Feb 20 2008

Amsterdam Trip IS On

Almost all the details are now sorted… We have bought the plane tickets, paid a deposit on the Apartment, now we just need to sort out a pet-sitter again. Either that or re-unit Karra and Muska with their Mum (Dasha) and younger sister (Tishka) that they’ve never met. Ira thinks 4 cats in one house would be too much work for her parents, so perhaps Mira fancies trying out living on her own again?
Anyway, see below for a map of the general area we’ll be staying in.


View Larger Map

Sadly Alex and Mat won’t be coming this year, as was originally hoped, as their flights cost even more than ours. btw, congrats to Alex – Dryad Musings has just got an Alexa rank… around 12 million, but that is better than the dreaded ‘no data’. At one point this site almost broke into the 200k region, but since then its bounced back up to the million mark again. Which is a little odd, as my unique visitors per month have been steadily increasing, but there you go. ChrisD (who doesn’t have a blog, so doesn’t get a hyperlinked name 😉 ) can’t come either, as his new work randomly tests its employees, and he is worried about passive smoking whilst he drinks.

The apartment we are renting has internet access, but it is wired, so unless Ira’s laptop comes for the journey, we’ll in communicado for a while (my PDA/phone has WiFI and BT, but is obviously lacking an RJ45 socket LMAO)

Anyway, enough on Amsterdam for now, I’m sure I’ll be boring you with more info a lot more over the coming weeks…

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Dec 03 2007

My Main Christmas Present

Category: Personal,WiFi,Windows MobileChrisM @ 3:01 pm

I just wanted to show my readers a demonstration of my next toy 🙂
It is called a HTC TyTn II and will be replacing some of my current equipment…

My current phone (an Orange C550 (a rebadged HTC Hurricane) which crashes and some buttons no longer work all the time.
My current PDA (a HP iPAQ 2210) with a non-functioning directional pad, faulty USB socket, a snapped battery cover and it also crashes.
GPS unit – my current one no longer gets a fix on satellites.
The TyTn II also has a built-in camera, which should be an improvement over my current phone’s. Though without a flash, I don’t think it will be completely replacing our current digital camera.
Anyway, have a play with the demo below, you can spin the model around, slide open the keyboard and tilt the screen.
Continue reading “My Main Christmas Present”

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Oct 25 2007

Ira’s New Phone

Category: Kazakhstan,Windows MobileChrisM @ 6:42 pm

Irina seems to be happy with her new mobile phone, a Motorola Razr2 v8 (I better go and check that I have actually got that model name right 🙂 ). It was a delayed anniversary present; the reason for the delay is that you can not yet buy it here in Kazakhstan. I could have ordered it and had it posted to our flat here in Astana, however using the normal post system involves long delays and visiting the Post Office to pick it up – assuming the postal workers do not ‘accidentally’ mislay it. That said, I have not heard stories of birthday cards arriving, with the money missing, as used to happen. So, when I visited Britain I picked on up there, and gave it to Ira on my return to Kazakhstan.
The phone does not have a memory card slot, but given that it has almost 1/2 gig of internal memory, Ira decided that this was one feature she could live without, for the sake of the sleekness of the phone. As she does not store multiple movies or a large collection of programs on her phones, the lack of expandable memory was not a problem. I remember when phones had external slots for an SD card. This meant changing from one card to another was fast and easy. The first phone I had with a memory card was my current one – a Orange C550 (actually a rebadged HTEC Hurricane), but as with most similar phones now, you have to remove the battery to gain access. This phone took mini-SD cards, which use the same electronics as their bigger and older brother, a normal SD card. However, phones have since moved on, and many now sport a micro sd slot. Again, the card is simply a smaller version of a mini SD card, and you can use adaptors to insert it into a standard USB card reader, or into a PDA. Personally, I prefer memory cards that are not smaller than my thumb nail, but that is more due to my tendency of losing things – the smaller the object, the less easy it is to find. I suppose if the memory capacities continue to increase, and the price premium is not too great for physically smaller cards, there is no real loss.

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Oct 25 2007

Books Finished – Reviews To Catch Up Soon

Category: BooksChrisM @ 6:20 pm

I have finally finished the collection of e-books stored on my PDA. However, I know that the book reviews here stalled a long time ago now. I hope to return to the book reviews a little later, as well finding some new books to read. The Terry Goodkind ‘Sword of Truth’ series is one I would like to continue reading, see here for my Wizard’s First Rule review. One area described within the books is the garden of life, where the evil Darken Rahl carried out his dark magic. The scenes involving the young boy were mildly disturbing, but most of the rest of the book was well worth reading.

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Sep 13 2007

GPS With Speedcamera POI

Category: AmsterdamChrisM @ 5:01 am

Now that I have my GPS systems sorted for Amsterdam (we will have TomTom Navigator on the PDA, GPS Tuner also on the PDA, and TomTom Mobile and a couple of basic GPS apps on the Smartphone), one positive side effect will be having a navigation system ready to use in Britain, should I end up hiring a car for any of the long journeys. (If it costs the same to hire one as a coach or train ticket, I may well do this, as I have not driven in 9 months, and sort of miss driving, especially in a country where people have at least a semblance of lane discipline 😉 ). What with the speed camera database installed on the PDA, the only other item I could do with is a radar detector to ensure I am aware of any mobile speed detection units on the road I am travelling on at the time. Obviously this would be for interest only, as I never go above 70mph on Britain’s motorways.

