Related with the last post, here is a picture of Thierry Henry, and notice the uncanny similarity :P

Thierry Henry Lookalike

I've been a follower of English Premiership Football for a while, and my favorite club was Southampton. I adopted the club when I watched Southampton came from 2-0 to draw 2-2 with Newcastle at the Dell by one of England's most gifted but probably most unlikely Footballer - Matthew Le Tissier. Where as most of the country support bigger clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, or Leeds, I stuck with Southampton through the years and during the last few years, Southampton has progressed from being a pennerial relegation contender into a relative safe mid-table position.

However this year, things got off in an awful start and currently Southampton is lying low in relegation zone - a few months in the competition. This has been compounded with controversy over managers as our early manager Paul Sturrock got the sack after apparently having trouble with a few senior squad members and the chairman. After a long period of confusion, the caretaker Steve Wigley took over and things got worse with injuries to over 14 squad members and bad performances brought the club down the rankings. With all of this turmoil, its just that the younger players were allowed to play more, and I've got to see more of the younger players from the academy squad - which has been very solid in the last years - mainly Best and Blackstock.

Like old previous Southampton players like Luis Boa Morte - who I nicked named with Ian Wright lookalike (later called the headless chicken), I found that Blackstock looked very similar to Thierry Henry, so I quipped with my little bro who was a Middlesborough fan that we got an Henry Lookalike, and I hope he plays half as well X'D Well during the first few games, seeing the physical side of the Henry Lookalike I do think he has potential, and in the latest game against Colchester, he scored a hattrick to allow the Saints to win the game. Oh well, its a bright start for this young fella, and I hope to see more from him in the following months - too lift all the doom and gloom there :P

Picture: I think he should be a little more careful

Picture: I think he should be a little more careful - This is a picture of some Democrat supporters in USA. I noticed they were passionate just like how the Bush/Cheney supporters are. Though I personally don't like both sets of candidates, and I don't support any of the two; I just couldn't help but notice this absurb picture that was posted today's paper related with John Kerry in the US elections. I suppose the supporter on the right didn't notice he placed the poster upside down ;)

Castro the Fall Guy?

During the other day, I've heard from an online chatroom that Castro has taken a fall, and most of us here were wondering what happened. Did some US commando unit finally assasinated Fidel Castro, Dictator for Life of Cuba? In the chatroom itself, there was a huge discussion on this topic, in which there were many mixed emotions based on the rather curious news we got. Some of them were verging on the edge of vulgar, whereas some of them were more muted, and some of them were indisbelief in hearing about the infallable's dictator's unconventional fall.

After that, I decided to visit the CNN website, in which I found the scoop on his fall. After reading through the article, I just can't help but admire that old man, if you notice through this report:

The 78-year-old leader missed a step down from a rostrum as he was walking back to his seat and crashed down heavily.

In an effort to calm the crowd, Castro took the microphone after a few minutes, saying, "Just so that there won't be any speculation, it seems that I broke my knee."

He apologized for any concern he may have caused those who care about him, and then joked about how his spill was likely to make headlines in the international media.

Looking shaken, the Cuban leader of 45 years was taken to a hospital, where he said he would probably get a cast. He promised to get back to normal as soon as possible.

Personally, I'm a huge fan of Castro. Though Castro known as a dictator and has been vilified for many decades by USA due to its Communist leanings and because of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the hugely embarassing Pay of Pigs, I have much to admire from him. Though the west have been shedding Dictatorship in bad light, I have to say that Castro is an example of what we call a benevolent dictator. Though most people consider dictators to be megamaniacs with ultra egos, a tendency to tot their hardware around, and a huge insantisable desire for riches, Fidel Castro as a leader has been very different. I find that his policies in Education and Healthcare has been one of the most progressive - and is a sign of a good policies. Though there is severe economic problems in Cuba, I wanted to point out that it was caused by the failure of the Communist System and coupled with US embargos (and pressure against all trading partners of Cuba) and interests, it is evident that any country placed under such situation would be in trouble. If you look at a close example, Iraq during the preinvasion period is a standout example. Though many people might associate Saddam as another dictator, I don't think that Castro has built so many lavish palaces and stashed away his funds in secret Swiss bank accounts :P

