I redesigned my blog last night to show off some of my web design skills. While it might look really impressive and professional, it’s actually pretty easy to do with WordPress 
Please let me know what you like / don’t like about it, I need everybody’s feedback to help me build better sites.
Oh and don’t be shy to ask me for the theme!! If there’s enough interest I will gladly publish it somewhere. It’s all open source 
My office is next to a school. Today, the pedestrian overpass right in front of the school was plastered with these leaflets:
Leaflet
The text roughly translates as:
New work for teenagers
We are now recruiting the youngest team ever to use programs such as MSN, hi5 and Camfrog [webcam chat, also with "adult rooms"]. Work after studying for 1-2 hours, daily income is 500 THB on average. If interested, contact [phone number] urgently for an appointment.
Those are junior / high school kids (มัธยม) and 500 THB (~=10 EUR) is a lot of money. Depressing 
Shared for Sajal. This python script wakes me up when our server is down. Just substitute the variables at the beginning to suit your needs. mpg123 is required to play mp3
#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib2,re,time,os
url = "http://www.google.com"
needle = "I'm Feeling Lucky"
sound = "~/music/Rage\ Against\ The\ Machine\ -\ Rage\ Against\ The\ Machine/07\ -\ Rage\ Against\ The\ Machine\ -\ Wake\ Up.mp3"
def is_down(url,needle):
print "checking..."
try:
source=urllib2.urlopen(url)
content=source.read()
pattern=re.compile(needle)
if re.search(pattern,content):
return False
else:
return True
except:
return True
while 1:
if is_down(url,needle):
print "site down!"
os.system('mpg123 '+sound)
else:
print time.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S",time.localtime()),"Up"
time.sleep(10)
One of the few podcasts that I regularly listen to is Thinking Allowed, an excellent BBC Radio 4 program about sociology, anthropology and modern culture.
I was very surprised when last week’s episode — after discussing the implications of Darwinian theory for modernization of man — turned towards a certain subject of grave importance that to date has been largely overlooked by serious media: ping pong shows.
In the second segment of the show, host Laurie Taylor interviews Nottingham PhD student Erin Sanders, who has been talking to women tourists attending sex shows in Thailand for her thesis titled: Women? What women? An exploration of western women’s voyeuristic encounters with the sex industry in Thailand
Here’s a short excerpt: (rough transcript by yours truly)
Taylor: When you asked them why they went, what sort of accounts did they give you?
Sanders: There are a variety of accounts. Most of them didn’t seem to have any very clear reason for why they went, except that they saw the ping pong show as a distinctly Thai cultural experience. And that’s really how they described it, some of them likened it to going to a ballet. Going to a ping pong show is the Thai version of going to a ballet. They said that, you now, friends had talked about it. It was something that was really part of the sort of tourist discourse about Thailand.
The whole segment is really well worth listening to, and not just because it’s a strangely scientific approach to the all too familiar seediness of sex tourism in Thailand. Among other things Sanders talks about the phenomenon of “dark tourism” and the role of white women tourists in promoting the Thai sex industry.
To me, hearing Brits talk about Thailand as a sex tourism destination is a reminder of what folks back home associate with Thailand: ping pong shows, ladyboys, and cheap prostitutes. I think this is especially true for Europe, and to a lesser extend for North America.
Living in Bangkok, it’s easy sometimes to forget about Thailand’s reputation abroad, both because you get so used to seeing the sex tourists in certain parts of the city that they start to seem like the most normal thing in the world, and because Thais rarely ever talk about what’s going on in those areas.
I’m sure that most of my Thai friends and acquaintances have a good hunch that beaches aren’t the only thing all these male tourists come to Thailand for. But many of them never set foot into Pat Pong, or Nana Plaza, or Soi Cowboy, and it’s not like sex tourism is ever discussed in Thai media, so the issue is all the easier to ignore. Most Thais would probably be shocked and embarrassed if they were fully aware of Thailand’s image overseas.
And “workout” is in quotation marks for a reason.
This morning, for the first time since I prematurely ended my soccer career at the age of 12, I got some exercise for the sake of exercise.
I ran about 2km on a treadmill, did 20 situps (against an incline!), and finally some upper body workout at some devil machine. At that point I was too busy panting to count how many times i pushed what lever and pulled what pulley. All in all it took about 30 minutes (or 7 songs of Nas’ 1994 album Illmatic.)
I knew it was going to be bad, but oh boy. I think I had stomach cramps at one point, and I almost threw up but that was probably because I drank too much water. I’m pretty beat right now but man, I know I’ll really feel it tomorrow.
Aren’t you supposed to feel good after a workout? Maybe I’m doing something wrong. For my next session I’ll have to check out some youtubes or something, like the pale flabby nerd that I am.
I had this conversation with a friend today:
(03:38:15 PM) [Name withdrawn]: you think using Wireless Router will make internet speed slower
(03:38:16 PM) [Name withdrawn]: ?
(03:40:17 PM) till: no
(03:40:41 PM) till: not unless you have REALLY FAST internet lol
(03:41:30 PM) [Name withdrawn]: what do you mean?
(03:45:05 PM) till: nevermind. a wireless router will not slow down your internet
(03:45:20 PM) [Name withdrawn]: thanks!
(03:48:10 PM) [Name withdrawn]: btw, you’re such a nerd.
Owned o_O
Quick and dirty translation for Kitty, original is at http://www.zib21.com/netzzeit/netzzeit-news-das-katzchen-als-blogstar-google-ist-uber-dir-macht-facebook-infantil/
Bangkok Blogstar
A few hours ago she was at the Central World Shopping Center, Bangkok. “It was echotastic” she wrote, “but then lightning hit.” She wrote this on twitter. She also posted that she was on Phuket for the weekend, where she had an unpleasant encounter with a repulsing foreign reporter: “Do you write for an English magazine, he asked. Yes, I said. No, really? he said. Am I not speaking English with you, you idiot?” [All quotes are loosely translated back and forth and prob. nothing like the orig. posts?]
Her name is Alisara Chorapongse, she loves the color pink and is obsessed with fashion. For years she has been running an an accordingly themed blog, starting out with a small readership, and this would be the end of the story if the Thai military hadn’t staged a coup in 2006, followed by a news blackout, as usual for a coup d’etat. But then, this kitty showed her claws. “The military is staging a coup!” she blogged. “It’s over for the government. The military is in power!” She posted photos of the troops and organized a campaign against the army’s attempts to win her over for censorship. Ever since, she is known in the whole world and talked about from time to time. Today, for example, here.
And ever since the coup, she doesn’t like like roadblocks, either. Yesterday the Rama 1 road in Bangkok was blocked, which she criticized right away. “Why I care? Because I have yet to pick up my pictures from Phuket and I can’t access the shop.”