Off to Bangkok to meet with Camberley and his family.

When we both lived and worked in Sarawak, his offspring were tiny children, bouncing off the furniture and eating carpets, as all small children do. Now they are grown with boyfriends for the ladies and girlfriends for the men; which resulted in a party of ten people touring Sarawak, Sabah and then passing through Bangkok on their way home.

It was good to meet them all again, and Camberley supplemented the pleasure by presenting us with the now traditional gift from the UK:

A couple of notable birthdays:

First of all, happy birthday to the internet. It was twenty year ago last Saturday that this appeared for the enjoyment of the world, although I expect there were not that many people connected to enjoy it. The Spike family were a little late to the game; it was another three years or so before we savoured the delights of the randomly available dial-up service of Brunei Telecom. Nearly twenty years on and I am now enjoying the delights of the randomly available ADSL service of Thailand Telecom; but at least there are a few more pages available to visit. So well done the internet, and the rather clever and very British Tim Berners-Lee.

The other birthday may have slightly less worldwide recognition, but today’s the birthday of she who must be obeyed and is therefore slightly more important in this household. There would certainly be greater repercussions should I forget it.

Last night she suggested I might like to kiss her while she was still young, but I failed to spot a significant deterioration overnight (unlike myself. Margaritas followed by red wine with my friend Tic, visiting from Singapore, left me feeling somewhat the worse for wear this morning).

The day started with much needed coffee and stomach settling croissants at La Baguette.

My days are usually fairly free from commitment, which is just the way I like them to be. This gives me time to indulge myself in assorted meaningless activities, such as updating Pattaya Days.

Currently I find myself busier than usual. Trying to finish design of another photo book for the most excellent Spacefruit, then we have visitors arriving tomorrow for two days, and then on Tuesday it is off to meet Camberley and his family. So no time to think up new rubbish to put on here; especially as I also have to dedicate too much time every day to Trade Nations (don’t start, it takes over your life).

There are many upsides to living in Thailand and, given my financial position, I would not want to live anywhere else. It is comparatively cheap to live here in most respects; but there are a few items which are painfully expensive and I just have to avoid them.

For example, I would like to sit and enjoy a quality bottle of wine, perhaps accompanied by some cheese, whilst pondering where I might take my sporty little car for a drive once the hangover and heartburn had subsided. In truth, I can do without the wine and the cheese; but I do miss having an interesting car.

The problem is, I come from the UK, a land where there are so many wonderful cars available at prices that would be inconceivable in Thailand. For example, for what I paid for my truck, I could have a Caterham 7; without doubt the most fun for the money on the planet; just like my truck isn’t. It hurts.

The pain was brought sharply into focus this weekend where Central Beach Road were holding the Pattaya Motor Show - Fast to Fest 2011. Unclear about the slogan, maybe ‘fest’ is short for ‘festering’. There was certainly a woeful collection of crap, masquerading as vehicles.

I can vaguely recall the purchase of a pong machine, back before home computers became commonplace. That was my first computer game and, in retrospect, it was pretty crap.

Then came Atari home computers, the games improved, and since then I have regularly indulged in gaming. Indeed all of my PC upgrades over the years have been triggered by the need to play some new game. 1,000 baht for the game, 30,000 baht for the machine to play it on. The latest update to my Mac Pro was driven in part by a need to be up to date.

Wild wind this morning and we were off to the windsurfing club with hopes of some good shots and a chance it might be OK for an old fart to sail. Turns out that the waves were messy and the wind was dropping and there was little of interest to shoot.

Nik has been in the UK for a while and reports he could live in Thailand for six months for what it costs to live in London for one month. Fortunately he had some cash remaining to buy us a little gift:

There appears to one less chocolate egg and several fewer marshmallows than five minutes ago. I blame the cat.

Poet, photographer, and total Scotsman; Ian has been mentioned before in this organ.

Now a full-time resident in Pattaya, he continues to write terrible poems and take interesting photos, and he wanted a way to share them with the world. Being somewhat behind the times (he was still using Netscape Navigator as a web browser), his method of communication with his many admirers was to fire off a series of emails with massive attachments. What he really needed was a blog (and to get rid of Netscape).

Once you get up close and personal with subjects, the depth of field you have to play with is very small. Consequently, to make sure you have focused exactly where you intended, it is best to use manual focusing. And manual focusing is something the X100 does not do well.

So it was with little hope of success that I spent some time this morning shooting exclusively in macro mode, and indeed the camera was nowhere near as easy to use close-up as the Panasonic GF1. No problem with grabbing focus, but I was never sure what had been grabbed. I could zoom in and confirm that indeed it had not focused exactly where I wanted, but then trying to spin the useless manual focusing ring was a waste of time.

Still, when it did work, the shots looked OK (to my eyes). But if I was going out to shoot macro again I would leave the Fuji at home and take the GF1 (if I can stop she who must be obeyed from “borrowing” it).

Some Fuji macro shots, mainly at F4:

Please take the children out of the room and cover the ears of your granny.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Bastard bloody Windows!

Thank you, I feel better now.

I take back any passingly pleasant comments I made about Windows 7 this morning. It’s a cloak of charm covering the usual Microsoft wank.

Started up Win7 this afternoon and after coughing into life it announced that it was not happy about my copy of Windows; maybe it wasn’t genuine. Oh yes it is pal, and I have the original box to prove it. Shouting at it made no difference, so I looked at what it wanted me to do. Download a shitty little exe file was what it wanted me to do; all very 1990s. So I did, and I ran it and it shouted VALIDATION CHECK, before confirming that my copy of Windows was not genuine and would I like to buy a new copy online provided I was in the USA; otherwise tough luck.