I know of some newspapers who have been linking, on purpose or otherwise,  the ’shootings and bombings’ in the south of Thailand with the protests in Bangkok. A complete and utter falsehood. The problems in the south have been going on years, a bit like the problems that went on for a long time in Northern Ireland.

I can understand why some people due to travel to Bangkok have cancelled their plans but there really is no need to. I can only reiterate that the violence is minimal, especially when compared to what happens in some western cities on a near daily basis !  So come over and enjoy !

Have you heard of eRepublik ??  Its in beta, and has been for a few months. If you have applied to join it the wait is anything from 2 to 3 months. However I can invite you and you can get in straight away. I have 3 invites left…..

eRepublik is a new world, a new Earth!  When you join you have to work for someone to start with, to get money. The person you work for is another real person. The country  you reside in has political parties, governments and elections.  Exactly the same as we know now. You have the chance to create your own companies, your own political parties, newspapers, you have the chance to influence the way your country goes. There are no NPC’s. Everything is done at a more strategic level, you do not have to micro manage your companies, and you only have to devote a few minutes  a day unless you get to be president of your country !!

You will not make any money on eRepublik. But it is a good way of escaping from the real world !

Check out http://wiki.erepublik.com/index.php/Main_Page 

then contact me from my main website Maverells World if you want to join !

A CT Scan Showing An Acoustic Neuroma

In late 1988 I was diagnosed as having an acoustic neuroma ( acoustic schwannoma ). As can be imagined I was devastated by this news and it was hard to believe. The worst thing was that I felt fine. I was physically fit, and my body was in great shape. Or so I thought.

I found it very hard to submit myself to major brain surgery when I felt fine !

Back then the internet was in its infancy and there were not the support groups that are available now. I more or less coped alone. Thankfully, the treatment, support and care for people with acoustic neuroma is now much better than before.

The story of my experiences, from diagnosis to retirement, can be found on my main website. It is far to big ( 7 pages ) to place here. Please read it ! Maverells World Website

I don’t think that what I witnessed last night would be allowed in Britain - but it worked !!

A young Thai woman about 30 years of age, has been living in a condo on the same floor as mine for the last month. Soon after she moved in it was obvious to the rest of the people living on floor that she was keeping 1 and sometimes 2, small dogs in her rooms. This is forbidden by the property management company for obvious reasons:

1. Its not fair on the dog being on the 23rd floor of a condo block.
2. The dog is left in a hot room when the owner goes out. and goes crazy, or worse.
3. The dog begins to stink and the smell spreads…..
4. The dog barking is a nuisance to the neighbours.

Tolerance is the norm here and no overt approach was made to the woman by her neighbours that I know of. However someone must have tipped off the management company. I think it was one of the cleaners who had to clear up the dogs excrement after it had escaped into the communal areas !

About two weeks ago a security guard working for the management went to her rooms and delivered a piece of paper, it was clearly a request for her to vacate the premises because she was keeping dogs. She was not happy and slammed the door in the face of the guard.

Yesterday evening, two guards turned up at her door. They talked to the woman through the front door but she wouldn’t open it. The guards said something to her, walked up the corridor to a utility cupboard, and promptly cut off her electricity and water supply !

They then quietly left.

The woman and her dogs moved out this morning with their tails between their legs.

No problems with the webserver. I obtained the freeware Abyss Webserver and had it up and running in no time. I just installed it, set up port forwarding in my router, adjusted the hardware firewall and that was that.

I then installed PHP on the PC and a free PHP file upload script. I know that PHP is installed with a default max file upload size no where near what I want, so I tweaked the php.ini file. It worked great with a file of about 40MB but anything more and it fell over. I read forums, help files etc to see if I could get round this. I tweaked the ini file again - increasing allowed script execution time etc. But to no avail.

I then spent hours searching the net for an alternative script - I checked out ASP scripts, java applets, Javascript etc - but there were none suitable for FREE !! I found some excellent scripts but they were commercial releases and cost between $25 and $100. No good for me.

Then I came accross FileMail. A web based solution !!  For FREE !  It allows a user to send a file(s) up to a total of 2GB in size for FREE. I nearly fell off my chair - you can upgrade your account for a very small fee which gives an enhanced service but I do not need it. I have tested FileMail and it works a treat !!

You could train a monkey to use it, so my friends should be able to ! I have e mailed them with the info - and will see !

I have just created a new Victor Book For Boys website !! It is really only of interest to those of you that know the Victor Book for Boys which was published in the UK between 1964 and 1994 by DC Thompson. The Victor started out as a comic for boys, mainly about various exploits in the Second World War. In 1964 the first annual was published and 30 more followed.

When I was a boy I was an avid reader of the comic and the annual, and decided a few years ago to get a collection of the annuals - all in excellent condition. I had the annuals from my younger days but they were not collectors items ! I had read them dozens of times, dropped them, spilt coke on them and generally ruined them

But now I have got all the books in great condition and the website is for others trying to achieve the same goal. So if any of you are interested in collecting such annuals check out my my Victor Book site. You might be interested to know that some of the annuals, if they are in excellent condition, can command a sales price of 50 GBP or more. Who knows what will happen in the future.

By the way the site has a page of useful book collecting tips for buying books for online. They should be of interest to any book collector.

It is just a load of PHP and a MySql database. I cannot see why the webhost may disallow it but I have heard that they do sometimes because of server performance issues.

I do not expect to get a million hits a month LOL, a hundred or so will do !! So I cannot see how it will effect server performance ! Time will tell

I use the people in the banner for webhosting - I have a bulk user account and I am very happy with it. But if they stop this blog maybe I won’t be ! They are based in the UK.