Slip

Oh my, you're in for a fun ride here with this question.

I can't think that the UK courts would request someone's visa to be canceled over an outstanding debt or that Thai immigration would listen even if they did.

Sounds like cobblers to me.

This seems to be the next Bike week worth attending. Not sure what's the best way from central Bkk. Out along Rama II (35) to Samut Songkham and do a right on to no4 highway maybe.

I'm not a biker but I have driven that (BKK-SS) road in a car before (admittedly a few years ago) and although its usually a faster way to get here than the bus route the state of the road was not what I would think would be fun on a bike. I know there have been some improvements in the SS area which was the worst bit but maybe someone else can give up to date advice.

I'm not in this thread often enough to see requests (sorry Surface and Pixiegirl) but maybe it's best if anyone who wants a demonoid code, pm's me. YoungBrother behaved excellently so my faith in downloaders has returned lol.

Thanks also MKASok for that URL- successfully signed up and just having a dig about

You're all kidding right?

I'm not even Scots, I'm English and I know that Haggis is delicious.

Don't watch it- just eat it.

So how many Americans were bombed in Bangkok this New Year? Or did they all listen to this sage advice and avoid the Traditional New Year 'bomb the American' festival?

I'm not gonna bash the US but I think that if you compare it to the UK (or maybe some other European places), there is a big difference. The US is not generally (tho' with some petty enormous and tragic exceptions) used to its citizens being bombed on their own soil. The Brits are- the IRA did it for years when I was working in London (and not just in London either). I remember my English MIL phoning us before when there were bombings in BKK saying 'oh you must come home'- we were like 'are you for real?'

So this makes them worried about this sort of thing.

Alternatively you may consider this to be just another part of the 'be very afraid' message that Western governments have been flogging for the last 10 years or so.

I know its off topic so my apologies; but Mickba, please be careful- you're situation sounds chillingly similar to that farang guy who got topped by his wife a few months back. She was being forced to live in the garden or something as I remember, and he ended up very dead. It was widely discussed on TV at the time.

My girlfriend, her brother and I were on Kho Phi Phi. We were really very lucky. Her brother and I were sitting on our balcony. Luckily being cheap charlies our guest house was about 200 m from the beach. We didn't see any wave, just a sudden flooding to the level of about 1.5M. At that point it all seemed very strange and quite funny. My other half wasn't quite so lucky.

She was down at the beach front at the ATM when the wave stuck. She heard people shouting "Run! Run" but thought to herself "sod it! I'm not losing my card" knowing how much hassle they are to replace with the police report and all, and obviously having no idea what was coming. Whilst she was waiting the wave swept in and the plucky little idiot ducked under the water, retrieved her card, and hung on to a lamp-post while the water receded, before making her way back to us. Still none of us had an idea of the severity of the situation.

With regards to the timing; it seems strange to me, as I would have sworn it was some time not too long before 9 am, but we'd been up partying all night so I guess my recollection could be faulty.

We went for a reccy to see what was going on, and that's when we started to realise the extent of the carnage- as we walked from the Muslim village area on the back road to town that passes the water treatment works we saw our first couple of bodies although how they'd got so far inland so quickly I still have no idea.

Somewhat shocked to find bodies lying at the side of the road we continued along until we came into the town at the very quiet end. The scene was absolute devastation. We quickly came across a guy who I reckon was responsible for saving many lives that day. He was marshalling what I would guess was 10-20 volunteers carrying the wounded from the beach across a nearly impossible landscape of rubble, trees, twisted metal and the like, using doors as stretchers. The biggest fear was that another wave would hit, and as we worked a shout would go up that another wave was on its way and everyone scattered to higher ground. We were stretchering people up to an undamaged guest house and at least one poor guy died as we were taking him up the hill. By this stage there were many bodies obvious to be seen all around. At one point I sat on some wreckage on the beach to take a breather and turned round to see some poor soul dead inches away. By this stage I had become strangely numb to the presence of dead bodies although I'd never seen one before in my life.

I saw a lot of horror that day but I saw a lot of good too. People (farang and Thai) were toiling in horrible conditions to help their fellow man. Over the course of the day we moved through the entire town and everywhere were people looking for people. We saw one heavily pregnant Thai woman who had injured her leg and couldn't walk.

Later we came across one of the island policemen and asked him if he could help her- he just shrugged. This is not meant of a criticism of him, but shows what I had still not grasped- that in the short-term there was nothing that could be done.

