Audio Clips From Feb 26-28 Demonstration In Bangkok

You can hear many recorded speeches from the Thaksin-Ousting Demonstration at Sanam Luang on Feb 26-28 on this page.

I especially like this one by Sulak Sivaraksa, this one by Dr. Wutthipong Priebjariyawat, and this poem by Phuket's Saman Groa-Lek.

Sondhi Limthongkul described the events leading to the demonstration from his point-of-view here.

Chinese Opera clip (Thaksin Vs. Pao-Boon-Jin) can be found here.

Of course, if you really press me, I have to admit that my favorite of all is this piece (from around 5 minutes into the clip.) :-)

The next demonstration will start on March 5.

Things to Teach My Children (Version 1.0)

ย้ายไป http://witpoko.com/?p=592 แล้วครับ

Why Geeks Make Good Fathers, Super Stone Skipping, and FakeAlibi Service

When I showed my wife this link about "Top ten reasons Geeks make good fathers", she laughed out loud and told me that I possessed a lot of traits in the list of reasons, especially Lego, math, up on technology, science fair projects, and toy assembly.

One of the things a geek might enjoy is stone skipping. My personal record is 7 skips before the stone disappeared in water. The Guinness World Record holder is Kurt Steiner, with 40 skips! You have to go to this website and see the videos!

On a totally unrelated topic, for those of you contemplating about cheating your significant other, see this article about a service that will provide you with perfect alibi for your affairs.

From the article:

The standard alibi package is an invitation to a fake conference, seminar and/or training weekend sent to your address, along with a false hotel booking confirmation. FakeAlibi will also supply a telephone number, which, if rung by an inquisitive significant other, will be answered by an agent pretending to be a hotel receptionist or seminar organiser. (A similar website in America, AlibiNetwork.com, will even send a certificate of completion of whichever course you're supposed to have been on to your home afterwards, plus a class photo with you in it.)

and:

Goulding says that FakeAlibi already boasts 21,000 satisfied customers, the incorrigibles among them paying a fixed monthly retainer. An average job, according to their promotional material, will cost you £49.99. The website employs four full-time managers and has 600 retained "operatives" around the world, most of whom have other jobs.

Considering that they also provide private investigation services, I wonder whether there will be any conflict of interest among their clients.

Hedonists Might Have A Point

Here is an interesting article about what we are learning about pleasure and our brains:

"While pleasure may have evolved as a way to encourage creatures to indulge in healthy behaviour and avoid more harmful pursuits, Stefano believes there is another benefit. Inside brain neurons, and also other tissues in the body, is a chemical called proenkephalin. He says that when we experience pleasure, proenkephalin is broken down, producing a substance that causes a feel good sensation. But the same enzymes involved in that process also release another chemical called enketylin, a strong antibacterial agent. "Just think of the beauty of that: when you're feeling good, you protect yourself," says Stefano."

Also, here is another article about how happiness causes success, in addition to the usual success-causes-happiness idea that we are used to. The PDF of the study is here.

A Super-Duper Image Denoising Algorithm!

"GREYCSTORATION is an image regularization algorithm which processes an image by locally removing small variations of pixel intensities while preserving significant global image features, such as sharp edges and corners. The most direct application of image regularization is denoising. By extension, it can also be used to inpaint or resize images."

It's much better to just go see what GREYCSTORATION can do at the demo page. My jaw dropped. Yours might too!

A very cool invention, indeed.

CorruptionWatch.net Is Blocked

CorruptionWatch.net is now not accessible to most people in Thailand. You will need to access http://202.142.223.186/ instead.

I guess Thailand is now officially adopting China's censorship policy.

Meanwhile, you can see and hear a lot of media clips related to fighting corruption in Thailand at http://www.uthaisak.net/

ประมวลเหตุการณ์ชุมนุมกู้ชาติ 4 ก.พ. 2549

http://www.manager.co.th/Politics/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9490000015576

เพราะความชั่วจะชนะถ้าคนดีอยู่เฉยๆ

บทที่ผมชอบที่สุดจาก The Lord of the Rings:

Sam: It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn't. Because they were holding on to something.

Frodo: What are we holding on to Sam?

Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo and it's worth fighting for.

และเราก็รู้ว่าเกิดอะไรขึ้นกับ Sauron ตอนจบนะครับ