Another video shot on Irina’s birthday (31st of January), here we have a quick clip of Anna munching on some fruit, and continuing to practice walking around. There were definitely not her first steps, but you can see how the experience is still relatively new to her. Towards the end of the clip you can see Losha, Ira’s Dad, Zakhar, Rossita, Balzhan and Dr Natalya.
Which reminds me, no idea when it will be broadcast, but Karra will probably be filmed tonight for a piece in Astana’s (as in the TV channel, not the city itself) news program. Something to do with black cats not being unlucky! (The reminder being that Balzhan is the reporter involved).
Oct 12 2010
First-ish Faltering Footsteps
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Oct 12 2010
Nowhere To Run. Just Swerve.
Just noticed that there are two or three YouTube videos that need to be embedded before catching up with those featuring Anna since we got back to Astana.
This one was shot on Irina’s birthday, and it looks a little like they are playing something similar to dodgeball. I was always more of a British Bulldog lover personally, for the same reason I preferred playing rugby to football. Precise aim and co-ordination were never my strengths, body checking someone and or grabbing a ball was more my thing.
Anyway, we have another video to come after this one, then we’ll be around the end of March timeline wise.
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Oct 12 2010
ChrisM, AntiSceptic or SilentlyScreaming?
If you have registered for a lot of different sites, teams and organizations online, you may find it difficult to remember the exact URL, and user name you’ve chosen in the past. This isn’t a problem if you keep your bookmarks fresh, but if you want to give your membership details to a friend, you want to ensure you don’t go giving your YouTube account name when talking about a forum for antique watch enthusiasts. Unless you always use the same nickname, and the site in question has an easy to use search facility, it is quite likely that people won’t be able to find you.
This is where the DandyID Services plug-in enters the fray. You can can see a very simple example of how it works by visiting the About / Contact Me page here at ChrisMerriman.com. The DandyID Services plug-in is designed to display the icons, site names and obviously the underlying URLs in your sidebar (via a widget that becomes available once the plug-in is activated and configured. Obviously you’ll actually need to tell DandyID about which places you have a membership, but their accounts are free to operate, and it doesn’t take too long to collate all the info you’ll need.
(The post it titled as it is because depending on where you look for me online, you’ll find me as ChrisM, AntiSceptic or more often than not, SilentlyScreaming).
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Sep 24 2010
Star Trek: Tik Tok
This video reminded just how many of the original Star Trek episodes I haven’t seen yet. Apparently the song is by Ke$ha. Auto-tune seems to be overused everywhere now, but at least this isn’t subtle and trying to present her voice as pitch perfect.
If you want a video that is slightly less canonical (sp?) with Star Trek’s history, check out Let’s Get It On (Kirk/Spock)
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Sep 16 2010
Ony Vsur Derjit Kazakhstan Bezopasnom
I’ve attempted to spell out this post’s title in Latin characters, as the following Cyrillic characters will probably just appear as question marks still. ??? ??? ?????? ????????? ??????????.
First we have what appears to be a promotional video for the Kazakh navy, though it doesn’t actually exist yet. Hat tip to EurasiaNet for the video below and also this related article regarding orders for patrol boats and corvettes. I’ll just pretend I know what a corvette is for now 🙂 The Kazakh coast guard already exists on the Caspian sea, however a fully fledged navy would be able to sail further out, and obviously also be a visible deterrent to any ne’er do wells interested in Kazakh properties and installations.
I decided to check out the YouTube account that had uploaded this video, and found an interesting selection there.
Kazakh Special Forces – interesting that you only seem to see Kazakh faces there, I didn’t notice any Russians under the camo paint.
Here we have the Kazakh Presidential Guard, though the footage must be a little dated, as I believe that is Pope John Paul II being greeted around a minute into the clip, and our dearly beloved Glorious Leader President Nazarbayev looks a little younger at around the 3:45 mark. I’m not going to point out the ceremonies involved, especially as Britain has a similar set up with changing of the guard etc. in London. That said, I can’t help notice the Soviet style marching each time I watch this. I think this is from CCCP/USSR days, or do many other countries copy this style? There is a small section of non-ceremonial action at around 5:10.
If you have any military, specifically Air Force knowledge, I’d appreciate you taking a look at the follow clip. It is entitled “Kazakh Air Force strike the Manas Base”, but some of the footage (especially of the bombers taken from lower in the sky) seem to have been collected from other operations. Not as bad as one of the other videos on the channel that definitely had hollywood movie footage cut in to it. Anyway, feel free to leave an anonymous comment if you could clear up this query.
Finally, after all the military themed clips, we have a little b-boy action…
OK, I lied, I couldn’t leave you without this brilliant tribute to our most esteemed leader. I will not be writing anything negative about him here, nor publishing comments that contain insults, because of legal constraints in this country, and also due to the fact that there is nothing negative to write about him, his political party and the policies currently in force here. Obviously.
