autonomous_unit

I had it in my mid-twenties. I think my wife had shingles and I caught it from her, since I'd never had it before.

My case was typical and ran about one week with raw rash and another week of healing and itching. I guess I was lucky as I only had a half dozen spots on my face, more on my scalp and back, and a few more on each arm and leg. Some adult cases can have much more severe rash and as a result more recovery time.

There was a fever and flu-like symptoms for about two days before I first saw a rash and realized it was chicken pox. This continued for another three days or so, tapering off slowly until the rash was the only real problem.

It's been a few years since I used GPRS heavily here, but AIS used a private address range for the GPRS service and went through god knows how many network address translations and proxies. Their DNS service was also pretty unstable.

I found that I could keep an SSH session open for many hours or entire days, so I ended up tunneling nearly everything through SSH to a remote server that I controlled. In addition to restoring sanity for web access, it let me run a filtering proxy and compression on the remote server, to optimize the use of the slow GPRS link.

Good luck finding 32 inch CRT here.. And god knows how much that would weigh !!

We bought a 34" Panasonic CRT at HomePro a couple years ago, and I don't think it cost more than about 25k THB even back then. Have they taken them off the market? It is standard def but does all the 100 Hz and progressive display modes and has component inputs. At the time, I chose it because it just stood out on the shelf (in the side-by-side sales display) as the best picture to me, both from far away and up close.

You are right though... lifting it is really a two-man job, and those two guys have to have their hearts in it too.

Yeah, if you really want to get good isolation for sound (and heat!), rather than pouring a thick wall you would make double walls and use double-glazed windows.

Search the web for how people build high-end home sound recording studios... they do things like avoiding parallel surfaces in the shape of rooms and even making the double-walls non-parallel, which drastically reduces resonance and transmission of sound through the whole structure.

Of course, the cost is much higher in materials, workmanship, and inefficient use of space/volume compared to a normal structure. And nobody will want to buy your freakish creation later on, so it really has to be a labor of love. I'd recommend moving somewhere cooler and quieter instead.

Of the people on TV, I suppose I'm fairly atypical. I found the Thai long before I ever found Thailand. Enjoying Thailand is just a pleasant side effect.

There seems to be a handful of us at least... in my wife's sphere it seems like about 10-20% of the Thai students who go abroad on scholarships manage to pick up a western partner along the way. Not all of those succeed in coming back here as a couple though.

My first trip to Thailand was after I already decided to take the plunge to be with my girlfriend (now wife)... so we went for about two weeks to meet her family and give me my first dose of the tropics. That was my only visit until we moved here about three years later, and now we've been here for four years.

Here are a few quick troubleshooting procedures to help understand what is wrong:

• What do you mean it goes "blank"? Is the backlight on or off?
  
• Does it fail the same way with all video input types or just VGA? E.g. DVI, S-video.
  
• Can you use the on-screen menu functions even when it is "blank"?
  
• Can you get an alternative power supply or otherwise rule out the power supply as the culprit?
  

For the first item, is there any light coming out of the screen at all when it fails, i.e. normally a "black" screen is really glowing a little compared to the screen when it is powered off. If it is really "dark", also try shining a bright light on the screen and see if you can see even a faint outline of the video image you would expect to be showing; if you can see this, then it is a backlight failure. A backlight failure (whether its power inverter or the lamp itself) should be relatively cheap to get repaired, but the quality of the workmanship may affect the resulting image etc.

For the second item, you want to rule out a problem with one input of the monitor, one video cable, or one graphics card. Any of these situations might mean less repair cost than a problem affecting all input modes of the monitor (which would point to a problem deep in its circuitry).

Gary, I cannot give individual help since I have never used a Nokia phone. But let me give a general answer to the OP and maybe it can help you too?

In general, data connections via mobile phones with Linux are easy (unless they're impossible ). The USB cable connection is the easiest and most reliable method in my experience. The main trick to understand is that when properly detected, your phone will appear to the Linux PC as a connected USB modem. Then, dial-up (PPP) settings can be used to get data services. Different dial strings (and modem initialization strings) can be used to access data services.

