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| Greg's diary |
| April 2024 |
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| Monday, 1 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 1 April 2024 |
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distress: disaster?
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Into the office first thing this morning and wanted to continue with yesterday's photo processing. That involves waking distress.lemis.com, the ThinkCentre running Microsoft, which is usually hibernated. That goes via rdesktop, so I first hear the sound of the DVD drive seeking.
But then nothing. More problems with this bloody Microsoft? No, the machine wasn't running at all. Even the power light was off.
More searching, and ultimately came to the conclusion that the box had some hardware failure. Not to worry, I have a number of these boxen. Took out the disk and put it in another one, same model. And it came up happily with no repairs needed: after all, it had been hibernated. Success!
Well, not so fast. When I started up DxO PhotoLab, it wanted me to enter the license key. Why? It's identically the same system that I have been using all along:
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Huh? I have licensed the thing already. OK, dig out the license key and painstakingly type it in, something that I have hated for decades. And it worked, so clearly I didn't mistype.
But things still weren't right. My first task was to straighten this image:
Yes, it's on its side, but it takes a single keystroke (c-l) to fix that. The real issue, a little slower, is to get it exactly rectangular. That's straightforward. Select one of the almost descriptive symbols at the top of the window. But they were gone!
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They should look like this:
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Why? Something in the back of my head said “ViewPoint”. Right, that could be it. Back to my list of keys, searched the DxO menus, and luckily found a Help item “DxO ViewPoint → Activate DxO ViewPoint”. And yes, that did it. But what a pain!
Still, “Perfectly Clear“ didn't want to be outdone. It, too, decided that I wasn't registered.
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But unlike DxO, it didn't give me the option to register! How do I register? It didn't offer the possibility. After some searching on the web, found a way: select the barely visible “About” towards the right at the bottom of the main window, which brings up this window:
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OK, click on Activate. Yes, it comes up with another window that already knows the license key and email address:
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But the “ACTIVATE” button was greyed out, and nothing that I could do persuaded it to let me submit the data! Off searching for answers, and finally found a way to send a message to their sales team (support has ended). “Please prove that you are human and fill out this CAPTCHA”! And yes, EyeQ, that's the correct information. See if I care. Clearly nobody can steal it.
Damn you, EyeQ, and all those who insult people like that. I won't fill out a CAPTCHA, ever again. Sent off a rather stiff email to support@eyeq.photos and sales@eyeq.photos, asking what to do and telling them what I thought of their attempts to insult their customers. And support@eyeq.photos bounced. Yes, my product has reached end of life (but should work for ever), but surely they have other customers.
And that was only half of the pain. What about Yvonne? She has always had issues; clearly Microsoft likes her no more than she likes Microsoft. But in fact things went relatively smoothly, once we persuaded the bloody thing to react at all. Trying from my system and a shell, I got
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/26) ~/Mail 79 -> rdesktop -u yvonne distress
ATTENTION! Found a certificate stored for host 'distress', but it does not match the certificate
received from server.
Review the following certificate info before you trust it to be added as an exception.
If you do not trust the certificate the connection atempt will be aborted:
Subject: CN=distress
Issuer: CN=distress
Valid From: Sat Mar 30 13:06:41 2024
To: Sun Sep 29 12:06:41 2024
Certificate fingerprints:
sha1: e5821dd31e6a4e640b95ee93a1ec815430fa7304
sha256: edb83be75b8c33cb86e31fe2d40b1ce8fa95842e1f0e90216b024f5073407ebc
Do you trust this certificate (yes/no)? yes
Connection established using SSL.
disconnect: Logout initiated by user.=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/26) ~/Mail 80 -> rdesktop -u yvonne distress
Core(warning): Certificate received from server is NOT trusted by this system, an exception has been added by the user to trust this specific certificate.
Connection established using SSL.
Clipboard(error): xclip_handle_SelectionNotify(), unable to find a textual target to satisfy RDP clipboard text request
Protocol(warning): process_pdu_logon(), Unhandled login infotype 1
That must have something to do with the change in something, and by comparison it's acceptable. After a bit of playing around, things worked, but only when I wasn't already logged in. Previously it would produce a popup asking “shall I disconnect grog?”, but now it just silently fails. And it seems that it no longer goes to sleep, so I have to explicitly put it to sleep (which, I discover, works with just a handful of mouse gestures).
So: things are almost working again, when there should have been no problems whatsoever. But this is Microsoft. And why did the programs want revalidation now? It wasn't the disk; it came up out of hibernation as if nothing had happened. And it's barely the hardware. The new machine has a PCI graphics card in addition to the on-board graphics (it was once teevee.lemis.com), and it has only 16 GB of memory, and of course the Ethernet interface has a different MAC address, requiring updates to /etc/ethers:
--- ethers 2023/02/18 00:33:55 1.10
+++ ethers 2024/04/02 01:36:41
@@ -5,4 +5,4 @@
6c:f0:49:09:7a:4d teevee
00:21:86:21:ab:7e despair
00:21:cc:d0:9e:0e euroa
-44:39:c4:90:52:20 distress
+6c:0b:84:04:0a:5c distress
But clearly there's something about the hardware environment that triggers the license check. What is it? And why? It would make more sense to store the activation information on the disk. As it is, there's clearly a loophole: change the hardware once a month and you can use DxO for free.
One thing's clear: I really need to migrate distress to a virtual machine, as I had planned when I built hydra. That way I'd save power, probably have more processing power, and I could work around this kind of pain.
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Bibi castrated!
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Topic: politics, general, fiction | Link here |
The news of the day: Bibi has been castrated! It seems that it was just completing the job started 11 years ago. As the punchline of an unrelated joke goes, would you eat that pig all at once?
Oh, and admire the delicacy of the reports. They've changed “castration” to “hernia operation”.
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Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
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Topic: general, history, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Sixty years ago I was preparing for the GCE 'O' Level exams. One of the set works for English Literature was the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, and in a fit of misunderstanding I thought I could pass the exam by memorizing the entire prologue (I failed).
But the weather today reminded me of the first two lines:
Whan that Aprille with his shoures soteThe droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote,
In modern English: when April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root.
And somehow that seemed to fit. Here a photo taken this morning:
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According to the Bureau of Meteorology, 0.8 mm of rain over the whole month at Ballarat Aerodrome, the closest measuring station to us. By contrast, the average rainfall in March is 42 mm, and in April 51.2 mm.
But now it's April, and as if to honour Geoffrey Chaucer, it rained heavily. The Bureau measured 46.8 mm, 58 times as much in the whole of March, or 1,755 times the March daily average.
That's their view, of course, and they told me so:
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But despite their claims, that's the rainfall for Ballarat, not Dereel. We measured only 28 mm, still a welcome change and a refill for our water tanks. On the other hand, I measured 5 mm of rain last month.
| Tuesday, 2 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 2 April 2024 |
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Another disaster
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Response from not one, but two people at EyeQ today, saying that the license details were correct, but because the product is no longer supported, they can't do anything about it. They did offer me a discounted upgrade to Radiant, the new replacement, but that would still cost money.
OK, one thing's for sure: changing hardware messes up licenses. So let's do what I had been planning all along and set up a virtual machine on hydra. What shall I call it? Yvonne was for discard or dismiss. She would have liked disgust too, but we've already had that one. But by the time I asked her, I had already started with the name disaster.lemis.com, so one of the next ones will be Yvonne's choice.
First step, of course: make a copy of distress' disk. Put it in dereel, which I haven't used for months, and do a dd, which went at the reassuring speed of about 103 MB/s, effectively wire speed.
Then create a new VirtualBox VM. Last time I tried this, I ran into confusion between hydra and eureka. But once I started the right version of VirtualBox (on hydra), and also discovered how to include a native disk image (it must have a name ending in .hdd), things went relatively smoothly, and soon I had it up and running. Microsoft didn't like the change of IP address, but it didn't know why, just “Windows can't find the problem”. People, “Windows” is the problem. And everything I tried Just Worked—quite a success story. Doubtless the devil is in the detail, and I'll find other issues.
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50 years of microprocessors
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Topic: history, technology, opinion | Link here |
It has been well over 50 years since Intel introduced its first microprocessor, but for me the first one was the 8008. Spent a while comparing it with my most recent processor:
| Feature | I8008 | Ryzen 7950X | factor | |||
| Introduction | April 1982 | September 2022 | ||||
| Transistors | 3,500 | 13,140,000 | 3750 | |||
| CPUs | 1 | 32 | 32 | |||
| Clock speed | 0.0005 GHz | 4.5 GHz | 9000 | |||
| MIPS | 0.03 | 220,000 | 7333333 | |||
| Process size | 10 μm | 5 nm | 2000 | |||
| Die size | 16 mm² | 264 mm² | 16.5 |
At first I was confused by the process size. 10 and 5? Oh, different units. The entire I8008 processor could be
And in the course of my investigations, came across this detailed description of the chip layout, which looks very interesting. I should read it some time.
| Wednesday, 3 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 3 April 2024 |
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Where's my New York Times?
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
No surprisingly, I got no response to my open letter to the New York Times. During the week they relent and keep their 1-800 phone number manned beyond dawn until 10:00 (in the morning), so called up there, where a grating artificial voice asked me for the 10 digit code. Huh? What's that?
Somehow worked past that and was connected to Robert, who told me that all was OK with my subscription. I explained (hopefully to his comprehension) that I wasn't getting any email. He said that he would contact technical support (medium wait), after which he said that I should now be receiving email. Despite my requests, he didn't say whether they had found any issue. So now I just need to wait
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Netanyahu: Sorry, killed wrong aid workers
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
The world (or a any rate, USA, Canada, UK, Poland and Australia) are up in arms (no, that's an inappropriate metaphor) about the killing of 6 aid workers. Even Anthony Albanese got up on his hind legs and condemned the killing of Lalzawmi "Zomi" Frankcom. The Poles lamented the death of Damian_Sobol. The USA and Canada mournedJacob Flickinger. Nobody mentioned Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha.
And for the first time ever, Bibi admitted a mistake. They had killed non-Palestinian aid workers! That can happen in war, especially if three separate cars in a convoy at some distance from another are targeted by precision missiles, but it should only happen to the Palestinians.
Bibi, does anybody outside Israel believe your drivel? You're actively engaging in genocide. This strike succeeded in removing 200 tons of greatly needed food from Gaza. To quote from this article
“This is not an isolated incident,” said U.N. humanitarian coordinator James McGoldrick, citing the killing of at least 196 humanitarian workers in the occupied West Bank and Gaza since October. “This is nearly three times the death toll recorded in any single conflict in a year.” The 196 includes more than 175 U.N. staffers, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres said Tuesday.
When will people come to the recognition that Israel's barbarism is unacceptable and not even useful to them. No wonder Hamas attacked them. Not a justification, of course, but you can't make people like you by destroying them.
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CJ off the air
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Mail from CJ Ellis today:
Hi Greg It seems that I have had no phone signals since we last spoke & you
had been in touch with Broadband for me to be able to have message bank ..
I thought it might have been the storm that has stop my phone , from having
signals , but to even now there is nothing there .. Sorry to trouble you
,but it has been a saga with broadband since we have changed to them with
the phone service ..
What's wrong now? Clearly the loss of VoIP has nothing to do with the bad weather. Checked the status: both lines registered. Tried to call him. Nothing. After 2 minutes, the attempt timed out, but it should have given some other indication before that.
Dammit, call Aussie Broadband support again, and was connected to somebody who on asking admitted to the name Semanjit Kaur. Once again this incredible difficulty that all support personnel seem to have with handling calls on behalf of another customer. At least this time I'm on their list as an approved contact, but she had trouble with the phone number. I had a number ending in 3, from their web site and also my own records. She found the same number with a 2 in the last position.
More puzzling, then she decided that she had been looking in the wrong place and that the number I had was correct. For some reason she didn't try to call it. Instead she wanted to check the router configuration. Can't access it. Oh yes, I can. I'll update the dial plan.
I explained to her that the dial plan had nothing to do with incoming calls, but she thought it would help anyway. OK, but it meant getting CJ to power cycle the router, so that was all we could do. I sent a mail message to CJ explaining how to power cycle it, and that was all that we could do for today.
Does this really have to be this difficult?
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Bigger disaster
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Carried on playing around with disaster.lemis.com today. It was my intention to use it seriously, and 1 CPU wouldn't cut it. But hydra has 32 logical CPUs, so we could easily allocate 8 to disaster. Did that, and fired up DxO PhotoLab. Please activate. OK, we're getting used to that. But when I tried to activate “ViewPoint”, it told me “too many activations”! Three activations on the same disk! Another support request, and all I could do for today.
But I did try processing Saturday's photos. 140 images processed in 5 minutes! 28 images per minute, where I previously only had about 5. That's really worthwhile. Only: for reasons I haven't understood, it uses stupid amounts of CPU time when idle. Here disaster and eureso (FreeBSD, reinstated to see if I could get it to work):
PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
37150 grog 37 20 0 17G 17G select 28 493:14 241.39% VirtualBoxVM
37024 grog 32 20 0 2501M 2244M select 8 2:53 0.87% VirtualBoxVM
It wasn't like that all the time; it fluctuated wildly and dropped as low as 20%, still unreasonably high. But that's not that important: I can put it to sleep most of the time. Could it be something to do with GPU emulation?
During this time, the task manager showed something interesting:
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The top output coincided with the 0% usage, but for non-obvious reasons it was using up to 25% CPU, corresponding to 2 full CPUs. Why? Somehow this must have something to do with virtual machines.
| Thursday, 4 April 2024 | Dereel → Geelong → Dereel | |
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More Aussie VoIP pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So why didn't CJ Ellis contact me about the success of power cycling his modem? Checked the status page. Both phones not registered. Did something go wrong with the router? Is he maybe completely off the net?
What a time! I was in a hurry because of an appointment in Geelong, but called up Aussie support and was told that there was a two minute wait—every two minutes for 8 minutes. Finally I was connected with Pranil, who asked all sorts of questions that I didn't know (CJ's mobile phone number, for example, which for Aussie's purposes doesn't exist). Finally I got through to him that I just wanted to check whether CJ was on the net or not, but he kept returning to VoIP configuration. Finally he checked: yes, he was unable to establish contact with CJ's router. That probably means that it was off the air. What are you going to do about it? It looks like a misconfiguration on Aussie's part. Can somebody go on site? Sure, when do you want to go? Oh, they expect me to drive the 55 km and do the work! To fix something that they had done!
