The news of Thaksin's imminent return had only been leaked for a few hours before the Bangkok Post 'broke' the following story:
The group that staged huge street demonstrations before the military stepped in and overthrew Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra resurrected itself on Monday and threatened to start the protests again. The People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) suddenly on Monday morning turned against the return to Thailand by Mr Thaksin for any reason.
Leaders of the group, including newspaper tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul and Buddhist sect activist Maj-Gen Chamlong Srimuang, said at a special meeting to the current government was acting in the interests of "the Thaksin regime," and PAD instead to step up protests. In a seven-point statement, PAD resolved "to oppose the return of Thaksin" and threatened to return to the street protests if, as likely, the ex-premier comes back to Thailand.
Ed. It's a lengthy article so if you want to read it all click on the link above. I have to say this is a pretty brave statement given Samak's history of dealing with demonstrations. In private Samak's probably thinking, "Bring em on".
On the subject of "bring em on" have you noticed the many similarities between GW and Samak? The obvious ones are:
- both are shoot from the hip type personalities
- both have tried to re-write history which leads to
- both having a problem with the truth
- both struggle to show the benefits of their elitist education
- both have a limited knowledge of the world beyond their borders
- both are fine examples of the Peter Principle
- both put vested interests before the needs of their people
- both have a displayed a disturbing ease for washing blood off their hands
- both see power as a means to get what they want, not as a means to serve
- both cook - nah, George can't cook anything more than a cow. Wipe it's arse and stick it on the grill is young GW's cooking tip for rare steak
- both are known for their erudite commentary - nah, Samak can speak Thai
Sierra Tangos
- Gullivers to open a new tavern on Walking Street. If the freelancers won't come to you, then.....
- Rumour doing the rounds that it will be business as usual for the Pattaya bars from 6.00pm, Saturday, March 1
- Man arrested while trying to hand out yaba during court trial [via The Nation]
- Guns, grenades and fists used in North Pattaya fight [via Pattaya City News]
-
World's Biggest Cheeseburger - The first picture is of the burger that won Bob's BBQ & Grill's the title for the biggest burger.
It has now been surpassed by Mallie's Sports Bar & Grill in Michigan with a 134lb burger. [via The Telegraph]
- How To Save All Open Websites in Firefox When It’s Time to Call It a Day
Imagine a situation where are you have a dozen different websites open inside Firefox and suddenly your wife walks in saying - "Let’s go out for dinner and then see a movie."
That’s an offer you can’t refuse but before shutting down the computer, you would like to save a list of all websites that are currently open in Firefox. Here are some suggestion on how to achieve this?
Option 1. Press Ctrl Shift D or go to Bookmarks and select "Bookmark all Tabs". This will save all the open tabs into one folder and you can resume surfing the next day by select "Open All in Tabs" from the bookmark folder.
Bonus Tip: Name this folder something like "Feb25" or "022508" so it becomes easy for you to guess the date from the folder name itself.
Option 2. Send Tab URLs - This extension helps you send URLs of all open tabs to any other email address tabs using your default email program - it could be Gmail, Microsoft Outlook or anything else. Very handy if you are working from home and need to access the same websites from office the next day.
If you don’t want email, use Tab URL Copier to copy URLs of all open tabs to the clipboard and paste them inside any note taking software like Google Notebook.
Option 3. Google Browser Sync - If you have a Google Account and work
across computers, this Firefox add-in from Google is a perfect way to save your Firefox tabs and open windows. Unfortunately, Google Browser Sync is not supported on Firefox 3.
Option 4. Session Manager - This is probably the most popular solution for save your browser session in Firefox. It will even restore your windows and tabs incase your browser crashes.
Firefox, even without any extensions, will prompt your save the tabs if you decide to quit the browser when multiple tabs are open. This sounds like a good idea but if you are sharing the computer with other family members, you run the risk of losing work if someone else logs in the next day before you do. [via Digital Inspiration]
- 2-Step DVD-to-PC or iPod Video Conversion using Free Software
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past years figuring out how to get my DVD collection onto my PC so I can use my Home Theater PC (HTPC) to play my library on my TV. The following is the two step process I’ve come up with to do this; all other programs I’ve used either are not free, install spyware, or desync the audio.
Step 1:
Install and use DVDFab HD Decrypter.
The settings here are pretty straightforward. Select “Full Disk” and where you want to save the file. Click start, and about 40 minutes later you will have your DVD on your hard drive and ready to encode.
Step 2:
Install and Launch Handbrake.
Handbrake is a cross-platform (Win, Mac, Linux) program which is a collection of command line utilities that are used to convert DVD files to media files for use on your PC or iPod.
Handbrake really can’t make things too much simpler. First, open the directory where you just saved your DVD to. It will then analyze the DVD for you.
You can then select your options manually, or use some of the pre-built presets available on the right to automatically convert your DVD for several devices. Devices include iPod High Res, iPod Low Res, iPhone/iPod Touch, PSP, PS3 and more. Generally speaking, all of these profiles use H.264 to encode the video - this codec is arguably one of the best ones for quality/size tradeoff. Also, Xvid is available to encode your video. If you are converting video and you only wish to transfer to your iPod, select the iPod profile you need (I generally use iPod Low for the iPod Nano).
Finally, select the “Destination” and file name for your converted file.
Click “Encode Video” and up pops the command line window and you will be able to watch your encoding progress via this window.
If you want to encode your video for storage on your PC, you can tweak the settings to your liking. Feel free to experiment with these - I find that selecting AppleTV profile generally suits my needs - this saves the video in a high quality format which you can then convert later to lower quality ones if you need to.
Hit encode and your PC will start processing that video! In my experience it takes roughly 2 hours to do a full conversion in high quality - iPod video takes much shorter since it is lower quality.
Bonus:
If DivX is more your fancy (with more and more DivX compatible devices and connected appliances coming out) then there is alternative software to use. Dr. DivX 2.0 OSS is the open source version of Dr. DivX program.
There are some quirks with this program, and it could take some ‘massaging’ to get it working without crashing. A problem I ran across was that the version of AC3Filter I had installed was not compatible with it; I had to go back and install AC3Filter 1.11 to keep it from crashing when I imported the DVD files.
With Dr. DivX, you select all of the video files you want to convert to a DivX file. The best way to do this is to open the DVD’s VIDEO_TS Folder and look for the first VTS files which are over 1 Gig. Select all of them up until the file that is less than a gig, as seen in the screenshot below.
With these tools at your disposal, you should be able to get through your DVDs pretty quickly - converting them to a friendlier PC based format really makes it awesome for viewing on your TV without the hassle of searching your your disk and putting it into the DVD player. [via MakeUseOf]
- The power of Times Magazine's cartoons
- A man mentioned to his landlord about the tenants in the apartment over his. "Many a night they stamp on the floor and shout till midnight."
When the landlord asked if it bothered him, he replied, "Not really, for I usually stay up and practice my trumpet till about that time most every night anyway."
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