Category: Photos

Having a truck is nice

Yes, I can fit all of these things in my normal cars. But I don’t need to dust them off or lay down plastic because it’s a TRUCK.

Honestly, the Mitsubishi pickup truck fills a very specific role in Thailand – it has enough loyal fans that buy them new to enable secondhand value hunters like me to find customized gems that are good for another couple hundred thousand kilometers or whatever. These things lose value like crazy compared to the top-tier pickup brands like Toyota and Isuzu, yet are equal in most functions to other mid-tier brands like Nissan (best for towing) and Mazda (best interior). If you just need a cheap, reliable truck in Thailand, Mitsu is the obvious choice.

This is where the tiles were going (although they were just temporarily placed in this photo, along with a butane cassette burner because we were going to replace our gas range). We had a sheet of dark glass as the splash guard for the wall since we built the house, but it finally broke. So Nam’s older sister gave us these nice tiles she brought from Bangkok.

I switched from a Google Pixel 6 to a Xiaomi 15t

Of course, it’s a much newer phone, but it’s pretty hard to deny that even the newest Pixels don’t have big flaws. I am mainly attracted to them because of the cameras and stock Android. But the Xiaomi is no slouch on the photo front, and has better reception and battery capacity/usage. I debloated it by deleting all the preinstalled crap first thing by running commands from my PC, and I’m happy with it.

Here are some photos I snapped, mainly from car windows. I got them off of a chat group I sent them to, so they’ve been degraded a bit.

YOU ARE PASSING ANOTHER FOX

I actually quite like the stormy moodiness of the Leica system on the Xiaomi models.

It’s time for a road trip

These are some photos from last year, taken on my expired Pixel 6. If in this lifetime self-driving cars become the norm, I will miss driving. I see the greatest things on the road, but usually when I’m driving myself. Otherwise, my phone is much more interesting.

I’m going on a trip to Nakhon Pathom tomorrow, a bit past Bangkok from here. We’re taking students to an academic competition at the Rajabhat there, in a van.

I dropped my phone

I mean, I really dropped it. It slipped out of my sweaty hands when I was checking a message while walking. I kicked out with my foot and the phone hit the soft part of the padding, but bounced off, so I technically punted my phone into the asphalt. It immediately died, and after trying various online recovery techniques, I could not get it out of a bootloop. The multicolored “Google” logo appears and disappears endlessly, as the device seems to scream THAT’S WHAT YOU GET FOR DROPPING ME. But that’s when it’s plugged in. When it’s not plugged in, there are no signs of life at all. So maybe taking it apart and unplugging the battery might help, but I’m not optimistic and have already ordered another phone (a Xiaomi 14t) that was on a Flash Sale (these are happy words for online shopping in Thailand).

For now, I’m using my old Pixel 4 and spent a couple hours getting into my various apps without access to my broken main (a Pixel 6). I will have to repeat this process when the new phone comes in a couple days. The fact of the matter is, changing phones is a much bigger pain than it was when they were less useful.

I was hoping my Pixel 6 would last me until my next trip to the states, but now I’m kind of relieved. Buying Pixels outside of the states really sucks without the support, US pricing, and loyalty incentives. I mean, they are great phones, but you better be ready to find expensive parts and maybe even dissect them yourself if there’s a problem.

Camera, photo quality, and price are my top priorities, which is why I like previous generation Pixels, but settled for a last-gen Xiaomi with good Leica design. I’ve already researched the bundled app debloating and Revanced compatibility, etc. We shall see how it works out.

Here are some Pixel photos from around August that I never got around to posting:

Farewell, Pixel 6.
We had some fun together.

Pickle is gone.

My cat died today. Sad.

She had FIV from getting into fights with neighborhood cats and her health was in decline. There were a lot of trips to the vet over the past year. She became lethargic and incontinent for the last few months and we put her in a cage outside with a litterbox (which she had never seen before but instantly took to) at night. We fed her rich foods she wasn’t used to having like mackerel and chicken liver to supplement her normal meals. Basically, we tried to make her life very nice, because her mouser days were kind of over (although I found the remains of a pokey pokey dude near my charcoal grill and Wave 100s as recently as two weeks ago).

Pickle was the runt of her litter, and that’s why she outlived all the others — she stayed close to the house and out of the road when she was young. Her father or granddaddy (we forgot the exact lineage over time) was the spookiest cat we ever kind-of-owned and had a huge head and broad shoulders, so we called him Pumpkinhead. Her mother was either Donut or Mommy Cat. It’s amazing how little these things matter to cats. Her son was Marmalade, and he passed this year, too, back around June, also from FIV. Our gardener buried him in Nam’s mom’s garden next to where the water buffalo graze, so I took Pickle there today as well so they could rest together.

Luckily, she did not suffer too much and I was there petting her neck when she took her last breath.

Goodbye, Pickle.