watutsi

Living in Bangkok i usually use this festival as an excuse to leave the country.This year probably to save some money i decided to get wet, also it is good to face your demons / fears /prejudices now and again, so i wrapped my camera in cling film and headed for the Belly of the Beast, Khao San Road.

Those of you who have stayed indoors for the past 3 days, this is what you are missing ----- or not.

I came across this http://theonlinephot...n-internet.html when i was looking for something else.It is probably even more relevant today than it was then. If you trawl down to the readers comments after the article, there is a link to a flickr page where the guy posted a Cartier Bresson picture as his own,the evaluations are also interesting.

How do you determine the scale of how your image appears on the screen,using the Attach File method. i realise that everybody does not have the same size screen but is there a rule of thumb to get the image to fit the screen edge to edge.Images that i had scaled 9 inches across for printing were much smaller than this when posted and clicked on, so is it just a matter of scaling up a bit more ? Also i see some posts where the image is way larger than my screen [15 inches] to show fine detail on photos ,is this just a matter of scaling the image up to 20 or 30 inches and keeping the pixel ratio at 72pp or what ? My screen is 12 & half inches across what size should my pictures be to fit approx side to side. thankyou

I'm loving the Faithless video watutsi.

It seems Kim Jong -il had a purpose after all .

North Korea being in the news today reminded me of this ;

Amazing but scary;

Picasso

-bought a Picasso litho (signed) and several Miros at an auction for a friend,

-wife says let's keep them, they add a nice contrast,

-did not really mind the Miros, just thought "women folks and their irrational farts",

-hung the Picasso in the rarely used library,

-whenever i read a book and paused i hesitated to look up, because...

-...the Picasso showed an ugly² nekkid woman with shifted eyes, twisted limbs and the hairiest woolly-woolly on earth,

-was happy when my friend took the paintings a few years later.

I keep my Picasso postcard on a rarely used shelf.

Then i suggest you buy your 5 year old daughter a decent camera, hire her a publicist, and retire.

P is for Professional

if you are still fascinated the next 3 episodes are here http://www.youtube.c...ACattack/videos

Two videos by top fashion photographers. The Robert Palmer video is by Terence Donovan and was credited with making the song a global hit.The video having a bigger impact than the song.

The Pet Shop Boys video is by Bruce Weber, who was shooting those Calvin Klein ads for Obsession with Kate Moss at the time.This video almost makes me want to be young again, was this how it really was?

and something from Africa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-4QsrjFDgo

Time for some reggae

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPwqtRAGUK8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8szRgIcYlY

Music Video masterpiece ;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP9zfmTry8w&feature=related

The great Fela - "Water no get enemy". Probably not heading for the Thai Top Ten anytime soon

Please Kobrien some info on the first photograph, what ? where ? w.t.f. ?

Crocodile photo a bit suspicious it is either dead or stuffed, great photo but would love a caption.

Info for people not in Bangkok :

All my photos are taken in a small community in Chinatown, the flooding here is caused by the volume of water in the river meeting the high tide from the sea.This is not the same as the flooding to the north of Bangkok which is a vast lake of uncontained water gradually moving south.The people in this community are more used to flooding as it happens here to a lesser extent most years.The photographs are my take on their ability to carry on as normal albeit in 2 or 3 feet of water.The communities to the north have a more serious situation to deal with and it is definitely not business as usual.

Given the vast scale of this disaster, covering a significant percentage of Thailand, it would be interesting to hear and see from some other members how it is impacting their community.

From yesterday

Tuesday : took a camera with me today, it is easier to wade through the current with it round my neck than struggling with a phone in my hand

Monday

Difficult to follow the previous link but here are some phone shots from this morning [sunday]

Chao Praya tonight, friday 28th october 2011, looking benign and beautiful.The water almost looks clean and there has been no river traffic for about a week giving it a more serene quality - camera is lying again.