As to the original post, EDGE is no problem with my Motorola phone. In fact, it is the same setup as regular GPRS, except it just goes faster when the phone is in range of EDGE service and the right SIM is installed in the phone. I don't have personal experience with anything newer than EDGE.

If trying to connect a new phone, I would start by looking at the kernel messages (in /var/log/messages and via 'dmesg' command) to see that the USB layer detects the hardware on insertion. If so, then the next question is whether or not it correctly identified it as a modem. Normally, the kernel driver for all standard USB modems is "cdc-acm" so I would also go on to try inserting that module manually just in case...

With some phones, there are two (or more) modes it can be in via USB, and this may affect how it is detected. For example, my wife's Motorola V360 has a setup option in the phone menu to either act as a USB data/fax modem or to act as a USB storage device. We have to set it to data/fax mode to use GPRS/EDGE services with Linux. Under Windows, a device-specific driver may know how to change this mode on the fly, but with Linux it is easiest to set the correct mode before attaching the phone.

For technical help, I find it best to get the device USB vendor/device code from the 'lsusb' command and start googling for this code and Linux, GPRS, etc. The code is the colon separated hex numbers, e.g. 'lsusb' will print a line of the form 'UD xxxx:yyyy' for the connected phone.

Part of the foreign-earned income exclusion (reported with Form 2555) involves figuring your foreign/US split, so that you can for example determine that the income earned on days in Thailand or Laos is excludable, but income earned on days when you travelled to the US is not excludable.

You are confusing the topic by referring to your telecommute work as "US income". In general, it does not matter who paid you or where the payments were sent. What matters is where you were when you performed the work that earned the income. If you plan to figure your taxes and exclusion, you should read IRS publication 54 "Tax Guide for U.S. Citizens and Resident Aliens Abroad".

Note, all non-earned income (rents, dividends, deposit interest, etc.) is non-excludable regardless of source. You would have to use the foreign tax credit to try to prevent double-taxation on these incomes, rather than the foreign-earned income exclusion.

A separate issue is that you may find it impossible to pay Thai taxes on your telecommute income if you do not have a work permit here. I am not sure where this leaves you with claiming the foreign earned income exclusion, ethically or legally. I see that Thaihome just made a similar comment while I was writing this...

If your all-in-one is an inkjet based printer, there's a pretty good chance it won't survive the ocean voyage. Most inkjets need to be powered up pretty frequently to prime the printheads and keep them from drying out. The extended trip without power and without climate control could easily cause this to happen. That's why they are usually delivered new with a seal pasted across the printhead and also the printhead wrapped in a vapor-tight bag.

So, just bear in mind the possibility when you are determining whether it is worth it or not... if there is no additional cost to throw the printer into the container, is it even worth your hassle to pack it up etc if it may not work on the other end? (Don't answer me, just ask yourself...)

You might also want to acquaint yourself with current US prices on a site like techbargains.com (no affiliation for me), as you may be surprised just how dirt-cheap all these electronics bits are back there!

No, I live just outside Bangkok, but on the other side of town to the airport. It was just a thought, and yes, taxis can be booked, but often not trusted.

I take taxis from Nonthaburi, from over the river near (but inside) the outer ring road. It usually costs around 350-400 THB to Suvarnabhumi including expressway tolls. We always arrange the taxi the night before since my usual early flight would mean leaving home around 4 or 4:30, and I never had a problem with them not showing.

Yes, VMware server is great and free (no cost, not free as in open source). You just have to go to the website and register your email address and answer a short survey to request a license key to use the software.

As mentioned though, the biggest hassle with VMware on Linux hosts is if you find that the vmware-config command fails due to a recent kernel update breaking the kernel modules that must be compiled from the VMware package. Usually you can just search for a vmware-any-any-updateXYZ patch file and apply it, but I've recently found some periods of time where this did not work for an up-to-date Fedora 8 system. (I keep my Fedora system in sync with the updates nightly, and it can take a while for things to catch up with new kernels.)

I don't see why anybody would use VMware workstation anymore. The free server product is more capable in my opinion.

There is also the built-in "kvm" virtualization in recent Linux systems on recent hardware (recent AMD socket AM2 and Intel Core 2 chips). I've run a standard Windows XP install inside kvm before as a test. But, this requires more finesse than VMware, so probably would not be a wise alternative for someone who finds the VMware stuff difficult to configure.

