I had an epiphany on the bus this morning, and it was this: all of the people in my life who have ever done something bad to me or in my presence have had something in common. They are all heterosexuals.
I had an epiphany on the bus this morning, and it was this: all of the people in my life who have ever done something bad to me or in my presence have had something in common. They are all heterosexuals.
I have an iPhone 3G, and lately I’ve been saying that it’s the best gadget I’ve ever owned, and the worst phone I’ve ever owned. There’s been two main reasons why, one of which Tony helped fix a few days ago. Allow me to tell you a story.
Firstly, ever since I installed the iPhone SDK (software development kit; the tools necessary to build applications for the iPhone) I started getting an error everytime I tried to sync the device. Tony pointed out that leaving tethering enabled caused issues, and disabling it on the iPhone has meant this probem went away. I think it was just a co-incidence that I’d installed the SDK, but it might not have been; it didn’t cause that error previously when tethering was enabled.
More importantly though, in the last few months I’ve had more dropped calls, failed calls and general frustrations with the iPhone than I’ve ever had with any phone, ever before. There’s a specific section of Berwick Street that, without fail, will disconnect any calls as I drive through it. My tech-mind put that down to the phone jumping from one cell tower to another, and that made sense. Then the calls started to fail anytime I’d attempt to make them. Then they’d start dropping with a “call failed” error when people called me. Not to mention that the mic stopped working for a while, and I’d have to switch to speaker mode to talk to anyone, though I think that’s more to do with crap getting in the headphone jack (which I use all the time in the car, for music and podcasts) and it thinking that an audio cable is attached.
As you can imagine, this is all quite frustrating, considering how important my phone is for work, let alone socially. There’s little relief in the knowledge that it’s fairly well accepted that 3G on the iPhone uhh 3G isn’t all it’s cracked up to me. The problem is, who’s to blame - the carrier (in this case Vodafone Australia), Apple, or Infineon, the 3G chipset manufacturer?
My short-term solution has been to disable the 3G network, and stick to WIFI when I’m at home or in the office, and regular ol’ 1G (or is it 2G, or 2.5G, or 3.14G?) when I’m making calls. That works kinda OK, but it’s annoying having to go into the settings to enable 3G anytime I check Twitter at a cafe, for example. I know, it’s such a first-world-problem, isn’t it?
Earlier this morning I found out that the iPhone supports a field test mode, which you can access by dialing:
*3001#12345#*<call>
Don’t forget that last star - I was missing it off and getting a “Error performing request No Network Service” message popping up.
There’s a whole raft of information that’s available here, but the only bit that interests me is the signal strength indicator that appears in the top left corner, where the “bars” normally are. This turns into a negative integer, where the higher the number (closer to zero) the better the signal. For the mathematically-challenged, this means -60 is better than -80. According to TestFreaks (when they tested the Cell Ranger Port, an interesting signal amplifier):
| Signal Range | Result |
|---|---|
| -80 to -70 dBm | Reasonably strong signal |
| -107 to -90 dBm | Weak signal |
| -113 dBm | No servicable signal |
For me, sitting at my desk in West Perth I get -81, which shows up as 5 bars. To be fair, the downstairs office is three walls of concrete, with three storeys of concrete above above, and a wrought iron clad window. It’s pretty much impervious to radio frequency signals. If I cover the antenna area (which is at the base of the handset, incidentally right where people tend to hold their phone) then the signal drops to -95, which is a significant change. I figured I’d check out the reception on Wellington Street, where to my surprise I get a solid -57.
OK… now we’re getting somewhere.
Further investigation also revealed an CNet article which suggests that you can boost the signal by attaching a piece of sticky-tape to the backside your SIM - it’s got something to do with the SIM making firmer contact with the phone. They also recommend using an eraser to remove any oxidation that might have ended up on the SIM. It’s all about the contacts, baby!
And then it hit me - a few weeks ago my phone reported that it had no SIM! I rebooted the phone and it worked fine, so I had just dismissed it as the phone being silly. Maybe there was a connection issue that was causing problems?
I dug out some scotch tape and found a paperclip on Hale’s desk, and went to work. I stuck two pieces of tape to the back of the SIM, just to be sure. I cleaned off the oxidation with an eraser. This changed resulted in -81 inside, -51 on Wellington Street, so no change inside, but a jump of 6 points outside. That’s not bad, but might just be a regular fluctuation.
As a last test, I checked the inside strength again. I saw the inside value change from -73 (momentarily) to -79, and then hover around -75. Then back up to -81.
The end result: I’m not sure that the hackery did much, in fact I don’t think it changed anything to be honest. I think what’s more likely is that Vodafone are being a little generous with their “convert signal reading to bars” function, and should be showing me less bars when I have a poorer signal.
Either way, I’m now armed with a snugly-seated-deoxidised SIM, and the tools to measure signal strength next time I get a drop out. I’ll keep you updated.
Every third Thursday of the month we have a Ruby on Rails meetup at our offices. It’s a bit of a mix of some socialising and some tech sharing. A few of the guys share the same woes in trying to run a small business, or deal with clients, or implement some particular solution so it can sometimes end up being quite a mixing pot for solution finding and solution sharing.
I think in the year 2009 we’ve seen the group grow from a meeting of somewhere around 4-8 people each month to sometimes around 30. In December to celebrate a successful year of growth in the Perth Ruby community we went on a pub crawl down Barrack and Beaufort St, everyone seemed to have a lot of fun and it was good to take the show on the road. Generally we keep the drinking and tomfoolery inside the bounds of our office.
You can find out some more information at the meetup site but generally we get between 15 to 30 people attending and there will be talks ranging from using Capistrano for PHP deployments to Behaviour Driven Testing and a lot in between. In January we had talks on using Sinatra to setup some simple Javascript unit testing, using Sinatra and Rake to setup a simple management interface, and using Soap4R to interface with SOAP APIs.
The meetup is held in Unit 9, 1010 Wellington St from 5pm onwards. Beers and snack food are provided, you just need to bring yourself and a willingness to exchange ideas! The next meeting will be on February 18, 2010.
Lately I have been left feeling slightly bemused, possibly even despondent. What about you may ask? The reaction this week to the iPad for one.
The instant it was announced, the concept of jumping on the nearest spaceship and leaving this planet behind was not far from my mind. I mean, who doesn’t love a good argument on the Internet right? But the sheer magnitude of negativity and lack of foresight was astounding. I guess there was a lot of disappointed people who expected the iPad to be something that it was never intended to be, but are we really living in an “all about me” society? More importantly, is that where we want to be?
I would never expect everyone to like such a device and nearly everyone I talk to that doesn’t use an Apple product, hates Apple products. I used to be one of those people too. I grew up with MS-DOS, Windows 2, 3, 95, 98, 2000, XP, then shifted to Linux for the next few years. Maybe a solid Apple product came along at the right time for me, just as all the other competitors were struggling. They’ve since moved on and regained their following again, but I’ll most likely continue down the path which has seen me the most productive in business and life.
But back to my original point. I spent 10 minutes thinking about potential uses for the iPad that I hadn’t seen mentioned anywhere, and it wasn’t hard to come up with some amazing out of the box solutions. I contemplated writing a post, to join the other millions of bloggers out there but I held back for a while. Eventually Venessa Miemis wrote exactly what I was thinking, but she’s done the hard work citing resources and everything!
If you have a spare ten minutes it’s definitely worth a read, regardless of how you feel about the device. It may turn out to be a game-changer or it may disappear into insignificance 12 months after it launches. But if like me, people want to read some objectivity on a topic, then this is for you.
Last weekend at The Academy we had a jiu jitsu seminar with internationally-renowned Robert Drysdale. We spent three hours with him, going over some of his favourite techniques, and linking together movements and transitions. I found him really approachable and familiar, in contrast to some of the senior black-belt Brazilians I’ve trained with. He was just a guy that was good at jiu-jitsu, or that’s how he came across.
One of the activities we performed at the end of the seminar was an “in the hole” exercise. For this, we have five people starting “in the hole” on their backs with an opponent in their guard. The guard player has to sweep or submit their opponent, whilst the defender has to pass the guard or back out to win. The winner stays in, either keeping or taking the role as attacker and the loser joins the end of a line, from which new defenders cycle in.
I volunteered to be one of the initial hole dwellers, starting on my back with an opponent in my guard. I tend to like fighting from my back so this is an activity that I quite like. I worked my way through three or four defenders until my instructor, Adam, was in my guard. I figured my run would be up, and didn’t have any expectations of beating him. Similarly, he was aware that Robert was doing the exercise with us too, and everyone was anticipating the match up between the two black belts. I think Adam was a little distracted, and wasn’t as focussed on me as he might ususally be.
This was great for me, because as Adam started to pass my guard, I caught him in half-guard, which is a position I’m not very comfortable in. I find people pass through my guard into half, and then straight through to side control. However this time I locked him down and went for a basic half-guard sweep (reverse the positioning and place Adam on his back with me on top). He regained some balance (he has great balance, as you might expect) but I felt he was committed in one direction, so I swept him the other way.
It was only a minor victory, but in terms of my jiu jitsu journey, it’s a milestone. Sure Adam wasn’t at his peak, and if he was concentrating 100% on me then it might not have worked out. But that wasn’t the case, and I won this encounter, this time.
I think it’s what I really needed to kick-start my 2010 training. I have a goal for this year, and if I can string enough small victories together, then I’ll achieve it.
What are some small victories you’ve had in your life that had significance to you?
Over the last month we have been in negotiations with Engine Yard to join their Partner Network. Today we are proud to announce that we have been accepted into the program and have become Engine Yard’s first Australian Partner. The partnership is a mutually beneficial arrangement that enables us to work together on projects that require the backing of a premier scalable Ruby on Rails hosting company.
We look forward to working with Engine Yard and are excited at the opportunities it will bring in 2010.
Oh, and we get to display a sexy badge :)
From prnewswire:
With the dramatic increase in the number of Ruby on Rails development firms, Engine Yard has launched the Engine Yard Partner Network to connect customers to a full range of application services for Ruby on Rails including design, development, deployment, and maintenance. Choosing an Engine Yard Partner with Engine Yard products and services helps deliver a highly available, scalable, secure application and a seamless end-to-end experience.
“The ecosystem of application development firms using Ruby on Rails is snowballing as more and more firms discover they can get more done in less time by switching to Rails,” said Marcy Campbell, VP of Sales and Business Development of Engine Yard. “We’re excited to offer our partners a complete, reliable platform for their Rails applications during and after development.”
Partner Network developers create applications using Ruby on Rails because they can deliver better applications faster and with higher quality. They rely on Engine Yard to provide the best platform, technologies, and services to deploy and manage applications in the cloud.
The Frontier Group is a boutique software development company based in West Perth. We have a strong focus on web software, and utilise Ruby on Rails.
Our development team has recently grown to eight staff and we’re looking to take on our first full time designer. Until now we’ve worked with design freelancers and subcontractors. Now we want to make a designer part of our team, allowing our developers to work closely with the interface expert. We need someone who’s part of our team and not just kicking the ball in the same direction.
We don’t micro-manage and we trust your design ability, so you’ll need to have a track record of delivering completed designs. You’ll have a few years commercial experience, probably working in a creative studio doing great but under-appreciated work.
This is your opportunity to jump-ship and drive the creative direction of a young, vibrant and passionate company.
You’ll care about pixel-perfect alignment, and will take pride in the quality of the HTML you use to reflect those designs. You’ll know how JavaScript can be used to enhance the web. You might even care about SASS and HAML, if you’re really cool.
You’ll keep up to date with current trends and care about using modern techniques and practices, as well as tools and technologies.
Your workload will be approximately broken down into:
The other design component will include things like fashion (t-shirt design), art work and even interior design… anything colourful or creative that’s happening in our world will be your responsibility.
Using the right tools is important and we realise that. We don’t have a parent company dictating how we do things or what our “standard operating environment” is – you’ll get to make those decisions with us. We all use MacBook Pros for development, but you might want a new iMac, for example.
What you give us
Send an email to jobs@thefrontiergroup.com.au linking to your online portfolio. Please be clear how much of the design you are responsible for, or if it was a collaborative process with other creative types.
Prepare a list of four sites – two that have elements you like, and two that have elements you dislike. A critique of these, either in person or via the phone, will be part of the second round of interviews.
We’re going through a massive growth phase at the moment, which has seen us double our staff in the last few months. This spurt has been driven by our customers wanting more Frontiersmen to work on their projects. It’s a good problem to have, but it has also exposed a series of considerations.
Our growth until now has been very controlled and organic, in that we have always been reacting to our business’ needs. We have taken on development staff one at a time. This resulted in our team being stretched for a little while before we take on a new hire. For example, when we moved from two directors (and took on Mark, our first employee) it was because Adam and I were working at 150% capacity. When Mark joined us, and we could spread that 300% over three people. As we get bigger, the extra capacity a single person can supply is reduced, relative to the total capacity of the company. This is great because it means we don’t get pushed to 150% anymore, but also means we need to start taking on multiple hires at once.
Late last year we had James and Dan join us, and we’ve just wrapped up our interview process and have hired John, Jacques and Jordan. We’ve gone from five developers to seven, to ten.
Now we’re looking for a full-time designer too, to join our team and balance our logic and structure with creativity and colour.
This raises the following ethical consideration: is it OK to actively head-hunt staff from other organisations? What if they’re your competitors? What if they’re you competitors, but you’re part of a social community? I think there’s two main schools of thought.
Firstly, there’s the attitude that we live in a capitalist world where the dollar rules and everyone’s looking out for themselves. If you can offer better employment opportunities than your competitor, then that’s your commercial advantage. If The Frontier Group is able to offer a larger salary and greater career prospects than our competitors, it’s to our benefit. Is it unethical for us to leverage that advantage?
Counter-balancing that argument, I feel, is the idea that the relationship between a company and their employees is comparable to human romantic relationships. If the pretty girl at the bar has a ring on her finger, it’s not considered appropriate to hit on her. Do you thing that translates?
Are “married” (employed) staff off-limits, or is it a case of “all’s fair in love and war (and HR)”?
Sortfolio (the website formerly known as Haystack), is a website where web design firms (and freelancers) can provide the necessary information about their business to a potential client. Instant information such as location, price and style of work are easily found. Sortfolio makes it easy for a potential client to browse multiple web designers all at once and make an informed choice.
Whether this concept will prove to be effective long term is still an unknown. Certainly for companies in Australia it seems to be less effective at the moment. I would imagine that potential customers in Australia probably aren’t using this sort of website or directory, like our American counterparts would be.
We’ve had our free listing on there since the site launched in October and have had no enquiries in that time. Potentially the 11 hits to our website from Haystack last year were all internal.
Sortfolio offers a paid plan for $99 per month. You have access to 6 thumbnails instead of 1, and a larger listing card. Given that there can be a large number of people competing for ad space, this can prove to be effective from a theoretical point of view. You can see the immediate benefit on the Perth-Australia page.
