A little PVD to go with your Monday
Don’t like EDM? Where were you in the 90s? They don’t make it like they used to, sadly.
An afternoon on Koh Kret
I really shouldn’t be telling you this! One of Bangkok’s gems, a hidden secret along the Chao Praya. Getting there? Take a taxi to the temple of Wat Sanam Neua (80-90 baht) in the neighboring district of Pak Kret, from where ferries shuttle across the river to the island pretty much non-stop for the princely sum of 2 baht (return). Thanks, Wiki Travel. Wondered around, bought some stuff (great prices) and found Chit’s Craft Beer bar. What a top spot to sit for a few hours on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Put it on your list if you’re ever in…
48 hours in Singapore
The time had come to once again undertake the dreaded visa run. In order to cheapen the trip a little I had cashed in my FF miles for return flights from BKK-SIN and we made an early morning start from the crib to catch SQ973 bound for the little red dot. Been there before but they’ve all been short trips, just a few days each time. Why? Tell ’em the price son! Singapore is bloody expensive. Allow S$500 per day if you intend on having a few drinks at beer o’clock.. Thursday After clearing immigration (they now have biometric scanners…
Stranger Danger
Like a lot of condos in Bangkok, we receive a communal feed via satellite dish and the channels are known to change at a moments notice without any warning. As it stands now there are only a few English channels available (Al Jazerra, NHK Newsworld, SyFy and Universal channel). Invariably when I switch on the box I will see a re-run of Animals Unleashed or The Bourne Identity for the umteenth time (I know most of the lines now) And I’ve put up with that for far too long! So we recently joined the 21st century and signed up to…
LL Bean surprises, thankfully
Hey, if you’ve got a blog, might as well use it to get something off your chest, right? This started out as a post intending to put the boot into LL Bean. Then something good happened – I actually received a positive response from their customer service folks. The backstory I’m a big guy and buying clothes isn’t fun at all, especially in Thailand. Shoes and shorts are two items I simply cannot buy off the rack. Enter on-line commerce. After hitting their website, which is aimed at the global marketplace, I placed my order and waited. Then I waited…
Micro$oft Madness
I given plenty of $$$ over the years to Micro$oft and in the process helped Mr Gates build a nice little home somewhere in the Pacific Northwest Still waiting for my invite, Bill! Despite that, after configuring Win 7 Pro to handle ICS (which it does quite admirably, I must say!), it started suggesting that I was a bad guy, and my version of Windoze was not the real thing 🙁 Dr Google diagnosed the following for my Genuine Windows 7 starts giving “counterfeit” messages problem: ♦ Right click on CMD => Choose Run as Administrator ♦ Inside the Command…
Hotmail – not so hot
I’ve recently gone through the process of trying to reclaim my wife’s Hotmail account – to no avail. Yet again I’m forced to remind you, dear reader, that you don’t own anything! (Especially if it’s cloud based) Hotmail has an interesting history, and you might know something about it if you are older than 30. For some reason I never had a Hotmail address but I know a few people that still do (I’m looking at you, Turtle!1) The takeaway – If you forget your password you will be forced to step through a stupid AI algo facing web page…
Blog Brownout – Now back to full power
Lately, visitors to this site were greeted with Cloudflare’s colorful little screen (see right) and the HTTP 502 error – Bad Gateway. Is there a harder error to debug? Maybe, but this one is up there, that’s for sure. It sent me into a minor panic as I didn’t have any site backups (plumbers pipes are always leaky!) and I could see a years worth of work quickly spiraling down the drain. I ascertained that some of the site was still working, especially the post URLs themselves which led me to roll out the old wget and create a script…
RIP – Farewell to a gentle giant
I was saddened to hear the news yesterday that my friend and old neighbor, David, had passed away after a long illness. I didn’t know him for a long time yet he had a positive impact on my life. When we moved into the housing estate in Hua Hin I spotted him in the garden one day and said hello (OK, so maybe it took a week or so after I heard that iconic Aussie accent.) My wife and I became friends with David and Shannon, his wife, who were our neighbors across the way and enjoyed some good times…
Phichit and Kanchanaburi
A busy Songkran this year – that time of the year when Thais like to splash water everywhere. While I did get a chance to unload a few rounds (ok, so it was just a water gun but who cares?) it was a wedding that took centre stage this year. Two of our good friends were getting married and we wanted to be there to share in their happy day, so made the trek north from Bangkok to Tapan Hin in Pichit province. After piling on to a bus at 11 AM we arrived around 4 PM, including a 20…