Yet Another formal complaint, correcting his text that referred to VoIP rather than the network link (“Internet”), with a request that this time they would send me the text of the complaint. And that would take up to ten days to resolve! He said that he would put it on priority, but that didn't help. 45 minutes on the phone for something that didn't even concern me.
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Cataract surgery follow-up
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Off to Geelong today for another eye examination. It was much slower than last time, and it took over half an hour before Bridget, the orthopist, called me in. Before she got a chance to do anything, I mentioned the apparently incorrect focus of my right (“new”) eye. She checked me and found that yes, I had an offset of -0.5 dioptres spherically—almost exactly what I had guessed (well, -0.5 to -0.6). But she also found astigmatism of +1 dioptre at 100°. That doesn't match any miscalculation in the infinity point, and Bridget thought that it could be due to continuing inflammation of the eye. It seems that it takes 4 weeks for complete healing, thus presumably the timing of the drops.
It wasn't until we were done that I discovered that that was about all. Presumably she was there to measure my eye. But I had thought that today's appointment was a precursor to next week's operation on my left eye, when in fact they weren't interested in that at all.
Then, with the inevitable dilating drops, into see Shivesh Varma, David Fabinyi's locum tenens, the man with the handshake of steel. He put me through the usual tests, noted eye pressures of 12 mm Hg (left) and 13 mm (right), apparently excellent values. I mentioned the difference of focus, and he checked through the lists and came up with a value of -0.45 dioptres. I asked him to ensure that this didn't get applied to my left eye, and he said that he would ask David to call me before the procedure.
After we had left, got a phone call from him: in fact, my spherical correction is effectively 0 dioptres, since the cylindrical correction is +1 dioptre, giving a focus range from -0.5 to +0.5 dioptres. That's an interesting consideration; maybe things will clear up when the eye has finished healing. In the meantime, of course, there's the question of where the -0.45 dioptres comes from. Still worth a talk with David, though I really don't want to wait until the right eye has finished healing.
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More Aussie pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Back home at 15:00 and tried to catch up with the day's work. First this diary. I was in the middle of describing yesterday's pain with CJ's phone when the doorbell rang. CJ, with a car full of hardware. It seems that he didn't just power cycle the router, he disconnected a number of cables. Did he put them back correctly?
Anyway, took the router in and connected it to dereel, which is seeing more use lately. All works, the phones register, as the Aussie status page shows. And I still can't call in! So effectively we're where we were before I called Aussie the first time.
More investigations: I can make some outgoing calls. I could call my mobile phone, but not my “home phone” (also VoIP with Aussie Broadband). So something is still wrong. What do I do now? Postpone. Sorry, CJ, I know that you went with Aussie on my recommendation (something that I will never do to anybody again), but I don't have time. Leave the hardware here and I'll look at it tomorrow.
But there are so many things that don't make sense here. I need to add to this list as I discover them:
Clearly Aussie's support staff are incapable. Why reconfigure a dial plan if the issue is with calling in? Did Semanjit understand what she was doing?
What did CJ do? He seems to be having comprehension issues. He claimed that Aussie's voice menu didn't give him the choice of selecting “support”. Tried it from his phone. Works as expected. And what did he disconnect yesterday, and how did he reconnect it?
Looking at his call logs was strange. There must be something wrong with this: Why does the usage log show calls from CJ to himself?
| 18-03-2024 | 0395662250 | 2m 14s | $0.15 | |||
| 01-04-2024 | 0353182413 | 4m 38s | $0.00 |
That's a call from 0353182413 to 0353182413, the same number. 4½ minutes long! How can that work? On the same day, we have the same thing on the other line, 0353244269:
| 01-04-2024 | 0353244269 | 1m 44s | $0.00 |
They're too polite to give times (something that MyNetFone did much better), but what does it mean? And of course there are no recent calls; for some reason it takes up to 48 hours to update the call register, something that should happen in real time.
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named death
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As if I didn't have enough to do, after CJ left I discovered that I hadn't received any external mail for nearly 6 hours. Local mail was still coming through, so checked things on lax.lemis.com (also mail.lemis.com). At first sight things looked OK. Nothing queued bar the usual messages from MAILER_DAEMON to non-responsive spam sites, maillog showed the usual rejections because of name lookup issues. Sent a message from freebsd.org. It didn't arrive!
A bit more searching and I discovered that all DNS lookups were failing: named had stopped. Why? No idea, except that I added disaster.lemis.com to the configuration yesterday. Nomen est omen? Restarted and things worked normally. Another thing to check on when I have time.
| Friday, 5 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 5 April 2024 |
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Aussie: no support any more!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So what's wrong with CJ's VoIP service? The obvious thing to do would be to try it on my own ATA and see what happened. And indeed, it still didn't work. The same symptoms: call in rang, but the caller got a busy signal, and it stopped trying to call after a few seconds. Clearly a service configuration issue.
So I sent Aussie a summary of what has happened so far, and then called them at 14:20, and was connected to a very quiet Mohammed after only 4 minutes. The same old pain, at least 10 minutes of identification before we even got started. But Mohammed couldn't find the message I sent. What address did I use? support@aussiebb.com.au. Ah, that's an old, worn-out magic word. Now I should send support requests to accounts@aussiebroadband.com.au. OK, did that, but where did the first message go?
While waiting for the new message to arrive, asked why I hadn't had a confirmation of my complaint. It seems that they sent it to CJ, who is off the air!
Finally I got a response to my first support request:
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2024 03:27:48 +0000 (UTC)
<support@aussiebb.net>: host smtp1.wide.net.au[121.200.0.25] said: 550 5.1.1
<support@aussiebb.net>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local
recipient table (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Return-Path: <grog@lemis.com>
Received: from eureka.lemis.com (121-200-11-253.79c80b.mel.nbn.aussiebb.net [121.200.11.253])
by lax.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3B3A328088
for <support@aussiebb.net>; Fri, 5 Apr 2024 03:18:11 +0000 (UTC)
On the one hand, that's symptomatic of what has become of Aussie: no support any more. But look at the times! It took over 9 minutes for their mail system to reject the message!
So he read the email and asked for CJ's email address, which is a little difficult for non-native English speakers (though Mohammed spoke excellent English). He decided to test the connection on their “test bench”, whatever that may mean. And it passed. So it must be the router.
What router? This line was configured on my ATA. I tried to make it clear to him that if the problem moves with the service and not with the ATA, it must be a configuration problem with the service, not the ATA. But I failed. He kept asking his “level 2” people, who presumably have little more understanding than he. And this despite the request in my email:
Please forward this to your VoIP specialists.
He went through all sorts of rigmaroles, including another video view of the ATA configuration screen. I've seen this before, so I put the phone on a tripod, at which point it obligingly rebooted.
More talking, and at some point he said that the service couldn't work at my address because VoIP is tied to the Internet service. That's nonsense of course, and I tried to explain to him how VoIP works. I don't think I succeeded.
Then he went back to the ATA configuration screen. It has frozen, he said. Clearly he had never seen things on a tripod before.
After understanding that, he created a new service with the same number, so all I had to do was type in the new password. It ended in l, but he had read it as 1. And it registered anyway, or at least the ATA claimed that it did. Can I factory reset the ATA? Emphatic NO! Somehow I can't get it into their heads that the problem can't be with the ATA, and think of the damage it would do.
In the end, we agreed that CJ would pick up the equipment and take it home with him, and that they would mess with the configuration there—he still thinks that it's an ATA configuration issue!. But at least it gets it out of my hair.
Still, I could give CJ one of my spare VoIP lines to tide him over. Took a look at his router again. Both lines registered! Tried them out. Yes, they work! And so does the one I have on my ATA.
How can that happen? My best guess is that somebody at Aussie fixed things without telling me. Still, clearly good news. CJ came and picked up his hardware and went home. Called me at 18:45. Both lines down! In addition, I checked my lines. Now the one I had turned off for the ATA test is showing the same symptoms: call in rings, but the caller gets busy signal. And call out works.
What does all this mean? It could be that Mohammed was correct after all: the VoIP configuration depends on the IP address, maybe a misguided attempt to lessen abuse. That would also explain why I was never able to configure Aussie VoIP on my mobile phone. All of this points to a configuration issue on the SIP server or proxy, which happen to be the same machine. Still, sufficient to the day is the evil thereof. So far this week I must have spent at least 8 hours fighting this problem, and all sorts of other things have had to wait as a result.
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disaster processing photos
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Topic: photography, technology | Link here |
disaster.lemis.com seems to work well now, though I still need to confirm my software licenses. But one was a surprise:
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“Perfectly Clear“ has decided that it's licensed after all! I need to tread carefully now to ensure that it doesn't change its mind.
| Saturday, 6 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 6 April 2024 |
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Aussie: You are not worthy
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Another day half wasted trying to get Aussie Broadband to fix their configuration problem. Once again a message explaining the situation and asking them to do something about it.
Then called up Aussie, and for a change I was connected to an Australian, Harrison. He wasn't the brightest: I gave him the details at the outset, but he wanted to hear my date of birth no less than three times and CJ's address twice. After a quarter of an hour he still had not managed to identify me, and I asked to be connected to his supervisor.
After a few minutes I was connected to Paul, who also couldn't find the message I sent. I suggested that they had serious problems with their email system and he agreed, yes, the system isn't logical. But even after he found it, and asking my date of birth another 3 times and CJ's address at least once, he refused me access. He wouldn't even admit that they had a customer called CJ Ellis, and he couldn't give me any details—even not why he didn't like my credentials. The privacy laws prohibit that. He would also not tell me where I could turn to solve the problem at hand. In the end, after 42 minutes, I hung up. Aussie (represented by Paul, surname protected for privacy reasons) has refused support for reasons that they don't want to divulge.
So what went wrong there? Did something in their system raise a red flag? Or, more likely, is he completely incompetent and unable to find his way round Aussie's support infrastructure? I think I'd go for the second choice. I thought of calling up again and seeing if the next “consultant” could find his way round the system better. But I couldn't stand the pain. Instead I sent CJ an email:
I've spent another 1½ hours today trying to resolve your phone problems. Unfortunately, today they have decided to refuse to let me work on your behalf. I spent 45 minutes on the phone today and was brushed off by a supervisor who didn't like something about my credentials, but who was too polite to say what.
So: I don't know where to go from here. Your lines are still down, and Aussie is too proud to do anything about it. The best you can do is send them an email and tell them what you think.
Sorry that I recommended Aussie to you. I won't do that to anybody again. My only excuse is that they once used to be a good company, but they're doing everything they can to change that. I'll look for an alternative VoIP service for you.
What went wrong here? As I said to CJ, once they were a good ISP. Now they've become inefficient bureaucrats who would make Telstra envious. And of course the faults haven't been fixed. But why did this happen? It happened to Internode, also once a bright star in the ISP sky. As Simon Hackett put it, How to ignore a customer without even trying. Ironically, that experience drove him to Aussie. I wonder if he's still as happy with them now. I note that the problems I have now are similar to what I complained about last September, just worse. And the solutions that I mention would still apply. The only thing that I would add is that support people seem to be set to believe that all problems are misconfiguration of customer hardware, even when there's hard evidence to the contrary. Yes, it's difficult to find good support personnel, but that's what escalation procedures are for.
So: what do I do now? I should drop Aussie like a hot potato, but who knows if there's a better ISP? And how do I get my /24 routed? But it does look like a good idea to look for a better VoIP supplier. Mañana.
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disaster? despise!
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne had some photos to process yesterday, and she did it ondisaster, which worked well. I checked the processing times, and they seemed significantly faster than her normal processing on distress, but I forgot to write them down—something like one photo per minute, because all her photos are done with DxO PhotoLab's DeepPRIME feature. But that increase in processing speed didn't seem as dramatic as I had noticed
But why limit myself to 8 CPUs? hydra has 32 logical CPUs. I could easily increase the number on distress to 16.
And, probably, invalidate my license keys. OK, how about cloning it? And yes, that's easy. Shut down the machine, right click on it, select Clone and follow the instructions. And without much ado I had a new machine, which Yvonne decided to call despise.lemis.com. But DxO PhotoLab decided that my license key was invalid, and so did Microsoft. I have DxO's license key written down, and their support team was relatively responsive with the key for “ViewPoint” (which I haven't applied yet), so once I'm happy we could stick with despise.
And how did Yvonne go? Worked out of the box modulo setting DxO in 30 day trial mode. And it was much faster. The only issue was memory: it only had 16 GB of memory, and running 14 concurrent conversions (the maximum) it was hitting memory limits. So I should probably add another 8 GB of memory.
My own access to the machine was less satisfactory:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/29) ~/Photos/20240405 942 -> /home/local/bin/dordesktop despise 3790x2110+0 &
Connecting to despise
ATTENTION! The server uses and invalid security certificate which can not be trusted for
the following identified reasons(s);
...
Do you trust this certificate (yes/no)? Core(error): Failed to read response from stdin
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Disconnected from despise, status 139
And that was repeatable. rdesktop really dumped core for no obvious reason. But that, too, will find a solution.
| Sunday, 7 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 7 April 2024 |
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DST ends
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Topic: general, photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Daylight Saving Time ended today. Lots of clocks to change, including my cameras.
In days gone by I have used this horrible OI.Share, mobile phone app to set the time on the OM-D cameras. But it's such a pain. It has the advantage of setting it almost exactly correct (why do mobile phones, which use NTP, still have times that vary by a couple of seconds?). But is it that important? Yvonne's Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III proved to be 3 minutes fast. That's 1 second per day since DST started, but should I (or Yvonne) constantly reset it? I'd be for resetting only when it really makes sense, and then I can do it with programs after the event, like this case 14 years ago
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Setting the time manually was so much faster, though several cameras managed to change 2 hours instead of one, presumably a key bounce issue. What I did discover, however, was that the date on the E-30 was wrong. Some time last month it seems that it decided that the month was December, as the mdir output shows:
53102888 ORF 10993760 2024-03-10 13:25
53102889 ORF 13378519 2024-03-10 13:25
53152890 ORF 10993854 2024-03-15 13:25
53152891 ORF 13225868 2024-03-15 13:25
53162892 ORF 10993377 2024-03-16 13:25
Was it only the month? The time shows 13:25 every time, mean solar noon, so it probably was. I wonder how that happened. But the camera is now over 15 years old, so I'll just keep my eye on the date when I turn it on.
