6:19 pm

I’ve just published a new page on this blog. Simply titled LOL (laugh out loud) it is a place for me to place links to funny web sites. Hopefully you’ll like some of them, and I won’t spend so long trying to remember their exact addresses. In case those few extra pixels are too far for your mouse/trackball to travel, I’ve included a copy below.

These are pages that sometimes make me laugh, other times are enough to prevent boredom from setting in too fast. Roughly in the order of predominantly funny to worth checking occasionally…

XKCD – Web Comic that is consistently funny. Geeks likely to appreciate it a little more 🙂
I Can Has Cheez Burger – Cats. Pictures of cats. Pictures of cats with captions. Might not be your cup of tea if you’re not a pet person.
I Has A Hotdog – Like I Can Has Cheez Burger but with dogs and other animals.
There I Fixed It – Bodge it. Snap it. Post it.
Pundit Kitchen – News related photos with captions.
Probably Bad News – Journalists making mistakes.
Item Not As Described – Weird and unsavoury items found in the classifieds (often ‘free’ and sourced from CraigsList).
Pwned On Camera – Pwned. Like owned, but spelt in a l33t way. People caught acting inappropriately on camera.
ROFL Razzi – Celebrity photos with captions.
This Is Photo Bomb – Basically someone appears in a shot who isn’t supposed to. Funnier than this description makes it sound.
Awkward Family Moments – A bit hit and miss. Photos from the last few decades where the poses are contrived, and the families a little weird.
Up Next In Sports – Sports photos with funny-ish captions.
Once Upon A Win – Nostalgia. Not comedy, but reminiscing about toys and sweets from your childhood.
Graph Jam – Also hit and miss, this site attempts to tell jokes in the form of a graph. Sometimes the material isn’t funny, other times people don’t seem to know what sort of graph could be used.
Engrish Funny – Spelling mistakes, normally from countries where English is a second (at most) language.
Totally Looks Like – Look-a-likes, in the vein of those found in the Letters page of Private Eye.

So why post them all? Although a lot of them link to each other in their headers, some aren’t in the same group and I always forget the exact address. I’ll add more when I get back to our home PC.

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Jul 10 2009

Anna Pink Dress And Turning On Tummy

Category: Anna's Photos,Anna's Videos,Personal — ChrisM @ 9:55 pm

Displaying both one of her pretty pink dresses, and her ever improving neck muscles and general co-ordination, here we have a couple of photos and four videos shot on the 10th July, at the in-laws.

Although not yet crawling (occasional shuffles backwards seem to be haphazard), Anna really has got travelling by rolling down to a tee – take your eyes off her for 10 seconds and she’ll be at the other end of the blanket we put on the living room carpet for her 🙂 (The things on the floor in the videos is just a small sheet, the blanket I refer to is a king-size duvet type thing.)

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Jul 03 2009

Site Up And Running Again

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 4:26 am

My thanks to EricW who works for Bluehost Live Support. Following some changes to the server, I encountered multiple error messages when trying to access, and later use the admin side of, this site.
The previous two agents seemed a little more confused in comparison, but following Eric’s help, the site was available again, and the memory errors displayed when I edited/published a post were indeed down to a plugin.
Anyway, the last four posts mark the end of this night’s work – I’m heading to bed in a moment. We have another five posts or so before we catch up to photos of Anna in Kazakhstan, and so in a week or two, we should finally be up to date and posting live pictures 🙂

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Jul 03 2009

Amsterdam 2007 Photos #7

Category: Amsterdam,Friends,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 4:18 am

We moved back to Cocos Outback Steakhouse (need to check name later), where we have Alex once more, deciding which delicacy to go for… (kangaroo burger was one of the touristy delicacies on offer in the menu. More importantly, they allowed schmoking with your meal, though if they were busy, they preferred you to use the side room. Fair enough.)
Amsterdam Chris Merriman AlexC ChrisD 2007

Not related to the aforementioned grub, here is that establishment’s toilet taste proudly on display.
Amsterdam Chris Merriman AlexC ChrisD 2007

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Jun 20 2009

Amsterdam 2007 Photos – Finally

Category: Amsterdam,Friends,Personal,Pictures — ChrisM @ 12:58 am

OK, the 2008 Amsterdam picture series was started back on 10th February this year, just 11 days before Anna was born. Here, finally are the 2007 photos, from my previous trip to Amsterdam. This time Irina did not come, but AlexC and ChrisD met up with me there, and we shared an apartment for four days (21/9/2007 – 24/9/2007).

