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
Updated 27-Aug-2026 See also: AI coding for Go I guess I'll be using Golang. Go Getting started Go packages Go applications of note In several cases venerable PHP and C applications have been replaced with Go, which to my mind is a good thing. Start with Awesome-Go a list of Go apps, like this one ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W15/2025: Monday 07 April - Sunday 13 April 2025 Caption: Think Think Think Work Trump is killing me with a 36% tariff. Whoever thought this senile criminal is a mastermind should be forced to light all their money on fire. It's what he is doing. Tech This approach to developing a PWA using ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W14/2025: Monday 31 March - Sunday 06 April 2025 Caption: midnight snack Work Managed to distribute a lot, though this depleted much of our stock. Paid the printers. Trump's stupid tariffs are going to make it impossible to ship goods to the United States, as we have less than a 37% profit margin, ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 The 19th century phenomenon, has different (distinct) implementations but is generally the same. One (or usually more than one) person move a glass or marker of some kind across a board (wood or paper) with letters and numbers on it, spelling out different answers to questions that are posed. A spirit supposedly guides ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 This information is specifically about Thailand and the United States, though it may later be expanded to other countries, their rules, and traditions. United States Allows dual nationality. Thailand Allows dual nationality. Two passports (from the United States) Sometimes this is called concurrent passports, though usually second passports. Under certain conditions it is ... Read more
Updated 03-Aug-2025 W13/2025: Monday 24 March - Sunday 30 March 2025 Work Ah, so much. Tech What about Phoenix as a web framework? Uses Elixir and LiveView instead of Javascript abominations. See more here. Maybe overkill (or simply too different), and something like Svelte (which can also be used to build things like Obsidian plugins) ... Read more
Updated 21-Jul-2026 (Pictured: Kindle Paperwhite 2018, 2022, paper Manga) See also Ebooks and where to buy them which discusses DRM from each ebook seller. Kindle and Kobo ebook readers Calibre Ebook Library, De-DRM, Conversion Jailbreak Kindle KOReader open source ebook reader Note July 2026: I've been using the Kobo Clara BW for the past year ... Read more