Category: Toys & Tech

21 Years of Steam

If that’s not a cringey Steam profile, I don’t know what is. I’d like to say I registered for Steam on dial-up, but looking back on posts from 2003 just before I signed up*, it was either my first FTTH line (NTT 100Mbps service on a Japanese island 20 years ago!), or Dual ISDN (128 kbit/s and more expensive than the FTTH, if I remember correctly).

I was one of the only Dual ISDN subscribers on Awaji Island according to the techs who installed it. After I upgraded to FTTH and they came by for maintenance, they said I had the fastest hikari (fiber) connection they had seen, as well. I can’t remember all the tweaks we were using, but there were software configs as well as hardware hacks and accessories. Ironically, in those infant days of broadband speed tests, some cable internet company in Yokohama often had the highest scores on the leaderboards!

It was interesting over time to see where broadband expansion flourished. Korea was the leader for a long time. Back home in the states, it was sad to see how slow both the rollout and speed of FTTH was, and how corporate monopolies and weak legislation resulted in terrible service for almost everyone. Over here in Thailand, things took off five or so years after I got here. My very first FTTH provider here was a neighborhood kid who hacked together his own DSLAM in his house (his main cost was keeping the equipment from overheating, he would leave the aircon on all day) and strung lines for subscribers all over the gated community. Back then, almost nobody had a computer (net cafes were in their heyday), but damn, that kid had a sharp business mind (and a miserably hot St. Bernard named Tang Mo). I still see that kid around sometimes; I’m pretty sure he’s running several businesses around town.

*Steam apparently launched on September 12, 2003. I registered within the first month, and a few million users had registered by the end of the first year, according to Reddit. The reason I got on Steam in the first place? To make playing Counter-Strike easier! I never would have thought it would still be so popular (and basically unchanged).

Would you like that with or without endocrine disruptors?

The saddest cooking news I’ve heard in a long time: Black plastic products including spatulas are likely being made from recycled electronic waste like computers and televisions, many of which are treated with flame retardants and other chemicals. Flame retardants can dislodge from polymers easily and make their way into the surrounding environment. They are endocrine disruptors, which interfere with the body’s hormonal system and may be associated with thyroid disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Full link to the Atlantic story: Throw Out Your Black Plastic Spatula

These are my mainstay utensils for certain things I cook and I surely have a dozen in my kitchen including spoons, ladles, slotted and unslotted spatulas, etc., because sometimes silicon is too flexible and wood/steel are too hard. I do have blue plastic spatulas, but they are on the large side… Then even if I buy all the right size blue plastic ones to replace the black ones, we’ll find out that they’re made of recycled nuclear Smurf poop or something…

WordPress — undefined constant error

I try to follow cardinal rules of data management that were drilled into me since I got into computers at university by (#1) taking backups often and (#2) keeping stuff organized. Well, the first one caused my site to go down today because I didn’t really follow the second one.

I try to keep on top of things by doing a full site backup at least once a year, on top of doing periodic database and blog backups. When I finished the full backup today, it stored the tarball (a compressed .tar.gz archive) in my hosted account right next to two other huge ones from last year that I forgot to delete, and it put me over the storage limit. This had the effect of returning ERROR 500 when trying to reach my site. However, I could still get into cPanel from my host’s server address, and support advised me to check the error log and replace core WP files.

The error log was full of lines containing the following:

PHP Warning:  Use of undefined constant DATABASE_SERVER - assumed 'DATABASE_SERVER' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP)

Then I noticed that the file size of the wp-config.php file was 0 bytes.

So I downloaded the tarball from the backup I had made earlier and extracted wp-config.php. I replaced the one on the server, and everything seems to be working again.

The PHP warning above is not specific to my host or WordPress configuration, but I couldn’t immediately find a search result describing this exact problem. Then again, Google search really sucks these days, so maybe this post won’t help anybody in any case.

Here is a photo of a statue in a downtown Maha Sarakham canal that’s supposed to be the tail of a mythical river monster of ancient Thai legend, but is jokingly called “the asparagus” by everyone and has become a national symbol of corruption (the city supposedly paid over 100 million baht for it):

It has nothing to do with the server problem above; I’d just wanted to post the photo for a long time.

Sushiro End Stack

I remember using QR codes for product tracking (with Keyence printers and scanners) as a salaryman around Y2K at an electronics factory on monster island. The only other place I’d ever seen them used was at kaiten (conveyor) sushi, on the bottom rim of the plastic plates. The codes would be scanned as they went by on the conveyor so old plates of sushi could be pulled – this was more than 20 years ago! Things certainly come full circle (although the new system seems to be RFID-based):

There was a boom in QR code usage here in Thailand from around ten years ago specifically for adding friends in the LINE app, and then again a few years ago for cashless payments tied into the evolving PromptPay system.

