Toys & Tech
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I switched back to Firefox again.
I’ve switched between using FF and Chromium-based browsers (mainly Opera and Brave) several times over the years. They both had times when they were so good! Now it seems like we’re forced to use the one that sucks the least… Chrome’s most recent transgression was making uBlock Origin unusable, but I was leaning this way for a long time. I just kept putting it off by building PCs with more and more RAM.
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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.…
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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…
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PP Pedestal
This is in the refurbished (!) restroom of one of my favorite restaurants in town. After careful observation, I have determined that it’s a MacGyvered pressure plate flushing mechanism that stinks of piss. It looked disgusting, so I just straddled it and stepped on the cleanest part when I was done… So weird.
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Sunset Cast
At the movies on Thai constitution day.
Pokemon Go in Thailand – Day 3
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AMD Software window annoyance
On Windows, if your AMD Software window is always popping up after reboot or waking from sleep, you might be able to fix it with the following:
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