This benefit is less apparent when the search is refined, however there still is an advantage to being a large listing card.
Recently 37 Signals announced another benefit for paid listings. They purchased a slot on The Deck Network for Sortfolio. That gives somewhere between 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 ad impressions in a 30 day period. They used to run a static ad in that spot, but now are splitting the ad display 25% static and 75% dynamic. The dynamic ads feature the Sortfolio Pro customers. About 140 companies have Pro listings and the ad is a combination of a crop of the thumbnail as well as linking to the Sortfolio listing.
This means we will also get roughly 15,000 highlighted ad impressions across The Deck Network. This means exposure to sites such as Daring Fireball, A List Apart, 43 Folders, Kottke.org, The Morning News, Ze Frank, Twitteriffic (in app), Tweetie (in app) & Design Observer.
It will be interesting to see over the next 2 months whether this proves to be effective for an Australian company, as well as it seems to be for our US counterparts. You can check out our full listing on Sortfolio and if you are an Australian company (or freelancer) who has had success with Sortfolio, please leave a comment.
Do you fix broken MacBook Pro keyboards for fun?
Well to be truthful, that’s only half of what I did. I also enjoyed dinner and coffee with Magdalena, Fitzy and Kirstie, but the last two hours were spent hunched over Magdalena’s broken MacBook Pro with my mini screw drivers and a plastic spudger. Nope, I did not make up that name, that’s what it’s called.
The replacement keyboard arrived today, just one week after we placed the order online. I can’t recommend iFixIt enough. They not only have great guides, but when I bought the keyboard, they “suggested” the tools I’d need, and offered to include them in the purchase. I thought this was a very handy up-sell.
All up the job was not too difficult, though I was scared for a second that the keyboard wasn’t sitting perfect in the top casing, but some jiggling and prodding saw it seat itself fine.
There were no screws left over, however a generic piece of black plastic did wriggle free from somewhere inside and fall out when the shell was disassembled. It doesn’t look important though, and has probably been floating around inside the laptop for months, if not years. No real loss.
I also thought that the back-light wasn’t working, meaning that the back-light cable was not re-attached correctly, or that there was further damage that the water had caused that I had not detected, but it was simpler than that. Magdalena had the checkbox for “Illuminate keyboard in low light conditions” unchecked. I ticked it and now the keyboard lights up like a Christmas tree.
All in all, Im very happy with how the repair work went and extremely happy with the parts, tools and service I received from iFixIt. Whilst I hope I don’t have to repair too many more Macs, it’s reassuring to know that there is a one-stop-shop with all the parts and tools necessary to get the job done.
I’m currently getting into using RSpec for testing our controllers on what is turning into a large project. It’s been more than handy because we have a lot of complex scoping to take into account whenever retrieving data. People don’t like to see other peoples’ financial data, mostly because it implies that someone is probably looking at theirs. With this in mind it’s more than important that we know the right data is going to the right places and hence the need for controller testing.
Now most of our controllers require the user to be logged in so writing tests to check this for every controller is annoying and time consuming, more than that it feels dirty. I think this is what some people call a code smell though I’m not up to speed on buzz words. There are also other tasks that are done quite often such as setting up the various types of users we’d like to test as, it would be nice if this were easily put in one place and could be easily pulled in. I guess I was looking for a template of tests that I could share.
It seems that the solution to it is found in Shared Example Groups which I hadn’t heard very much discussion about and it kind of leaves working out how they work to you rather than documenting it too much.
So far I’ve used it simply to make sure that controllers that require are redirecting users appropriately and also for setting up a specific type of user for our system before testing.
I created a directory under /spec/support called example_groups and in there I have a file called login_groups.rb. In that file I have something like the following :
shared_examples_for "customer is logged in" do
before(:all) do
@user = Factory(:customer_user)
@user.customers.push Factory(:customer)
end
before(:each) do
activate_authlogic
OperatorSession.create(@operator)
end
end
Now in my spec files when I have a bunch of tests requiring a logged in customer I will include this little snippet :
it_should_behave_like "customer is logged in"
I get a logged in customer to start playing around with. I have the spec/support/example_groups directory in my include paths for Rspec and so it just all works.
My tests can then start to look like :
describe MerchantsController do
it_should_behave_like "areas requiring login"
context "customer logged in" do
it_should_behave_like "customer is logged in"
... insert other tests here ...
end
end
It means I can swap in another authentication gem/plugin pretty easily and also encapsulates the logic about creating customers, or whatever type of item you want to use, so that if that changes you can swap things in and out with a minimum of fuss.
Just to be clear, example groups aren’t limited to setup tasks or connecting to before/after hooks, you can also include a bunch of tests as well. This allows me to have a bunch of tests to run to make sure that a user does have to be logged in for various controllers and include these tests in on line.
I hope this helps someone, it took a bit of searching and trial and error myself this morning to get it working and find the uses for it that I’ve found. I’m definitely open to better solutions to this sort of issue though.
JRuby is a 100% Pure-Java implementation of the Ruby programming language. From the folks over at the JRuby project:
The JRuby project has been growing impressively quickly, with frequent releases and a constantly expanding community. There’s a hefty list of impressive users and companies, and the team has been touring the world, trying their best to make it out to everyone who wants to hear and learn about the project.
As with any growing code base though, there’s a need to keep things tidy; frequent releases and speedy development also mean bugs, and things that need fixing—and that’s where we turn to you!
The first ever official JRuby BugMash will take place this Saturday, January 9th through Tuesday, January 12th. The core team will spend the days prior to the BugMash highlighting the specific bugs that are most important—you’ll want to keep an eye out for the JRuby Introsection, which will one of the focuses of the BugMash. Also look in spec/tags for failing RubySpecs for JRuby’s 1.8 and 1.9 compatibility modes. There’s a lot of low-hanging fruit (especially in 1.9) for both new and experienced developers. Then, Saturday morning, it’s off to the races! As a small token of our appreciation, in addition to the wonderful satisfaction of having made a difference to the project, we’ll be sending each of the first 100 participants a limited edition JRubyConf Poster.
The JRuby Core Team will be around on IRC channel #jruby throughout the BugMash to help folks get started and to answer questions. Be sure to stop in and say hello!
There’s also a great post on the good and bad of JRuby over at the Engine Yard blog.
A few days ago Magdalena and Doug were messing about and Doug caused Mags to laugh really hard, when she had a mouthful of water, when she was using her laptop. As such, she now has a semi-functioning keyboard where some letters, like “S”, “E” and “X”, just don’t work. Or maybe she’s worn those ones out independent of the spill.
Her MacBook Pro is a hand-me-down. I didn’t need two, so when we replaced our units at work last year, Mags got my old one. It’s about three and a half years old, which makes it six months since the extended Apple Care expired. On top of that, I doubt Apple Care covers liquid damage to the keyboard.
The good news is that the rest of the computer seems to be working fine, so a new keyboard should do the trick. I had a look around, and whilst it’s not easy, there’s definitely resources online that provide instructions on how to remove and replace the MacBook Pro’s keyboard. I reckon it’s a task I can undertake.
In the mean time, I’ve bought a wireless keyboard that Magdalena can use. Coincidently, it sits over the inbuilt (broken) keyboard almost perfectly, so it’s a great short-term replacement, as indicated by the thumbs-up in the photo.
The wireless keyboard won’t be useless after I repair her laptop. Tony’s been using one of the pairing keyboards recently and seems to like it, so I’ll bring it into the office when we’re finished with it.
Initially I had some problems with the Bluetooth keyboard not pairing with her machine, and I couldn’t install the system patch because it required Magdalena’s password, and one of letters that’s broken is used in her password. Talk about a vicious circle! Anyway, the patch was for Mac OS X’s Java install, so I didn’t think it would make any difference. I plugged in a standard USB keyboard and used that to get the patch installed, and when her Mac rebooted it was playing nicely with the Bluetooth keyboard. Maybe another coincidence, or maybe the patch was mostly an update to Java, but had other things, or maybe it just “reset” some bit on a chip somewhere. Either way, it’s all good now, and we have a replacement keyboard being shipped on Monday. It looks like I’ll be doing some laptop surgery in a week or so.
Maybe Emma or Chanel can lend me their scrubs and a face mask.
We all have rules we try to live by. One of mine is that I only eat McDonald’s once a year. Last year I had it three times – once being lazy in Perth, and twice in Canada when I was hungry at midnight and nothing else was open.
This year I have eaten it twice already, and it is only the 9th of January. Ruh roh.
On my birthday we collected two toy poodle puppies. We have a boy and a girl. Magdalena said that if she could pick the breed, I could pick the colour and name them.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Snake-Eyes and Baroness (or maybe Baroness and Snake-Eyes; they didn’t have their collars at the time the photo was taken, so I don’t know which is which):
Initially we had planned on getting a little girl (I can’t bring myself to call her a bitch) but when we were at the breeder’s home a few weeks ago, when we were visiting Baroness at about 4 weeks of age, Magdalena got to meet Snake-Eyes. She had a play with him whilst I was nursing Baroness, and they hit it off. Then and there I knew we needed to get both pups, and we had talked about getting a second at a later stage - I just skipped the waiting part.
They’ve been getting on great and only whine when we put them back in their playpen before they’re exhausted. They’re eating properly and don’t appear to be missing their mum at all. I think having a brother-sister pair meant that they’ve got a friend to play with all day.
Magdalena’s doing a great job trying to toilet train them whilst she’s on holidays, and I can’t wait until they’re a little older and have had their next round of vaccinations. That will mean they can come into the office for a visit. I know the Epic crew will love to meet them, and maybe they’ll have a play date with Aaron’s dwarf rabbit, Mathilda, who’s sometimes found hopping around our office.
I’ve recorded a few videos of the puppies running around our back yard which I’ll upload to YouTube, allowing me to boast like a proud parent.
Magdalena and I just spent a tonne on books from Amazon, with the idea that we’ll build up our collection of classics for the coming 2010 season of the Berwick Manor Book Club. We established the book club in April 2007 and I’d estimate we’ve read close to a book a month since then. When we were recently down in Mandurah for a long weekend we discussed some titles that we’d like to read, and came up with a list similar to this (in alphabetical order):
You might notice there’s a few Jane Austen novels in there - Amazon were doing a 3-pack for $8 which was hard to go past. We’ve found so far that we most enjoy reading books that you’d regard as classics for our book club, like George Orwell’s “Nineteen Eighty Four”, Truman Capote’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange.”
As a side project, I’m running another book club (of which I am the only member) where the focus is on classic adventure stories that boys should have read growing up. To be on this list, the book has to have been written before I was born. I wanted to read some of the books that my father read as a boy, and even some that his father might have enjoyed too.
Magdalena didn’t think she’d be interested in a lot of the titles, so I’m doing it solo. Feel free to play along at home if you’re interested - I’ll use lambie.org to keep you informed of the titles as I start them. There will be some cross over with “Lord of the Flies” and “Frankenstein” being on both the lists, however I have added (again, in alphabetical order)
When I was a kid I had a pop up book about Tom Sawyer, and it was the most amazing book ever. I have such fond memories of it, but alas, it seems as though eBay, Amazon, and even Google don’t have a recollection of it. I guess it’s destined to remain a memory. Watching the recent Sherlock Holmes film was the final motivational push I needed to start creating a list of the all-time classic adventure stories that I really should find the time to read.
I’ve also seen the latest Bond film, Casino Royale, and know that Lewis Carroll was not on LSD when he wrote “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (though he probably should have been). In “Back to the Future III”, Doc Brown recalled with a great fondness reading Jules Verne’s work when he was a child, and that ol’ time-traveller knew what was what. I probably watched a Disney version of Peter Pan as a child. All up, that’s my experience with these stories, and I’m very excited about the prospect of changing that.
Call me sentimental, but I think it’s a romantic notion that one day my son, or daughter, will want to read these books too. If that day comes, these novels will be already waiting on the shelf, eager to be devoured by yet another generation.
Which of these titles have you read, and which would you like to read in the future? What do you think I’ve forgotten? Will you be playing along at home?
A few weeks ago I told a client that they shouldn’t have a blog for their software product unless they were willing to maintain it. I am going to take my own advice, and reaffirm my dedication to my home on the internet: lambie.org.
I think that the undertaking only has value if I consider two questions: does my blog, and blogging in general, still hold value, and what caused me to lose interest in lambie.org over the past 12 months?
Most people used to read my blog through themadpeeps.com.au, which collects feeds from most of our friends that blog. A quick check shows that there’s still a few articles trickling through each month, but the activity has definitely dropped off. I think there’s been an overall decline in social blogging, amongst my friendship circles at least.
I think that we’re are moving to short-format systems, like Twitter and Facebook status updates to let people know about the things that are going on in their lives. I believe I’ve fallen into that group too and it’s been a factor in reducing my lambie.org activity. Paraphrasing someting I read (ironically, as a tweet) the other day:
I heard someone say they wished you could express themselves in more than 140 characters, to which I replied “you can; start a blog.”
I usually have more than 140 characters of stuff to say.
I have also been writing a few articles on our company blog, which is where I’ve been putting all the relevant technical or work-related articles for the last year or so. Some of the most popular articles I’ve written have been about technical topics, like Connecting to MS SQL with Ruby on Ubuntu, The Right Way to Get a Rails Project into Subversion and the 6-years-old-but-relevant SSH Auto-authentication.
Above all of this though, lambie.org gives me an outlet for creative writing. Certainly I write every day as part of my job, but the scope for creativity is limited. lambie.org gives me an avenue to express myself, and I should not overlook that.
Therefore, whilst I believe the value of blogging has been reduced over the past 12 month or more, the value of lambie.org is still high, if only to me.
As an experiment, and potential ego maker/breaker, if you still read lambie.org leave a comment and let me know. Whilst I write for myself (heck, doesn’t every blogger without an audience say that?) it’s still nice to know that others might sometimes read my ramblings.
With the start of a new decade, I declare that you can expect to see new articles here every week or so, as I try to get my online life back on track.
Skip to about 3:45 for some of the lead in.
By definition, alternative medicine has either not been proved to work, or proved not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work?
Medicine.
I’ve spent the morning fiddling around with a new Rails project and getting a basic rspec test going inside it. I hit a stumbling block though – I couldn’t get it to work using Rails 2.3.5 and rspec 1.2.9 on OS X 10.6. If I ran
rake spec
nothing happened, and if I ran
spec spec/models/foo_spec.rb
I would get an error saying
/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require': no such file to load -- spec_helper (LoadError)
Some more Googling around indicated a command I had not seen before:
script/generate rspec
I ran it and tests started working. The list of commands I ran to make it work were:
rails foobar
cd foobar
script/generate rspec
script/generate rspec_scaffold foo name:string
rake db:migrate
rake spec
One of the bigger factors to consider when designing a website is whether or not to incorporate photographs into the design. You have the choice of no photography at all, utilising stock photography, or using a professional to capture photographs specifically for the website.
Certain industries and business niches really thrive with the inclusion of professional photography in a website design. Whether to convey to the customer or shareholder the true nature of the business, or to show professionalism, or perhaps to make something instantly recognisable to the website viewer.
