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Jon Brown's take on travel, photography, technology and WordPress.

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The Spider Bite in Thailand & My Quick Visit to Sukhumvit Hospital

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Here’s the run down on my spider bite in Thailand.

Day 0 (Wed May 22nd): Didn’t actually notice the bite happen if I did I thought it was one of many mosquito bites.
Day 1 (Thur): I notice it but assume it was just a mosquito bite or maybe small jellyfish sting. It’s a little bigger and itchier than a normal mosquito bite, but not much.  I spend the day on a boat and motor scooter going from Koh Phangan to Koh Samui.
Day 2 (Fri): I notice some slight swelling and it’s a little sore. I’m also tired & have a slight fever but am not sure if that’s just from the prior day’s travel or from the bite. I feel like I’ve been in the sun way too much the last few days.  Per my plan, I hope on my scooter, ride to the airport and fly from Samui to Bangkok. I arrive at my nice little air conditioned hotel room mid-day.  I’m exhausted at this point, mild fever and headache.  I lie down and rest rather than my planned shopping excursion.  I end up sleeping ALL afternoon and through the night although I periodically wake to watch movies on Satellite TV. Regardless I literally spent 24 hours lying in bed resting.
Day 3 (Sat): Awake feeling WAY better, I figure I’m through whatever it was and spend the day walking around little India shopping for curtains for the new house. By the end of the day, my foot is seriously swollen though.  It’s still not really painful, but it’s looking nasty, it’s starting to ooze a little.
Day 4 (Sun): Not much change, but I decide to wisely avoid walking much.  The result is much less swelling but little change otherwise.
Day 5 (Mon AM): The wound is ever so slightly bigger, it is still oozing a tiny bit and the swelling is unchanged.  The more I walk or don’t elevate it, the worse it is.  So I decide to head to the doctor to get it checked out.  I thought about going to Bumrungrad Hospital or Bangkok Hospital (both of which are big world class private hospitals in Bangkok that cater heavily to medical tourists and foreigners), but for something this simple I have no problem with Sukhumvit Hospital which happens to be a 5min walk from where I’m staying and is still one of the best Hospitals in Bangkok if not quite the class of BMG and BH

 

My visit to Sukhumvit Hospital involves:

  1. Filling out a single page form at reception. (no waiting and <5 min.  It only took that long because I needed to look up addresses for “Person to Notify”.
  2. The staff kindly walks me from reception to ER where I wait <2 min. to see an ER doctor. He proceeds to instruct and observe his 3 helpers in thoroughly clean my wound with 3 different solutions and then scrape some of the dead tissue away. They are very gentle and there is no pain.  The doctor then tells me there is a little infection, it’s not bad, just minor.  Since I’m traveling he’s going to prescribe oral antibiotics (Amoxicillin) and a topical antibiotic (Sodium Fusidate).  He tells me to keep it clean and bandaged and much like my dentist in Chiang Mai he tells me what seems like 10 times that it’s important to take ALL the antibiotics, not to stop early. Total time with the doctor and his 3 helpers, about 10 min.
  3. I’m walked by a nurse down the hall to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions. I wait about 2 min and pay my bill while waiting for my prescriptions to be ready.
  4. I walk out.

Total time at the hospital, including time to pick up my prescriptions from the pharmacy, was about 20 min.

Total cost including my prescriptions: 1730THB (about $60 at today’s awful USD to THB exchange rate). So cheap I didn’t bother claiming it on my travel insurance.

Reviewing the week

Still not too worried about it, but I’m happy I got it checked out.  I’m mostly glad I got on antibiotics early before the infection got worse. It might of gone away, but it might not of and taking care of it in 3 days back in the US would have been a huge hassle. Everything is just so easy here. I mean this was pretty difficult “as things go”, find a hospital, get myself to it, deal with potential language issues etc… but in Thailand it STILL ends up easier (and cheaper) than in the US. I spend a lot of time thinking about where I’d really want to live in Asia and Thailand has long been at the top of that list for all these reasons and more. Someday…

WordPress Genesis 2.0 HTML5 overview of DOM changes

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Genesis 2.0 Beta for WordPress was just released for public review and one of the key features is HTML5 support.  However, HTML5 isn’t on by default though and some may wonder why. So I thought I’d illustrate that by comparing the DOM of one of my test sites before and after enabling Genesis 2.0 HTML5 support. First, the method being used to enable HMTL5 is by using WordPress’ add_theme_support function:

add_theme_support( 'genesis-html5' );

UPDATE: After Genesis 2.0 RC2 StudioPress changed this.  In the final version of Genesis 2.0, this is now:

add_theme_support( 'html5' );

This is the right and sensible way to add this and this is why just updating to Genesis 2.0 won’t break your site.  If all you do is update to Genesis 2.0 you won’t get HTML5 but you also won’t get a broken site as you will if you just toggle on genesis-html5 without making the necessarily changes to your CSS. I simplified DOM a little so it’d all fit on one page, but all the key elements inside <body> are intact.  There are some minor changes in the <head> but the changes inside <body> are what will break existing CSS since ID’s like #content have been replaced with HTML5 elements like <article> and this means your CSS no longer applies.  Also note, this isn’t meant to be an exhaustive guide of every change, just a few major ones and in a simple visual format to answer the question “Why can’t my existing Genesis child theme be magically updated to HTML5 with the press of a button?”.

