Bangkok Blog

Its always nice to see and deal with other people using Unix-based operating systems. If a student comes to me for help with a software problem, although I'll try to help no matter what OS, I am much more interested in spending time with them if they are using a Unix-based OS (Ubuntu, MacOS, etc). This is mainly because that is what I know best. Of recent, more students have Ubuntu installed, either as dual-boot or in a virtual machine, on their personal laptops. And they are starting to learn that the Windows GUI way is not the only way. I am encouraging the further exploration of Linux in my networking lab (ITS332) where 90% of the tasks are completed on the command line in Ubuntu (the other 10% using Wireshark in Ubuntu). In other courses, although I don't require the students to use any specific operating system, I demonstrate how easy it is to complete networking tasks in Unix-based OSes, such as measure the throughput of TCP in a network with varying packet loss rates (three command line operations using iperf and tc).

One of the local Unix gurus at SIIT is Yoichi. As well as doing his research, he has been active in labs and teaching introductory computing to SIIT/Thammasat students. He has started to blog about some of the simple, yet very powerful things that can be done via the command line in Ubuntu. Yoichi and other teaching assistants and graduate students are spreading the word in SIIT that Windows is not the only operating system available. And their efforts are starting to show as more students are coming to me for help on a network or programming assignment with their laptop booted into Ubuntu.

New Years Eve 2009 was spent around Wan's family home in the north-east. We left Bangkok about 2am on Tuesday 29 December with the intention of avoiding the traffic jams seen last year. It worked - there was almost no traffic, even less than normal. It took 6 hours to drive to her home, which is midway between Chumphae in Khon Khaen and Phu Kradeung in Loei (normally it takes about 7 hours, although we didn't stop for food so much this time).

Apart from relaxing and catching up with family and friends (Ann, Wan's sister, and her husband Simon were also there) we had a few day trips to: Nam Nao National Park in Petchabun, a local mountain, Phu Pa Man, and near Phu Luang in Loei. As always, a lot of good food and a few beers. New years eve involved a party with a lot of family attending, followed by some late night dancing at a street party. All good fun.

The trip home on Sunday was not too bad. It took 9 hours, which was probably 1 or 2 hours less than it could have been because we took a back route to Saraburi, bypassing the busy Khorat to Saraburi road.

Check out some photos.

The CABINN Hotel was recommended to participants of the CPN Workshop. It is part of a chain of 6 or 7 CABINNs across Denmark. They have the aim of the providing cheap but comfortable accommodation near the centre of the city. The tradeoff is the room sizes. They follow the layout of cabins in cruise ships; small and with bunk-beds.

The hotel is about 10 minutes walk, straight along the main shopping mall, from the Arhus central station (where trains and the airport bus stop). The area between central station and the hotel is the main (only?) area for shopping, pubs, restaurants and night-life in Arhus. So the location of the hotel is great.

I arrived at 1pm, and despite the hotel web site saying checkin was between 3pm and 6pm, I was immediately given a room. As expected, it was small. There was a single bed, and a bunk-bed above it. There was a desk, small TV, electric kettle and small bathroom containing toilet, shower and sink. There were 3 or 4 coat hangars and a couple of shelves to store clothes. The room size was not a problem for me. However if there were two of you with full size suitcases you probably would find it too small. Of course there are a few larger rooms at the hotel.

Despite the small room sizes, the rest of the hotel is quite good. The lobby is large with a couple of sofas, and then there is a TV lounge with 5 sets of tables and chairs and a LCD TV. On the 4th floor is the breakfast room which was great. Each morning there were fresh loafs of bread, bread rolls, bread for toasting, to be accompanied by cheese, slices of ham/turkey/salami and 3 or 4 delicious jams. There were 3 types of cereal, milk and yogurt and of course, coffee, tea and juices. It wasn't fancy but it was more than enough to get you full in the morning. I loved the fresh bread with salami and cheese, and made about 3 slices each morning. There is a restaurant/cafe on the bottom floor but I never went there (not sure if it is just part of the hotel or on fact an external restaurant). Finally, the reception sells snacks and drinks 24 hours a day (a bottle of Tuborgs beer was 27 Kroner).