We run our bedroom unit for the entire night, year round. We bought all "inverter" units so they wouldn't be too inefficient while operating all night with a low heat load.

We run one in the living room up to 6 hours a day in the evening if we're spending time there. This room is naturally too warm, even without the television or hifi powered on...

We very rarely use the biggest unit (a few times per year), in our dining room/pantry area, because that is the naturally coolest room of the house.

When I am working at home in the office, I run that unit the entire time I am in that (small) room. If I'm just hanging around during the day, I try to just use a fan and get some cross-breeze from open windows.

In general I think we set the thermostats in the 24-26 range. Sometimes it needs to be set lower to dehumidify in the rainy season.

I have a Motorola L6 that is not EDGE capable but has the little coax connector under a rubber cap. I am familiar with this being on almost every Motorola I've ever owned, but I just checked our V360 which has EDGE, and I cannot find such a dust cap or connector.

I believe there are a Motorola L72 (candybar style similar to L6) and W510 (a flip-phone) available at Jaymart, each of which is EDGE capable and costs about 6000 THB. You might want to check them, though I cannot confirm whether it has the coax connector or not.

I've always found my Motorolas to be very reliable data modems, even if the phone functions can be a bit quirky (particularly for people who are trained on other brands first)...

Just in case anybody reads down this far.

There is a walk-up window as Soi Suuanplu where you can pick up your 90 day reporting slip after reporting your address online. (I think the problem with going completely electronic, at least for now, is that they have to give you that receipt, and the government isn't going to pay the postage for it.)

Can you give the web URL etc. for this? I didn't have any luck looking around on the immigration bureau website. I'm almost due for my first report (previously, I always ended up traveling before 90 days elapsed).

Alternatively does anybody know what specifically is needed for someone else (my wife) to do the report or pick up the receipt for me, since she will be in the vicinity of Suan Phlu and I won't? I don't see any details on the website or on TM47 as far as what supporting documents are required if I do not attend in person. I assume the pre-filled TM47 and my passport with entry card, but anything else? It ceases to be convenient if she gets turned away for insufficient documentation (a favorite Suan Phlu pastime it would seem).

My father developed very similar symptoms as a diabetic with severe obstructive sleep apnea, and his bowels became much more regular within a week or two of beginning use of the CPAP breathing machine when he slept.

Don't ignore the stress you are putting on your body by having chronically disrupted sleep...

To compare resolutions, here is a rough estimation based on the 24x36mm film frame size: a 5 megapixel equivalent shot would require a scan of about 1900 dpi (approx 2740x1830 image), while an 8 megapixel shot would require a scan of about 2400 dpi (approx 3460x2310 image). Beyond that, you're likely just adding more blurry bits unless you have specialty films and a real film scanner. Even these resolutions may be overkill, but some people would say scan at the highest your scanner and printing system can handle, to get the most possible image content from film to paper.

You might want to look at a site like photo.net for a lot of technical advice on scanning film. Only read further for more scanning/imaging geekery... it's a complicated topic and requires a bit of skill and experimentation to get good results.

But since we're in a Thailand forum, I've just been looking into this recently myself to try to make the best use of the Epson flatbed scanner I bought here (since I wasn't going to pay the exorbitant Bangkok prices for a dedicated film scanner). First, it is generally assumed that 35mm color negatives have somewhere between 1000-4000 ppi of resolution in them. (Range both for different film brands/types and also differing opinions on this topic!) Then, your scanner will have some practical upper limit, i.e. scanning at higher resolutions will just give a more detailed image of its blurry optics...

Under a microscope, color film looks sort of like a dithered print by an inkjet printer. Rather than continuous colors, it is just little flecks of different colors. If you can get a really high quality "raw" scan, you will actually see this grainy mess. A lot of post-processing is required to make the picture look appealing again, and even then it will look more noisy than a digital camera photo, because the grain is less uniform in color distribution and sensitivity versus a modern digital sensor. Because of all this post-processing, the quality of resulting images depends on the scanning software utility as well as the scanning hardware. I saw many recommendations online for the "VueScan" utility which you can download for free to try, and which costs a modest $40 US if you want to keep it and use it to its full potential.

