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| Greg's diary |
| April 2023 |
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| Saturday, 1 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 1 April 2023 |
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Trump: hoist with own petard
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
Only yesterday Donald Trump became the first US President to be indicted on a criminal charge. How can you beat that?
Not as I expected. Yes, there are lots of mass shootings in the USA, but Trump remained firmly in favour of gun ownership and against their restrictions. So I suppose it's poetic justice that he should be caught in a mass shooting and be shot dead. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving man.
But where are all the news reports? You'd think that the press would have a field day. But nothing. It's amazing how well censorship works if it has to, and maybe it's a good thing that the report has been censored: how many rabid extremists would get up on their hind feet and start the next insurrection if only they knew what had happened?
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What's annoying Xorg?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For some days now I've seen this kind of output from top:
PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
2768 grog 1 52 0 3470M 43664K select 1 218.8H 41.55% Xorg
This instance of Xorg was started a month ago, so it's using about 7 hours of CPU time per day. What's it doing? The obvious answer would be that it's handling data, but it's not displaying anything significant. Sure, I can stop suspect processes (I specifically suspect firefox), but there should be some way to find out what's going on. Some discussion on IRC, but it remained inconclusive.
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Latest delicacy: rotten meat
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Topic: food and drink, history, opinion | Link here |
Read this article today. Ancient humans didn't just eat rotten meat, they relished it. That sounds unlikely, but they came up with a surprising amount of evidence, some of it relatively recent, and a surprising number of reasons. That puts rotten meat on a par with cooking, pickling and smoking, only clearly it was easier than any of these. And since the current understanding is that humans developed their current shape and also their brain from cooking food, what other conclusions can this lead to?
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Yvonne rides again
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Topic: animals, general, opinion | Link here |
Despite all my objections, Yvonne is riding again:
Not only that, she did it with nobody to pick her up in case something went wrong. It didn't—this time—but I'm still anything but happy.
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More pink lilies
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
These wild (or invasive?) pink lilies are everywhere now:
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I can't recall them from more than a few years ago. Are they spreading?
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Late for dinner
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Topic: general, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Pam Hay off with my car to visit Chris Bahlo today.
And she didn't come back. We had told her when she arrived that we ate at 18:00, and today being Saturday, Yvonne made something special for dinner (seafood bisque and scaloppine al limone). Come 18:00, no Pam. Yvonne called her on her phone. Voice mail. Called Chris, who should have been with her. Voice mail.
Yvonne seriously angry, we started without Pam. Round the time of the second course she showed up. Sorry, things were a little late. Why didn't she call? Some answer or another. Why didn't she reply to the phone call? Battery discharged. No attempt, apparently, to get somebody else to contact us. And when I told Pam how upset Yvonne was, “oh, sorry”. Somehow we're on different wavelengths.
| Sunday, 2 April 2023 | Dereel | |
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Piccola not eating again?
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Topic: animals, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
For the past over 3 months I've been keeping careful records of Piccola's food consumption. It varies, but it's in the range of 120 to 150 g a day. But today she ate nothing! Is she sick again? Is it because of the canned food I've been giving her? Either way it's a worry.
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More photo processing videos
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Topic: photography, technology, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
After spending more money than I really wanted on Luminar Neo, I should get the most out of it. There are a surprising number of videos about how to use it, and I've been watching some of them. And how about that, I have learnt something. Probably the most interesting one is that they have a surprising number of key bindings that can be useful if I can only remember them.
| Monday, 3 April 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Sulky → Dereel | Images for 3 April 2023 |
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Piccola still not eating
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Piccola ate almost nothing yesterday. Things aren't looking good. Yvonne visited Pene Kirk today, but she didn't think that there was much that she could do for her. It looks like her time is up.
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Sài Gòn noodles?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Some time ago I bought some “Sài Gòn” noodles, without a clear idea of what to use them with, so I put them in the freezer in serving portions. But this morning I had phở bò for breakfast, so that seemed a good choice. It's not clear whether they need to be cooked again, but as they came out of the freezer they stuck together and required separation. Today I checked the instructions: pierce packaging and heat in a microwave oven of unspecified strength for 2 to 3 minutes.
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Into town again
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Topic: health, food and drink | Link here |
Off into town today to see Heather Dalman about my legs. The good news: things are looking up. She gave me a few more exercises to strengthen things.
Then on to the Fruit Shack for normal shopping, in the process coming across this assortment of noodles:
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They nearly all call themselves Sài Gòn noodles, which I had thought was a term for a specific kind of noodle like the ones I had for breakfast. And maybe the basic dough is the same—not just rice, but also wheat and tapioca. But it's interesting that they have “Laksa” and frying noodles as well. Clearly the other Vietnamese words are important.
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Wombok lives!
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Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
Also seen at the Fruit Shack:
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I thought that they had finally got rid of this silly word wombok. And that in a predominantly Chinese grocery!
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More free plants
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
After shopping, off to Sulky to pick up some plants I had been offered on Freecycle: 6, no 7, no 8 Hebes and a few jonquils. Surprise, surprise: the Hebes were tiny, and there were round 8 kg of jonquils:
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Are these really Hebes? They look quite different from the ones we already have.
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Maintaining the “nature strip”
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Topic: Stones Road house, gardening, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne has been getting on my nerves wanting to tidy up the “nature strip” in front of the house. That's a no-no, sort of, as we discovered 5 years ago: we can only remove weeds. So I said to Yvonne that she should contact the council, which she did. Spoke to Caitlyn or some homonym, who told he that it was our responsibility to maintain the nature strip.
That's nonsense, of course, but who am I to argue with the council?
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AAMI rears its ugly head
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Five months ago I received mail from AAMI claiming that I had caused damage to Helen Miller's car on 18 October. I replied asking “what damage”, and please send proof.
Silence. That seems reasonable, since there was no damage and thus no proof. But OK, after 5 months we can pretend that nothing happened and ask for compensation anyway. So today I received another letter with an invoice for replacing the bumper. No assessor's report.
Somehow these insurance people are just plain irritating.
| Tuesday, 4 April 2023 | Dereel → Cape Clear → Dereel | Images for 4 April 2023 |
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More gardening
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Jesse Walsh along today to plant the Hebes, if that's what they are:
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It'll be a while before they catch up with the others.
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A new cat?
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Clearly Piccola's days are numbered. What do we do when she's gone? In the past we've bought a new cat before the old one died, and they get to know each other, and she helps the new cat to adapt to the family. But Piccola was already too sick, and we wouldn't want to do that.
Still, it was worth looking around, and to my surprise we found just what I was looking for, a Chocolate Burmese male in Creswick, only 50 km from here. Sent off a message.
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Goodbye Piccola
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Another day when Piccola didn't eat anything. I gave her some milk, something that she normally doesn't drink. But this time she did, more than I expected.
Yvonne consulted with Pene Kirk. Yes, that's typical. As Pene later told me, it's the result of urea building up in the blood and making the animal feel sick. When she first looked at her 3 months ago she said that she could live another couple of days, couple of weeks or couple of months. So she lasted longer than Pene had thought. I was misled by the fact that she recovered so well after her change of diet: it was only temporary.
So today was the day. Piccola spent the morning in a box in my office and then disappeared, almost as if she had a premonition. But no, she was finding other places that she hadn't used before:
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So off to Pene's place for her final journey. It's sad, and coincidentally the first time in over 40 years that we didn't have a cat at all. Back home, and showed her to the dogs. Elena didn't want to know: she sniffed around the carrier box and then went away. Larissa spent some time sniffing at her:
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While I was away, Jesse had dug a hole for her.
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And that was Piccola. I get the feeling that the dogs are sad too.
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More plant giveaways
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
While at Pene Kirk's, also picked up what is apparently a climbing geranium:
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That should be big enough for two plants. Maybe we can finally find something that can grow up the arches we erected years ago.
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New cat, part 2
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Response from the seller of the cat in Creswick, showing that Gumtree had discarded my message and replaced with a generic, useless message. By this time Piccola was dead, so we could buy the cat if we want and the seller found us suitable:
If looking to be considered we do need some basic information about yourself and your experience with Burmese breed and family enviroment
But then, we were even pickier about whom we sold our cats to when we were breeding decades ago.
A bit of discussion by fake email and SMS, and it looks as if we will be able to go to Creswick tomorrow and have a look at him.
| Wednesday, 5 April 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 5 April 2023 |
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Goodbye Pam
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Topic: general | Link here |
Pam Hay off again today, and at the very last minute I discovered that I hadn't taken a single photo of her and Yvonne:
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More gardening
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Topic: gardening, animals, opinion | Link here |
Sam Berry along today to do more gardening, bringing her two sons with her. Larissa loved them, and demonstrated something that I have seen before but not completely understood: with small dogs she lies down on the ground. I thought that it wass just her way of getting closer to the animals, but she did it with Sam's children too. So somehow it's a recognition of somebody younger as well.
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Car insurance: the pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne's car is still not insured for third party and stuff. In view of the pain we've just had with AAMI, it's time to do it. My interaction with Budget Direct last month was particularly painful. How about RACV again? Called up, gave the details. No, sorry, we can't renew the policy: it has lapsed. We need to do a new one.
Various silly questions, but at one point it occurred to me: how much money are we looking at? The last yearly premium was $212. This time it would be $350 odd! I no longer get the membership rebates.
Sorry, RACV, that's the final nail in the coffin.
So, try Budget Direct again. Things went exactly as last time, and once again I failed just before the payment was completed. Called up and told them that I just want to pay the bloody bill. Sorry, we need to go through the whole thing all over again. It took another 40 minutes, admittedly somewhat longer than it could have been because I asked to speak to a supervisor (Jessie), who just told me the same old nonsense that Alan (“consultant”) had told me. About the only thing he confirmed was that the problem with the web site was probably not at my end (in other words, it's a known problem). Why don't they fix it?
What's wrong with these people? The whole thing took 2 hours! Or, as the wait blurb on the phone told me, quickly and easily.
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Hello Bruno!
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
More discussion with Graham, the seller of yesterday's Chocolate Burmese kitten. It seems that they have moved to Ballarat, and in fact the cat was only about 1 km away from where Yvonne was doing her shopping. Arranged to meet round 12:30. Called up Yvonne on her phone. It rang right next to me: she had forgotten to take it with her.
Gradually we got our act together. Yvonne came home, Graham sent me an address and phone number of his wife Tanya, and we called her up. After hardly any more miscommunications we set off to Mount Pleasant and took a look at the cat. He was, of course, just what we wanted, so off to a bank to get a ridiculous amount of money (thanks, COVID-19) and back to pick him up:
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And what shall we call him? My original idea was Bruno, but Yvonne didn't like that, so we're still discussing. For the time being the working name is Bruno, but that could change.
Back home, how do we acclimatize him? The dogs were overly excited, of course, but for some reason Yvonne is worried that they might eat him. I find that extremely unlikely, but clearly its better to play it safe. Let him out in the bathroom, where he quickly took advantage of the litter tray and food, eating a surprising amount of the latter. Then I erected the big dog cage in Yvonne's bedroom and put him in, to the great interest of the dogs:
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And that was the first day. It's interesting to note that Bruno was the only cat available this side of Melbourne who matched our criteria, and that almost exactly. And coincidentally he was born on the same date as Piccola, 31 December. I suggested that we might call him Edwin, but Yvonne was not amused.
