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| Greg's diary |
| December 2023 |
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| Friday, 1 December 2023 | Dereel → Napoleons → Dereel | Images for 1 December 2023 |
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Huevos a la Tigre, another try
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Another attempt at huevos a la tigre today, mainly to use up some cooked potatoes. I also didn't have any capsicum, so instead of the 30 g of tomatoes and 20 g capsicum I used 50 g of tomatoes and 14 g of frozen and sad chile poblano. I also fried in lard (a total of 21 g) instead of oil and used a total of 114 g of potatoes. And as planned, I used 5 g of salt.
The result? Once again things stuck in the pan:
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From a flavour viewpoint, I think the lard made the difference. And to my surprise, the chilis were very much in evidence. They're the same ones and the same quantities that I use in nasi goreng, where I barely notice them, but here they were almost overpowering. Was that an individual chili or a basic difference in the cooking?
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What use Australia Post tracking?
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Topic: rant, general, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been following the progress of the monitor that I bought last week, of course. Australia Post keeps me informed. Scorptec told me that it was sent on Monday, but AusPost said that it was sent on Tuesday at 7:33, not a likely time for a commercial company to send things. It later decided that it had received the shipping information on Monday afternoon, and had approved it as “ready for processing” after only a little over 2 hours. They then stored it for 1½ days before actually processing it and sending it to Delacombe, where it arrived less than 5 hours later on Thursday morning—the only transport so far.
OK, from Delacombe to Napoleons (or “Napoleon”, as AusPost insist on calling it) is only a few minutes. But no, they stored it until this morning, another 29 hours:
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Still not “It's coming today”. That's obvious because the line at the left is still grey; don't pay any attention to the text. And then I saw:
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This at 12:21 today. What confusion can cause them to think that they can deliver yesterday? Of course, that was perfectly possible on Tuesday, but today? And though the item was just round the corner, they come up with this wildly divergent delivery schedule.
Of course, I recognized the second-last entry: “transferred to post office for collection”. That means that it's ready for pickup! And sure enough, 20 minutes later I got email:
From bounce-1441751_HTML-415824451-32607653-10784680-529316@bounce.notifications.auspost.com.au
Fri Dec 1 12:42:34 2023
...
From: Australia Post <noreply@notifications.auspost.com.au>
Subject: Your parcel is ready for collection from the Post Office
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 19:42:28 -0600
Look at that time! It's UTC-6, corresponding to North American Central Time, and 17 hours behind the correct time! And that from a company that claims to be Australian! Maybe that's the background of the “30 November” claim: Australia Post doesn't know where in the world they are. But adjusting for time zone offset, the message was sent 6 seconds before I received it, and the updated tracking showed that it had been waiting in “Napoleon” since 11:37, long before they gave me the updated delivery estimate.
What's wrong with Australia Post? Clearly their tracking system is so far from reality that it's almost useless. Off to Napoleons, where of course the monitor was waiting.
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Still more anniversaries
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Topic: history, opinion | Link here |
Summer's here. And this means that I have been keeping this diary for a total of 31 years in two periods: 1 January 1963 to 30 September 1970 (7¾ years) and 1 September 2000 to 30 November 2023 (23¼ years). Coincidentally those two times are also exactly a ratio of 1:3.
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Continued hydra pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So where am I now with X on hydra? I still don't get the correct Alt key bindings. Yesterday I concluded that it's probably an xterm issue, not a bash issue, and found a couple of ways to compare settings. So I started with that today.
Tried xrdb and appres. xrdb was particularly useful. Comparing the output from eureka and hydra, I got:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/22) ~/public_html/Day/20231201 90 -> diff -wu eureka-xrdb-query hydra-xrdb-query
--- eureka-xrdb-query 2023-12-01 16:39:20.844134000 +1100
+++ hydra-xrdb-query 2023-12-01 16:44:04.662557000 +1100
@@ -15,10 +15,6 @@
*VT100*color5: #8000f0
*VT100*color6: #0080ff
*VT100*color7: BlanchedAlmond
-*VT100*utf8: 1
-*VT100*eightBitInput: false
-*VT100*eightBitControl: false
-*VT100*eightBitOutput: true
URxvt.background: BlanchedAlmond
URxvt.color1: #f00000
URxvt.color2: #ffffff
hydra is missing exactly the entries that I need! No wonder it doesn't work. But I put in those entries—didn't I? Off to check. Oh. Yes, I put them in ~/.Xdefaults-hydra, but on the wrong system. In principle I've had all the ~/.Xdefaults* files on eureka (thus the appended system name), but with the migration to hydra I've changed that, and I had a separate file on hydra. As a result, the settings didn't get applied. Copy the file, reload, and all was well.
So, a waste of time? No, I've learnt a lot. Apart from these three programs, there is output that I hadn't expected, and which I still need to consider:
! screen 0 resources
#if SCREEN_NUM == 0
#endif
! screen 1 resources
#if SCREEN_NUM == 1
#endif
! screen 2 resources
#if SCREEN_NUM == 2
#endif
! screen 3 resources
#if SCREEN_NUM == 3
#endif
So possibly I can add further information for individual screens. Things like window size come to mind.
