phuket Mike

thanks for that looks like a useful site.

Where did you get that sandbox from? I've been looking for a solution for my son as well.

Sorry don't let my name fool you, I am in Chiang Mai

When do you start doing your xmas products? I'm really interested in the mince pies, what I would also like is some cooked roast turkey as I don't have an oven at home. I could then make a xmas dinner at home with cold turkey.

In the UK an MOT Test is an annual test given to motor vehicles by a government approved inspector, it tests the vehicles general road worthiness. MOT stands for Ministry of Transport. Because MOT has been around for so long the word or acronym is now used in general language meaning an overall test of something. For example "I'm going to see my doctor for my annual MOT", or you might take your computer to someone for an MOT.

Here's a reply from a department of labour official to a similar enquiry I found on a Phuket newspaper site.

"You can help your husband with his business, however, according to the Foreign Workers Employment Act BE 2551, if you assist in a trade or occupation which is carried out for profit, whether or not you receive pay or reward for that employment, you are required to have a work permit."

It's a question of whether the sale of latex is classed as making profit. Speaking as someone who worked on my wife's rubber farm for 6 years without a problem or work permit, I would say don't worry about it. Most of the locals were happy to see a farang doing the same work as them. As for someone in competition dobbing you in, there is no competition rubber tree farmers can sell all the latex they produce.

Looks more like a Mock Viper to me - http://www.siam-info.de/english/snakes_psamnodynastes.html they are mainly present in the south of Thailand and harmless.

I went through this last week for my new work permit, I went to a hospital here in Chiang Mai and had the VDRL blood test for Syphillis. Total cost 200 baht. They will not test for anything else because it would cost more. There is a possibility of a false positive from this test but only in certain people, if you do test positive they will then do a more specific Syphillis test.

From what I understand this test is only required for new work permits not renewals.

I'm going offer a reply to this as I am the same age and have recently moved to Chiang Mai having lived elsewhere in Thailand for the past ten years. I really like CM it's more of a normal life, there a busy tourist industry here but not sex and sand, visitors seem to be a bit more sophisticated. It does have it's problems with pollution at certain times but also access to some really beautiful scenery, loads to do and see. From what I've seen of the local expat community it seems pretty friendly, a good mixture of singles and married people. We also have a local soccer team, who are by no means brilliant but going to a game is a good night out.

I have to agree with what's already been said and say that Chiang Mai is a great place to live.

Mike is correct. You will need to promote the generic URL initially, and find 25 people to "Like" your business page before you can change the generic URL to a custom name.

I just added a url to a page with only 14 likes... and I recall creating a URL for my personal account the day I created it.

Anything is possible with Facebook, the interface is full of bugs, I actually managed to create a custom URL on one of my pages, that only had 2 likes, but Facebook's own documentations states 25 likes and in most of the time this is case. Strangely I have gone through 5 or 6 pages that only have a few likes, all were ineligible for a custom URL except one, which has 4 likes and it allowed a custom URL.

So I would keep trying it from time to time you never know.

I just found this article that throw some light, if the account only has one page it may work.

http://just-ask-kim.com/facebook-custom-vanity-url-no-like-requirements/

It won't let you create a custom Facebook URL until your page has 25 likes.

When walking through a Thai market on a hot day breath through your mouth.

Always knock on a toilet door before trying it, just because it has a lock doesn't mean people use it (that picture of my mother-in-law squatting is one I will take to my grave).

If your in a toilet in a bar or restaurant just because the button is pushed in doesn't mean the door won't open, if possible keep your foot against it or something else (that restaurant full of people in Patong probably didn't want that image of me sat on the toilet burned into their memory)

If you live near your wife's family expect them to share your clothes, tools, motorbike, car

If you buy a new washing machine everyone else's clothes will be washed in it except yours.

Take people as you find them, if your honest and keep your word you will always find others that do the same.

Facebook flattens animated Gifs so they don't work. There are a number of apps that allow you to add animated gifs to facebook here's one that works. Animated Pictures

Guy Fawkes - "the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions"

I live just outside Trang and as yet there hasn't been any major problems, a few small items seem to be in short supply (mama noodles) but everything else is okay and definitely no price hikes. I would have thought your best stop off point if you wished to stock up would be Krabi, you will be driving past Tesco, Big C and Makro on the way to Phuket.

The TOPS shop in Robinsons Trang isn't very big and in my opinion not worth the trip, the same can be said for Tesco Trang. My favourite would be Big C in Krabi and possibly Makro for some bulk items.

Stay the hell away from bluehost!

They stuff accounts on shared servers and CPU throttle like mad. Their tech support is useless and if you run into slow MySQL query problems (you will eventually) or constant CPU throttling they'll first suspend and then terminate your account.

