A couple of hours outside Bangkok lies the sprawling open zoo of Khao Kheow (lit. “green hill”).

Monkeys are cool. Everybody likes monkeys, and I was happy to see plenty of them.

I wasn’t expecting penguins though.

Visiting in late March, the temperatures were in the high 30s (that’s 100° F, neanderthals). I’m not entirely sure penguins should be outside in that kind of heat, but I’m sure the zookeepers know best…

The Thai writing says “Don’t give cucumbers (to these animals)”. I wonder what the Japanese writing says. And the Russian.

Carrots seem to be okay though.

Turtle jenga.

This is a binturong, apparently. No, me neither.

Hippos always manage to look supremely grumpy.

Well, almost always.

Pygmy hippos though, I rather like.

I think this was an emu.

This sign was great. Love the facial expressions.

I did not sit on the fence.

Next up, elephants.

In Malaysia a couple of years ago, I fumbled my camera and missed a shot of a monkey holding her baby. Finally, I was able to make up for it.

Meerkats are also cool.

Giraffes’ tongues are terrifying.

Bullseye! Banana delivered right in the gullet by SWMBO.

Every time I’ve mentioned a weekend trip to Ko Sichang, Rayong or Laem Mae Phim, or even sometimes to Hua Hin or Cha Am, people have looked at me blankly and asked me why on earth I don’t go to Ko Samet instead. For so many expats, and Thais too, it seems like Samet is the only choice for a weekend beach trip.

It was for precisely that reason that I had never bothered going to check it out. Until now.

Knowing next to nothing about the island, I checked out its Wikivoyage page. This gives a decent run-down of the various beaches, and I cross-referenced this with cheap hotels on Agoda.

I found a place in Ao Phrao for a fairly reasonable price, and booked it.

Ao Phrao is one of the quietest beaches of Ko Samet. Located quite far away from the nightlife of Ko Samet; Ao Prow is preferred by travelers who quietly enjoy the sea, swimming and sand, Ao Prow is also best sunset view point of Ko Samet.

Except the hotel wasn’t really in Ao Phrao. It was in Hat Sai Kaeo.

The name speaks for itself, Hat Sai Kaeo, which literally means Crystal Sand Beach, is a nice beach filled with activities. From dusk to dawn, it is the place for sunbathing, swimming, jet skiing, windsurfing, riding on a banana boat or even partying at night. Tourists are entertained by the spectacular fire shows and the peculiar population of short legged dogs.

Which is fine if you like that sort of thing, but not exactly what we were expecting.

But let’s backtrack a little. In order to get to Samet in the first place, we had to take the bus from Ekamai. We’ve had bad experiences before when we’ve assumed we were taking an express non-stop bus, only to have it stop every 5km to pick up passengers, turning a 90-minute journey into a 3-hour journey.

Determined not to make the same mistake twice, we asked the woman at the ticket booth whether the bus made any extra stops, or whether it was an express straight to the pier. She reassured us that it was a direct service, with no other stops. Unfortunately, she was lying.

Four hours later, after making stops on every corner between Bangkok and Ban Phe, we finally reached the pier. At this point we learned that the last regular boat to Samet leaves at 6.30pm. It was now 8pm.

We managed to share a speedboat with some other stragglers, for 200 baht each. It didn’t quite take us to the island though. It took us to a particularly wet patch of sea about 20 metres short of the beach – we had to wade to shore. I’d have worn shorts and sandals if I’d known that was going to happen…

After we squelched our way up the beach, we asked locals for directions to our hotel. None had ever heard of it. Eventually we called the contact number for the hotel (a mobile phone) and a Cambodian member of staff was dispatched to meet us on the beach and take us to the hotel. She was friendly enough, but spoke very little Thai and no English.

Since my mastery of the Khmer language extends only as far as “hello”, “beer”, “cheers!” and “thank you”, communications were stilted. Eventually, as we navigated our way around a group of fat, drunk, dancing Russians, we were led off the beach and through a nice-looking hotel, to our rather more modest-looking hotel, which was nestled snugly behind it.

The room itself was built on a slight angle – not enough to cause major balance problems, but quite sufficient that the sliding wardrobe doors were impossible to close, as they’d simply roll back open again every time. Although to be honest, I’d call that a feature. More entertaining viewing than the fire shows on the beach, anyway.

The beach itself was nice enough, but we only managed to find average, over-priced food, and the rowdy crowds and loud music were precisely the opposite of what we’d planned for.

The road back to the pier was a nice walk, with interesting houses, stalls and a decent massage shop. The pier itself was very impressive, with statues of characters from the 19th century epic poem, Phra Aphai Mani.

Decent views from the boat back to the mainland, too. It was a pleasure to leave, which is one of the few bonuses of visiting disappointing destinations.

As part of the Khao Laem Ya-Mu Ko Samet National Park area, foreigners must pay a 200 baht fee (40 baht for Thais) to enter the island.

I spent almost 7 years living here without visiting Samet, and will be quite happy to spend the next 7 years not returning.

Often touted as the Eighth Wonder of the World (as are quite a few other things, to be fair), I’d been putting it off for almost seven years now, and enough was enough.

Firstly, the logistics. For some reason, flying into Siem Reap airport is absurdly expensive. I had assumed that, like Samui airport, it was privately owned, but this turns out not to be the case. It’s physically a lot closer than Phnom Penh (358km as opposed to 528km), but a round trip from Bangkok costs up to three or four times as much.

So we decided to take an early morning flight into Phnom Penh instead, spend a day in the capital, and then take a coach up to Siem Reap the next morning. At US$13 each way for a very comfortable trip with Giant Ibis, we saved a fortune and got to see a lot more Cambodian countryside than we’d otherwise have managed. Not bad for a flying visit.

Day One

On my last trip in December, I’d witnessed round-the-clock construction work at the site of Veal Preah Man for the pending funeral of the King’s Father, the former King Sihanouk.

The actual funeral was a few weeks before my return, but on this trip I was lucky enough to see it still standing.

An amazing structure, especially considering how quickly it was put up.

We stayed in the Blue Lime hotel for the first night, a very pleasant hideaway just behind the National Museum, with a pleasant terrace for breakfasts alongside the saltwater swimming pool.

After checking in, we took the obligatory stroll up to Wat Phnom.

And the obligatory photo of a lazy cat seeking out shade at the top of the hill.

At this point, Wat Phnom was still the only Cambodian temple that I’d actually been inside. This would soon change.