The room price was 465 Kroner plus 60 Kroner for breakfast; a total of 525 Kroner per night. I think this was a discount of 20 Kroner per night (as we booked as part of the CPN Workshop group). As Denmark is one of the most expensive countries in Europe, I consider this price quite good value and would recommend others to stay there (unless they need a large room).

I have been getting back into some Petri nets research recently, and to catch up on the latest happenings with Coloured Petri nets I submitted a paper to the CPN Workshop in Arhus, Denmark. The paper was accepted and tomorrow I leave for a week in Aarhus.

This is the 10th CPN Workshop, all held in Arhus (the home of the people who created CPNs and the related software tools like Design/CPN and CPN Tools). It turns out the first time I ever presented a research paper was at the 1st CPN Workshop in 1998. So I have been to Arhus before (twice) and am looking forward to catching up with colleagues and friends.

Wan was in search of a netbook for use at home and work, so after a couple of days online and wandering around Zeer Rangsit IT Plaza, she finally settled on the Samsung NC 10. It looks good, has a nice sized keyboard, received good reviews online, and was priced well against other netbooks (Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, etc.).

The specs are about the same as equivalent class netbooks from other companies:

• Atom N270 processor
• 1GB RAM, easily upgradeable to 2GB if needed
• 10.1inch screen
• 160GB hard drive
• IEEE 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, 100Mb/s Ethernet

The final price was 12400 Baht, which included an external DVDRW drive (which has yet to arrive).

As Wan has been using Ubuntu on my home PC for a while, the first thing I did with the netbook was install Ubuntu Desktop 9.04. I overwrote the existing Windows XP Home install, which I didn't think there would be any use for (However, I latter regretted this - I should've left it dual-boot. It turns out to update the laptop BIOS, Samsung software must run under Windows. Oh well, if an update is really needed it won't be too hard to backup Ubuntu and install Windows from the recovery CD).

I've had a few hours of setting it up and using it, and so far it seems like a good buy. The main thing I need to learn about is the Ubuntu power management features, where some fine-tuning is needed to conserve battery but also give reasonable (and constant) brightness settings.

Some sites with info on the Samsung NC10 and Ubuntu include:

• Samsung NC10 at Wikipedia
• SammyNetbook
• Ubuntu NC10 Community page
• Ubuntu on the Samsung NC10

Since returning from a holiday in Australia in April not much has been happening other than work. However over the past semester I finally made the switch to Ubuntu on all my computers.

In fact I have been running Ubuntu on all my computers since moving to Thailand. Both my home PC and work PC were running dual boot Windows XP and Ubuntu Desktop, and my home Pentium III web server Ubuntu Server. I was using Windows for most of my work. However when my own server PC died I shifted to running Ubuntu full-time on my main home PC (acting as my web server and everyday PC), and a month ago I deleted the Windows partition (but have XP installed under VirtualBox). At work I haven't got around to deleting XP, but I only use it a few hours per week.

Ubuntu supports almost everything I need for my everyday computing activities at work and home: browsing, office applications, graphics, watching movies, occasional basic games. Of course it also perfect for hosting my web and email server. The only things I've been needing Windows for are: running some Windows-only simulation software, opening/editing old documents in MS Office (most of my old lecture slides were developed in Powerpoint - OpenOffice Presentation doesn't always handle the animations and fonts), and accessing web sites of selected financial institutions (IE only). Now all new work documents are created in OpenOffice. Slowly I am converting old documents, especially teaching material, to OpenOffice formats. It is a nice feeling knowing that eventually my 1000's of pages of teaching material will soon be in open formats, no longer dependent on closed, commercial applications and operating systems.

As Wan has been getting used to Ubuntu on my home PC, when she recently got her new Samsung NC10 netbook I immediately installed Ubuntu Desktop 9.04, overwriting the Windows XP Home install. So now its Ubuntu at multiple PCs at work, Ubuntu at home and Ubuntu on the road.

