Latest News on this Project

29 Nov 2009

Two small errors have been fixed... one in MLD Download Manager, the other in Speak Easy Thai.

13 Nov 2009

Two users reported a program error in the new MLD Download Manager; it seems a single IF statement was missing in the logic to download a binary file. This caused an error to be undiagnosed when there was a timeout at a particular point in the transfer, resulting in an unexpected stop. This has been fixed.

Also, the default for the activity log is now to create a log file, and debugging is now set on by default until we have more experience in the real world with this new (and very complex) program.

27 October 2009

At long last, after more than two months of testing, the new versions of Speak Easy Thai (CD-ROM and download) and MLD Download Manager (formerly called "Web Update") are now available. I will be sending out a general notice by e-mail to everyone who has registered.

23 October 2009

The release of the new version is imminent... any day now. Downloads and CD-ROM sales have been frozen for two months while I do final testing and I am happy to say the testing is almost done.

1 September 2009

The forum has been moved to Thai Culture Publishing.

The Thai-Software.com web site has been moved from Toronto to Texas due to exhorbitant charges by the Canadian ISP, MyHosting, and the fact that their tech support is piss-poor; they deleted my web site and e-mail and FTP accounts when I changed plans; last time I changed plans a couple of years ago, they just altered my account record. This time they deleted everything without warning.

This move affects the MLD Web Update process, which is tied to the Toronto server. I will release a new version of the program in a few days.

It does not affect the initial installation of the software.

31 August 2009

New YouTube video:

Postcards from Amazing Thailand

These are actual postcards that have been sent to me over the past 20 years.

6 November 2008

I have begun creating videos on how to use Speak Easy Thai. The first few are available here. I will add more over the next few days.

15 February 2007

I added sections on French, German, and Spanish to the table of contents on the Multi-Language Dictionary page. The intention is to list resources available for learning those languages. At the moment, we have links to the Rocket courses (Rocket French, Rocket German, and Rocket Spanish), but we will add more links as time goes on. Although the layout of the screen is different, the Rocket courses include the same kind of learning method as is used in Speak Easy Thai, which is to say images and sounds. Personally, I find I need a picture and I need to hear the word spoken naturally several times to remember it. Rocket uses this same method, which is the main reason I have posted links to their products. I know it works. They have a good discount on the downloadable version of their courses.

10 February 2007

We now have a forum where you can post questions about the software, make suggestions, post pictures about Thailand, ask questions about Thai and other languages, etc. It’s at http://toronto.thai-software.com/forum/.

We also set up a site about how to fix problems with Windows, because I got tired of trying to remember what I did last time, and where I put the notes. It’s called Windows Stupidities and How to Fix Them; go to http://www.windows-stupidities.com.

I’ve been living in Thailand for more than two years now; you can read some of my anecdotes and thoughts on my Living in Thailand Blog at http://www.thailandculture.blogspot.com/.

6 January 2007

Tricky Dictionary Thingy- I have been working on a cute program called "Tricky Dictionary Thingy", or "Tricky Dicky" for short, which will let you write a note or short letter in Thai, even if you can't write Thai. Richard Nixon was the original Tricky Dicky, so I have taken the liberty of using his ugly mug as the icon for my Tricky Dicky.

The icon can be placed anywhere on your desktop, and you can right click and choose a size you like, from small (16 pixels) to humungous (128 pixels); the icon shown here is 64 pixels. When you double-click his ugly face, Tricky Dictionary Thingy opens up a search window, as shown below.

You click in the lower box at the left, and enter an English word. Then you press the Find button (or just press the ENTER key), and Tricky Dicky will search for that word (or words) in the dictionary. It then shows what it found in the list at the right. When you click on a line, the Thai is shown in the box at upper left. If there is a grammar note for this word, you also get a small icon (notepad with pencil); clicking on that pops up the grammar note, so you have more information about using that word.

If this is the word you want, you press the Copy button (the small button showing two pages) above the Thai word box. This copies the Thai word to the Windows ClipBoard. You can then paste the Thai word into an open document, such as Microsoft Word or Open Office.

The History tab shows the words you selected. This is retained so you will gradually build up a small vocabulary of the words you want; you can then just scroll that list and select the word again, rather than searching the dictionary.

The Classifiers tab shows the list of Thai classifiers (group words) that you need to use occasionally, such as when doing plurals.

The final tab shows a short list of 300 common words, like "maid", "car", "lunch", etc.

Can you really write Thai using this program? Yes, if you follow a few simple rules which are shown when you press the Rules button. The rules are quite simple. One, for example, is "Always put the adjective AFTER the noun; say 'dog black', not 'black dog'."