After dinner at the excellent Karma, on Sisowatch Quay, we had a quick nightcap at Le Cyclo on the corner of St 172 and 23. We were so taken by the place that we booked in for our return to Phnom Penh.

Day Two

First up though, an early start. We were booked on the 8.45am bus to Siem Reap, and after only a minor setback (I’d accidentally requested a pickup from the Blue Mango hotel, which doesn’t exist, instead of the Blue Lime, which does), were soon on our way.

Giant Ibis are a new company, formed in 2012, and I have to say this was probably the best bus I’ve ever been on. Very comfortable roomy seats, free wi-fi on board, free drinking water, a free croissant and a free cold damp towel. Not bad at all for thirteen dollars (£8.50 or €10) – remember this is a 230km journey, or about 150 miles. The trip took six hours, including a toilet stop and a lunch stop in literally the middle of nowhere, but it felt much faster. Highly recommended.

We’d booked into La Niche D’ angkor Boutique Hotel in Siem Reap, which was absolutely fantastic. We found it easily enough after a minor disagreement with our tuk-tuk driver on the correct pronunciation of “niche”(!), and were checked in and settled by about 3pm. We spent the rest of the day lounging by the beautiful swimming pool, then headed out to check out Pub Street. Yuck. Still, as with Bangkok’s own Khao San Road, I’m glad it exists if only because it keeps backpackers and other assorted irritants away from me!

Accordingly, we shot out of Pub Street and had a very nice dinner indeed at the rather posh-looking Terrasse des Elephants. Slightly expensive by Cambodian standards, but well worthwhile – tremendous service and presentation, and excellent food.

Day Three

Up at 4am again, as our tuk-tuk driver was collecting us at 5am. Ish. See, we were waiting inside the lobby, and he was waiting outside it. Eventually one of us (I forgot who) saw sense and actually crossed the threshold, and we were off on the road to Angkor.

The trouble with visiting the Eighth Wonder of the World is that, even at 5am, there are always going to be lots of other people around. What you can’t see in the sunrise photo at the top of this page is the people behind me. Here’s another shot of the crowd all trying to take the exact same photo.

Of course, you can hardly blame Angkor for being popular. It’s just one of those things. I’m fortunate enough to have already visited numerous tourist hotspots around the world, and none of them were exactly deserted.

I wasn’t expecting a horse though.

Angkor Wat itself is only the first on a trail of temples that the more devout could spend a week exploring.

Of course, we’re not particularly devout. We’re just interested.

After Angkor Wat itself, impressive enough in its own right, comes so much more.

Angkor Thom dwarfs Angkor Wat in size – literally “Great City”, it was the the last and most enduring capital of the Khmer Empire.

Bayon, by far my favourite, contains 216 gigantic stone faces. Stunning.

Outside the temple, along a dirt track, we pass an elephant ride and this corridor into the unknown.

And so on to Baphuon.

It was a bit steep.

Phimeanakas was next on the trail.

We took a break for lunch, exhausted, but vowed to see one more temple – Ta Phrom.

This place has had to be rescued from the jungle, having been thoroughly overgrown by the trees.

Although I’m sure we didn’t do it justice, we had been on our feet in the now scorching heat for eight hours, and called it a day.

Back to the hotel for a nap, and then out for tapas at Shadow of Angkor. And beer. Quite a lot of beer. When we got back to the hotel, the moon was spectacular. Even more spectacular was my ability to actually point my camera at it without falling off the balcony.

Day Four

After a nice lie-in, and a leisurely breakfast, we returned to Phnom Penh courtesy once more of Giant Ibis. Six hours later, we checked into Le Cyclo, and then wandered up to La Croisette for dinner – tremendous pizza. I left my camera in the hotel room though.

Day Five

Breakfast at La Croisette hit the spot, then we took a tuk-tuk up to the Central Market.

I considered buying a few stacks of imitation Benjamins, but decided that I probably would not enjoy explaining this decision to customs officers.

Back in to the city, we checked out of the hotel, and into the massage shop down the road for a foot massage. The plan was then to walk up to the FCC via Veal Preah Man – but the best laid plans etc and so on. As it turned out, the demolition process had just begun.

Still, as an occasional visitor to the city, I have to count myself lucky to witness this site in its construction, its full glory, and finally its deconstruction – if I’d visited just a day or two later, it would have already vanished.

Finally, the FCC itself is one of the best places in the world to watch the day go by.

I watched this chap carting coconuts past a tourist couple who managed to read a map for several seconds without being accosted by a tuk-tuk driver.

And watched this cargo boat make its way up the Tonle Sap without a care in the world, despite the fact that it seemed to be very obviously sinking.

Finally, it was time to head back to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. A quick snap of the rather grand Council of Ministers building from the back of a tuk-tuk on the way, and we were done.

Worth the wait.

Walking through Thong Lo itself is never dull, of course. Here are three Thais on a tandem.

And here’s a Hummer in candy pink. Ahh, Bangkok.

At the café, there’s a reception area where you can change into comfy slippers (shoes are to be taken off outside), and wash your hands.

After a short wait (Sunday afternoons are not the best time to visit!) we were taken through to the café itself, which is split into two sections.

The first section contains zero cats, but glass doors and windows open onto the full-of-cats section which was, unsurprisingly, full.

We ordered coffee & cakes while we waited – when they eventually arrived, they were excellent. Of course, slow service is nothing new in Bangkok, and everyone’s only here for the cats anyway.

We were eventually invited through into the cat room – it was worth the wait:

To get there, head straight up Sukhumvit 53 from Sukhumvit itself and look for this sign on the left. If you’re coming from Thonglor, walk all the way down Thong Lo 9 and turn left at the end. The café is about 100 metres down the road, on your right.

If you take the BTS to Victory Monument (อนุสาวรีย์ชัยสมรภูมิ, or “Anusawari Chai Samoraphum”), then take the skywalk around the monument itself, walking anticlockwise to the very end of the platform, a staircase will deposit you a few steps from a bus stop where you can catch the 166 bus to the Wat Sanam Neua temple, in the Pak Kret district of Nonthaburi.

From there, you can take a look around the temple itself, and walk through its grounds to a jetty, where you can take a boat across the river to Ko Kret – the boat fare is just 2 baht ($0.07 US, or £0.04 UK).

Once on this tiny island, you can rent a bicycle for 40 baht, or just wander around on foot – a complete lap of the whole island is about 5 kilometres.

There’s a very definite feeling of having escaped from the city – it really is an oasis of calm.