My car is about 1 year old now. Some stats:

• 18,000km traveled which is about 350km per week. I've done a few larger trips: Khon Kaen (3x, 1000km round trip), Yasothon (1200+km), Kanchanaburi (400km); as well as driving to work most days (25km round trip).
• 600 Baht per week spent on fuel (normally Gasohol 91, which is 10% ethanol and 90% benzene 91 octane). Average price of 26.5 Baht/litre. When I bought the car the prices peaked at about 37B/l, but dropped down to 15B/l at one point.
• 14.7 km per litre or 6.8 litres per 100km.
• Insurance was free for the first year, but I just paid for the second year: 16000 Baht for first-class insurance through Aioi; 1600 Baht for government taxes.
• Free service for 100,000km, however I had to pay about 3000 Baht for oil/parts for my 10,000km service.

The car is running fine. Only two complaints so far: my reverse parking sensors don't work very well - they often sound constantly (meaning I am about to hit something) whenever I reverse, even when nothing is nearby. Thats something that Toyota will fix for free when I take the car in next. The other problem is the blind spot caused by the front right frame between the front windscreen and drivers side window. I notice this mainly when turning, especially U-turns, as I need to lean forward to look at the front windscreen or look out the side window. I haven't noticed such a problem in other vehicles I've driven, but mainly its because of the many U-turns that are made in Thailand (on many roads you can't turn right - you need to do a U-turn and go back and turn left). Having good visibility in this area is important especially on large U-turns (e.g. under bridges) when you may find motorcycles on the wrong side of the road coming directly at you!

But in summary, I've been very happy with the purchase. The fuel statistics are constantly updated here.

Well, the holiday is over and its back to work. We got back to Bangkok about 11pm Wednesday night.

It was a great time, not only in Adelaide, Halls Gap, and Flinders Ranges, but also spending time with the family on the farm and around Mt Gambier. And of course, eating some of delicious food, especially Mum's home cooking (I put on 4kg!).

Plenty of photos in the Gallery.

Halls Gap is a small tourist town in the middle of the Grampians, a mountain range in western Victoria. We spent 2 nights there at the start of April, staying in the Halls Gap Caravan Park in the middle of the town.

Halls Gap is about 300km from Kongorong. There were 3 car loads that went: Peter and Allison; Brett and the family in their car; and Wan and I in Brett's Jeep with Dad's new camper trailer on the back. Its a nice setup, taking about 20 minutes to put up and includes queen mattress on the trailer, plus floor space for about two more, as well as a large annex.

The caravan park wasn't too busy, with most people staying in cabins and caravans. We had the open camping ground to ourselves. In the early morning and late afternoon there were plenty of kangaroos around the park, coming up to our camper trailer. Peter and Ally slept outside in their swags, and had kangaroos almost walk over them.

On arrival, after setting up we had a walk around the park and town then settled down to some drinks and dinner. The next day we all made the trek to the Pinnacle, a lookout above Halls Gap. Before going home on Sunday, we all drove up to Stawell (home of the famous Stawell Gift) and visited a couple of wineries in Great Western.

Halls Gap, and the Grampians in general, are a great place to visit with many opportunities for bush walks, camping and mountain climbing. Check out the Photo Gallery for more pics.

On arrival to Australia, we had four nights in Adelaide, staying in the city at the Country Comfort Motel on South Terrace. Adelaide is a quiet city. Although the population is about 1 million, the centre of the city is small and everyone is quite laid back (to the extent that the city is almost dead on weeknights and Sundays).