Also, appres outputs lots of font information that I might be able to use to set fonts on larger screens, most obviously the new 3820×2160 screen: even the current “Huge” setting will be barely legible there.
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hydra: tidy up?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So gradually my problems with X on hydra are resolving themselves. Time for another one to crop up: Xcompose. While doing normal work, tried to enter a composed character (something like ö). Instead I got ¨o, the characters entered.
Bad keyboard mapping? No, the same key (marked Compose) on each keyboard was mapped to Multi_Key. More investigation. Do I need additional settings? Checked when ~/.XCompose was referenced. Yes, when I start an xterm. But not when I start an Emacs.
OK, try to hunt this down. What happens if I get an Emacs running on eureka to open a window on hydra? Works. What happens if I use a keyboard on eureka to talk to an Emacs running on hydra? Doesn't work. Everything points towards the version of Emacs installed on hydra.
Once again off searching the web. It seems that it's a well-known issue. Pressing the Multi_key produces this response in the *Messages* buffer:
This page gives some ideas, notably the environment:<Multi_key> is undefined
XMODIFIERS=@im=none emacs
But that doesn't work; it would have surprised me if it did. OK, search for Multi key is undefined, also without useful results. And gradually I ran out of ideas. Other pages that refer to the problem are here and here.
So what do I do? More unsolved mysteries. About the best thing is that I have a workaround, but I really want to move my monitors and cut over more completely to hydra.
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What use ChatGPT?
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Topic: rant, technology, opinion | Link here |
Everybody's talking about ChatGPT as if it were taking over the world. But what I see is a very poor solution for the Turing Test. Quora uses it for some answers. I don't know why. Sometimes they're correct, usually stodgily written, and frequently amazingly incorrect. Here a couple over the last few days:
ChatGPT: The longitude of a place can be calculated based on the difference between the local time and the time at the Prime Meridian (0° longitude) at Greenwich, UK. Since the local time is 8:00 pm and the time at the Prime Meridian (Greenwich) is 12:00 am, the difference is 8 hours. Therefore, the longitude of the place is approximately -8° (negative because it is west of the Prime Meridian). It's important to keep in mind that this is only an approximation, as the Earth's rotation is not uniform and there are also time zones. Additionally, this calculation assumes that the place is not observing daylight saving time.
Real answer: No answer possible. This is a silly Indian school assignment that has no relation to reality.
Comment: Not only is the answer based on a wrong view of the world, the calculations are incorrect. I've seen this before: ChatGPT doesn't seem to be able to count.
ChatGPT: Both Bangladesh and Kazakhstan use the UTC +6 time zone because they are in the same time zone. The time zone is based on the average solar time at the 90th meridian east of the Greenwich Observatory, which passes through both countries. It is not based on their longitudinal proximity to each other.
Real answer: Because the countries choose it that way. ChatGPT is just plain wrong in claiming that the 90° meridian passes through Kazakhstan, which extends from 46° to 87°, and which is almost all west of 78°. And that was the whole point of the question. Time in the west of Kazakhstan is almost 3 hours ahead of solar time.
| Saturday, 2 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 2 December 2023 |
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CAPTCHA: How to chase away customers
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Topic: rant, technology, opinion | Link here |
A lot of the useful web pages recently have come from Stackexchange. Sounds like a good idea to sign up with them.
Oh. Are you a bot? Please look at this CAPTCHA and tell me which of the images contains a crosswalk.
No, stackexchange, I'm not a bot. I'm also not a US American, so I'm not really sure what a “crosswalk” is. But I am sure that I find it insulting. So what if 100 bots sign up for stackexchange? There are other, less obtrusive ways to deal with them (rate limiting, for example). So I haven't signed up.
I've been ranting about CAPTCHAs for nearly 15 years, and I still don't know why people use them. Yes, I understand the idea: to stop servers being bombarded by messages from bots. But that doesn't explain why they're used mainly for signup purposes. I have even had to fill one out to buy things online. Surely the people who have something to sell don't want to chase away their customers. And if 100 bots come and buy something, fine, as long as their payment credentials are OK.
My guess is that the people who do this kind of thing haven't really thought it through. There's still this big discrepancy between real life and the world view of a “webmaster” (though that's becoming an old, worn-out magic word).
I'm collecting these rants. This one is here.
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Australia Post: How did we do?
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Topic: rant, technology, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Australia Post today: “How was your recent delivery?”.
Ah, a chance to say what I thought. Or at least, that's what they said. It took several minutes before their web site responded, not once, but twice. But finally it did. Ease of collection: 0. Why? Oh, they didn't want to know that, though I had had a chance to enter some text earlier on. Try again? Sure, and this time I was able to enter the reference to my rant.
Why hadn't they noticed that I had already answered? Race condition, it seems. Much later I tried again, and got the message that I had already responded. More sloppy programming.