I should point out the use of the “Eye of the Tiger” could be misleading.
Face to face, out in the heat. Hangin’ tough, stayin’ hungry. They stack the odds ’til we take to the street….
You see you can not hold a protest on the street without applying for, and receiving the relevant permits. Perhaps we should alter the lyrics to ensure no Kazakh citizens are led astray?
Sep 15 2010
Comparing Walkers
This is (almost) it! Four more photo based posts and this site will be up to date with pictures taken during our last trip to the UK! All the videos have been published already, and if you check out this site’s YouTube channel, you’ll see I’ve already uploaded the last 4.5 months worth of videos recorded in Kazakhstan. This means there are now 538 videos there! I will try and increase the amount of posts written per week until we get close to real time publishing again. I still need to go through and title most of the recent videos, and select which photos to use and then process them.
Anyway, these photos were shot on the same day (15th of March 2010) as the A Promenade Around Cheltenham Promenade post. Since March, she is now happy (sometimes too eager and wants to go solo) climbing stairs, and can almost manage all of the four floors up to our flat!
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- Anna And Daddy In Cheltenham
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- Anna And Grandad On The Promenade In Cheltenham
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Sep 08 2010
A Promenade Around Cheltenham Promenade
The 15th of March was the day we all went into Cheltenham for a walk around the town centre (Anna still often preferred to have someone’s hand to hold onto when walking around outdoors at the time, and wasn’t shy about letting you know when she had walked far enough, and expected to be carried the rest of the way!). Anyway, the Promenade itself hasn’t changed much in the four years or so since we moved out of Cheltenham to move to Kazakhstan. I think this is FINALLY the last of the UK videos we recorded on our trip over there this year. There are still a few more post’s worth of pictures to publish, but after that we will be into Kazakhstan based pictures and movies.
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Sep 08 2010
PockeTwit Fixed!
If you happen to use PockeTwit to read and write your tweets, you should start the application and make sure check for updates is ticked with the options. Re-start if necessary.
Alternatively, head on over to here to grab version 0.82a . If you prefer, just grab the CAB to copy to your device and install from here.
Because of the changes Twitter made to their authentication and application verification system, namely OAuth being the only acceptable method, we had to wait for the writer of this (FREE!!!) program to update his code. This took a while, but TBH, the program is free, works like a dream again, and matches 98% of my tweeting needs. If it had YouTube access for video uploads (like TinyTwitter that I tried to use temporarily, but also had OAuth problems with) or possibly TwitVid, I could finally dump Qik. I just checked over at PockeTwit’s User Voice Page, and someone had already requested that enhancement. Added my vote.
Anyway, once the update is installed, start up PockeTwit, goto the Settings menu on the left, and select Accounts. Assuming it is already showing your Twitter account, click on Edit Selected, and follow the on screen instructions. One other person reported a problem with OAuth verification, it might be worth temporarily changing your phone’s default browser to Pocket Internet Explorer if this occurs. No reason I can think of that this would be the issue, but worth a shot. On an unrelated note, if you get general application errors, make sure your .NET CF is up to date. (Basically 3.5 or 3.7).
Now I just need to see how easy the program will be to operate on a device without a D-Pad, like the HTC Touch Pro 2 soon to be arriving.
Sep 07 2010
Walking Around Painswick
The next day (the 14th of March) we went for a walk with dad around a garden and the grounds of a big house in Painswick (and also popped across from a pub to check out the Painswick Church And Yew Trees). Stood amongst a sea of Snow Drops (assuming I’ve remembered the right name for the little white flowers?), and then panning to the little maze, which was created to celebrate the 250 years of the garden/grounds being around. A little later we went for a walk around Painswick Church, where (depending on the local stories you believe), there can never be more than 99 Yew trees, you can never count them all in one go, and/or the trees also move around!
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Sep 07 2010
Photos Sorted
I have finished sorting the photos we have shot here in Kazakhstan since our return from Britain, and I’m about half way through cropping, resizing and minor tweaking as well. I hope to have them published on here soon, and as we will be going back to our flat tomorrow (we have been house and pet sitting for Irina’s parents whilst they were on holiday), I should be able to actually post more often.
The one problem with looking after Anna in a house, compared to a flat, is that she wants to go up and down between all the floors quite a lot, meaning even if I use Irina’s laptop instead of the main PC, I don’t get a lot of free time to post. Anyway, expect photos of Anna’s new custom built play house (no wooden swing sets needed), meals out, playing around and our trip to Petropavlovsk! I think I have spelled the city name correctly this time, I don’t fancy having to trawl through all my posts again after last time’s problems.
I have also uploaded all the videos to YouTube, though only 1/3 of the new ones have any sort of title or description yet. As there are still a few to post that were already uploaded from our UK trip, I’m not going to lose any sleep over these anonymous videos just yet.
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