We try to use professional photographs as much as possible where the client will allow it, as it can really bring a website to life.
An oldie but a goodie
This website for Caudo Group has been around for a few years now, but the inclusion of high quality photography (taken by one of our team members), really helps this design stand the test of time. We captured photographs of their brand new office at the time, and some of their equipment.
Supplied photography
These photographs really emphasize the nature of Helix Resources, and the industry they are involved in. These photographs were supplied by their team, but are still of a high enough quality to really bring the website to life. This website is about 18 months old now, but once again retains a fresh feel thanks to some high quality images.
When stock is best
Some websites and industries work better with stock photography. Either the service is disconnected from the place of business, or there might be no images to work with. For a professional feel that still reaches out to particular demographics, stock photography can be used to great effect. In the case of Ironmonger Financial it is used to connect with the website visitor to show them that the content they are reading is relevant to them.
As you can see, using high quality images in a design can really work wonders.
It’s certainly not the rule, however an attractive, professional website goes a long way to showing your customers the care and professionalism that you apply to the business. An integral part of how you represent yourself to clients, customers and the world at large!
A business missing out on this, or having a low quality website is positioning themselves behind the eight ball, giving their competitors an easy ride to market share.
I think the IT industry has a tendency to push our clients and users to upgrade, or change things to suit our requirements or desires. Often times the reasons may be rooted in practicality, but as good IT workers tend to develop heuristics for problem solving they can sometimes find it hard to explain their reasoning.
A good example is browser upgrades. We all know it’s a worthwhile suggestion, and having the latest browser is the best option in most cases, but explaining that to a user or client can be difficult. It can be especially difficult if you don’t have face time with a user; the most common situation in the web environment.
Telling a user that the site works better in Firefox 3 or Safari 4 will, perhaps, just lead to the user finding a site that works better with their browser instead. It would be nice if we tried a different tact, and in doing so helped not only ourselves, but the wider community of developers. After all we want the same outcome : to have our work viewed the way we intended, for the minimum amount of work. Cross browser development sucks!
I was thinking the other day that I don’t think I’ve ever heard from a developer that users should switch browsers for security reasons, or any other reason the user would care about. Users don’t care about ACID compliance, or Javascript optimisations or any other technicalities. What they do care about though is security, especially now that mainstream operating systems, manufacturers and financal institutions have gotten the word out about phishing and other vulnerabilities.
We all know that unless you have a very good reason, it’s silly to be running an old browser. However when was the last time you explained the benefits for them personally? Increased security, increased stability, increased speed, more compatibility with other sites and the latest features available.
If you find a better way to sell your clients on spending 5 minutes to upgrade their browser then make sure you spread the word. Every user you convert is a win for the web community and the internet in general!
Oh my, this is funny. Watch it, you won't regret it.
We recently had to embed images into our emails that were being sent with Actionmailer, and as such we turned to the inline_attachment plugin to achieve this. It very easily parses your mail output and overrides the ActionView path_to_image helper to attach the file and create an appropriate path to the attached image inside the email while splitting your mail into appropriate parts as necessary.
What we needed to do though was embed a dynamically generated image into the email. The image didn’t exist on the file system previously so we couldn’t use the standard image_tag helper that inline_attachment was patching.
So we extended ActionView to include a new tag helper attach_image_file that uses the existing inline_attachment part management and just a properly referenced image. The methods from inline_attachment take care of attaching the file to the email and splitting the mail content into the appropriate parts.
Here’s my code. I just added it into my initializers directory :
module ActionView
module Helpers
module AssetTagHelper
def attach_image_file(file)
@part_container ||= @controller
if @part_container.is_a?(ActionMailer::Base) or @part_container.is_a?(ActionMailer::Part)
basename = "barcode.gif"
ext = basename.split('.').last
cid = Time.now.to_f.to_s + "#{basename}@inline_attachment"
@part_container.inline_attachment(:content_type => "image/#{ext}",
:body => file,
:filename => basename,
:cid => "<#{cid}>",
:disposition => "inline")
return "
"
end
end
end
end
end
It did what we need, and allows us to properly inline a dynamic image. You could use similar code to inline pretty much anything that your target mail reader supports. Apple Mail for instance may provide PDF previews.
Not to be outdone, AOL is on the rebrand bandwagon. Last time I checked, AOL was neither hip, cool or anything else that they are now claiming to be.
Here’s their old identity followed by the new identity (warning may not actually be a single identity).
(picture sourced from ABC)
(picture sourced from Inquisitor)
I wonder what the outcome of this will be? Once again, there’s a steady stream of backlash, mostly due to the fact that people remember AOL for what they were. I’m not sure changing the logo is necessarily the way to fix it. In any case their old logo looks fine to me, maybe they should have spent money on their service offering and public image instead. Although not according to the CEO:
“Our new identity is uniquely dynamic. Our business is focused on creating world-class experiences for consumers and AOL is centered on creative and talented people – employees, partners, and advertisers. We have a clear strategy that we are passionate about and we plan on standing behind the AOL brand as we take the company into the next decade,” said Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL.
Read Part 2 of our series in case you missed it.
Let us pick up where we left off last time. I had just begun examining the Facebook fan pages, and how you can apply them to your business. In particular we discussed the advertising platform. Advertising is just one aspect of these pages that can really drive your business. Let’s discuss the other potential areas of benefit now.
Company Announcements
If you have an important announcement to make, what’s the quickest and easiest way to get that information to your customers and followers? With a Facebook status update of course. Lets say you want to advertise your Holiday trading hours, or you have just launched a new product, or service. In 30 seconds you could have pushed this information to your customers. Anyone who follows you on Facebook will see this message on their home page.
Customer stories
You can write status updates that encourage customers to write back to you. Writing an engaging status update is a good way to start discussions. Once you get some traction with this method, you will soon be cultivating a community around your fan page. The more interactions with your page, the more likely it is that your page will get noticed. You know the rest.
This can also give you some valuable feedback on exactly how you deal and respond with your customer base, or with what you are doing in the market place.
Surveys/competitions
This is one area where having a fan page can really work for you. Coordinating a fan-centric competition is relatively straightforward, and this can be a great way to generate some buzz around your brand. The frameworks are already in place for you, and you just need to know what sort of competition you want to run, and then you can be on your way. The viral nature of sites like Facebook mean that your competition can get large exposure, without you having to spend the earth.
Likewise, conducting a survey can be a great way to improve areas of the business, and encouraging fans to participate in your surveys is as simple as setting up the survey, and posting a status update.
You can also use Facebook Ads to generate interest to either your competition or survey.
Linking to blog
If you’ve just written a great blog post, you’ll want to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. Having sustained readers on your blog is always a desired outcome, and Facebook gives you an opportunity to direct readers to your blog. When you write your post, make sure you follow it up with a succinct and catchy status update attaching the link to the blog. That way your fans will be driven to your blog and hopefully become regular readers.
Instant feedback
This is probably one of the key areas that Social Media can have a real impact on your business. The moment you do something that someone loves or hates, you’re going to hear about it. Having this sort of feedback at your fingertips is something that money can’t buy. We’re moving in to a world where you will be connected with your customer base (and critics) whether you like it or not. You can use this to your advantage.
Hopefully you’re really starting to see the potential for this in your areas of business. If you need any more information or have any questions on just how Facebook can expand your business, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Next week, we’ll be moving on to Twitter and how you can leverage that platform for your business.
A few weeks ago we launched the new website for Marine Protection Systems (MPS). MPS are the industry leaders in electrolysis control and prevention devices. The site is connected to our content management system (AuroraCMS) allowing MPS to edit and control the content, menu and news sections of the site on their own.
MPS were very happy with our work and we look forward to working on projects with them in the future.
Read Part 1 – What Is Social Media if you missed it.
Sound familiar? It sure does to me.
Each week I read stories and hear push back from companies who aren’t willing to embrace what is sure to be the #1 way to market your business or brand in the coming years. I added a few new blogs to my daily read list and even as a surprise to me, at least half of them were posting on Social media topics as their current posts. If you thought this wasn’t important, please, read on (well, read on even if you do!).
Think about how the entrepreneurs of yesterday (who are well and truly rich and famous today) and how they came to be that way. Names like Oprah & Trump. They have built a solid, personal brand and they built this over a long time. But how did they do it? Pushing themselves into your life, via unescapable mediums. TV, magazines, books, billboards. You name it. And this isn’t cheap. All of these marketing forms cost money, and lots of it.
Some of these big names are catching on and adapting very quickly to the future of marketing and branding, but some won’t. Their methods that worked 10-20-30 years ago were perfect for the time, not the way to do things now. People need to step back and understand this. Stop playing in a dying world.
I offer myself as an example. You’re marketing your product to me? How would I know about it?
I’ll tell you how I found out about your product.
This is not an unusual scenario, but I really shouldn’t have to do much more convincing. If you’re running a business and still can’t see that in a couple of years time, there’s going to be limited offline ways to appeal to me, my friends, and everyone else in this world, you need to jump ship now.
So what was the theme there, in how I discovered your product? Community. Community, community, community, community.
I connect with the companies I purchase from via information I seek out on my own terms (which in actual fact is community-driven information), or via encounters with the online community. If you’re not tapped into this now, you’re going to be last in line, and out of business. No question.
But how do you get started when you’ve got no time to research it, or no idea you even needed it until now? Lucky for you I started this series.
Firstly I’m going to discuss Facebook and how that can apply to your business. Facebook is a social network, and social networks are only one aspect of Social Media. Briefly touching on some other types we have: social bookmarking, media sharing, review based, user generated content and blogging.
Getting the most for your business from Facebook
There’s no question that Facebook is an incredibly low-spend way for a company to get their name and brand out onto the Internet. With over 300 million targetable users, it really as one of the biggest opportunities you will ever get.
Firstly you need to have a fan page set up for your business. This only takes a few minutes and means your presence is secured. We can worry about getting all the information entered over time. Once you have a presence what can you do with it?
Firstly you want to share your page with all your Facebook connections. They will become a fan of your page (hopefully) and this has a two-fold effect. One, thanks to changes to Facebook structure, the fact that your connection became a fan, is announced to all their connections. Two, their profile shows your fan page for as long as they remain a fan. This means that any new connections of theirs will be able to see they are a fan of you.
We will craft ways of using your fan page to maximum effect later, but be assured there are many ways to integrate this into your business plan or goals. A fan page makes it incredibly easy to monitor reviews, run surveys, interactive competitions, and spreading news.
The single best part in my mind is the Local targeted advertising. With 10 minutes of effort you can have your brand in front of millions of eyes, for a very low cost. But what if you don’t want your brand exposed to everyone on Facebook? What if your product is so specific that it only applies to women, or perhaps women in their 30’s. Maybe your product applies to 30 year old women in capital cities, or in one city. You get my drift. Being able to segment your advertising market with such ease is probably the single most powerful chance you will have to get your product or brand out there, with minimal spend.
I’m going to wrap it up there and let you digest that for a day or two. Stay tuned for the rest of the series, where I will finish up with Facebook and show you the next piece of the puzzle. Twitter!
Thanks for reading :)
I just finished making a coffee with our office coffee machine, a Breville ES400 Espresso machine (it does the job!) and it got me thinking about how much of a work horse this little thing has been.
At The Frontier Group, everyone loves coffee. Some people love it more than others, and some people more specifically love the caffeine more than the coffee itself. In any case, everyone at The Frontier Group drinks coffee.
When I started here almost three years ago, we used to go to the local coffee shop a few times a day. It was lucky that they produce some of the best coffee in Perth, and at least at that time, were probably the making the best coffeee in Perth.
However three or four coffees a day can quite easily eat into your weekly budget, not to mention the inconvenience of having to walk up the road to get it.
So we bought a coffee machine. Nothing fancy, but not completely entry level. We figured that it’ll be put through it’s paces, we enjoy our coffee and so we wanted a machine that could cope, and cope it has. After two years of use only the gasket on the group head needs replacing, and that’s really only been noticeable in the last month or so! It’s literally been trouble free.
However, down to the post topic, how much money have we saved? I thought the following sums were pretty interesting.
Coffees Made: 2 years x 48 weeks x 5 days x (approx) 8 coffees/day ~ 3800 coffees
Coffee Used: 3800 coffees * 16g/coffee ~ 62kg of coffee
Milk Used: 3800 coffees * 250mL/coffee ~ 950L of milk
Coffee Cost: 62kg @ $50/kg = $3100
Milk Cost: 950L @ $2.20/L = $2100
So we’ve gone through 62Kg of coffee in the last two years, and 950L of milk. I think that’s pretty crazy!!
Now to the costings.
Equivalent Cost at Cafe: 3800 coffees @ $4.40/coffee ~$16,500
Our Cost for Coffees: $3100 + $2100 = $5,200
Saving:$16,500 – $5,200 = $11,300
The machine itself cost $400, and there’s sugar and that sort of thing I guess, but all in all we’re looking at a solid $10,000 saving over the last two years. That’s not even including the saved time in not having to walk down the road and that sort of thing.
Our little workhorse is a silver box that sits in the corner and saves us money :)
This is the first in a series of posts about how Social Media is changing the way companies all around the world conduct business. It will discuss both the benefits and the pitfalls and how you can ensure you make the right decisions. We’ll reveal company successes and provide you with enough information to make a judgment call for your business.
If you think Facebook is a fad or Twitter is for teenagers, you could be setting yourself up for a nasty surprise down the track. Proactive companies are looking to adopt and leverage these technologies as yet another way to promote their brand and increase market share.
Shouldn’t you be doing the same?
So what will we be covering over the course of these posts? We’ll be going into detail on the various forms of social media, how each one applies to businesses, what combinations are right for your business and sharing some success stories which will hopefully encourage you to jump in and get started. We’ll also be delving into the ever changing area of online advertising and how this fits in the bigger picture of social media. The world is evolving and with it advertising, marketing and brand promotion. Time and time again we see the companies that fail to adapt are the ones left behind. Don’t let that be you!
Now, lets get on with Part 1 – What is Social Media?
Social Media as defined by Wikipedia as “content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies.”
But what does that really mean to businesses like yours? What does that have to do with promoting your business and increasing your loyal customer base? Perhaps it can best be summed up by this short video by CommonCraft.
That video uses a well known situation to demonstrate a few concepts. Specifically the idea of collaboration, sharing of information, and the inclusion of your customers into your business processes.
Before diving in to the various technologies, if you have a spare four minutes I’d recommend taking a look at this video as a quick introduction into just what Social Media is all about. It certainly gives an eye opening insight into the sheer size of what we are looking at.
Frightening numbers? Hopefully you now see it as something you need to delve into, but you just need the guidance to know where to begin. Lets end this first post with a quick run down on some of the more common Social Media websites. In the next few days, I will elaborate on these and present how they could be used in your business. Remember these websites are not the only aspect of Social media, and we will cover that in the next post.
Make sure you tune in.