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Free parking
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Where could I park when we went to the bank? It's pretty much exactly in the middle of town, the crossroads between Sturt Street and Doveton Street, here in the background:
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And in the foreground:
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OK, people, in the waste container? Really? I looked all around, but I couldn't find any indication of where I should enter the registration number. It seems that there's a mobile phone app, but this sign didn't indicate anything to do with mobile phones. I still don't know where they want it done.
| Thursday, 6 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 6 April 2023 |
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Acclimatizing Bruno
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne had a troubled night: the dogs continually tried to get to Bruno, and she had to chase them off. Come morning and things were calmer, and we let him out of his cage with Elena in the room, and me holding her by the collar. That went as I had expected: she was interested, but not in the slightest aggressive:
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Then we let Larissa in, who was definitely pushier, but again she was mainly interested in getting to know her:
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Then we let him run around the bedroom a bit:
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And that was enough for a start. We really need to keep a careful eye on him all the time. I had forgotten how active kittens are. But he seems happy, and later I found Lara lying in front of his cage (“little animal” position?), and he reached out with a paw to her paw. I don't see any issues, but Yvonne is still concerned. Certainly we will keep our eyes on things for some time to come.
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Feeding Bruno
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Topic: animals, language, opinion | Link here |
What do we feed Bruno? We never had any issues in the past, but especially since our issues with Piccola, we're paying much more attention. Whiskas must make kitten food, but the only thing Yvonne could find in the supermarkets was for animals 1 year and older. So she bought some fiendishly expensive sachets with the particularly stupid name “Smitten”, apparently a Woolworths brand, carrying on their fine tradition of silly names. I don't smite my cat! He doesn't seem to like it very much, preferring the pellets. But it brings home to us how long it has been since we've had a kitten in the house.
| Friday, 7 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 7 April 2023 |
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Bruno it is!
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Topic: animals | Link here |
When we got Bruno, we gave him that name provisionally until we decided on a final name for him. Now it's final: he'll be called Bruno.
Other names that were suggested were Dino, Charlie Brown, Yul, Yori, (short for Aanyoraung, the Burmese word for brown), Burma, Fudge, Toffee, Muffin, Mowgli, Kelim, Garfield, Indie (short for indifferent), Pluto, Gozer, Rambo, Sylvester. None of those reached out and grabbed us, though Yvonne was keen on Dino for a while. Was that a subconscious reference to the family of my cousin Helen Consalvo (ex-husband Dino, son Bruno)?
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Feeding Bruno
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Topic: food and drink, animals, language, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's marvel at the silly name “Smitten” for the cat food that Yvonne bought for Bruno gave reason to check the word (well, “smite”) in the OED. No fewer than 31 meanings!
While searching, I found a reference to the quality of the food. Not good. The first review started with:
Smitten could lead to the premature death of your cat. Products such as this are likely the reason many cats die of conditions such as renal failure. There’s a simple factual reason why: Cat’s [sic] are obligate carnivores, and this product is mostly cheap grains and grain by-products.
Oh. I hadn't expected such strong words. And renal failure is something that is far too recent to forget. Off to look for other references. This one comes up with similar claims, though it's interesting that in both cases the presence of cereals is given as the main cause, not (as I had expected) the high salt content.
And then there was this article referring to a Choice review of cat foods:
The underperformers included some home-brand cat food sold by Coles, Woolworths and Aldi, but also included food marketed as premium, such as Gourmet Delight, Advance and Dine.
Unfortunately, the Choice review seems to have expired. The best that I could find didn't help much beyond a statement confirming a suspicion that I had had:
Dry food in the past was the cause of urinary tract infections in cats, but manufacturers have altered the pH level of their formulations. Cats fed on a well-formulated dry-food diet don't run a higher risk of urinary tract disease if they're drinking enough water. If your cat doesn't, it's a good idea to feed it a canned-food diet, which has a higher water content.
It's interesting, though, that few reviews mentioned the salt content. Found this article, Salt in Pet Foods- Friend or Foe? seems to make sense, and it recommends between 0.2% and 0.5% (maybe to 0.6% for younger cats) elemental sodium. That's interesting for two reasons: firstly, it confirms that “sodium” is not “salt”, and it also confirms that the quantities in ALDI food that I established in December were far too high (0.8%, 1.5% sodium). It also contains:
One study investigated 36 cats with varying renal insufficiency and compared the effects of high sodium (1.1% as fed) and low sodium (0.35% as fed) diets. The cats eating the high salt diet had an increase in serum creatinine, urea nitrogen and phosphorus in comparison to those eating the low salt diet.
It's also important to note that many of these reviews are quite old, and one (which I can no longer find) refers to a significant price increase in “Smitten”. Could it be that Woolworths have improved the stuff? Took a look at the packaging. Yes, contains “real meat”; where have I seen that before? And 1.5% salt. And with the exception of “Smitten”, of all the cat food we have claims to adhere to the AAFCO guidelines.
In fact, as I discovered later, “Smitten” does claim to adhere to the AAFCO guidelines. So maybe they have improved since the reviews were written.
AAFCO makes it difficult to find the guidelines, but they could be just available in PDF format. This page claims to describe the Australian situation, but superficially it seems to be aimed at selling their products.
I'm left with the feeling that “Smitten” refers to another meaning of “smite”. From the OED:
14. Of a disease, disorder, or other condition: to attack; to affect suddenly or seriously.
So that's all the smiting we'll do for Bruno. Raw beef? Might make up for the salt he has consumed, but clearly we're going to have do a lot more thinking. One thing that was mentioned in passing, and which I still need to read, is the calcium/phosphorus ratio in the food. To think that we've had cats for nearly 50 years, and this is the first time I've really investigated the details.
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Cellophane? Cellopark?
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
The parking signs that I saw on Wednesday included a reference to a mobile phone app to pay for parking, or conceivably to park for free:
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Off searching today, and found it, with the strange name Cellopark, which sounds like cellophane. How did they come up with such a silly name?
OK, install. Configure. I suppose that it's par for the course that I can only configure the thing on the phone, but what a pain! In addition, I have to enter information that it should know, like the phone number. Once I entered that, it sent me a PIN, but it was too polite to read it: I had to type the bloody thing in! Then it wanted my name (“G L”; if it wants more, it should provide a keyboard) and tried to enter a password. No spaces! Just upper case, lower case, digit. “buggerY0u”. Password invalid. Did it want the upper case letter up front? Finally found a new password that found its favour, pressed “Register”. PIN wrong. Check, no, PIN is that it sent me. Back and try all over again. Finally it was happy, and wanted me first to say the code for where I was parked, even before it knew my car registration.
And there we're back to where I was on Wednesday. Where's there a code? Ignored that and messed around. Yes, of course I can enter configuration details, like the registration number of my car. And it wants credit card details too! On a mobile phone! Damn you, Cellophane, why can't you just bill me?
Shall I use it? For the time being I don't need to, so there's no reason to compromise the security of my credit cards. But in general what was an excellent idea has been broken by poor implementation, documentation and security.
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Bloody cables!
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Topic: technology, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Bruno ran around in the lounge room today, and somehow he managed to wobble on the HDMI output cable of tiwi. No picture. OK, I can do that too. Wobble. No picture. Wobble. No picture. How I hate HDMI!
Dammit, finally time to put the computer in the cabinet where it belongs. Cables too short. Mess around and finally get them long enough to be able to boot tiwi on a side table in front of the cabinet. Turn on. Nothing. No power. Look round the back of the cabinet. All seems well. More cursing and swearing didn't help, so I get a new power cable and finally powered it on.
This also gave me the opportunity to check starting X. When I boot, it selects the DVI output, but it started X on the HDMI output as planned. In principle the move was not an issue, but these bloody cables made it take 25 minutes.
| Saturday, 8 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 8 April 2023 |
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Peace!
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Topic: general, animals | Link here |
The last couple of weeks seem to have been particularly hectic, first two visitors, then the death of Piccola and the arrival of Bruno. But now there's less activity, and I can catch up with other things. Somehow I still didn't reach my primary metric, having less than the 67 email messages in my inbox that fit on one screen.
Bruno is still not allowed everywhere in the house. Were we this careful in the past? I have very little about the early days with Piccola, coincidentally 14 years ago, when she was the age that Bruno is now. And Rani (also coincidentally exactly 7 years ago)? We have more, but we didn't seem to have as much in the way of issues
The one thing that worried Yvonne was her continued fear that the dogs would kill Bruno. I have no idea why, but let her continue with a muzzle on Larissa:
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All went well, of course, though Lara does seem rather rough, so for the time being we won't leave them together alone. But on the whole they seem to be gentle enough, and Bruno isn't worried:
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Chinese pepper steak!
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Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
One of my favourite recipes from Sarawak is pepper steak, a beef steak with a sauce consisting mainly of crushed black pepper:
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So I was intrigued when I found a Chinese pepper steak recipe on the web.
Oh.
The recipe may be Chinese, but it's written in US American English. And yes, the framing of the image is original.
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Progress is coming. Get used to it.
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Five years ago I read and commented on an article Why smart fridges are the future. I read it again today. Have things changed?
I don't know. I change my opinions in the course of time—I've done it with Android, though I still find it abominable—but in this case, my opinions remain. About the only thing of interest in that article (apparently sponsored by Amazon) was the suggestion that Alexa could give you conversion factors and start timers:
For example, you can say “Alexa, how many tablespoons are in a cup?” or “Alexa, how many pints are in a gallon?”.
say “Alexa, set a timer for 20 minutes” and it will begin counting down.
OK, Google can do that too. It even knows where I am, so it can apply local knowledge. But no, the volumes it gives me are “us gallons” (and not “US gallons”), and it tells me that there are 16 fluid ounces in a pint, and 16 tablespoons in a cup. Both are incorrect here. It also tells me that there are 16 ounces in a pound of gold, which is wrong everywhere.
And the timer? Yes, it works. Like the article says, it also starts the timer immediately, which is seldom what I want.
In summary: some of this might be useful, but it needs a lot of work. Converting “units” is less useful, because you need to be particularly mentally impaired to need help converting a millilitre into a litre or a gram into a kilogram. It could be helpful if you're using a recipe from a different country, but at least Google is currently too stupid for that. The timer could potentially be useful (and yes, you can manually stop and reset it), but it's currently too inconvenient to use.
| Sunday, 9 April 2023 | Dereel | |
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More acclimatization
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Topic: animals | Link here |
It's taking its time for Bruno to become acclimatized with the dogs, made no faster by Yvonne's concerns. But it's also clear that Bruno is not overly concerned. Today he “attacked” Larissa in play. Still, it's a good idea not to leave them alone together.
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xterm for Android?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
One of the most horrible things about “modern” computer infrastructure is the lack of interoperability. How do I interface SMS with email with Facebook? How do I share files between Android and FreeBSD? All these things that should be easy have been made difficult for no good reason.
On top of that, of course, there's one almost acceptable reason why Android is such a pain: it has to run on a device that is too small to have a usable keyboard. But even there things could be better. And an obvious interoperability feature would be a version of xterm that runs on Android. That way I could point it to an X server and interface with it with a Real Computer™.
