User3

Well, if you watched the CBC reporting on this issue..... you would see that the minister of transport has indicated that persons without the ability (due to location etc) to get a PCR would be allowed on the plane but would have to go to an "approved quarantine facility" on arrival in Canada.

So.  

If I, a Canadian citizen, visiting someplace where I cannot get a PCR test can convince, a) the Canadian gov't and b) the airline, that it's impossible for me to get the test, then I am allowed on the plane. But with the proviso that I have to go into quarantine in a "Federally approved facility" on arrival in Canada.

Nice.

BUT. If I am returning to Canada from somewhere and HAVE gotten a negative PCR in the 72 hrs prior to arrival in Canada, then I'm ok. Still have to do the 14 day quarantine, but not at a Federally approved facility. Then someone boards the plane at a transit point under the 'rules' above.... i.e. untested.

However, I sat on the plane right beside the person that did NOT have a PCR.

This makes little sense to me.

If there is someone on the plane that did not have a negative PCR, why would not the ENTIRE plane be forced into the 'Federally approved Quarantine Facility'?? How can they know that the covid virus was not transmitted, if present, from the untested and therefore suspect traveler to the tested, and presumably 'safe' traveler???

Of course, this is only valid from places that require a connecting flight to Canada... which would be most places in SE asia.

Seems strange. But I guess only if you are trying to return to Canada from somewhere that does not have a direct flight.  SE asia perhaps??

Try http://www.sciencecity.biz/  it is on Ramkamhaeng opposite the Paseo local shopping center.

There is also a place in Fortune town that sells Davis weather Stations, Telescopes and a lot of educational toys.

I think it's on the street side of the corridor and is on the second floor if memory serves me.

We just installed a washer/dryer here (Minburi) and they both run from the same 20 amp breaker. One thing to note is that there are two types of dryer sold here, one venting and the other 'condensing'. As far as I am aware the condensing dryers don't work as well here as they do in colder climates. I gather the water supply temp in the tropics is too high to effectively condense the hot air from the dryer so they take forever to dry the clothes. We got a vented one, (Electrolux) and it works fine. I just dried 9 mens shirts in size Gigantor and it took a bit over 10 minutes. One thing to be careful of is the installation of the vent hose. If you let the company whom you buy it from install the vent then it might not be the optimum installation. That is- might have many kinks and the likely would use the crinkled plastic tubing instead of the correct smooth sided semi-flexible stuff, which is available at Thai Watsadu among other places. 

Good luck.

I have a bunch of older games for PS3, pm me if you are interested.

The Orange Box
Ghost Busters
Little Big Planet
Burnout Paradise
F-1 Racing
Tiger Wood Golf
Resistance, Fall of Man
Blazing Angels 2

NASCAR Racing 2008
The Simpsons
MLB 2007- The Show
Unreal Tournament
Ratchet & Clank
Tools of Destruction
All for One
A Crack in Time
Quest for Booty
Motor Storm

Just got back from Seoul. Went for 4 days to do a visa (non-Imm 0, aka married visa) as they are so easy and fast to get there. We flew THAI, don't remember the price but it was not that bad. Stayed at Courtyard Times Square which is a pretty good location just above a subway station so the whole city is available. For things to do, depends on what you like- hard to make any meaningful recommendations for complete strangers but we went to main museum and while the whole idea of the Korean royal family doesn't exactly enthrall me the art and history displays were kind of neat. The highlight had to be the water clock. It's about the size of a small house and is fascinating to watch. Must be where Rube Goldberg got his inspiration.

Other than that- not much. Korea isn't exactly a tourist mecca.... Guess you could go and walk at the demilitarized zone between north and south Korea but that requires a passport which I didn't have due to it being at Thai embassy.

Probably tons of things to do that I don't know about, but for us it was pretty boring.

Oops. You are correct, they are 3 prong plugs on the appliances, not that I've actually bought them yet.

I'm wondering about the ground, in that I'm pretty certain there is no house ground so the green wire coming from the breaker box seems superfluous. If I run that green wire to the receptacles (!) for the washer and dryer then continue it outside to a ground rod would that be a good idea? Or is just grounding the washer/dryer using a couple of spade lugs on the panel screws and running that separate wire to a ground rod a better idea..?

....a recommended sparks to do the job...

Well, considering that the best one I can find is the one that wanted to run my new breaker box for the kitchen expansion in parallel with the existing one and thereby put far more potential load on the house wiring and power meter on the pole.. I'm a bit hesitant to trust him/them/anyone nearby. There is likely a competent Thai electrical person around here (Minburi) somewhere but I'll never find them/him/her/it.