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Chasing down the Emacs bug
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Topic: technology | Link here |
So the only big problem with X on hydra seems to be the Emacs Multi_key problem. I've established that it's related to the version of Emacs installed on hydra.
OK, how about building from source? It takes a while, but at the least it could help me find what option might cause it. OK, “make all”. Turned to other tasks and looked at the screen a few minutes later. Stopped. What went wrong there? As far as I can see, nothing. hydra had built the entire Emacs port on 220 seconds! And for some reason I didn't need to build any dependencies.
Does it work? I don't know. I didn't have much time today.
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Shepherd's pee revisited
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Topic: food and drink, history, opinion | Link here |
Sixty years ago I was at school in Somerset. I spent my holidays in Netherton House, a holiday home in Combeinteignhead. The day was a Sunday, and I, along with “Laddie” (Ladipko Nylander) received a visit from two of the girls there. One was Régine Ruiz, a French girl who had turned my head some time before. And at lunch she ordered ”Shepherd's pee”. We never decided whether the mispronunciation was deliberate or not.
But “shepherd's pee” it remains, and that's what we ate today. It's not a complicated dish, but somehow I've had great problems with the quantities. One thing's clear: the baking dishes that I have used in the past were too shallow. But I had come to the conclusion that I needed 1.5 g meat per cm². 330 g gives me 220 cm², corresponding to a circular dish 16.7 cm in diameter. Found one 17 cm in diameter, just what I needed.
Oh:
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That's far too much. Found another one with 19.5 cm diameter. Still too much:
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Finally found an oval dish 28×18 cm in size. And that worked:
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Next, the gravy. For my 330 g of meat, my recipe would have wanted 465 g of gravy, but I had established that that was probably too much. I had 325 g left over, but that seemed to be too little. Found another 90 g in the freezer, so left it at that, 415 g:
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And then the mashed potato. Somewhere between 330 and 660 g? We had some small bags of mashed potato mix, and they make 615 g, so started with that:
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And how about that, it seems to have worked. Cooked on grill at 180° for 30 minutes:
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It's interesting to note that the potato rose.
So, finally, reasonable quantities. Yvonne thinks that there should be more potato, and we'll try that next time. And the quantity in the pot corresponds to 0.85 g/cm², less than I had expected.
| Sunday, 3 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 3 December 2023 |
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Mystery paste
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Topic: food and drink, language, technology, opinion | Link here |
Last time I was in town I bought a bag of ingredients for Kung Pao chicken, a little too hastily. Firstly, I have no idea what that is, beyond the belief that it's something that's cooked in the USA, and secondly this was definitely not from the USA:
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Yes, there's something in English stuck on the back, but nothing that gives the slightest idea of how to prepare it. I need a translation. Doesn't Google do something like that? How about scanning it in and presenting it to chrome?
Chrome proved to be singularly uninterested, or at least I didn't manage to interest it. How about Google Translate? Yes! It can translate images, sort of. Unfortunately the results were almost completely illegible. First I needed to submit crops of the text:
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And yes, I could barely make out the translation:
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But it must be possible to do better than that. Why is the text so small?
And of course I had missed the most important part of the description, for which I didn't need a translation: the image of the chilis at top right. That kills it for Yvonne; I should never have bought the stuff.
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Scan or photo?
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Scanning the spice paste sachet was fairly straightforward. But the results were less than spectacular, so I tried again with my camera (second image):
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I hadn't expected that. And somehow, given my current work flow, it's easier to take a photo.
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New neighbours
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Topic: general | Link here |
Donna Watts, who supplies Yvonne with duck's eggs, along with her husband Daniel, have bought the empty property to the north, on the other side of the Swift's property. It's heavily wooded, but they're currently having some of the trees cut down. That's not a bad thing for us, since it reduces our bushfire risk. In to take a look today, but Donna and Daniel weren't there, just the people doing the cutting:
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It proved that the property had been subdivided, and the people here had got the other part. Nothing to do with Donna and Daniel.
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Ten years Micro Four Thirds
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Topic: history, photography | Link here |
This month marks the tenth anniversary of a number of things, starting with our purchase of the Stones Road property, which I didn't note specifically in this diary. Another was 10 years ago today, the arrival of my first Micro Four Thirds camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark I. And I'm still using it! The photos of the neighbours were taken with it.
Yes, I have a newer camera, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, though it's coming on 7 years old too. Digital cameras have matured to the point where it's not overly interesting to keep getting the latest and greatest, and I use the E-M1 Mark II for more complicated things. It's a marked difference from the 8 years before, where Olympus kept bringing out new innovations, and the E-M1 is so different from the Olympus E-1. That camera had a 5 MP sensor that was probably instrumental in starting the myth of poor image quality of Micro Four Thirds. 8 years later the E-M1 had 16 MP and quite good quality. The current OM System OM-1 has 20 MP and apparently similar image quality. Evolution is going in other directions, notably autofocus.
| Monday, 4 December 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 4 December 2023 |
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Another monitor dropout
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Another dropout on my “Matrix” monitor this morning. This time I got to the power button in time, and yes, it came back. But clearly there's more to it than the power button: the sounds that I mentioned happen every time it displays after blanking, and I would have noticed them if they had happened earlier. So potentially there's another replacement monitor to be expected.