Walking around the narrow streets between a mixture of traditional wooden houses and more modern concrete structures, the pace of life seems slower. There are no cars on the island, so apart from an occasional motorbike there was very little background noise.

Pottery seems to be the main business on the island, alongside Mon/Thai traditional desserts!

We passed several kilns, and there’s actually a pottery museum on the island.

As in most parts of Thailand, there’s always something interesting around the corner.

We bought one of these incense burners and a couple of bags of incense cones from a streetside shop that was also preparing desserts on the side.

There are plenty of dogs and cats around the island, some more photogenic than others.

Plenty of splashes of colour adorn the streets, too.

This cat reminded me of a tortoiseshell we used to own when I was a kid.

As the evening approached, I wished we’d come a few hours earlier!

This chap was guarding his owner’s house with quite some vigilance, barking at us with great gusto as we passed.

At the end of a long walk, we reached a riverside café where we watched the sun go down over a coffee. We asked if the service staff could call a pair of motorbike taxis for us, to take us back to the ferry as dusk approached. Instead, they took us back on their own motorcycles, and refused to take any money. We were definitely not in Bangkok!

This haughty cat watched us as we went.

And this mock monkey, hanging from a branch, bade us farewell as we took the 2-baht boat back to the city. A fine day out, we’ll certainly go back – hopefully a lot earlier in the day.

And so back again to Don Meuang airport for yet another weekend in Cambodia – this place really does bring back memories. I was 25, on my first trip to Asia. Almost nine years later, and yet hardly any time seems to have passed at all. Scary stuff.

I’d finally picked up a copy of To Cambodia with Love, which had been on my Amazon wishlist for just over two years, after seeing it mentioned on contributor Elizabeth Briel’s site.

Reading it on the plane on the way over, I realised that I really do need to venture beyond Phnom Penh sometime soon. Of Elizabeth’s three contributions to the book, two were for Siem Reap and the other was for the train from Phnom Penh to Battambang, now closed. Still, I got some good tips for eats in the capital, and may visit Siem Reap in a few weeks time.

The biggest news in Cambodia for some time had been the death of Norodom Sihanouk, father of the King, in October 2012. He’d been King of Cambodia himself twice, from 1941-1955 and then again from 1993 until his abdication in 2004.

when I booked the trip, I thought it would be interesting to finally visit Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace to pay respects while his body was lying in state. Closer to the time, I found out that the palace was closed for the duration of the 3-month mourning period.

What I could see though, was the construction of the funeral pyre, visible in the middle ground above (shot from the FCC – foreground is a decrepit colonial building, background is the National Museum).

I’m still not at all comfortable with street photography, but managed to pluck up the courage to turn and shoot after walking past the above scene. More practice required.

I stayed within a few blocks of the river as usual, not far from Kandal Market. But this time, like last time, I managed to see a few more sights that had long been on my list – the Russian market, the Independence Monument, and Wat Botum (above) – the temple which was once home to a young novice named Saloth Sar, better known later as Pol Pot.

In between exploring, I politely declining offers of a haircut at an open-air barbers stall.

Unlike in Bangkok, the rarity of taxis means the occasional trip in a tuk-tuk is a necessity.

The above photograph of a man carrying a double mattress on a motorbike is, I think, my favourite in an ongoing series of motorbikes bearing unnusual loads.

Although this guy runs him close.

I couldn’t pass up a trip to Wat Phnom.

Not least because it’s home to a very photogenic ginger cat.

Outside, cyclo drivers wait for customers.

On my last day, I ran into a friend of a friend from Bangkok – by fluke of fate, we were staying in the same hotel. We went out and drank $0.75 beers until everything went blurry. But I didn’t take any photos of that.

For the first time since I moved here six and a half years ago, I returned to Bangkok’s old airport – Don Mueang International. Local budget carrier Air Asia have moved all their flights there, and it was interesting to be back there after all this time.

Things ran smoothly enough, and a short, pleasant flight later we were soon taking a cab from Krabi airport to Ao Nang.

I’d been to Krabi twice before – once to Phi Phi for New Year 2008/2009, and again to Ko Lanta back in February. But this was my first time staying in the north of the province – it is spectacular.

Ao Nang itself was brutally disappointing. It’s a great location to make a base, as it’s the hub for the network of long-tailed boats that ferry passengers to and from the many beautiful beaches and islands in the area – Railay, Ton Sai, Ko Gai, Poda, Talay Waek, and so on. But the town itself is a tourist trap, awash with pushy touts, vendors and irritants.

For some reason, every single restaurant in Ao Nang sells pizza. That’s a good measure of how authentically Thai it is – i. e. not at all.

Still, a convenient place to make base camp, and pizza isn’t the worst food in the world.

We eventually find a Chinese-Thai restaurant that actually advertised real Thai food, and enjoy a good dinner.

The next day, we take a boat from Ao Nang over to Railay – still part of the mainland, but inaccessible due to the huge limestone cliffs, boat is the only sensible way to get here.

The long-tail boat drops us off at Railay West beach – busy compared to the deserted beaches I prefer, but not overrun. Fantastic scenery.

From there we take a long hike through the jungle over to Ton Sai beach. If we’d known in advance what an arduous walk this would be, we wouldn’t have bothered. Especially after we eventually emerged, to discover that Ton Sai beach is actually not a very nice beach. Oh well.

The faster way to return to Railay is by clambering over the rocks and wading through the sea, taking the outside route rather than overland. A few hairy moments have me fearing for my camera, not to mention my footing, but we manage it with only superficial injuries – which I soon forget about after a couple of beers on the beach, and a swim in the sea.

Back to the mainland to walk along the shore and watch the sun set over the sea.

And then หมูกระทะ for dinner.

On Sunday we meet up with some friends and hire a boat just for the four of us – 2,000 baht for the day, so 500 baht each.

First stop, Poda – a tiny island with fantastic clear waters and some terrific limestone formations.

Then back on the boat, and on to a great spot for snorkelling.

We threw in a few crumbs and the fish swarmed around us.

Back on the move, past more rock formations.

And around the coast of เกาะไก่, or Chicken Island – so called because the rocky outcrop resembles the neck and head of a chicken.

I still can’t get over how clear and still the water was.

Finally to ทะเลแหวก, or “separated sea” – low tide reveals a path along which one can walk from Chicken Island to Tup Island. Once the tide comes back in, it’s gone.

Our captain for the day suggests we finish off by visiting Railay, but as we’ve already been, we head back to Ao Nang – where a long walk past 100 pizza parlours eventually brings us to a decent Thai place, where we eat some real spicy Southern Thai food. Eye-watering stuff, just how I like it.