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More fun with Aussie
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Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
To my surprise, three messages from Aussie
Broadband support accounts today. One was a boilerplate acknowledgement that I had
complained about not being allowed access to CJ's account yesterday with no
suggestion about what went wrong, just suggesting that CJ should authorize me, something that happened in July last year. So I
sent a reply asking in particular:
Please respond and tell me:
1. What aspect of my identification does not meet your approval.
2. Why your support staff have so far agreed that I am a
representative.
3. Where these privacy laws are stated.
4. What makes you think that name, address and date of birth are any
kind of evidence of the identity of the caller. All of this is
available on the web.
I also noted that I would raise this matter with the TIO.
And then there was another message addressed to the same thread, but referring to the VoIP issue. The final message was more to the point:
Unfortunately we are unable to access the modem as our logs are show a
connection to a dell devices at the moment.
Are you able to confirm the Ethernet coming from the NBN box is connected to
the WAN port on the modem.
This silly “modem” word again. Clearly he's talking about the Netcomm router. But that does look strange. CJ's machine is made by Dell (how did they identify it? MAC address?). Has he wired it up wrong? Sent him off a message:
You'll have seen this message below, which I copied you on. I think
they're still barking up the wrong tree, but one thing makes me
wonder: they talk about seeing a Dell device. Your computer is Dell,
right? Are you sure you connected the cables up correctly? As I said:
> 1. NTD connected to a Netcomm router (via Ethernet, of course).
> 2. Router connected to a Microsoft computer and two phones.
In English: the box on the wall is connected to the red connector on
the router. The computer is connected to one of the yellow connectors
on the router. Is this what you have done? If not:
1. Write down how you connected the cables, and tell me by email.
2. Fix it.
This should be done as quickly as possible.
And the response? A total of three, all saying nothing and not answering what I thought were clear instructions, except to say that he had connected the computer directly to the NTD to get any connection at all, and that the phones (on the router) were still not working. By the end of the day we still had nothing. I'm beginning to think that the current issues are of CJ's making.
Later in the day, another message from Aussie:
In a fixed wireless setup, the NBN box/NTD/Network terminal device, often gets
called the modem.
I assume that this is a response to my reply quoted above:
> There is no modem. I haven't checked personally, but what I
> understand is:
>
> 1. NTD connected to a Netcomm router (via Ethernet, of course).
> 2. Router connected to a Microsoft computer and two phones.
Clearly the second responder misunderstood. The first called the router a “modem”. The second called the NTD a “modem”. What better example of why you shouldn't use inappropriate terms?
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Baked chicken thighs again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Baked chicken thighs again today. We did them two months ago in the “hair dryer” air fryer, and they came out more or less as planned: meat temperature 78° after 21 minutes at 210°:
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But they seemed to have required a higher meat temperature. OK, as planned, this time 30 minutes to achieve 82°.
That took 13 minutes, and the thighs didn't look as brown as they could. Clearly I had placed the temperature probe in the wrong place. Turned off the thermometer and went by eye, stopping when they seemed OK:
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That was after about 18 minutes! And certainly they were cooked enough. The thermometer showed a temperature round 95°. They tasted fine, but I'm still dissatisfied. Why the difference? These thighs were smaller, but that wouldn't significantly affect the time it took to brown them. Maybe the start temperature (21°)? I didn't note it last time.
| Monday, 8 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 8 April 2024 |
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VoIP problems: resolved!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Mail from CJ Ellis this morning:
Good morning Greg .good news , the phone is working It seems that their
message bank is now working properly for me , but I am 26 in the que , I am
hope to get a message bank on the phone as it was as I wanted in the first
place with themm .. Sore y for all you troubles with them ... It was good
to get to the computer to find all the lights working on the router & the
phone working ..
What does that mean? It's certainly not an answer to my questions. My best guess is that he finally plugged the thing in, and it worked.
CJ, I've spent the best part of a week trying to work around Aussie Broadband to solve the problems. The last two days, including the extreme annoyance of not being able to authenticate myself, were only due to you not following instructions. Sorry, my good will is exhausted. Next time find somebody else to solve your perceived issues.
That still leaves a question open: my second phone line (the one listed in the phone book) no longer works, showing the same symptoms that CJ's did (can call out, incoming calls ring but return a busy signal to the caller). At first I thought that it was directly related to reconfiguring the ATA, but quite possibly it's been like that for a long time. I only have the phone to collect voice messages, and for that Aussie is particularly useless: there's no way to find if you have voice mail except by calling the voice mail number. So an alternative might be a less painful way to fix it.
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More Aussie Broadband pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Response from Aussie Broadband support accounts to my authentication questions yesterday. No attempt to address my issues, just
I strongly suggest you contact our team on 1300 880 905 with CJ so we can
arrange a solution to this issue.
And I explained why that won't work 2 days ago. OK, up a notch:
Please note the TIO deadline tomorrow and forward this matter to your
complaints team. I expect to see a complaint number with details (not
just asterisks) by this evening.
And I got a complaint number **16941085**, with no text. Sigh.
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Green coffee water tank
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
We've had our coffee machine for over 4 years now, and modulo routine annoyance with “descaling” (not needed for rainwater), it works well. But in the last couple of days the water tank looks like this:
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What causes that? Is it indicative of something in our water tanks?
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despise performance comparison
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Comparison of photo processing times using DxO PhotoLab DeepPRIME:
| Machine | Number | Time | Time/photo | |||
| despise | 133 | 41:20 | 19..5 s | |||
| distress | 29 | 33:32 | 70.0 s | |||
| distress | 34 | 37:26 | 66.1 s | |||
I think we can accept that that's considerably faster. And I was able to activate both DxO PhotoLab and “ViewPoint”. That just leaves “Windows” itself, and for that I need to find what I have done with the license key.
All perfect? Not quite. Why does this system use so much CPU time when idle?
PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
56239 grog 45 20 0 25G 25G select 9 69.5H 254.78% VirtualBoxVM
Is this maybe typical of Microsoft? It's not a big deal, since I can put it to sleep when I don't need it, but it would be interesting to understand.
| Tuesday, 9 April 2024 | Dereel | |
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More power problems
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Topic: general | Link here |
After cleaning my teeth last night, put my toothbrush on its charger. The charge light didn't go on. Another dead toothbrush? Took it into Yvonne's bathroom and tried it on the charger there. Still no light. Replaced Yvonne's toothbrush. No light.
Oh. Into the garage and to the switchboard. RCD tripped. Turned it on and heard a beep not far away. What's that? But yes, now both toothbrushes charged.
But this morning it had failed again, and this time it stayed failed. OK, what's on this circuit? Guest bedroom, laundry (including a freezer, the source of the beep), and outside, of course, the sewage pump and the bore water pump. The latter two seem the most likely cause, particularly given the borderline waterproof connections used for external power points in Australia. Disconnected them and turned the breaker on again. It stayed on.
So one of the exterior pumps is involved. Which? It's a borderline issue, so I left them disconnected all day, and we had no further issues. Tomorrow I can start reconnecting.
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Aussie complaints make contact
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Aussie Broadband about my complaint. In summary:
Thank you for bringing your concerns to our attention regarding the difficulties you've encountered
with unauthorized access to the account. We understand the importance of addressing this matter
promptly and appreciate your patience as we work to find a resolution.
As per the guidelines outlined by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), our
company is required to adhere to strict customer identity authentication rules to safeguard the
privacy and security of our customers' information. This includes verifying all points of
identification to ensure compliance with privacy laws.
For more information on ACMA's customer identity authentication rules, please visit the following
link: [https://www.acma.gov.au/customer-identity-authentication-rules]
At this stage, we have marked your complaint as resolved, as we are following the prescribed rules
and procedures for customer privacy and safety. We appreciate your understanding of our position on
this matter.
Is there anything in there that suggests that they have even read the complaint? Despite multiple requests they certainly haven't sent me the text, and they have addressed none of the issues. Is Aussie staffed by morons?
About the only thing of interest is the link https://www.acma.gov.au/customer-identity-authentication-rules. I followed it and found nothing to support their actions or claims. It was interesting, though: it refers to “high-risk customer transactions”, which include:
- SIM swaps
- transfers from a post-paid to a pre-paid service
- transfers of title (also known as change of ownership)
- adding additional phone service/s to an account
- activating a service for an overseas customer
- buying an additional mobile phone
- blocking an International Mobile Equipment Identity or a Permanent Equipment Identifier.
Depending on the services you provide, you may identify more high-risk transactions than just those listed above.
Clearly this is a different category of transaction from reporting a fault. But Aussie demands this authentication before even knowing what the matter is. And what about this stupid “give me your name, address and date of birth”? The rules, only for high-risk customer transactions, are:
3. Implement MFA for high-risk customer transactions. An example of MFA where a requesting person initiates a high-risk customer transaction is:
- an account username and password, and
- a unique verification code or secure link, sent to the customer’s mobile number or validated mobile application.
No mention of date of birth. User name and password. And under the circumstances they mention, multi-factor authentication is acceptable.
So: Aussie doesn't have a leg to stand on. I sent them a corresponding answer, reminding them of this evening's TIO deadline.
And I got another reply, talking about how their support people had done everything correctly. Huh? What does that have to do with authentication? Replied accordingly, reminding them that I still hadn't seen the text of the complaint. It wasn't until later that I discovered that this was a response to the other complaint that I had initiated on Thursday. Once again I think they got the wrong end of the stick, but without the text of the complaint it's hard to say who is to blame.
So what do I say to the TIO? Clearly this needs preparation. What I see is:
Is there more? To be considered.
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Cataracts: next step
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Topic: health | Link here |
Call from David Fabinyi today about the intraocular lens for my left eye. It seems that when combined with a vitrectomy, some residual astigmatism can remain, and the accuracy of focus can vary depending on the results of the operation. Makes perfect sense, but it's not quite what I heard on our first appointment.
Based on what they've seen, I probably have some corneal astigmatism, and for the left eye he has chosen a Toric IOL with focus at infinity. That all sounds very good, and it confirms the validity of my decision to have my right (non-dominant) eye first. So the procedure can continue on Thursday as planned.
In passing, it seems that they have a whole stock of IOLs, and the can return what they don't need. David had a choice of two for me, and we'll discuss it before the procedure on Thursday. He mentioned the purchase prices that they pay are in the order of $400 to $800, but he estimates that the manufacturing cost is much lower.
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18 years of blog!
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Mail from LiveJournal today, enclosing (if that's the word) a “virtual gift” for being with them for 18 years. That was a reaction to people calling my diary a “blog”, and it was very short-lived, round 2 days. I seem to have barely mentioned it in my diary.
| Wednesday, 10 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 10 April 2024 |
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Aussie Broadband: Go away
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Another message from Aussie Broadband complaints today. It seems that they have completely misunderstood the complaint, something that could only have happened if they had read neither the complaint nor my messages. But the content is amazing:
I understand your concern at this point in time. However, what you are
requesting is not something we can accommodate. I have reached out to our
compliance team for further input.
He understands my concern? There's no evidence whatsoever of that. And why can't he “accommodate” what “I am requesting”? My guess is because he has so little understanding of the issue that he can't do anything.
As per our ACMA complaint guidelines, we may take up to 10 days for further
response. If this complaint goes to the TIO, it is still within the ideal time
frame.
“We are fully bureaucracy compliant”.
Alternatively, if you are not happy with our policy, and since you are not in
a lock-in contract, you may look for an ISP which suits your needs in regards
to your privacy.
“We won't fix the problem. Go away”. But the interesting thing is “your needs in regards to your privacy”. Clearly he has understood nothing.
How do you complain about a complaints person who doesn't do his job?
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Authenticating calls
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Returning to the issue of authentication, I have had contact with three different health service providers this week: Specsavers, St John of God in Geelong and Health First. All accepted my call without identification, at least once: on calling back to Health First, I was asked for the inevitable date of birth.
Why not the others? Because they recognized my phone number. Health First did that once too, but they “up”graded their booking software. Specsavers knew all my data without having to ask. And the things that they were doing were more “high risk” than anything I do with Aussie. And Aussie of all people should be able to identify the phone, since it's with them.
On the other hand, I read an article today about a person scammed out of $10,000 with a related exploit, one of the high risk transactions explicitly mentioned in the ACMA guidelines: a SIM swap. I haven't finished analysing the somewhat confused article, but it seems that the victim made two mistakes:
Storing access details for his bank accounts on his mobile phone.
Having an account with Optus. They sent him a message to his mobile phone (much use if it had been stolen) and timed out. So rather than refusing the transaction, they allowed it! This image from the article:
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But clearly that's another issue altogether. And even if they had received a positive reply, what does that mean? As the article states,
ETEL said it sent a unique verification code via SMS to ensure the customer seeking to port their phone number was in possession of the device (my emphasis).
And how does that help identify the customer? To me, it does suggest a lot of caution in choosing a new RSP, however (not that Optus would have come close to being a choice).
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More thoughts on astigmatism
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
So it seems that I have some corneal astigmatism, something that nobody told me about until I found out last week. But 1 dioptre? That seems a little unusual. Off looking for my prescriptions, and came up with this one from January 2021:
| Eye | Spherical | Cylindrical | Axis | Near-add | ||||
| R | +2.25 | -1.25 | 115° | +2.50 | ||||
| L | +2.00 | -0.50 | 105° | +2.50 | ||||
Now it's 1 D at 100°. And the left eye has less. But that was total astigmatism, not just corneal astigmatism. And in passing, is there any difference between +2 spherical and -0.5 cylindrical on the one hand and +1.5 spherical and +0.5 cylindrical on the other hand? Or is it just the way things get measured?
| Thursday, 11 April 2024 | Dereel → Geelong → Dereel | Images for 11 April 2024 |
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The other eye
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Off to Geelong this morning, once again very early, to have my other (left) eye rebuilt. To my surprise, a large number of the people involved recognized me. The first was Roxy, who took this photo of my dilated left pupil:
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What a good example of mobile phone photography! Two other nurses also recognized me. I'm impressed.