OK, search for xterm for android. Lots of hits. But the devil is in the detail. The ones I found, like this one, appear not to be an xterm at all; they just have the xterm control codes, and they run on the phone. No improvement over this horrible keyboard substitute.
Maybe there is one out there, but it would be lost in the noise.
| Monday, 10 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 10 April 2023 |
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Breakfast with Graeme and Linda
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Topic: general, animals, food and drink | Link here |
Graeme and Linda Swift over this morning to have breakfast and see Bruno:
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Linda was particularly taken with him. Maybe a little too much:
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More lighting issues
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
It's been some time since we've had a full table for a meal, and the lighting (a single flash unit on top of a cupboard):
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Previously I had it on the cupboard to the right (where the mounting pin is), but today I moved it to the higher cupboard on the left. The results were mixed. On the one hand, I got a more even light distribution on the standard places, like here:
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That's a variation of less than 0.1 EV from one side to the other, and surprisingly an increase of ⅔ EV overall. But the shadow of the ceiling light is unfortunate.
| Tuesday, 11 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 11 April 2023 |
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Route my /24!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
OK, time is getting short for routing my /24 before I lose it. Do I need a business account? Off to the Aussie Broadband web site to look for pricing. Oh. First I need to log in! Why? And then they want me to go through this horrible 2FA! To make matters worse, it took several minutes for their email to come through.
The interesting thing was that their business accounts cost no more than their “residential” accounts. But they come with a static IP address—clearly nothing I need here—and that costs $5 extra for “residential” connections, so they're actually cheaper if you need the static IP.
So, nothing for it. Called up support on 1300 880 905 and was connected to Aaron. Told him “I want to route my /24 to my existing connection”. Puzzled silence. “You want to route your /24 to your existing connection. Can you repeat that?”.
Much discussion, and finally I suggested to him that this wasn't an everyday request. Yes, agreed, he had never heard it before, so he contacted his supervisor. “Sorry, not something we do. You'll have to do it yourself”. I tried to explain to him what routing is, and that only Aussie can do it, but it was apparently so far from their experience that I was unsuccessful.
OK, talk to his supervisor, Usama. Same thing all over again. “Sorry, not something we do. You'll have to do it yourself”. I tried to explain to him what routing is, and that only Aussie can do it, but it was apparently so far from their experience that I was unsuccessful.
So I suggested that he contacted the people who run the network. No, he's not allowed to talk to them! But he can raise a ticket. So he did that, sent me an email asking for the details. I had told him, of course, but it was probably a good idea to do it all over again. And how about that, I got a pretty quick answer from a Felix W, who clearly knew what he was talking about, and who pointed me to their application form.
This time I was the one who didn't understand. Set up BGP? Supply an ASN? I never needed to do that before.
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More gardening
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Rather to my surprise, Jesse Walsh showed up this morning. It seems that Yvonne had asked him to come, but not told me. Got him to dig some holes and fill them with soil, and also do some mulching. That will keep him busy for a couple of weeks as Sam Berry finishes the weeding.
Sam showed up shortly after he left and planted the sick-looking Abutilon on Piccola's grave, an equally sick looking Hibiscus rosa-sinensis “Uncle Max” and the climbing Pelargonium that I got from Pene Kirk last week:
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Bruno progress
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Gradually the dogs are getting used to Bruno, and Yvonne is getting used to them having access to him. He's still small enough to climb on people and sit on their shoulders:
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| Wednesday, 12 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 12 April 2023 |
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Bloody AAMI again!
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've now sent 2 emails to AAMI about the damage that they allege that I did to Helen Miller's car on 18 October 2022. I've responded twice, most recently last week, asking for immediate confirmation of reception. No response, so I tried again yesterday. Still no response.
Time for a phone call. 13224411243351? No, of course not. That's just what my phone recorded. The number itself is 13 22 44, and the rest is a voice menu from hell, ending with a warning that I could be in for a wait of 30 to 45 minutes. They were at least partially right; after 30 minutes I hung up. What do people do if their phone doesn't have charge for more than 30 minutes?
This is getting just plain stupid. Are they trying to annoy me? I'll continue bouncing for a week or so and see if I finally get a response.
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Is my email being blocked?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Currently I send my email via mail.lemis.com, and from time to time some misguided Big Company blocks it for reasons that they can't really justify. Today I was expecting a number of important mail replies, and I got none.
Did my messages get through? What if I send them via Aussie Broadband instead? It's a two line change in main.cf:
--- main.cf 2022/12/31 22:08:28 1.55
+++ main.cf 2023/04/12 06:37:37
@@ -319,8 +319,8 @@
#relayhost = uucphost
#relayhost = [an.ip.add.ress]
# One of these two should be right.
-# relayhost = mail.aussiebroadband.com.au
-relayhost = lax.lemis.com
+relayhost = mail.aussiebroadband.com.au
+# relayhost = lax.lemis.com
Why haven't I done that before? Mainly it's accountability. Here the delivery notification from the same message sent to AAMI via the two routes:
lax.lemis.com:
Reporting-MTA: dns; lax.lemis.com
Arrival-Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2023 04:25:04 +0000 (UTC)
Final-Recipient: rfc822; claimsadmin@aami.com.au
Original-Recipient: rfc822;claimsadmin@aami.com.au
Action: relayed
Status: 2.0.0
Remote-MTA: dns; cluster9.us.messagelabs.com
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 250 ok 1681273506 qp 2431
server-20.tower-686.messagelabs.com!1681273505!37645!1
mail.aussiebroadband.com.au:
Reporting-MTA: dns; smtp03.aussiebb.com.au
Arrival-Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2023 11:35:51 +1000 (AEST)
Final-Recipient: rfc822; claimsadmin@aami.com.au
Original-Recipient: rfc822;claimsadmin@aami.com.au
Action: relayed
Status: 2.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; delivery via spamfilter: delivered via spamfilter
service
They look almost the same (coincidentally Aussie is also running Postfix), but there's nothing in the Aussie output to actually say where the mail ended up. If it's at the receiving end, why isn't the name specified? In mine, it's clear that it has gone somewhere in the USA. What does “spamfilter” mean? I get the same response if I send a message to myself at FreeBSD.org, so it must be local to Aussie.
Still, we can leave it like that for a while and see what happens
| Thursday, 13 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 13 April 2023 |
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Route my /24, more attempts
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Discussion on the phone with Peter O'Connell. Can we register the /24 net block with the Lehey Family Trust? He's not sure, and wants to get back to me.
In passing, ABR has an appallingly bad search function. Yes, I can find Lehey Family Trust, and also hundreds of Lees, Leahys and similar. Search just for “Lehey” and it finds them too, overflowing its search results, with the result that I can't find if there are are any other companies with the name “Lehey” in them.
Apart from that, silence on all fronts: RIPE, Aussie Broadband. I even tried to contact Mark Price of RootBSD, now subsumed into tqhosting.com, or maybe NetActuate. Looking at their web site, it's not clear what services they offer, if any, and I wasn't overly surprised not to hear back from Mark, with whom I have had nothing to do for 8 years.
Only Juha Kupiainen came up with some useful information:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/22) ~ 97 -> whois -h whois.cymru.com " -v 192.109.197.0"
AS | IP | BGP Prefix | CC | Registry | Allocated | AS Name
NA | 192.109.197.0 | NA | AU | ripencc | 1991-05-01 | NA
I have no idea where that information comes from—Cymru seems to be a commercial company and not a country—but it looks plausible. By contrast, one of Aussie's address blocks gives:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/22) ~ 98 -> whois -h whois.cymru.com " -v 180.150.31.0"
AS | IP | BGP Prefix | CC | Registry | Allocated | AS Name
4764 | 180.150.31.0 | 180.150.28.0/22 | AU | apnic | 2009-09-01 | WIDEBAND-AS-AP Aussie Broadband, AU
Look at the first and last columns: AS number and name. ”NA” for mine, and also for the BGP prefix. It's also interesting to note the dates; apart from the fact that my block is well over 18 years older, it's older than the time I got it (early March 1992). My guess is that this was the date that the net block came into existence. Aussie's date is also interesting: it's nearly 6 months after signed up with Aussie. Presumably it relates only to this specific block. Now I have something to discuss with Aussie support, if they ever call me back.
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Feeding the Swift's animals
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Graeme and Linda Swift are going on their first “holiday” (spending days away from home) in 10 years. That closely rivals my time: the last night I spent away from home was almost exactly 10 years ago. And they have asked Yvonne to look after their sheep and miniature horse while they're gone. Over today to take a look at how to feed them, in particular how much to give them. Here horse, then (2) sheep:
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| Friday, 14 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 14 April 2023 |
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Simplifying KL Hokkien Mee
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I felt like KL Hokkien Mee for breakfast today, but I didn't have some of the ingredients: marinated pork and greaves (yau cha, 猪油渣).
OK, fake it. Pork “sizzling steak” and crispy fried onion. To my surprise, the steak was a poor substitute: it needs to be pork belly, and the difference was not good. And also to my surprise, the crispy fried onions were a good substitute. That's reasonably reassuring, since making the greaves was both time-consuming and expensive.
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Aussie Broadband Service: not what it used to be
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
It seems that technical superiority is no longer a hallmark of Aussie Broadband support. After Tuesday's message from a Real Techie, I replied:
Thanks. Maybe there's a misunderstanding here. I've had this block
routed (5 times) before, and in the past the ISP just advertised the
block. I've never had to set up BGB or supply an ASN. As far as I
can tell, there is no ASN. This is a legacy allocation (dating to
March 1992), which might explain that.
No response. Yesterday I resent the message marked “Urgent” and asked for a call back. No reply until today:
Could you please confirm that you have sent the requested information to
bgp-requests@aussiebroadband.com.au as per my colleague instructions in a
previous email.
Now why do I get the feeling that the “consultant” didn't read the email? In the meantime I had had confirmation from Juha Kupiainen that my block doesn't fit under the BGP umbrella. Responded accordingly, asking him to read what I had written. But no: quick reply showing that he had either not read or not understood what I had written and asking for the same information again. And this is “Level 2” support!
I've been with Aussie since 2007, and in the past I was very satisfied with the level of support. This incident makes me wonder whether I'm still with the right company:
So what do I do now? “Whingepool”? It sounds like washing dirty linen in public, but nothing else seems to work. And sure enough, I found a thread from 2019, describing exactly what I was looking for (even a customer transitioning from Internode, where I started routing
It had been answered by John Alexander:
We can and do advertise /24s (and larger) for customers. We prefer bgp with your own asn, but can do it via framed routes to your connection. What you do need to be able to do though is edit your apnic record to add in a route object for AS4764. Without that, our upstreams (NTT, HE.net) and peering (Equinix, soon to be Google plus more) will reject the routes from us. We need you to be able to do this otherwise the only path in will be via Telstra transit, so will have to think twice before advertising it for you.
That doesn't look overly encouraging, but, as I discovered a couple of months ago, John Alexander has retired. Time for my own message. And how about that, I got an answer within 30 minutes:
Drop us an email to the email listed in that help centre post, just mention you wish for us to advertise it on your behalf and we should be golden!