We chill out with a massage as evening approaches, then eventually succumb and have pizza for dinner, our last night in town. It’s actually not that bad.

I’ve been saying for years that I must go over for Christmas one year, but have yet to manage it. This year is no different – same old summer trip, once again. You see, it rains slightly less and is a little warmer in the summer, and I only need to take one coat. Still, it’s worth the trip to see family and friends, and of course the cats.

I also took one or two photographs…

With the 2012 London oh-god-not-the-Olympics-shut-up mercifully over, I wafted daintily into England via Manchester Airport. Almost as if they knew I was coming, the sky had been freshly painted slate-grey, and the grumpiest man in Manchester had been put on duty at immigration. My train was cancelled one minute before it was due to depart, and I had to take three separate trains (all late) in order to get back to Southport. It all came flooding back to me.

I was then unceremoniously dragged from the train when I finally arrived, and taken mercilessly to the pub where I was force-fed real ale until I had to lie down. With friends like these…

I wrote last year that ‘England now feels less like “my” country, and more like just somewhere I used to live’. I seem to have moved on from that position now, and have apparently become just another tourist.

I spent most of my time in the UK either with my brother and his wife & kids, or catching up (and drinking!) in pubs with old friends. In between though, and even during, I felt almost like an alien in England.

Cooing over English beers, marvelling at the continued existence (and dismal state) of Findus Crispy Pancakes, and even visiting an old-fashioned Tea-Rooms for full-on Cream Tea, capitals fully deserved. In fact, Tea shall be capitalised from now on. Although semi-decent Tea is available in Thailand, Tea in a café/bar/restaurant is inevitably dreadful, although not quite as bad as in the United States…

I even bought a packet of loose Tea to take home with me. A souvenir of this exotic land. I must be officially foreign by now, surely.

On the list for next year – Soreen Malt Loaf, fig rolls and Ready Brek.

As dainty and conversative as the Tea-rooms were, the chippy dinner was as welcome, if not quite as formal. I had the home-made steak pie and chips, with muchy peas and gravy. My dining pals had fish and chips, with a pot of More Tea, bread & butter, and a gravy boat full of curry sauce.

This tremendous traditional meal was usurped in its calorific glory though, a few days later after rather a few pints of locally brewed ale. The tremendously-named “Large Big Feast” contains chicken tikka, shish and doner, with a healthy amount of salad atop a delicious naan bread, slathered in garlic mayonnaise. I was quite unable to finish it, but bravely ate the second half for breakfast the following day.

Junk food and Tea aside, it was nice to be back in the UK, to catch up with friends, family and places from the past. But it’s just as nice to escape from it all to the sanctity, and indeed sanctuary, of rural Ireland.

A day trip to Arranmore had been on my list of things to do for years, and we finally made it. A short ferry crossing, and a host of scenery.

More Tea back at the quay, then back to the mainland for a drive up to a secluded beach as the sun slowly set over Donegal. A good day.

The weather brightened up over the next day or two – there will always be a cloud somewhere over Donegal, but there were many more bright patches of blue between them now, and another long drive around and past Errigal gave us some fantastic views.

But it was soon time to head back to the UK – to Derry airport, still home of the ill-advisedly named Amelia Earhart Lounge. Yes, really.

Thankfully, Ryanair’s Boeing 737 was rather more fortunate than Earhart’s Lockheed Model 10 Electra, and I was soon deposited back in Liverpool with the minimum of fuss, or indeed, comfort.

Back to Tea then, and to pubs, pool tables, curries and comedy. I do enjoy being back in the mix – back in my home town, where every stranger speaks the same language, where we all have a cultural connection… but these are fading even now. I don’t know the slang, I don’t know what people watch on TV any more, and I don’t know who most of the pop stars are.

Of course, that might be nothing to do with leaving England – I might just be getting old.

Epilogue: Chicken Biryani

On a layover in Abu Dhabi, en route back to Bangkok, I found the most authentic-looking café (i.e. not McDonalds), read the menu (it was printed in both English and Arabic), approached the server and placed my order.

Me: Can I have a chicken biryani, please?

Him: No.

Me: No?

Him: No.

Next year I shall have two.

Since 2012 is the year of London’s oh-god-not-the-Olympics-shut-up I thought it was time I tracked down Cambodia’s own Olympic Stadium – which has never actually hosted an Olympics, but you try telling them to rename it. It was a long walk, but allowed me to visit the City Mall – Phnom Penh’s 3rd and newest shopping mall. This city is growing up.

Construction is going on everywhere, the buildings are getting a lot grander and a lot taller, but nobody seems quite sure what all the huge new office buildings in particular are actually for. Still, growth is growth, I suppose.

From the very big to the very small, this kitten was tiny.

See?

The old railway station remains closed for now – Cambodia has no passenger train services at all – but has had a recent coat of paint, and there is talk of services perhaps opening next year.

Ganesh keeps an eye on the traffic.

There’s a lot more money coming into the country these days.

The old ways still survive though – the keen-eyed will spot a barber’s shop operating dead centre in Kandal Market – all you really need is a mirror, a chair and some scissors, after all.

Temples are a constant, and evidence of Buddhist culture is all around.

It’s a little more obvious in some places than others, though.

Trying to wash the spots off these Dalmatians?

Every time I return to Phnom Penh I find something new – but also something missing. It’s nice to see a city that has suffered so much growing up, but some of the old ways are inevitably left behind. I suppose it’s all part of the process. Still, I’ll be back.

I Googled the error message itself, and found nothing. Since the software had only been released that morning, results were always going to be limited.

I did find a few people having similar problems, but their posted solutions were either turning off a particular anti-virus app (which I have never installed), or deleting a certain directory hidden in /var/folders (I tried it, no joy).

Eventually I discovered that my ISP was causing the problem – maybe a transparent caching proxy with an incomplete cache of the download files, who knows.

I packed up my laptop and went to a friend’s place who uses an alternate ISP, and it worked first time. Bizarre.

Anyway, aside from an annoying and apparently random bug in Safari 6, where opening a new tab occasionally crashes the entire browser app, it’s rather good.

Anyone else receiving the above error might want to try downloading on a different connection, or via a VPN.

n.b. A good friend sends semi-regular emails showcasing his home cookery skills. For some reason, he serves every single dish with peas. I felt the need to respond.

Inspired by an empty fridge and a stingy unwillingness to pay upwards of 500 baht to get a curry delivered, I decided to experiment with actually making my own dinner last night (manual labour!).