Staying on South Terrace, within 5 minutes walk of King William Street is great because there is a free tram running from South Terrace to North Terrace during the day. Most shopping, cultural and entertainment venues are near North Terrace. Some of the things we did while in Adelaide included:

• Shopping (or at least window shopping) in Rundle Mall
• Visited the South Australian Museum (free entry)
• Wandered down North Terrace admiring the statues and old majestic buildings, and through Adelaide University to the River Torrens
• Lunch and shopping in the Central Market, which includes Chinatown and some good Asian grocers
• Tram to Glenelg Beach
• Coopers Pale and Sparkling Ales, as well as red wines at the Austral and Exeter on Rundle Street
• Dinner at the Red Ochre Restaurant (see me separate review), as well as at pubs and restaurants around Adelaide

On Friday we borrowed Brentons Pajero and drove up to Cleland Wildlife Park. Here is a great collection of Australian animals, most of which you can get close to and feed. We saw: kangaroos, koalas, Tasmanian devils, emus, echidnas, bandicoots, wallabies, wombats and all sorts of birds. There is also a snake farm. Well worth a visit if you are in Adelaide.

On Saturday morning Mum and Dad arrived in Adelaide and we all went up to Barossa Valley for some wine tasting. The first stop was Chateau Barossa, a new winery built by the guy who owned Chateau Yaldara. The wines were not special, but the highlight was the large rose garden outside. It was opened by the Queen Elizabeth II on here previous visit to Australia. Lunch was at a snack shop in Tanunda (Wan tried a Hamburger with the lot and was full after 1/3 of it). Then on to Jacob's Creek Winery which had some nice wines.

Back on Adelaide we had dinner at the Gilbert Hotel. It was great food and atmosphere until I noticed the last couple of mouthfuls of my chicken schnitzel was uncooked. Not sure how much of it was uncooked but luckily there were no side effects the next day.

On Sunday we made our way to Mum and Dad's home in Kongorong near Mt Gambier (about 450km south of Adelaide).

Tuesday night Wan and I are off to the land girt by sea. Its time for a well-deserved holiday and to catch up with friends and family.

On Wednesday I was at Sukhothai Hotel in Bangkok to be interviewed for the daily English talk show Morning Talk. I spoke about the IT and Computer Science activities at SIIT, including some of the interesting topics we teach (mobile Java applications, BitTorrent), the National Software Contest (NSC), and the scholarship opportunities. In the NSC this year two of our groups one prizes - one for a Thai Wikipedia question answer system, and the other for a mobile application that speaks messages sent to the phone (good for driving or for people that have trouble reading).

Before the interview I had a 10 minute chat with the host, Kipsan Beck, before we got into the recorded discussion. I was pretty nervous so don't remember much of what I said - but the hotel looked nice! You can watch the full interview online now or try to download from the Maxnet site (Episode from Monday 23 March 2009).

Its mid-March 2009 and 200+ final exams for Semester 2 have been marked, which basically finishes teaching for 2008. In semester 1 I taught only one course (Introduction to Data Communications) whereas this semester I was somewhat more busy teaching Security and Cryptography for 3rd year CS students, Networking Lab for about 90 3rd students and Internet Technologies and Applications for another 90 3rd and 4th year students. Anyway, finished teaching until next academic year starts in June. Time for a holiday!

This New Years I was invited to the home of May and Jum, two sisters who work with Wan. They come from Yasothon, a province in north-eastern Thailand. I had a great time there, except for the time spent driving and feeling sick. Unfortunately that was about two-thirds of the entire long weekend.

The first thing was getting there. Being a 5 day long weekend, there was going to be a lot of people on the roads. Having to work on Tuesday 30th of December, we left on Wednesday 31st (New Years Eve). There were two cars going (I was driving Wan and her friend Nee), although not driving together. We decided to leave early in the morning to avoid the heavy traffic. Unfortunately 5 million other Bangkokians had the same idea. We left Thammasat University at 5am and within 5 minutes of entering the main road (Pahonyothin, Highway Number 1) we encountered traffic jams (i.e. traffic stopped or travelling a mere 10kph). There was at least 4 lanes of traffic all the way, some times 6 lanes. It took us about 6 hours to travel the first 110 km's. The many petrol stations and food stops along the highway were full. After Saraburi (normally a 1 hour trip from Pathumthani, this time more than 5 hours) the traffic improved and we managed to get up to reasonable speeds of 80kph. We took the bypass around Khorat, staying on Highway 2 until slightly after the Phi Mai turn off, then made a right turn onto road 207. At this point the traffic lightened, although now we were on a single lane road. Traffic jams came in spurts, most often due to accidents, traffic lights or police check points.