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Another power failure
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Topic: general | Link here |
Another grid power failure today. That's interesting for a number of reasons: it was relatively short (25 minutes), it was the first failure in over 9 months, and I didn't notice it: it was sunny, and the battery charge remained at 100% throughout the event.
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Cataract surgery?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Into town today to see Trent Roydhouse, whom I last saw 7 years ago. After that experience I was prepared for a long wait, but in fact I was in and out within 30 minutes.
His diagnosis: the floaters are caused by a Weiss ring, and he's not surprised that they're irritating. But laser surgery went out years ago (15% danger of retinal detachment), and the alternatives are also quite invasive. And yes, I have cataracts, early stage. We can get them out.
And until I asked him for details, that was all he said. What about loss of focus? Oh, I don't have any accommodation now. That goes away completely at age 45 to 50. Somehow that goes against everything I've heard, but of course I should follow up.
The operation, it seems, is very fast, round 30 minutes per eye, and if I want they can remove the floaters at the same time. Or at least, Dr. David Fabinyi can. But for that I have to go to Geelong. If I don't want the floaters out, Dr Roydhouse can do the cataract surgery alone here.
And recovery? It's an ambulant procedure, and it'll take a few days for my vision to be usable again, and several weeks recover completely.
Somehow I wasn't left with the impression that I had all the information I needed. In particular, nothing about any involvement of the eye muscles that Paul Smith was talking about in September. On the positive side, the replacement lens will be “perfect”, no long-sightedness, no astigmatism, though of course I'll need reading glasses.
So I left with a referral to David Fabinyi and a list of things that I need to follow up on. Back home we discovered that Linda Swift, our neighbour, has also just had cataract surgery, so I should talk to her about her experiences—but only after I've done my research.
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xterm and TrueType?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
One of the things on my list for hydra is getting xterm to work with TrueType fonts. I've found lots of web pages addressing the topic, but somehow they all seem to miss my point.
OK, try it out. I have a directory /usr/local/share/fonts/TTF with file names like luxirr.ttf and luximri.ttf, which I guess to be Roman and monospace roman italic. Try it out:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/57) /usr/local/share/fonts/TTF 21 -> xterm -fa luximr
It works! Well, sort of. Here the comparison between the current xterm and what I get from luxi:
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What a mess! Is this just the font, or are other settings needed? Surely nobody creates fonts with so much horizontal space. On the positive side, I can resize the windows, and the font displays just about all the characters that I have saved for testing purposes:
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So on the whole, it's progress. In particular, I have something to use on the new LG monitor, which I still haven't unpacked.
| Tuesday, 5 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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Preparation for cataract surgery
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Topic: health | Link here |
So do I need cataract surgery? Spent some time today reading far too voluminous information, with the result that I'll probably have to go back and read it again. And of course I'll need to talk to David Fabinyi about the matter when he has time to talk to me.
And what will it cost? Trent Roydhouse said yesterday that it would just be the $500 excess that BUPA want, assuming that they cover the procedure. Otherwise it would be in the order of $2000 for the cataract surgery alone.
OK, call up BUPA on 134 135. Once again this horrible voice non-recognition system. Google manages much better, but all that this finally achieved was that I was annoyed before I was connected to a human, Hash. Oh, sorry, Pash. But she couldn't help me and connected me to Dinesh. Oh, sorry, Nick. Are my ears really that bad, or is it something to do with the phone connection?
Nick was helpful. Yes, anything that's medically necessary and allowed in an Australian hospital is covered. So no nose jobs, but (after I asked) abortions are covered. And it seems that my excess is only $250 after all.
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Preparing for Adelaide
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
I'll be off to Adelaide on Friday to attend our daughter Yana's graduation. While I'm there I'll buy a lot of food. Today out to check that the car fridge is still working.
I don't know whether it is or not. I do know that I couldn't find the cable, which should have been inside the fridge. And of course it's a special connector, so it's unlikely that I'll be able to find a replacement. Damn! This fridge has been more trouble than it is worth, and for the number of times we've used it, it probably cost $50 to $100 per use. Fortunately Yvonne has found somebody who can lend us a fridge.
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No joy in Palestine
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
I've been watching with horror how the Israell government commits mass murder in the Gaza Strip and, with US help, manages to get away with it. I've been thinking of writing down my feelings, but it's completely sickening.
One slight glimmer of hope was the 7 day ceasefire last week, in which a couple of hundred hostages and illegally detained prisoners were released. There was celebration for the released Jewish hostages in Tel Aviv. And in Palestine? Celebrations prohibited by the Israeli occupation forces:
Expressions of joy are equivalent to backing terrorism, victory celebrations give backing to those human scum, for those Nazis.