Here are the results.

I have always been rather fond of Indian food, and recently came across a packet of Tikka Masala spice paste on a jaunt around one of trendy Thonglor’s 24-hour supermarkets.

I had a quick look at the recipe (serves four) on the back of the packet, as I’ve been burnt by these things before – usually it’ll require the contents of the packet itself, some meat, a few vegetables, and then just as you’re lulled into a false sense of security it’ll throw in something utterly impossible to find in Bangkok – “two finely-ground stoats”, “500g of Eccles cake”, “one pint of drinkable real ale”, “the social decorum of a bargirl”, etc and so on.

This one was surprisingly simple though – chicken, some yoghurt for the marinade, a large onion, then just oil and water. Sold!

I bought a tub of live yoghurt because I couldn’t find any regular dead yoghurt.

I opened it up, left it for a while and watched carefully. Once satisfied that it was not planning to escape, I relaxed and mixed it with the paste to make this bowl of yummy goo, or “marinade” as the recipe (serves four) called it.

The recipe (serves four) also called for 450g of chicken, but I could only find 200g packets in the shop – I bought 2, for a combined 400g of chicken, so do bear in mind that my results will be 11.1% less meaty than envisaged by the creator of the recipe (serves four).

n.b. The English writing just says “Fresh Chicken”, but the super-secret Thai writing underneath says สันในไก่, or “chicken tenderloin” (whatever that is). I chopped up the chicken with my Big Knife.

And then dumped it into the yummy goo (“marinade”).

This was covered and chucked in the fridge for a bit. Next up, onions.

I couldn’t find a large onion, so I bought a medium onion and a small onion and had them join forces. Once again, my Big Knife made short work of them. Into the Big Pan with them, to fry in a little oil until soft.

Then all that remained was to add the chicken and goo (“marinade”) from earlier to fry up for three minutes, then to chuck in half a cup of water, bring to the boil, and simmer for another 15 minutes. Et voilà.

“Serves four”, my arse.

I put half of it onto a plate of rice, pictured. and the other half in the fridge. I’ll have that for breakfast tomorrow, on toast, because I am Northern.

The verdict? Impressive. Not particularly spicy, but nor should it be. Sweet and creamy without being too sugary, with just the right amount of crunch from the onions. Would (and will) devour again. And all this without peas! Cheers!

The precise difference between “The UK”, “Great Britain”, “England” etc has always been a source of great confusion to outsiders – this video by C. G. P. Grey does a good job of clearing up the differences:

Better? Good.

Now on the outside, looking in, I see that the Scottish are coming closer to independence, whilst curiously at the same time “Team GB” means that both English and Welsh footballers (soccerball kickers) will be representing the same nation at the Olympics this year.

In the midst of all this, the fact that none of the individual nations that make up the UK have their own national anthems – they all share the turgid dirge that is God Save The Queen.

It’s a confusing time to be British, and Prime Minister David Cameron has evidently decided that this is the perfect time to suggest that England adopt its own national anthem – his suggestion? Jerusalem – Sir Hubert Parry’s musical take on William Blake’s rather well-known words:

And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountain green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the countenance divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

The Guardian furnishes us with the details (and some splendid comments).

Far be it from me to agree with a Tory, but it’s quite a good tune – dark sanatic mills and all. Perhaps it would perk people up a bit.

And in an England where I read of the Olympic embargo on non-McDonalds chips, an England where I read that Bruce Springsteen and Sir Paul McCartney had their microphones turned off for singing after 11pm in a Saturday night concert, an England in which a Frankenstein coalition government is quietly dismantling the NHS, having already made free education a thing of the past, and in which the populace react with a “tch” and a sigh and a “well I suppose we should vote the war criminals back in next time around then”…

In that England, I think people could probably do with a little perking up.

I shall be visiting once the Olympics are over. Sing along.

We flew up from Bangkok on the Friday, and took an airport taxi to the hotel. It’s still a 120 baht flat rate to anywhere in the city, or about US$3.75 / £2.40. Bargain.

The hotel itself was superb – an oasis of calm in the heart of Chiang Mai’s Old City. This is the area within the remains of the original (and partly reconstructed) city walls, dating back to 1296 CE (1839 BE).

It’s a quieter, more laid-back part of the world than central Bangkok, but then I suppose that’s true for many places. Still, it’s a pleasant change to see cars stop to let pedestrians cross the road (no no, after you), instead of speeding up to warn them against even thinking about crossing (green man? what green man?)… People just seem to have more time.

Friday night was a quiet one, a quick trip to 7-11 to stock up on the liquids that we weren’t allowed to bring on the flight, and a late lunch at the very good แซ่บจัง (“Yummy E-san Food”), tucked into กาดกลางเวียง (Kad Klang Wiang) – a nice little courtyard area featuring several cafés and restaurants at the corner of Ratchadamnoen and Ratpakinai roads. You’ll spot the Wawee Coffee café first, right on the corner.

Then a long walk to the night bazaar where we looked at everything and bought nothing. Dinner at Asma, a halal Indian-Pakistani-Arabic restaurant in the heart of the market, and then back to the hotel for an early night.

Saturday – Flight of the Gibbon

Up at dawn, we squeezed in a quick buffet breakfast at the hotel (they have an omelette station – I want one in my apartment please), then picked up by a minibus which did the rounds collecting another three couples before the hour-long drive up into the mountains. Our co-gibboning couples were Russian-Russian, Italian-Italian and French-Belgian. A good mix of friendly folks.

After an hour or so driving up into the mountains, we arrived at Mae Kampong, a small mountain village some 1300m above sea level. There we found the Flight of the Gibbon office, filled in some forms, paid up, and got into our harnesses and helmets. Not a good look, but a small price to pay.

Back into the van, which played a quick safety video on the ceiling-mounted DVD player, then all out and pretty much straight onto the first zipline.

Still half-asleep, we didn’t have time to get nervous before we were whizzing along steel cables through the jungle canopy. Not a bad way to start the weekend.

After a couple of gentle lines, a jungle hike between stations and a chance meeting with a family of real gibbons up in the treetops.

More ziplines, rickety rope bridges, and finally rope descenders to the forest floor finished off a great three hours in beautiful surroundings.

Back up to the village for lunch, then a trek up a waterfall for good measure, and finally a minibus ride back down into the city, and back to the hotel for a well-earned afternoon nap.

After a bath, a snooze and a decision, fast gathering pace, to buy a Real Camera in the not too distant future, we made our way to the small, easily missed but superb Thais That Bind. It’s a shame about the name, but the food is superb.