Talking about it, the major falling of Castro is to embrace an Communist ideology that has been deemed out of touch of the world. His leadership is a dictatorsihp, which is also deemed as a danger to the world by our biased media. Though there are numerous cases of bloodthirsty and dangerous dictators, it has been stressed very little that sometimes authoritian rule can unite and push the country forward to prosperity. Singapore is one good example. Strangely enough Pakistan, with General Musharaf is a major US ally and is a military dictator. In a curious note the Saudi Arabia which is a huge ally of the US is a monarchy which rules over its country in an ironfist Islam fundamentalist way which is similar to an authoritian dictatorship. Its strange to see how a small insignificant country and dictator like Castro to be taking the flack for many of the US old failed policies in Latin America?

It doesn't make too much sense. Talking about democracy, its quite laughable to see how things are at Iraq at the moment. Iraq is an example where a strong leadership must be installed. As Iraq consists of 3 major groups - the Sunni, the Shiite, and the Kurds, there is no way a divided country can easily agree on itself without a strong leadership! Democracy does not provide strong leaderhips. It gives the choice to the people, but if the people are not prepared or not united enough to take elections in a mature way, we can see that elections will never solve any problems. It can only get worse as the government elected would be severely tested by the other two factions. Now include vested US interests in Iraq, I just have to foresay that its highly likely nothing good will happen in Iraq for a long while.

Dictatorship is just another form of governing, much like democracy. Economic systems such as free capitalism or communism are just systems, and none of them are inheretly good or evil. What matters is the leaders behind the system, and how they govern their country.

Productivity Burst

Today, it seems I'm on a high productivity burst. Maybe its got to do with sleeping 10 hours yesterday instead of my usual 5-7 hour sleep. Anyway, other than solving a few very big research issues today, write a few blogs, I've also finally create a forum and a picture gallery at the cycle-soft.com website. Well there is nothing there right now, but it will gradually be worked upon.

Talking about it the picture gallery at http://www.cycle-soft.com/photo is currently being updated, and we got a few pics up. As one of our members is a photographer, I'm sure he would be uploading alot of his pictures to this new dynamic photogallery instead of the old static one. This one is nice as it got a online-picture management system, rating system, comment system, and gallery albums which makes it really useful :)

Oh well, once there are more significant updates there, I'll poke here again reporting on the updates ;)

Alas... Democracy... Alas!!!

If I remember it correctly, the underlying principles of a democracy is that a representative elected from the people would be serving the people - which is the majority? I just wonder why these days people are resigning to the fact that politicans are serving the rich minority, and all of us should suck it up on the guise that is only a token benefits to the huge majority - as acceptable?

Picture: An Array of Bicycles

Picture: An Array of Bicycles - On my visit to KMUTT (Bang Mod), I happen to see that a sizable number of students ride bicycles to their university which is a welcome sight. Riding public transport and using non-polluting ways of transportation is a good start in how we can make our world a better place :)

Picture: Bicycle Parking

Picture: Bicycle Parking - Its rare to find bicycles in Bangkok. It has got to do with the fact that Bangkok is hot, humid, and polluted, so most people prefer to ride in air-conditioned vehicles - even for short 100-200 m drives to a local grocer/barber.

The Travels of a Can of Coke

Today was a routine day going to work. I usually walk from my home to the bus stop at the Ratchada/Sutthisarn interjunction which was about a 2km walk from my home. Today, since I left a little later than usual, I found that I was rather thirsty from the routine walk so I went to Seven-Eleven to get a quick drink. I bought myself a can of coke, and decided to walk to the bus stop asap so that I won't miss the bus when it came. To my dismay, I've noticed that the trash cans along the intersection has been removed, and there was no trash can in visual sight except the one at the Seven Eleven mini-mart - which was a 100 meters walk from the bus station. After a short thought, my bus came, so I decided to bring my empty can of coke for a ride until I find the next trash can.