It would be easy to say that “everything went the same way as last time”, but that's not quite correct. Somehow it took a lot longer today, not during the procedure, but beforehand. The result was that I was there for 3½ hours, while last time it was only 2 hours, 20 minutes. But I didn't notice that until I compared my times.
The procedure was as before, except that this time I was fitted with a Toric IOL. As I had discovered, part of the procedure involves marking the orientation of the eyeball while the patient is sitting up, since it may rotate when lying down. But I wasn't expecting David Fabinyi to poke me in the eye with what looked like a felt-tipped pen. Of course the anaesthetics did their job, so it wasn't that painful.
He also gave me more details of the IOL: -0.06 dioptre spherical, 1 dioptre cylindrical. I forgot to ask about the axis, but that's quite strong compared to the prescription I got in 2021. But that's the difference between the cornea and the complete eye, maybe.
And why -0.06 dioptres cylindrical? The target would have been -0.25 dioptres (4 m, a good hyperfocal distance, but they only come in steps of 0.25 dioptres, so the next one would have been 0.31 dioptres. Assuming the hyperfocal distance of 4 m (± 0.25 dioptres depth of focus), that would give me a maximum sharp distance of about 16 m. As it is, I will have a close distance of 3.2 m. And the other eye is more myopic, so it's not a big deal.
The procedure itself was different, too. First Liam Broad, the anaesthetist, decided to put the cannula in my elbow, since it had been so painful last time. And this time there was much more light, though once again I didn't notice being moved into the operating theatre. And the visual effects were very different: instead of random geometric shapes, I saw four pillars arranged in a square. They moved and changed shape, but the arrangement was still the same. David says that this might be a reaction to the anaesthetic, which this time seemed to be stronger than last time.
Then back home, and this time I read the instructions: remove the eye cover at 18:00. Here before and after:
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And things looked very strange. A bubble in my field of view, of course, this time mercifully smaller. But I had forgotten how obtrusive it was. And everything looked so bright! I could barely stand looking at the TV. The image must have been equivalent to 2 to 3 EV more than the right eye. Also not very sharp, and with a pronounced magenta cast, and the images was considerably lower than the image from the right eye, and I couldn't correct it. But that's early days, and presumably it will improve.
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AAMI never gives up
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Surprising spam today:
Subject: M07956723
Message-ID: <SYBPR01MB452222792EC4FAB1D0E1BAC1AE052@SYBPR01MB4522.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com>
Good Afternoon,
Please be advised we have provided our assessment report and quote to substantiate our demands that was a result of
Of an accident that you are liable for. Our costs were assessed and Approved by a licensed professional motor vehicle assessor.
Find attached our final letter of demand and advise your intentions within 7 days.
Somebody who had read my entries on the AAMI matter last year and wanted to cash in? Checked the headers. No, this abortion of a message really came from AAMI. And once again they have not responded to my questions, nor provided any proof (including the claimed assessment report). Instead they once again provided irrelevant photos, and also a screen shot of my article on the subject at the time, which pretty much disproves their claims. But why now? Is the “final” letter of demand a glimmer of hope that they will then let the matter rest? I have little hope.
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Bloody Microsoft again!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Now that it doesn't use any significant power, I have taken the easy way out and let despise.lemis.com (Microsoft “Windows” 10) carry on running. Bad idea. Microsoft did its usual update without asking me, and after that “Perfectly Clear“ didn't want to know about registration. Back to where I was at the beginning of the month.
Grrr! But despise is a virtual machine, and I do backups religiously. Can I revert to the state of yesterday evening? No, it seems. Restoring the backup was trivial, but every attempt to restart it failed with VERR_ACCESS_DENIED. But not only despise: all VMs. More searching, and found what I've seen before less than a month ago: I need to be in the vboxusers group.
But aren't I? Schrödinger's cat: yes, I'm in the /etc/group entry, but the shell I was running was started longer ago (4 January). So I had to start an xterm from a fresh login, and then it worked. And yes, Perfectly Clear was still enabled at that time. So: keep snapshots. If things go wrong, just revert to them.
Who needs Microsoft updates anyway?
| Friday, 12 April 2024 | Dereel → Geelong → Dereel | Images for 12 April 2024 |
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Audrey Herbert turns 100 years old
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Topic: history | Link here |
It's been 100 years since the birth of my mother, Audrey Lehey née Herbert. And, of course, five years since she died. Once again: how time flies! And how the world has changed since her birth.
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Eye checkup
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Topic: health | Link here |
Into Geelong again this morning to have my eye operation checked. Since yesterday my vision has improved considerably, though it's still not as good as the right eye. But now I have something to compare, and it's good to see the gradual improvement.
And the strangeness yesterday evening, the magenta colour cast and excessive brightness? Probably a reaction to the anaesthetic, which can take up to 12 hours to dissipate.
Then back home in time for breakfast. An hour's drive to Geelong, 10 minutes wait, 5 minutes consultation, and an hour back again.
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Reprocessing old photos
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Fifteen years ago I spent a lot of time comparing photo processing. A lot has changed since then. In particular, I was concerned with gradation, and I took a lot of photos with different camera settings. I made a comparison between “muted” and “vivid” profiles, which showed no obvious difference. I thought that I had not understood that “muted” and “vivid”, like many of the settings, only applied to the in-camera JPEG images. But that's not the case: these were JPEGs (which I took alongside the raw images), and there was really almost no difference (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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There's really almost no differencd. What does the Exif data say? Here the relevant difference between “muted” (-) and “vivid” (+):
-Custom Saturation : 0 (min -5, max 5)
+Custom Saturation : 1 (min -5, max 5)
-Contrast Setting : -1 (min -5, max 5)
-Sharpness Setting : -2 (min -5, max 5)
+Contrast Setting : 0 (min -5, max 5)
+Sharpness Setting : 0 (min -5, max 5)
-Picture Mode : Muted
+Picture Mode : Vivid
-Contrast : Low
-Saturation : Normal
-Sharpness : Soft
+Contrast : Normal
+Saturation : High
+Sharpness : Normal
I wonder if it's still that bad.
Still, that's not the sort of thing I do any more. Here's a more typical image, which I chose because it showed the worst gradation at the time. Here the best I made then. First a conversion with UFRaw, then an unspecified “optimization”, probably Ashampoo photo optimizer, that seems only to have made things worse, then a conversion with Olympus “Master”, which at least corrected the geometry and made it marginally better (again, run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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I've progressed since then. Here the best I made then (the Olympus “Master" image), then as processed with my standard “Myset” profile with DxO PhotoLab, then that image further enhanced by “Perfectly Clear“ (again, run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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This is pretty much my standard processing. If I cared enough, I might be able to improve the image further. But it does partially explain why it took me so long to raw images.
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Finding rwhod
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Topic: technology | Link here |
despise.lemis.com is now running as well as you can expect of a Microsoft system, but I'm still running into this irritating loss of rwhod on reboot. Last time I noted issues, but not how to fix it. What I need to do is:
In passing, discovered Yet Another strangeness in Microsoft: as administrator, NET USE claims that there are no network “shares”. As normal user all works well.
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The dangers of one-eyedness
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Topic: health, general | Link here |
Tried to pour myself a glass of wine this evening. Not for the first time, it didn't quite work:
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This, too, will pass.
| Saturday, 13 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 13 April 2024 |
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Floaters again
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Topic: health | Link here |
One of the first things that I noticed when I opened my eye after the rebuild of my right eye was the surprising number of floaters. And with the left eye there were none.
But that has changed. Like with the right eye, they have changed in shape, tending towards strands. That's clearly transient: I can't notice any floaters in my right eye any more, so these will almost certainly go away too.
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A cat cage
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Topic: general, animals | Link here |
Jesse Walsh gave us the contact details of Cassie Clarke in Corindhap, who has a an external cat cage. Off this afternoon to take a look.
I was mainly interested in the details, to the point that I forgot to take a photo of the entire cage. How cat-proof is it? I think it will be sufficient:
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Dereel bushfire aftermath
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Topic: general | Link here |
On the way home, drove down Swamp Road to see what the bushfire had done. A lot of burning, of course, but it seems that none of the trees had been burnt down.:
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Somehow it's all to close to “home”. Here a corner of a walk we used to take with the dogs:
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And this tree, I think, shows the remains of the Amyema pendula that is on the Wikipedia page (here my original), and what I think are the remains of the same bush today:
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And here a sign where I cut open my finger trying to hold back Nikolai nine years ago. It's not damaged, but it's good for orientation. Here in 2015 and now:
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despise photo processing times
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
House photo day today, a total of 111 images to convert. And despise did it in 3 minutes, 50 seconds, an average speed of 2.07 s per photo. That's far better than I have ever seen.
But then I converted another 17 images from the afternoon. 1 minute, 30 seconds, or 5.3 seconds per image. Why? My guess is that there's some amazing inefficiency in DxO PhotoLab that applies at the start of every processing batch. Even the values given are inaccurate: it can take up to 15 seconds after pressing “export” before it even starts. Still, a great improvement over the other machines.
| Sunday, 14 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 14 April 2024 |
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Manipulating data in the Microsoft space
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Topic: technology | Link here |
I've been running autocutsel for a while now, and it works, up to a point. If I copy something on Microsoft, it automatically updates the clipboard on the machine that runs the rdesktop. If I mark text on an xterm, it also appears in the clipboard. But it doesn't change the cutbuffer in any way, and that's not what I understand from the documentation:
When the clipboard is changed, it updates the cutbuffer. When the cutbuffer is changed, it owns the clipboard selection. The cutbuffer and clipboard selection are always synchronized.
There's this word “own” that I don't understand. But I do understand “always synchronized”, and that's not what I see. Is this a bug, a misdocumentation, or what?
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How to save an SMS
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Topic: technology | Link here |
I've been trying for years to find a way to save or copy an SMS. Based on my almost complete lack of success, you'd think that somebody wanted to avoid it. Even the mobile phone apps that promise to save or forward them don't work for me.
But finally I've found a way to at least save the text, if not the metadata:
Simple, isn't it. You have to love Microsoft.
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Understanding depth of focus
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Topic: photography, technology, health, opinion | Link here |
One of the things I learnt as part of my cataract operation was the term depth of focus. I know that, right? No, what I know and use is depth of field. And while they're closely related, there's a subtle difference: depth of field is measured in distances, the closest and furthest distance in acceptable focus when you focus on a specific point. I've known this for ever, at least since I started using cameras 60 years ago. The lenses had a depth-of-field scale on the lens, here a Diaxette that looks just like the one I had at the time:
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The top (black) scale is distance, in feet, and the lower (red) scale is depth of field. Here the focus is set to 30 ft (10 m), and the scale shows a depth of field from a little over 20 ft to a little below 60 ft at f/2.8, or 14 ft to beyond ∞ at f/8.
The devil's in the detail, of course, and 14 years ago I found the contradictions enough that I wrote my own program to calculate depth of field.
The problem with depth of field is that it depends on the distance. Depth of focus is measured in dioptres, the correction needed to move the edges of acceptable focus to the prime focus. And that makes sense: it's independent of the distance.
Or is that the definition? The Wikipedia page is currently very vague:
Depth of focus can have two slightly different meanings. The first is the distance over which the image plane can be displaced while a single object plane remains in acceptably sharp focus; the second is the image-side conjugate of depth of field. With the first meaning, the depth of focus is symmetrical about the image plane; with the second, the depth of focus is slightly greater on the far side of the image plane.
The first definition looks like the inverse of depth of field: instead of measuring the subject distance, it measures the object distance. And clearly the claim that the depth of focus is symmetrical is just plain false. At 1:1 magnification the values are the same. And the “second definition” seems to be the same thing. Without formulae the whole thing is too fuzzy to understand. But the formulae presented are just plain wrong: they're formulae for depth of field. The page also stated:
While depth of field is generally measured in macroscopic units such as meters and feet, depth of focus is typically measured in microscopic units such as fractions of a millimeter or thousandths of an inch.
That's clearly only part of the statement, of course. In optometry depth of focus is usually measured in dioptres, so I said so.
So: clearly the Wikipedia page is almost useless. What else is there? The first hit on Google tells me:
In optometry depth of focus is usually measured in dioptres.
That's quite impressive. It's a reference to what I wrote in Wikipedia only a few hours earlier. And clearly it's useless for confirming my claims. How about Gemini?
Q: How do I calculate depth of focus in dioptres?A: Depth of focus (DOF) isn't directly calculated in diopters. DOF is typically measured in linear units like millimeters or feet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field.
That's a quote from an older version of the Wikipedia page! And it uses the term “DOF”, which I always took to mean depth of field. But there are others who disagree. This article, from the US National Institutes of Health, writes:
In theory, only one plane or surface of world can be in focus at one time. However, the eye exhibits a certain tolerance to out-of-focus images, a feature that is known as depth-of-focus (DOF). The corresponding distance range in which the objects are seen “clearly” is known as depth-of-field (DOFi).
Somehow the term NIH sounds appropriate.
And there's more. This paper goes into some detail, and maybe it contains all that I need to know. It refers to human eyes, and interestingly (on page 830) it comes up with a depth of focus of 0.1 dioptre for adult humans. I just need to read it more carefully.
In summary, I'm just as confused as I was at the beginning. I need to check my maths, but it seems that the concepts are poorly understood, and measuring depth of focus in dioptres is really independent of the subject (or object) distance. That's why depth of field scaled work. But measuring the depth of focus by distances from the sensor is not distance independent. Eyes are a special case because the sensor is always at the same distance from the entrance pupil. But even there, the linear depth of focus should not be symmetrical, which should be particularly apparent when using strong auxiliary lenses (say +20 dioptres, bring focus to 5 cm).
