Jul 26 2010

Lakeside Bird Watching

Category: Anna's Photos — ChrisM @ 9:28 pm

Just a little more than a fortnight since the last post with photos of Anna. Which reminds me, I need to check if AnnaMerriman.com is still picking these up automatically, and whether the plugin used will work when I upgrade her blog to WordPress 3.0. Anyway, this photo was taken in the same place and at the same time as the last video published on this blog – the 4th of March 2010. You’ll have to forgive me if I maybe skip putting 2010 for the rest of the posts today, and if you are new to this blog, and wonder why the date is included, I want Anna’s site to eventually be something we can show to her and say, look, five years ago today, this is how you looked, and what you were doing 🙂
So, over by the lake that was in the camp site Mum and John were previously at, here we have John and Anna looking at the birds. Anna seems to be momentarily distracted by something land based, but in general she does seem to like watching animals in the wild 🙂

Anna And John By A Lake With Some Birds

Anna And John By A Lake With Some Birds

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Jul 21 2010

Fit For A King

Category: Videos — ChrisM @ 12:11 am

Before I forget (or it gets relegated to an ever increasing group of bookmarks titled “to write about”), here is a video I came across of my old hometown, Cheltenham. It focuses entirely on some of the Regency era architecture to be found in the Spa town, but it was interesting trying to work out where some of the shots were taken, and the music seemed very suitable.
If you want to see what parts of ‘nam look like, click play below, and then head on over to Cheltonia, for a brilliant series of posts on walks you can take in the area. I’m not aware of knowing the author at all, but found his video and blog when searching twitter for mentions of Cheltenham, and thought you might like it?

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Jul 08 2010

Celt Caption Competition – Chocolate Chance!

Category: Anna's Photos,Personal — ChrisM @ 6:14 pm

I just wanted to write something quickly letting people know about a post over at Celt Photographic (JohnK’s site). It has the picture below this text, and a request to provide a good caption for it. See here.

Chris And Anna Relaxing At Home

So far we have

“…and the world’s a better place when you’re upside down…sweet about me” ,

“Australian Baby rearing therapy is questioned” ,

and the current favourite, “Despite vigorous shaking the jelly bean dispenser appeared to be empty”!

I’ve added “Father very carefully & securely holds his daughter upside down, as she really enjoys seeing the world from that perspective, and at no point was any shaking involved whatsoever” more as an explanation for concerned readers (one hand holding Anna by the shoulders), rather than a specific entry to the competition.

Ts&Cs
The bar of chocolate needs to be picked up in Wales by the winner.
The judge’s decision is final.
If I get around to upgrading CeltPhotographic to WordPress 3.0 and the site goes down, you may need to resubmit your caption.
No idea when the closing date is 🙂

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Jun 24 2010

Multiple Sites, One Interface?

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 10:24 pm

I have yet to play with the multi-site abilities of WordPress 3.0 (porting over WordPress MultiUser main characteristic). I want to see if I can have all of my blogs looked after by one super admin interface, so when the time came to upgrade to WordPress 3.1, or one of the plugins, I could go through the process just once instead of twenty odd times. I’m not sure how the process would work when some plugins are only installed on some sites. If have a plugin that pulls in news from various RSS feeds on one site, but that plugin isn’t used elsewhere, what happens? I also think I’ll need to still use an extra plugin and fiddle with some CNAME records, as all the sites except one are on totally different domains, not subdomains or folders of one master site. Anyway, that is all a project for another day – I don’t have the time to dedicate to repairing any potential problems I may cause right now.

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Jun 18 2010

Installed WordPress 3.0 on main blog

Category: Tweets,WordPress — ChrisM @ 2:25 am

Installed WordPress 3.0 on main blog. All posts vanished from front page! Changed theme. All OK. Proper post in the morning. Heading to bed.