On my flatbed scanner, I get a better scan at 3200x4800 dpi (it doesn't support 3200x3200 for some reason) than I do at 2400x2400 dpi. This is getting to the point of diminishing returns on my typical ISO 100 and 200 color film negatives, but the higher scan resolution avoids an aliasing problem where the grain of the film starts to create funny moire patterns. So I scan at higher resolution and then scale down the image again, in order to get a smoother anti-aliased image.

For special photos I want to enhance with much more effort, I find that the following rough process gives the best results for some of my grainy old negatives: scan "raw" at 3200x4800 dpi for 48-bit color; apply a gaussian blur of radius 3 or 5 or even 7 (depends on image) to smooth together the grains; adjust the white-point and black-point levels since the histogram is bunched together in the 16-bit range; maybe adjust the levels curve away from its default linear shape to change shadow versus mid-tone versus highlights; re-scale the image (to make it smaller and give the aspect-ratio I want, to correct for the unequal scan resolutions in horizontal and vertical dimensions); apply an unsharp mask to clear up some of the fuzziness (this will also re-create some of the graininess); finally convert to 24-bit color (normal 8-bits per channel) and save as JPEG.

A caution: the above manual process creates HUGE intermediate image sizes, e.g. a scan is about 100MB and the image editor seems to hog even more system RAM while working on them. The final resulting JPEG is in the 1-2 MB range for a 5-8 megapixel image size.

When you say free software, are you considering Linux PCs, or just Windows? I'm not sure how much of my answer would apply to Windows... I never use that...

If you cannot use one of those file-drop services mentioned so far, the basic solution is to setup your own FTP server on one side and have the other use a client to move the file. I'd set up the server where the file originates, so the FTP "get" and "reget" commands can be used (in case the transfer fails before the whole file is moved).

However, this may be challenging to set up securely, since you have to enable port-forwarding and firewalls for FTP on the "server" PC on a typical home internet connection, etc.

A more secure solution is to setup an SSH/SFTP server, which only needs to forward one incoming SSH port from the NAT-router to the PC running the service. It's easier to configure the router than FTP, and harder to make it insecure by accident.

Between systems which both run Linux, I'd never hesitate to recommend using rsync over SSH for transfers like this. It is very efficient about using bandwidth, and very secure.

Not all salsas need tomato, and in my opinion the best fresh salsas do not need so many additions that can mask the flavor of the chilies.

If you can find some other "meaty" chili varieties, try making a salsa that is only chilies, onion, coriander, garlic, lime juice, and salt (no vinegar nor sugar, and mind that the onion is a minor fraction compared to the chilies). This may take a few batches to find the mixture of different chili varieties that you like, but it's a "sacrifice" well worth making. Stock up on corn tortilla chips.

Also, if you have the patience, try roasting some (or all) chilies first to get a much broader and more mellow flavor. I think a Thai-style wok on high heat could be used to blacken the skins a bit, or just broil them on high heat if you have an oven... Some people will remove the blackest skin, but I like to roast them lightly enough that all the skin stays in. Put the darkest bits in the part you pulse in the blender. (But, too much blackened stuff and it will be bitter.)

Speaking of avocado, I made my first guacamole in Thailand last week... the very lazy-man's variety. I just scooped one avocado into a small bowl, added some roasted garlic powder, dry red chili powder, a pinch of salt, and a few squeezes of lime juice and mashed it together with a fork. I'm not sure why it took me four years to get around to that, but absence did make the heart grow fonder!

It doesn't take much of a file serving environment to saturate 100BaseT... that's only about 12 MB/s when you really get going on a full-duplex link, and even my laptop hard drive can sustain 20-30 MB/s for long transfers. It's hard for me to remember how many years ago it was that I experienced Linux and Solaris machines which weren't fast enough to do 12 MB/s with NFS.

So, I agree most PCs won't saturate a 1000BaseT link, but they certainly can benefit from being faster than 100BaseT...

On the other hand, if your storage server is a cheap SOHO "nas" box, most of those have such weak CPUs that they struggle to even saturate 100BaseT for NFS or CIFS traffic. Faster links won't help them.

