Thursday 13 March 2008

New Pattaya

New developments await as the beach town aspires to cast off its red-light reputation and welcome families and upscale couples

Pattaya has long been known for its notorious side - the town is afflicted by chock-a-block red-light spots, drug abuse and crime. Yet in recent years, luxury condos, five-star boutique hotels and resorts, golf courses, chic shopping malls, cool clubs, gourmet restaurants and modern art galleries have been reshaping the beach town, which is just an hour and a half hour drive from the capital.

As in other seaside getaway destinations such as Hua Hin, Phuket, Koh Samui and Koh Chang, property rates are quite expensive, especially in central Pattaya and Jomtien Beach.

Around five years ago, multi-million-baht real estate projects started popping up.

So why has Pattaya become so hot? Better infrastructure is one factor - a new expressway connects Suvarnabhumi Airport and Pattaya. The city is also hosting many more annual international festivals. Among the successful events are the Pattaya International Music Festival, Top of the Gulf International Regatta, International Balloon Festival, Polo International Tournament plus a variety of sports competitions.

Pattaya's emerging distinction as a sailing destination is adding value. There are a number of boats berthed at Ocean Marina in Jomtien.

Jan Van Houtven, director of Addax Development Co, the developer of The Lakes at Phoenix in Jomtien Beach says that Pattaya is continuing its gradual transformation into an upscale, family-oriented resort town. In addition to including 25 golf courses, Pattaya has a wide range of sport and leisure activities for individuals, couples and families. The Lakes has been created as a resort-style home for affluent families who wish to live in a green area and a pristine environment, Van Houtven says.

Among the newer high-end resorts is the five-star Sheraton Pattaya Resort, which is nestled among resorts lining the hill next to Royal Cliff Hotel near Jomtien Beach. The three-year old resort was designed by acclaimed architecture firm P49. As with boutique hotels in Samui, the Sheraton Pattaya is a sanctuary, with many facilities - a spa, Mediterranean restaurant and a tea-room chill-out spot. [via The Nation - Feb 08]

 

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  • If you are looking for the weather gadget I have temporarily moved it lower down in the right margin. It was slow to load today and stopping all other items in the margin from loading

  • Chalerm asks governor to inspect Surayud's land - Interior Minister Chalerm Yubamrung ordered the Nakhon Ratchasima governor to strictly inspect a 20-rai plot of land owned by former prime minister Surayud Chulanont. The controversial land is on Khao Yai Thieng, which is inside the national park. [via Bangkok Post]

 

  • Darling's 2008 UK Budget [via The Independent] Guzzlers targeted - cars and drinkers.

 

  • Michael Jackson and his family are planning to buy a home in Barnstaple, Devon. [via Now Magazine] Ed. Rumour has it they like clotted cream and scones.....

 

  • Share Large Files Instantly with EatLime [File Sharing]

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Brilliant new file sharing web site EatLime expedites online file sharing by allowing your friends to begin downloading the file as soon as you start uploading it, meaning you don't have to wait for the file to finish uploading before they begin downloading. You can share files up to 1GB with a free registration or up to 100MB with no registration. In testing EatLime, I found that eventually—once my download caught up with my upload—I was essentially downloading in real-time from the upload, which is fantastic. If you've ever shared large files online, you know what a pain it can be in terms of time. EatLime could cut a significant chunk out of the time it takes to share files online. [via Lifehacker]

            
  • 10 Essential Mac Apps to Install After a Reformat - I format my Mac once a year, either because it’s clunked up with old .prefs files or because I just feel like performing a zero-out on my hard disk. One good thing about owning a Mac is never having to worry about installing drivers after reformatting. So that’s one problem avoided. Having a checklist of applications to install is quite handy to get my Mac up and running as quickly as possible. So, I’d like to share the applications I consider to be essential:

(1) NeoOffice

Get right back to work! It’s an open source set of office applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation) for Mac OS X. It also supports editing of Microsoft Office 2007 files so you don’t need to quiver in fear when your colleague hands .docx files over to you.

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(2) Perian and Flip4Mac

Perian is known as the ‘Swiss-army knife for Quicktime’ because once installed, Quicktime can be used to play nearly every format of video there is, except WMV. So that is why I paired this entry up. Together with Flip4Mac, Quicktime is all geared up and good to go.

