kash

1. Cheap. (cheapest OKEY apartment I've found for storage purpose is 1100THB which is actually pretty ok but small)

2. Dry and above the ground.

3. Airconditioning (frequently, say like once a week - depending on what beeing stored)

4. Safe, and entry possible 24/7.

In Australia they use special designed containers spread over a fenced area, which is a pretty neat and nice way to do it.

I DO like the way Thai people enjoy and adopt these celebrations- hey, any excuse for a party! Sanook mak mak

Sure, but we all know that bookworms ain't the hottest party lions in the world ... :-)

Great post....I'm gratified to know that you also share the same view.......

What a great reply, you really made my day now.

A few people have questioned why i need an 8MP camera. Well the answer was I dont know, so I gave the tech support guys a mail to ask why. The answer I got is this.

" To get reliable OCR it is best to scan at 300DPI. If you consider a one inch square at 300DPI it will contain 300x300 dots or 90,000 dots or 0.09Megapixels. We consider an average scan size to be 8 inches by 10 inches giving 80 x 0.09 = 7.2 megapixels. We rounded this up to 8 to be on the safe side."

Kind of makes sense to me.

What a lot of rubbish. Ask them how we could possibly do OCR 10-15 years ago? Maybe time to change software? Lots of free stuff that does the job.

HELLO?

You guys seem to like to surf the net, the link you provided is for a scanner - a scanner is simply nothing else than a kind camera and a system. In regards of your comments, I never suggested a flatbed scanner, there are numerous solutions, which you certainly will find by keep googling.

And needing 8 megapixel, why? We used 1.4 megapixel cameras (Olympus C-1400L) in 1997 to OCR single documents which worked perfect.

Yes, you can get a "work permit" for this - there is a special visa that permit work as a foreign journalist/photographer, there is a section at the thai immigration website.

Scanning books with a flatbed scanner is not very efficient.

The page orientation/curvature is sorted in software. Also scanners are not very portable. Not easy to pull one out, scan a doc and stow it in a laptop case.

Here's an example of a basic program that does this. Note that this is not the best solution out there.

http://snapter.atiz.com/

And it is efficient to use a camera? You are talking about a book in your post, either you are a troll or you have absolute no idea what you are talking about.

OCR software has existed since early 90s, so I really don't understand your issue?

.... England for old money, USA for new money and Australia for no money

I've never understood this, a Oz UG is pretty much just as expensive/inexpensive as a UG in England or USA/Canada, same for PG. In our company we don't hire US graduates due to their fcked up attitude, and UK degree holders and Oz seems to be pretty much the same, do you mind elaborate a bit? Thanks.

Take a look at the Le Meridien sign facing Doi Suthep, a nice little spelling error

This is clearly part of the new governments' scheme, to eradicate Bird-Flu, by spraying noxious chemicals across the country.

I guess it is mossies they spray for :-)

Who is this group that judges people based on thier style?

The common people. Anyone who see a picture of the people involved quickly understand what kind of theme they adhere to. And if that doesn't include various substances not very legal in most countries, well - I find it hard they choose that kind of lifestyle in that specific place, as they wasn't tourists who was just "passing through" the town.

Dang you guys need to get with the times, back home theres a zillion different styles and none of them have to do with being bad people.

No need to include the rest of the world for a local case, the thing with perception is that it seldom correlate with the truth, but it really doesn't matter as long as people around here enforce "shoot first - then ask". Nothing wrong with rastahair e.g., but you are naive and on the border to stupidity if you don't think people will judge you and your behavior just because of that hair style, like it or not - that's reality.

Are you saying that it's academic when shooting in RAW (which I always do) as to what colour space you elect for the "in camera" settings?

Yes, if you are only shooting in RAW you don't have to think about this at all, as the color profile will be applied on the image in your RAW converter i.e. Lightroom that uses ProPhotoRGB e.g.

Simple eh!

It's horribly complicated! Too much for my old brain.

This is my understanding, and what I do, for right or wrong.

The problem is that you really need to pre-decide what your output is going to be, print (on a good printer), on screen display for your own delectation, or you want to put on the web. Well you cant can you?, at least this happy snapper cant.

I use RAW and let the camera do absolutely nothing, its software is far less powerful than what you can do on a computer. I use a RAW converter to save them as TIFF. That is my backup and is easily viewed in almost any application, even though the colours may look a bit screwed.

If I find something (this is really rare!) that is worth printing or anything else, I can then use the TIFF, or the original RAW, reprocess it and to take it to the colourspace that is most appropriate.

That sounds more complicated than it is. Truly

There are probably better ways, so the usual disclaimer. Ohh and I use Nikon but same same I think.