Eventually just about everyone in the area ended up sleeping on the hill behind the water works. A Thai family that lived up there provided their land, facilities, food and water to what must have been hundreds of people. That night everyone slept under the stars and heard reports that there were other areas of high land with people, which gave some hope to those missing loved ones.

What I remember most is the smell that was around. I have no idea what it was but I never want to experience it again.

To all those who lost loved ones that day, my sincerest condolences, and may those that passed away R.I.P.

[EDIT: Fixed annoying double spacing]

Having read your post, which does raise some interesting points, I still think the original question was rhetorical.

Add your own photo to your avatar. Prat!!

And you really look like yours?

Oh, sorry is that a voice from beyond the grave?

I think the point that Mr Daly was making was that Mr MyPhuket life is a fascist like the people in the photo of his avatar, so he should add himself to it, rather than your avatar should look like you.

Toodlepip

Working now...

Mine was one of the 1st things I ever drew in Flash. 10 points to anyone who can guess who it is.

Nope- I can't get it either. OpenDNS says specifically that it's their (tehparadox) servers that are failing.

My old maths teacher was called Mr Aspinall which sadly (for him) rejigs to Mr Anal Lips- how he suffered.

they have already formed the Puea Thai Party (PTP) for weeks.

First it's the TRT.

Then it's PPP.

So, now they stand-by PTP.

They never seems to get the 'right formula'

Everyone knows that the code for permanent good governance and social utopia is PRP, but sssh.. don't tell Somchai it's funny to watch him stumbling about. Mind you I guess it's pretty unlikely he'll be anything to do with it by then.

it just disappeared from view where i am

My neighbour just told me the name for this and true to form I've forgotten it already. The last word was yim ( ยิ้ม ) - smile. I daresay the first word(s) was moon but I can't remember what he said. Thai people have been ringing each other to tell point it out it seems. It's a sometime occurence here- he says he remembers a few from his childhood. Don't know the significance though maybe someone has some more history- it's bound to signify something.

BIB only do things for their own benefit, so most unlikely. Interesting thought though.

One thing is certain, it looks like BIB vs Army. Who does the majority hate more?

1+2= Clear battle lines have been drawn. Who do you think the majority will side with in the end?

Really?- they look pretty united in doing bugger all to me...

In the last few days TV seems to have been taken over by Trolls or Daily Mail readers- not sure which it is. The OP is a working example.

(Maybe it's both)

Well, all the gangs in (or most at least- strangely there's some posters you don't see any more). I'm off to another thread before this one loses the plot.

I don't know Garro- how many of the teachers in Thailand have your level of qualification? You should certainly expect to be in one of the plumbest jobs not one where you feel you have to 'blackmail' the management into getting your dues.

You don't say what you get paid -maybe it's a lot already. You could be working in an international school on 100k ++ and for sure they're giving a lot of extra benefits (Probably not in Lopburi admittedly). At the very least your school should be giving you annual incremental rises. I don't think it's really blackmail for you to point out how lucky they are to have you. If they won't look after you bite the bullet and move on one last time, but move on to a place you can stay at for 5 years or more with an increase after the end of each year. My school gives 10% year on year. I'm now in my 7th year and this has made a big difference to my lifestyle- I couldn't imagine going back to a 30k salary again even with free accommodation.

Anyway I hope you can bring them round to your way of thinking. Whether you can apply the pressure or not is probably dependant on your boss' attitude but you can be sure he won't like you going over his head. Seems to me that you would be better to have a good offer in your hand when you approach them, but then will you really want to stay at a place where you had to force their hand or rather go to a good new job who were willing to offer what you were worth from the get-go?

Sorry- this is a pretty old topic but I didn't notice at the time.

Actually there are quite a lot of farang in Ratchaburi- certainly in the town. My school alone employs 14 and neraly every school has at least one farang if not several. There are also quite a few lads living locally married to Thais- some retired, some contracting overseas for x months a year and some working in local industry.

If you want to meet farangs, check out Mum Sabai in town- a little street corner bar on Kathathorn road. It's a lively place and there's usually a farang presence but it's pretty well guaranteed on a Friday night.

Ha ha, thanks Plus- your post got me thinking.