The bus I rode on, was 137, and it went from Ratchada/Sutthisarn Intersection into its depot along Ratchadapisek Road. When I disembarked from the bus to board a new one, I was looking around for a trash can. There was none in sight. So after a short decision, I decided to bring my can of coke for another ride.

This time, the bus went along Ratchadpisek road, and then turned to RamaIX and then into Ramkamhaeng road when I disembarked again along the BigC bus stop. To my dismay, I found out that all the trash cans have mysteriously disappeared again. I walked about 50 meters to the closest 7-11 minimart, and this one has no trash can in front. I've noticed some 7-11 minimart have removed the trash cans from their store especially ones that are in busy stops.

So without a trash can in sight, I decided to walk down the road until I finally found a trash can inside Big-C superstore, and that was the end of my Can of Coke journey.

What I do want to comment is that I'm completely aghasted at the lack of trash cans on the streets of Bangkok. I remember on a similar occsaion, when I strolled down Silom area, there was NO TRASH CAN in the short 2 km walk!

If you are wondering what has happened, let me explain the major reasons why they were removed. The first reason is from our last Bangkok governor Samak complained that the trash cans were eye-sores and had to be removed. The second major reasons was during the APEC meeting, a number of security officers have claimed trash cans to be a bomb-hazard as terrorists can easily hide their bombs in trash cans. With the combination of both these factors, the number of trash cans have progressively been removed from Bangkok.

Strange strange... I wouldn't be surprised if someday Bangkok would be named the litter-bug paradise in Asia. Thinking about it, since we don't have designated trash cans, then it means we can dump it anywhere? Just a satire, I'm not serious on that litterbug part :P

File Type Extension Quiz

I just noticed an interesting quiz that asks you what type of File Extension you are and did it. Here is the result of my quiz:




Which File Extension are You?

Interesting Quote

I just stumbled on a very interested quote when I was firing up Call of Duty, which is a great game which goes like this:

"He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere."
- Ali ibn-Abi-Talib

I thought it was interesting so I posted it here.

To Be Or Not To Be?

I was thinking about the Shakespeare quote - To Be Or Not To Be? - for quite a while in one stormy and boring afternoon when my UBC got disconnected after a horrible thunderstorm.

During that time, I just reached nirvana, and I finally figured what that quote meant and I can prove it, so many centuries after Shakespeare first popped the question. I decided to ask the members at my local forum if they knew the answer, and I've received a few interesting answers, which I'll list below here:

ma3x
In my opinion this is equivalent to:
"To live, or not to live" or "To exist or not to exist".

prl
I never read any Shakespeare's but I would map your
"TO BE OR NOT TO BE"
to

สมุทัย สาเหตุทำให้เกิดทุกข์ คือ ตัณหา ความอยากอันไม่มีที่สิ้นสุด แบ่งออกเป็น ๓ ลักษณะ
ก. กามตัณหา ความอยากได้ ในสิ่งที่ต้องการ เช่น อยากมีเงินมาก ๆ อยากมีบ้านสวย ๆ เป็นต้น
ความอยากเหล่านี้ ถ้าอยากมากก็ทุกข์มาก ถ้าอยากน้อยก็ทุกข์น้อย
ข. ภวตัณหา ความอยากเป็น ตามที่ตนต้องการเป็นก็เป็นทุกข์ ไม่น้อยกว่าความอยาก
ประการแรก เช่น เห็นเขาเป็นเจ้านาย ก็อยากเป็นกับเขาบ้าง เห็นเขาเป็นใหญ่
เป็นโต ก็อยากเป็นกับเขา ฯลฯ
ค. วิภวตัณหา ความไม่อยากเป็นอะไรทั้งสิ้น ก็เป็นเหตุให้เป็นทุกข์ได้เหมือนกัน เพราะความ
อยากไม่เป็น บางครั้งก็เกิดจากความไม่สมปรารถนานั่นเอง เช่น ปรารถนาสิ่งใด
ก็ไม่สมหวัง จึงทำให้น้อยเนื้อต่ำใจ หรือเกิดจากอารมณ์กลัว วิตก ฯลฯ

http://www.geocities.com/chanpagon/BD-L.html


Tu-Sais-Qui
I got my answer for a long time, but it’s impossible and unchangeable. Finally, I’m still in the loop, and fall into the local optimum again and again.