Police check points were setup in almost every small town. You also saw police stationed at major intersections. From what I saw, the police were not stopping people (e.g. for speeding), but rather there in preparation for accidents. Some of the check points also doubled as places were you could stop for a rest. I had the feeling there major focus was on safety, rather than collecting money from traffic infringements, which I thought was good.

Including several food/toilet stops, we finally arrived in Yasothon at 6pm. A 13 hour trip. Not something that I had planned, and I probably wouldn't have done it if I knew it would be like this, but didn't have much choice once we got started. Because we were going so slow, the first 6 or 7 hours were in fact easy driving. But by the time I arrived in Yasothon, my right ankle/leg and bum was killing me.

The others left Bangkok at 3am, but still hit the traffic and it took them also about 13 hours.

Given the long day on the road, New Years Eve was not going to be big. After eating hot pot with all the family and having a few beers, I was in bed by 10pm! I was awoken at midnight by some very loud fireworks being set off nearby. I got up to see them for 5 minutes, and then hit the sack again.

The next morning the extended family were up early for a trip to the local Wat to offer food to the monks. Then after breakfast we drove to Mukdahan, a town/province about 100km's from Yasothon and on the border with Laos. There we went to Phu Pha Thoep in the Mukdahan National Park. This was some rock formations which were nice to wander around for an hour or so. For lunch I had some delicious (and spicy) Som Tam and Laap Bplaa, as well as a local delicacy, Moo Yaw. After lunch the others were shopping in Mukdahan town, while Wan, Nee and I went for a drive further north to Kaeng Ka Bao, a popular spot on the Mekong River and the Second Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge. We also stopped at a large Christian church - apparently Christianity is reasonably popular in this area, as well as the provinces north of Mukdahan. It was another long day, arriving back at Yasothon at 7pm.

That night we headed to the Yasothon nightclub for some whiskey, live music and dancing.

Early the next morning I wasn't feeling well. At first I thought it was the whiskey (although we didn't drink much, a bottle between 6 of us), but then I started firing at both ends. About 10am, Win drove me to the local hospital where I spent the day and night with a saline drip.

The night in hospital and 4000 Baht for private room and medicine was well worth it. The next morning (Saturday) I felt fine, and in an attempt to avoid the traffic going back to Bangkok on Sunday, we left Yasothon about 11am. Another 13 hours drive though - this time the traffic was mostly between Yasothon and Khorat (from Khorat onwards it wasn't too bad).

So overall, the things that I managed to do - Phu Pha Thoep, Kaeng Ka Bao, Friendship Bridge, disco - were good fun. Unfortunately too much time was spent in the car and hospital!

Photo Gallery

SIIT held its Annual Seminar (end of year trip) in Cha Am town (in Cha Am province). Most of the staff and faculty from SIIT went down to Cha Am on a bus on Saturday morning.

After speeches and lunch, Saturday afternoon we went to a Royal Project for planting trees, where everyone got to plant a single tree.
This was a little disappointing for me, mainly because I was expecting that we would be planting lots of trees (i.e. doing some hard work). Instead we spent a good 45 minutes waiting for the previous group to finish, then listened to a talk and movie for 45 minutes then spend 30 minutes planting a tree each. The holes where already dug for us - we just had to unwrap the tree, put some dirt around it and splash it with water.

A couple of us had a swim Saturday afternoon, but the water was freezing for Thailand's standards. Dinner and shows were held on Saturday night, as were some drinking sessions on the beach.

We stayed at Long Beach Hotel, Cha Am. This was a large tourist hotel with standard rooms, and all the facilities you could need. It is in a great location, about 50 metres from the beach.

Photo Gallery