Testing 640px480 output from lower quality front-facing camera on an HTC Touch Pro2 (using PockeTwit) via Posterous http://post.ly/1FOiU
Nov 25 2010
Testing 640px480 output from l…
Nov 24 2010
This vid should auto upload2yo…
This vid should auto upload2youtube, effectively offering a backup service to posterous hosting & enable easy embedding http://post.ly/1EpXc
Nov 21 2010
WTF 2 Music Video
Just a quick post with the video to Jon Lajoie’s “WTF Collective 2”. It contains a little bit of NSFW language, but if you’re using headphones or have the speakers turned down reasonably low, you should be fine. It is worth searching for other videos by Jon Lajoie, though other tracks fear a higher percentage of not suitable for work lyrics.
By the way you may have noticed this blog is still unavailable sometimes. Since the 16th the server this blog is hosted on has been the target of a DDoS attack. Bluehost aren’t able to move me to a different box, nor have their actions so far resulted in the attack being stopped. Basically, if you see this site down, try again a bit later and it should be OK.
Nov 20 2010
Seb’s Trance Playlist
Just a very short post, passing on our friend Seb’s great YouTube Trance video playlist. Quite a few of the tracks don’t have real music videos, but I still think it is worth just letting it play in the background on another tab, as I’ve done whilst writing tonight’s posts. Thanks Seb, some of these tunes bought back great memories, and it was good to know what a few of them were actually called. We all look forward to seeing you again around Christmas time, when we will be back in the UK. Which reminds me, I need to think about updating the MP3s on my phone and thumb drives, I’m getting bored of listening to the same tracks over and over whilst walking to work…
This is the first time I’ve tried embedding a playlist from YouTube, please do leave a comment if it behaves strangely.
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Nov 20 2010
TGI Was My Birthday!
After taking Anna to the playground in the morning, we went to TGI Friday here in Astana. Although some friends comment on the prices, occasional staff attitude issues and better alternatives, I hadn’t tried the Astana branch at this point (20th April). The burger was tasty, the cocktail (custom ordered as the menu didn’t match what I remembered from a UK edition) well made and just right ratio of ingredients. Irina’s Mum came with us, Anna was very well behaved (I was a little concerned she’d try throwing the big girls ceramic plate on the floor) and by the end of the meal I was very glad we went there, and perhaps a little tipsy 🙂
We have since visited again once or twice, and given that there are other expensive restaurants in Astana, and sometimes you just want a Western style burger, I’d happily recommend you try it at least once – if nothing else you’ll at least be able to criticize from personal experience, if you don’t end up liking it 🙂
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Nov 19 2010
PS3 FanBoys, Look Away Now
My thanks to ChrisB for posting the following video up on Facebook. As I may have mentioned already on this site, I’m hoping to get a Kinect for Christmas. Partially for the intended use (playing games and interacting with some menus on the Xbox without using a controller), but also because I’m fascinated by the potential for other uses when the USB device is plugged into a Windows/Linux (or even a Mac I suppose!) box and drivers (already created) and applications and bodges (some already out in the wild, some currently in alpha stages) are used. Yes, the whole Minority Report-style waving your hands in the air to select and move objects around has a short term appeal to it, but just check what the guy does in the clip below. As mentioned within the comments section on the video’s native YouTube page, the possibilities of what can be done if you could use two or three Kinects around a room at the same time are very interesting.
Nov 19 2010
Arresting Roundabouts
The pictures and videos of Anna have now moved onto the 20th April, meaning I have about a month and a half to catch up with 7 months worth of backlog! Anyway, this was shot on the morning of my birthday this year, in the play area near our flats. Anna can now hold on to the roundabout by herself, and she seems to enjoy giving me a heart attack by trying to get off the ride whilst it is still spinning round. A lot of the time she now just sits on the foot rest and watches the world go by, occasionally pushing the roundabout around with her feet. As the winter gets colder, we spend less time out doors, and as no locals go and play there already (I’ve only had a few people tell me off for letting my daughter play in these sub-arctic (it was around 5-10 Celsius at the time!) conditions) there aren’t any children for her to play with right now. However, there is now one other child in her weektime playgroup sessions, and I’m hoping tomorrow’s goes as well as Tuesday’s did.
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Nov 19 2010
Tory HQ (Or Not?)
I finally watched some footage of the protests that occurred in Central London, after a friend linked to them on FaceBook. Not surprisingly, there were a few incidents not covered by the articles I read and the few broadcasts I managed to catch at the time. One thing, there seems to be some confusion as to whether this was actually the Conservative Party’s HeadQuarters, or “just” their campaign HQ?
At approx 8m15s – OK, obviously not mature, but the Star Wars (Death Star?) theme tune humming through a megaphone raised a smile.
13m50s – of the little video footage in TV news broadcasts of the protest I saw, I don’t remember hearing the crowd’s reaction (boo) to when an idiot dropped a fire extinguisher from the roof.
Part 2
1m43s It is NOT a government building, not sure why he said that.
8m25s Mob mentality – we’ve got a stick!!!
9m30s Perhaps it was not fair to hold so many people, but very much standard practice I believe, often just to keep a demo on it’s allotted route/out of “no-go” areas. Here they are apparently being held to find the ring leaders.
10m08s good tune, however the image of a CCTV camera in a suit raises one question in my mind – how many policemen will be watching this YouTube upload to identify “criminals” that they didn’t manage to catch with police surveillance cameras?
In general, from these clips, the police seemed very restrained, I was expecting more thuggish behaviour. I could be wrong, but I think they all kept their ID numbers on their shoulders as well. Perhaps since digital video capturing equipment is so prevalent now, they are more careful. Or it could just be that the protesters were (in the main) tame?
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Nov 12 2010
Leg Stretching
After a long time sat in her pushchair (we were visiting the Mega Shopping centre near us on the 12th of April earlier this year), Anna had an opportunity to stretch her legs and have a walk around. Unfortunately the camera wasn’t zoomed in at all (and it is fixed once you start recording a video), but at least you get a glimpse of what the area looks like. Pretty soon we’ll be moving back into the sort of weather we had back in April, with colder temperatures and some snow. Last I heard, minus 25 degrees Celsius was forecast for the later parts of November. Another month or two could see it drop further again.
You can also hear the music that Mega play outside. There has been a lot of studies on the effects of music, smell and shop layout, when it comes to increasing how much people buy, however given the choice of tunes they sometimes play, I don’t think that part of the theory has made it over here just yet.
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Nov 05 2010
No Subs Yet
However, here is the video I mentioned earlier in the week. I’ll see if we can get some sort of translation done by the weekend, but the basic idea is a discussion on whether black cats are lucky or unlucky. I’d personally be more inclined to say they are just cats. If you push me on the point, I’d agree some are black. However as the journalist was a friend, and she needed a foreigner to give her a nice quote on some interesting good luck omens we apparently have back in Britain, I was happy to oblige 🙂
You’ll see Karra and Muska in there, as well as Anna enjoying playing with the cats’ toy.
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