Dekchai Plaboo could see the future. Thirty seven years ago he successfully predicted the 2003 Thailand tsunami; at least according to his father who announced this fact many years after the tsunami took place. Dekchai also predicted that the Bhumipol Dam would collapse on December 31st of last year. The dam is a popular tourist attraction and people stayed away over the danger period, costing four million baht in lost tourist income.

She who must be obeyed has a day off and we head for Bangkok to renew her passport, just in case we decide to go overseas at some point, which is currently unlikely.

The passport office used to be high up, next to a car park in Central Bang-Na; and a scruffy unwelcoming place it was too. Now it has moved to the basement of the same building, but it has taken the scruffy, unwelcoming bits along for the ride. And it is busy, horrendously so.

I find a seat a long way away from anyone, and my wife enters the scrum; emerging some time later with a piece of paper bearing the number 777. As they are currently processing number 481, a long wait is in store. We go for a pizza and come back in an hour to find the counter has only crawled to 523; no chance of getting served today.

So we head for she who must be obeyed’s real reason for coming to Bangkok, a trip to IKEA.

Adobe are known, admired and despised for the massive software bundle that is their Creative Suite. One of the bundle is Photoshop and this used to be the standard for Photo manipulation; and a right pain in the arse it was, and probably still is.

I vaguely recall working through a twenty hour training course. At the end of it I had forgotten the features taught in the early part of the course. A couple of weeks later and I had forgotten all of it. Problem is, what I wanted to do with a typical photo was a few simple tweaks; which were littered all over the place in Photoshop and in a non-intuitive jumble of options.

So I had just finished a product photo shoot and was loading the shots to my computer for an appraisal when…. blackness. The computer light was still on but the monitors were blank. Oh dear.

I have been having problems with one of the five hard drives in my machine refusing to connect. Perhaps nearing the end of its life, and maybe it was causing the problem. So I took it out and re-booted. Success! For about five minutes and then it happened again. It did seem a little hot inside, so I turned it off and let it cool down and tried again. Ten minutes and then death, and this time I finally worked out that the graphics card was red hot, and that was because the fan in the card wasn’t moving. Tapped the fan and away it went and it seemed to be OK. Checking the web and it appears it is a common problem with this ATI card and it will probably eventually fail. Oh, and the hard drive is still not happy.

Imagine a massive world, where every blade of grass, every rock, every tiny item inside a house, has been crafted and placed there. Imagine this world alive with sounds and movement, the spindrift of the snow on the mountains, leaves falling from trees, animals moving through the undergrowth. Whether it is dark or sunny, misty or clear, raining or snowing; it is beautiful.

Now imagine the world filled with more than 350 locations, from large towns to small underground caverns. Imagine different races of people, different cultures, all waiting to interact with you with more than 60,000 lines of script. Imagine hundreds of books to be read, puzzles to be unlocked and quests to undertake. Welcome to the world of Skyrim.

Reading through the GX1 manual and I find it has a “super high speed” shutter mode which knocks out up to 20 shots a second. Image size is substantially degraded but it has to be tried out. Let’s drop a ten baht coin into a bowl of water….

Popped out to my usual haunts this afternoon for some GX1/GF1 comparison action; but I ended up just enjoying taking some photos and the comparison went out of the window. I thought this was quite stark and interesting, shot almost directly into the sun:

It was a difficult conversation with my wife.

You said it was love for life, she said with bewildered eyes.

I know, I replied, not daring to look at her.

You said this was all you would ever need.

I know.

Why, only yesterday you breathed “I love you”.

I know.

So, why? I just need to know.

Well, I just feel the need for a new experience.

A new experience!!??

Yes, well, younger, faster, more sexy.

Typical man….

Yes, today I went to Bangkok and came home with a Panasonic GX1, the younger, faster, sexier upgrade to the GF1. Report undoubtedly to follow.