Now why is it so difficult to discuss that with Aussie support? That doesn't solve everything, of course: I had already sent multiple messages to that address, and support claims that they haven't received anything. And there are other issues, notably with RIPE:
... please provide us with the official documents issued by national authorities supporting The Lehey Family Trust is the legal successor to LEMIS (SA) PTY LTD. We will then review the documents and evaluate your request to extend the deadline of de-registration process.
Problem: there is no such official document. How do I get it across to them. And why is this suddenly so important? In the course of my ownership of this address block, it has belonged at least to me (possibly as LEMIS GbR, then LEMIS GmbH, then presumably nothing between 1997 and the founding of LEMIS Pty Ltd in July 2001. And at no point did anybody advertising the block want any official statement. Yes, it's clear that they need to ensure that nobody hijacks network blocks, but there must be an easier way.
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Sun shots
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
A Solar eclipse is coming up next week. Should I get a shot of it? In Dereel we will only see a small part of the eclipse, and there's a good chance that it will be cloudy when it happens (maximum, magnitude 0.219, at round 14:06 on 20 April, though it will last for nearly 2 hours) so it's not worth going to too much trouble. But it's worth considering.
By chance my Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 telephoto has the same filter thread as the Zuiko Digital ED 9-18 mm f/4.0-5.6 ultra wide angle lens, so I can use the 10 stop Neutral-density filter. What angle does the sun subtend? It seems that the ideal focal length is closer to 1000 mm than 400 mm. Theoretically I could get quite close with a 2x teleconverter, but is it worth it?
One of the issues was the image quality. Out today to take a couple of test shots. They were surprising. I'm used to taking shots of the sun with the E-30, but I've never tried with more modern cameras. And it came close to a complete disaster. The viewfinder showed a large flare image of the sun, larger than the sensor. Will that end up on the photos? No:
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That's clearly overexposed (1/5000 s, f/9, effective EV 28.6). The crop also shows that my guess of 1000 mm focal length is not far from the truth. But there's significant chromatic aberration, something that I've seen before. I suppose that I could correct that in postprocessing, but how do I fix the viewfinder issues? Is it the camera or the lens? I could try the other mirrorless Olympus cameras, but I doubt that would make much difference. If it's the lens, I could theoretically try the old Hanimex 300 mm with a 3x teleconverter, but of course it would be too much to hope that it also had the same filter thread—it's about 2 mm less.
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New keyboard
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Received a new Sun Type 7 keyboard today. Well, not so new: it looks considerably older than the one I'm using. But it only cost $25, and it's a good backup if the other one fails. I'm using it now to ensure that it really does work well.
| Saturday, 15 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 15 April 2023 |
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Understanding the /24 transfer
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
The current state of play with deploying my /24 net block is that RIPE wants proof of ownership of the block, and that by Thursday. It's currently allocated to LEMIS (SA) Pty Ltd:
inetnum: 192.109.197.0 - 192.109.197.255
netname: LEMIS-LAN
org: ORG-LPL6-RIPE
country: DE
admin-c: GL3-RIPE
tech-c: GL3-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PI
mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-END-MNT
created: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
last-modified: 2023-03-22T09:43:24Z
source: RIPE
organisation: ORG-LPL6-RIPE
org-name: LEMIS (SA) PTY LTD
country: AU
org-type: OTHER
address: 47 Kleins Road Dereel Victoria AU
mnt-ref: MP4204-MNT
mnt-by: MP4204-MNT
created: 2015-04-07T21:35:02Z
last-modified: 2022-12-01T16:35:49Z
source: RIPE # Filtered
abuse-c: THA15-RIPE
person: Greg Lehey
address: LEMIS Lehey Microcomputersysteme
address: Schellnhausen 2
address: D-36325 Feldatal
address: Germany
phone: +49 6637 1488
fax-no: +49 6637 1489
nic-hdl: GL3-RIPE
mnt-by: DENIC-P
created: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
last-modified: 2001-09-21T23:11:30Z
source: RIPE # Filtered
But who allocated it? I'm quite sure that I didn't, and I have no record of being informed of the change. The date is 7 April 2015, almost exactly 8 years ago. At that point LEMIS had long since ceased trading, though it still existed, and we were about to move into the Stones Road house. If I had made that entry, I would have used the new, valid address 29 Stones Road. So: finding a legal successor to LEMIS (SA) is not important. It should revert to LEMIS in Germany, a non-incorporated trading name that I used at the time, and which by definition hasn't lapsed. The real question is probably whether individuals are allowed to hold net blocks or not.
Spent quite some time searching the RIPE web site, and came up with this page about Legacy Internet Resource Holders. It seems that I don't need any involvement with RIPE unless I want something about the resource changed. But there's no reason to assume that that will be the case. And there's a different email address to contact, legacy@ripe.net, though I suspect that it's quite possible that the same person will end up with the request.
| Sunday, 16 April 2023 | Dereel | |
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Netblock ownership revisited
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Topic: technology, history, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I established that my network block had transferred to LEMIS (SA) Pty Ltd on 7 April 2015. And it was clear that it had nothing to do with me. Did I have any record?
Yes, of course. And yes, not only was I involved in the transfer, I signed a document asking for the transfer. So why did I think I wasn't involved? The most convincing argument was that I used the old address for LEMIS, though I was in the process of moving. But that's a misunderstanding. I never migrated LEMIS to the new address: even then it was effectively non-functional.
What does this mean for the transfer? At the time, all they wanted from me was a signature. I can do that again. The real question is whether I can just transfer it to my own name.
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Luminar HDR
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Luminar Neo has functionality for focus stacking and HDR, both of which I use. I already have Photomatix for HDR and Zerene for focus stacking, but who knows, maybe Luminar has some advantages.
OK, fire up. It still has photos open that I processed weeks ago. How do I get rid of them? All I could find was to select them all and then press the DEL key. Somehow that seems tacky.
Next, load the images. Nothing showed. Oh, first I need to open the “folder”, after which it went off and started displaying all 36 images in the directory.
Merge? Drag the images! Dammit, for the sake of comparison I did so. That involved first selecting 3 images at a time. Somehow this interface is a toy. And I only managed one image merge before I got too annoyed. But the results weren't bad. I need to find if there's a sane interface to the functionality; clearly the documentation leaves something to be desired, as the title of a recent email admits:
34 N 16-04-2023 To me@lemis.com ( 770) Maryna from Skylum N Secret tips! How to speed up editing in Neo?
So why is that a secret?
| Monday, 17 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 17 April 2023 |
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More RIPE fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
On Saturday I discovered (I think) that my net block doesn't need to be in the name of a company, and as as a legacy network I don't need any involvement with RIPE. But the devil's in the detail, in particular the proof of ownership of LEMIS (SA), and it wasn't until today that I sent off a message offering a statutory declaration about the ownership of LEMIS, and also requesting non-involvement and a method to update the data for GL3-RIPE. The delay doesn't mean anything: it still arrived at RIPE at 4:53 UTC on Monday morning.
The reply (in the evening due to the time difference) was also relatively fast, at 9:32 UTC: no, I'm not a legacy user. They may, however, accept a statutory declaration, so that's tomorrow's work. And no mention of the database update; maybe I overflowed the input buffer.
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Aussie complaints
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
How do I complain to Aussie Broadband about their support (or lack thereof)? I asked for it in a response to the useless mail thread that I got from them last week. And how about that, I got a message:
From: Aussie Broadband <no-reply@team.aussiebroadband.com.au>
Thank you for contacting the Aussie Broadband complaints department.
Complaint reference number: **52729642**
Please use this number when contacting Aussie Broadband about your complaint.
OK, and how? The message went on:
### **What happens next?**
If you have already spoken with one of our team, they should have outlined our complaint process timelines for your case.
Well, no, this is all I heard. But there's yet more:
### **Need help?**
We have a lot of helpful information, troubleshooting tips and FAQs in our [Help Centre.](https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/help-centre/)
OK, try that. “Aussie BroadbandSearch results for 'complaints':Sorry, we couldn't find any results for: "complaints"”
Now that's worth complaining about. I was offered a “Live Chat” that proved to be less helpful even than most:
Me: I have tried to enter a complaint about the service I have (not) received, and I have received an email with the reference number 52729642 and NOTHING else. I don't know how to continue, and your Help Centre is too polite to talk about complaints.
Tara Hi there, typically once you send in a complaint you would receive a reference number and then someone from the complaints department will be in touch within the next couple of days as soon as they can 🙂
Me: This is two days old. When can I expect contact?
Tara I wouldn't be able to say specifically sorry, as I'm not part of that team. They're not available over live chat, but if you like, you can call 1300 880 905 and ask to speak with someone from the complaints team 🙂
Me: And that's part of what I'm complaining about. OK, thanks for your help.
That 0x0614f2 at the end of the lines doesn't render on my display. I should find out what it is. But clearly there's little help to be expected from Aussie.
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AAMI again!
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Finally a response from AAMI! But what kind of response?
We tried to contact you on 03 53461370.
However, the number is not connected.
What's wrong there? Firstly, the number is connected, just with permanent voice mail. And my logs showed that no connection attempt had been made. And secondly, I had given them the correct number to call. Score 0 for AAMI.
The message also included a number of photos, most probably of Helen's car. There seems to be damage that I didn't cause, but then, nobody told me what damage they're blaming on me. There were also photos of the inside of the car and other irrelevant things. And the images had been postprocessed and downsized.
OK, AAMI,
I see a number of photos, many of which seem completely unrelated to
any damage. These photos have also been postprocessed, so I can't
tell whether they are accurate or not. For example, the colour
differs from one image to the next. If you have photos that show
damage purported to have been caused by me, please:
- Send the original, unchanged versions of these photos, and only of
these photos.
- Explain what damage these photos show.
- Explain your claim that I caused this damage.
| Tuesday, 18 April 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 18 April 2023 |
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LEMIS: Statutory declaration
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
First thing today was to write a statutory declaration about my relationship with LEMIS (SA) Pty Ltd, not made any more difficult by my discovery of no fewer than 3 copies of the Constitution of LEMIS (SA) Pty Ltd (“A company limited by shares”). It's nearly all boilerplate, but of course there's a signature, where I declare that I am the sole member of Lemis [sic] (SA) Pty Ltd.
Writing the declaration was straightforward enough, but somehow my text processing software has rotted, and I was unable to create a PDF output file (well, I created it, but it was empty). OK, PostScript? Yes, that worked.
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UPS: More trouble than they're worth?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Turned on the printer to print out the statutory declaration, for the first time in months. BEEP! I had accidentally connected the printer to the new UPS instead of its own power point, and it overloaded. Instead of falling back to passthrough, it simply turned off all power output, but not the beeping, which continued even after I removed all loads. I had to kill it separately.
ANOTHER bloody power failure! Yes, of course, it was my fault, but what excuse is that? And this time, of course, I lost all the computers in my office with the exception of bde, the laptop.
And printing the declaration?
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~/letters/2023 5 -> lpr RIPE-statdec-20230418.ps
lpr: cannot create /var/spool/output/brother/dfA356eureka.lemis.com
Huh? What happened there? Has the printing infrastructure rotted? When did I last print anything? What kind of permission error is that?