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Sep 07 2007

Two Weeks Today!

Category: Amsterdam,Friends,Personal,Windows MobileChrisM @ 2:10 am

Yep, 14 and a half days, and I’ll be waiting to board the plane from Kaliningrad to Amsterdam. I have checked with the hotel about their luggage storage facilities, and all is OK there. (I can not check into the apartment they own until 5pm, and Alex & ChrisD arrive 4 hours after me anyway.) I have tried updating a couple of GPS related PDA programs, with varying success. As I do not want to risk losing the use of the older versions, I will leave trying to fix the problems (related to .NET Framework issues) until I am back in Kazakhstan, in five and a bit weeks. I am sort of itching to sort the problem now, but I know from experience that if something works, it is best to leave until the need is not there before attempting un-necessary upgrades. Anyway, I need to double check on a few forums that I have made fair and accurate summaries of what, where and how much to spend in Amsterdam, and then make sure the data is replicated across the PDA, Smartphone and real world paper and ink 🙂 No flat battery is going to throw this break into a mess for me 🙂 I discovered that there was no point in checking for Java based GPS applets to install on my Sony Ericsson K700 (my backup phone that will have my UK SIM card in it) does not allow access to bluetooth services through JARs, unfortunately. Given that Alex is bringing her (newer) Smartphone as well, and the installation files I need are on my mini-SD mem card, I guess I’ll just have to survive somehow 😉

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Sep 03 2007

TomTom Mobile Sorted

Category: Amsterdam,Windows MobileChrisM @ 1:41 am

I finally got around to installing TomTom on to my Smartphone, and making sure the Netherlands map was activated and looking OK. Next I need to double check the research I’ve carried out, make sure I have not missed any places worth visiting, and export them to KML files. Those files can be imported straight into GPSTuner on my PDA, though my PDA’s and SmartPhone’s TomTom application will require the data to converted into OV2 etc. files.
I now have two separate sources for satellite navigation, in case either the phone or the PDA’s battery runs out, and with two different applications, should one turn out not to be working as well as planned. I’ll post results once I know how well things went.

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Aug 29 2007

Mapping Forum

Category: PersonalChrisM @ 4:16 am

As you may remember from my previous posts in the Amsterdam category, I have been using a combination of Google Earth, Microsoft’s Windows Live Local and other online mapping utilities to locate the best destinations for upcoming trip.


Combined with some photos and reviews, I have been calculating the Latitude and Longitude for each, to add to my PDA’s GPS software.
Well, there is a forum for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Windows Live Local service users and programmers to come together and discuss a wide range of topics on this topic. User’s of the the MapPoint software are also welcome, and the forum looks like it will be a good place to discover all the facts about the soon to be released MapPoint 2008 app.

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Aug 20 2007

Not Just Me – Skype

Category: Amsterdam,Internet Connections,WiFi,Windows MobileChrisM @ 11:50 pm

Over the weekend I had terrible problems signing into Skype, though Live Messenger had no issues. Due to the previous problems I have encountered with our local ISP, I just assumed they were doing some work on their servers, and were perhaps having to block ranges of ports whilst they were carrying out work. It now looks as though the ISP is not to blame, as Skype have released an official statement explaining they had encountered unexpected technical difficulties, that had led to some users not being able to sign in. As I don’t often use Skype for IM, it did not really effect me a great deal, but had I been in Amsterdam already, this could have caused problems, as I intend to use my PDA’s Skype application (with whichever free WiFi spots I can find) to avoid having to pay for calls back here to Kazakhstan. Other users who had to redirect Skype audio calls to a mobile have been asking if they will receive a refund. (In case you haven’t come across the system yourself, audio/video/typing conversations between two computers are free, if you need to dial a ‘real world’ telephone, be it mobile or a landline, you need to purchase some Skype credit.)

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Aug 18 2007

Any Interest In GPS POI For Amsterdam?

Category: AmsterdamChrisM @ 4:38 am

PLEASE SEE THE NEW AMSTERDAM PAGE FOR THE GPS FILES.

As you may have gathered, I recently spent quite a long time collating information on Amsterdam, from which bars serve the best beer (for ChrisD), to which CoffeeShops (CSs) sell the best, ermmm, coffee (?). Anyway, part of this process involved me using the forums I previously posted about, a fair few Google searches, Google Earth and anything else I could lay my hands on to discover the exact locations of the good CSs, in terms of Latitude and Longitude. Once entered into Google Earth, I exported them as KML files, and imported them into the GPS Tuner PDA application I mentioned a while back. Now I have nearly completed this stage, would there be any interest from this blog’s readers in those files? I still need to tidy up the names, if they are to be used by other people, but I can’t be bothered, TBH, if there is no interest. So, I’ll give it a fortnight, if you would rather not publicly state your fondness of smoking, feel free to e-mail me (addresses are posted on the Contacts page, link at the top here), and I’ll not mention any names if you prefer.
At some point, I will be publishing a summary of the research, including non-smoking-related information, so don’t think this is exclusively for lovers of the green stuff.

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