Facebook – Facebook is a global social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region.
LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003 mainly used for professional networking.
Twitter – Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.
Digg – Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories.
MySpace – MySpace is a social networking website
YouTube – YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.
Definitions from Wikipedia.
We left Federovka aiming to head to Aksai (Aksay) to get our visa’s registered and get some money. The drive was easy and the scenery such a contrast to anything that we had seen in the last 4 years. Gone were the rolling mountains and lush green pastures of Europe and to a certain extent Russia. Instead wide flat plains continue until they meet the sky. They are slightly red with a sparse covering of reddish or gold grasses and very occasionally green scrub. Every so often the continuity of the horizon was interrupted with distant sand storms and occasionally the smoke from a scrub fire.
As we drove the steppe Eagles one of the symbols of Kazakhstan watched us with curiosity from their vantage points on telegraph poles, mounds or even the side of the road. Sometimes they seemed to escort us, hoping no doubt to profit from the disturbance that we would make on passing, thus scaring some little rodents out of their hiding places. Slightly larger than a rat these were golden in colour with long tails that were bushy at the very tip. We also saw a fox and a snake. The eagles seemed perfectly tourist saavy, staying still just long enough to get the camera out and taking off before a photo was possible.
There were moments though where the world around us seemed entirely empty and still. Betrayed only by the occasional tumble weed crossing the road in front of us.
Aksia (Aksay) was the perfect size. Big enough to have everything we needed and small enough that we did not get incredibly lost trying to find anything. In saying this though it was with some luck that we managed to find a place that would be able to register our visas. Alas, the visa man was not in his office, and after one of the girls in a nearby business had phoned him, he would not be in for some hours. Enthusiastic as we were to continue driving we decided to head toward Aktobe, a much larger town.
To reach Aktobe we needed to rejoin the M32. This meant travelling almost due south on a slightly smaller road to meet it. Here begins our initiation to Kazakhstan. We started down a road which ran out of hard top within a hundred meters of being on it. Feeling that we must have taken the wrong way, we turned back, reassessed and with a sigh acknowledged that it was the right way after all. It took us several hours to negotiate the 117km back to the motorway. The roads were so bad that in some areas vehicles that had gone before us had carved out tracks along the side of the road to drive on instead, and when these had become corrugated or potholed beyond comfort, another track had been started further out again. And so it was that we weaved our way down to the motorway, every now and again popping up onto the road ‘just to check’ that it hadn’t magically gotten better.
Once back on the M32 we made better ground. We were determined to reach Aktobe tonight but really wanted to have a proper dinner before hand. So we stopped on the side of the road and cooked up a spaghetti Bolognese feast!!! It did draw a lot of strange looks from the locals and truck drivers as they past us.
Just after starting again we passed a Mongol Rally car and flagged them down for a chat. The three lads from England were in their fourth week of the rally. They reckoned that they were one of the last cars, saying that the last few days they had various mechanical issues, and a couple of crazy nights with crazy Russians. It was nice to swap war stories, although theirs were so much better than ours. But it was getting dark and cold so we headed on.
Once back on the M32 and quite behind schedule we arrived in Aktobe somewhere around 9pm. Aktobe was nothing special according to the guide book, but we really like it. It was a well manicured, tidy city with a complimentary blend of old and new. We stayed at Hotel Aktobe, purely because it was the hotel we could find, but it was completely adequate.
The hotel that we were staying at did not register visa’s for non Russians, however they wrote down the instructions to give the taxi driver so we should know where to go to get them sorted. The OVIR or immigration police was a 10 minute cab ride away, and once in their office a sort of pandemonium ensued. The initial guard pointed us in the direction of one window where we collected the registration forms in Kazakh/Russian and then proceeded to accost the poor customers in the office to “help us fill in the form”, and “oops can we please borrow your pen” Eventually one guy after he had helped us as much as he could dragged us to the front of one of the queues where after speaking to the girl behind the counter we were urged to wait one moment. Not that we really had any choice, these visas are supposed to be registered within 5 days of arriving in Kazakhstan, otherwise there maybe fines or legal action on trying to leave.
We were finally given prime position at the window again and despite constant interruptions from an irate woman who could not seem to get her form filled out properly, we had our stamps and were finally legal.
Now we have set off from Aktobe, we are now heading south towards the Aral sea, and where the Aral sea once was. Our visas were sorted and we were driving on brand new road, we were elated. But when will we learn… things regarding roads are extremely transient. After a couple of hundred kilometres the beautiful surface ended, the road all but disappeared and we were back on the labyrinth of side tracks that ran alongside where the motorway should be.
Thank goodness our pelvic floor muscles are intact as these tracks are not all that smooth. The bumps were slow to dent our optimism so periodically we would pop alongside the motorway in the hopes that the surface was better. And it was like this that we continued for 4 or 5 hours.
Our only interruption was a couple of road workers who seeing that we were not from Kazakhstan had stopped us for a chat and hoped to bum a cigarette. They told us that the road would continue like this to Aral but from there to Almaty it was better.
Eventually as the sun was setting we pulled off our track and were forced to admit defeat. There was no way that we were going to make it to near Aral today. We were tired, a little snappy (well Duncan was anyway) and Hugo was making a strange clunking with lateral movements on the bumpy roads. Duncan thought it might be the bushes on the suspension… where is the bush mechanic when you need one – ha ha . Dunc climbed under and tried to tighten the bolts but realised that we need two 24 sockets to do the job and we only have one. Funnily enough we had two before we left London, but left one behind after saying, what do we need two for??
We jumped out of our car at our camping spot onto ground that is cracked with dryness. It does not appear to have seen much moisture in recent days, and any moisture that we poured on it (I think you know what I am talking about) quickly disappeared as if it was never there. Apart from the isolation, and the beautiful sunset, the really stunning thing was the scent. One of the little plants that grew across the steppe had a lavendery-like scent. What had been a strong hot wind during the day had died into a gentle fragrant breeze.
The days continued in much the same way as the day had finished. The steppe Eagles which had been absent the day before were back in abundance. As were small little birds that sat on the road playing chicken until hugo was virtually on top of them. I am sad to say that not all of them made it.
Finally finally finally we made it to Aral. Aral was once an extremely important fishing town whose glory days are long gone due to an executive decision in the 1970s to divert certain water bodies to cotton plantations. The devastating effect of this is the reduction of the Aral sea by quite a lot more than 50%. So there is no longer any water any where near Aral, and therefore no fishing. The harbour is dry and now a dumping ground for rubbish. Camel farming seems to be the predominant livelihood. Interestingly since the Aral sea has disappeared from Aral there has been an increase in TB and Hepatitis and there are signs entering the town to remind people to take their TB medication!
All this driving was thirsty work so it was necessary to top up Hugo’s tank and find ourselves some water. The central bazaar in Aral was near the central square and a hub of activity we stocked up on bread and water but were a little reluctant to purchase any of the meat that was sitting uncovered and un-refrigerated on the countertop. However in saying that I think that if we are going to want to eat meat in the future we may have to get past this idea, as our options will be limited… and just cook it… really really well.
It is hard to imagine what this town would have been like 40 – 50 years ago when it was in its prime. The buildings close to what would have been the water’s edge are white washed like you would expect from a fishing village on the British coast. The dryness is so undeniable that it is hard to fathom that some water is being diverted back into the Aral sea.
The friendliness of the people that we have met in Kazakhstan has been astonishing. While asking for directions at a local hotel the guy Dunc was speaking too wasn’t completely sure of what we wanted so instead of shaking his head and passing responsibility he called a friend on his phone to assist us. We were looking for the ship cemetery, the final resting place for the fishing vessels that once so capably provided the people here with food and a livelihood and now are collapsing rusted memories of their former selves located in what was once the Aral Sea.
Our guidebook had stated that recent map publications and some other guides have listed the ship cemetery as being quite far north of Aral, which was incorrect. The ship cemetery is in fact south west of Aral, so we needed to find the right road out. It was about a 45minute drive on a blue metal road which takes you to a gorgeous little village called Zhalangash, this village used to be a fishing village as well but now survives farming camels. It is a tiny village with a road through that if you follow (as we did) drives straight out onto the old sea bed, and not too much further you arrive along side the ships in the desert who are being watched over by the ships of the desert (and a couple of cows as well). The sea bed is gradually becoming covered with another sea of green and red grasses, giving the impression that the sea was never there. But between the sparse vegetation you can still see the shells that are now bleached white by the sun.
There used to be 11 ships here at the cemetery but they are slowly being torn apart trucked to China to be sold as scrap metal, so now there are only 4.
We left Aral and continued south and shortly after the motorway turned east and we passed the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It was from here the first man was launched into space. The name Baikonur is the name of a village that is hundreds of kilometres away in the middle of nowhere. When the Russians were going to launch a man into space they were required to declare the location to the Air Traffic Authorities. However not wanting the rest of the world to know where their space research centre was located they said it was somewhere else and the name has stuck ever since. It is not easy to visit the cosmodrome so we admired it from the outside.
A policeman with a complete set of gold teeth stopped us outside a small town not far from the Cosmodrome. With a sigh Gem started rifling through the box important stuff for the driving documentation. The policeman with one hand over the airconditioning vent, enjoying the refreshing breeze, saw Gem’s effort and with a blasé wave of the hand indicated not to bother. He spoke to us is Kazakh worked out where we were going and shook our hands and sent us on our way.
We stopped at the rather strange Korkut Ata Monument, another 57 or so kilometres from the Cosmodrome. This is a bizarre large monument to Korkut Ata who invented the kobyz, a famous Kazakh stringed instrument. Legend has it that the poor old chap (who lived in the 8th or 9th century dreamt as a young man that he would only live to age 40. Frightened by this he saddled up his camel and went in search of immortality, yet everywhere he went he discovered people digging his grave. He returned to the banks of the Syr Darya and sacrificed his poor camel, and using her skin made a musical instrument who’s sound was so beautiful that while he played it death could not touch him. However finally exhausted from playing he fell asleep and death in the form of a snake killed him. On the banks of the river behind this memorial is supposedly the spot where Korkut Ata died. It is a large, white, modern looking monument and a favourite amongst the local wedding parties, well we assumed so as we saw two while we were there. One of the brides was wearing traditional costume that as well as a pretty frilly ruffly white dressed consisted of an enormous pointed hat on her head.
We made it to Kyzlorda after dark, a momentous occasion as it meant that it was time to flip the map over to the other side. Yes we were half way-ish through Kazakhstan. The town of Kyzlorda is equally difficult to navigate after dark as others that we have been to. At the third petrol station looking for a hotel a young Kazakstan girl was called in who spoke English. She was unable to tell us where the hotel was but she and her boyfriend offered to show us the way. So following them we wove through the dark streets until we got stopped by the police!!! These ones were not as friendly but we were so lucky that this sweet stranger and her boyfriend stopped and walked back to advocate for us. So soon we were on our way again. We ended up at the hotel that the guidebook mentioned to be one of the most expensive in town. However we definitely could not choose to be picky at this hour of night so gritted our teeth when presented with the calculator demonstrating the cost of the room and went upstairs. The room was huge in golden hues, and as their was no internet we had to make do with Hugh Jackman as Wolverine for our evening entertainment, it was tough for Gem, watching him all muscley beating up the bad guys, but she suffered through it.
We have been happy with the roads for as the little Kazakh had said since passing Aral, they had been consistently average. Meaning there was more smooth asphalt than there were potholes.
Our next stop was 50 or so kilometres west of Turkistan. Here there are the remnants of a city from the Silk Road. From the distance Sauran appears on the horizon flickering and shimmering in the heat haze like a mirage leaving us to wonder whether it was really there or not. Turning off the road on a dirt track passing under a railway and any doubt is removed as the ancient ruins stand unyielding in front of us.
The city was once surrounded by 7 walls, and the wall that remains encloses 40ha. Hundreds of years of winds across the steppe have dumped sand and dust at the foot of the walls gradually building up so that now much of the wall and indeed the ruins of the city lie under the sand. There were several teams excavating and preserving while we walked around, it will probably be a different sort of tourist attraction in a few years. As we scuttled down the side of the wall and back to Hugo we ran into an Aussie from QLD (they are everywhere) and his Canadian wife. We traded hints and tips and learned a snippet about what was going on in the rest of the world.
We sighed with a little exasperation when we learned from the guide book that the Mausoleum that was next on our list to visit was not just outside of Turkestan as the map indicated but instead right in the middle. Although sometimes it makes us want to bang our head against the steering wheel when turn after turn we go the wrong direction it is equally distracting and amusing to stop every 200-300 meters to ask directions. If we are feeling brave we use our 50 word Russian vocabulary. If we get no where with this approach as so often happens we revert to pigeon English, and if that fails we get the picture in the guide book and point confusingly at it. Nine times out of ten we will get someone who will point us in ‘a’ direction. (We always ask someone further up to confirm as we have been sent on a wild goose chase before). However there is always someone who looks at us like we are nuts (can you blame them) and then walks away.
But I digress. We drove the wrong way through an energetic roadside bizarre where the road had almost as many cars as it had people, and appeared to be the only road in Kazakhstan that did not have a healthy respect for road rules. We turned around and following the ‘might is right’ rule allowed Hugo to gracefully escort us back the right way. We finally parked Hugo in some shade, and after admiring the beautiful drawings on Hugo’s dusty flanks we walked to the Mausoleum.
It is described by some as the most impressive building in Kazakhstan, and as we have a limited Kazakhstan experience I can neither confirm nor deny this. It’s full name is the Timurid Mausoleum of Khodja Ahmed Yassaui an important figure in Sufi Islam. The decoration of the building was never completed and has been left as is. The bits that have been decorated are stunning in their intricate mosaics and beautiful colours. His tomb inside the mausoleum is a place of pilgrimage for many Muslims. It was built as a multi-functional room and has everything from living quarters, to school, to burial tomb all under the one roof. In the front entrance it has a cauldron that weighs two tonnes and has a diameter of over 2m.
Suitably impressed we clambered into Hugo. Little did we realised what fateful events would unfold. As Hugo moved out of the carpark his left front wheel hit an enormous (yet unseen from the driver’s perspective) pothole, wrenching the steering wheel out of the drivers hands. No immediate effects were noted however after stopping for fuel the aircon was not quite as cold and the speedometer was no longer working. This was cause for consternation as we didn’t know how fast we were going anymore. An emergency call was put in to Julian, who gave us a couple of suggestions of which we tried on the side of the road and felt that if they didn’t work then we probably had a ‘little gremlin in the electrics somewhere’ and not to worry too much about it til we get to Almaty. So being the creatures of adaptation that we are we switched the sat nav to show speed and the odometer reading so at least we would have an idea of how far we were travelling. Reading this you might think that we just took it in our stride, but being as we had also had a little hiccup with the oil earlier in the day we were a little discouraged.
We turned off the road and followed a dirt track down, noticing an ominous clunking with every bump, and as the sun was kissing the golden horizon we were eating ratatouille on toast in the field. It was wonderful being alone in the field but for the lone shepherd on his horse that we occasionally spied silhouetted on the horizon.