There isn't much to choose between them, they all cock up at some point. I've hosted stuff on Bluehost for over 5 years, all MySQL based and never had a problem, but it's not difficult to find people that have. As for Tech Support, again they more or less all do the same thing, close a ticket whether the problem is fixed or not.

Shared hosting is cheap in every way and not designed for business critical systems. As for referrals Dreamhost pay $97 dollars, and $5 for everyone your referrers refer, so that's probably the best deal.

Register your domain with anyone (I use Gem3.com), host with Bluehost, Dreamhost, Hostgator - all good. Install Wordpress 3.2 from the Fantastico section of the control panel. Go to themeforest or similar and find a suitable Wordpress theme that looks nice and professional, maximum cost $40, but make sure to look if they have an affiliate scheme first (Themeforest pay 30% of the initial desposit).

Also check hosting company affiliate schemes before buying hosting Bluehost pay $65 US, Hostgator $50 etc. There's nothing wrong in referring yourself.

If you look for a theme where the company name is textual rather than graphical, you can change it via the WP dashboard without any knowledge of HTML or graphics programs.

One you register with Adsense there are loads of Wordpress plug-ins that with automatically put the ads in your content, as for affiliate you r already started with your hosting company.

If you do that you will have the framework of a nice looking site, it's then up to you to add the content via pages and posts.

If you're serious about driving traffic to your site you may also want to create a Facebook fan page and link the content of your site to via RSS (really simple syndication). Wordpress has RSS built-in and there's a free Facebook app called RSS Graffiti that will link the content.

Thanks for all the advice guys, it's probably made me more confused than ever. I am currently trying a few different distros out with VMWare and I also need to test the apps that I use. To be honest I do really want to make a full switch, I have a laptop that on Windows 7, so can use that for any Windows specific stuff.

As for a database tool I am probably going to buy Navicat for Linux once I'm certain it meets all my needs.

Thanks again and I will let you know how I get on. I will probably be back with more questions.

I will always consider Wine, it's a good option - need to test my app first.

I never considered the virtual machine option going to take a look at vmware, the microsoft addon and virtual box.

Thanks for the help.

I've been a heavy Windows user for a long time. Played with Linux from time to time in various forms. My current thinking is to go with 64bit Fedora 15 on my main desktop. I don't care about Windows Software, I don't use office and have recently ditched Dreamweaver.

I have a fairly high spec machine i7 processor with 8gb of RAM, but have found Windows 7 is slowly eating up all my resources.

The only Windows application that I need that is not on Linux is a Database Design tool called Dezign, I can't do without it, but I can move it my laptop for the time being.

If any one knows of a Linux app for graphical database design I would be very grateful and also opinions of Fedora V Ubuntu.

I will also be heading back to the UK in a few months and getting back into the job market so if anyone has any info on what distro is widely used in companies that would be helpful, I've seen plenty of people using Centos which is based on Fedora.

I'm not particularly looking for job supporting Linux, but as my background is in tech support it would be useful to have some more recent Linux experience.

Thanks in advance.

I think Dave has pretty much covered your issues.

I would just add that the advantage of using Feedburner is that firstly it provides statistics i.e. how many people have subscribed to your feed etc. It also allows you to add adverts (Adsense) to your feeds, I think the jury is still out on whether this is an effective revenue generator. As it's free it makes sense to use it.

As for a 404 page, that mainly depends on your theme, some themes do some don't, if it doesn't you can easily add one by copying the default 404 page and modifying it your requirements.

Google Analytics is probably your best choice although it's takes some time to learn, if you are using Adsense then it's a must.

Going by your description this looks like Dean, if it is there is a photo which may help people.

http://dean-batty.gonetoosoon.org/

There is also a reference to Ao Nang which may help.

It sounds to me that Windows is detecting some hard disk problems and so is trying to do a chkdsk (check disk) to repair the disk or flag any bad sectors. My laptop did exactly this for while. Maybe it's finding a lot of disk errors and so restarting to try again.

If you can connect the disk to another machine, you can check it for errors using the Windows error checking option, delete any old files and defrag it. Put it back in your laptop and try again.

You also want to get it professionally cleaned inside as heat is a big problem for laptops in Thailand and if it's full of dust this makes the heat a big problem.

I have a Wildfire which I bought here in Thailand for 8900 baht a few months ago, it's now 7900 baht because is S is here now. I would go for a Wildfire with an AIS 3G sim, it doesn't work everywhere on 3G but drops back to Edge. DTAC Edge is painfully slow where I an at least (Southern Thailand). USB Tethering is very easy and works out of the box.

I have had the same problem here in Trang today. What I have found is the connection is timing out, when the page comes up with the error and a reload page option, the reload works. I am using Google Chrome and Google DNS (8.8.8.8)