This is one of the ongoing weekly notes, as per Thej.
Work
Lot of research into the audiobook market, something I let slip over the past x months. Turns out this is still a fast-growing segment of the publishing industry (~27%)
Health
Overall the family is fairly healthy, in the 90% range or so. I still have a cough that flares now and again, but it is really nothing to complain about. I think the air con (at home and in the car) exacerbates it, and it is the cool (dry) season here in Thailand (though a nice rainy respite today). Still healing from the motorcycle accident, nearly 2 months ago.
Transportation
Got to use the windsheild wipers today, worked fine, even the rear window wipers, and the front and rear fluid dispensers. So far 539 kms on the BYD Dolphin (when we got it there were 18 kms on it, four days after birthing).
I have two other transportation projects:
- Revamp the bicycles
- My bike needs new tires (worn), and handlebars (clean the mold)
- Jon's bike needs new rear tire tube
- Ben's bike needs to go to Jon (size it properly) and Ben needs a new bike
- Retrofit the motorbike to have saddlebags, and an extended seat back (with backrest), so that both boys could fit behind me safely. This will require some welding, and plastic / fiberglass modding.
Weather and Pollution
Air is getting dustier and with more PM2.5 pollution, though it isn't as cold as one would think, it being mid-December. Likely the real cold will come for us late December through mid-February. The dry means that occasionally a thumb or finger will have cracked skin near nail, which is painful but lasts a few days.
Creative Tasks
- Get the eGPU working and install and configure Stable Diffusion
- Read Stable Diffusion book and workbook
- Soldering christmas ornaments with boys
Urgent Needs
For Chiang Mai, there is an easy way to help meet some urgent needs of the immigrant community. That said, to me it is sad that many who are doing good work get carried away and stop using critical thinking skills, and get involved in all kinds of mumbo jumbo so-called spiritual nonsense, from supposed cure-alls, to using intuition (aka no actual learning or science) to intuit what is wrong (physically or spiritually) with people. The fundamental confusion seems to be between the altogether appropriate imagining and visualizing change (and creating that change, usually through a combination of hard work, stubbornness, and luck), and whatever random (and largely imaginary) conclusions that are drawn which somehow turn those visualizations and imaginings to being the critical important part of making change. Things like kombucha, crystals, reiki, to name a few, are simply wrong-headed and wrong.