After breakfast in our field we clunked rattled and slowly rolled back out onto the main road. Whilst driving on the bitumen Hugo felt and sounded fine, which made us feel that the issue was something to do with his suspension – but he was definitely still driveable.
So drive we did immediately after Shymkent the fields became luscious and green and the mountains loomed ahead and to the right of us. The stock (still wandering on the road, despite all the green pasture) looked fat and in some fields it appeared that crops of grain were being grown. It was in a small village here distracted by the beauty that Gem was stopped by the police for speeding. 74km in a 60 zone. The police were very friendly and had a good laugh with us, but quite clearly wanted us to pay a speeding fine. It seemed to do this that we had to backtrack 30km to a bank, pay the fine at the Bank and then come back and collect Gem’s driving licence that the Police would hold onto as collateral. This idea did not suit us at all. Nevermind that we did not want to backtrack through the mountain roads that we had just weaved through, we did not like leaving Gem’s drivers licence with these blokes. Neither party were able to clearly articulate what their concerns were despite the help of our Russian-English Dictionary, nor were we able to clearly ascertain how long the police would be in their spot on the side of the road before moving on elsewhere. Eventually after much laughing, miming and banter the Policeman grabbed our dictionary and looked up the word for ‘warning/caution’. With a twinkle in his eye he sternly shook his finger at Gemma and sent us on our way with drivers licence in hand!
Much of the rest of the drive was not worth mentioning. We had tentatively thought we would go and see the petroglyphs of Tamgaly – carvings that have been in place since the stone, bronze, iron age and even some added in the last century. Yet our trusty guide book described the road from the motorway to the carvings as 60km of dirt. Even though Hugo was travelling fine on a relatively smooth bitumen road we did not want to risk 120km detour until we had had him checked out. So regretfully we drove past the turn off and into Almaty. This drive did take us across the border into Kyrgystan – it was only for a few minutes and we didn’t get out of the car, but can we count this as another country??
Friends Julian and Gilly had given us the contact info of some of their good friends in Almaty Camila and Richard. Camila and Richard had kindly offered to host us while we were in town. So following some text message directions we battled the heavy Almaty traffic and found their apartment building.
We were shown up to the apartment and greeted by the wonderful couple (and Clare), it really was a blessing given how tired and frustrated we were. Camila and Richard were to attend a leaving bbq and had invited us to come along, so in a whirlwind we showered and put on some clean clothes before heading out. Robert a Dutch friend was returning to Amsterdam. The barbeque was held at the residence of the Dutch Ambassador to Kazakhstan, and the offered food and friendship was very much welcomed (not that we haven’t enjoyed spending just over 4 weeks in each other’s sole company). Gem drank wine and chatted with the girls and Dunc did what all Ozzie blokes do and drank beer and talked about the size of his engine with some other men before peeing on the lawn (see the photos of that one 
– Duncan will tell you it was a party game, and he won actually)
In case you are curious about all the references to apples it is because Kazakhstan is home to the apples. Yes the Alma (you’re seeing the connection now aren’t you?) used to be from the mountain region here and now although it is almost extinct (do apples become extinct?) there are a group of dedicated apple lovers who are bringing it back.
Furthermore an additional claim to fame is the tulip. Long ago we had our belief that tulips were from Amsterdam dispelled by a man with beautiful blue eyes who on the coves of Gallipoli assured us with no uncertainty that the tulip is from Turkey. Well the Kazakhs dispute this claiming that it’s many many wild varieties of tulip still found when spring is sprung is testament to the fact that the Tulip is from Kazakhstan. It found its way to Turkey on trading routes before being taken North after Constantinople was attacked. (Apologies if my history is out a little)
So with the idea of searching for the Alma apple we headed down town into the city centre, armed with our guide book and some local hints and tips. Camila and Richard were off at a Charity golf tournament, and the car was not able to be fixed until Monday.
The sun beat down on us as we walked, continuing our no rain streak,. It was fairly hot and we were grateful to reach the cool Panfilov Park. Here we saw the city’s war memorial for which the hype was justifiable. An enormous sculpture with soldiers bursting out of it, the conglomerate of figures forms the shape of the USSR. Stretching out in front of this is a solemn black memorial burning an eternal flame. The guide book had noted that this is a particular favourite spot for couples to come and have their wedding pictures, and we were not disappointed. An entrepreneur seeing a gap in the market has bought down a small cage filled with white doves that for a fee he will release to make your wedding photos all the more special.
Through the park stands the equally famous Ascension or Zenkov Cathedral, also known as the wooden cathedral. It is one of the oldest buildings in Almaty, despite the city being practically ruined by a massive earthquake at the beginning of last century. The reason it survived?? Apparently it is down to the construction of the church being completed without nails, just brackets were used. The outside is colourful in keeping with many of the orthodox churches we have visited. The inside is much more understated than other churches and this in combination with the beautiful natural light made it a very appealing place to be. A little less appealing was the screaming of the disgruntled babies from the mass baptism who were unimpressed at having water thrown at them.
Feeling hot and bothered from the walk we welcomed the coolness of The Green Bazaar in the middle of town. Surrounded by market stalls selling everything from stationary (there were a lot of stalls selling stationary) to your weight (yes for 20p you could stand on some scales) entering the bazaar bought some order to what seemed chaotic. The orderly rows within the bazaar were laden with fresh fruit and veg (including of course the giant alma) as well as dried fruit, pre made salads and pickles, and honey. As we wandered up and down the aisles we were enticed to try the fare with the broad smiles and encouragement of the sellers. At the far end of the market was the meat section. For the non Kazakh readers/speakers amongst us the aisles were headed with pictures of the animals so as not to confuse. Vegetarians beware!!!! Along these aisles any part of any animal from goat to camel (including horse) could be found. And there were a lot of parts that we both looked at wondering where on earth on the animal it came from.
We were spat out of the green bazaar through an aisle full of fake designer clothes, and walked on through the pedestrian mall admiring the many art sellers before entering the former soviet department store Tsum. Is there a more apt description of a building than the word ‘soviet’? Probably not so I wont bore you, but the top floor is the place to be should you be after any Kazakh handicraft and souvenirs.
Feeling the warm glow of post shopping energy we decided with little thought to walk back up the hill, a distance that seemed a lot greater on the way up than it did on the way down. We stopped to get some cake which was definitely for after dinner and had nothing to do with resting our weary legs.
Speaking of dinner, Camila must have had some sort of sixth sense. Knowing that she would be out all day at golf she had pre-prepared something for dinner – Lasagne – Gem was a very happy girl.
With excellent food, wine and company the day wrapped up. Camila, Richard and Clare entertained (and educated) us with their stories of central Asia. At one point the discussion turned to history and ‘to clarify’ certain points we all pulled out our reference books. (And by reference books I mean our various different guide books) (including Camila’s brilliant WC guide book). I have been to other countries where the demographics are described as a melting pot, but Kazakhstan seems to be a prime example of this. Smack bang in the middle of some massive empires, it has been invaded, defeated, and absorbed by so many different groups it is difficult to keep count. Perhaps it is this continuous fluidity of power shifting over the ages has greatly reinforced the seemingly fierce pride of being Kazakh, and the equally fierce friendliness and hospitality that we have experienced.
I would like to say that this was an indication of the direction of the evening, but the reference books were soon closed as another bottle of wine and then scotch came out J. Despite Clare’s plumbing dramas of the day it was not too difficult to convince her to have another, and before going to bed we made grand plans for the next couple of days.
Richard had headed into the office by the time we made our appearance on this Sunday morning. Our plans had been made with particular consideration for the days sport – we needed to be back for the cricket and the formula one.
With that in mind we headed to the State Museum. Quite small it contains some really good displays and replicas of fossils, bones and Kazkakh culture. Unfortunately for us there was limited information in English, but we were content to look at the taxidermy, models of burial mounds and prominent Kazakh buildings and of course the clothes and loot of the tomb of the Golden Man.
I fear that Australia’s demise in the Ashes may have been the direct doing of Clare and Camila, for as we discovered that night on one of the other tests they had created a ‘voodoo candle’ to further Englands efforts. Despite the voodoo candle being assaulted by many little Australian cocktail flags, and a clip on koala the damage was done and Australia conceded the Ashes. We didn’t do much better in the Formula one, so not a great day for the Aussies in the ex-pat Kazakh home J The winning team were extremely good sports, and fed us with bbq on shashlik wood, so maybe it is a good thing that Australia didn’t win. Another friend Sebastian handily joined us after his adventure racing near Astana, providing us with some more insights into the route that we were planning to take.
… And at this point in the tale our accident happened. While out sightseeing some plonker decided to pull out on us on a highway while we were doing 85kph and he was doing about 10kph. He didn’t look in his mirrors, he even freely told the police that, and we didn’t see him pull out, so we cleaned him up. And pretty seriously too. Hugo fully loaded with us in it is a steel tank of about 3.5 tonnes… this tends to make a bit of a mess of whatever it might hit. But he protected us brilliantly. I won’t go into specifics as its all a bit dismal and this is a happy blog. But just let it be said that the Kazakh police were brilliant, even taking us out for dinner. Camila and Richard were very helpful, and the mechanics fixed and repainted Hugo in record time. It just seriously hurt our bank account… but, things have to move on and we weren’t about to be beaten… we just now know that we NEED to find jobs as soon as we get home J
Anyway, we’d already booked Hugo in before this accident to have the suspension and speedo looked at, which the repair shop couldn’t do for us with the accident as it wasn’t accident related…so this morning was Hugo’s big day. Dunc was to take the car in to the mechanics while Gem updated some of the diary.
Apparently the trip into the mechanics turned into quite the epic. After much tyre kicking, examination and extensive discussion by two of the drivers (Seric and Victor) they decided that the original mechanic of choice would be too expensive so selected another one. Then in convoy they escorted Duncan there one in front and one behind. When Serric (in front) decided to change lanes, Victor (behind) would have also moved over in anticipation blocking the crazy traffic so Duncan could move over.
Fortunately for us Serric spoke very good English so once at the garage was able to translate both Duncan and the mechanics so everyone knew what was happening. When Dunc finally arrived back we were expecting to pick up the car later in the evening.
Dunc’s morning had been a little more productive than Gem’s as she had found some McLeods Daughters on TV as ‘background noise’ while she worked. After he discovered this Gem’s fate was sealed. She would definitely be going back to the garage in the evening to help Duncan
But first, Camila had organised us a Russian lesson with her teacher Nadezhda. Nadezhda later admitted that she had been nervous coming to teach us as she didn’t know what we would be like, hopefully she was quickly reassured. It was really fun learning the alphabet, numbers and some simple communication. We had already learned the Cyrillic alphabet but having someone to help with pronunciation was a confidence booster. Poor Dunc though, still can’t roll his ‘r’s.
So from Russian to the now open NP office for park permits, (we had tried earlier in the day and it was closed) to the car, where we discovered that Hugo was not ready. They thought that he might be ready in another hour, but being the social butterflies that we are we had dinner plans!
Dinner was at a place called Line Brew which was a favourite with Camila and her gang. Richard unfortunately was unable to join us as he had had to fly out in the early hours for work, but Clare and Sebastian came along as well as some new faces Malene, Mike and some others (whose faces are clear, but whose names, I am very sorry, I cannot remember) Gem had horse shashlik and Dunc had horse steak. Only the first mouthful was hard for Gem as she tried not to remember all her beloved horse friends, but once she had tasted the delicious bbq flavour, she found it was not so difficult. After dinner Camila, Sebastian and Clare took us to their local: Guns and Roses in the hope of showing us some more entertainment. It was a quiet night at the Gun, which in retrospect was probably a very good thing, but nonetheless firm plans were made for dancing tomorrow night.
Camila and Gemma woke up this morning both seriously regretting their plans for dancing and after a very quick conversation decided that a quiet night in would be just lovely.
Camila had golf practice in the morning, and in the afternoon we went with Victor to pick up Hugo.
Success – the speedo was now working, the undercar suspension and anti-roll thingies requiring attention had been attended to, and the car was super clean. We were finally ready!
The second thing we learned, well Gem learned, under the watchful eye of Camila is how to make pasta. The girls were cracking eggs one handed, kneading dough and generally cooking up a storm. I can hear many of you saying – “hmph pasta, who hasn’t made pasta?” but this is Gem we are talking about, her reputation in the kitchen needs no explanation. Clare arrived for dinner and she and Gem set about trying to make pasta longer than themselves, we got photographic evidence J
Where was Dunc while all this inspiring kitchen creativity was occurring? He was literally tearing his hair out at the astounding incompetence of the UK Banks – namely Lloyds – who are crap, useless and who’s own staff recommend we bank elsewhere. They just make you want to be violent!!!!!!
So with home made pasta, sauce and Moldovan wine we celebrated the end of our rather topsy-turvy stay in Almaty. We have made some good friends, and hope to be able to show them some WA hospitality sometime, and spent a lot of money. Oh well. We will just need to earn more. J When are we going to be able to do a trip like this again? Might as well do it right the first time.
It was with mixed emotions that we left Almaty this morning. We were excited to be going on with our journey but would miss the friends we had made. Before leaving we went to the office and met Zarina who had been a lifesaver on so many occasions for us by translating over the phone. We also wanted to thank Serrik, Parvil and Victor, the drivers who had put up with us and really helped us out a lot.
Helping us out one last time, Victor escorted us out of Almaty. Shortly after he left us we got pulled over by the police – again!. This time we had driven straight when we should have turned and an on the spot ‘fine’ was to be paid.
Before getting to the Charyn Canyon we stopped at the Falcon Museum. This was our opportunity to visit the museum, meet and possible hold a hunting eagle. Quite exciting. One of the guidebooks had suggested that we call ahead, which we hadn’t done, perhaps that would have made the difference.
We were greeted at the gate by a lady who showed us her hunting dogs, their puppies and her hunting eagles. She then took us around her orchard where she plied our arms and backpack full of all sorts of fruit. She spoke about the same amount of English as we spoke Russian but chattered easily too us in Russian as we walked around the orchard. She then took us to her one room museum where she pointed things out to us and continued to rattle on despite our ignorance. After some confusion regarding the entry fee of the museum and us not having small enough notes we gave her a hefty tip, and left a little bewildered without holding the eagle or seeing any demonstrations.
A little wrong turn here and a little correction there and we arrived at the Charyn Canyon, which is touted by some Kazakhs as the mini Grand Canyon. About 10km after turning off the road we came to the national park office where sat a ticket man and a park officer. After a little friendly chatter we discovered – unbeknownst to us – that we had just paid the park fee and the camping down the bottom fee, and the park officer climbed into the front of the car to escort us down the canyon. Happily Dunc engaged the 4WD, while Gem concertina-ed herself into the back seat which was definitely not prepared for passengers.