The only bottled water they had at swampy airport today was Evian which costs 45 baht for 300ml. I evacuated from rangsit unversity today, the 7/11s and family marts there had built concrete and sandbag walls out the front and then closed. That was a sign that it was time to go.

doesnt look like there are any foundations ????? .... this wall will just collaspe under the pressure of the water

After a blessing from a Monk and maybe some black magic, it should hold any amount of water.

I live in Talad Noi next to the river and for the past 2 weeks i have watched store owners choose between bricks & mortar or sandbags. We have been flooded for the past 2 days ,and the results are in. Bricks & mortar 99% success, haphazard sandbags 99% failure

FWIW, you can register for Call Detail records, from within the eService platform, and then be able to view all debits/credits/calls etc. I assume any special service deductions would show up. Some have reported that the registration process is challenging, there was a thread on it recently here.

I use Google Translate, on an Android smartphone, which has a 1-button "SMS Translate" function, to interpret all SMSes in Thai. Generally SMSes service offers require proactive registration with a service code, and I've never heard of any where you are required to opt out.

It would be nice to get more detail on the exact offering which may have caused problems for you,

"...it was something called "Content Partner" which is in some way connected to AIS, they said PROBABLY i was sent an sms in Thai offering a free trial of something and if i didn't want it i had to CANCEL it or it would very quickly become very expensive. "

as this sounds a bit unbelievable. But I think we all understand the communications issues here.

"I have since checked into my account and sure enough something called MEntertainment has been bombarding me with mms's at a cost of about 40+ baht every day for about 2 weeks.Although i am unaware of ever receiving whatever content they were sending."

Generally one does not pay for received MMSes, other than for the data connection time/volume. How did you arrive at the 40 baht figure?

Finally, you can request that your number be removed from any 3ed part promotional SMSes. This has worked for many in the past, but sometimes they start back up again after a few months. I have not received any promotional SMSes from One-2-Call in well over a year. Truemove was less accommodating on this front, and DTAC/Happy has been good: I have not received any 3rd party promotional SMSes from them since signing up ~ 7 weeks ago.

As i said ,i was scratching my head as i found the explanation a bit unlikely, but it had the atmosphere of saving face, and they were very vague about how it could have happened when i kept asking them,that's why i stressed they used the word "probably"

I now have access to my account details and the charges which started the day after i started my package are listed like this, under MMS'S

mEntertainment - 1 unit - 12.84 baht

they would send 3 every day , all within a 30 minute period, as i've already said i was unaware of receiving anything that i may have been being charged for, but they cleared out about 700 baht in over 2 weeks. I am very careful about opening up or clicking on things i don't understand, so i really i am still unclear how this happened, other than a version of their explanation.I don't think they would have so readily replaced my balance unless the blame lay somewhere in their court.

I started a Volume Smart Phone Package with AIS about 3 weeks ago. After i had paid for the package and topped up my sim i had a balance of about 700 baht still in my account.As this was all new to me i kept a very close watch on everything i was doing with my new phone.Very quickly i noticed that money was leaving my balance at an enormous rate, at first i thought i had misunderstood the package ,but soon came to the conclusion something was not right

.I went into the AIS offices at Central World, and they also saw that there was something amiss as my balance was now zero. They said it would take a few days to check. OK that was last week,i have just returned from AIS, their explanation was it was something called "Content Partner" which is in some way connected to AIS, they said PROBABLY i was sent an sms in Thai offering a free trial of something and if i didn't want it i had to CANCEL it or it would very quickly become very expensive. I have since checked into my account and sure enough something called MEntertainment has been bombarding me with mms's at a cost of about 40+ baht every day for about 2 weeks.Although i am unaware of ever receiving whatever content they were sending.

The people at AIS were very helpful and my full balance has been returned but i'm still scratching my head that i had to opt out of something i didn't want .Not reading Thai of course does not help but i have been ignoring sms's in Thai for the last few years without any problems,and i can not think of a good reason why this form of " selling" is being forced on their customers other than to rip them off.So pay more attention to all these sms's in Thai.