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~/letters/2023 6 -> l /var/spool/output/brother/
total 1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root daemon 0 18 Apr 10:47 errs.87Cnwrq
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root daemon 0 17 Sep 2016 errs.8YjuCZs
-rw------- 1 root daemon 0 18 Apr 10:42 errs.yXn4VF7
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root daemon 5 18 Apr 10:47 lock
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root daemon 26 18 Apr 10:49 status=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~/letters/2023 7 -> l -d /var/spool/output/brother/
drwxr-xr-x 2 root daemon 512 18 Apr 11:29 /var/spool/output/brother/=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~/letters/2023 8 -> wh lpr
3053995 -r-sr-sr-x 1 root daemon 38560 25 Nov 2015 /usr/bin/lpr
That all looks fine. Yes, the directory is only writeable for root, but lpr is setuid root.
Anything in /var/log/messages?
Apr 18 10:47:50 eureka lpd[1771]: lpd startup: logging=0
Apr 18 10:47:50 eureka kernel: Starting lpd.
Well, that's a help. But if it continues, I could restart lpd with logging. Will it fail again?
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~/letters/2023 9 -> lpr RIPE-statdec-20230418.ps=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/5) ~/letters/2023 10 ->
Strange, but that's clearly the one that got away.
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Yvonne: heart problems?
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Topic: health, technology, opinion | Link here |
While this was going on, Yvonne told me that she was not feeling well. Chest pain. Given her cardiac history, that could be serious, so when I left for Ballarat round 13:30, I took her with me to the emergency department of the Ballarat Base Hospital, in the hope that they'd give her priority based on her symptoms.
Drove on to the police station to get the statutory declaration signed:
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It's amazing how few checks are made for such a formal document. I didn't even have to identify myself to the JP, a perfect stranger: my signature was enough. Hopefully RIPE NCC will accept it.
Then off to Bridge Mall, finding a toilet on the way. Got a call from Yvonne: she was to be put on an ECG and have blood tests done, so it would take a couple of hours. I back home, and finally got a call from her round 19:00: can be picked up, nothing serious. But clearly there's more to be done in the near future.
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Google Maps times
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been grumbling about the accuracy of GPS navigation software for as long as I have been using it, in particular the times it claims. Gradually it's getting better, to the point that it's almost worth looking at the timing information.
Today I set up my route: Ballarat Base Hospital, police station, back to the Base Hospital, then back home. Driving time: 1 hour, 6 minutes:
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But when I sent the route to my phone, it disagreed:
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Now wouldn't you think that the same app would agree with itself? Yes, it says “fastest route due to traffic conditions”, but it was the same route. And when I got back home, the total time was 1 hour, 1 minute! So there's still work to be done on those times.
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What's legacy IPv4 address space?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
So why did RIPE NCC tell me that my address block wasn't a legacy block? It predated RIPE (in fact, the creation date shows as 1 January 1970, in other words 0). But it seems that's not enough: this page tells me:
Legacy space is the IPv4 address space that was distributed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority's (IANA) central registry prior to the formation of the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) system.
After the RIPE NCC was established as an RIR, IANA authorised it to take over administrative responsibility of the address space that it had distributed in what is now defined as the RIPE NCC service region (Europe, the Middle East and parts of Central Asia).
| Wednesday, 19 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 19 April 2023 |
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Still more RIPE fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
No response from RIPE today, the deadline that they had set. Sent them a reminder and finally, just before I went to bed, I got a reply:
Unfortunately the Statutory of [sic] Declaration which was made recently on 18 April 2023 is not sufficient to support 192.109.197.0/24 is transferred from LEMIS (SA) PTY LTD to you.
Why? Ah, they're too polite to say. They want all kinds of documents that don't exist, and as only institution I know, they won't accept the valid information I supply.
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Reach out? Retch out?
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
Another irritating modern term has raised its ugly head: “reach out”. It's not a literal translation of German „ausreichen“ („es reicht aus“), which means to suffice. I really don't know what it means. Clearly it's something like “establish contact”, but how? I've been through the OED, which has 2 pages on the base verb, with a total of 21 main meanings, the last of which is
To strain in an effort to vomit; to retch.
Is that maybe the effect that the usage has on me? But that's unlikey. The most likely meaning appears to be:
2. f. intransitive. figurative of the mind, spirit, etc. spec. with out: to offer sympathy, support, assistance, or understanding to; also with for (a person, help, etc.).
But that's not the way people appear to use it. RIPE NCC use it, and I can't see them meaning that they want to help:
If we require any further information from you we will reach out.
Clearly it's an Americanism, so let's look there. Merriam-Webster has a definition, with the obligatory boilerplate:
Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, s.v. “reach out to (someone),” accessed April 19, 2023, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/reach%20out%20to%20%28someone%29.
It's too polite to include a definition, but it gives a couple of examples:
1: to offer help or support to (someone)a community reaching out to refugees2: to try to get the attention and interest of (someone)He's reaching out to young voters.
So: nothing like what I thought it would mean. Am I misunderstanding? Or is this just another example of obfuscatory bad language?
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ALDI spices
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne picked up some spice mixtures at ALDI yesterday:
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On reflection, they don't look very interesting, just herbs that we would have used anyway. But look at the quantities! For 500 g of lamb they want 35 g of herbs! That's round 10 times what I'd expect! A good thing that we can return them.
| Thursday, 20 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 20 April 2023 |
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192.109.197.0, the latest
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Spent some time addressing the response from RIPE that arrived yesterday evening. Why isn't the information sufficient? Wrote a lot on the subject, explaining the significance of the documents I had sent. Then I looked again. I had sent the wrong statutory declaration! I had made a second declaration regarding my access to the RIPE database, just in case they caused problems there too, but that was the one I sent:
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OK, nothing for it. Sorry, mea culpa. Another day gone by. At least they have dropped the deadline.
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Garden flowers in mid-autumn
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
It's a month after the Equinox, time for the monthly garden flower photos. For a change, nothing seems to be dying, or at least not very quickly. In the front garden the Corymbia ficifolia has finished flowering more quickly than I expected, but there's still a straggler, and it doesn't look too bad:
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The Ginkgo biloba has discovered that it's autumn; hopefully it will pick up in the spring:
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There are a surprising number of mushrooms—I think Agaricus campestris—in that area too:
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From recollection, they're edible. I wonder if they have anything to do with the oak trees that we planted in the area:
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The Buddlejas that I replanted are gradually looking better, in particular the one planted in the ground:
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I suspect that the previous ones were drowned. I'll have to find somewhere drier to plant the others.
And the Abutilons that caused concern a few months ago are now looking much better. The first one, on Piccola's grave has picked up very quickly:
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And the roses that looked so unhappy in the summer have picked up:
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I think I should spend more time looking at the irrigation come springtime.
The newly planted Magnolia has lost leaves, but not buds:
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With any luck it'll flower in a few months' time.
I can hardly say that the Strelitzia reginae is looking good, but by comparison to the last few months it's definitely better:
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On the other hand, I have more concerns than usual about my two Hibiscus rosa-sinensis “Uncle Max”. The one in the ground has barely flowered all year, and it will need trimming back:
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And this one has been in a far-too-small pot for months:
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It's time to bring it in for the winter, during which I hope it will recover.
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Solar eclipse!
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Topic: photography, general, opinion | Link here |
Total solar eclipse today. Every man and his dog was involved. I was intrigued with this article: How to safely photograph the solar eclipse with a phone. What an idea! But it reads:
Can I photograph the Sun with my smartphone?Yes, but it will look terrible.
So why do they even bother?
Last week's preparations were less than satisfactory. The issue is with the viewfinder, and there I have a choice. In particular in this situation, the separate “Feelworld” FW760 monitor that I bought over 5 years ago seems destined for the purpose.
Drag it out. I haven't used it for most of that time, and I couldn't power it on. Even charging the battery took some coaxing. And finally I discovered that there's a trick in inserting the battery. But then it seemed to work.
Then wait for the eclipse. It got darker than expected: the sky clouded over. The only evidence of the eclipse was the presence of two tripods (one for the camera, one for the viewfinder) in the house entrance.
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Never mind, it was only a 0.219 magnitude anyway.
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Rewiring lagoon
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Part of installing the UPS units 2 months ago involved tidying up the rat's nest behind lagoon, Yvonne's computer. Apart from the fact that I hate it, it's a lot of work.
But Bruno forced my hand. Wandering about behind Yvonne's desk, he found a wobbly power connector, and later something changed the resolution of the display. Cat on keyboard? How do you change X resolution anyway? Ctrl-Alt-+ and Ctrl-Alt--? Didn't work.
Dammit, if we have to stop X, we might as well reboot and use the opportunity to redo the wiring:
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At the end a surprising amount of stuff was left over:
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And the monitor still displayed the wrong aspect ratio, even in text mode:
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So it wasn't a different X resolution after all. Somehow the monitor settings had been changed. How I hate configuring monitors! Each has its own method, all of them hide the controls behind invisible inscriptions. Off to get another monitor instead, until it occurred to me that X might reset the monitor controls. And so it was. After restarting, all looked normal.
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ALDI pies
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne brought home some frozen pies from ALDI yesterday:
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How do you cook them? In the end, interpreted the instructions: 25 minutes in the “hair dryer” “air fryer” first at 170°, then at 160°:
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How did they taste? Yvonne likes them, I can live with them.
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Bruno at home
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
It took Piccola a long time to adapt to lying down on people. The first was with George Boyanich in May 2011, by which time she was 2½ years old:
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Not so with Bruno:
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| Friday, 21 April 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 21 April 2023 |
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Aussie resolves complaint
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Finally got feedback from Aussie Broadband about the complaint that I lodged a week ago:
I have picked up handling of your formal complaint raised on your behalf regarding your request for a legacy IP Routing change.
I have reached out directly to our NOC leadership, and our NOC team have progressed your request on 18.04.23. You should have access to this now. If you have notyet kicked your session and rebooted your router, please do this so your framed route to properly attach to the service.
Now what does that mean. “Progressed”? Is that a typo for “processed”, or new bad language for “analyzed” or similar? He does use the term reached out without explaining what he means. And of course the request hasn't been processed: I wanted somebody with a brain to contact me, and that hasn't happened.
But the response suggests that the route is in place: “If you have notyet kicked your session and rebooted your router, please do this so your framed route to properly attach to the service”. What session? How do I kick it? Is that the same as booting it? What router? What framed route? A quick traceroute shows that the net doesn't know where the block is located:
=== grog@lax (/dev/pts/3) ~ 8 -> traceroute eureka
traceroute to eureka.lemis.com (192.109.197.137), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 * * *
2 100.100.100.1 (100.100.100.1) 0.442 ms 0.312 ms 0.629 ms
3 10.68.2.241 (10.68.2.241) 1.029 ms
10.68.16.37 (10.68.16.37) 2.010 ms
10.68.2.241 (10.68.2.241) 1.019 ms
4 10.68.0.205 (10.68.0.205) 1.038 ms !N
10.68.1.250 (10.68.1.250) 1.127 ms !N
10.68.1.241 (10.68.1.241) 0.974 ms !N
My guess is that the responder has no idea what he's talking about. That's sad for a purported conflict resolution, let alone one that has taken a week to arrive.
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RIPE postpones
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Topic: technology | Link here |
It seems that I have had partial success with my application to RIPE NCC. No further questions; they've just transferred it to somebody else, who will look at it next week. Does this mean that there are multiple hurdles to jump?