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May 26 2010

Late Spring Clean

Category: Personal — ChrisM @ 11:44 pm

After repairing all my other websites (following the hacking of my server and insertion of malware links), I decided to standardize all the plugins across the sites, and only install themes and plugins that were available from the official WordPress repository. This makes keeping them up to date a lot easier (and semi-automatic) and should any new hacks take place, the clean up job will be quicker. In the last few days, I also finally re-instated the Amazon links; when these sites were not built around WordPress, I’d had Amazon.co.uk books related to each topic displayed, but didn’t see a single sale. I went through my AWStats information, and nineteen out of twenty sites had the most traffic from America. (Actually Russia figured quite heavily as well, but a) Russian visitors aren’t famous for click on adverts and buying products and b) Amazon don’t have a .RU specific site, oh and c) A lot of the Russian visitors were actually spam bots, once again not known for earning web masters money 🙂 ) So, discovering that I had already set up an affiliate account there, I went ahead and inserted Amazon.com adverts on each site. I’m hoping that the sites will start to earn a bit money than the last year’s income, though I know that with summer coming there will be the usual dip in visitor numbers and corresponding income. The grill (BBQ) tips site might just be the exception, I suppose 🙂

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Apr 27 2010

Another Kazakh Blog

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 5:44 pm

I was just catching up with some of the Astana and Kazakhstan based pages over at Expat-Blog, when I realised I hadn’t yet checked out the Kazakh Nomad blog. Obviously this site, KZ Blog and also the Oyster one have been read, and in deed linked to from here in the past, but for some reason I’d not looked into the last entry on the Kazakhstan blogs page. The lady now lives in Astana, and teaches English, so I suspect she has/will cross paths with a few of our ex-pat English Language teachers. I’ll have to check around and see if anyone has met her in real life yet…

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Apr 25 2010

WP FTW w/EA!

Category: Friends,Personal — ChrisM @ 3:31 pm

WordPress For The Win with English Advantage just seemed a little bit too long for a post title, even on this blog.
As you may remember, I’ve linked to English Advantage a few times before, but the last 12 months saw the site not producing new content. Well, all that could be changing, as the owner has decided to give WordPress a try as the framework around which he can build the new look site. Randy The Raccoon has already made a very welcome return, though I’d watch out for any shiny things you treasure, and his new friend (a cat) should under NO circumstances be allowed near any gold or diamonds!
Anyway, to “Lurn English Gud Hear” head on over to English Advantage.

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Apr 06 2010

Suggestions For Kazakhstan – Part IV

Category: Kazakhstan — ChrisM @ 1:25 am

This one is quite simple, and some may even argue petty (in which case, just wait until you’ve seen a few more of these Suggestions For Kazakhstan posts!).
What it all comes down to is cover your mouth if something liquid-based is coming out, and don’t spit in public!

Coughs And Sneezes Spread Diseases. Oh, and don't spit on the floor. Please.

If you really feel the need to spit, then do it at home, where people have the choice to share the area you live in.

For a while around the time of the swine flu epidemic hysteria here in Kazakhstan, I had really hoped that people might take heed of the (surprisingly) sensible advice posted up by the authorities. However, behaviour on the street since then suggests that people still think nothing of bringing up a large amount of phlegm, or even just saliva, and projecting it onto the nearest area of ground they are not immediately about to walk over.

Sneezing

I might just be able to lend a small amount of credence to the overall majority opinion in this country that you get a cold from being cold (modern doctors are finally realising that the major issue isn’t temperature, but germs in the air from already infected people), if people would just stop their saliva, snot and phlegm from being launched into the air at around 50 mph!

You could argue that sneezes (and to a lesser extent, coughs), are often involuntary and come with little warning. In which case, I’ll compromise, and focus on the spitting in the street. Premier league footballers across the world gob onto the pitch, but lets be honest, they aren’t normally ideal role models for many areas in life, so why let them influence your approach to hygiene?

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Feb 10 2010

Putting My Finger On It

Category: WordPress — ChrisM @ 11:37 pm

One of the WordPress plugins that I have been meaning to write about is Comment Referrers by Donncha O Caoimh. Very lightweight, and single purpose, it simply adds a line to e-mails that you receive when new comments are made on a post at your site. If the browser sent a referral URL upon arriving at the page, it is copied in. So if someone has been searching Google for “WordPress Astana ExPat”, I can figure this out if they leave a comment. This can be useful for tailoring your reply to their the visitor’s specific needs, or at the other end of the scale, it is normally very simple to see if someone has simply left a comment to gain a backlink. It also works as a simple way of keeping tabs on which sites or search engines are sending you traffic.

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