Sunday – Wat Chedi Luang and Chiang Mai Zoo

I think Wat Chedi Luang is my favourite temple in the world.

Dating back to the 14th century CE, there are several buldings in the grounds, but the central chedi is simply beautiful.

Heavily damaged by an earthquake in 1545 CE (2088 BE), the main structure has been partially restored, but the spire is long gone.

From the temple, we took a songthaew to Chiang Mai Zoo. We’d got two free tickets as part of the Flight of the Gibbon package, and headed straight to the panda enclosure to see Lin Bing – one of the few pandas ever born in captivity outside China.

Lin Bing herself can only be seen through a glass wall, but her parents Chuang Chuang and Lin Hui live in more open enclosures.

From pandas to lions, tigers, and monkeys.

Lots of monkeys.

Monkeys are cool.

The hippos seemed content to stay underwater out of the heat when we first approached.

They soon became less shy though – the presence of a (closed) hippo food stall nearby was presumably the reason why.

I thought hippos were notoriously dangerous animals. If I were designing a zoo, I would probably make it so that you couldn’t stick your arm over the wall, under the railings, and dangle it into a hippo’s waiting mouth if you wanted to…

There were plenty of other animals, of course, but those were certainly the highlights. A simple chicken & rice lunch at the zoo, then back into a songthaew and onto the hotel, via Jangira Traditional Thai Massage shop for a welcome foot massage.

Chill, shower, change, and back out to the Sunday night Walking Street Market. Far too much time spent wandering the stall was eventually, mercifully crowned with dinner at the very nice Chiang Mai Writers Club.

Monday – Doi Suthep

Doi Suthep is one of the mountains that overlooks the city of Chiang Mai, and the temple Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep sits on top, offering a fantastic view of the city and surrounds.

Another songthaew ride took us up the mountain – a long, lurching winding ride up steep mountain roads. Once at the top, the temple itself is a way up from the raod – it can be reached by cable car or an alarmingly long and steep set of stairs (309 steps, apparently). We took the cable car.

Inside the central courtyard, the large golden chedi is surrounded by various statues, bells and shrines, and the walls painted with various murals.

Outside that central courtyard are those spectacular views, as well as bells and further shrines, including this one to Ganesh.

Back down, via the 309 steps, for the long and winding road back to the old city, and the hotel.

Monday also happened to be Visakha Bucha day, so after a well-earned rest we wandered around to Wat Pan Tao to watch the monks lighting candles in the grounds.

Here’s a quick video clip (try here if you can’t see it):

Dinner at Girasole, an excellent Italian restaurant back at Kad Klang Wiang – the courtyard where we had lunch on our first day. Great simple Italian food, marred only slightly by the alcohol ban for Visakha Bucha day!

Tuesday – Back to Bangkok

A quick dash down the street for a well-earned full-on fry-up at Ginny Cafe, then packing, check-out, and a cab back to the airport where we stocked up on Chiang Mai sausages to take back to Bangkok.

All in all, a perfect weekend.

The Nook uses the exact same book format as the iPad – ePub. It can handle PDFs just fine, too. Most of my books are DRM-free, but a few have copy protection, so won’t work. Also, anything with embedded sound/video isn’t going to work. But 99.9% of my collection can be read on the Nook with no problems at all.

However, since it’s not an Apple device, it obviously doesn’t integrate quite as well with iTunes. When you plug it into your Mac via USB, the storage will show up in Finder as a FAT32 drive (or two, if you added an microSD card). You could manually copy all the .epub files across to that drive, but that would be tedious.

So I knocked up a one-liner to rsync my iBooks library to the SD card on my Nook, and figured I would post it here in case anyone finds it useful.

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#!/bin/bash

# change <username> to your actual OSX username
# if you don't know what that is, run 'echo $USER'

/usr/bin/rsync \
    -rvP \                     # recursive, verbose, and with progress meters
    --size-only \              # ignore dates - FAT32 does!
    --delete \                 # delete anything that doesn't exist at source
    --exclude '*Enhanced*' \   # skip any books with 'Enhanced' in the title
    --exclude '*Winnie*' \     # skip that DRM-protected Winnie the Pooh!
    ~<username>/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Books/ \  # source path
    /Volumes/NOOKSD/                                 # destination

Most of the above should be self-explanatory – on the —size-only option, rsync will normally check whether a file’s timestamp matches at source and destination. If not, it’ll re-transfer the file. Unfortunately FAT32 doesn’t store very accurate timestamp information – it rounds times to the nearest 2 seconds. So a timestamp check against a file on a real FS (HFS+ in this case) will often fail. That —size-only option fixes this.

The —delete option means that anything I deleted in iTunes will be deleted on the Nook as well when I sync it.

I have a few books that aren’t useful on the Nook – Kevin Smith’s “Tough Sh*t (Enhanced Edition)” has embedded videos at the top of each chapter, for example. That’s not going to work on a Nook, so I don’t bother transferring it. Same with the DRM-laden free copy of Winnie the Pooh that comes with iBooks. If you have books that don’t work on the Nook, add a line to exclude them from the copy.

Specifically, this one deals with running a file server accessible from my desktop, which is a Mac running OSX Lion.

Yes, we could use Samba, but I don’t have any Windows machines, and I like keeping things simple. Using netatalk and avahi removes all that Windows-related unpleasantness, and also seems more efficient – files certainly seem to transfer much faster than they did using Samba.

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sudo apt-get install netatalk avahi-daemon

That was easy.

There are, of course, a few tweaks:

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sudo editor /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf

Add this line to the bottom of that file:

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- -tcp -noddp -uamlist uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2_passwd.so -nosavepassword -setuplog "default log_info /var/log/afpd.log"

Next, define the actual shares:

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sudo editor /etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default

Scroll to the bottom of the file, comment out the default home directory share, and replace it with this one, plus extra lines for any other directories you want to share:

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# The line below sets some DEFAULT, starting with Netatalk 2.1.
:DEFAULT: options:upriv,usedots

# By default all users have access to their home directories.
#~/                     "Home Directory"

# End of File

~/           "Home Directory" cnidscheme:dbd
/opt/storage "Storage"        cnidscheme:dbd

Finally, restart the services:

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sudo /etc/init.d/netatalk restart
sudo restart avahi-daemon

As Paul pointed out in a comment, if you’re running a firewall you’ll need to allow connections on TCP port 548. Assuming you’re using ufw (and if you’re not, you should be – it’s great), it’s a simple matter of:

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sudo ufw allow 548

Or if you want to be more selective about who gets access, you can restrict it by IP:

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sudo ufw allow proto tcp from 192.168.1.8 to 192.168.1.4 port 548

In the above example, my Ubuntu server is at 192.168.1.4, and my Mac is at 192.168.1.8. Or if you use DHCP, allow the whole range or indeed the whole class C:

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sudo ufw allow proto tcp from 192.168.1.0/24 to 192.168.1.4 port 548

Now if you open a Finder window on your Mac, you should see the server show up under the Shared section – click on it, log in using your Ubuntu username/password, and viola – there are your shares.