Yeah, I can understand trading off the image for the room aesthetics... I just wanted to bring it up since you mentioned how you were spoiled by the current DLP images. Have you viewed the rear-projected DLPs in similar lighting to your existing room?

I used to "borrow" a DLP from work once in a while for movie nights, just projecting onto an actual 3x2 foot dry erase board... the image was incredibly good, once we tipped it back to make the specular reflection shoot up over our heads. I've never seen a rear-project unit in a store that matched that image quality... the ones I saw looked like you'd have to really dim the room lighting a lot, and I don't like being in a dark cave.

We don't have any high-def material here, just UBC and DVDs, so I just opted for a 34" direct-view CRT from Panasonic, after comparing a bunch side-to-side at a few stores and preferring its color and lack of flicker. Even this is almost too big as far as looking kind of blurry with the typically over-compressed UBC programs, so I am glad I didn't try to go high-end with a projector etc.

All of these consumer-grade products are fragile and have non-zero failure rates, so the key is redundancy no matter what you choose.

Among my avid digital photographer friends, lots of flash memory failures are reported. They range from files with internal corruption after a day of shooting to cards physically crumbling into bits of plastic and dust. Just like among my computer science friends, lots of hard disk failures are reported... the larger your sample size, the more failures you see. In truth, nobody should assume something is reliable just because they know one lucky guy who "hasn't had any problems."

I thought I had a bunch of CDs go bad, but I kept them and a few years later tried them in a new computer on a lark. They all read perfectly, so it would seem that the different drives have a lot to do with it as well!

My impression is that you may be disappointed going from a front-projected DLP setup to a rear-projected DLP cabinet. The contrast and viewing angle just isn't the same with any of the rear-projected screens. I actually think a direct-view large LCD looks better than most rear-projected screens, even with the other drawbacks to LCDs.

Do you really have source material to notice how your current setup is not high-def enough? I would think that improving your screen installation (to please the wife or the viewing quality) would be money better spent...

Wow, 25%? Yes, the problem is that I'd be shipping it back to a company, while I remain an expat in Thailand... (not a personal item for a returning citizen, and not part of a larger shipment).

Are "slow boats" a cheap option for just a few small boxes? I got estimates of around $400-500 USD from FedEx and UPS websites just for the two boxes associated with the desktop PC and monitor. Add a 25% duty and it would really cost the same as a new or slightly used machine with similar specs in the US!

Here in Thailand, I have a PC and a laptop which were purchased for me to use when working on a project for a US-based client. We are approaching the end of the contract, and now they're wondering whether it is cost effective for them to have these computers of theirs shipped back to them or not.

We're talking about a very old IBM laptop that probably has a $250 used value on the market in the US, and a newer desktop PC and LCD that probably has a value closer to $750-1000. There is also an old VOIP phone which I do not know the value on. Does anyone know how duties are determined on these sorts of small, one-off shipments?

For those needing to store durable CD/DVD backups... there is a really interesting open source program called dvdisaster... Dvdisaster page at Wikipedia has a brief description and links to the real project page.

This is useful because it allows you to generate an extra checksum/backup DVD and store data in such a way that all data can be recovered even after significant "bit rot" has occurred on the original or checksum media. They have a Windows version, as well as it being available in many Linux distributions. My recommendation would be to use this to generate each "set" of DVDs and still store duplicate sets at multiple locations in case of total loss or damage to a single set. I've heard good things about it, but never used it myself.

Read on for geeky alternatives: I don't need to archive permanent data, but protect a large working set of data that changes all the time; I'm too lazy to sort out what data goes on which backups, so I take the approach of live "online storage" with RAID and then remote Internet-based mirroring between servers that are actually in different countries (where I could put a cheap Linux box on a UPS at a friend's house). I just put my entire "home directory" onto the system. Each server also automatically keeps online, generational backups (daily, weekly, monthly) to allow recovery of older data in case a mistake is mirrored between them before I notice it. I just feed the servers with new parts every few years when one gets errors or when I need to expand the system. If this sounds complicated, it's because computers and systems software are my expertise and my livelihood...