http://listverse.com/2009/11/18/top-10-things-you-should-never-discuss-online/
I agree. I’m keeping this blog un-controversial…
But of course merely by listing the subjects he’s discussing them – and he’s gathered 590 comments (when I looked) in two days.
The upscale Emporium shopping centre on Sukhumvit Road at Phrom Phong reuses their holiday tree year after year. I tried a different approach to a photograph this year. What do you think?
Courtesy of Google Translate. Of course the translation isn’t perfect. I got a few chortles when I showed a Thai translation to a Thai person. But she said it was pretty good and she got the sense of what I was writing.
Here, for example, is my “Funny Story” in Welsh:
Yr wythnos diwethaf ffrind gofyn i mi ffotograff wheatgrass rhai diodydd iach ar gyfer ei gwmni. Rhoddais iddo CD yn cynnwys yr holl lluniau.
Yesterday nos galwodd i mi ddweud bod un o’r lluniau ar goll. Sut y gallai hyn fod? Rwy’n rhoi copïau o bob llun cymerais ar y CD. Yna … Rwy’n sylweddoli ei cynorthwy-ydd gave ‘m paned o goffi iâ a doeddwn i ddim yn gwybod ei fod yn bwnc arall ffotograffig. Felly rwy’n ei yfed!
Wneud unrhyw niwed – i mi fynd yn ôl y bore ‘ma ac aeth darlun arall cwpan. Yna mi ei yfed.
and in Thai:
สัปดาห์ที่แล้วเพื่อนถามฉันไป ถ่ายภาพ เครื่องดื่มสุขภาพบาง wheatgrass สำหรับบริษัทของเขา. ฉันได้ให้แก่เขา CD ที่มีภาพทั้งหมด.
ตอนเย็นเมื่อวานเขาเรียกฉันว่าหนึ่งในภาพนั้นหายไป. วิธีนี้อาจจะ? ฉันใส่ชุดของภาพฉันกินในซีดีทุก. แล้วฉัน realised … ช่วยเขาให้ฉันถ้วยกาแฟน้ำแข็งและฉันไม่ทราบว่ามันเป็นอีกเรื่องถ่ายรูป. ดังนั้นฉัน drank มัน
ไม่ทำอันตราย – ฉันก็กลับเช้านี้และเอารูปถ้วยอื่น.
I don’t know why it gave up on “realised” and “drank” above.
Of course Google Translate isn’t the first computer translation tool on the web and it may not be the best. It has one feature I have not seen before: users can suggest improvements.
It’s doesn’t make the substitution immediately. I guess they have to have a human check the suggested improvement in case a bad person contributes something rude. But the idea is great if they can make it systematic – only native speakers can convey the nuances of the language.
Of course the classic test of machine translation is to see how, for example English to Thai and back to English works. I should try some tests but I don’t imagine they will be excellent. That’s a lot to ask of a computer.
Please try out Google Translate on your language and tell me what you think of the results. Of course you can comment in your language and I’ll use Google Translate to read them in English.
I like the complex lines and curves in this view of the entrance to Thailand Cultural Centre Subway Station next to the large Esplanade complex and the RS Tower skyscraper.
Maybe the rainy season is over: we had a lovely blue sky on Tuesday.
Confession: I removed some unsightly power lines in Photoshop.
It’s a classic design but the Thai language label makes it look unusual. This 300 gram bottle cost 18.75 Baht (about US 57¢) in my local supermarket.
For a comparison, here’s the US market 14 oz. (397 gram). bottle. How much does it cost in America?
According to the Heinz web site:
To release ketchup faster from the glass bottle, apply a firm tap to the sweet spot on the neck of the bottle— the “57.”
The Thai bottle doesn’t have a “57″ label, thus putting Thai consumers at a disadvantage.
I saw US-labeled Heinz Tomato Ketchup for sale alongside the Thai producted product for over twice the price in a hi-so supermarket catering to foreigners. As far as I know the product is identical worldwide.
Ice Coffee
Last week a friend asked me to photograph some wheatgrass healthy drinks for his company. I gave him a CD containing all the pictures.
Yesterday evening he called me to say that one of the pictures was missing. How could this be? I put copies of every picture I took on the CD. Then I realised … his assistant gave me a cup of ice coffee and I did not know it was another photographic subject. So I drank it!
No harm done – I went back this morning and took a picture of another cup. Then I drank it.