Here are the instructions, so that I remember how I did it next time. Anyone else reading this, feel free to make use of it, but I won’t be held responsible if you break your computer – there may well be errors, large or small :)

The first nice thing about btrfs is that it replaces the md software RAID tools, as well as completely replacing LVM. Neither are much fun to work with, and I shan’t miss them.

I have a Shuttle SH55J2 at home, with a couple of mismatched hard drives (160Gb and 1Tb) and 16Gb of RAM.

I decided to set up the drives like this:

/dev/sda1 = 160Gb partition for RAID-1

/dev/sdb1 = 160Gb partition for RAID-1

/dev/sdb2 = 840Gb non-redundant partition for downloads and storage of unimportant things

This gives me 160Gb for the basic OS which is mirrored across both drives, so even if a hard drive dies my computer will still work.

The other 840Gb I can use for messing around with virtual machines, temporary file share storage, etc.

No swap for now, because I have 16Gb of RAM.

First gotcha – the Ubuntu install process does not support setting up a btrfs RAID1 system. It will allow you to install to a btrfs partition, but only as DUP/RAID0.

The fix: once the installer gets to the screen where it asks you about partitioning, press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to get to a prompt, and set up the RAID manually:

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mkfs.btrfs -L root -m raid1 -d raid1 /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2
btrfs device scan
exit

Then Ctrl+Alt+F1 and back to the installer, and select manual partitioning.

Select the btrfs partition at /dev/sda1 – choose btrfs, mount as ‘/’, bootable flag on, and DO NOT FORMAT. The installer will warn you about existing files on the disk, but you’ve only just created the filesystem so there is nothing there to worry about.

Under mount options, select ‘noatime’, we will add other options later (they’re not selectable from the installer).

The installer will automatically create two subvolumes, whether you like it or not – @ for the root FS, and @home for /home.

Once the install is done, you’ll reboot and be met with a scary warning message from grub:

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error: sparse file not allowed

It tells you to press any key to continue, but it’ll actually continue by itself if you just wait and press nothing. Still annoying though, so we’ll fix that first.

It’s actually a known bug, listed here.

The fix – edit the file /etc/grub.d/00_header and comment out these six lines:

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cat << EOF
if [ -s \$prefix/grubenv ]; then
  set have_grubenv=true
  load_env
fi
EOF

becomes:

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#cat << EOF
#if [ -s \$prefix/grubenv ]; then
#  set have_grubenv=true
#  load_env
#fi
#EOF

Then:

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sudo update-grub

Reboot, and all should be well.

Now, we’ll add those extra mount options to /etc/fstab:

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/dev/sda1 /     btrfs noatime,subvol=@,compress=lzo,space_cache,autodefrag,inode_cache     0 1
/dev/sda1 /home btrfs noatime,subvol=@home,compress=lzo,space_cache,autodefrag,inode_cache 0 2

The ‘noatime,subvol=XYZ’ part should have been there already – I added the ‘compress=lzo,space_cache,autodefrag,inode_cache’ to make it faster or set it on fire or something.

Finally, apply all of the above:

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sudo mount -o remount /
sudo mount -o remount /home
sudo btrfs filesystem balance
sudo btrfs filesystem defragment

Edit: As Mayank Bansal points out, btrfs’s defragment command is not recursive, so actually this does NOT apply compression to the files already installed.

Given the issues with manually defragmenting all the files after the install, I would probably wait for Ubuntu 12.10 or even 13.04, whichever is the first to fully support installing to a compressed btrfs volume.

Since btrfs also seems to be significantly slower than ext4, especially for larger files, I actually recommend sticking with ext4 for now.

This time, my destination was the rather more sedate Ko Lanta.

Flying from Bangkok down to Krabi allows a great view if you manage to snag a window seat on the right-hand-side of the plane. I got lucky.

Krabi airport has a massage shop in the arrivals area. This struck me as odd.

From the airport, a taxi all the way to the hotel cost ฿2,300, including the two ferry crossings.

The first ferry crossing took our taxi from the mainland to Ko Lanta Noi (เกาะลันตาน้อย), the smaller of the two islands. A short drive, and then a second ferry crossing to Ko Lanta Yai (เกาะลันตาใหญ่).

Our hotel was a short further drive down the west coast of the island, just past the end of Long Beach. Quiet? Utter silence. Apart from a cat, on which the volume appeared to be broken.

From the sleepy quiet of the hotel, we walked north along the main road until we came to a dirt path that led to a seafood restaurant right on the beach. As in, sand under the table. Great food. The waves softly lapped at the shore as we ate. We couldn’t see them, but we could hear them.

The second day was hotter than it really had any right to be. I felt the need to verify that the hotel’s American Breakfast was awful, as is traditional in this part of the world. It did not let me down – the eggs were fried on the bottom but still raw and runny on top (the white, not the yolk). The ham was grey. The sausage had escaped from an underwhelming hot dog. All was well with the world.

After breakfast, we headed north and found a perfect deserted beach. We swam in the sea, and I got horribly sunburnt, as is traditional.

Later, we took the hotel’s shuttle bus up to the main town of Saladan, and wandered around the local shops and a rather touristy market.

Apparently, somebody likes gin and tonic.

I, too, like gin and tonic. I now also like Ko Lanta.

We had lunch at a café on Klong Dao beach, then walked along the main stretch for a while. These houses caught my eye.

Then a tuk-tuk back to the hotel, to lounge by the pool and read a book or two. Taking a shower, in the outdoor, roofless bathroom, I noticed wild monkeys watching me from over the wall, with thoughtful expressions on their faces. I wonder what they were thinking. I did ask, but their responses were vague and poorly-formed.

Dinner was at Baan Pad Thai, a muslim restaurant down the road from the hotel, and was exquisite.

If day two had been slow, day three ground to a standstill. A slow stroll back to the beach, where men and birds were fishing.

Lunch was over at Meeting Point, a great little family-run restaurant and guest house. The spicy seafood salad (ยำทะเล) was both nuclear-hot and delicious.