VLC Player is also an option if you don’t like using Quicktime. With VLC, you can set playlists, boost the volume until 200%, zoom in and change the aspect ratio of the video, so generally it’s more powerful. However, I feel that VLC takes slightly longer to load, that’s why I choose Quicktime for everyday use.

(3) UnRarX

I can’t even begin to describe how much I love this app. Similar to Stuffit Expander, UnRarX is a .rar decompression utility. I prefer it to Stuffit Expander because I find it easier to use, it handles segmented .rar archives, and it even manages to decode archives which failed with Stuffit Expander!

(4) Adium

Feeling the shakes? Withdrawn from instant messaging? Adium is an IM app that is connects to almost all popular IM protocols (AOL, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, Gadu-Gadu etc.). It’s so customizable that you can make it match your favorite wallpaper, if you need to. Check out some screenshots here.

(5) Gmail Notifier

Normally, I use Apple Mail with IMAP to get my mail directly onto my Mac. But for those who don’t want to go through the hassle of setting up an IMAP account, Gmail Notifier is quick and easy to use.

(6) Image Shackle

Want to change your profile picture on Facebook? Darn, that photo is just too large! I use Image Shackle to instantly resize my images. It’s a dashboard widget, so wherever the photo is, just click-and-hold it, press F12 and drop it into Image Shackle, set the size of the output photo and click Shackle! Easy, isn’t it?

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Image Shackle only resizes a photo at a time to any default size you set. And it doesn’t do cropping, so you can’t use it for heavy-duty image processing.

(7) Transmission

A lightweight yet functional BitTorrent client that’s open source, so it will also run on Linux and BSD systems. This is an alternative to the famous Azureus, for those who don’t like the bloated-ness of Java. On the surface, Transmission seems to be simple but if you dig a little deeper, you’ll notice that it has some pretty cool features like speed restriction at certain times of the day and Peer Exchange (similar to Azureus’s DHT).

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(8) Skype

Need I say more? The most popular VoIP application out there.

(9) ZIP Quick Look plugin

Leopard’s Quick Look feature is really useful when you want to preview photos, videos or even Word and PowerPoint documents. But .zip files still need to be unzipped before you can tell what is really inside. This plugin allows you to view the contents without having to unzip anything. It comes in handy after you’ve downloaded .zip files from dodgy sites and would like to check out what they contain before releasing them into your system.

(10) MenuMeters

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This is normally the first application I install. It’s a set of monitoring tools and reads system information like CPU load, memory usage and network activity and it sits subtly on the menu bar. If you’re a control freak like me, then you’d want to know if a process is taking up 100% of your CPU resources.

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All these applications are free and available for Mac OS X Leopard.  [via MakeUseOf]     

 

  • Create Your Windows XP Installer CD with All Hotfixes Since XP SP2 - Windows XP SP3 may be just round the corner and is expected to include all hotfixes ever issued by Microsoft since XP SP2.

But if you are not in a mood to wait and urgently need a Windows XP installer CD with all the hotfixes included, the XP SP2 update pack created by Ryan VanderMeulen will help you.

Ryan’s XP SP2 Pack weighs just around 50 MB and includes every hotfix, security patch released after XP SP2. You download and unzip the pack, then point it to the i386 directory of your XP installer and click Integrate.

Once the integration is complete, you just have to burn that XP SP2 folder to a CD and you are done.  [via Digital Inspiration]

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  • Spitzer's Downfall, Ashley Dupre - $4,000+????

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  • An Irishman was terribly overweight, so his doctor put him on a diet. 'I want you to eat regularly for 2 days, then skip a full day, and repeat this procedure for 2 weeks. The next time I see you, you should have lost at least 5 pounds.' When the Irishman returned, he shocked the doctor by having lost nearly 60 POUNDS! 'Why, that's amazing!' the doctor said, 'Did you follow my instructions?' The Irishman nodded...'I'll tell you though, by jaesuz, I t'aut I was going to drop dead on dat 3rd day.' 'From hunger, you mean?' 'No, from all dat feckin' skippin', the Irishman said. 

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