Woke to no internet yesterday morning. Disaster.

It has been some three months since I had my condo unit rewired to the telephone junction box on the edge of our condo, and since that time the wide wide world of web has been presenting itself on our various screens with a pleasing reliability. Until yesterday.

Tried calling my internet provider but the line was busy; so sent them a “please help me” e-mail via my phone and before long they were calling me and being sympathetic. But they couldn’t do anything because it was a line problem, which meant placing it in the not at all reliable hands of TT&T who operate the phone lines. I was assured that TT&T would phone me back; but of course they didn’t and the day was spent firing off “what the fuck is going on with my problem” e-mails and receiving solicitous but useless responses.

Still, in the absence of internet, I decided to embark upon my latest and greatest project, The Spike guide to how cameras work (tm). Attend any photogenic event and it is noticeable how many more people are carrying around DSLR cameras. Such cameras offer the opportunity to creatively control how the camera is operated; rather than just pointing and shooting. But check how most of these cameras are being used and you find they are set on auto mode; because the owner does not know enough about basic camera settings; and the 74 page, badly written manual is no help. These people have wasted their money and need guidance.

Enter The Spike guide to how cameras work (tm). An as yet to be decided number of page manual which will tell you how to use the features of your shiny new toy to ensure you capture the images you want; rather than a blurry blobby mess (unless you were aiming for the blurry blobby mess look).

In the tradition of all great designers. I started with a blank piece of paper. Not in the tradition of all great designers, a cat came and lay on my blank piece of paper, so I fired up Keynote and used that instead. Fiddled around for a while and then decided I needed a side-on shot of a camera. In the absence of the opportunity to steal one from the internet, it was out to the balcony to take a photo of one camera with another camera, whilst fighting off the cat which had temporarily abandoned the piece of paper to jostle for inclusion in the camera shot. Then I needed a photo of a control wheel, so more photography took place; and eventually I had a few pages which looked something like this:

The youth of Pattaya are no angels. A popular way of being rebellious is to join a gang, drive around on scooters, and shoot guns at other gangs. Thankfully this tends to happen when most of us are safely tucked up in bed, even if in some cases (hello Ghost) it is another person’s bed. But you won’t find groups hanging around corners, playing at being intimidating; and acts of vandalism are rare. Graffiti, for example, is rarely seen.

But if the local lads with spray cans discover an abandoned building…..

After ten days of feeling like shit, I awoke this morning with almost a spring in my step and a considerably reduced flow of unpleasant substances from the nasal area. Not quite up to windsurfing, which was a shame because it was windy, but how about a little stroll with the wife?

The wife agreed, and this afternoon we headed out to Nong Nuch to wander around, have a cup of coffee and take a few photos. She who must be obeyed had not bothered to charge her camera battery since returning from our trip to Loei, so the photo session was rather short; and the light was awful. Still, just to prove that I went out of the house:

Some time ago, I read the not at all pithily titled Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. The book highlighted the coming of peak oil (“the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline”), and argued, amongst other things, that the American government was complicit in 9/11 to justify the subsequent invasion of Iraq as part of a move to secure oil supplies. There was something about the CIA and drug money and a whole lot of other stuff which I can’t remember. But I do recall it was a good read and every claim was substantially supported (it was a very thick book).

The author was Michael C. Ruppert and he went on to predict the global financial crisis, a couple of years before it happened. Now there is a documentary called Collapse. It’s about 90 minutes of Ruppert sitting in a cellar, chain smoking and telling us in how many ways we are screwed.

The core argument continues to be peak oil. First he spends some time reinforcing how our current lifestyles would cease to exist without the black sticky stuff. He debunks alternative sources of energy and highlights the increasingly difficult search for new reserves. He is convinced that peak oil is almost upon us (there again, he used to be similarly convinced that it would arrive in 2008, and it didn’t).

There is a discussion on the world economy which he reckons relies on continual growth; an impossibility in a time of increasingly expensive oil.

Then he flashes up a slide of world population growth which looked something like this:

Comments 🔗

2010-06-21 | TT says

For a Guff you do have a sense of humour and good on you sunshine. However, I feel that in short order you are liable to be in more poo poo than those two red shirted foreign twats.

Why?. Cos’ now you’ve shown us how to wire it up I’m going to keep all the neighbours awake all night listening to Pee Scot. And when the plods turn up (Wearing ear protection), I’m gonna grass you up straight up. So there.

Both sexes have afflictions they could do without. Women have a monthly event which I prefer not to consider in too much detail; but I know that it makes she who must be obeyed a little grumpy for a day or so; and she complains about back pains; but then women are so weak compared to us men. They even moan about popping out an occasional baby, how hard can that be? You should see what I delivered to the toilet bowl last week; or perhaps you shouldn’t.

A hot and tiring morning at the festival, and after coffee and food we return to the resort where we are booked to stay for a second night. Trouble is, there is nothing else we want to do around Dan Sai, so we get some sort of value from our booking by making full use of the bathroom, check out, and hit the road. A sort of a plan to check out the dok krachiao flowers near Chaiyaphum collapses when we realise that we will arrive too late. So what to do? Drive all the way home was the answer, and some 600 kilometres later we were back in Pattaya; conveniently just in time for the Canadian Grand Prix.

It was fun taking photographs with she who must be obeyed. Now she has her own, decent, camera; she is happy to wander around places that would previously have bored her. The only downside is that she has liberated my zoom lens, leaving me to use my 40mm fixed lens for almost every shot. But in a way it is liberating to be restricted in this way and I don’t feel I missed much. Certainly didn’t miss carrying around a DSLR, I am seriously considering selling all my Canon equipment.

We didn’t get lost as much as I thought we would, and she who must be obeyed kept me awake on the drive home by playing excerpts from Eddie Izzard concerts on YouTube and stuffing a steady supply of snacks into my mouth; you couldn’t ask for better support.

A good trip, although the mini-adventure has left me with man-flu, so it feels like death is near. Goodbye cruel world etc.

One final shot from the weekend:

This from Reuters, hard to believe that something didn’t go wrong with the translation:

German student attacks Hell’s Angels with puppy

A German student created a major traffic jam in Bavaria after making a rude gesture at a group of Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang members, hurling a puppy at them and then escaping on a stolen bulldozer.

German police said on Monday that after making his getaway from the Hell’s Angels club, the 26-year-old dumped the bulldozer, causing a 5 km (3 miles) traffic jam near the southern town of Allershausen, local police said. He then fled to his home nearby where he was apprehended by the police.

Up bright and early (by my standards) for our drive from Ayutthaya to Dan Sai. But first we had to source a vital snack.

It is a given that, when travelling with a Thai, stocking up with snacks is as important as filling the tank with fuel. But we weren’t looking for any old snack, we needed to buy from the best roti samai shop in Ayutthaya.

Roti Samai can best be described as a candy floss wrapped in a thin pancake. It should be slightly crispy when you first chew on it, and then it should just melt in your mouth. Usually, this doesn’t happen. But there is one stall, out of at least a hundred Roti Samai stalls, inexplicably situated opposite the hospital in Ayutthaya , that gets it just right. She who must be obeyed knew exactly where to go, but so did everyone else; so when we had visited the previous evening, they had sold out. But early on Saturday morning, production was underway…..