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Periodontics again
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Off to Ballarat today for a periodontics checkup, for the first time with Peter Apostolopoulos.
He's clearly a very different person from Leela Movva. Things started off the same way, measuring gum depth, where he consistently came up with 1 mm more than Leela. But he found a tiny piece of something—chipped tooth or ceramic filling maybe—just above my top front teeth. He pulled it out, not the most pleasant experience I have had.
And that was all. He's happy with the state of my gums, and he sees no reason for regular appointments. He suggests that I only come if Mario Cordioli, the dentist, recommends it, or if I have some sudden gum issue.
That will certainly save a lot of money, but who's right? Leela or Peter? I don't know, but I'll discuss things with Mario next time I see him.
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More Google Maps fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As a matter of course, used Google Maps to get to the periodontist. It's pretty straightforward. But when I forwarded the route to my mobile phone, I checked the times. Yes, this time it agreed with the web browser version. At least for the means of transport that I had chosen, car. But it also gave me a time for public transport:
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Public transport? There's almost no such thing. What does the web browser say?
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So it really seems as if there are two different teams at Google Maps, one for mobile phones, one for Real Computers™. In passing, what's that mutilated time at the right on the phone? Hitchhiker?
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Ballarat parking meters again
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
One issue with Peter Apostolopoulos is that he doesn't have any free parking, unlike the other dentist practices. So I had to find a parking meter.
OK, time to try out this irritating Cellophane app that I installed a couple of weeks ago. Oh. It looks as if it isn't supported here, only these horrible parking meters with an ABC keyboard and an illegible display. Got as far as entering my registration number, and then something illegible appeared. Get a photo:
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The camera doesn't understand either. Pressed “OK”, and it was back at the start prompt. Did the display say “thank you, parking is free”? Or was it something else? Since there are no instructions, there's no way to know. So I assumed free parking. If the council wants me to pay, it shouldn't put such obstacles in my way.
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Understanding Microsoft, part 4713
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Part of my normal photo processing uses Microsoft-space programs, which I run on a machine called distress.lemis.com. Both Yvonne and I use it via rdesktop, each under our own account.
But it seems that not all accounts are equal. Yvonne frequently has issues starting rdesktop, and sometimes she gets a login screen for “Other User”. Then again sometimes the rdesktop screen pops up for less than a second and then disappears again. And sometimes it gets as far as displaying:
There are no endpoints from endpoint mapper
What is that? It only happens to Yvonne, never to me. And after a few attempts, it always works.
Of course, I should ask Google. The level of helpfulness is wanting. This one tells me to download the latest version of Avast, whatever that is. This one is more drastic, though possibly Google helps: “Delete the Internet”.
| Saturday, 22 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 22 April 2023 |
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More phone scams
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne received a strange call on her phone today, purportedly from ANZ. That's clearly a scam: ANZ doesn't make that kind of call. But by the time she handed the phone to me, the connection had been dropped.
Still, not a problem. I got what was presumably the same thing myself later in the afternoon. It was an automated message, and it knew something like my name. It seems that my credit card with the "end numbers" 4337 was $59 in arrears.
Nonsense! I always pay my credit card balance when it's due. Still, let's see what it wanted. I had various menus to go through, and in my case I was asked if I had paid. Presumably that's a dummy selection; what they really want is for me to transfer money to their account. I can't do that, of course: I don't trust mobile phones with bank details. But I suppose it's an interesting way to collect money. So I said I had paid, went around in circles a couple of times, and that was it. I wonder if there will be a follow-up.
And of course the card number didn't match anything I have. But is that important? I had to go and check myself, and probably most people wouldn't check. But clearly this is the kind of scam that requires a government response. As it is, I still haven't heard anything about the scam that cost Centrelink round $1000 18 months ago, and which they deducted from my account!
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Bruno
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
More photos of Bruno in the evening. I couldn't be bothered to set up flash—there are still issues in the lounge room—so I used a couple of wide aperture lenses. Not the best choice. Here an image taken at f/1.8 with the M.Zuiko Digital ED 75 mm f/1.8:
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People fixated on the 24x36 (“full frame”) format praise the shallow depth of field. Here it was a disaster. The coat is sharp, the eyes are not. And yes, eye detection autofocus was set, but clearly the camera doesn't recognize cat's eyes as eyes.
Time to play round with the flash in the lounge room.
Apart from that, he seems to be making friends with the dogs, particularly Larissa:
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| Sunday, 23 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 23 April 2023 |
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Breakfast chicken wings again
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
I currently have no fewer than three recipes for chicken wings, all prepared in advance. Today was the day to make a batch for nasi lemak.
What do I put in? Do I really need sesame oil? Could I use more dark soya sauce? Here the changes:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 1 kg (about 10) | chicken wings | 1 | ||
| 20 g | garlic | 1 | ||
| 10 g | ginger | 1 | ||
| 15 g | soya sauce | 1 | ||
| dark soya sauce | 1 | |||
| 1 | ||||
I won't know until some time in the future whether it's worth it or not.
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Kicking, Aussie style
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Friday's response to my complaint about the lack of support from Aussie Broadband included the request “If you have notyet kicked your session ..., please do this”.
And now, thanks to Juha Kupiainen, I know what it means: use the Aussie “Service Test” app to, well, “kick connection”. He gave me the URL “Aussie broadband customers can now kick their connection”, explaining
a connection ‘kick’ acts like a remotely-controlled fresh reboot but even more powerful. Rather than just the old switch on, switch off method for your modem when it’s playing up, the ‘kick’ will restart everything all the way through the network.
That's not from Aussie, so I went to their knowledge base, which is really terrible. It tells me
Test: Kick Connection
Description: This will clear the connection you have with us. It will not reset NBN. Generally, you will not need to do this.
Use this if: You want to change your modem/router; kick your current connection, remove the old modem/router, plug the new one in and allow it to pick up a new connection.
Paraphrasing, “use kick connection if you want to kick your connection”. And how? Ah, they're too polite to assume that I don't know. But “app” says everything.
Damn, why an app? This horrible reliance on mobile phones is really irritating. OK, fire it up. Please log in, and I'm too secure to remember your user name and password. OK, find that. Oh. The password is something like “Why are you do1ng this to me?”. That's fine to copy and paste, not too bad to type on a real keyboard, but the pain of typing it into a glass keyboard that immediately obscures what you have typed! Strangely, though, I got it right first time. Later I discovered that the Aussie app had stored my fingerprint, so the whole login procedure was superfluous. But it didn't say that at the beginning.
But where's the test stuff? Fool, says Juha. On a browser.
OK, finally found the tests on this page. Should I do it? Who knows what might happen? Finally, with encouragement from Juha, I did.
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And now? Nothing. Out of the water. Potentially dhclient would have reestablished connection some time in the next 30 minutes, but I didn't want to wait that long. Restarted dhclient, and I was connected again after “only” 2 minutes off the net. And of course the net block was still not advertised.
And framed routes? Juha was helpful there too, with this external link and if i purchase additional ip addresses how will they be configured in Aussie's now-to-be-expected detail:
Additional IP addresses are routed to our clients via a framed route. IP address can be purchased as individual IPs (/32) or as part of a block (/28-/31).
And how to configure them? Presumably the routers that Aussie supplies already handle this situation, though that's not clear. A web search suggests that the concept comes from Cisco, and that maybe RADIUS is related. But there's precious little information to be had. It makes the fun I had with GRE tunnels 18 years ago look easy. But at least in those days I was able to talk to people who understood the issues. Maybe a router would be the best option.
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Bruno settles in
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Bruno and Larissa are gradually spending more time together:
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Yvonne is still concerned that the dogs will do something to him, but I don't know why.
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A use for on-camera flash
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Topic: photography | Link here |
Took the photos of Bruno and Larissa with on-camera flash, something I don't like doing much. But they didn't come out too badly. Put the old Meike MK-300 flash on Yvonne's Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, before it occurred to me that it no longer worked. But it did work on the E-M5, confirming my suspicions that it was mainly a contact issue.
| Monday, 24 April 2023 | Dereel | |
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A route! A route!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
More discussion on IRC about my issues routing my net block. What happens if I change the address of the external interface xl0 to something in my net block, say 192.109.197.77? Just what I had expected: no traffic. Problem proven. So I restarted dhclient to set up the link again.
But then Jamie Fraser came up with something surprising:
jfraser: traceroute to 192.109.197.77 (192.109.197.77), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
jfraser: 1 _gateway (10.8.0.1) 1.324 ms 1.941 ms 2.045 ms
jfraser: 2 loop1591962320.bng.mel.aussiebb.net (159.196.232.1) 28.730 ms 29.955 ms 30.206 ms
jfraser: 3 192.109.197.77 (192.109.197.77) 47.981 ms 48.060 ms 48.224 ms
Huh? How did he do that? Part of the story was that dhclient didn't remove the address, it just added its own:
xl0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
inet 192.109.197.77 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.109.197.255
inet 121.200.11.253 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 121.200.11.255
But Jamie still needed a route, and that means that he had one! So they have done something. Still, he's with Aussie Broadband as well. Is the route globally visible? Tried it from lax.lemis.com (a Vultr in the USA). Yes! Others with Vultr also confirmed that they could reach me, and in each case I confirmed with tcpdump that the data was really coming here. They could even connect to addresses behind NAT, like my phone. Jamie established 13 devices, including the sprinkler controller, inverter and 3 mobile phones, but not the TV, which was turned off.
Firewall? Not a problem. It's already in place, and has been for decades, as another nmap invocation proved. A stranger thing was that only some systems could access it. lax could, but another Vultr, ffm, couldn't. Neither could freefall.freebsd.org.
How long does it take to propagate a route? Until it's universally visible, I can't change the NAT configuration. And I still need to hear from RIPE NCC to confirm that things are OK their end.
But once again, what appalling lack of documentation on the part of Aussie Broadband! No information about how I should set things up. My complaint is now 10 days old, and I have heard nothing from them. The good news is that the route is almost completely transparent, something that I hadn't expected. I still need to find out how to connect eureka.lemis.com to the net: since it's the machine running the external interface, connections established from there use the Aussie interface address. Once again I wonder how to tell the system which address to use when setting up a connection.
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Preparing for colonoscopy
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
On Wednesday I'm booked in for a colonoscopy at the Ballarat Base Hospital. By far the worst part of that is the preparation: laxatives, no food for 24 hours, greatly limited choice of food for 24 hours before that. So today it was eggs Benedict for breakfast and fish, crackers and cheese in the evening. Tomorrow's going to be the painful one, as I noted 7 years ago.
The promised call from Minnie of the Base Hospital came today: “see you tomorrow”. What? It's supposed to be Wednesday. Sorry, we don't work tomorrow, so I called you today. Yes, Wednesday. She went over all the details that were in my documentation and forgot the most important part: what time? I had been warned that the time (8:30) might change, but no, it hadn't.
I'm still not looking forward to this.
| Tuesday, 25 April 2023 | Dereel | |
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Colonoscopy: postponed
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Topic: health | Link here |
Today was the worst day of the colonoscopy: laxatives instead of food. But in late morning, before I had started, I received an anonymous phone call from somebody claiming to be Doctor Daniel. The surgeon for tomorrow's procedure had called in sick, and so the procedure needed to be postponed.