I’ve checked Lemming was fine with his mug up in public in the 2008 series of pictures, and I’ve blurred anyone else who looked like they might want it. Though in these 2007 pictures, I’m only aware of one person from the forums being involved.

21st April

Stix near our apartment. 1st visit I think of the trip. We have our friend Chris on the left, AlexC on the right, me hiding behind, and a random local behind:) I’ve checked, and any photos presented on the front page, as opposed to behind a ‘click here to read more’ type link, will not be displaying any Dutch herbs, as I don’t want to put off advertisers.

Amsterdam Chris Merriman AlexC ChrisD 2007

The two below are the scene outside the entrance to our apartment. It belonged to Hotel Amstelzicht, just down the road. Yes, I got a bit distracted in Photoshop when I returned, and had a go at making these two shots a little different to the normal point’n’click affairs presented on this blog.
Amsterdam Chris Merriman AlexC ChrisD 2007
Amsterdam Chris Merriman AlexC ChrisD 2007

Right, thats your lot for now, I’ve no idea whether these posts will total a series of 13 again, I need to try and keep load times down on the front page for this blog, as Bluehost seem to be having another go-slow on my server 🙁

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Apr 08 2009

Best Way To Slow Down A PDA?

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 1:54 am

Try setting a 1×1 BMP as the background image, on a Windows Mobile device. That will teach me…
(Yes, I now realise a 240×320 image makes more sense, I was hoping to save some memory by having a tiled 1×1 black background, but it didn’t work too well.) Also finally got around to installing the latest Barcorama install (see previous posts or pop over to XDA Developers, or just google 🙂 ). Will have a play and report back later.
Hmmm, problems with the transparency level I set in Resco Photo viewer now not being accepted, and also 240×320 is the resolution for the whole screen, not the area the today screen actually uses for displaying a photo. If I don’t use a custom background, I’m stuck with the one embedded in the TSK file, and I want to use the colour scheme from a TSK, but not the author’s image.
Finally… a 213×320 JPG that was slightly off-black seems to have done the trick – the 240×320 BMP exhibited some strange vertical banding as a background image, don’t know if that was an original colour/dimension/filetype issue, but all seems fine now.

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Mar 22 2009

Driftwood, Seb And Anna

Category: Anna's Photos,Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 8:23 pm

The day (22nd March §) after Marilyn arrived, Seb came over to say hi to all of us, and so we decided to take a walk on the beach. As there are three main beaches within easy reach of Clydach, we had to decide where to take him. The Mumbles is possibly the most famous beach near us, but unless you time your visits with the tides correctly, there can be no sand left at all – just the wall and then the sea itself! This left us a choice between one of Swansea’s beaches and Port Talbot’s. Although Swansea itself is a little prettier and seen as more up market (relatively speaking) compared to Port Talbot, Irina and I had been down there quite a few times recently with Anna (and sometimes Gwen), so we hopped onto the motorway for a few junctions, and parked up along the sea front in Port Talbot.
As ever, hover your cursor over the image’s to see their title/description… You could do that, or I could just remember that I only need to leave the caption field blank on tweet posts that are displayed as asides. (Runs off to edit a few earlier posts)

§ – Why this constant fascination with the dates photos were taken? In case the EXIF data is some how not retained with these JPGs, I wanted to ensure that in years to come, I could easily tell when the pictures were actually taken, rather than when the posts containing them were published. You’ll just have to put up with it for now, sorry…

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Mar 17 2009

Anna At The Seaside

Category: Anna's Photos,Personal — ChrisM @ 10:44 pm


These are from the 17th March, apologies that we are once again quite far from real time with pictures of Anna’s growing up, I’ll try to rectify that soon.
Let your mouse hover over the image’s for a brief description, as normal. Not sure why, but I don’t like the way the title is displayed with WordPress’s gallery, so I don’t enter any in that field normally. I’ve also heard from a few relatives that they hadn’t realised you could click on Anna’s photos to see them in a higher resolution, so my apologies for not making that clear earlier. If any friends or family want a particular image to print etc., drop me a line and I’ll supply the original version for better quality.

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