It's enough to make you vomit.
| Wednesday, 6 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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Travel preparations
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Topic: general | Link here |
I'm off to Adelaide on Friday, the first trip out of state in over 10 years and also the first time that I'll spend a night away from home since then. Somehow it's more stress than it used to be. To think that I flew over 200,000 km between 8 May 2005 and 17 May 2006! But I got round to making a hotel booking, and Yvonne has been checking what food I should buy while I'm there.
In the afternoon off to Swansons Road (which people, including the council, are increasingly calling Swanson Road) to visit Jan and Colin Elford, who lent us a car fridge that looks surprisingly like ours, except that it's clearly of better quality. Even the power cable looks the same, but in fact it's different, so we can't use it for ours. Their house is interesting: we saw it when it was being built, coincidentally also 10 years ago. We first met Warrick Pitcher there, though I hadn't noted it in this diary.
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hydra: Back burner
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
The other things I have to do have put most work on hydra on hold. But I'm using it, although there are some strangenesses. Today I had another window manager crash, again on hydra:0.3. But this time it was with a normal browser display:
console.error: "Experiment next-generation-accessibility-engine-powering-screen-readers has unknown featureId: accessibilityCache"
console.warn: services.settings: Could not determine network status. Message: TypeError: lazy.gNetworkLinkService is undefined
JavaScript warning: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/05/us-students-math-scores/?utm_campaign=wp_the7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_the7, line 183: Script terminated by timeout at:
trackChanges/<@https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/05/us-students-math-scores/?utm_campaign=wp_the7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_the7:183:299
i@https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/05/us-students-math-scores/?utm_campaign=wp_the7&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_the7:183:1052
[Parent 88484, Main Thread] WARNING: Failed to create DBus proxy for org.freedesktop.UPower: Operation was cancelled
: 'glib warning', file /wrkdirs/usr/ports/www/firefox/work/firefox-120.0/toolkit/xre/nsSigHandlers.cpp:187
** (firefox:88484): WARNING **: 15:43:22.359: Failed to create DBus proxy for org.freedesktop.UPower: Operation was cancelled
console.warn: services.settings: Could not determine network status. Message: TypeError: lazy.gNetworkLinkService is undefined
Assertion failed: (ret != inval_id), function _XAllocID, file xcb_io.c, line 626.
[1]+ Abort trap (core dumped) fvwm2 -s -display $DISPLAY.3 -f ~/.fvwm/fvwm2rc-$me$DISPLAY.3
Somehow that looks like a timeout. Why does it remain after the window is closed?
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Latin parsing resource
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
What are the words to Ave verum corpus? I heard a rendition of it recently, and I wanted to look up a part of the lyrics that proved to be “cujus latus perforatum unda fluxit et sanguine”. But I didn't guess the ending of “perforatum”. I know the English translation, “from whose pierced side water flowed and blood”. But somehow that didn't parse: syntax error? “Cujus” is the genitive of quis, but then “latus” doesn't fit. 4th declension feminine? So why “perforatum”, clearly 2nd declension nominative or possibly accusative? By comparison, the rest is straightforward.
Off searching for Latin translation resources, and came up with this one. Latus is third declension neuter, thus agreeing with perforatum.
And cujus? Adjective, nominative singular? I had never heard that before. And somehow it still doesn't parse. We have one verb and 3 nouns in the nominative: latus, unda and sanguine. The last two are joined by et, so that's OK, but where does the perforatum fit?
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Aussie Broadband: support or bureaucracy?
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Topic: rant, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've ranted about the quality of Aussie Broadband support enough in the past few months, most recently in August, where I left them with some suggestions for consideration by top management. But they're not letting up.
Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2023 01:02:45 +0000
From: Aussie Broadband <no-reply@team.aussiebroadband.com.au>
Subject: How did we do?
How satisfied were you with our fault resolution process?
How would you rate your experience?
Fault Reference: 25867367
And they had a web form for me to fill out to answer the question.
Problem: what fault is this? I don't have any other reference to the number, and of course the “My Aussie” page has no reference to it. And I hadn't reported any problems recently.
OK, respond. Please enter your full name, your address, your phone number and your date of birth.
Huh? They know all that. They sent me a message regarding a service with them. Are they trying to annoy me? Tried to fill it out without that information, but no, it was manda-tory. So I put in something easy to select from their “must be in this list” address. But I couldn't say what I wanted: the response was limited to 255 characters.
And almost immediately I got a response from their ticketing system:
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 16:40:24 +1100
From: Aussie Support <support@aussiebroadband.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Ticket#2023112710048988] Website - Customer Fee [...]
X-Mailer: OTRS Mail Service (2.0.4)
Thanks for raising a query with Aussie Broadband.
If the query is urgent, we suggest giving our friendly Australian team a call on 1300 880 905 (8am to midnight Australian Eastern Time).
It had created a new ticket (and truncated the subject line)! Am I the first person to actually respond to these things? And that, I thought, was all. After all, it was just a response to a message from them. But earlier this week I got an unexpected reply, this time with an untruncated Subject: line, apparently showing that it takes them 8 days to attend to support requests:
Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2023 15:15:32 +1100
From: Aussie Support <support@aussiebroadband.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Ticket#2023112710048988] Website - Customer Feedback Request
I cant not find any services attached to that address
Can i please confirm some details
1) First and Last Name
2) Date of birth
3) Current service address that your services are connected to
No, dammit, you may not. She had already received (and possibly further truncated) my comments:
I have no idea what this fault is, if indeed there was one..