Thanks for the info. Appreciate it heaps.

The only really good information I have about electricity is that it hurts....

I want to install a washer and dryer in the shower area of the downstairs bathroom.

The water connection will be 'T' at the wall and one hose to washer and one hose to dryer (steam drying cycle).

Finally- my question. There is no heater installed in the d/s bathroom but of course it is wired for one. I would like to use the existing heater wiring to create a couple of plug-ins for the washer and dryer. These would be put up high on the wall, say 2m or so. The washer and dryer will have two prong plugs. The heater wiring has 2 wires (red and black) and a green which likely is a ground. It would seem that as there is a red and black I would use the red on one side of the plug and the black on the other is that true?? If so, I assume there is no issue having the black and red on either side of the receptacle- they would be interchangeable?

The washer and dryer power consumption is 2400w each. What size wire would be safe to use for this? To be safe you'd have to allow for both appliances to be in use at same time I think, even though that is unlikely. Is 2.5mm2 cable ok for this? Or does it need 4mm2 all the way to the receptacles? It already has a 32A breaker.
How do you connect such heavy wires? I don't think wire nuts would work.

Any info appreciated. The internet is useless in searching for info about this as it assumes that everyone in the world uses 110v.

oops. spelled receptacle wrong and don't know how to edit it to change it... oh well.

Not sure if this is of any help as they seem to top out at 36 watts. But they might be able to source an 80w for you?

http://www.duan-daw.com/

Well look on the bright side, at least there are no fires burning in Thailand.

Fire Map mar 22.pdf

This site does not seem to be updated daily, but does give an indication of the levels at various places.

http://ffw.mrcmekong.org/overview.htm

Given that the original intent of the Raspberry Pi was to bring affordable programming platform to less fortunate people (kids) and that it is heavily slanted towards programming I'd say it would be an excellent starter for your son. If both of you are new to this, though, you should stick to the more mainstream operating system and mainstream programming languages. You will find over time that Linux is a total pain in the a$$ due to the many competing versions that exist which are sort of, but not exactly, compatible with each other. If Linux had ever gotten it's act together we would all be thumbing our noses at Microsoft but alas it has remained a hobbyist platform for the most part although there are some exceptions wherein good, solid application programs have come from the open source community.
Notice also that the cost of getting into this is really minimal so if it doesn't work out for you then your loss is only a few bucks. You only have to pay for the Raspberry Pi which was around 30 bucks when I got mine, a power supply which is any 1amp wall wart, about 5 bucks at any computer/cell store, and a memory card of at least 8 gigs, around 8 bucks. You have a computer now, so only need to download a program called 'Putty' and log in remotely to the Pi via your main computer(assuming you are on Windows) which avoids the need to buy a display/keyboard/mouse until you decide if the Pi will be a viable learing tool and worth spending extra bucks on.
I'd suggest taking a look at Linux User, which is a magazine based in the UK (I think) as they seem to be the most active Raspberry Pi fanboys at present.
For a low cost platform that is heavily slanted to teaching computers/programming to kids there probably isn't a better one available.
Mine is in a box in a cupboard as I just couldn't be bothered to devote the time needed to get it to do what I wanted- which was act as a recipe displayer in the kitchen. It worked fine for that, as connected to the LAN in the house, but I also wanted sound and that is the Pi's biggest failing so I gave up on it and got some Intel NUC's from InvadeIT that are also very low power consumption and far easier and more powerful, albeit a bit more expensive.

Good luck. If you want any more info feel free to contact me.

Victoria island Canada

Nunavit??

Victoria Island, Nunavut – Victoria Island is Canada’s second largest island, and the eighth largest island in the world.

The Island straddles both Nunavut and the Northwest Territories.

Kind of a change in climate isn't it?

Was in Korea for a few weeks working and decided to renew my expired Non-O (married) visa while there. The Thai embassy in Seoul opens at 9:00 am (9 until noon for visas). Arrived at 9:10 and was number 2 in a queue of about..er..2. Submitted paperwork for visa. I didn't have up-to-date bank statements (which they didn't want anyway) nor Police letter (which they didn't want anyway) nor doctor's certificate (which they didn't want anyway). But did have 200,000 won (which they most certainly DID want) which is a bit expensive compared to other embassy/consulates. This was Monday morning and we were out of embassy by 9:15 a.m. Came back on Wed at 9:05 a.m. trying to beat the queue, but sadly were second of three in line. Got the visa at about 9:10 and out of the embassy by 9:15 a.m.

