simon43

Not being lonely in Pattaya does not necessarily mean having a Thai GF/BF/wife/partner etc. I'm happily single and when I'm at my condo in Jomtien, I pop over the hill on the baht bus to go shopping, meet some friends, enjoy a meal etc. If I were so-inclined, I could join the expat club, play golf, do team sports etc etc. The big mistake (IMHO), is that guys seem to assume that when in Thailand you must find a Thai GF etc. Why?? At my age, no Thai woman will be interested in me other than for my money, so why waste my precious time seeking one out? There are plenty of social activities in Pattaya that do not involve having a Thai partner - I heartily encourage these 'lonely' men to quit the UK and find a social life in Thailand...

Bunch of snowflake wokies.... I remember the days when TV presenters could make 'real' jokes about n*ggers, p*kis, w*ps and so on. Comedy ain't funny anymore.. 🙂

Give it a rest Bob. Every thread you start is anti-Thai. I really can't understand why you're allowed to get away with breaking one of the forum rules time and time again. (Well, actually I have a very good idea of why you get away with it, but I can't say this - other forum members will understand...)

Yes! In the 1980's I had 1 of these: I was working in London and of course the mobile network was analogue. So it was very difficult to get a clear channel. That didn't matter too much, because the batteries only lasted a few minutes!! 🙂

This is a photo of me (on the left) and one of my software engineers, as we worked on the design of software for one of the first smartphones for Ericcsson. I was the CTO for the company who designed the operating software for some of the first mobile websites. Amazing how mobile devices have progressed in just a few decades.

OK, there are 2 different systems: 1 - Low earth orbit (LEO) weather satellites at about 450km above the Earth, such as NOAA 15, 18 and 19, and the Russian birds Meteor 2-3 and 2-4. They transmit around 137 MHz. These are the images that I've been posting (except for that single whole-world image). Since they are close to the Earth, these satellites move faster than the Earth is spinning, meaning that they orbit the Earth every 90 minutes. In other words, you will only receive an image when the bird is passing over you, and at other times no image is possible since the bird is somewhere else over the Earth. Luckily, NOAA-15 passed over my location just 15 minutes ago, and here's one of the images received, with the intensity of the rain shown in colours: I use an SDR to receive the satellite signal and Satdump free software to decode the satellite signal. 2 - Geostationary weather satellites are about 50,000 km away from the Earth, in an orbit which means they move at the same speed as the Earth turns, meaning that they are visible all the time and always show the same area of the Earth. To decode these images, you can use Satdump again, but you need to use a dish antenna and feed horn to actually receive a strong enough signal. So that's the fun challenge for me 🙂 If you want to receive weather satellite images, using an SDR dongle and Satdump is fine. The easiest and strongest signals come from NOAA 18 and 19, but you do need to mount your receiving antenna clear of buildings/trees etc - my antenna is on a 6-metre pole. A simple dipole antenna should receive some signal, but a 'QFH' antenna works much better - see my photo of this kind of antenna that I built in a few hours from some wire and water pipe.

I also found Lampang dull. Worked there for a few weeks about 15 years ago, dull as dust. As for koh Lanta, I also lived there briefly about 2 years ago, Nice beach, but depressing because of the 'black crows'. I've learnt that living in a Muslim area is depressing, no-one wants to see walking black tents all day.....

Here's my real experience last night, I thought it was a dream, but turned out to be real. I'd gone to bed and was sleeping soundly, or so I thought. But around 3 am, I became aware of loud snoring. Since I live alone, in my half-asleep state I assumed that the snoring was actually me. So I thought no more about it until I consciously held my breath, and the loud snoring continued! That woke me up and I lay in bed listening to this rythmic snoring that sounded as if it was coming from next door. Except there was no next door.... The nearest house to me is about 50 meters away. Surely someone can't be snoring that loud? In fact, this snoring was so loud, that it could be just outside my bedroom window. The only way to find out was to quietly peer out of the window. And so that's what I did, carefully peering out into the darkness. Luckily, there was a little light from the nearby streetlight. Less than 2 metres from my bedroom window was a very contented brown cow, happily snoring in the field next to my house 🙂

I'm confused! Surely the waitress is simply checking how many of each item you have ordered. Nothing wrong with that.

Excellent! Take a look at the GG weather thread here: https://aseannow.com/topic/1360474-merely-reporting-the-weather-in-my-area/#comment-19828520 I try to post daily images from NOAA and Meteor weather satellites.

As a radio ham, and previously living in Burma, I'm reasonably prepared for outages: - Solar panel and controller to charge up 12 volt car battery - 12 volt DC/220 volt AC inverter from that battery - solar/hand-crank powered flashlight - My ham radio is powered from 12 volts DC and I am able to send and receive basic emails (no big attachments) via shortwave comms using the winlink (winlink.org) network. - I have a simple DIY water distillation system to provide potable water (Just use two 2-litre water bottles connected at their lid openings, water to be cleaned in the lower bottle, upper bottle is empty and has an outlet hole in the bottle wall about 3 cm below the cap opening. Orientate the contraption at 45 degrees and place outside, the sun will cause the water in the lower bottle to evaporate, the water vapour rises into the upper bottle, condenses on the plastic and the drips of clean water fall by gravity out of the sidewall hole into a collecting bottle...) Apart from that distillation unit, the above equipment is used daily by me, (I power my laptop, radio etc from the car battery all the time in case of power cuts), - so I know it all works! I also have a huge chopper (the knife sort...), just in case the zombies try to get me....

Well, it depends on whether you are in pain or not. Not everyone who is dying is in pain. My young niece who died in my arms 3 years ago died of TB, but she just faded away, no pain , no nasty symptoms, just got weaker and died peacefully. Apart from the TB medication (which was given too late to help her), she had no other medication and needed none. Eddie doesn't seem to be suffering with pain, I hope he has a peaceful passing and his videos no doubt will help others to come to terms with the inevitable.

Or a Tourist Police Volunteer in police uniform, but I'm sure there are any/many TPVs in Phangan.

Do you mean watching these videos? I don't seek out videos of people dying. I watch those about Eddie to see how well he is doing at staying alive! Despite his terminal prognosis, he seems to be giving a good battle to stay with us, and with a sense of humour as well. He seems to be a very honest, down-to-earth chap.

I just bought a 7 foot diameter satellite dish to receive the weather images from a geostationary satellite (GK-2A), which produce the 'whole Earth' view (well, one side of the Earth) as shown in one of my previous posts. I'll put up an image when I get it all working 🙂 Unless you're in the south of Thailand (like me), you've got cloud cover everywhere - which you probably know by looking out of the window 🙂 The Russian 'bird' Meteor2-3 was passing over IndoChina and on towards mainland China, so today's weather image shows more of China than Indonesia etc.