I have kept to my promise, and I am in the middle of reorganizing last night’s tweets and Qik-based posts into something a little more readable, manageable, and with the media embedded here on the site, rather than readers having to click over to external sites to look at the pictures and videos. I have learnt that some people don’t seem to want to do this, but are happy to check out the media and comment if it is on this blog already. The twitpics are all done (see below), but I’m still working on the videos. Some had to be deleted (accidental 15 second recordings of chairs and my pockets aren’t interesting, I know), all had to be retitled (Qik still has problems using the text I provide with most recordings to set the title for some reason), and I’m attempting to categorize them into two or three posts at most, rather than have them taking up most of the front page here.
Jun 12 2010
QBP Videos
So, as I mentioned in a tweet, Irina and I were invited to the Queen’s Birthday Party (organised by the British Embassy) on the 10th of June at the Radisson Hotel here in Astana. This was the first QBP since the new ambassador here in Kazakhstan took over.
A short summary would be no speeches (apparently the correct tradition for celebrating HRH’s birthday), a good local band that played a wide variety of covers, free good food (fish and chips in cones again, as well as a buffet (curries, beef kebabs, potato wedges 🙂 ) and free drink. I’ll leave the details of my mishap on the way home until another day.
The following videos were supposed to be uploaded on the night, but I was too drunk TBH. They were then supposed to be transferred via Qik, but once again the program got very tempremental. So, I reverted to YouTube.
I’ve not yet had a chance to actually watch all the videos, but I wanted to post these up tonight, as I’m away from the PC tomorrow for half the day, then giving a lesson and running an English Talking club in the afternoon and evening, then hopefully off to watch the England vs. USA football match during the night.
So it was now or at some random point in the future for embedding these clips.
Oh, and Irina took some proper photos with a real camera, so I’ll try ad post those up soon as well.
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May 28 2010
List Too Long For A Tweet
Unless you are @janeslee, or have a particular interest in which books I’ve read in the last three or so weeks, you can probably safely ignore this post. If you are janeslee, do I know you in real life?
I just noticed that you were in Wales, and despite my current location being Astana, Kazakhstan, we are based in Swansea when we are back in Britain.
Anyway, as you may guessed, my answer to your query of “what you reading that’s keeping you intrigued?” wouldn’t fit within 140 characters, so I’m writing this here and will reply to your tweet with a bit.ly link to this post.
John Birmingham – Final Impact
Jasper Fforde – Something Rotten
David Gerrold – The Man Who Folded Himself
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Destination: Amaltheia
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – The Final Circle of Paradise
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Prisoners of Power
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Roadside Picnic
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – The Time Wanderers
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Poor Cruel Folk
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Monday Begins On Saturday
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – The Gigantic Fluctuation
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Spontaneous Reflex
Arkady and Boris Strugatsky – Probationers
Harry Turtledove – The Man With The Iron Heart
I haven’t found a very well stocked English book shop here in Kazakhstan suddenly, these were all read on my MP4 player than can read plain TXT files. (Obviously I own all these books in paper form back in the UK, and wouldn’t dream of downloading e-books otherwise… /end-arse-covering)
Feb 09 2009
9th February – T Minus ?
Today is the day. If you believe that doctors can ever predict with any sort of certainty, when a child will be born, then you would expect our daughter to be born some time today. As it is, I’m just glad that we’ve reached some sort of milestone that at least signifies you are officially close to giving birth 🙂
All the bags are packed, the technology has been mostly tested and pared down where necessary. I still need to sort out YouTube uploading from my phone, and if I had some sort of Sony MS <> Micro SD adaptor, I could post all the details, pictures and videos on the phone alone. As it is, you’ll have to make do with a tweet, text or call 🙂