Category: Photos

moblogging again

Its been nearly 20 years since I set up a moblog sidebar and posted tiny pictures from my Hitachi clamshell over iMode to my MovableType blog… But today I just got the itch to see where we are in terms of easy accessibility to WordPress moblogging.

It’s kind of in between rainy periods right now, which is hard on my lawn, since I assume it’s gonna rain and don’t water every day as I’m accustomed to doing the rest of the year. So yesterday, I performed my rain ritual and watered the yard thoroughly, and also washed the dust off my truck. It worked.

Back Home Again

Nam and I went on a nice trip to pick up Mina in WA and for Nam to see Max after four years of COVID lockdown/US visa processing. The last long leg of our trip saw us dropped this bus stop in between the two sides of Maha Sarakham city at dawn.

As it turns out, we aren’t moving back to the states just now.

Mina has come back to Thailand; she missed her friends here.

I have many tales to tell.

Blue vs Red Kapom/Gapom Species

No photos here, just a link to a 13 year old post I updated about some local lizard species which are called the same thing in Thai/Isan languages: กะปอม/กิ้งก่า), but ended up being distinct species with different common names: Oriental garden lizard (Calotes versicolor) vs. Calotes mystaceus (the Indo-Chinese forest lizard).

For the sake of posterity, I hereby shorten their names to Bob(s) and Dan(s). Bobs are the red ones, Dans are the blue ones (did you know that roughly 75% of people on social media would have used apostrophes to indicate plurality in that sentence?)

Update: Uh oh, there are Emmas (green when mating) in Thailand as well: Calotes emma

Further update: There are also some references to a species called Calotes goetzi which is treated as a separate species on some pages, but is also reported to have replaced Calotes mystaceus (who I just call Dan[s]) altogether according to this page, which also says that Dan is called กิ้งก่าหัวสีฟ้า (ging ga hua si faa) in Thai. This literally means the “gin ga (forest lizard) with a blue head,” which I immediately think is weird, because a much larger area than just the head turns blue, and also, every local I’ve ever talked to has just called it a “blue forest lizard” in Thai – there is no reason to be more specific, especially when it’s less accurate.