In a more simple language :-)

- Color profile is just for shooting in JPEG, Adobe RGB has the widest range out of the two available.

- Shooting in RAW does not use a color profile, hence RAW :-)

I have some software sitting on my PC that can accept RAW/TIFF files fom digital cameras and convert the images to text/pdf. (given that the image is a photograph of a document that is!)

Now to get this up and running I need to go and get hold of a digital camera with the following specs:

1. Ability to save as either RAW or TIFF format

2. Good macro capability - (this means nothing to me)

3. 8 megapixels or higher

Personally I would prefer to have the camera as small as possible. The camera will only be used for scanning books.

Could somebody give me an idea of a good camera that would fit into these specs and idea on price. If worse comes to worst would go for a DSLR but prefer not to.

edit (Read RAW above as Adobe RAW, open format)

Buy a scanner, saves you A LOT OF WORK, how do you plan to keep the pages straight enough to get a correct picture which again the OCR program would read?

well since you said free license plate I assumed you got the 500baht one for free (choose your own lucky no), this takes two months exactly. and I sincerely doubt that it takes less than a month for regular license plate to be approved, a reason why you see so many bikes without license plate in the city (at least in cm).

huh, 60,430THB is the wholesale price the dealers pay for the bike + transportation to wherever in Thailand. the difference between 61k and 63,5k is the profit of the shop, including their cost for the freebies they gave you, do you really think anyone would sell you a bike for cost? as for having a VAT invoice, why bother? you cant claim it back at the airport anyway, and I would be curious to know which company setup you have if you consider claiming it back in that way.

the going rate is 65-66k now, so 63,5 is a nice price - be happy. the registration takes 2 months exactly.

www.expedia.co.uk // www.lastminute.com

I hear that Rambo ate at the Duke's every night when he was filming in Northern Thailand.

rubbish, he was there a couple of times, most of the time takeaway to his mansion at the Mandarin Oriental and his crew at Chiang Mai Orchid.

so why dont you guys meet up and buy 2 cars ... ?

huh?

Its amazing how often places are closed, MBK, Paragon, Hard Rock etc, i found the answer is to lie about where you are going when asked and suddenley all the places that were closed are open when you get there

I also always laugh when I go somewhere and somebody approaches me and says that today (due to Buddist ceremony, holiday, cleaning, repairing etc etc) this place is closed. I continue walking saying "yes, yes, yes, I know it's closed, it's okey though.." and of course everything is open.

mm, quite a few of them in the beginning of January, started arguing loudly with the guards that it was a scam and they showed them their Lonely Planet's, too bad the Grand Palace actually was closed from the 1-9th

Thanni.com is ok, order there all my pc parts. Annoyance is that you have to pay by bank, it takes so much time.

Today I had to pay at the bangkok bank for another supplier, drive 16 km and back, wait in the cue and pay 600 baht for a part that cannot be bought in Phuket.

U know you can do this in any ATM?

I cannot understand anyone paying 3000AUD for this, and even those who can say they can afford it - buy a ticket for 1000AUD and give the rest to charity, what a complete waste.

Yes and why pay thb 6000 for dinner when you can have noddles for thb 60 , or thb 1.5m for a car because you can buy one for thb 350k or rent an apartment for thb 80,000 when you can get some for thb 25,000 .

All people to there own , and you might be supprised that the most people making and spending a lot also do give some to charity

but even if they do not give a cent , people are entitled to spend money how they want , and Business or first is not a waste of money

if you can afford it , ask anyone where they would rather sit if they can afford to??

why? I've traveled biz and first class with i.e. Qantas several times on business, and I don't get it why people would spend thousand of thousands extra for some nippy food and a larger seat (I do understand if you are 200kg...) I am happy to travel there as I get some incredible millage points for it, but if I had a choice of getting the cash from the company and travel on economy that would be my choice. And the two times I've traveled first it was bloody awkward, there was only two seats in the front, and I felt like an idiot sitting there staring in the front wall in my silly seat ... Well, go for it if you want, but what a waste ... in regards of your analogies, well - comparing apples and oranges, doesn't really make it for me 'matey.

just did some random searches on that site, what on earth is a average salary in Singapore with most rents being in the area of 5000-15 000 Sing'Dollars?

Why risk going to the airport and not being able to board the plane? What is an acceptable risk to you? 25% chance? 50% chance? Follow through with talking with Thai Airways and see what they say.

Then you simply go to the ticket office, book a return ticket on business class. Upon arrival in BKK, you go to the ticket office and cancel the ticket and get a 100% refund. Simple and easy.

Again not necessarily correct. Many airlines will charge an 'admin' fee for cancellation of around £100 (7,000 baht)

Then you simply book with a Airline that does not attract such a fee.