A good thing that he called before I started the laxatives. Just a reset. It wasn't until later that it occurred to me that it could have been a fake call. But then, yesterday's call also obscured the details of the caller.
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More network routing thoughts
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So how does network routing work? In principle I know the details, but what I saw yesterday was that some systems could see my 192.109.197.0/24 block and others couldn't. And that didn't change today.
But what's the point of the second IP address (192.109.197.77) on the external interface? Nothing outside my network knows it. Remove it (leaving the DHCP-assigned address). Things still worked.
And the other thing: how do I get eureka (the one connected directly to the WAN link) to send packets with eureka's source address (192.109.197.137)? The network stack automatically chooses the external address (currently 121.200.11.253). I really need to read up on this. It seems that the stack makes a default choice when setting up connections. Can that be changed?
And of course my tcpdump activity unearthed a lot of traffic that shouldn't be there:
11:36:27.950763 IP sh-chi-us-gp6-wk102d.internet-census.org.19891 > 192.109.197.5.8081: Flags [S], seq 3590374426, win 1024, length 0
11:36:29.601752 IP 112.173.125.118.14775 > 192.109.197.89.ssh: Flags [S], seq 3228419417, win 58790, length 0
11:36:29.665791 IP 180.214.238.21.48094 > 192.109.197.86.3358: Flags [S], seq 3002991558, win 1024, length 0
11:36:30.140758 IP static.vnpt.vn.19800 > 192.109.197.32.telnet: Flags [S], seq 3228419360, win 25973, length 0
11:36:31.991755 IP 59.4.205.203.32262 > 192.109.197.58.telnet: Flags [S], seq 3228419386, win 16702, length 0
Clearly that wasn't there before, because the route didn't exist, but does this low-life do this all the time, or is it from somebody reading this diary? At any rate it helps confirm that the firewall is doing its job.
| Wednesday, 26 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 26 April 2023 |
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Open letter to Aussie Broadband
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
My issues with Aussie Broadband support are still not over. My route is visible in some places, but not in others. That could be beyond Aussie's control, of course, but the fact that I can't contact anybody in support who even understands the concepts is not.
TL;DR: I summarize the pain I've been through in the last couple of weeks. Further down I have suggestions on how to improve service.
Today I got an email from them:
We’re glad to see that the recent fault on your service has been closed!
Fault Reference:
OK, what fault? I didn't report a fault, and they don't seem to know either. I asked for a route to be put in place, and I complained about the process. One way or another, things aren't resolved. Is it the routing request? It's partially in place, but after several days only some systems can see it. And I can't contact the people who did it, which was the reason for the complaint that wasn't even acted on until a week after I had raised it, and it was from somebody who appeared not to understand the concepts. I asked him to clarify things and got no reply. So that's not resolved either.
OK, let's see what they want.
We want to hear about your experience 👂
If you’ve got some feedback for us, whether it’s suggestions about how we can do better, or just to tell us the features you like the best, then we’d love to hear it.
Take just 3 minutes out of your day to share your feedback with us by clicking the link below.
OK, I can do that. How happy am I with the resolution? Not at all, of course. The problem hasn't been resolved. OK, then enter your name, email address, street address and phone number. They have all of that on record! Start typing in my comments. Only 256 characters allowed! That's not enough for the URLs! OK, this diary has it all, and I can put one URL in the response.
So, Aussie, my experience. Not good. Let's take a look:
On 11 April 2023 I called Aussie Support to ask them to route a network block. Both the consultant with whom I spoke and his supervisor didn't understand what I was talking about, and they weren't able to connect me to somebody who did. Finally they raised a ticket.
As a result I got an application form which didn't apply to my (admittedly unusual) situation. A quick talk with the people doing the work would probably have resolved that, but I wasn't allowed to contact them. My requests by email went unanswered.
On 14 April I got a response to my email from what is presumably “Level 2” support. But it didn't address my issues, and I got the feeling that the consultant hadn't read (or understood?) the issues. I responded and got another response that also did not address my issues. I asked how to complain, and the only response was to raise a formal complaint on my behalf. There was no information on how I could access it, nor what the content was.
I put in a post on Whirlpool and got a response from an Aussie representative within half an hour, but it pointed back to the unresponsive address.
On 21 April I received a response to my complaint. It has been resolved! I still don't know what the content of the complaint was. But allegedly it included my network routing, which was still not in place, and asked me to perform actions that I didn't understand. I asked for details, both of the complaint and how to configure the net block, and received none.
On 24 April some friends discovered that they could access the net block, and yes, it was mine. But it was only accessible from some systems, and it stayed that way.
Today I received an email asking about my satisfaction, as described above.
As if to confirm this situation, while trying to enter feedback, I received another message:
Subject: Re: [Ticket#2023042610016732] Website - Customer Fee [...]
Thanks for raising a query with Aussie Broadband.
If the query is urgent, we suggest giving our friendly Australian team a call on 1300 880 905 (8am to midnight Australian Eastern Time).
What's that? I didn't raise a ticket. And of course there's nothing in the message to indicate what it's about, nor how it occurred. About the best part of it is that the subject was truncated, and there seem to be no fees involved.
What does their help system (or “Knowledge base”) say? I have yet to find any useful answer there. It doesn't know “complaints”, nor anything else I looked for. And there's no way to access open tickets; they don't show on my personal pages. I still don't know the content.
What's wrong with this picture? Almost complete lack of communication and documentation. That's very different from the customer-facing support interface, where they almost insist on phone contact. And there seem to be no clear escalation procedures. It's forgivable that the first-line support doesn't know details of IP routing, but they should be able to contact people who do, and customers should also be able to contact them where necessary.
The big issue here is really communication. Here some suggestions based on my own experience as support manager at Tandem Computers:
Implement usable escalation procedures. If first-level support can't handle a request, they should know whom to contact.
Allow customer phone access to higher-level technicians, whether support or otherwise. This should be filtered to ensure that customers who don't know what they're talking about shouldn't annoy them
On the other hand, allow email requests as a fully fledged replacement for phone calls.
Set response time limits. A reasonable limit might be 1 day for initial acknowledgement, 3 days for normal resolutions.
Give customers access to their tickets, including create, view and update access.
Overhaul the help system so that it can really help.
This might make Aussie look particularly bad, but that's not the case. The service is normally excellent. The real issues are limited to what I describe above, and they're fixable.
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Horse tranquilizer?
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Topic: animals, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne came home today with this bag:
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Tranquilizer? No, just a somewhat inappropriate name for normal grain supplements.
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The power of a viewfinder
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
The photo of Yvonne's horse tranquilizer was pretty normal, and I grabbed the Olympus E-PM2 to take the photo. Not a good idea:
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Why the terrible framing? I had to hold the camera above my head, pointing downward, and I could only guess at what the viewfinder was showing. With the swiveling display on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III there was no problem:
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Quora strangenesses
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Over 5 years ago I answered a question on quora.com: “What is the need of swapping of processes from end to memory?”. Not a very clear question, and not a very good answer. I didn't even try to reinterpret it. And then I forgot it.
And now, for unknown reasons, I've had a flood of upvotes, 92 in a single day. There are 2 or 3 other answers (Quora can't make up its mind), and they have had none. Why is this happening now?
| Thursday, 27 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 27 April 2023 |
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RIPE response
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Today's response from RIPE NCC was short, but double. They need more time for both tickets. On the other hand, I had a response from Mark Price of Tranquil Hosting; maybe he can finally convince RIPE that I'm the legitimate “successor” to LEMIS.
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Aussie insights
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I still don't have complete routing for my network block. But while writing my open letter to Aussie Broadband, re-read this message from John Alexander:
What you do need to be able to do though is edit your apnic record to add in a route object for AS4764. Without that, our upstreams (NTT, HE.net) and peering (Equinix, soon to be Google plus more) will reject the routes from us. We need you to be able to do this otherwise the only path in will be via Telstra transit, so will have to think twice before advertising it for you.
So that's almost certainly the reason. Nothing to do with propagation. And arguably outside Aussie's control. But why do I have to read this on Whirlpool? This is part of the same pattern that I have been complaining about all the time.
In my case, of course, it's RIPE, not APNIC, and that's another building site.
And when I finally replied to the satisfaction questionnaire, I received two replies, each with a ticket number and otherwise content-free. So the one I received yesterday was probably because I pressed the wrong button (but not “Submit”) while trying to enter a useful text.
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Bruno
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Topic: animals | Link here |
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Next AAMI response
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Response from AAMI to the message I sent them 10 days ago:
I tried calling to your number 03 53461370. However, it is not available.
Could you please provide us the number that we can contact you or could you please contact us on 1300 041 691?
Did my message not get through? No, it was attached, and contained:
The number is connected. Did you maybe misdial? And why did you call
this number? I gave you a different number to call (see the headers).
Based on the timeliness and the accuracy of your response, though, I
would suggest that it would be better to continue this discussion via
email.
So: did this person read it? It seems hard to believe. But it's a good indication of why I should conduct any further investigation by email.
Only later did I discover a PDF attachment to the message I received. It had a slightly different content:
We have attempted to contact you recently and unfortunately you were not available. Could you please contact us via telephone 13 22 44 at your earliest convenience so that we are able to discuss the above claim.
Why is it so difficult to communicate with people nowadays?
| Friday, 28 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 28 April 2023 |
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Bruno: Catastrophe!
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Part of breakfast every day for me are the pills I have to take. Yvonne nicely puts the dose in a Chinese saucer:
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But today she came back a little later and found that one pill was missing and another had been chewed on. Bruno! The missing pill was a 1000 IU capsule of Vitamin D (the transparent one in the photo above).
We've seen this before. Vitamin D can be toxic. How much would be toxic for Bruno? Called up Pene Kirk, conveniently in Queensland, but she didn't have the details in the top of her head. Call a vet.
Called the Bannockburn Veterinary Clinic on (03) 5281 1221, and they told us to make an appointment. Emergency! Oh, wait please. So we waited while the line seemed dead. Nothing for it, try another vet, the Ballarat Veterinary Clinic on (03) 5331 1533. Again put on hold, and it seems it blocked the entire line; after a brief question “what kind of Vitamin D?” (proved to be D3), the line reverted to the recorded advice messages, and when it came again, it was somebody completely unrelated, who, however, called a second vet. Does this stuff require a prescription? Well, no, but what difference does that make?
In the end they came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn't do any harm, but told us what to do if there were an emergency. Off to look in the web, where I found a surprising amount of information: JustAnswer had a number of threads on exactly this problem. Several answers from different vets, apparently all in the USA. They almost all agreed that things start to get dangerous when they swallow 4000 IU per kg body weight (one said 4000 IU per 2 lbs, but then, they're US vets). And I confirmed that on another site:
Most supplements list the amount of each vitamin using international units (IU). One IU of vitamin D3 is the equivalent of 0.025 mcg or 0.000025 mg of Vitamin D3. At doses as low as 0.1 mg/kg, we can start to see signs of vitamin D poisoning. (Rather than stress out over the math, call a professional for assistance! When in doubt, contact your veterinarian or ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) for advice on what to do. They can help calculate whether or not a toxic amount of vitamin D was ingested.)