Totally painless process and super efficient and polite staff.

Given how painless it was I'll be happy to go back there for another non-0 visa.

Great location for the embassy too, near subway station.

No response needed, just info regarding how easy the visa was in Seoul.

(there was an honorary consulate in Busan a while ago, but it seems to have been shut down within the last few months)

Thanks for the precious advises. And I may need more as things are getting more complicated ....

I'm now going room by room to show the electrician where I want the sockets. I'm happy (lucky ?) that he understands what I want to do. He has knowledge about ethernet cabling and surveillance cameras which helps a lot and even if what I ask him to do in the not the average house wiring the fact that he understands what I'm trying to achieve is really an advantage.

Basically there will be three networks in the house. A "standard" computer network, a home entertainment network and a security network. I want to have the security network physically separated from the other networks, which means more cables. As Cigar7 suggests, a 48 ports patch panel will be a minimum.

@ innerspace : I don't think a second patch panel will be needed. First I don't have the space for it, it's a residential place not an office building. The cable will not be that long anyway. And also for configuration and maintenance purpose, to have all the cables terminated in one place will make things easier. It's my opinion so far but I'm open to discussion

We have a two story house with LAN connections in every room, all of which end up in what was supposed to be the 'Maid's Room' where the switch, router, modem etc are located.

Same configuration for me

One thing to keep an eye on given that you are not running the cables yourself is that the installer understands how important long radius bends are in CAT cables and understands the importance of the connection to the sockets. (i.e. smallest amount of exposed wire possible). We found that a number of people are familiar with LAN cables but not with the importance of handling them properly. Another thing to consider is your security network. I'm not sure what you mean by that but in our experience a stand-alone (Bosch in our case) alarm and monitoring system is preferable to having your security running on a home network. It certainly can be done, but why not put it as a stand-alone? They work better, are professionally installed and, if you so desire, monitored although I think most people just route the alarm signals to their own phones and don't bother with paid monitors.

I don't like 3rd party solution for the same reason I don't like to rely on cloud storage or solution : companies get bankrupt or change business model all the time and if you rely on them for critical application then you are in deep sh_t.

I can't see any reason to separate your 'standard' network from your home entertainment network.

No intention to do so

One thing to consider is to install HDMI cables between rooms. Lots of them. With an HDMI outlet as well as a LAN outlet you have the flexibility of using LAN enabled streaming devices or, as we do, use an HDMI amplifier on the output of the dish receiver and just send the signal around the house that way.

Could you please give some more details about this application, it's not too late to add a few socket and cable if we have the use for it. But also for this kind of application don't you need to install CAT 7 cables ? and so far I haven't found anybody selling CAT 7 cable in Thailand

Using an amplifier allows you to have the maximum signal strength at the device input. It is a slightly better option than streaming the HD signals on a LAN cable as the electronics are simpler and you only need one amp. When I did this years ago (5) the signal amplifier was around 500 bucks but now I think same general one would be about 250 and they are plug in and forget. So easy for my poor old head to deal with. But of course if you wire with HDMI cables you are locked into the version/rev of what you put in. Mine are all rev 1.3 so I'm not able to take advantage of the rev 1.4 cable features but so far I see no need to. All I want is a 1080p signal at the input of the viewing device, whatever it is. By the way, these are the same type of amps that retail stores use for getting a picture to their display TVs and the quality certainly does not suffer from having a bunch of TVs on and using the same source.

Takes a bit of load off of the LAN, if that is an issue. Again, Somchai Electric and Dog Polishing co. probably are not familiar with routing such cables so care needs to be taken in selecting the people to do the install.

For two people we have a 20 port switch and it is about enough for us. But I'd consider that a minimum amount of ports and I'd suggest putting many more sockets than you ever think you will need into the system now while it's in it's embryo stage. Our 'computer area' has 3 sockets and should have had about 6. The kitchen has 2 sockets and should have had about 4, the living room has 2 sockets and should have had 4, the movie room has 2 sockets and should have had 4... it just adds up but maybe with more sockets you invent reasons to use them... who knows?

4 ports in the kitchen, what for ? I plan two as well, what do you need the additional 2 ports for ?

1 port for the i3 NUC that is the main kitchen computer, 1 for an IP camera, 1 for a Raspberry Pi that is being used as a time waster now after trying to use it to stream sound (no joy) and trying to use it as a client to the recipe database on one of the NASes. That didn't work out due tot he incredible slowness of the Pi, and the other port was to be for an IP radio/Speaker but now the music is covered by the NUC so I have to figure out something to plug into the spare LAN socket...