Can you write a business report with this? No, it's designed for simple notes and letters, not formal letters or business reports. You need a real Thai person to help with that.

But you can use it to instruct a maid on the day's tasks, thank a friend for something, invite a friend to go somewhere, write a love note to your honey, whatever. As long as you keep the sentences short, and follow the simple rules provided, the resulting Thai will be understandable, even if the grammar is not perfect, and you will get compliments from Thai people saying, "I didn't know you could speak Thai so well!" No need to tell them you got a little help from Tricky Dicky.

Tricky Dicky is not available yet, but should be finished in a month or so. If you have indicated that you want to edit Thai documents in your Web Update profile, then it will be downloaded automatically when it is released. It won't be free, however. You can use it for 60 days free; after that the Copy button will be disabled unless you make a small donation to the Multi-Language Dictionary Project. The program will also be available on CD-ROM, probably priced the same as Speak Easy Thai (800 baht / about US$20 / 15 Euros). The money raised is used to finance this project.

Oh, and you aren't restricted to Thai and English. If you speak a European language, you can make that language the default. So if you're French, for example, and have a girl friend from Isaan, you can enter French words and get Isaan Lao out. Pretty tricky, eh?

Timeouts - If you have been receiving Timeout Errors when running MLD Web Update, Andrew Slater in the UK advises that, if you upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, the Timeout Errors disappear. The current version of MLD Web Update uses the Microsoft Internet Transfer Control to do the actual reading and writing of files from the remote server in Toronto. This is part of the code in Internet Explorer. IE7 seems to have fixed a number of problems. However, IE7 will not install if you don't have a legal copy of Windows. In addition, the IE code used by Web Update cannot handle restart/resume; when it gets a transfer error, it just craps out.

I have a new version of MLD Web Update coming. I have been working on it for many weeks, and it is basically functioning OK. It bypasses IE and does direct file transfers via a low level process known as "Windows Sockets". This code is extremely complex, but is mostly working. The problem is that error conditions can occur at dozens of places in the code. I can simulate some of them by yanking out my network cable, causing a lost connection, and I can simulate timeouts by adding some code to intentionally block Internet access. However, the other two dozen error conditions are much more difficult to simulate. So I expect to release a test version soon (probably in about a week) because there is nothing like a healthy dose of the real world to find problems.

The new version of MLD Web Update has a small status panel in the bottom status bar that shows three LEDs (Americans call these "idiot lights"): the first (labelled "CONN") indicates that there is/is not an Internet connection; the second ("RMT") indicates that the program has connected to the Toronto server; and the third (labelled "ACT") flashes whenever there is any activity (transferring of data).

The new version constantly tests the Internet connection, and will show a green status light when connected. About 5 seconds after the connection is lost, the light turns red, and the program enters a "reconnect mode". In this mode, it will try up to 10 times to reconnect. If it can, then the program logs onto the Toronto server again and continues what it was doing. If it can't, you get an error message saying the Internet connection was lost.

The new version also checks to see if a file to be downloaded has already been partially downloaded. If so, it picks up where it left off. The old version of the program starts over again. This is very annoying if there was an error 10MB into a 12MB file. The new version just downloads the remaining 2 MB; the old version does the whole 12MB.

The new version will be available in a week or two, and will download and install itself automatically. So run Web Update a couple of times a week for the next few weeks to get the latest updates.

22 December 2006

We now have a discussion forum at http://toronto.thai-software.com/forum/. You are invited to leave messages, comments, etc., on this project. There are also sections on life in Thailand, space for photgraphs, etc.

Chong font and Keyboard mapper are now available.

19 November 2006

Thanks to Lars Olsson in frosty Sweden, the Isaan Lao alphabet has been edited and normalised (volume levelled). If you have Isaan ticked in your Web Update profile, the updated files will be automatically downloaded to your computer.

11 November 2006

First release of Speak Easy Isaan Lao. The program is reasonably complete, but some sound files need equalisation as some are too quiet, some are too loud. Tone Practice section has been disabled as the sound files have not been recorded yet. A new cartoon scenario has been added for Isaan, but the hotspots are not there yet, nor are the sound files. The Isaan Lao dictionary has zero phonetics, just Isaan words (in Thai characters) and English words. If you have French, German, etc., selected as your secondary language, then Speak Easy Isaan will attempt to show your language first, and will fall back to English if there is no word in your dictionary.

Bonus files (images and sounds) are now available and require a password to install; you get the password by making a donation to this project of US$49 or more.