Major DOM changes between Genesis 1.9.2 and Genesis 2.0 for WordPress I see on first glance:

HTML HTML5
<div id=”wrap”> <div class=”site-container”>
<div id=”header”> <header class=”site-header”>
<p id=”title”> <p class=”site-title”>
<p id=”description”> <p class=”site-description”>
<div id=”inner”> <div class=”site-inner”>
<div class=”post-10 page type-page status-publish hentry entry”> <article class=”post-10 page type-page status-publish entry” itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/CreativeWork”>
<h1 class=”entry-title”>The Title</h1> <header class=”entry-header”><h1 class=”entry-title” itemprop=”headline”>The Title</h1></header>
<!–nothing before –> <footer class=”entry-footer”></footer>
<div id=”sidebar” class=”sidebar widget-area”> <aside class=”sidebar sidebar-primary widget-area” role=”complementary” itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/WPSideBar”>
<div id=”sidebar-alt” class=”sidebar widget-area”> <aside class=”sidebar sidebar-secondary widget-area” role=”complementary” itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/WPSideBar”>
<div id=”footer” class=”footer”> <footer class=”site-footer” role=”contentinfo” itemscope itemtype=”https://schema.org/WPFooter”>

A lot of these could probably be fixed with some careful text search and replace strings, but I think it’s always going to take a little TLC to make sure it’s right.  I’ll probably give it a shot on this site in the coming weeks when the beta has proved itself stable (not problems so far) Here’s the screen shot in FileMerge and DiffMerge:

Tech Community and Coworking in Chiang Mai

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PunSpace Coworking Chiang Mai, ThailandI’ve been working this week from a coworking space in Chaing Mai, Thialand called PunSpace which lucky me just opened 2 months ago (March 2013).

Meanwhile back home on Maui many parties are continuing discussions about opening a coworking space there. Obviously being back working in a coworking space has gotten my neurons firing on the subject as well so I had some thoughts to share.

Community

I was super fortunate to have first dropped by PunSpace the day before a bi-weekly BeerCamp night they host. For those unfamiliar with BarCamp see wikipedia here, for BeerCamp however I quote the BarCamp Chaing Mai website:

Beercamp is a continuation of the discussions and connections that emerge from Barcamp. It’s a bi-weekly tech meetup. We get together every other Wednesday. Roughly half the time we have a presentation and/or discussion about a selected topic.

— BarCamp Chaing Mai

Not clearly stated in there is that they really have two things: BeerCamp (socializing) and BeerCamp+ (Socialiizing + a talk). I presume this is in part because they don’t always have a volunteer willing to speak. I actually think it’s brilliant , which Ibecuase it means people meet regardless of whether someone volunteers to speak or not lending consistencny of schedule and the more familar people get with eachother the more willing the shy ones are to share thier knowedlge.

This week one of the several ex-patriot business owners (runs a web development shop) gave a talk about “Programmer Optimization”. He was test running it as a talk he wanted to give in Singapore in a few months (I assume BarCamp Singapore). The talk was about 15 minutes and we had about 15 minutes open discussion/comment period afterward. We then all refilled beverages and hung out chatting for the rest of the night. Being Thailand the rest of the night invovled changing locations at 11pm to the Blah Blah Bar for late night food and more drinks. It was a GREAT intro to the coworking and ex-pat tech scene here, I’m glad I didn’t miss it. This is tech and ex-pat community at it’s finest.

Coworking Chickens and Eggs

I had many nice discussions with both members and owners of the coworking space. The thing that struck me was that there was a small, but active and growing, tech scene in Chiang Mai before the coworking space opened. The tech community seemed to be focused around BarCamp, TEDx and Creative Chiang Mai and it was a little ragged, but it existed and it had leaders. There exists a paradox as to which comes first, the nucleous that a coworking space can be, or the energized cloud of folks that orbit it. IMHO this hasn’t been, and needs to be, discussed in regards to Maui Coworking.

Seeing the evolution of tech and creativies here made me realize that one of the things lacking in Maui is any sort of tech/dev meetup where geeky creatives get their geeky creativeness on with like minded folks.

Neither MauiSMUG nor MauiWP is that venue. As many know, I’d really hoped MauiWP would someday be the spark to ignite that, but it’s not and I’ve come to realize why. The meetups are far too much community help group where new users come to learn and far too little sounding board for new ideas (don’t misunderstand, I love helping my community, but that is a while different mode from a user group).

Plain Wrap Tech

The Beercamp+ talk was pretty generic, it could be applied to anyone working on anything, not just a programmer. Someone who knitted for fun could easy draw analogs from the topics of avoiding burnout and maintaineing focus. I’m sure there are talks that are very narrowly focused, but the talk itself is only a small part of a BeerCamp night which is in part why I think it’ll work.

Bringing it Home

I’m thinking we need to reach out to a larger audience on Maui and put together some sort of BeerCamp+/BarCamp style gatherings.  Something to start to build community around the creative tech arena. Such gatherings would principally be to build community (which I crave) but would also act as a gauge for the critical mass necessary to support a coworking space (something I also crave).

I feel the key to these gathering is that they would NOT be another user group nor a group where any one narrow thing defines it (ie. WordPress _or_ Social Media _or_ Drupal).  It would try to draw a broad crowd.  People could come for 15 minutes and leave, or stay for 4 hours if they saw fit.  I know there are a few tech folks I see 2-3 times a year that I could try to pull out to an gathering like that.  I also think the Maui Makers folks would be a perfect fit.

TechHui used to do socials of a sort on Maui, but I haven’t seen one in more than a year. Perhaps the approach is restarting those, or restarting those with a modification.

I wondering if I make any sense… please share your thoughts!

I’m also specifically wondering:

  • if you know anyone you think might be interested in something like this?
  • When and where to do it?

(One thought I had was piggybacking onto one of the Friday Town Parties to start, ie meet then mingle, or maybe with our own booth…  maybe that’s crazy.  I also seem to recall there is a Pau Hana or Maui Happy Hour group that meets somewhere, wonder when/where they do their thing.  Finally, maybe something like what MSB did, start with some coffee meetups?)