Rather than call a professional, let's “stress out over the math”: 1000 IU is 25 mg, so 0.1 mg is 4000 IU. Exactly what the others said. So there appears to be general agreement.
But how much does Bruno weigh? I was guessing round 500 g, but we managed to weigh him by putting him in the cat basket and weighing on the kitchen scales. 1.7 kg. No problem at all.
While searching JustAnswer, I got a popup: can I help? OK, why not?
Pearl Wilson, Veterinarian's Assistant Welcome! What's going on with your cat?Me: Burmese kitten, 4 months, 1.7 kg. Swallowed 1000 IU Vitamin D3.Pearl Wilson, Veterinarian's Assistant I'll do all I can to help. How much does the kitten weigh?Me: As I said, 1.7 kg.Pearl Wilson, Veterinarian's Assistant Has the kitten thrown up since eating the Vitamin D3?Me: No. It happened about an hour ago.Pearl Wilson, Veterinarian's Assistant Pearl Wilson, Veterinarian's AssistantAnd what's the kitten's name and age?Me: Age 4 months, as I said. His name is Bruno. http://www.lemis.com/grog/Albums/Animals/Bruno.phpPearl Wilson, Veterinarian's Assistant AssistantIs there anything else the Vet should know before I connect you? Rest assured that they'll be able to help you.Me: Not really.Pearl Wilson, Veterinarian's Assistant OK. Got it. I'm sending you to a secure page to join JustAnswer for only AU$2 (fully-refundable). While you're filling out that form, I'll tell the Veterinarian about your situation and then connect you two. Continue >>
I suppose that's fair enough. $2 is so little that it could relate to time spent on the phone, and it's much less than the petrol needed to drive to Ballarat or Bannockburn. But of course I had my answer already, so there was no point in going any further. It's just interesting to note how little it's worth to try to give clear descriptions: people don't read them. The only one I didn't provide at the start was the name of the cat.
So: looking back to Di Saunders' problem 15 years ago. On that occasion the dog had eaten a whole jar of the capsules, and I recall that they were particularly strong ones. Not a direct comparison. And Sarah at Ballarat Veterinary Clinic confirmed my fears: you can make a dog vomit by giving him lots of salt, but that doesn't work for a cat. They need special emetics.
And Bruno displayed no problems (though they can apparently occur up to 36 hours later). But it's good to know.
And of course there's another thing to do:
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Depth of field pain
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Topic: photography, animals, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's photos of Bruno were better than the ones I had taken with available light last week:
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But somehow they're still not sharp enough. Yes, the nose and hairs around it are OK. Here a 1:1 view:
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But the eyes are still out of focus:
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And here are people claiming that the Micro Four Thirds system has too much depth of field! This image was taken at f/5.6; all I can do is to crank up the sensitivity and use a much smaller aperture.
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Still more miscommunication: Vonex
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
VoIP seems to be on its way out. In fact, telephony seems to be on its way out, probably because modern phones have made it so difficult. Instead people “text”, painfully typing into tiny, non-responsive “keyboards”. That says something about the pain that making phone calls is.
From our point of view, still with something resembling the old-fashioned telephone, things haven't changed much. But the world outside has made a change: Since people don't use phones as much, we don't make as many calls as we used to. And the ones made to mobile phones aren't free: in fact, they're more expensive with VoIP than with a mobile phone, so we don't use VoIP to call mobile phones.
When I signed up with MyNetFone over 15 years ago, it seemed a good tradeoff to pay $99 a year for free fixed line phone phone calls. But now we only make about 10 to 15 such calls calls a month, so at 20¢ it's cheaper to have a service like Aussie Broadband offers, without a fixed charge (“line rental”?). And the second call-in number (”DID”) costs another $30 per year; with Aussie that would be free (I think). In addition, since MyNetFone because Vonex, it has become much more difficult to deal with them.
So: time to close down the service. Log in to my account.
File not found.
Huh? In fact, I've had this for a few days now. Time to call Vonex and ask what's going in:
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Huh? Apart from these stupid letters instead of numbers, the number doesn't match the standards. There should be 6 digits after the 13. Tried it anyway—from a Vonex number—and of course I got a “not in service” tone.
OK, try to find a login page. Yes! This page seems to be what I want. Account number, password. I have all that.
Oh. The account number should have a maximum of 11 digits. Mine has 13. And of course I was unable to log in. And further investigation showed that the page is from a completely unrelated domain.
More searching, and finally found a number (611300733995), hidden in an image about MyNetFone moving, and I actually got an answer from somebody who, on the third attempt, managed to tell me that her name was Leeann or similar. She explained the problem: the “portal” had been decommissioned on 20 April. I could call 1800 828668 if I liked, but I chose to continue, possibly out of masochism. For further help I first needed to authenticate myself. Not with account number, but with name, address and date of birth. After giving that all with a clear indication of my irritation, she continued: “How are you today? How can I help?”.
I told her that I wanted access to my account details. Sorry, the portal has been decommissioned. Can I help?
Finally got connected to Chris Panapan, her supervisor, who wasn't so focused on a scriptbook. Yes, they have decommissioned their portal because they're creating another, which should be in place by the end of May. He, too, couldn't explain the sequence, nor why I hadn't been informed. But yes, he would get somebody to close my account for me, and also send me daily updates on my calls.
And that he did. Got an email from Joey Melendez, who told me that there was a 30 day delay and that the account would be closed on 28 May. I explained that I had paid in advance, and that I wanted the account to close when my payment expired, but she seemed to have difficulty with that concept. Off to check: I paid my last yearly sum on 16 August 2022, but I don't know for what period. Sent her email to that effect, but that seems to have been enough for today.
Somehow this month has been full of poor communication. Is that brain rot initiated by “smart” phones?
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Roast stuffed chicken
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Found a stuffed chicken piece in the deep freeze. We must have bought it November last year and eaten one of them, but I didn't make any note. Just the label said “chicken and feta”.
OK, how should I cook it? Decided that it was a case for the “hair dryer” “air fryer”. And how long? 200° seemed right,and round 20 to 30 minutes to reach 77°. The meat thermometer wanted 80°, but that seemed too much.
My timing guess was right. After 25 minutes I had:
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But it was overcooked! Next time 75°, maybe even less.
| Saturday, 29 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 29 April 2023 |
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More photo pain
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Topic: photography, animals, opinion | Link here |
Seen in Yvonne's office:
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What's wrong with these photos? The face isn't exposed enough. And clearly the first is badly framed. Why?
These were spur-of-the-moment photos taken with Yvonne's Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III and its toy flash unit, FL-LM3. The original was lit by direct sunlight from behind. And though the fill-in function worked as intended (helped by setting shutter priority), it wasn't enough. Once again an issue with on-camera flash. I don't even know how to improve it. Set flash to +2 EV maybe?
But that doesn't explain the bad framing of the first image. I used the monitor viewfinder
rather than the traditional optical look-into-the-camera viewfinder, and not for
the first time I've had bad framing as a result. I wish I understood why, but I've seen
other people do so too.
| Sunday, 30 April 2023 | Dereel | Images for 30 April 2023 |
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Singapore Hokkien Mee?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've been working on KL Hokkien Mee for nearly 2 years now, but it's not the only game in town. Well, maybe, but there are other towns than KL, notably Singapore, and they have their own version of Hokkien Mee. For years now I've been intending to prepare this paste:
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But the instructions were so confusing that I kept postponing. Spare ribs?
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Still, high time to do something with it. A bit of research shows that most recipes use pork belly (maybe that's what the recipe meant by “spare ribs”), and rather than frying the ingredients, they're mainly boiled—and there's no soya sauce at all.
Found a number of recipes: the one in Wendy Hutton's “Singapore Food” and three others on the web. This one is from SBS and has correspondingly vague quantities: 8-12 prawns (how big? They're too polite to say) and one squid tube (ditto). This one, from Rasa Malaysia, has clear quantities. They're mind-boggling: per person 200 g prawns, 175 g squid and 100 g pork! A total of 475 g, where I typically would use 150 g total. It does, however, have an interesting comment:
The Singapore Fried Hokkien Mee featured here, is a variant of the Penang Prawn Noodles.
So maybe this is just Hokkien Mee, not Singapore Hokkien Mee. It would also explain why the paste comes from Penang.
Then there's this one, which may be the best, though it mentions shrimp, which I can't find here. It also belies an apparent US American origin by wanting sugar in the broth.
These recipes have a number of things in common: the main ingredients (squid, prawn and pork) are the same as in KL Hokkien Mee, but you boil the ingredients and make a broth (that's my sachet of spice mix). In principle that makes things easier to control. But with the exception of Wendy Hutton, all want a mixture of Hokkien noodles and thick bihun (rice noodles). I only had a full portion of Hokkien noodles, so I didn't use any bihun.
So: how do I adapt it? The paste sachet wanted 2 l of water, and to boil 650 g pork in that. That sounds like 10 portions, so I cut the pork into 10 pieces and cooked as requested for half an hour. Here's the complete recipe as I intend to make it next time:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 65 g | boiled pork | 1 | ||
| 220 g | broth | 2 | ||
| 50 g | prawns | 2 | ||
| 50 g | squid rings | 2 | ||
| 50 g? | kangkong | 3 | ||
| 8 g | lard | 4 | ||
| 10 g | garlic | 4 | ||
| 2 g | chili, sliced | 4 | ||
| 1 | egg | 4 | ||
| 5 g | lard | 5 | ||
| 100 g | Hokkien mee, cooked | 5 | ||
| 50 g | Thick bihun, cooked | 5 | ||
| 10 g | garlic chives, chopped finely | 6 | ||
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And it didn't taste bad. Maybe a little salt needed? But this paste could also be a good substitute for the overly pedas Tean's mi udang paste. It's also interesting because I've found very few useful pastes from Richmond.
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Blood from stone?
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
One of the things that I needed for the Hokkien Mee was a lime to squeeze over the noodles. None in the fridge. Never mind, that's what our lime tree is for. Found few likely candidates:
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Limes have thin skins. This sight wasn't encouraging:
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And sure enough, I couldn't get any juice out of them. Yvonne had a go with a juicer and got some, very little:
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A good thing that we have a bottle of lemon juice on hand.
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Dinner recipes?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I had planned to try a(nother) new recipe for dinner tonight: orange chicken, which looked somewhat like the beef with broccoli and orange that I made last year. We still have dried orange peel left over, so it sounded like a good idea.
But closer examination showed that it was somewhat boring, and I had done enough cooking already today. So I gave in to Yvonne's suggestion to try another of the pies that she had bought from ALDI.
How long to cook? We've been there before, so I was quite happy with 25 to 30 minutes. And sure enough, after 26 minutes in the “hair dryer” “air fryer” at 200° one of them was nice and brown:
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Why such a difference? No idea. But the pastry was really hard. Was that because of the cooking temperature (they had recommended 180° for a “convection oven”)? It doesn't seem so. The pies we had last week must have been an exception.
In passing, it's worth noting another disadvantage of air fryers that has been growing on me: they're difficult to clean. I can put most things in the dish washer, but the air fryer components barely fit. And they need cleaning almost every time, unlike a deep fryer. They're still easier to clean than an oven, but they're still a pain.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
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