Antiquated OS X

Preamble

How does one get hold of an older version of OS X? There are dodgy google drive links available on eBay, from Russia (with love) for £3, or a shop in Fortune Town that offers pirated DVDs for £6. None of which are particularly good, or trustworthy, options.

The AppStore would be the best and safest option, but it is not cheap, and if you haven’t already purchased Mountain Lion when it was available, then it will not show up.

So, you have to buy direct from Apple (see links below), for $20. Or try to find a second hand version of a DVD, but on eBay they generally go for more than $20, when postage is included.

However, post-Snow Leopard, the OSes were more commonly released on USB sticks. Also, to install Lion or Mountain Lion, you need to be running Snow Leopard or Lion (respectively), so it seems that you need both the Snow Leopard DVD and then the binary of Mountain Lion – this is getting long winded and pricey…

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Thai- style roman fonts

Preamble

I was sent this image.

At first I thought that it was a clever use of the Thai characters. However, after looking at the actual Thai character set  I realised that it was not.

Then I thought that it could be a mix of real and fake characters, for example the “H” is a ho hip (ห), the O is very similar to a o ang (อ) or tua o (อ), U is a bo baimai (บ) with a tin yiat (◌ุ), T is a ro ruea (ร) and the I is a mai na (เ) with a phinthu i (◌ิ), whereas the C, E and Y are clearly fake, the N is a reversed H (or rather, a reversed ho hip (ห)) and the F looks like an unfinished kho khwai (ค) and the A looks like something, but it isn’t, and the R is a reversed version of the A without the cross bar.

Finally, I wondered  whether there was a single font that contained all of these characters, and I went off on a hunt for it.

Saigon to Hanoi and back again… by train

Preamble

Visa run, became a 15 day trip to Vietnam. I had watched the Tough Trains episode on Vietnam, and fancied giving it a go, myself…

Ratchada Xmas lights 2017

Preamble

Near my flat, there was a beautiful light display for Christmas 2017…

Finding a cure for the Red Ring Of Death in Bangkok

Preamble

A friend of mine passed me an XBox 360 Core to repair that was suffering the, well known, Red Ring Of Death (RROD).

“Well”, I thought, “we are in Bangkok, so this shouldn’t be too difficult to fix…”

Samsung WEP150MBE bluetooth headset

Preamble

A friend found a WEP150, but it needed a charger

Selfie Canon?

Preamble

I saw a Canon Selphy CP 760 for sale for 50 baht in a street market on Sunday, in Yu Chareon, just off Ratchada Soi 3

However, it had no supply supply, 24V 2.2 A. By luck, I managed to find a Canon power supply brick CA-CP200 B, 24 V which supplied 1.8 A. Obviously not the correct rating, but close enough to test the printer.