So this is fun

I’m having intermittent problems with a keyboard that I bought a year ago and it’s driving me crazy. It skips or lags on certain key presses only sometimes, so it’s very aggravating and difficult to diagnose. This keyboard (HyperX Alloy Origins) was not cheap, so it’s especially maddening.

‘as;ldfjal;’sfm

p;als,mcl;,a;sl,c

p;laep[

oijkf

[p-qowjkfp

wogjew40-9tj2-349iu5-23kf[

sd,;dc,pwermpigjw-0pikcvsld’;,f

;w;le;ktf

;wldkfsldkfs;dlkf’sp;;;dklfs’;dlfjksoidhkfa;oshjdal;skjdl’aklsjd

After calling technical support, they advised me to try changing the cable. So here we go again. Is there lag when I type the letter “y”?

yellow

olo

yes sir

over yoder

oh no I lost the “n”

never

nothing

entertainment

how about the period key

he….

Oh yeah it started lagging again….nmmm

“m” is gone too

mother

aniac

isunderstood

lol

425,000

Is the approx. number of media files I have stored locally on my main hard drive backup. The digital photos go back to 1998 or so. I have them mostly arranged by date in the file names so I can look up people and events chronologically. The 3TB HD in question is old and unhealthy, so it’s currently being synced to a new external 12TB one I picked up on amazon for a hundred bucks!

The US remains the low price king for certain consumer goods, PC components being one of them. The same drive in Thailand would cost many times more, but partially because only a few big brands and questionable knockoffs are sold here- there is no reliable middle ground for many items (large capacity external HDs being one of them).

Here’s to hoping this sync completes trouble-free!

DTAC International Roaming

If you are planning to visit Japan from Thailand and haven’t been suckered into buying an eSIM yet, I highly recommend buying a roaming package from DTAC/TRUE (AIS also has similar plans, but I haven’t tried them). The main reason is that it’s much cheaper, but also because I saw many travelers struggling with SIM cards/eSIMs purchased from both vending machines in Japan and online. In the space of one week, I saw at least five people complaining about weak coverage or spotty connectivity.

The DTAC package we chose also came with free travel insurance for a week, which is great, but very difficult to actually find on the DTAC site/mobile app. The DTAC site now directs through the TRUE roaming website (because of the merger last year), but I’m leaving this reference here because we have students going to Japan later this month.

This is the package we chose for a ten day trip, which probably has enough data if you’re not addicted to TikTok (hint, hint, daughter):

And this is what you need to click on to begin the process of registration for the free health insurance from Dhipaya Co. The process will include registering your phone number, filling out online forms, and running a special USSD code.

The graphics for the roaming packages also have English translations, but the insurance one does not. I’m not sure if the insurance is intended mainly for Thai nationals or not, but it accepted the ID number from my pink Thai ID card (it did not accept my passport number).

IMPORTANT NOTE #1: One thing to look out for regarding the insurance is that the coverage is only for a week, and it starts on the day you register for it. So you should register it just before you depart from Thailand.

IMPORTANT NOTE #2: You have to apply for the roaming packages within Thailand.

Once you land, the international roaming should activate automatically. If it does not, you can try switching the Roaming setting on your phone on and off. The coverage in Japan is provided by several carriers. In Osaka, it seemed to mostly be the KDDI network. On the train from Nara, I saw it switch to other networks (maybe DoCoMo or SoftBank – I was sleepy and reminiscing on salaryman/bartender train rides between Tenri and Miyakojima).

Mina’s new Warbirds

We picked up an incomplete set of Callaway Warbirds for Mina at the Tsuruya Golf (Japan’s golf Mecca) main branch in Honmachi. It was exactly the kind of deal I like to find in Japan, because any imperfection in a product can result in huge bargains – we scored the set for less than half off because it was missing the hood (removable top of the golf bag) and a putter. Nam’s good friend ended up gifting Mina a really nice putter anyway, so we packaged the set with bubble wrap and brought it on the plane back to Thailand. Tonight was Mina’s first lesson in nearly a month, so we were peeling the plastic off of the heads before trying each club. It was like golf Christmas.

She’s only had a dozen lessons, and she seems to really like it (which is great now that we are invested in it LOL). This range is currently the only one open in Sarakham, and it’s owned by Mina’s schoolmate’s mom: Non Duea Driving Range Maha Sarakham

Highly recommended.

I rather like smashing balls with a weighted stick (although I have no proper form and employ only brute force – I hope Mina teaches me the form part someday), so I hope we can start actually golfing soon.