In any case good luck Thanks and hope your cables are ok.

(aside- we had two cables destroyed by the original installers... at least they replaced them.)

If you use NAS at all, they really should have 2 ports per device. I've got 2 QNAP NAS's and that is a total of 4 ports! But the difference in speed is worth it if you are moving large files.

By the way, these are LAN ports. I think someone may have been confused and thought I meant USB ports. The QNAPs can use port trunking to allow faster file transfers and it does make a difference.

SIDE NOTE

If your house is in a housing development be aware that a lot of houses have chambers, typically 1 foot t x 3 feet, that provide pathway from upper and lower floor. Typically for plumbing and wiring and electrical cable access. You may find that these are very opportune places to run the cables. It makes things much easier albeit does add a small amount of length to the cable run. They don't show up very well on any drawings or housing company brochures, but most of them have them.

Thanks for the precious advises. And I may need more as things are getting more complicated ....

I'm now going room by room to show the electrician where I want the sockets. I'm happy (lucky ?) that he understands what I want to do. He has knowledge about ethernet cabling and surveillance cameras which helps a lot and even if what I ask him to do in the not the average house wiring the fact that he understands what I'm trying to achieve is really an advantage.

Basically there will be three networks in the house. A "standard" computer network, a home entertainment network and a security network. I want to have the security network physically separated from the other networks, which means more cables. As Cigar7 suggests, a 48 ports patch panel will be a minimum.

@ innerspace : I don't think a second patch panel will be needed. First I don't have the space for it, it's a residential place not an office building. The cable will not be that long anyway. And also for configuration and maintenance purpose, to have all the cables terminated in one place will make things easier. It's my opinion so far but I'm open to discussion

We have a two story house with LAN connections in every room, all of which end up in what was supposed to be the 'Maid's Room' where the switch, router, modem etc are located. One thing to keep an eye on given that you are not running the cables yourself is that the installer understands how important long radius bends are in CAT cables and understands the importance of the connection to the sockets. (i.e. smallest amount of exposed wire possible). We found that a number of people are familiar with LAN cables but not with the importance of handling them properly. Another thing to consider is your security network. I'm not sure what you mean by that but in our experience a stand-alone (Bosch in our case) alarm and monitoring system is preferable to having your security running on a home network. It certainly can be done, but why not put it as a stand-alone? They work better, are professionally installed and, if you so desire, monitored although I think most people just route the alarm signals to their own phones and don't bother with paid monitors. I can't see any reason to separate your 'standard' network from your home entertainment network. One thing to consider is to install HDMI cables between rooms. Lots of them. With an HDMI outlet as well as a LAN outlet you have the flexibility of using LAN enabled streaming devices or, as we do, use an HDMI amplifier on the output of the dish receiver and just send the signal around the house that way. Takes a bit of load off of the LAN, if that is an issue. Again, Somchai Electric and Dog Polishing co. probably are not familiar with routing such cables so care needs to be taken in selecting the people to do the install.

For two people we have a 20 port switch and it is about enough for us. But I'd consider that a minimum amount of ports and I'd suggest putting many more sockets than you ever think you will need into the system now while it's in it's embryo stage. Our 'computer area' has 3 sockets and should have had about 6. The kitchen has 2 sockets and should have had about 4, the living room has 2 sockets and should have had 4, the movie room has 2 sockets and should have had 4... it just adds up but maybe with more sockets you invent reasons to use them... who knows?

In any case good luck and hope your cables are ok.

(aside- we had two cables destroyed by the original installers... at least they replaced them.)

If you use NAS at all, they really should have 2 ports per device. I've got 2 QNAP NAS's and that is a total of 4 ports! But the difference in speed is worth it if you are moving large files.

Try:

http://www2.tmd.go.th/radar/lmpLoop2.php

http://www2.tmd.go.th/radar/bma.html

http://www2.tmd.go.th/radar/sattahip.php#

Most of them have links to external sites and other stations, but sometimes the displays are not up to date so you need to check the date to make sure it's current.

If you are interested in wind try:

http://www.windfinder.com/windstatistics/rayong_utaphao

not sure if it has a link to the interior or not.

Thank you all for your input,looks like I'll have to take up gardening.

Mike.

There is saltwater fishing near Ranong, a friend of mine and I were there in Feb/Mar and caught 5 barracudas in 3 days, along with a myriad of smaller fish.

Will the water companies be disconnecting supply or at least announcing when the salinity becomes excessive?