More loafing followed, along with a massage, and then a final dinner – we cheated, and had pizza.

All that was left was for one last sleep, one last breakfast, and to check out and clamber aboard the minibus back to the airport.

And no, Krabi airport does not have a massage shop in the departures area. Genius.

In the queue to board the plane, a surly middle-aged French woman declared “I am not pushing in!”, as she pushed in front of me. She definitely was though.

Ko Lanta is an absolutely beautiful place to escape, unwind, relax, and basically just stop. Yes, there are tourists, but the island’s big enough that you can avoid them – the further south you go, the fewer people you will encounter.

It’s a bit of a trek from Bangkok, but well worth the effort. I will definitely be back.

Last time around, I stopped off in Copenhagen with time to explore the city. This time, I had a quick layover in Narita, Japan. No time to leave the airport, but plenty of time to take in the weirdness.

I think ANA is my new favourite airline. The in-flight entertainment system has an A/V socket to plug in your iPod/iPhone/iPad and play your own music or videos on their screen (careful now), and you can recharge power via USB at the same time. I’d seen this on some Etihad flights before, but it seems to be standard on ANA (it was on all 4 of my flights). Very nice.

Soon enough, I found myself walking out of JFK towards the car, and realised I was suddenly very cold indeed – a feeling I hadn’t experienced for about six years. It was nice – for about five minutes. After the initial excitement had passed, it was no longer pleasant – just cold.

I was soon warm enough in the car though, but it was fascinating looking at the scenery as we made our way north to Stamford, CT. The trees had shed their leaves for winter – they simply don’t do that in Bangkok. A forgotten sight. Arriving in Stamford though, it was still cold outside.

Remember, I’d gone six years without feeling cold. In March 2010, we’d had a mild snap in Bangkok – 18˚C (64.4˚F), and I had complained that it was a bit chilly. Back in the USA though, the temperature had dropped below zero. As time went on, I became convinced that this was, in fact, the coldest place on earth, and as cold as anybody could possibly be.

And then it snowed.

And two things happened. Firstly, and not very astonishingly, I discovered that Thai shoes are not snow-proof.

Secondly, and very astonishingly indeed to this Briton, things just carried on as usual. Normally a light sprinkling of frost is enough to bring the entire UK public transport system grinding to a halt. Trains will be delayed by several hours, or (more likely) will stop running completely. Road surfaces become lethally treacherous, local councils sheepishly admit that they didn’t buy any grit, and society has to take a week off while we wait for the thin glazing of snow to melt.

In America, they just carry on as usual through a foot of snow. The trains keep on running, the roads are kept clear, and life goes on.

Once I got over the time difference and the jet lag (the day I landed was effectively 36 hours long), I had a really good trip.

American food gets a bad rap, but if you avoid McDonalds you can eat incredibly well for very little money. The only problem is the enormous portion sizes, but if you are capable of stopping eating when you’re full, then it’s not such a problem. Heck of a waste though.

The meal is not over when I’m full. The meal is over when I hate myself.

I always take advantage of the shopping opportunities when I’m stateside, this time I picked up a Nook Simple Touch for $99 from Barnes & Noble.

I already have an iPad which I can use to read .epub books using the iBooks app, but the iPad is just slightly too heavy to read for hours on end (as I discovered during my 20+ hours of flying time). It’s not heavy enough to make it impossible – just enough to be annoying.

The Nook is much lighter (212g vs 601g), reads the same .epub files that I already own without any conversion required, and has a few other advantages too.

The iPad also has a glossy, reflective screen, so doesn’t work too well in direct sunlight. In comparison, the Nook has an e-ink screen, so you need a light source to read on it, but it really is just like reading a paper page – plus the battery lasts for weeks rather than hours. I picked up a 16Gb micro SD card for $50 while I was there – that will probably hold more books than I can read in a lifetime. Now I just need to find some time to read…

Taking the train up the local Metro North line to Bethel, CT to visit friends was impressive – the trains run on time, even through snow, and the tickets are far cheaper than you’d pay in the UK to take a delayed train (or quite possibly a bus replacement service).

I finally managed to reach the station
Only to find that the bus replacement service had broken down
After wondering to myself whether or not it should actually be called a train replacement service
I walked out onto the concourse

In short, an enjoyable trip, but I think I’ll try to visit in the summer again next time.

Here’s to another 6 years of cold-free living.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

Thailand has been tremendously good to me. No country is perfect, certainly not for everyone. Indeed, if one country ever did get it right, it would quickly sink into the sea as the entire population of the world swarmed to move there.

But for me, I would certainly much rather be here than in any other country I have ever visited.

More on this subject as the anniverary of my permanent move approaches.

Coincidentally, it’s also about eight years since I started fiddling with Wordpress, the CMS which until recently powered this website. I’ve dallied with other systems, including Movable Type, Bloxsom and Habari, but it’s been Wordpress for the vast majority of the past 8 years.

Recently I’ve been trying to streamline my digital lifestyle. I’ve lost too many songs, photos, streams of words over the years because I’d only saved them in one place, which then became suddenly… inaccessible.

Physical fragility is only one problem though – the other is fragility of formats. There are versions of Microsoft Word that can no longer read documents created in certain previous versions of Microsoft Word. Ten years or so ago, I spent weeks digitising all of my audio CDs into the Ogg Vorbis format, which I was convinced would soon become the dominant audio format. It didn’t.

Meanwhile, plain text files written two decades ago on Amiga computers, or creaky MS-DOS PCs, or indeed anything that can read/write straight ASCII files are still perfectly legible. Simple is good.

And while dynamic data-driven websites obviously have their uses, it has always struck me as terminally stupid that so many websites are dynamic for no good reason.

For a typical Wordpress site, the content is stored in a MySQL database as a blob of (usually crufty) HTML or XHTML, and so every time a visitor wants to read the content, a mass of PHP code sets off its arduous journey to retrieve the content from the database and dynamically generate an alphabet soup of HTML, JavaScript, CSS and other such ingredients so that the browser can display the content.

The next time the page is requested, it does it all again. Generates the same code from the same ingredients. All day, it generates the same page over and over again.

Not any more. It seems more sensible to simply create the page once, and leave it there.

Octopress, incorporating Jekyll, generates plain old HTML from Markdown – which itself is almost plain text. Comments are now offloaded to Disqus. And the whole shebang is now hosted on Amazon Cloudfront via S3 – I don’t even need a web server any more.

Simple is good.

Instructions here