What you read above are some interesting answers, but none of them can be proved. So without further delay, I want to show the following answer:

0x2B | ~ 0x2B = 0xFF

LOL (You won't understand this if you are not in a science/engineering related field :P)

Wasp Tales

I got stung by a freaking wasp yesterday. Now I won't mind if it stung me in the arms, in the legs, but it had the audacity to hit me straight on head.

How does it feel? Well all I can say is that I have this terrible headache, and it pretty much hurts likes crazy :-/

Sorted Garbage Bins

Picture: Sorted Garbage Bins: This is a rarity in Thailand. In Thailand, we usually don't sort the trash here. Trash are usually dumped together, and there are scavengers, who make a living sorting the trash between recycled garbage and plain waste.

Though personally I do feel that we should try to move forward to a better garbage sorting system, but on a hindsight, this would affect the scavenger profession - a big reason why moving forward to completely sorted trash may not be good in every aspect.

This just shows that there are still very serious underlining problems with the education system here, where a huge number of unskilled labors who lack work - have to work in professions such as scavenging. Coupled with huge indifference in the general population on recycling, it seems that this problem will be here for at least another generation...

Picture: Office Strangeness #2 - Well I wonder if this is edible :P Oh well, strange things happen in the office place, and I really wonder what will the owner of the keyboard do :P

Picture:Office Strangeness - Don't leave your office too long. You never know what will happen, like in the example of this picture :P

Picture: Ghost Picture O_o

Picture: Ghost Picture - Before you look at it, and say this was a cheap photoshop retouched picture, I want to point out that this is my first experiment with multiple exposure on a film camera. What I did was to change the setting of my film camera to take a picture initially. Then I later took another picture on the same part of the film (using multiple exposure) to superimpose the second photo on the first one. What you see is the process of that, and a strange picture indeed ;)

Happy Birthday to Little Bro

Just a short note that I want to wish my little bro a very happy birthday.

Yes that is it. This is how lovely our family is. We don't care about public shows of affection :P

Finally I got ADSL

Okay, after months of procastination and argument between the three brothers, we finally agreed to get the ADSL service from TRUE. The major reason why we were complaining was about which type of ADSL modem we should get. In the inital process we were looking for an ADSL modem with WiFi router in itself, so that it would be easy to setup internet sharing between our computers. Anyway, that device cost around 5k, which is alot more than we three scrooges were willing to pay, so we decided to get a free ADSL modem and just simply apply for the ADSL service.

Nothing much to say though. The internet is alittle faster, which means its easier and faster to do stuff. Anyway, I was quite used with 56k modems, I really don't care too much about the latency anymore. Anyway, extra speed is nice, much like having alittle extra horsepower to browsing :)

Anyway, more bandwidth doesn't mean the solution to everything in the Internet. One good example, is this blog site. I won't be updating this any more frequent due to faster bandwidth, so notice that technology is nothing without the personnel behind the technology utilizing it to the maximum benefit ;)

The Honest Taxi Driver

I want to recollection a tale about a taxi ride today.

Today I had to meet one of my associates at IT Mall at Ratchada and I was in a rush, so I decided to hop on a taxi from Ramkamhaeng Road. I told the taxi driver that I wanted to go to Lotus Ratchada - since most taxi drivers assume them to be the same place. On the way there, the taxi driver drove in a rather strange way. Instead of going the usual RamaIX road, the taxi went through the short cut at Wat Theplila instead. Though it was strange, the route is another short cut that we could take so I didn't really mind. However after doing to the route, it happened that the taxi driver suddenly went in the opposite direction, in which I was surprised and quickly asked which way he was driving.

He replied me he was going to Lotus Ram Intra - which was a little up the road.