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Off the net again!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Idly checking ping times today brought a failure: I couldn't ping eureka.lemis.com from lax.lemis.com. Nor anywhere else, for that matter.
Firewall problem? No, a traceroute stopped much earlier than that. Is there something wrong? The block has been routed here for nearly a year, and in May last year I confirmed:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/24) ~ 33 -> 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
4764 | 192.109.197.0 | 192.109.197.0/24 | AU | ripencc | 1991-05-01 | WIDEBAND-AS-AP Aussie Broadband, AU
And what do I have now?
=== root@lax (/dev/pts/7) ~ 90 -> 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
Gone! An easy enough bug to fix, I suppose. But it means dealing with Aussie Broadband “support” again. The first part (after authenticating myself) will be to explain to the first level support person what I'm talking about. The horror!
| Monday, 15 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 15 April 2024 |
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Pixel depth of digital cameras
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Topic: photography | Link here |
One of the important parameters of a digital camera is the pixel depth, which determines the dynamic range of the sensor. Fifteen years ago I wrote “I gather that my Olympus [E-510] has only 10 bit pixels”.
Is that correct? Today I went searching and came up with a blank. The best specs page I could find is this page, but it, too, is too polite to say. Why are people not interested? It has much more of a bearing on the image quality than the number of pixels.
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How to copy SMS, again
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Callum Gibson read my article on how to save an SMS. He has a simpler method: Google messages. That way you don't need Microsoft, just a web browser.
OK, sounds interesting. Off to take a look, but instead of https://messages.google.com/ I was redirected to https://www.android.com/google-messages/. Funny, says Callum, “it works for me”. Still, the page is clearly related, full of advertisements and content unrelated to what I'm looking for, like “With Google Messages, you can customize your experience, ensure private conversations, and enjoy the latest AI features.”. Dammit, all I want to do is to save an SMS with its metadata, like you can do with any sane MUA with a single click!
First, of course, I have to install Google Messages on my phone. Good news: it's compatible with all my “devices” (which in this context I think means “phones”). OK, install. I was given a single line choice of which “device”:
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Damn, that's my old phone, the one I just use for experiments. Ah, but single line windows are modern. Click and you get:
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Sometimes I despair. OK, click on the second one, and receive the information that the app will soon be installed. Wait a while. Nothing. While I was looking, discovered this comment about the app:
December 30, 2019I still don't know what good this app is, but I can never find answers to the noises that are bugging me.
And that was what I wrote on the following day. Further investigation shows that it was already installed on the phone, and it's the standard messages app that I use. Why didn't Google say so? They're supposed to keep track.
So: what next? I couldn't find anything to tell me what to do. Finally, though, found my way through the maze. You have to be logged in to Google to even get the correct link! And that told me the way through the maze of menus on my phone: click on the image of myself (currently) at top right and select Device pairing, which tells me to go to https://messages.google.com/web. And there I get a QR Code and instructions:
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Problem: there is no QR code scanner on the phone:
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I couldn't find a way to use the code. But I did have the option of signing in, and suddenly that worked,
And the results? It looks surprisingly like Microsoft's PhoneLink. But it does have the advantage that I don't have to fire up a Microsoft machine to access it.
So, next step: save the messages. Why would you want to do that?, says Callum. But yes, you can back them up—to Google Drive, the storage medium that has caused me so much pain in the past. And doubtless the format would be unwieldy.
And at the end, I also understood the comment I made five years ago: the thing keeps dinging at me, the noise it makes when a notification arrives. But all I find is information that my phone is linked to a web browser.
So what's wrong here? Clearly the ability to save messages to Google Drive could be useful to some people. But why can't I save them on the current machine? Once again other people are making decisions for me, not the ones I want. It would be so simple just to save the messages, metadata and all, but modern web and mobile phone software seems to ignore the obvious and want to run before it can walk.
So, a comparison of the methods:
| Microsoft PhoneLink | Google Messages | |||
| 1 | Start Microsoft “PhoneLink” and display the message. | Pair phone with https://messages.google.com/web | ||
| 2 | Select text. | Go to https://messages.google.com/web and display message | ||
| 3 | Copy to clipboard with c-c. | Select text. | ||
| 4 | Mark text in xclipboard on the host machine. | Mark text in xclipboard. | ||
| 5 | Save! | Save! | ||
So yes, it could be easier if it weren't for the fact that I have to explicitly pair and unpair. But the noise it keeps making means that I have to unpair when I'm not using it. Why can't they have a button to turn the noise off?
In passing, Callum mentioned another app, SMG Backup and Restore. It still just copies to Google Drive.
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Double bubble
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Topic: health | Link here |
The bubble in my eye is gradually getting smaller, not as fast as I had hoped. This evening, though, I had two after the evening eyedrops! One was the normal bubble, and the other one was a tiny bubble about 5% of the size of the main one. It hung around for an hour or two before disappearing again.
How did that happen? My guess is that one of the floaters kept it from joining the main bubble.
| Tuesday, 16 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 16 April 2024 |
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Solving the routing issue
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I should have called Aussie Broadband yesterday about the routing problems that I discovered on Sunday. But I dreaded the encounter, so I put it off.
But it had to be done, and today I called up and was connected relatively quickly to Ashika, who of course didn't understand. What kind of router do I have installed? She could only see one IP address. I tried to explain, and she decided to escalate to “level 2” after only 3 minutes. And after a total of 5 minutes, the call was done: she would send me an email, to which I should reply with the problem details.
That's actually quite reasonable, and quite a difference from recent encounters. But how do I explain in a manner that will get the problem involved? Ask an expert, Philip Paeps.
First question: what tools do I use? So far I have been using the rather strange invocation
=== root@lax (/dev/pts/7) ~ 90 -> 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
And I don't even understand the syntax. I know the basic syntax for whois, but it doesn't describe the -v parameter. I'm still not 100% clear what it is, but it seems that it's passed to a special version of whois at https://whois.cymru.com/, which also proves to have a web interface that doesn't really say any more.
So: in the course of the discussion, Philip came up with the following tools:
https://bgp.tools/, which is particularly unreliable. While I got it to work with Google Chrome, I wasn't able to get it to work with firefox:
Sorry, We appear to be broken.
While the issue has been logged on our side,
it might help to send this following message to the admin (admin@bgp.tools):
It does seem to have some interesting information when it's prepared to divulge it.
route-views5.routeviews.org, accessible by telnet. It's particularly verbose:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/34) ~ 20 -> telnet route-views5.routeviews.org
Hello, this is FRRouting (version 9.0.1).
Copyright 1996-2005 Kunihiro Ishiguro, et al.
route-views5.routeviews.org> show bgp ipv4 unicast 192.109.197.0/24
BGP routing table entry for 192.109.197.0/24, version 8922913
Paths: (21 available, best #21, table default)
Not advertised to any peer
22296 6140 1299 4764
23.155.8.1 from 23.155.8.1 (23.155.8.1)
Origin IGP, valid, external, rpki validation-state: not found
Community: 1299:35000 22296:10004
Last update: Tue Apr 16 14:46:43 2024
This repeats many times, about 200 lines, and I haven't been able to decipher it yet. In addition, though there's a help command, it doesn't say anything useful, in particular not what other commands are available.
Routeviews also has a web interface that I haven't been able to decipher yet.
https://stat.ripe.net/app/use-cases/prefix/bgplay/. Philip gave me a URL for my net block.
In the process, Philip identified a nick “cyrusone”, also known as Mark Price, who helped me through the maze a year ago. He is “a prince among men” and Philip's upstream.
In the background, it seems that Philip contacted people whom he knows at Aussie:
*trouble* A look is being taken by an aussiebb person with a clue [13:08]
*trouble* do you have your WAN IP? They're trying to find where your route should go
<Groogle> xl0: flags=8943<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,PROMISC,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
*trouble* my transit friend found an edge friend who is now looking around :) [13:14]
<Groogle> This looks like it might happen faster than the typical support call to the [13:15]
support people.
So the whole thing took 16 minutes. On occasion I've taken longer to authenticate with Aussie “support”. And yes, it works.
Some of the tools show interesting graphic representations. The RIPE page shows:
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And when I can get it to work, bgp.tools shows:
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In summary: it helps to have friends. And it shows how big a difference there is between Aussie's front line mail configurer “support” and the people behind the scenes
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Eye progress
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Topic: health | Link here |
I had hoped that the bubble in my eye would be gone by now, but no such luck. It's getting smaller, and on a couple of occasions I got a smaller one that then went away again. But by evening it was still not gone.
| Wednesday, 17 April 2024 | Dereel | |
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Sourdough lifetime?
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Topic: food and drink, history | Link here |
It's been fifteen years since I started cooking with sourdough. In that time I have tried various sources, including making my own from kimchi juice, but in October 2017 I bought one on eBay, and I've been using that ever since.
But somehow things are changing. I now have something like the 50th generation of the starters, and starters that would happily keep for months are becoming dark and mouldy within the 2 months that I need them to last for. And looking back to October 2017, it seems that they're also less active. How did that happen? I can replace them, of course, but it irritates me.
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I can see clearly now
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
The bubble in my left eye has been shrinking continuously, but somehow not as fast as the one in my right eye three weeks ago. That bubble was much larger, and it took 163 hours, almost exactly a week to disappear. This one started at about the size that the right bubble had after two days, but it still took 155 hours. But this evening, finally, it was gone. All done bar the floaters.
So, for the first time in decades, I can see clearly in the distance. Really? After the first operation I had the distinct impression that my focus was too close by 0.5 dioptres, which was maybe confirmed by the follow-up examination two weeks later. But now I can see clearly, read email on TV better than I have been able to for months, and I can read text on my computer monitors at the 67 cm distance that you'd expect from 1.5 dioptre glasses.
But sometimes I get the impression that my focus shifts in relatively short periods of time, and that distant things are not as sharp as they could be. From time to time the vision is also smudged, maybe something to do with the eye drops. In addition, the view of each eye doesn't quite correspond; hold a hand in front of one eye and then the other, and the view changes both in shape and position. Take the hand away and I have perfect stereoscopic vision. Clearly it's a good idea to wait for things to settle.
| Thursday, 18 April 2024 | Dereel | |
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Peace?
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Topic: general | Link here |
I don't know why, but the last few weeks have been particularly active, as this diary shows. Clearly the eye operations were one aspect, but only one. Finally, though, it seems as if things are getting quieter. I'm not complaining.
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More eye improvements
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Topic: health, photography | Link here |
It only became clear in the course of the day: now that my left eye has “normal” distance vision, I no longer need optical corrections in my cameras, and I could use the viewfinders in my older film cameras. I could do that before with my right eye, of course, but that's not my dominant eye. It really takes time to get used to the idea.
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Another new cat?
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne has decided that Bruno is lonely, and that we could do with another cat. Maybe she's right; I had thought of the same thing myself.
And what kind of cat? It seems that ragdolls are the flavour of the year, to the point that they keep cropping up unrelated search results. But I chose Bruno, who was exactly what I was looking for. This time it's Yvonne's choice. And she wants a brown Burmese female. But the only one she could find was 3 years old, a little older than I had expected.
Burmese are popular cats, right? And brown is the standard base colour. How difficult can it be to find a kitten? Off to look at Gumtree, which seems to think that I'm in Queensland. Checking through the listings, there were only 6 hits, 3 of them Ragdoll. Another was only adult chocolates, and the last two were the same advertisement: 4 chocolates, 1 lilac, and one brown—male, and sold. So there's really nothing! Am I looking in the wrong place? It seems that brown Burmese are no longer in fashion.
In passing, these kittens are marked (apparently by Gumtree) as being available from 2 April, though the date of birth was 2 February! What responsible breeder gives away kittens at 2 months of age? Not even this one, as it happens—he wants to wait until 27 April, by which time they will be 12 weeks old, the bare minimum. I would expect them to keep them with their mother until they're 16 weeks old, which would be 24 May. But that's academic when they don't have anything that interests us.
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Mowing the lawn again
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Paul Donaghy along today to mow the lawn. He was finished much faster than in the past, as he noted. So the new mower saves money too.
| Friday, 19 April 2024 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 19 April 2024 |
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Removing the blackwood
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Topic: gardening, general, opinion | Link here |
Michael, a colleague of Warrick Pitcher, along today to remove the blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) that has sprung up too close to the house in the last 5 years. Most of his time seems to have been spent loading and unloading his machine and driving it to the site of the tree.
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And then he pulled it out almost without effort:
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The whole thing, including moving the remains of the tree to the west of the property, took 40 minutes. Michael estimates that 100 years ago it would have taken 5 men half a day.
And now the dogs are confused:
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Another haircut
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Topic: general | Link here |
Into town today to have my hair cut. The first time I drove a car in how long? It proved to be 13 February, coincidentally also to have my hair cut. And my car had been so lonely that it didn't want to start, so I had to take Yvonne's car.
And what's it like driving again? A little different from what I expected. Clearly I didn't need glasses any more, and that made itself noticeable at the corner of Grassy Gully Road and Ballarat-Colac Road: there's a 135° junction, and I need to look over my shoulder to see oncoming traffic. In the past the frame of the glasses got in the way. No more! But I'm still not sure whether my stereoscopic vision is working properly. Presumably that will improve over the weeks.
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Still more cats
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Topic: animals, technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne is really dead set on getting a brown Burmese cat. No other colour will do. We could have found a (small) number of chocolates, but no, it must be a brown.
So she asked the seller for photos. And they came by mobile phone, of course. But what I didn't expect was that she couldn't download them. First she had to turn on mobile data and download them slowly and expensively! Only later did I find suggestions:
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More searching in the settings pages brought me to this:
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People, we've had machines with multiple interfaces for 40 years! The routing issues have been resolved. Why should it be necessary to choose things manually? And if so, why is the default the slower and more expensive network? My guess is that Internet and phone network still haven't come to terms with each other.
But that was on Yvonne's phone. On mine I don't even get the choice.
And what do the photos look like? The cat looks more chocolate than brown, at least in some of the photos. Where are they? How do I know? Hidden somewhere in the innards of Android. I still haven't been able to get them out onto a sane medium.
How I hate Android!