So with our breaths held we slowly advanced Hugo over the edge onto the steep descent into the Canyon. As neither of us have been to the Grand Canyon we had no expectations, and therefore found the jagged outcrops and craggy precipices awesome. The red colour dramatically contradicted the blue sky. Further on under Gem’s watchful eye Dunc navigated Hugo through a narrow passageway created by the collapse of one rock column against another. Granted on the first approach Gem was more focused in taking photos leaving a minor injury to the tent cover, but the second approach had Gem’s attention and we was casualty free.
We were astonished when we reached the far end of the canyon to find a swift, blue cold river at the bottom. Here the tones transformed, the red rock face became dark grey cliffs, and at the foot of these the soil must have been fertile enough to support grass and trees which overlooked the light blue water. The guide told us we could wash our face and hands in the water but that the current was too strong to swim, although after Gem experimentally stuck her feet in to cool them down, one look on her face told us there was no chance of swimming.
There were some very large bins around the camping site, so we took some time to give Huge’s a bit of a clean out. While we had the draw open Dunc thought that he would pump the tyres up a little. Ha – not going to happen as our tyre inflator’s broken – we had only used it once in London!!!
We had asked the guide whether we could fish in the river and he had said yes indicating that it contained some good sized fish. Feeling lucky we set up and waited, and, Phil!! We really need some fishing lessons – I really don’t remember it being this hard when we were kids. But this is the third or fourth time we have pulled out our rod this trip and nadda. Surely you take out line, add bait and wait, maybe re-cast a few times if it is slow…. That’s all we used to do to catch blowies off in WA anyway! It is a good thing we had sandwiches as a back up for dinner, otherwise it would have been some hungry little campers that went to bed that night.
It was a balmy night in the canyon, we had had the canvas up all night, so woke with the natural light to the sound of rushing water (funnily enough we went to sleep to the sound of rushing water). Getting a nice early start gave us the chance to investigate the top of the canyon a little before anyone else might arrive.
When the park guide did arrive, he pointed us in the direction of a short cut to where we were going, and for once this short cut actually went where it was supposed too. Although later Gem lost the gained time by taking us on a 160km detour!!!
When we did finally enter the Altyn Emel National Park in Basshi we stopped off at the National Park office for directions. The directions were extremely good in the form of a guide. Swapping broken English and Russian, she took us out to the singing sand dune.
I am sure that most people when they think of deserts they picture as I do that childhood image of sweeping sand dunes, with perhaps a two humped stick-figured camel and a palm tree oasis. The Kazakhstan deserts have been nothing like that (apart from the occasional camel. Instead they have been flat dry steppes often covered with low lying vegetation of some description, and with the occasional mountain range disrupting the horizon. Except for here in Altyn Emel. All of a sudden there is a mammoth sand dune (and a little lizard). It doesn’t merge with the landscape or gradually become… no it just is there (with a little lizard). One minute dry steppe with vegetation, the next minute a colossal sand dune looms in front of you (yup and the little lizard).
With the mercury pushing 40 the most sensible thing to do in this situation would be to climb the sand dune! So we did! Well Duncan did, Gem got ¾ of the way up and started sinking shin deep into the sand and thought that she would let Duncan see what was at the top. Duncan made it to the top but didn’t really see anything as the very moment he popped his head over the crest he was blasted with hot sandy wind from the other side of the dune. Walking back down we heard a low hum as the sand dune sang.
Not far from the sand dune is a real oasis. An explorer found this fresh water spring bubbling from the rocks and of course proclaimed that it must be an elixir of health that would cure all ailments. I have to say the only ailment of ours that it cured was our thirst. Perhaps had the day been cooler we might have been a little more cautious, but our guide said that the water was alright to drink, and it was coming straight out of a rock so we drank it. So far, no ill effects J
We were to camp back at the nearest Cordon, which as best we can determine is the name given to the private residences within the National Park. Some of these have little huts restaurants but we were fairly self sufficient this night. We were directed past the toilets, under the low slung electrical wire (held up by a broom), past the drying yaks hides to the apple orchard. It was here while Dunc cooked spaghetti that we experienced our first sand storm. Although it did not last particularly long we were reminded throughout dinner with the occasional piece of crunchy pasta J
So with the sun down and the dust storm abated we were alone in the national park, with the local dog for company. Feeling scandalous we filled our bucket with water and soap. We took it into the orchard and went and stood on the wooden bridge over the dry irrigation ditch. And, under the moonlight and apple trees we stripped off to have our bath and get rid of the sand that the singing sand dune had managed to get everywhere!!!
We picked up the guide (who had been staying within the cordon) and headed back to Basshi, before heading north toward the Russian border.
The drive today was like a summary of the landscapes of Kazakhstan, we saw more desolate steppes, lush green river valleys and bleak beautiful mountains.
The road had been fairly good for the day and as the sun was setting we found ourselves within 150km of Semey. If we made it to Semey tonight we would be back on schedule without having to worry about the extra day in Almaty. So we pushed on!!!
When will we learn!!!
The very instant a decision is made to push on after dark because we are almost there…everything changes. It always does – it always will – remember these words of wisdom.
No sooner than we had decided the road stopped being a road and became one large 150km long pothole impersonating a road extremely badly. When there was no one on the road, or someone coming towards us progress was slow. If we were fortunate enough to have a local overtake us it helped us learn where we could apply a little more acceleration and where we had to swerve quickly and slam on the brakes to avoid arriving in New Zealand via pothole.
I can hear you saying “why did we not pull over and camp?”…. Well we did consider this, however, Semey used to be called Semypalatinsk. The region southwest of it is called the Polygon which was used to test 340 underground (borehole and tunnel) shots and 116 atmospheric atomic/nuclear explosions from 1949 up until 1989. Unsurprisingly the area has experienced wide spread devastation resulting from this, from which it will not recover from a very long time, including incredible high rates of deformities and disease in the local population. So we didn’t camp.
But we did finally make it to Semey, and as the guide book map matched well with the road map, we found a hotel as well.
As we made it to Semey in good time we allowed ourselves some time to get organised in the morning, so when we finally made it to the border it was about 12:30.
This was the longest border crossing that we had so far endured. After collecting the mandatory docket from the first booth we queued to enter and were directed to drive into a big blue shed. Two blokes checked our docket and then waved us on. We did a three point turn and drove out of the big blue shed to park at a nearby building. Here was passport and customs. Passport control for leaving Kazakhstan was easy, but in the customs office we queued for around 40 minutes vying for attention from the clerks who ignored our existence and instead focused on the bolshie Russian truck drivers. After a while Dunc muscled his way in, only to be given a couple of forms to fill out. And pointed in the direction of another office outside. 40 minutes for that!!!
Finally we were done with the Kazakh side of the border and found ourselves in a sandpit in border land waiting to be let into the Russian side. This waiting process for admission took several hours, and then for seemingly no reason at all they let us through. The Russian passport control was a tiny little office with two people trying to deal with the influx of people. Having already done a Russian border we knew that we needed an entry/exit card to complete, and we could see other people completing them – we just couldn’t see where to pick up the cards. Then we realised, we had to queue at the passport desk, have them examine our passports, give us the cards, take them away and fill them out, re- join the queue, have our passports examined again, everything stamped and then we were done. I think this system would benefit from a little LEAN thinking.
Russian customs was relatively quick and painless, and in total we spent 6 hours crossing the border.
So with the time difference and the extremely cautious driving (being back in Russia and all) we arrived in Rubstovsk a little after 8.
Rubstovsk was a really interesting experience! We quickly found ourselves at the train station and after asking in broken Russian for a hotel, a taxi driver offered to show us to one. So following him we quickly entered a typical grid pattern street layout typical of the Soviets, at the centre of which was a massive square/parade ground. Surrounding this square were concrete buildings whose facades had seen better days. At one end of the square loomed an enormous Lenin statue honoured by fresh flowers laid beneath him.
We were waved in the direction of one of the hotel and found ourselves stepping back in time by about 50 years. The hotel did not look like it had changed since the Lenin’s day – literally – not a coat of paint, not a new floor tile, not a bit of hot water plumbing, or rewiring to conform with health and safety standards. It was quite expensive and when we arrived at our room we realised we were paying for square meterage. Our ‘room’ was an apartment of much the same size as our place in Bermonsdey. The furniture was as old and ignored of as the rest of the building. Initially we were irked at the negative value for money we were receiving, but then we just could not help but laugh – the whole building was stuck in time and the whole experience was surreal.
The difference after we crossed into Siberian Russia was apparent almost immediately. Gone were the ramshackle, monotone country villages that we had seen in Russia before entering Kazakhstan. Instead the villages were collections of pretty intricately carved wooden cottages. Even those that looked less affluent were well maintained and appeared cared for. Of course by saying this I don’t mean to say that those in western Russia were not cared for or loved, but that for some reason a contrast between them exists.
The contrast was not just in the villages, the landscape had changed – mountains, rivers, valleys and thick forests.
As the road cut through one of these forests we came upon a row of shashlik-ers. So we stopped sat out in the sun and had freshly cooked shashlik. I am in love with the shashlik. I think they use a particular type of wood which helps give it the flavour but it’s so good.
Not knowing what we would be experiencing we stocked up in a town called Bishk. This was a momentous occasion because finally after weeks of searching Gem found a hat that she liked. So not only were we headed into the Mongolian wilderness with our fridge and food box full but Gem has a hat to keep off that desert sun.
Another difference that we noticed was that in western Russia travelling down to Kazakhstan we saw very very few hotels. But in this region they were everywhere. So we thought to treat ourselves and found a nice secure hotel near the river in a town called Maajma.
It was a Sunday night so there was very little happening in Maajma however we arrived with plenty of time to walk around the town and down by the river. There had been a little bit of rain, and now the mountains and town were divided from the sky by a brilliant full rainbow. At first glance the gardens appeared overgrown and chaotic but closer appraisal showed gardens abundant in seasonal fruit and vegetables. One of the more orderly gardens near the hotel was growing what we are sure are the worlds biggest cabbages.
There were no restaurants open on Sunday night so we grabbed some cheese, crackers and tucked into some Moldovan wine which we had bought in Almaty – loving the Moldovan wine, add it to the list of places to go next time.
After the treat that yesterday had given us we were looking forward to what the rest of the Russia would have in store. It was almost as if we could be back in Europe. An extremely good quality road showed us the way alongside a river through the mountains. The leaves of the birch trees were just starting to turn golden. In spite of the occasional rain shower it was beautiful.
Eventually we crossed the river and left it, but continued to wind through the mountains and up into them. After one particularly long climb we got to the top an altitude of about 1800m. At the top there were joggers doing altitude training, people selling souvenirs and toilets. So we stopped to stretch our legs and were alarmed to find that Hugo was bubbling. All of his warning lights were fine but there was definite bubbling coming from his engine fluids. A good warning for Gem to take it a little easier on the hills from how on.
Not long after we rejoined another river and stopped for sandwiches. Very occasionally through the forest on the other side of the river we would catch glimpse of some cantering horse.
We left the river and continued on. We stopped and chatted to two Mongol Rally drivers Aqib and Franta who were having a pit stop. They were hoping to reach the border and possibly cross today so after tailing a much more sedate Hugo, overtook in their little Suzuki and disappeared.
We continued at much the same altitude and soon we caught glimpses of the Altai mountains that border Russia, Mongolia and China. Some of their peaks are over 4000 meters and are covered in snow. Still climbing the scenery gradually changed and lost is faux-Alps look becoming more like the severe exposed mountains that we had seen in Kazakhstan. The pine trees and green associated with them disappeared to be replaced with the green-red foliage of low lying vegetation.
Finally we arrived at Tashkent – the border town. We thought we would try and cross but on investigating found that the border was closed. Aqib and Franta who had seen us drive by came to meet us, a quick mutual agreement that it would be nice to camp together and we headed up the mountain above Tashkent.
The temperature dropped rapidly but dinner, companionship, wine and a little vodka was good (for all but Franta who had an upset belly). Camped at 2200m we had a beautiful view of the sunset over the mountains and the moon rise over the village.
Next we cross into Mongolia!
Oh, and there are like 6 new galleries added too.
Woke up this morning to see the news of the ANZ rebranding and the rollout of the new logo which was announced a few months back. I take an interest in the decisions that lead to a company rebranding or repositioning themselves, and also the followup once they decide to go through with it.
So, the OLD (top) and NEW (bottom) logos
The idea behind the rebranding was explained in a nutshell by chief executive Mike Smith:
“In recent years, the ANZ brand has become fragmented,” Mr Smith said.
“To deliver on its growth strategy and regional aspirations, ANZ has to look like one bank and provide a consistent experience for our customers and our people wherever they come into contact with the bank.”
Good intentions, but will this actually work? I get the feeling it’s heavily focused on their plans to make inroads into the Asian market. The logo has been influenced by a lotus flower.
Firstly there has been a backlash of iSnack 2.0 proportions, with many people drawing similarities to that marketing failure. I’ve yet to see more than a handful of comments today indicating this is a successful logo. The logo is supposed to represent both a human living in the customers world, as well as the three areas of focus (Australia, New Zealand and Asia-Pacific).
Personally I find the font a little bit off-putting, and much prefer the original. The logo design itself I was ok with, until someone pointed out what it looks like upside down. I would think a bank’s logo is seen upside down quite a lot on teller desks and everywhere someone has a letterhead from the bank.
Kinda creeps me out. What’s your take on the new logo? I’ve seen a lot of designers that could communicate their intentions in a better way. It just looks half finished to me (even though they spent 18 months deciding on it). The font appears mismatched from the logo itself, and the spacing between the letters feels wrong. I’m not sure why they left the horizontal line through the letters, I guess as a shout out to their old logo, but I’m not sure how that contributes to the overall rounded feel of the new logo.
What does everyone else think?
I’m currently trying to create a Dojo widget that extends dojox.grid.DataGrid and has sub grids inside it. It’ll likely expand over time to be somewhat of a complex beast so there wasn’t really any other way than going the self contained widget. Having a bunch of global functions and DOM manipulation would be disgusting.
I’m building this widget in an incremental way so after getting the layout and hooking it up to a data source I moved on to creating a column with an expand/contract link that would trigger the sub grid to expand and contract as required. I ran into a problem when trying to keep my formatting functions contained within the widget definition.
I setup my layout in the following way :
_mainGridLayout : [
{ type : "dojox.grid._RowSelector" },
{
cells : [[
{ name : '', get : this._getBlank, formatter : this._formatExpander },
{ field : "customer_id", name: "Cust ID" },
{ field : "customer_name", name : "Customer" },
{ field : "job_number", name : "Job No." },
...
]]
}
],
I had defined the get function and formatter function in my widget, but whenever I loaded the widget I’d get a blank column as if neither function had been run.
After some poking and prodding it seemed that whatever context this view was being built in, the ‘this’ object was not my widget as I originally expected. The ‘this’ object was actually an instance of dojox.grid.cell. That was okay as a cell has a reference to it’s grid, so what I needed to do was access this.grid._formatExpander and this.grid._getBlank.
