Updated 03-Aug-2025 Any future music player needs: Chromecast Auto-mix (random function, some limit to number of songs Share (album cover, album, song) Don't mess with files directly, beyond liking them (turn off external artist info import) Normalize across collection (Symfonium does not appear to have this) Equalizer Android Auto support (an icon and interface, not ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W20/2025: Monday 19 May - Sunday 25 May 2025 Caption: Mussaman curry with chicken over rice. I split this with my youngest son, and we are both full. 60 Baht (<$2 USD) at Kad Farang, Chiang Mai. Stuff Did not keep track of things very well this week, so we are a bit ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W20/2025: Monday 12 May - Sunday 18 May 2025 Caption: Back to school Cooking Some good food these days, but nothing new. Split pea soup. Lovely breads from Nana Bakery. Pasta, tomato, and meat sauce. Hamburgers (pork) with baked potato wedges. Yoghurt with fruits and nuts. Fluffy scrambled eggs. Pancakes (on the weekend). ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also Ebooks and where to buy them which discusses DRM from each ebook seller. Kindle and other Ebook Readers Calibre Ebook Library, De-DRM, Conversion Jailbreak Kindle KO Reader open source ebook reader It appears that KOReader is the leading open source ebook reader, and besides being able to run on Kindle, Kobo, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W19/2025: Monday 05 May - Sunday 11 May 2025 Caption: Boys Cooking Some good food these days, but nothing new. Work End of Boy's term vacation means I can get to work again. Tech Moving out of all US-based company tech. This means my VPS and all other third-party hosting and services. No ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also Ebooks and where to buy them which discusses DRM from each ebook seller. Kindle and other Ebook Readers Calibre Ebook Library, De-DRM, Conversion Jailbreak Kindle KO Reader open source ebook reader Update May 2025 It is still possible to decrypt (de-DRM) Kindle ebooks, just not possible to download them from Amazon. ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Mutual Intelligibility is the ability for two speakers (or writers) of different languages, to understand each other. Certainly there are degrees when it comes to mutual intelligibility, and not simply intelligibility or not. And there are many ways of measuring mutual intelligibility, with the sentence-level utterance a key feature. On the one hand ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 First, happiness is multidimensional. Second, happiness can be measured. And third, happiness cannot be dictated (though, indeed, there is a significant role for lawmakers and politicians). Happiness does not come from the barrel of gun. That is a concept only for armchair generals who never fought a war and still live inside some ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Of all the fairly ridiculous ideas, bicycle lanes in Thailand rank fairly high. First, let's discuss the law of unintended consequences. This is when you want to do one thing, but something unexpected (and usually negative, though not necessarily) results. As Merton writes undesired effects are not necessarily undesirable effects. One did not ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The other day I was looking at the Thai keyboard (a fascinating subject, especially when we have to distinguish between Unicode characters, Thai letters, and Thai script elements, and keyboard keys (these do not match up). I noticed there is no space in the Thai unicode standard. Which means a Thai keyboard maps ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 While Induction Stovetops and Convection Ovens might not appear to go together, both can be considered cooking innovations which have significant advantages over other cooking technologies. Cooking Hazards and Disadvantages First we should illuminate the dangers and drawbacks of various other cooking approaches: Microwave ovens are likely not safe Gas stoves and ovens ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W18/2025: Monday 28 April - Sunday 04 May 2025 Caption: Small boy and mannequin Cooking Gonna do a chasha / nibuta / yakibuta Some sources: here, here, and here. Work The revision project has begun (slowly) Tech Time to revisit which DNS services to use. First draft of Open source project sustainability article. ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W22/2025: Monday 26 May - Sunday 01 June 2025 Caption: Mid-may look (pre-chop) Cooking Standards, nice and healthy. Work Lots to do and not much getting done. Tech Discourse not Discord. The latest theme I've been seeing is quite Discord-like in terms of the left-hand menu. Discourse is not likely worse than Discord, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Paprika, or more accurately smoked paprika is a lovely spice which gives an earthy flavor. Nice on yogurt. Basically it consists of roasted bell peppers (aka capsicum, sweet peppers). In Thai, these are called prik waan (พริกหยวก) sweet peppers.
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W17/2025: Monday 21 April - Sunday 27 April 2025 Caption: Peanut butter on toast mmmm. Work Not much done, see health. Tech Some renovations to the kitchen included a new toaster oven (replacing a 15-year-old beast whose timer stopped turning off the burners after the time was up). I've added a second induction ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also: Part 1: Stop using their stuff For me, both open source (defined below) and sustainability (some kind of appropriate life-span and level of health) are both important, together. Though also I believe that reasonable business models around closed source (proprietary) should also be sustainable (in a non-rapacious sense). What is Sustainability? ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 Thunar is the Saxon name for Thor. Thunar is the default file manager for the XFCE desktop but can of course be installed on most distributions. In general it is low-resource, highly flexible, and extensible (supports plugins, and custom actions). It can easily be used for SFTP connections as well. See also Thunar ... Read more
Updated 12-Aug-2025 See also Symfonium Quod Libet is an absolutely brilliant music player / library tool, with a nice community and set of plugins. Open source and cross platform (Linux, OSX, Windows), it can't be beat in terms of speed (fast), resource utilization (low), and flexibility (UI, streaming, podcasts, etc.). Truly a gem. The last ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W16/2025: Monday 14 April - Sunday 20 April 2025 Work Ah well, can't win them all. Tech Some stuff on golang Stop using their stuff (work in progress) Health The big boy has been sick for more than a week. We've changed the medication. He is not getting worse, and the lungs check ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also: Part 2: Open source project sustainability -- not yet available This article is a work in progress See also Against venture capital We really need to learn from Google, Twitter, etc. The fact is, these large companies are unaccountable, and not only illegally scrape but also can scan your stuff, delete ... Read more