After only 10 days of searching I finally managed to get the photos out of the mess that is Android. Pixie (now Mona) is in all of the photos.
Image title: Pixie and Talula 1 Dimensions: 1440 x 1080, 503 kB Display location on map Make a single page with this image Hide this image Make this image a thumbnail Make thumbnails of all images on this page Make this image small again Display small version of all images on this page All images taken on Friday, 19 April 2024, thumbnails All images taken on Friday, 19 April 2024, small Diary entry for Friday, 19 April 2024 Complete exposure details
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Image title: Pixie 1 Dimensions: 1080 x 1440, 509 kB Display location on map Make a single page with this image Hide this image Make this image a thumbnail Make thumbnails of all images on this page Make this image small again Display small version of all images on this page All images taken on Friday, 19 April 2024, thumbnails All images taken on Friday, 19 April 2024, small Diary entry for Friday, 19 April 2024 Complete exposure details
Image title: Pixie 2 Dimensions: 810 x 1080, 204 kB Display location on map Make a single page with this image Hide this image Make this image a thumbnail Make thumbnails of all images on this page Make this image small again Display small version of all images on this page All images taken on Friday, 19 April 2024, thumbnails All images taken on Friday, 19 April 2024, small Diary entry for Friday, 19 April 2024 Complete exposure details
| Saturday, 20 April 2024 | Dereel → Keilor Park → Dereel | Images for 20 April 2024 |
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Power fail?
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
While cooking breakfast today, the lights over the cooktops went out. More investigation showed that another RCD had tripped. Why? There's nothing outside that could have done so, but the water kettle thermostat had just turned it off. Is it on its way out? No idea, but it did demonstrate to us where circuit 5 (from the row of breakers) is: “kitchen”, pantry, lounge room and dining room. So tiwi failed too. Fortunately it came back without too much trouble, but I hate it when computers go down.
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Hello Mona
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Off to Keilor Downs today, a journey of 135 km, to see Helen Weir and her cat Pixie, the one that Yvonne wanted to buy. She's definitely brown and not chocolate:
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But that was after we had found her: she had hidden, apparently when she heard us coming. She's a little timid, but Yvonne likes her, so we took her. Her kennel name is Stacemoh Pixie Lee, but Yvonne decided to call her Mona.
Helen has a number of other cats, and like us 35 years ago, she is interested in red cats. Her current litter has two males:
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They're both male, but they're clearly of different colours. The father is lilac, the mother tortie, but her pedigree shows that she carries chocolate and blue, so it's reasonable to assume that the lighter one is cream, not the most common colour. Of course, it's very difficult to reproduce the colours correctly in a photo, but the difference is obvious.
Back home, picked up a crate from Julie Donaghy and first put her in the bathroom. She wandered around, into Yvonne's office, but then returned to the box, where she stayed for several hours.
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In the evening, I finally pulled her out of the box, and she came with little resistance, and walked around the lounge room. As good as no contact with Bruno. She's clearly suffering from the change, so we put her in the laundry to spend the night.
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Google maps: the curate's egg
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
I've been using Google Maps for navigation even when I don't need it, but clearly today's journey to Keilor Park was a case where I did need it. It got us there with no problems at all, once again taking a short cut round the university which proved to be about 2 minutes shorter than going through Ballarat.
But the user interface! Even by Android standards it's appalling. Today I had:
Send the route to my phone. I would have liked to send it to Yvonne's phone, but it's too secure for that. And I know from past experience that it will forget a route at the drop of a hat. OK, there's this “Pin” button. Press that. Your route is pinned! But how do I get it back again? I couldn't find a way. Pressing the button again just “unpins”. An obvious place would be Directions, but that only gave me places like Geesthacht, Frankfurt (am Main), Brussels and similar. Nothing to do with Keilor Park. Doubtless there's a way to recall it, but I didn't find it, and this interface is supposed to be intuitive.
Part of the problem here is clearly that “there can only be one”. No matter where I look at Google Maps, it remembers it into one single group of places. And even then there are places that I don't recall even looking at, like Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
We thought that we wouldn't have enough cash to pay for Mona, so I went looking for an ATM. Google Maps offers all sorts of things to “Explore” round the destination. Restaurants, hotels, petrol stations, “car places”, whatever that might be, and “More”, which proves to be banks, “coffee”, post offices, bars, groceries and hospitals. Still no ATMs. And banks? All closed, of course: today was Saturday. But without drawing attention to itself, any choice offers an input field. And there I could enter “ATM”. But why so complicated? And this was on a real computer. I don't dare think what it would have been like on a mobile phone.
If I want to get rid of a route and change it for another, what do I do? Last month I established that I should answer “Yes” to the question “Exit Navigation?” to continue navigating. But today I had a complete failure. I had loaded the route from Helen's place to the next ATM, but I didn't really want to go there, just establish where it was. OK, Google, take me home. Exit Navigation? Yes! But it didn't work. And I was already at the freeway, so I turned on it anyway. Only later did I realize that I was on the wrong freeway, the one to Bendigo. OK, Google, take me home. Nice map of the local area, but no directions. I had to stop in the emergency lane, stop and restart the app, and then finally it worked, taking me across a cross-country route that in fact didn't seem any worse than the way we came over the freeway.
Then there are silly things like lack of preferences. Do I get directions in kilometres or miles? Google Maps decides, based on the location, and if I don't like it, I can fix it. Why can't I tell it “forget archaic measurements”?
So on the way home I saw Google Maps from its worst and its best sides. I had to fight to get it to take me home, but when I did, it found a good route that I would probably not have found by myself. All it needs is an interface overhaul.
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hydra crash!
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Back home, I had plenty of photos to process. A good thing that I have despise, which gets through them really quickly.
But then things froze up. Somehow the rdesktop window had focus and wouldn't let go. And vtys hung. Gradually it became clear: I had lost network connectivity. Nothing for it but the Big Red Button. Two crashes in one day!
Not only that, of course. I've been holding off updating the X configuration on hydra until my eyes are OK again. And there's so much piled up: the window managers are a real mess. Managed to get the thing up and stumbling, but of course there was no time left for photo processing. And why did the system freeze? Defective network card? It might be a good time to install the driver for the on-board interface, which might be of better quality. Still more work.
| Sunday, 21 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 21 April 2024 |
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Where's Mona?
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Up first thing this morning to see how Mona was getting on. But I didn't need to open the door to the laundry: it was already open! Clearly we have a door-opener. By contrast, Bruno can't even open the door when it's ajar. Of Mona herself there was nothing to be seen.
Waited a while, but still no Mona. Yvonne spent some time looking under armchairs, and finally found something under the sofa that moved from one position to another the next time she looked. Mona? A little later we heard a sound that could have been a cat. Where was she? Nothing to be seen under the sofa, so we turned it on its back and took a look:
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About the only thing we saw, apart from lots of dirt, was this:
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That's a cable for the recliner at the left. Somebody must have put it under part of the frame. And it didn't work, but that was only because the cable had been disconnected from the power supply.
And there seems to be no way to get further inside the sofa without destroying something. Yvonne was concerned that Mona might have got into a place where she couldn't get out again. But that seemed unlikely given that she had been able to move around before, so we left it. Our biggest concern was that she doesn't seem to have eaten anything since she arrived here.
A few hours later I saw her on the windowsill in the dining room. Looked timid, but she let me approach her and stroke her, purred and seemed relatively happy. But then she was off again, and a too-enthusiastic greeting from the dogs did nothing to make her more confident. And for the first time we heard Bruno hiss.
More gone Mona, until the evening, when she came out again. Let me stroke her, but walked on, and a bit later she was gone again. Clearly this is going to be a long process. Left her in the lounge room (I think) for the night, with the door to laundry (litter tray and food) open.
And her door-opening? That's a serious issue. This stupid house door latch can't be effectively locked from the inside. It can be locked, of course, but you just need to push on the handle to unlock it, and any cat can do that. So we're going to have to replace it. In the meantime Yvonne came up with this mechanism:
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But that proved to be less than convenient, and I'm concerned that she could disable it by pushing sideways on the rod. So we put in something more difficult to move:
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hydra: the other shoe
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Continued with the photo processing so rudely interrupted by the crash yesterday. And it happened again! In each case it happened while I was processing photos on despise.lemis.com, a virtual machine running on hydra.
What caused it? Yesterday I had guessed a network adapter hang, based on the fact that everything else seemed to work, but I couldn't ping the machine, and any attempt to start a program hung, presumably because the PATH includes directories on other machines. But for some reason ARP seemed to work. Is that a counterindication? Other possibilities might include overheating, but I didn't have the issue when processing my house photos, which also maxes out 32 cores. And despise processes 32 images simultaneously, accessing eureka:/Photos via Samba, so it places quite a load on the network.
For the time being I'll assume that it's the network adapter. I'll install the driver for the other interface Real Soon Now, and in the meantime there's just despair (.lemis.com). And that works, though significantly slower.
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The daily Android pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For some reason I found myself using fossil.lemis.com, Yvonne's phone, today. I wanted to access my local index, simplified for mobile telephones. But it wasn't there. How do I enter it? The URL isn't designed even for keyboards, let alone toy glass keyboards.
But there was nothing for it. Try to type http://wwww.lemis.com/grog/index-local.php?page=talipon&header=no into the thing. Yes, says Google, you mean http://www.lemis.com/grog/index-local.php?page=talipon&header=no, right?
No, you idiot, http://wwww.lemis.com/grog/index-local.php?page=talipon&header=no. Don't try to outguess me. But I couldn't find a way to enter the URL.
OK, install firefox, which for some reason wasn't on the phone. Ah, you mean Firefox Fast & Private Browser?
No, I mean firefox. But I couldn't find it. OK, install the Fast & Private Browser, with a tasteful dark blue background. And yes, it works. Is this a different product, or just modern terminology for the old firefox that I know and hate? At least today it showed one advantage over Google Chrome.
| Monday, 22 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 22 April 2024 |
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Acclimatizing Mona
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Up first thing to look for Mona. I didn't find her, but her food bowls were empty, so clearly she has ended her hunger strike.
Later, round midday, she showed up and let me stroke her, and take her in to show her to Yvonne:
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She wasn't overly comfortable, but when we let her go, she came back again:
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So things are on the mend. She keeps disappearing somewhere, and clearly the other animals worry her, but things seem to be improving. In the evening she stayed on my lap for some time, though clearly Bruno's presence worried her.
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Understanding medical bills
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Topic: health, technology | Link here |
Last time I was in Geelong for my eye checkup, Estelle asked me about paying my bill: $500 outstanding. But that should only have been $250, and finally I got round to checking. Yes, deducted far too early on 15 March. It looks for all the world like an organizational slipup.
So what's going on? I received an estimate ahead of time for the sum they're asking, but clearly that was before they contacted Bupa, my medical insurers. OK, print out all the documents I have, not helped by the fact that Google Chrome produces PDFs that my printer doesn't want to know.
Call up Bupa, supply obligatory date of birth (8 digits please) to the voice menu. OK, 19480817. Wrong! I want DDMMYYYY. Why do people do this? There should be a prohibition of using date of birth for authentication. Also, more logically, the membership number. “We have an estimated wait time of between 13 and 19 minutes. Want a call back?”. OK.
70 minutes later I gave up and tried again, this time being routed differently by their voice non-recognition system. First to Daclin ([spelling?]), who transferred me to the correct queue, where the waiting time was down to 7 to 10 minutes. Held on, spoke to Lachie ([spelling?]), who was not very easy to understand (maybe VoIP quality issues somewhere?), but who ultimately told me that there can be up to 4 bills for a procedure: the hospital (paid, that was the $250), the surgeon, assistant doctors and the anaesthetist. In my case no assistant doctors were involved, but Medicare and Bupa only pay up to a fixed amount for the the surgeon and anaesthetist (Medicare 75%, Bupa only 25%), so their bills are outstanding, in more sense than one: my $250 has suddenly increased to nearly $1000, and there's the possibility of another $730 or so for this month's operation. A far cry from what Nick told me four months ago. They're going to look into that.
On the positive side, the whole thing only took 20 minutes, including waiting time. And I note that in December I had the same issues with their voice non-recognition system and the sound quality.
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What colour is Mona?
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
Today was the first day we got any photos of Mona at home. But they showed a surprise:
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In the first photo, she looks like a brown Burmese, but in the second she looks almost chocolate. That's exactly what we saw with the photos that Helen sent her on Friday, and which I still haven't been able to save. But this seems to be an artefact of the camera: she looks brown to then naked eye.
But then I looked at the pedigree. According to that, the sire is lilac, dam is chocolate. There's no way that that combination can lead to a brown offspring. What had the GCCF been thinking to accept that pedigree? But then it occurred to us that we had seen the mother, and she's brown, not chocolate. Still, it's puzzling.
But then there's this photo, from the Wikipedia page:
That's also a brown Burmese. So there's more to this issue than meets the eye.
| Tuesday, 23 April 2024 | Dereel → Geelong → Dereel | Images for 23 April 2024 |
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Mona's progress
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Mona is still not showing her face much, and today wasn't a good day for keeping an eye on her: Yvonne had horsey visitors in the morning, and in the afternoon we were off to Geelong. She has found a hiding place behind this cabinet:
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In the evening she finally came out and was prepared to be stroked. She walked around a bit and then jumped onto Yvonne's lap:
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So it's taking its time, longer than we would have expected from a young cat, but then she has spent her whole life in one house, without dogs.
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Eyes: all done bar the shouting
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Topic: health | Link here |
Off to Geelong again today for what proves to be the final followup on my eye surgery. Once again Bridget, the orthoptist, saw me first, and confirmed that her main purpose was to measure my eyes. Three weeks ago I had asked her to do so before I knew what I was there for.
And the results were interesting. Left eye -0.5 dioptre spherical, +1.0 dioptre cylindrical, at 100°. Exactly what my right eye had three weeks ago. But the right eye has changed (and improved). No spherical correction any more, just +0.5 dioptres cylindrical at 130°. That's very much in line with what I had been observing.
And then an eye scan with this Zeiss device that I haven't been able to identify. It proves to be a scan of the macula, and all came out well. That's good, because I'm overdue for a macular scan.