I did it in the following way :
{ name : '', get : function() {return this.grid._getBlank(arguments);}, formatter : function() {return this.grid._formatExpander(arguments);} },
It worked perfectly, I’d like to say just as I expected, but alas I’m not that smart :)
It feels to me like there should be a cleaner way to do it, but at least for the time being it works fine and doesn’t required me to move my formatting functions out into some global namespace and outside of my widget’s nice pieces of logic.
Friends of The Frontier Group welcomed their baby daughter Josephine into the world last night.
Congratulations from all the team!
We’ve been using Selenium, Webrat, Cucumber and any number of other gems together for quite a while with very few problems. Just recently our Selenium tests just stopped working on the login step, and given our application requires users to login to do anything, it meant out test suite was basically broken from step one.
Given that we thought very little of any consequence had changed it was annoying trying to troubleshoot the problem. Typically you start off thinking it’s something you did, then maybe it’s something someone you know did, then you start to branch out and think that maybe, just maybe, it was a bug elsewhere!
I initially started to check the logs and they seemed perfect, but it wasn’t finding the user record in the database. So I loaded the database in sqlite and lo-and-behold there were no user records to be found. I started a debug session and it reported that the user had in fact been created. I thought it had to be something to do with transactions being used. Trying to insert a record into the database and being told the database was locked confirmed this.
I turned out that the Cucumber gem writer determined that there should be no more global setting for turning on or off transaction support when running tests. Previously transactions were turned off by default in Cucumber, and you’d generally turn them back on if you needed them. This change is annoying because a good chunk of our suite uses Selnium for testing and it requires transactions to be turned off. It’s also a bit odd to reverse a default option and have no way to enable it at all.
Apparently the work around is to tag all the features and scenarios that rely on non-transactional database operations with this new tag of @no-txn. After implementing this, we’ve found it does work and so our tests are back to usual condition.
So if you’re running into problems with your Selenium tests using Cucumber with Rails and your database isn’t updating within a test then check out the ‘@no-txn’ tag and see what happens after you use that.
I like to make a note when I receive great customer service. There’s nothing better as a business owner than to receive compliments from a happy customer. I’ve become more aware of it and I try and send the love back when I have a good experience too. Lately that has been a lot.
Andrew Lynch @ Car Class
We purchased a new family car recently and opted to find an aftermarket paint protection pack. I had planned to do the procedure myself, but after finding Andrew’s website, I immediately phoned him. Within the same week, he was out on a Saturday morning, we had a good chat for half an hour, then he set to work. 2 hours, $300 one amazingly smooth vehicle, and a further chat about our business later, he was on his way. It was an all round great experience, great service and I obviously would be recommending him for any further work. I couldn’t imagine finding anyone to do a more professional job, and it’s now proven successful for Andrew as he will no doubt get more referrals.
Teneke Knight @ Fitquip
Teneke helped with the online purchase of a new piece of exercise equipment. Within a week we had made a purchase decision online, interacted with Teneke to fulfill the order and organise payment. At every step of the way she informed us fully what was happening, and as such I wrote to the head of Fitquip to elaborate on the customer service at their organisation. The equipment arrived today and is just what I was hoping for.
After our old dishwasher decided to end its life in a cloud of black smoke, I decided to head online once more to find a replacement. I’m not really interested in driving around from store to store trying to find something that is being sold to me, so was happy to look here instead. After finding a mid-range Fisher & Paykel model at 35% off I went ahead and ordered it.
Not reading the availability section, I just assumed it would be delivered on the day I requested. After finding out I had made a mistake, I called them and they let me know it would be there the next business day, but for my inconvenience they would refund the delivery fee. I made a mistake, yet they compensated me for it.
A slight mishap laid to rest, even though they had no obligation to do so. In turn they get a positive recommendation from me, and I’ll be looking there next time I need to purchase appliances.
It seems good customer service is still something to be valued.
Our website has undergone a few changes this week. We have improved some areas that were a little rough around the edges and have reworked the content in preparation for a raft of new products and services we plan to introduce over the next 12 months.
As well as making a few visual changes to the site, we have also integrated the blog into the update design, rather than using a different design template.
If you’re having any troubles viewing any part of the site, or something that you relied on has gone missing, please let us know.
I was contemplating writing a post about the brand name choice of the new Vegemite product.
Now that twitter is well and truly here to stay, we’ve implemented a delightful twitter background image.
Let us know what you think!
Earlier today I put the call out to a bunch of students indicating that there’s employment opportunities at The Frontier Group. Here’s what I said:
To quote Joel Spolsky, we’re looking for people who are “smart and get things done”.
The Frontier Group is a boutique software company based in West Perth with a strong focus on web application development. We work with Ruby (and Rails), PHP, relational databases, VMware and Linux. We work in small, specialist teams. We’re a young company – our staff are all in their late 20s. Our interview process is a 10 minute casual chat over coffee, with a full day of (paid) pair-programming. If you like us and we like you, you’re hired.
We understand that you’re a student and will work to accommodate your schedule. We’re expecting about 10 hours per week, as an indicator. If you’ve got exams and can’t work, that’s cool. If you want more work, that’s cool too. We get it.
We are affiliated with Sun Microsystems and IBM. We use Sun server hardware and Apple notebooks. We’re members of AWIA. We host and sponsor the Ruby and Rails Oceania Meetup each month. We’ve got our own rack space in the city.
We use a converted apartment as an office and have a t-shirt and jeans dress code. Come check it out some time.
The positions are entry level part-time/contract with a view to full time upon graduation.
Email jobs@thefrontiergroup.com.au if you’d like more information, or to arrange the chat.
Within a few minutes I started receiving enquiries, so I thought it would be worthwhile elaborating on our interview process and expectations.
Here’s what I told one potential applicant:
We’re focussing on Ruby and Rails development for new projects, but have a lot of legacy PHP code that we’ve inherited or developed over the years. Both languages are readily available and I’m recommending applicants familiarise themselves with them. There’s heaps of Ruby and Rails resources online – I recommend Railscasts and the RailsEnvy/Ruby5 podcasts. The PHP documentation (at php.net) is awesome too – we use it daily.
Obviously we don’t expect you to become a Ruby or PHP rockstar over night – as I stressed in my initial email, we’re looking for someone who’s “smart and gets things done.” However, we do need to look for people that are able to actually do the work we require. If you’re smart and can get things done, learning Ruby and/or PHP to a level that you’re useful to us is not going to be hard.
The interview process is a 10-15 minute chat where we present a problem and bounce ideas around on how you’d solve it. You’ll work as part of the team. It’ll be a question like “what are the considerations when designing and implementing an online shopping cart?” You won’t write code, but will have a whiteboard if you want to draw diagrams to help explain things. A knowledge of plugins, tools and the Ruby gems available to you will help a lot here. For example, ActiveMerchant is a really popular gem for interfacing with credit card processing systems, and mentioning it during the chat would show us you have a finger on the pulse.
We usually know if we’re going to mesh with a potential employee or not within the first few minutes, so why drag out an interview over an awkward hour? All that first encounter is about, for me, is making sure they’re the kind of person I could get along with, and trust to get the job done. I’m not looking for someone who’s a cookie-cutter generic, but rather someone with personality and confidence as well as general intelligence and technical ability.
It’s during the day of pair-programming that we get to road-test you, and you get to road-test us. If we work well together, then you’re offered a job. We don’t pair-program all the time at The Frontier Group, but it’s a technique that we use with good results on suitable projects. Sometimes you drive and sometimes you’re the wingman.
This is the part of the interview process where you get to show us your technical skills, as well as how you operate as a team member. I don’t think there’s much value in intimidating someone with “solve this problem in C on the whiteboard in 5 minutes” during a formal interview. When was the last time you ever wrote real code on a whiteboard anyway?
Lastly, I love asking people if they collaborated on an assignment at uni. It normally catches people off guard, but their answer can be really insightful and gives a good indication to their personality. Some people will deny they ever cheated, whilst others will claim that they let their friends copy off them. Some will tell you that they worked on all their assignments with their friends, even when they weren’t group assessments. Here’s a tip: in the real world I want to work with people that have experience working in a team, using each other’s skills and abilities, so if you did get together with all your uni friends, work on an assignment as a group and then spend the last hour changing your variable names and obfuscating your code so it looked unique, it might not be something to hide.
How is our recruitment process similar or different to your organisations?
At 830 on the dot we were off. Using google maps Gem had ‘memorised’ the way out of St Petersburg to the M10, fortunately this was relatively easy and we made it with no trouble. Once on the M10 it was a continuous guessing game as to what the speed limit was and where the police were hiding along the road. Like Australia the oncoming drivers helpfully flash their headlights to warn of an upcoming trap. This would give Duncan time to sneak up behind a truck or van so that the Police did not realise it was a UK vehicle until we passed… that was the general concept anyway.
We drove on persistently, interrupted only by the occasional fuel stop. Being our first experiences of fuel in Russia we had determined that you must estimate how much fuel you need and then pay for it before you start pumping. Only after you have paid will your pump be turned on allowing you to do so.
The roads are variable, and there are plenty of road works aiming to improve the quality. The lookout for potholes and wheel ruts in the bitumen was relentless; and signs saying that the next 5km ahead would be bumpy were common.
As had been the trend in Eastern Europe the sides of the highway were utilised as shop fronts for many trades. Like Eastern Europe, berries, mushrooms and other fruit and veg were in abundance. However distinct to eastern Europe were roadside stalls selling honey, souvenirs, ugg boots and winter vests and hats! In the larger towns the skyline was dominated by the concrete blocks of apartments that are so archetypal of the Soviets. In the smaller villages, no skyline prevails and instead small wooden cottages are nestled in amongst the trees along the side of the road. Many are painted lovely colours with picket fences and vegetable gardens; but conversely stand in various states of disrepair.
We have never seen bugs like this… in fact we can barely see at all, the windscreen is so splattered. It sounds like hail, and has made pretty patterns, white, yellow and red. The wipers are no match for such an onslaught.
We detoured east from Moscow to a town called Sergiev Posad which is home Russia’s most important monastery: Troitse-Sergeyeva lavra. This was established by an eccentric hermit monk who had run off into the forest to be alone and be forgotten. His strange solitary lifestyle and devout beliefs secured him a following and he was forced to build a town for his followers to live. He was asked to give a blessing for a battle and the success of the battle was attributed to Sergius. As such later he became the patron saint of Russia and some of his relics are housed in the monastery making it a popular pilgrimage destination. In the 1920s the monks were banished to Siberia, but in the 1950s Stalin allowed the monastery to reopen as thanks to the Orthodox Church for their support in WWII. What we found most surprising was the sheer number of churches inside the walls of the monastery. They by far outnumbered any of the catholic monasteries that we had been in; The Gateway Church of St John the Baptist, Refectory Church of St Sergius, Church of St Mica, Church of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, Dormiton Cathedral, Trinity Cathedral, Church of the Virgin of Smolensk and the Church of Zosima as well as an enormous baroque bell tower. We were there quite late in the day and some of the Churches were closed. Some were open and were having mass, so we only poked our noses in. As we had expected the interior was similar to other Orthodox churches that we had visited. Dimly lit the churches are extravagantly decorated in floor to ceiling murals. The wall behind what we know as the altar is called the iconostasis. This in our experience almost always contains a lot of gold gilt work that surrounds 4-5 rows of religious iconography. Men must remove their hats, and women must cover their hair. There are no pews, there appears to be no start and finish to a service. You arrive when you want and stay for as long as you want, standing and listening to, or joining the chanting and singing of prayer. As observers from the outside we thought – though we have no historical facts to back this up – that the architecture, interior decoration and ceremony seemed a combination of more western religions and some eastern/Islamic buildings and ceremonies that we observed in Morocco and Turkey.
But however strange it was to have something like 8 churches inside one monastery wall it was certainly spectacular.
We drove into Moscow and onto the MKAD (ring road) with very little difficulty and now just had to try and find the hotel. This was a little trickier now as we were coming around the ring from the other direction than we had originally planned. Once again with no map, a memory of google maps and written directions we winged it – and almost made it to!!!! Instead ended up on the highway to Warsaw and drove 8-10km the wrong direction before there was an opportunity to turn around. What was most frustrating was that we had been able to see the hotel as we got diverted.
We chose Rus Hotel because it has secure parking, a shuttle to the metro station and a special for non renovated rooms. Because we arrived so late and there are no shops in the immediate vicinity self catering was not an option so that meant eating at the hotel restaurant. It cost £30 for 2 bowls of pasta and a small bottle of water!!!! Internet was £6 an hour and as breakfast was not included with our room rate we were welcome to join for an extra £9 each!!!!! Outrageous. Needless to say, not all that impressed with the hidden extras but can’t say that we were surprised as we had been warned about it. On the plus side it had it’s own (slightly smelly bathroom) an enormous double bed and some English news, as we have no idea what is going on with the rest of the world.
In the morning, the Moscow underground delivered us safely into the centre of town. It is a huge system, and according to statistics moves more people in a day than both the London and New York underground systems combined. Underground the stations are large and airy, much cooler than the London underground and some of them are richly decorated.
I am sure that is no surprise that our first stop was the Kremlin. A lot of old Russian towns have a kremlin, which means fort. But the most famous in Russia is next to the Red Square in Moscow. Surrounded by an imposing red brick turreted wall it houses many important buildings of today’s government including the Arsenal, the Senate Palace and the Presidium. These of course are off limits to tourists. In fact about 2/3 of the buildings within the walls are off limits. Others such as Armoury Palace, Patriarchal Palace and Cathedral Square are the reason we come.
Originally built in the 12th century as a wooden fort the Kremlin has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. When the Russian states united Moscow became capital, and under the reigns of Ivans the great and terrible, the Kremlin grew. Although Peter the Great moved the capital to St Petersburg for a time the Kremlin in Moscow remained the centre for religious and ceremonial events.
The main focus for tourists is Cathedral square, again not dominated by one particular church but bordered by several impressive churches. In one of the churches a choir of monks sang, a beautiful sound and churches always have such good acoustics. We saw the burial places for all the great (and not so great) Tsars of Russia. Saw a giant decorative canon that was built as a psychological weapon for if it was fired it would break. And a great bell that was damaged in one the wars, and has also never been used. Apparently it was tradition for each of the Tsars to create a bell for the bell tower that would tone lower than the last.
For the first time since leaving Australia we could honestly say we were starting to get a little churched out. So instead of heading for the Red Square we headed for Arbat street, a pedestrianised shopping area full of cafes, street performers and artists and shopping.
The cathedral of Christ the Saviour, is a new-ish addition to Moscow. Like so many things lost during the soviet era it was dynamited to make way for the construction of a soviet palace. The palace was never built and until the 1990s it was an huge open air swimming pool. But in the 1990s it was reconstructed at a cost of 360 million dollars to look exactly as it had.
One of the highlights of the cathedral for us was the bridge from it over the river Moskva. From here there was a wonderful view back over the Kremlin.
We walked along the river marvelling at the some of the neo-gothic seven sisters skyscrapers that we could see, before turning up into the Red Square.