There's no reference to anything that I have reported. But I have given you
voluminous feedback on ticket 2023082910027075, which most definitely was not
solved anywhere near the way I wou...
She should also have had validated access to all the information she requested. In particular, date of birth is sacrosanct in Australia (it proves who you are!). So I said no, read the ticket.
But no, I must provide this information:
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2023 07:56:51 +1100
From: Aussie Support <support@aussiebroadband.com.au>
Subject: Re: [Ticket#2023112710048988] Website - Customer Feedback Request
As we're unable to correctly ID you we're unable to assist you further
People, this was to assist you. If you're unable to “ID” me, then you have serious problems. Somehow Aussie Broadband is getting more and more like Telstra.
Aussie management, if you're listening, I have lots of suggestions. Based on your apparently complete lack of interest, I won't go to the trouble of summarizing unless you request it.
And what a pity. Once Aussie was good. What went wrong?
Maybe my recollection was too rosy. Fifteen years ago I complained in a similar vein about Wideband, which became part of Aussie.
| Thursday, 7 December 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | |
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More lawn mowing fun
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Paul Donaghy along this morning to mow the lawn. Should we try the ride-on mower? Sure. But the battery was flat! Why that? We got it to start with jumper leads, and it ran happily—for about 40 m, after which it gave up. That must be a carburettor issue.
And then Petra Gietz, who was also there, told Paul that she had a ride-on mower that we could borrow. Off they went to Enfield to pick it up, only for Paul to discover that the drive belt was worn out. So in the end Paul had to mow with the hand mower after all.
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Another monitor fade
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Another brief monitor fade this morning. It went away before I could react.
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More AF problems
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Topic: health | Link here |
Found a stethoscope lying in the laundry this morning. Yvonne had just come back from the paddocks, and I asked if it was for the horses. No, for herself. Suffering from high pulse. And blood pressure? She hadn't measured it.
The blood pressure monitor wasn't much help. E5. That means that it didn't like what it heard, and couldn't analyse it. OK, try with mine. Something like 87/67, pulse 102—and that after she had recovered a little. Called up Ballarat Cardiology and asked for Rodney Reddy, but he wasn't available. Quite some time later we got a message back: go to the Emergency services.
By then, over the course of the morning, things had calmed down. Should we take her there anyway? It took a while to decide: yes. Off to the St John of God emergency room, which wasn't where we were told (not for the first time at that hospital), where Yvonne was told that she would be in for a wait of 2½ hours before a doctor could see her. Is that any better than at the Base Hospital across the road?
Did a bit of shopping and back home. On the way home Yvonne called: done a Troponin test, showing 65 ng/l (in other words, 0.065 ppm). Repeat test after 3 hours was indicated, by which time it had dropped to 58 ng/l, still above the limit of 48 ng/l marked on the test results. Diagnosis: Atrial fibrillation, for which she was treated 2 years ago. It's apparently not as serious as it sounds, and Rodney Reddy gave her instructions on which medication to increase if it happens again (Flecainide acetate 50 mg). It's interesting to note that the episode started shortly before she was due for her twice-daily dose, and went away shortly afterwards.
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No Adelaide this year
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
I was due to leave for Adelaide tomorrow morning. Should I go? No. Even before we got Yvonne's results, it's clear that something like this could happen again, and it's not a good idea to leave her alone at home. That may be the case for the rest of our lives. So, once again, Yvonne's health cancelled the trip.
Cancel the hotel. Yes, that's no problem. But when I got the confirmation email, it contained:
If you have cancelled after 2pm the day prior to your arrival, you will incur a 1 night cancellation fee, which will be charged to your credit card accordingly
Fortunately I canceled well in advance of that time (and so the message shouldn't even have mentioned it), but is that normal nowadays? I would have thought midday on the day of arrival.
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COSIG lives
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Decades ago I started a cookery SIG on Tandem Computers' internal mail system. In keeping with the convention, it was called COSIG (Cooks Special Interest Group).
Tandem isn't completely dead; there's a mailing list tandemalumni for ex-employees, and today Micki Wood posted some recipes that she got from Tandem, including some from COSIG.
OK, I can do that too. I never throw anything away, so I still have (as far as I can tell) all correspondence from COSIG. I wonder how interesting it is.
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Power fail!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
While watching TV in the early evening, the power failed. And then came back.
What is it this time? Out to check the inverter. All OK. No sign of a power failure in the office, apart from the printer that had woken from “deep sleep”. And in fact, apart from the TV and tiwi, the computer that drives it, all was well.