Bangkok Taxis
I found this blog quite by accident – http://lifeinmovingvehicle.blogspot.com/
The author, Dale, regularly posts pictures of the decorations inside Bangkok taxis in which he travels. Often they are excellent quality: impressive for pictures taken in a moving vehicle,
But more interesting is that he’s spoken with the taxi driver and usually has an interesting explanation or anecdote to go with the picture.
I’ve had bad experiences with scamming Bangkok taxi drivers so I tend to avoid them unless I have no alternative. Dale posted some good advice for travelers:
Following are a few simple rules to follow to avoid getting burned by cabbies in the “City of Angels”:
- Do not take taxis that are sitting and waiting in tourist areas.
- Make sure the driver turns on the meter.
- Carry a map as a guide for yourself, but don’t expect your driver to use it or look at it.
- Bring a business card or get the address of your destination written in Thai.
- Do not believe some recommendations or claims from your cabbie such as, “I know this great seafood restaurant” or “The Grand Palace is closed today”.
No Roof Sign
They are unlicensed and more likely to scam you.
Taxi Number
It took three attempts to download the 139MB update package from Adobe, but I finally managed to get it all and installed the latest Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2.5 over my 2.4.
I hope it will fix the “ever-changing metadata status” problem. I found it has not fixed the “exploding keyword tree” problem.
I’ll look out for other changes in its behaviour. I am very fortunate compared with many other users in that I have had very few problems with Lightroom and none that are critical. (Touch wood.)
I'm Sick!
Not my computer, fortunately.
A friend bought me her laptop computer today. It’s a 9-month old Compaq Presario CQ20 running Windows XP. She said it was running very slowly, had many windows popping up on the screen and would not type in the Thai language any more.
I started it up and indeed it ran very slowly. The first pop-up I saw was for some shareware wallpaper changer. I asked her if she wanted it and she said she had no idea where it came from. Her English isn’t so good and she always clicked “Yes” when she encountered a dialog box. I disabled it without a problem.
She had an old version of the free AVG virus scanner on the computer. I opened it and tried to update it to the latest version. It complained that it could not find the avg.com domain. I tried going to avg.com in her web browser but it got a DNS error. I tried symantec.com, makers of Norton Anti Virus, and got the same problem.
But it could browse other internet sites successfully. Something had inserted itself in between the browser and the DNS service and was blocking access to anti-malware sites.
From that I knew that the computer was very sick, even though it wasn’t showing other signs of infection other than being slow. I asked if she had the original Windows XP install CDs. No – the shop configured her machine for her and didn’t give her any CDs.
I knew it was beyond my capabilities to fix. I think the best solution is to reformat the hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch. But I’d have to get Windows install CDs and also find all the proprietary drivers for a discontinued computer.
I called a friend who’s a professional at these things and has all the right tools. He agreed to fix it tonight. There are times when you need an expert.
She said she didn’t have any files on the machine that she needed to save; after using it for nine months. I think I could have saved her files to a CD without infecting it but I am not sure even that is safe.
Of course my friend had no idea what I was talking about. She’d used her computer for surfing the net, email and chatting but had no idea what she was doing. Maybe I worry too much about the safety of my computer but this was a good lesson on the dangers of not worrying enough.
I was a bit worried even having her computer on the same internet connection as mine. I’ve turned off things like Windows File Sharing and run a firewall but I expect it was still busy probing for other computers it could infect. I didn’t even trust that the network connection taskbar icon showed no activity. I bet there are ways of fooling it so a user does not know that her computer is doing bad things on the network behind her back.
I found that Geotagging my WordPress blog posts has some utility even before WordPress release features that use the information.
GeoURL has a directory of goecoded web sites (pages?). GeoURL describes itself as
… a location-to-URL reverse directory. This will allow you to find URLs by their proximity to a given location. Find your neighbor’s blog, perhaps, or the web page of the restaurants near you. GeoURL is listing 4,896,702 sites.
It has a tool to add a geotagged web page to their directory and then list web sites that are located nearby. I think the reasoning is a bit weak: there are better ways of locating restaurants aren’t there? It seems like a solution running around seeking a problem to solve. But that’s okay – many things started out like that.
So I tried introducing my first geotagged WordPress post to the service to see what it would find.
You can check the results by clicking
That was a good exercise but it is of limited use. I will be interested to try the tools that WordPress introduces to support geotagged web pages.
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