The first thing that you see is of course the unmissable Povrosky Cathedral. This is also known as St Basils Cathedral. Built on one above ground foundation or basement the Cathedral is actually (9) (I think!!) churches with one of them, that held services everyday called St Basils, hence the name. It is so ‘disney’ and fairytale like with its coloured and decorative domes. Apparently the Tsar who commissioned it Ivan the Terrible had the builder blinded when it was finished in 1561, in case he should do something similarly eye catching in another city.
The cathedral was nearly knocked down by the soviets as it stands at one end of Red square and it was thought it did not allow enough room for marching access. Hence knocking it down would have allowed plenty of room for troops and tanks. It never happened thank goodness.
As you pass the cathedral the cobbled Red Square opens up in front of you. The red walls of the Kremlin stand to one side and just in front of them the tomb housing an embalmed Lenin (which unfortunately was closed when we were there). At the far end is the distinctive red and white building of the State History Museum, and a small church that did get bulldozed to create more marching room and has since been rebuilt.
And finally on the other side is GUM what was once a bare state department store is now a high end retail store. The Russians apparently do not do cheap, if it did not cost a lot it is not worth anything. The women all wear brand clothes, with brand accessories, short skirts and high heels are apparently compulsory. The amount of black four wheel drives that we saw in the city was insane. Landcruisers, Jeeps, Hummers and Escalades…
Needless to say Moscow is not the place to do any clothes shopping.
The guide book that we had recommended a stroll past the Old English Court, we weren’t so impressed with this as the buildings seemed largely run down.
Unfortunately we had not organised a tour for the KGB museum so were not able to see it as they don’t allow people off the street. Instead we explored the backstreets of Moscow stumbling on a church the colour or fairy floss before finding ourselves on the square outside the famous Bolshoi Theatre. There was a market in the square which we found some cute little presents.
For our final day in Moscow we had decided to experience the more relaxed side of it and head to Gorky Park. We had our books, and the idea was to watch the world go by and enjoy some greenery.
I think however somewhere along the way there was a communication breakdown as when we got to Gorky Park we discovered that it was in fact an adventure park. There were rollercoasters and fairy floss and balloons. As Duncan had been a little nervous in the hotel lift he was not at all keen to try the Russian rollercoaster, so instead we went shopping!!!!
We were back to the hotel quite early as we wanted to decide where to go next as we worked our way down towards Kazakhstan as we had managed to get our visas a few days prior.
The hardest thing about driving in Russia so far has been the absence of decent maps. We have a major road map which would be adequate except the maps of Moscow that it includes in detail do not go out to the MKAD which is a fairly important ring road.
So once again with a little bit of guess work we found our way out of the city. We did momentarily go the wrong way.. again…. twice… but eventually got ourselves on the right track. It seems that road signs for turn offs etc are at the turn, not giving a lot of warning if you are travelling at 90km an hour.
Now south of Moscow, for the first time in Russia the land appears to be farmed. The standard grains are about but there are also fields and fields of sunflowers.
Driving we saw a beautiful blue domed church with gold stars and in front of it a row of campervans. As they were the first campervans that we had seen since leaving Europe we thought that we would stop and say hello. Sure enough the vehicles were from Germany and Switzerland but there was no one to talk to.
We stopped at the town Tombov. From here we were leaving the motorway and heading east southeast towards Saratov. We are planning to wild camp as often as we can on our way to the border so thought we would use the opportunity to stock up on supplies. We literally just pulled into the carpark of the shopping centre and some guy starts knocking on the window. He had spotted the GB number plates and thought that it was so infrequently that he saw people from home over here that he would say hello. He worked consulting in farming over in Russia on a fly in and fly out basis.
The great big elephant in the car has up until now been alluded to but remained unspoken. After all these driving days in Russia we were yet to be pulled over by the DPS (traffic police). We have passed them going in the other direction, we have passed them hiding in obscure bends, crests and dips in the road, and we have passed them many times at their all too regular DPS stations situated on the roads. And finally today, an officer in blue, with his black and white baton and his shiny gold teeth waved us in. We don’t think he actually realised that we were an international car because he first came to Gem’s side of the vehicle. He then came around to Dunc’s side and started talking in Russian, he had no English and we had not enough Russian to have any idea of what he was talking. Duncan passed in his international drivers permit. ‘Ruski Ruski’ said the policeman. ‘Da da da’ he smiled, his gold teeth glinting when Dunc showed him the Russian translation. The next document he required was the Russian insurance, “Da da da” he smiled again, checking the number plate and waving us on our way.
We turned off a track, followed it behind a grove of trees that shielded us from the road and set up camp. Unfortunately this did not outweigh Gem’s fear of the dark… or fear of our first night real wild camping. We were not far enough away from the road for her to feel secure, yet hidden enough that others could be hiding too… Poor Dunc had to chaperone her downstairs to use the facilities. Back in the tent though, imagining sounds outside with every breath and breeze Gem finally fell asleep…. But she got much better at it as we got further from the big smoke.
The Russian countryside has opened up to a massive farming expanse. We are in ‘black soil country’, so the patchwork fields alternate between rich newly turned black soil ready for sowing, fields with newly cut hay piled loosely, and acres of sunflowers with their faces pointing east.
The towns out here have lost their concrete soviet look, and resemble isolated farming communities that have seen better days. Almost all construction is wooden.
Yesterday in some of the bigger towns each house had a bench outside for people to stop and chat. Almost all of the houses had apple trees whose branches were heavy with fruit. On some streets there are so many apples, the fallen fruit has been raked into piles like autumn leaves. But out here there are few trees. And little time it would seem to stop and chat. At bus stops that appear in the middle of nowhere people wait with their hands outstretched, hoping that car will pick them up before they have to take a bus.
Hugo smells today. The diesel we bought yesterday was cheap (~28p/L), perhaps it has something, or is missing something compared to the fuel we buy. But he appears to be running ok on this slightly sulphurous substitute. Nevertheless we intend to top up with fuel from a larger looking fuel station at the next opportunity.
This day has advanced with Hugo steadily putting more and more miles under his tyres and seeing some beautiful scenery, leaving us feeling slightly satisfied with ourselves but for one thing; we do not have very much money on us, and the few small towns that we have passed through recently have not had banks or bankomats. But aside from this small inconvenience we felt confident and content regarding our Russian experience so far and what was to come in Kazakhstan.
Ah, how quickly the winds of change blow. We arrived at Ozinki with a little difficulty. For some bothersome reason unbeknownst to us, signage becomes fewer and farther between the further south east you venture in Russia. This meant that we had quite a bit of back tracking and diverting to arrive safely at the border town. At one stage we were so off course that we were driving through some farm fields and came across some old guys and their massive tractors. They were very interested in who we were where we had come from and where we were going. They laughed when they found out where we wanted to go, but very good humouredly pointed us in the right direction.
We did get there, and found the border. So next stop – bankomat, but of course this border town does not have a bankomat, and despite attempts at pidgeon-russian and charades we were unable to communicate our need to any of the locals, most of who looked at us blankly and then turned away. Looking at the map, the closest town that was guaranteed to have a bankomat was Samara, several hundred kilometres away. As we were keen to cross the border now and we figured that we had a couple of hours of daylight left so we would head in that direction til dark and then get up early in the morning and continue to get the money that we would need to cross the border.
Then the road ran out of road. Or perhaps I am being a little over dramatic. There was road but it was dirt and full of potholes meaning that progress was very slow. Darkness fell and slowly intensified without streetlights or the glow from a huge metropolis like London that we had become used to. The dirt track continued to wind onwards, never seeming to go in the direction that we wanted it to. Next looming out of the darkness a town would emerge, looking even more sinister and desperate in the headlights of Hugo, than it did in the day. A wrong turn off from a town led us to a dark machinery parking lot all but abandoned except for the “rabid” Alsatian bounding and barking around Hugo’s four wheels. With Gem freaking out that she had landed into a real life Wolf Creek scenario (if you have seen it you know to what this alludes, if you haven’t seen it, word from the wise is DON’T) it was all Dunc could do to keep driving despite the dark.
We asked directions from a farm girl and her mother. They seemed to argue about which direction to go, which wasn’t a lot of help. We took a best guest of their gesturing and came to a lake. Two shady looking characters (who turned out to be nice boys who appeared to be out for a night time fish) waved us in the direction around the lake. We came to a town with bitumen, and were pulled over by a policeman who after checking our papers thrust his red glowing baton in the direction we needed to go. This road also ran out of bitumen. With the clock approaching the witching hour and Duncan fatigued and Gem a little less hysterical we stopped, threw up the tent and slept.
And all of this because we were so unprepared that we had arrived at the border with no money!
This morning we woke before the alarm, and after negotiating more dirt roads that weren’t going exactly where we wanted them to go but were rendered much more agreeable because of the beautiful sunrise that we were witnessing, we arrived at the motorway.
We drove past the DPS to the fuel station, the fuel station did not take visa, but said that there was a bankomat in town – more glorious news could not have been heard. Not even the surly police officer built like a rhino that pulled us over, could ruin this feeling. We found the bankomat and hey presto we could eat again. More importantly we could buy fuel. Buying fuel meant going back past the DPS but it seemed that they had finished for the morning and gone home.
With money burning a hole in the safe, and fuel burning nicely away in Hugo we could head straight for the nearest border crossing, and by 9:55 Kazakh time (somewhere along the road we had lost an hour) we crossed into border land. Now if you believe everything that you read on the internet you will think that this is a long process taking up to 12 hours. This may be so on a regular weekday, but this early on a Sunday morning meant that we were through in about two hours. The border guards were extremely friendly and we had a laugh as they helped us fill out our forms. We had two moments of consternation. The first was when we were told to leave our car where it was and walk into Kazakhstan to secure the insurance and customs information. Then walk back to the car and drive it forward six feet to have it checked by customs. This was our second worry, because in the time that we had been there we had witnessed the customs officers very thoroughly go through *everything* that cars or foot passengers had. What luck, either our innocent faces or the prospect of going through everything that Hugo has stored in him convinced the customs guys that they really didn’t want to go there. They asked us whether we had a gun and cash, and when they were satisfied with our answers they sent us on our merry way to Kazakhstan.
I don’t remember the scenery changing but almost instantaneously we were out of the scrubs and farmlands of Russia and into the flat sparse dry steppes of Kazakstan. We hadn’t even made it into Oral (Uralsk) when we were stopped by the police. Feeling slightly aggrieved that we had got through Russia with minimal interference from boys in blue only to be stopped as soon as we entered Kazakhstan we rolled down our windows. They didn’t speak any English, but through the action of rolling up Gem’s window and pulling the tinting off we were able to gauge that tinting of any sort was not allowed on the front driver and passenger windows and we were not allowed to proceed onwards until Duncan (with his really short nails) had managed to pull the tinting off his window.
All we can say of Oral (Uralsk) is it must be a sprawling city on the river Ural, we were never able to find the city centre, any of the sights it stated that were worth seeing or a hotel. We had been stopped again and interrogated by the police and we had reached our tolerance point. So we drove on, foregoing the education that the most historically interesting city in Kazakhstan (according to our guide book) could give. The guidebook mentioned another town in the general direction that we were going so we headed that way, but never made it, instead we found the Presidential Hotel just outside a town called Federovka in northern Kazakhstan. We were tired, it was comfortable and cheap so we stayed. Federovka town is typical of the towns that we were to drive through or by during our time through north west Kazakhstan. Houses that are well maintained stand blasted by the heat, wind and dust of the summer. The dirt roads are well travelled on, the surface of dust loosened by each vehicle and falling victim to the strong wind. Geese, cows and horses wander throughout the town. Yet despite this there is a strong sense of community, the children laugh and play amongst the wagons of hay and climbing on the old tractors. They watch us closely out of curiosity knowing immediately they see us, that we don’t belong.
A storm chased us back into the hotel, where as it had been several days in the bush for us we showered and discovered that we weren’t as tanned as we had thought!
Somewhere along this mornings route the times had changed and we had no idea whether we were one or two hours difference, and each resource we consulted told us something else. We ended up having to text Mark in England who was thankfully able to google-ise it and text back. Not that it really matters I suppose, but it does explain why the hotel staff looked at us extremely strangely when we had asked whether we could have dinner, a lot earlier than the normal person would.
After a steak (of animal origin unknown, goose?, camel?, goat?) and fries we very thankfully to collapse into bed exhausted but ready to tackle Kazakhstan properly tomorrow.
OK, so the news has been slow coming… but we have just done another 4 galleries for you to all look at. That’s something at least 
I’ve spent the last few months scouring the web for stunning web designs. Searching high and low for web designs that really jump out at me and I’ve discovered two things.
When viewing a post about high quality web designs, you are presented with a bunch of thumbnails. It’s amazing how good a bad website looks when it’s compressed to the dimensions of a postage stamp. I find myself consistently disappointed when I see the full view of these websites. There’s always some detail that is just completely overlooked that throws the balance of the site off. Whether a strange font choice or poorly compressed images, it’s rare to find gold.
I understand that sometimes a client request can get in the way of that completely perfect design, but many of these sites belong to web designers themselves which is the scary part.
The second is a little closer to home. I’m very interested in the standard of work coming from Perth. For the most part, I really don’t like what I see. We are in an industry that is made up of people of all ages, and varying levels of professionalism. Print designers turned web designers, university students, boutique web studios, we have it all. A quick view through the top 10 results at Google for Perth Web Design will present you with this variety, and you have to look quite hard to find really stunning designs. Even a low budget website can still be designed well. Cheap doesn’t have to mean nasty.
Also there’s some very well known large web companies that seem to have really dropped the ball lately. I guess once you reach a certain size, the web design is no longer the primary focus. I hope we are never responsible for polluting the web with substandard websites. And if we do, I hope someone will bring it to our attention.
Perth web designers, this is a call. Come out of the woodwork and share your stunning designs to put my mind at ease.
by Emma (noreply@blogger.com) at September 13, 2009 08:53 AM
I don’t have a top hat in real life…
When I first heard Yourself or Someone Like You in 1998 I liked it straight away. Eleven years later, I still listen to Real World, 3AM and Push occasionally, so when I saw a flyer advertising Rob Thomas coming to Perth in February I decided to go, and bought my ticket this afternoon. Now I just have to wait six months…
Matt Mullenweg wrote a blog post about an interesting worm which exploits a security flaw in Wordpress to serve malware from your blog, so I decided to upgrade from version 2.3-something to the latest version (2.8.4). It’s quite an improvement and I already like using the administration tools in the new version more than the last one. I also like the Quick Post section in the Dashboard.
I’ve also chosen a new theme to go with it, but I wonder if anyone will see it as I think everyone just uses The Mad Peeps these days.
Aaron (Fat for a Reason)
Brooke
Carrie
Emma
Hugo's Big Adventure
Jacob
Magdalena
Mark
Matt
Melinda
The Frontier Group
Tony
Tony (Photoblog)
Last updated:
February 09, 2010 11:00 AM
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