So what happened? The most obvious culprit is the UPS to which the TV and tiwi are connected. Power surge? The inverter logs show nothing. But something must have happened to wake the printer.
| Friday, 8 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 8 December 2023 |
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Getting Emacs to work
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Why doesn't Emacs on hydra handle the Multi_key correctly? None of the information I found on the web seems to fit. But there's one hope: the development version of Emacs (/usr/ports/editors/emacs-devel/ in the FreeBSD Ports Collection). Build that. It took 8 minutes! That's much more than the normal version I built last week.
Starting it was interesting. I got this window, which didn't even have copyable text:
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What's that? I built the standard version. But so far it works, and not only does the Multi_key work, it's been enhanced. Now a blob appears when you press it, and goes away when a valid combination is entered.
More investigation. What is “pure-GTK”? No mention of it in the configuration screen, just GTK2 and GTK3 options. But we already have a bug report on the subject. That's currently more a discussion than a solution, suggesting that “it works with Wayland”, and that most people don't use Emacs with X. And since it's a development version, they don't care too much.
Somehow this is Just Plain Wrong. Today's emacs-devel is tomorrow's emacs, and it should work. The fix (in Makefile) seems straightforward enough, but I'll defer until everything's working.
So is Wayland the way of the future? I don't like the idea. X works, warts and all, and if I change over, I'm liable to find dozens of restrictions. An obvious one is: is there an equivalent to x2x on Wayland? Somehow I doubt it.
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No graduation!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
The weather forecasters are warning of all kinds of weather issues, unprecedented heat waves and things. But today we had mainly wind, though the temperature barely hit 35°. And tomorrow it should be much wetter and cooler (under 20°) here.
And what would have happened if I hadn't cancelled my trip to Adelaide? More of the same kind of weather, but no graduation: they've postponed it until next week because of the weather! I suppose that's one good thing about Yvonne's health issues yesterday. By the time anybody found out about the postponement, I would have been half way to Adelaide.
So: should I go next week? A couple of things say no: firstly (though unlikely) the ceremony could be postponed again, and more to the point, I had decided not to leave Yvonne alone—ever again.
| Saturday, 9 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 9 December 2023 |
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Wet gardening
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Wet day today, a total of 23 mm of rain over the 24 hour period, but Jesse Walsh came along anyway and spent a couple of hours tidying up the succulent garden. It looks better now, but sometimes I wonder if it's worth it.
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xterm fonts: solved!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Back to looking at the font issues with X, particularly xterm. I'd really like to complete the transition from eureka to hydra, and that's the main thing that's in the way. In particular, I don't have any usable fonts that will be readable on a 3840x2160 display.
OK, Microsoft has fonts, but are they legal, and how do you install them? How to install Microsoft fonts on Linux for better collaboration seems to offer the answer, but in fact it only tells you how to install a font installer on specific Linux distros. But then I saw this article on FreeBSD forum, which pointed me to Freshports, which again pointed me to the Ports Collection.
They're all in a port called x11-fonts/webfonts. Now isn't that obvious? How could I have missed it. It contains the Microsoft fonts that I have been considering, or at least the ones that are legal. It also contains typical commercial warnings:
IMPORTANT - READ CAREFULLY: You may not use these fonts if you do not agree to
the terms of the Microsoft End-User License Agreement ("EULA"). You will find
the EULA at /usr/local/share/doc/webfonts/LICENSE. If you read and agree
to the EULA, you can start using the fonts by following these instructions:
But other information is useful:
Make sure that the freetype module is loaded. If it is not, add the following
line to the "Modules" section of xorg.conf or XF86Config:
Load "freetype"
Add the following line to the "Files" section of xorg.conf or XF86Config:
FontPath "/usr/local/share/fonts/webfonts/"
NOTE: Due to known freetype bug some glyphs (N, W) of y2006 Verdana Bold
font are not rendered correctly in anti-aliased mode within the range
9-16 ppem
OK, do that, creating a configuration for server 2. But X refused to start:
Parse error on line 30 of section Modules in file /etc/X11/xorg-2.conf
"Modules" is not a valid section name.
Oh. It's "Module", not "Modules”. But after that, X started. So what fonts do I have?
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/7) ~ 93 -> ls /usr/local/share/fonts/webfonts/
andalemo.ttf comicbd.ttf georgia.ttf timesbi.ttf verdanab.ttf
arial.ttf cour.ttf georgiab.ttf timesi.ttf verdanai.ttf
arialbd.ttf courbd.ttf georgiai.ttf trebuc.ttf verdanaz.ttf
arialbi.ttf courbi.ttf georgiaz.ttf trebucbd.ttf webdings.ttf
ariali.ttf couri.ttf impact.ttf trebucbi.ttf
ariblk.ttf fonts.dir times.ttf trebucit.ttf
comic.ttf fonts.scale timesbd.ttf verdana.ttf
OK, times looks like a good choice. xterm -fa times shows me lots of stuff, but it's just as messed up as the luxi fonts a few days ago. In fact, they looked almost the same. In particular, the Greek letter π didn't match the rest of the Greek font:
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I copied this invocation from some web page. But what does -fa really mean? Is it even looked at? Tried xterm -fa fubar. Same thing! Clearly xterm does something with the invocation, but it seems that it's too polite to complain if it doesn't find what I ask for.