In to see David, who was also happy. In principle I should come in for a final checkup at the end of May, but given the current status it's likely that he will take an even shorter look and say “yes, everything's OK” and send me on my way again. Not much for a 2 hour drive. So we agreed that we would only make an appointment if something were to change. And he suggested that I have my eyes checked with an optometrist (Specsavers) at the end of May, very much in line with my current appointment for 10 June.
So it's done! All in all, an excellent outcome, and one of the best treatments I've had anywhere. To be recommended.
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Garden flowers in mid-autumn
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
It's a little over a month since the Equinox, the time for the monthly garden flowers, but the weather hasn't been suitable. Finally I got round to it today.
The biggest difference is clearly the removal of the Acacia melanoxylon to the south of the house. Here two weeks ago and last Saturday (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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It's been a while since I looked at our Adenanthos sericeus. Gradually they're growing, after only about 8 years:
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The Banksia serrata has finally produced many flowers:
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So as I suspected, it seems to be a matter of the season. If only the other plants would grow as well.
The Clematis is also sill producing a few autumn flowers:
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And the Grevillea robusta is finally growing, after only five years.
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The Hibiscus rosa-sinensis “Uncle Max” also seems to have recovered from its freezing a couple of years ago:
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The Magnolia that we got last year is losing its leaves, but it has almost no buds. Here this time last year and today:
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I fear I should have put much more fertilizer on it.
The Abutilons are looking good, but they're barely flowering:
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I think that here, too, my laziness with fertilizer is showing.
But this wild bush that we planted a year or so ago suddenly looks almost dead. For some reason I don't seem to have mentioned it before, but it grew happily through the summer, and since last month it seems to have died. Here photos from November, last month and now:
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What causes that? Will it recover? I suspect that Yvonne's heavy-handedness with glyphosate might have something to do with it, but that doesn't explain the other plants growing round the base.
| Wednesday, 24 April 2024 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 24 April 2024 |
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Mona's progress
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Mona is gradually becoming less timid, but the emphasis is on gradually. I was here alone in the morning, since Wednesday is Yvonne's shopping day. Mona came out and inspected the place, wanted to be stroked, and all seemed well.
But then I went into town too, and when I got back, she had retreated behind the bassoon cabinet again. And she didn't come out for hours. By 20:00 I was getting worried and looked for her everywhere (how often have I done that with various cats?). Climbed up on a footstool and looked down behind the cabinets in the corners. Nothing.
But Bruno, who had joined in on the fun, suddenly hissed: Mona was right in front of him in this part of the bassoon cabinet:
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Extracted her, moved Bruno to another room, and she stayed with us all evening. She's becoming much more friendly now, and if it weren't for the other animals, the adaptation period would probably be over.
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Next doctor's appointment
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Into town today to visit Kontoku Shimokawa to hear the results of Yvonne's latest pancreas MRI. Things didn't start off well: it took longer to put the animals away, while driving out of the garage I managed to knock over the air compressor that I had carefully placed behind the car, the door opener remote control didn't work, so I had to go and get the spare, and while I arrived in front of the practice exactly at 14:00, by the time I found a parking place and walked back, it was 14:05. Never mind, Kon always lets us wait—except for today, where he was 3 minutes early. He had put in another patient in between, so we had to wait after all.
Never mind, says Yvonne, all is OK, no change since last time. We could have left, but since he had been alerted that we were both there, we went in anyway. Gap in pancreas has increased, the question is when to have surgery. Some time in the next 5 years; after age 80 he wouldn't want to perform surgery, which would take up to 12 months to recover from. Yvonne is clearly worried (“give me three years and I'll be happy”). I don't buy that. Clearly we're going to have some discussions. The question is whether her other ailments might make the point moot. For now she has another MRI appointment in 3 months.
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Remote control battery change
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Why couldn't I open the garage door with the remote control today? Clearly the battery was flat. That's not surprising after 9 years, but how do you change it? The casing clearly comes apart, but there's no indication how it's intended to be opened.
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I still don't know. I opened it by pressing a screwdriver between the two halves, slightly damaging the casing, but that doesn't seem right. Maybe it's intended to be opened somewhere round this buckle, but I don't see where:
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Still, it works, and nobody will ever notice the slight damage.
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Bloody AAMI!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Yet another nonsense email from AAMI today, a reply to my message of 12 April:
I have attached the screenshot showing that your wife willingly shared your vehicle's registration when asked by our client to claim insurance.
The screenshot attached shows where you confirmed the accident.
The evidence holds you at fault. Please share your insurance details or pay the demands in full before we escalate the claim for further recovery.
What kind of nonsense is that? Of course we “willingly shared the vehicle's registration”. Why not? And the (second) screenshot to which he referred is part of my diary entry for 18 October 2022, clearly stating “The damage? Nothing visible”. OK, Nitin, tell me what makes me at fault, and how it explains the various damages that Helen Miller claims to have been cause, from memory including scratches along the side of the car. Where's the assessor's report?
The best thing is to go along. Escalate the claim. Nobody with any sense is going to take this one to court.
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No weather!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Checking the weather readings from my weather station this evening. None! I had forgotten to restart the application after tiwi lost power on Saturday.
OK, start it. “Can't find libmysqlclient.so.18”. Damn, which version is it? I've been messing around with these things so long that I don't recall which I was using. In principle it would be in ~/src/weather/WH-1080-tiwi/, but there is no such directory, just directories with other system names and versions going back 12 years:
=== grog@tiwi (/dev/pts/13) ~ 26 -> l -rt ~/src/weather/WH-1080*/wh1080
-rwxr-xr-x 1 grog lemis 62,179 5 Jul 2012 /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-amd64/wh1080
-rwxr-xr-x 1 grog lemis 54,368 29 Nov 2020 /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-dereel/wh1080
-rwxr-xr-x 1 grog lemis 52,741 11 Sep 2022 /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-eureka/wh1080
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root lemis 61,048 23 Oct 2023 /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-lagoon/wh1080
-rwxr-xr-x 1 grog lemis 54,312 9 Nov 14:53 /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-hydra/wh1080
-rwxr-xr-x 1 grog lemis 52,788 24 Apr 22:15 /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-teevee/wh1080
WH-1080-teevee/ maybe? No, that didn't work either. OK, rebuild the executable. “No mysql/mysql.h”. Oh.
More messing around. There is a file /usr/local/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient.so.18. What does ldconfig -m say? Accepts it, works. Why did I have to do that? Probably because /usr/local/lib/mysql/ is a symlink to the directory on eureka.
Done? No, I had blown away /home/grog/src/weather/WH-1080-teevee/wh1080. How do I get it back again? From a backup (220 GB of compressed tar)? That could take hours. Rebuild? It doesn't work on tiwi, but it does on eureka. And finally I was able to get the thing running again. Only half an hour of work.
I really should tidy up this mess.
| Thursday, 25 April 2024 | Dereel | |
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Another catch-up day
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Topic: general | Link here |
Somehow the last few weeks seem to have been hectic; there has always been something to do. Finally things are over, though. No doctor's visits for a few weeks, cat gradually settling in. And a mound of email to work through.
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Mona's progress
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Topic: animals | Link here |
No Mona to be seen today. Petra Gietz was here, and of course she wanted to see her, but she remained behind the bassoon cabinet all day. It wasn't until the evening that she finally came out. Things seem to be getting better, though. I held her while Yvonne took the dogs past us, and though she tried to escape, it wasn't too hard, and I held her until the dogs were gone again. Then I let her go, and she didn't disappear immediately. So things do seem to be improving.
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Installing the Realtek driver
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As planned, installed the net/realtek-re-kmod driver for the Realtek 8125 2.5 Gb/s NIC. The installation message was surprising:
Add the following lines to your /boot/loader.conf
to override the built-in FreeBSD re(4) driver.
if_re_load="YES"
if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re.ko"
How is that going to work? If the driver is built into the kernel, you can't load another driver. And of course that is what happened:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/5) ~ 4 -> kldload if_re.ko
kldload: can't load if_re.ko: module already loaded or in kernel
I had thought that it was a separate driver. While searching, found this page, which, for the latest update, states “Note: the driver is still unstable (crash or hang) on some cards/machines”. Other bugs fixed in the last year are also less than encouraging: “fix kernel panic when generating MAC address", “fix panic when kldloaded outside of loader”.
Not quite what I want in a production machine. And to even attempt to load the module, I will have to reboot, with all the untidy ends that that entails. Even then, it's not clear that the module will load; maybe I'll need to build a kernel without the re driver. So for the time being I'll leave things as they are.
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More Microsoft pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Can I find other ways to avoid the hangs I had over the weekend? For reasons I don't understand, despise.lemis.com tries to access the eureka:/dump file system when I run DxO PhotoLab. What do I need /dump for? For backups, in principle. But this is a VM, and it's so much easier to back it up (and restore it if necessary) from behind the scenes rather than running a Microsoft backup program. So umount it, or whatever Microsoft calls it.
What does Microsoft call it? No idea. I went through likely searches and drew a blank. Then played around with the file manager or whatever it's called, the one that with the right clicks will display a graphical representation of file systems and “folders”. Right click. Disconnect! That's the word. But even then, I couldn't find any hits from Microsoft on windows disconnect share.
Will that be enough? It will certainly save time waiting for the drive to spin up. Clearly I should move the /Photos file system to hydra. But that will require considerable restructuring, and in principle I want a 12 TB or more SSD, which is not yet practicable. So maybe I should consider some symlink mess.
Where's Vinum when you need it? Dead and gone, unfortunately. Yes, I could almost certainly do something similar with ZFS, but that requires more learning than I'm prepared to do.
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The sting in the tail of the symlink
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Finally got round to writing up my monthly garden flower page for this month. The big difference was removing the Acacia melanoxylon (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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How do I align them? I have scripts that align photos taken on a single day, but these are a week apart. And to add to the annoyance, my scripts really assume that the build directory and the directory for the day's files are on the same file system, and here they are not, so I need to use symlinks. OK, after setting up for one day, I had:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka 37 -> rm newlaundry-door-*=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka 38 -> pd
~/Photos/20240420/C /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) ~/Photos/20240420/C 39 -> for i in laundry-door-?.tiff; do l $i; ln -s $i /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka/new$i; done
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,918 21 Apr 10:51 laundry-door-0.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,910 21 Apr 10:52 laundry-door-1.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,404 21 Apr 10:52 laundry-door-2.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,052 21 Apr 10:53 laundry-door-3.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,224 21 Apr 10:53 laundry-door-4.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,184 21 Apr 10:53 laundry-door-5.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,454 21 Apr 10:54 laundry-door-6.tiff=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) ~/Photos/20240420/C 40 -> pd
/photowork/Hugin-build-eureka ~/Photos/20240420/C=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka 41 -> l newlaundry-door-*
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,072 13 Apr 08:35 newlaundry-door-0.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,926 13 Apr 08:35 newlaundry-door-1.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,140 13 Apr 08:35 newlaundry-door-2.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,456 13 Apr 08:35 newlaundry-door-3.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,268 13 Apr 08:35 newlaundry-door-4.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,984 13 Apr 08:35 newlaundry-door-5.tiff
lrwxr-xr-x 1 grog wheel 19 25 Apr 15:29 newlaundry-door-6.tiff -> laundry-door-6.tiff
Huh? The files are the same as the old ones, dated 13 April. How did that happen? How about copying them?
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) ~/Photos/20240420/C 55 -> for i in laundry-door-?.tiff; do cp -p $i /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka/newer$i; done=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) ~/Photos/20240420/C 56 -> pd
/photowork/Hugin-build-eureka ~/Photos/20240420/C=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/28) /photowork/Hugin-build-eureka 59 -> l newerlaundry-door-*
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,918 21 Apr 10:51 newerlaundry-door-0.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,910 21 Apr 10:52 newerlaundry-door-1.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,404 21 Apr 10:52 newerlaundry-door-2.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,052 21 Apr 10:53 newerlaundry-door-3.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,224 21 Apr 10:53 newerlaundry-door-4.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,961,184 21 Apr 10:53 newerlaundry-door-5.tiff
-rwxr--r-- 1 grog wheel 120,960,454 21 Apr 10:54 newerlaundry-door-6.tiff
That looks right, and it worked. But what went wrong with the symlinks?
FOOL! Unlike ln, ln -s copies names, not inode numbers. In this case, instead of linking to ~/Photos/20240420/C/laundry-door-0.tiff (for example), it linked to laundry-door-0.tiff (in the destination directory). Normally this would have failed, but I already had files named laundry-door-0.tiff to laundry-door-5.tiff (but not laundry-door-6.tiff) in the destination directory, so I just created a symlink to the files already in that directory. Normally they would all have failed.
| Friday, 26 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 26 April 2024 |
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More noodle cooking time adjustments
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Fake Phat thai for breakfast today, for which I use rice noodles such as these from Jack Hua:
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They specify to soak in hot water for 5 to 8 minutes, but I've been cooking them for 2 minutes, like other such noodles. Too long, I think. Today I cooked for 1½ minutes, and maybe that's also too long. More experimentation needed.
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Mona progress
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Topic: animals | Link here |
It's taking its time, but gradually Mona is becoming less timid. She comes out in the evening, when the other animals aren't there, and gradually she's coming to terms with Bruno, who spent a lot of time following her at a distance:
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She has also made friend with her first dog:
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But she's still concerned about Larissa and Elena. When she sees them, she takes refuge behind the bassoon cabinet. That, too, will pass.
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Preparing for fvwm3, again
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
One of the issues with hydra is that the X configuration is a mess. Part of that is things like font size, and it's a good thing that I postponed until after my cataract operations: I think I can now choose a significantly smaller text size. Even the issue with the window decorations is no longer so important, though it's still on the small size.
The real question is the window manager. I was quite happy with fvwm2, but X no longer is. And all the instructions say that fvwm3 is a drop-in replacement, but that's not even close. It makes a complete mess with my configuration files, but it's too polite to complain.
OK, yes, there are indications that it only accepts one kind of colour definition, “colorsets”, but so far I haven't found any clear indication of how to convert them. And then this page goes on to discuss monitor layout and definitions. I have always had one window manager per monitor, but it's not even clear whether fvwm3 supports this configuration.