Don't want to pollute our stored supply.

The Pollution control board has a web site that gives water quality readings from the automated samplers in some of the water treatment plants, one of the reported data is salinity.

http://58.137.231.37/wqm/GGW/ That is specific to water treatment reporting.

http://www.pcd.go.th/indexEng.cfm That is an overview of the reports available

http://www.arcims.tmd.go.th/DailyDATA/ That is specific to meteorological data

http://www.pcd.go.th/airquality/regional/Graph/createaqi2.cfm That is specific to air quality index

http://cpd.bangkok.go.th/eng-map2.html That is city planning map, fwiw.

Nope, those recipes are from a cookbook by Charmaine Solomon. It's title is 'A Taste of the Orient'.

I've never heard of the web site you are talking about.

But I am truly, really, deeply very sorry for offending you.

They also appear in another cookbook entitled 'The Complete Asian Cookbook'

Nope, those recipes are from a cookbook by Charmaine Solomon. It's title is 'A Taste of the Orient'.

I've never heard of the web site you are talking about.

But I am truly, really, deeply very sorry for offending you.

Or This:

Green Curry Paste

15 green hot chillies
3 tbsp. chopped shallots
l tbsp. chopped garlic
1 tsp. chopped galangal
1 tbsp. chopped lemon grass
1/2 tsp. chopped kaffir lime rind
l tsp. chopped coriander root
5 pepper corns
1 tbsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. salt
l tsp. shrimp paste

1. In a wok over low heat, put the coriander seeds, and cumin seed and dry fry for about 5 minutes, then grind into a powder.
2, Into a blender, put the rest of the ingredients except the shrimp paste and blend to mix well. Add the coriander-cumin seed mixture and the shrimp paste and blend to obtain 1/2 cup of a fine textured paste.
3. This can be stored in a glass jar in the refrigerator for about 3-4 months.

Try This:

Red Curry Paste

13 small dried chillies, soaked in hot
water for 15 Minutes and deseeded
3 tbsp, chopped shallot
4 tbsp. chopped garlic
1 tbsp. chopped galangal
2 tbsp. chopped lemon grass
2 tsp, chopped kaffir lime rind
1bsp. chopped coriander root
20 pepper corns
l tsp. shrimp paste
l tbsp. coriander seed
1 tsp. cumin seed

Preparation:
1. In a wok over low heat, put the coriander seeds and cumin seeds and dry fry for about 5 minutes, then grind into a powder.
2. Into a blender, put the rest of the ingredients except the shrimp paste and blend to mix well. The add the coriander seed-cumin seed mixture and the shrimp paste and blend again to obtain about 3/4 cup of a fine-textured paste.
3. This can be stored in a glass jar in the refrigerator for about 3-4 months.

True Value hardware has pizza stones, and for not much more than pocket change too. They work fine.

If you search on pizza stones using Google, you will find that most of the cooking/recipe web sites have information on using plain tiles as pizza stones. It seems there are some things to look for regarding type to stone, density etc etc. They also caution against using glazed stones for a number of reasons.

Edit: assuming you have a True Value hardware down there that is...........

I bought a few from here: http://www.thailand.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=raspberrypi

Have to say that I'm not too impress with the raspberry, I'm constantly have problems with the SDcard getting corrupted

Same experience here but oddly enough the worst offender seems to be Raspbian. I've got 3 SD cards with Raspian, Pidora and Arch installed, and one card that I use to try other distros like XBMC, PiBang etc. The Pidora card is rock solid, never gives any corruption or problems. Of course, that is rather moot now that it seems Fedora is not going to support/update Pidora, at least according to the Raspbian forum. The Arch distro works fine, has only ever crashed once, but it's a bit minimal for my tastes and the Raspbian one is super nasty in that it has something like a 50% failure rate after I unplug the Pi. And yes, I am shutting it down properly. It's rather weird because all the distros have been moved around from card to card to see if it was the card or the distro and it seems to be the distro. Even tried re-downloading the Raspbian one. The 3 cards are all 8GB, type 10. The one for use with other distros is a 32GB type 10. The power supply was the one purchased from the vendor of the Pi, so it's sort of officially supported. I think I got it from Allied Electronics, not sure.

Re the Thai distributor- that seems like a pretty high price (Fifty bucks for a 35 buck unit).

If you have a specific use for the Pi related to it's strengths it's a good deal, but if you don't have any interest in learning programming, learning Linux, doing I/O or other such things there are probably much better options out there. Arduino is one that springs to mind, and NUC also although that one is a bit pricey.