Work
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Modernized!
I stuck with the previous theme for quite a while, but it was really just a new take on the old two-column blog layout I’ve used since blogspot, yo. It’s been a QUARTER CENTURY! But we are not going to talk about that today. Below, I am adding a photo of a waitress (the owner?) of a plate lunch joint in Pattaya we ate lunch at last year when visiting students interning at hotels and resorts there. If the photo does not appear, my new template needs additional tinkering. When I wrote the word “below” in the first paragraph, I should have said “above,” because that’s where it appears on…
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A few shorts from the past month
I regret nothing. Except accidentally washing my passport when I got back home from all the trips. We went to Pattaya and Phuket on separate trips to visit students interning at various hotels. Met a lot of cool people and saw a lot of crazy things. I got what seemed to be food poisoning in Pattaya, possibly from a beloved plate of seafood rad na, but who knows? Food poisoning happens (for me, every five years or so), and the culprit is not always clear. I took off for the Phuket trip still feeling nauseous. On the plane from Don Muang to Phuket, we sat in back of a foreign…
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Tendai Visit – August 2025
Nam and I met at Tenri University in Japan 30+ years ago. Over the years, we kept in touch with Tendai from Thailand both formally and otherwise, which led to formal MOU signings between Tenri university and Nam’s employer, Mahasarakham University, as well as mine, Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University. This eventually led to yearly trips from Tendai to MSU with groups of up to 20 students, as well as Nam taking students from Mina’s high school (with her uni students acting as chaperones) for intensive Japanese language training and cultural study in Tenri. The Tendai group always has a couple destinations when they come over, and they left for Phayao…
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ChatGPT 5.0
The machine has adopted an identity.
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Firefox has big issues with ChatGPT
I basically lost two days of work on a textbook because of Firefox. I just switched back to Firefox from Chrome. Fuck. Hello, Opera, my old friend. Pro tip: If you experience a sudden slowdown, stupidity, hallucinations, or other issues with ChatGPT, try using it with a Chromium-based browser. ———–Below is some GPT shit. 鈿狅笍 Why Firefox Sometimes Causes ChatGPT Issues ChatGPT’s web app heavily relies on modern JavaScript frameworks, dynamic APIs, WebSockets, and real-time interactions. While Firefox is generally excellent, it can sometimes experience issues with: 馃洃 Common Firefox-Specific Symptoms (Exactly Matching Yours): These precisely match your described scenario鈥攕udden issues after previously stable performance, including looping, hallucinations, and severe…
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Weaver
I went on an excursion to the nearby town of Kut Lang on a social development training course for our students. This consisted of locals gathering at a temple, Wat Nong Saen Nuea, and showing off their handmade product crafting skills while students watched and asked questions, with the intention of offering improvement strategies at a future date. For me, however, this meant a chance to do a side quest and add a new skill, so I embraced it and sat on the concrete floor and learned to weave dried bamboo strips and reeds for five hours. The old ladies were surprised that a foreigner was so interested in their…
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Koh Chang
We visited students interning on the island last year and stayed in a nice, deserted-due-to-low-season resort. A big storm came and the power went out for a few hours, but otherwise it was a great trip. This was Max’s favorite meal on the trip, Khao Soi.
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RMU Melodies
I like walking around my campus at sunset because I can see after school activities in a nice light just as it’s getting cooler. @Rajabhat Maha Sarakham University, Thailand
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AI Limitations
I’m using GPT-4 to help write an ESL textbook, which is probably taking longer than if I just did it by myself. However, because I’m relying on AI for the graphics and audio files for conversations, it’s really forcing me to learn basic Python script debugging and troubleshooting for ChatGPT. The most frustrating things about this experience so far are: I have to get back to the textbook, but I leave you with these absolute gems of what AI thinks Bingo cards look like: According to the file name, the prompt was: “A 4×4 Holiday Bingo sheet with a clean, minimalistic design suitable for embedding in a Word document. Each…
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Chit-chat Corner Ice Cream Session
The US embassy-sponsored conversation project that Mina and I have been facilitating on Wednesdays at Mahasarakham University every Wednesday in the evenings goes on break between terms. For the last session of the term, we usually do a special cooking project. Since there’s no kitchen facilities in the American Corner, I usually have to think of projects that require minimal cooking and no running water, etc. This term, I decided to do a throwback to simpler times. We made ice cream in Ziploc bags with ice and salt, and it turned out much better than expected. Normal Thai milk contains about 10-11% milk fat, so I spent the week before…
