Raising a family in Thailand // Documenting Issan food, culture, music, and people
The updated terms and conditions for apps available at the Google Play Store dictated that I apply for a International Age Rating Coalition (IARC) rating, which I have now received: LINK
As you most probably are not aware, C. Buddha’s Blog Reader is an Android app; it’s a dedicated reader for this blog that hosts the spirit of virtual Keanu Reeves (yes, it is most excellent). You can check it out here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.warting.blogg.wis_cosmicbuddha_feed_nu
I recently experienced a very strange and vexing problem in Chrome (EN v.38, 64-bit, Windows 7) where all Thai text appeared as small boxes or squares, or squares with strange symbols inside of them. It literally appeared overnight, and no amount of tweaking encodings or font settings (you know, the normal stuff) could fix it. Only Thai language seemed affected, and it only happened in Chrome (I tested in FF, IE, Opera, and MS Office as well).
If you are experiencing the same problem, I have a solution that is working 100% (for me). It is tied to a new Microdicksoft font rendering technology recently enabled in Chrome by default called DirectWrite.
TL;WR: If you want to fix this problem with garbled foreign text display, you need to turn that shit off.
How to turn off DirectWrongWrite:
1) Open Chrome and type (or copy and paste, you lazy fucker) chrome:flags in the address bar, then hit Enter. This opens a magical gateway to a Land That Makes Chrome Bipolar:
2) Click the “Enable” link under Disable DirectWrite. That’s right, you have to click a link called Enable to turn off the Microphallussoft shit. But Bill Gates cured hemmorhoidal dysentery in the fourth world, so I forgive him.
3) Restart Chrome (remember to shut it down completely if you have it set to run in the background.)
Results for me:
I am including the bug report I filed with Google below, for posterity.
All Thai language text suddenly started appearing as boxes or squares in English version of Chrome 38.0.2125.101 m (64-bit). This was a sudden problem that appeared and persisted through various attempts at problem solving: Changing page encoding, font settings, re-installing Chrome, emptying cache, overriding CSS properties with various Extensions, etc. Although other browsers and applications were unaffected, I also tried re-installing all fonts in Windows (64-bit Windows 7), tweaking language settings, deleting FNTCACHE.DAT file, multiple restarts, etc.
I finally found a solution that is working for my system: disabling DirectWrite in chrome://flags/ and restarting Chrome. This solves all problems with Thai text rendering.
EnablingDirect write again and restarting Chrome causes the same problems again, disabling it and rebooting solves it instantly.
Keywords: Fuck Microsoft, Fuck DirectWrite, Fuck Windows 9, thank god it’s friday
I’m fairly satisfied with my monthly TrueMove H internet subscription; it’s fast enough and I’ve never run out of my monthly high-speed allowance (although I am careful not to download or stream too much with it). One thing that always bugged me about it, though, was the number of stupid spam messages I would receive from True, especially since I’m using this SIM with a Nexus 7 tablet (that doesn’t even have a phone function!).
Eventually, I got around to looking it up and found that it’s very easy to unsubscribe from the SMS spam sent by True themselves:
That’s it!
The only problems I have found after doing this for a few friends are that sometimes the system gets overloaded, and sometimes True has no control over 3rd party spammers – in which case you should look for an app to help filter your spam while praying feverishly that the spammers quickly die horrible deaths and are reborn as toilet brushes.
I am at home enjoying a private day off. My wife has work, my kids are at non-summer summer school, and my sofa is beckoning me. Links already:
My Life As a Young Thug
Mike Tyson on how he became an animal.
New line of underwear filters out farts
Is muffling a bug, or a feature?
This post will be compiled almost entirely of material taken from other sources, because I am lazy. If you follow the instructions and install the script successfully, you will have the best YouTube functions integrated directly into Google Chrome. This includes turning off DASH (where YouTube segments videos into parts that prevents you from preloading whole videos – handy for slower or overseas connections), downloading videos in all available formats, and many, many other options.
A Chrome extension for this script is downloadable from the Google Play store, but it seems to be causing a lot of problems. The workaround is to install an Opera extension, which is counter-intuitive, and this is why I’m compiling this short guide.
What is YouTube Center? (via Github)
YouTube Center is a userscript designed to expand the functionality of YouTube. It includes the ability to download the video you’re watching, auto selecting your preferred video quality and much more. Here’s a list of all the features.
How to Install the Opera Add-on into Google Chrome
on the browser toolbar.For me, even just the downloading function is worth the hassle of installation, but really, this is how YouTube should look and work by default.
How I got this is very difficult to explain…
This is the coolest medical video I’ve seen in a long time. Sometimes technology really works, I guess.
Since Twitter got hacked a while back, the apps using its API have been refused permission intermittently. Until now, I used a site called twitterfeed to daisy chain my blog posts from my dedicated blog to Twitter to Facebook, but that all fell apart when Twitter security got oversensitive.
So now, I’m going to see how the WP Publicize function works out. Guess I’ll try to post a photo and embed a YouTube video:
Random video from my YouTube “music” playlist:
“Last Friday, Sony Music sent Gummy Soul a cease and desist order for Amerigo Gazaway’s “Bizarre Tribe: A Quest To The Pharcyde”.”
Sony just doesn’t get it:
They don’t know how to make good products anymore.
They don’t understand “fair use.”
They don’t know how to get back all the loyal customers they chased away over the years…
It seems they only want to make a last few bucks before Samsung and Apple and all the other companies who do get it (a little better, at least) collectively piss on their grave.
Die, Sony, die.
By the way, the album mentioned above is simply sublime.
Like it says in the title, Line.
My wife is in Myanmar/Burma for a week. I looked up the best options for calling to/from that country before she went, but the telecom market is in a state of constant flux and it seems they the government controls the sales of SIM cards. What sad state of affairs: Third world telecom service with first world bureaucracy!
As it turns out, most of the airports and hotels she’s been to have had barely decent wifi, which has left us experimenting with voice/video chat services. Here are the results for using chat apps on Android to/from Yangon, Mandalay, and maybe other places in Burma:
1st place: (Naver) Line
Excellent voice quality even on weak connections. If there was a major disaster, this is the app I would rely on (oh yeah, that’s why it was made in the first place).
2nd Place: Google Hangouts
Fairly stable, but laggy with both voice and video calls. Consistently laggy, though (about 1/2 second), so usable if you want to speak slowly and wait for responses.
3rd place: Skype
Skype changed my world, then abandoned it. I still have most of the money I put into Skype credit 7 or 8 years ago. TOTALLY UNUSABLE FOR ANYTHING UNLESS YOU LIVE IN KANSAS CITY AND GET FORCE-FED INTARWEBS FROM GOOGLE. Seriously, I’m going to uninstall Skype from all my devices. So fucking sad.