All would be less of a problem if it would at least complain if it finds something that it doesn't like. But so far it has been completely quiet, and there's no explanation as to why it doesn't include my terminal definition files.
| Saturday, 27 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 27 April 2024 |
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AAMI redux
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
So despite everything, AAMI claims have not gone away. Time to prepare for the next step. They really have nothing to go on.
To summarize:
On 18 October 2022 I backed into Helen Miller's car, which she had parked in the blind spot outside the garage. Contact was (plastic) bumper to (plastic) bumper. Damage was non-existent, but Helen claimed to see something. All I have is this photo of the bumper on my car, where it connected with her bumper:
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The same evening, Helen asked Yvonne for the registration number of my car. She didn't mention the incident to me at all, although I saw her a number of times.
On 8 November 2022 I received two apparently identical letters from AAMI, claiming that I had damaged Helen's car. No explanation of the damage. Helen was there at the time, so I asked her about it. She said “you're insured, right, so the insurers pay”. I wanted to examine the alleged damage more carefully, but she refused to let me, and she also refused to let me take photos, though I got a couple as she was driving off. I replied to AAMI denying liability and asking for evidence, to which I received no reply.
On 3 April 2023 I received another letter from AAMI, enclosing an invoice for replacing the the rear bumper. No reference to my letter of 8 November. I replied again reminding them of the letter and asking for proof of my liability.
On 17 April 2024, after 4 reminders, I received a reply from AAMI claiming to have tried to call me on a different number from the one I gave them. They included a total of 18 images, all with missing Exif data, and without comment. At least half of them were unrelated to the incident. Some showed minor damage to the rear of the car. I replied reminding me of the phone number and asking for correct photos and a description of what damage was done.
On 27 April 2023 I received another email, again claiming to have tried the wrong phone number, and supplying no further information. I replied reminding them that they had the correct number on record.
After that, silence for almost exactly a year. The message was so badly written that at first I thought it was spam. I replied asking them to answer my outstanding questions.
On 23 April 2024 I received an email with two screen shots: a Facebook page showing where Yvonne gave her the registration number of my car, and a partial display of my initial diary entry on the subject, the one where I wrote “Sorry, Helen, I didn't do any damage. If you want me to pay, get proof”. And that, they say, proves that I am to blame.
Are there any clues in the photos AAMI sent me on 17 April 2023? Many are clearly not related, and there are photos of the back of the car that look perfectly normal:
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But then she has another photo that shows a clear scratch in the same place, just above the exhaust pipe:
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That's strange on a plastic bumper. But how could it have come from the incident? My bumper is convex, and it couldn't have caused a scratch like that, especially not in concave parts of her bumper.
But wait, there's more! Here it is again:
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But that's on the other side! At first I thought that it was laterally inverted, but clearly the scratch is in a different place.
And then there's this one:
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What's that mess on the bumper? It looks like paint that has flaked off, and it's not on the other photos. Is it even the same car? When were the photos taken?
Still, I have a couple of photos of the car that I took while she was driving off on 8 November 2022:
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Is there any damage to be seen there? Yes!
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The one on the left looks more like an indentation from a pointed object. So there were really two separate scratches on the bumper, one on each side. Coming even closer,
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There are indents on the bottom of each scratch, as if something with a hard bumper had driven straight into the back of the car. There's no way I could have caused even one of them, and absolutely no way that I could have caused both. For me the case is clear: Helen is trying to get me to pay for damage done by somebody else, probably in a car park. There's no way she could convince anybody with a brain of that.
But why didn't I see the damage when I bumped into her car? There are a number of possibilities. Maybe it didn't happen until later. I wasn't given a chance to look at the car more closely on 8 November. Is that the reason why? It's interesting that one of the photos she provided does not appear to show any damage:
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But later damage alone wouldn't explain things. She went to her insurance as soon as the incident happened. Has it maybe happened earlier, and she had somehow covered it over.
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More fvwm fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Spent a lot of time reading documentation for fvwm, without coming to any real conclusion. It does seem that I can have one window manager per screen, but clearly there's a question as to whether I want to. It seems that the -v option might give me more insights into what fvwm3 doesn't like about my configuration file, though.
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The cruft of ages
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Where do you find documentation about software? Man pages, of course. But:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/5) ~ 9 -> man fvwm3
No manual entry for fvwm3
Oh.
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/5) ~ 10 -> fvwm3 --help
usage: fvwm3 [-d display] [-f cfgfile] [-c cmd] [-I vis-id | -C vis-class] [-l colors [-L|A|S|P] ...] [-r] [OTHER OPTIONS] ...
-A: allocate palette
...
Try 'man fvwm3' for more information.
Huh? Is it there or not? Where is it? A
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/10) ~ 50 -> locate -i fvwm3
...
/usr/local/share/man/man1/fvwm3.1.gz
/usr/local/share/man/man1/fvwm3all.1.gz
/usr/local/share/man/man1/fvwm3commands.1.gz
/usr/local/share/man/man1/fvwm3menus.1.gz
/usr/local/share/man/man1/fvwm3styles.1.gz
Isn't that in my MANPATH? No!
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/5) /home/grog 15 -> echo $MANPATH
/home/local/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/local/bitkeeper/man:/usr/libexec/bitkeeper/man
They've changed the location of Ports Collection man pages, and I didn't find out. But then the references to Bitkeeper date to my time at MySQL, over 17 years ago.
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Mona's acclimatization
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Mona and Bruno are continually coming closer. Here they are at top left and bottom right:
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The good news is that she doesn't go into hiding any more when the dogs go past.
| Sunday, 28 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 28 April 2024 |
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Finally a chili sauce?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
You can buy chili sauces on every street corner, many kinds. But I can't find one that I like, especially for the eggs in huevos rancheros. There are things like Sriracha, which are almost only (almost too) hot, with no additional flavour. Then there's Tabasco, which has been round for ever. It's not really a sauce, and if it were, it would also be too hot. Then there are various sambals, potentially also too hot, and frequently with dried prawns and things that limit the usefulness outside South-East Asian food. And then there are things like chili paste, some of which aren't bad, but the one I have (from Lee Kum Kee) is too salty.
And then there's bibimjang, a Korean sauce intended for bibimbap. I made it over a year ago and was pleasantly surprised. But it, too, is limited in its usefulness due to the sesame seeds and sesame oil.
OK, remove them. And how about that, without the sesame, it doesn't taste bad. I used it today, and the recipe is here. It may evolve.
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Why am I losing weight?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
I've been following my weight since March 2023, when we got a second set of scales. The initial results were encouraging: round 87 to 88 kg, corresponding to a BMI of a little over 23, and considerably less than the 90 kg that I had expected.
And not surprisingly, it has stayed that way, though the day-to-day fluctuations were greater than I expected, up to 1 kg per day in each direction. Until my first cataract operation, after which it dropped below 87 kg and stayed that way, dropping even further. Today it hit 84.7 kg.
Why? That's a drop of over 3%. Is it indicative of some problem? I don't feel in any way different, and potentially it has happened to me before when I wasn't weighing myself. Off to search the web, with a Google search coming up with comforting information like “Cancer, even when other symptoms are not present”. But that led to this page, which included the information that it could be a cause of loss of appetite, not loss of weight.
I have an appointment with Paul Smith in 3 weeks. I'll discuss it with him then; in the meantime spent some time copying the data into the computer and investigating plot programs once again. gnuplot may no longer be the best choice (if it ever was), but it has the advantage that I sort of know it.
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Mona's acclimatization
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Mona continues to come closer to the family:
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It's always Bruno approaching Mona, and they're careful about their distances. This evening he jumped up onto Yvonne's lap while in the armchair, only to find Mona already there. Both looked surprised, but made no noise, and Bruno retreated. It was a different matter with Elena: she came up to me while Mona was on my lap. Mona departed, hissing and growling, but didn't go far, and she came back when Lena was gone.
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Paella again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Paella for dinner again tonight. Spent some time reading up various recipes, and discovered a claim that it should be made with “Fumet”. That doesn't sound Spanish to me, but a bit of trawling through Wikipedia brought me to the Spanish entry Fumet, clearly a borrowing from the French fumet de poisson. And the recipes showed that it was based on shellfish, not fish.
Do we have something like that in the pantry? Yes!
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It proves that we have had it for a while:
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How much do we need?
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Aaargh! These horrible spoons again! What's a « petite cuillerée »? A teaspoon? Saltspoon? Off to look online, where it seems that the fumet de crustacés is no longer made. But clearly the concentrations would be the same as for fumet de poisson (fish), which they do still make. And once again no information as to the quantities.
But then I found this page, from the maker, which offers 750 g professional packs. Still no direct quantities, but the label states that it will make up to 50 l of fumet. In other words, a round 15 g per litre.
Finally! Put 18 g in the water, and it worked well. Yvonne knows this recipe well, of course, but she said that it tasted particularly good this time.
It wasn't until later that I discovered that I have been here before. At the time I guessed 16 g/l, close enough to today's results. That still doesn't tell me the volume of a petite cuillerée, of course. See if I care. The weight corresponds to 2.5 g.
| Monday, 29 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 29 April 2024 |
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Extracting photos from Android MMS
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Topic: technology, photography, animals, opinion | Link here |
I've been searching for a method to extract photos from MMS messages on Android for at least 10 days, when Helen Weir sent us some photos of Pixie (now Mona). All seemed to be non-starters: the instructions didn't match reality, or they just didn't work. Or they required installation of apps that were incomprehensible in their use, or required infrastructure that I didn't want (why do you need Google Drive to copy a file?).
Clearly the files must be on the device somewhere, and though text appears to be stored in a database, I can't imagine that to be the case for images. But all my searching suggests that it's hidden from me, probably in the /Android hierarchy.
What about the file manager? No, it doesn't believe in images in MMS messages, just lots of advertising. A complete loss.
But then I found this page, which is really trying to sell an app, but contains the information:
OK, this looks like:
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After long pressing on an image, a “down the drain” and a slingshot image appear. Pressing on the “down the drain” image produces:
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I've saved it! But where? What are “Messages stored media”? The “file manager” still can't find it. Looking through the visible parts of the hierarchy shows that they were in /Pictures/Images, and I was able to retrieve them with normal FTP (with an add-on app, of course).
So, in summary:
Isn't modern technology wonderful? In the bad old days we had to use cp.
There's also another page which may contain useful information.
In passing, it's amazing how much these images appear to have been modified. They're only 1080×1440. Is that the original? My guess is that Android politely reduced the image size, in the process stripping most metadata. All that's left are the (correct) GPS coordinates.
Why that? Yes, in these uncertain times privacy is a concern for many people. But the date and time don't really fall into this category. But arguably GPS metadata do. And all metadata is stripped with the exception of the GPS coordinates! What kind of sense does that make? Of course, this could be an accident: when I tried almost exactly this last month, it stripped all metadata.
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Security, 2024 style
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Message purporting to be from Linkt today, exhorting me to beware of scams, and offering good advice:
Online safety tips for your account:Don’t click on links in an SMS.Replace your password with a passphrase. A passphrase is made up of four or more random words with special characters making them harder to guess.
Ah, and that's not a password? Many of my passwords are multiple words, and many systems refuse them because they contain blanks. And make sure to include special characters! “Braindead security recommendations” is clearly easy to crack. Still, the thought is there.
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AAMI again!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Somehow AAMI don't give up. Another mail message today:
In your email, we noted that you are disputing damages to our insured vehicle.
Please provide a qualified assessor report supporting your dispute, confirming damages are inconsistent with the impact.
Well, the good news is that after less than 1½ years they have finally understood that I dispute the claim. But what's this nonsense about me having to provide an assessor report? How could I even do so at this stage? I should have asked him to send me the old, now replaced bumper, but it didn't occur to me at the time.
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Latest Academia mail
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Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
Seen in my inbox today:
47 ND 28-04-2024 To grudgled@gma ( 940) Academia.edu ND Have you coauthored a paper with Po Box?
Somehow that's related to a request to Claim “Treasurer” for your profile. There, too, Po Box appears. I'm sure that they've sucked “PO Box” out of the document and interpreted it as a name. And of course, „Po“ is a polite word for “arse” in German.
| Tuesday, 30 April 2024 | Dereel | |
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Mona progress
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Mona continues to settle in, but not the way we expected. She's coming closer and closer to Bruno, but they're not friends yet. And she's still terrified of the dogs; that will take much longer than I expected. Kittens have always taken to them very quickly.
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Security, 2024 style
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Mail from eBay today. I have a second account that I set up for some purpose, and they've noticed that I don't use it. Can they shut it down?
No, I think not. I don't know what I might need it for, but it's convenient. All I need to do is log in.
I failed. Password wrong. No worries: they'll send me a reset link. Got that, went to the login page. Enter user ID. OK. Enter new password. It's not strong enough! Must contain at least one digit and one special character to make it easier to crack. I tried, in sequence,
No security!
Stup1d concept of security!
Stup1d c0ncept of s3curity!
Stup1d c0ncept of s3cur1ty! 1d10t5!
And it kept producing the same message. After a while I realized: Ha, ha, only joking. Just couldn't be bothered to clear the message.
OK, continue. With Google? No, of course not. That's putting all your eggs in one basket. But there was no other way! Maybe that was because the email address was with Gmail, but that's no excuse. A good thing that the account doesn't have access to any of my financial details.
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NetBSD again
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Topic: technology | Link here |
I have a bug report on makefs, a program ported to FreeBSD from NetBSD. It works under NetBSD, but the FreeBSD version creates invalid file systems under some circumstances.
OK, let's compare what FreeBSD and NetBSD do. For that I need a NetBSD system, and the last one I had (a virtual machine) is ancient. OK, install a new virtual machine. How hard can it be?
The biggest problem was getting installation media. For some reason, both firefox and fetch failed early in the download. In the end I downloaded it to my external server and then copied it from there. But why did a direct download fail?
After that, setting up a VM and installing was a piece of cake. Of course, I still have a basic machine, but it was refreshing how easy it all was. Somehow that happens too infrequently nowadays.
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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