I'm in favour of writing up a flash based assessment module, it's on my rather long to do list. I've made some flash based interactive tutorials (5 grades' worth) but developing the testing uses has so far eluded me- I can see it's mostly action-scripting. Unfortunately once I get into scripting I'm pretty clueless. I can script buttons or events in flash but nothing fancy. But you say on the server side so what would you use, not flash I'm presuming?

The students all save their files to a common folder on the LAN, I could make them save to a separately passworded folder of their own but it seems clumsy and when it came to harvest the files I'd be rooting around in 20 odd sub-folders. Again you might tell me I could do this with some sort of script- this is an area I badly need to research. Do you know of any handy links? Please PM me if you can't post them here.

Funnily enough Logo is a programming language and interface with a bias towards children. (Actually it's pretty cool- if there are any parents out there it's worth checking out- just google 'MSW Logo' and there's tons of good guidance materials out there too). Theoretically I imagine I should be able to write something in that to do the job, but the smarts just ain't there.

But as I was chewing over your post it made me remember something which I was stupid to forget. I copy the students' files from a central server to my memory stick so I can lounge in my chair at home to do my marking- when I do that all useful metadata is often wiped (well that's my experience of other programs anyway). Having checked logo it looks like its meta-data records are reasonably good. Although on my home pc it's not actually recorded anything- just lots of blank boxes.

I'm sure a programmer could help me but I suffer from this irritating need to re-invent the wheel. I think I understand what you're suggesting with a script that watermarks but I don't think I have anything like the skill to do it (yet) sadly! Any resource pointers would be extremely gratefully received.

Thanks again everyone for interesting, useful replies. I haven't solved the problem entirely to my liking yet but I think I have a work-around and some avenues to explore at my leisure.

Across the grades I use many different programs -the visual ones are no problem as you would immediately see. At the moment I'm using logo with some of my kids. The office family provides data about the author so make it easy (my students don't seem to have sussed you can change this yet)- as much as anything it's useful to be able to point out the evidence when you get the inevitable 'but I didn't copy teacher'.

Pretty well at the moment I guess I do as you are saying, in that I will spot jarring similarities when I mark so then have to go back and review which is sometimes time consuming and a bit irritating to be honest. That's why the information already provided by some programs is very useful- I can check the authors very quickly once I notice similarities. Sadly not all programs provide good properties data. As you suggest the comparison progs should speed up that process, especially for the logo work I'm doing now, as I expect the code to be very similar but any little common mistakes should turn up rather easily. But yes I'm only looking for files that are identical and then when I notice mistakes or anomalies common to both I can guess that this is a save-out version of someone elses file. I don't want to give the impression I'm obsessing about this ,lol,I'm not really hunting for copying but sometimes it's obvious, it just doesn't seem very scientific for computers to have to 'do it by hand'.

Anyway thanks for all the replies everyone.

Thanks Veazer -I'll give them a whirl.

I am not sure it would work at all, depending on the type of files, how they are edited and submitted etc.

From your description of the problem you want to prevent plagiarism between the students (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection) but if the work is submitted to, and reviewed by you, don't you notice when two works are similar enough to be copied? or they edit them enough to escape detection?

Just curious,

bbp

Yes, thanks bbp, haveing looked at it again I'm not sure it's helpful except by some very obscure and hard to execute application.

But, yeah; it's anti-plagarism. As I have to mark say 25 pieces of work the 'notice by eye' technique which means I then have to go and review (sometimes 5-6 times (lol 23-25 times)) the work to round up the guilty, and that's manually looking for the differences, is time consuming and rarely ultimately justified- just do a round up twice a term to catch thte kids who think they can get away with it. Programs like the office suite for example store info like the original author , but most do not, then you may have to look for extra spaces, diffent capital letters for example, and that's just hassle. If they are clever enough to edit the files they're uncatchable- you can only prove files that are identical really.

I've encouraged my students to realise that I know all and they can't get one over on me,which seems to do wonders for their motivation (to learn bad stuff-lol), but my defences are becoming stretched and I really would like a quick easy way to stamp a file so I know where it's come from.

Thanks for that inspiration about 'anti-plagiarism' tho- I've been thinking to much about hash codes and watermarks and searching on all the wrong things.

Hi BangkokBP-

Thanks for the reply. I've bumped up to Stenography a couple of times in my search but not pursued it. Strange really as I had a bit of a thing about it when I was younger and more revolutionary and didn't like the fact that governments can read my mail. (Since then, of course, I've realised that's it's boring and no-one would be interested.

Thanks for the link- I'll check it out