Its seems that he was confused about the destination. I was alittle mad at first considering that I know a few unscroupulous taxi drivers will intentionally go the wrong way in order to get a higher fee.

Anyway, after reaching the destination, the fee of the taxi came up to 111 baht, which was alittle more expensive that usual. I was planning just to pay up and forget about the whole incident - but before I managed to pay, the taxi driver told me that he would ask only for 100 baht instead of the cost in the meter.

This is the first time I ever had a taxi driver that seem apologetic for going in the wrong direction, so I decided to give him 120 baht instead. The amount was more than what I was expected to pay, but I think that it was well worth to reward those who are honest as its rather hard to find these breed of people these days.

My Tribute to Win

Okay before peeps get confused, this post is a tribute to one of my close friends since highschool whose name is actually Win. Yes I'm not kidding.

If I talk about my highschool years that has been rather forgettable - due to a myraid of reasons - I still have fond memories because I had the luck to be in the same group as a number of great individuals. In my immediate clique - we call our clique the "under the stairs club (USC)" in which we occupy a small area beneight the auditorium grounds as our stomping ground. In the intial stages our club has like 3 members. I want to show you a picture of how it was decades ago:




If you look at the picture, you can see the person in the right who is sleeping is Nick, who is the original founder of this club. He is a gaming and RPG freak and is often seen carrying cartoons(Manga) around with him all the time. The person in the left using the strange device is me. I share alot of common traits with Nick. The person in the middle is Win, who is a little different as he is less obsessed than me and Nick. Though Win never really got into RPG, his cynical comments on our RPG session added depth to the game play.

If you were wondering what this was all about, I could say it simply that this club was like a gathering of nerds and geeks :P Anyway though we weren't that cool, the USC club grew in number as we had the penchant to do rather interesting things out of the blue, like at times we changed into a board game club and other modes of entertainment ;) Anyway, the number grew quite huge and we had many more members during the years and gained more acceptance - and that was a surprise. In many schools we can see those geeks and nerds being trampled on, bullied, or made fun of, in our group we actually do have a huge influence in the outcome of our class year - which is strange. Anyway maybe it has to do with all the neutrals that prefer the underdogs :P

After those wacky and zany highschool years, we kind of split ways due to further education. At the present, I'm here as I am. Nicky went to study in the US in Missouri (which we kind of make fun of him by saying how much his like is a misery without those cartoons :), and Win who graduated from Sweden in IC design and started working in Thailand for a while.

Anyway Win is going to study again, so I just thought that it was fitting to make a short recollection of how the zany highschool years were and wish luck on the person that we say is mostly likely to be a PhD graduate. Good luck, and wish for you, all the best ;)

Picture: Cover of My 2nd Online Music Album

Picture: Cover of My 2nd Online Music Album - On one odd evening a few days ago, when I had dinner with a group of friends I haven't met for a long time, my phone rang, and the people on the table were laughing at the ring tone. They told me it was probably one of the most queer opening 5 seconds of any song.they have heard. Well they were quite right, the song that I used for my ring tone was this song called Progressive F - and it begins with a very obnoxious "Come Up" challenging the listener in a rather aggrevating way :P Oh well, talking about that, I decided to continue and talk about my little stint as an online international online music artist. The picture on the left is the picture to my 2nd online album which is mostly based on sampled, experimental, and DJ type of music. Though most of them gave me rather odd faces - as most of my friends thing I've a rather one dimensional computer specialist and rambler :P Well by showing a strange side of yourself to surprised people is one way to hold a conversation for a while, and I've got a few tricks up my sleeves ;)

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Take a huge breath. Close your eyes. Count 1 - 10. Repeat it over again.


It seems that its very easy to blow one's fuse in today's chaotic world, so just wanted to remind all of us to keep our cool in stressful situations. Once emotion takes over, sometimes we do things we regret. Remember that glass that are broken can never be repaired, and that should be a big reminder for all of us - though I wish to reserve alot of that to myself.

Anger Management!

RAWR!!!!!