OK, more web surfing, and back to this page, which I had skimmed over before. The invocation it uses is somewhat different:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/28) ~ 4 -> xterm -fa "DejaVu Sans Mono"
And it works! Spacing is normal, font appearance is acceptable, and even the π now renders correctly!
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But where does this DejaVu stuff come from? Haven't I seen it before? It doesn't seem to match anything in the webfonts directory. And yes, it works on eureka and tiwi too. And it scales!
Well, almost. Not all the characters render. A couple of characters in the example above don't render, and on eureka the same section renders:
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The Hanggul line doesn't render. So there's more to it than just the font name. The web page suggests using this invocation to
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/28) ~ 5 -> fc-list :scalable=true:spacing=mono: family
Andale Mono
DejaVu Sans Mono
Luxi Mono
Nimbus Mono PS
Courier 10 Pitch
Liberation Mono
Nimbus Mono L
Courier
Courier New
Cursor
So I'll have to play around with that, along with another careful read of the article. But I've broken the back of the problem. Soon I can connect my main monitors to hydra. That will be a moral victory.
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Indian food from ALDI
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
While in town on Thursday, I picked up some Indian-style food at ALDI: Onion bhaji and deep-frozen roti paratha. Today we ate them along with chicken tanduri.
The bhaji come from India, and somehow they look it: they're very uneven in appearance, though they deep fry well:
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The paratha is interesting. I took out a couple of slices and left them to thaw, which made them stick to the foil so that I couldn't get them off. I put them back in the freezer and tried a couple more, also not easy. They don't seem to like my roti maker:
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Still, with a bit of care I was able to get them to brown nicely:
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And the taste? I was pleasantly surprised by both, but Yvonne found the bhaji too pedas.
| Sunday, 10 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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X on hydra: tidying up
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Topic: technology | Link here |
So now I can display xterms on hydra with usable fonts. Time to cut over?
No, I'm still not done. How do I start xterms? For the last 20 years I have been using a set of fvwm2 menus that do it for me. What do I need to change? Currently I have entries like
+ "eureka" Exec ssh -A eureka LC_ALL=en_AU.UTF-8 /usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm" -bg BlanchedAlmond -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display hydra:0.2 -geometry 100x65+53+0 -e /usr/local/bin/bash &
+ "hydra" Exec LC_ALL=en_AU.UTF-8 /usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm" -bg BlanchedAlmond -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.2 -geometry 100x65+53+0 -e /usr/local/bin/bash &
What do I need to change? Set the font, of course. And for reasons I haven't understood yet, some windows show very large type, while others show normal or even small type. Yes, I can fix that with the -fs option, so I end up with even more parameters:
+ "hydra" Exec LC_ALL=en_AU.UTF-8 /usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm" -bg BlanchedAlmond -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.2 -geometry 100x65+53+0 -fa "DejaVu Sans Mono" -fs 10 -e /usr/local/bin/bash &
But why do that in the menu? I can do that in ~/.Xdefaults. And the same applies to the background colour (-bg BlanchedAlmond), and, while I'm about it, setting a foreground colour (something that I whinge about about programs that assume I use reverse video, because that's all that was available 50 years ago).
xterm*background: BlanchedAlmond
xterm*foreground: Black
xterm*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono
xterm*faceSize: 10
And from there I go down the slippery slope. What do these options mean?
-s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw
For reasons I haven't investigated yet, the man page xterm(1) renders incorrectly on tiwi, where I was doing the research. But is it possible to put all this stuff in ~/.Xdefaults? And what else do I have in there? The cruft of ages:
xclock*hands: green
xlogo*Background: magenta
*pointerShape: hand1
xclock*Geometry: 200x200
e*display: unix:0.1
emacs-Right*Geometry: 110x50
emacs*Geometry: 110x75
emacs-Left*Geometry: 110x50
e*Geometry: 110x50-0+0
eg*Geometry: 110x50
emacs*font: 9x15
e*font: 9x15
Emacs.toolbar: off
It seems that I did remove the entries for mwm in 2004, after it had been obsolete for 10 years, but there's still a lot of stuff that can go. And the entries suggest that I use it to store the window dimensions too. But what about the position? I have some on the left, some on the right. The entries for Emacs suggest that I can do something, as long as xterm plays along. So there's even more stuff to research.
| Monday, 11 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 11 December 2023 |
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X setup on hydra: install 4K monitor
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So now I have something like a usable X configuration on hydra. Time to finally unpack the new LG 27” 27UP850-W 4K UHD monitor—I've only had it for ten days.
What a lot of plastic! Two large polystyrene forms weighing 490 g and no less than 9 plastic bags weighing 64 g. I'm sure they could have got by with less than half that. Do cables really need to be in individual plastic bags?
To make up for it, there were no instructions whatsoever. Well, a single sheet of paper showing some of the connections, but not where they were, and—for illiterates—how to mount the monitor on its stand, something that still didn't make sense until I examined the device. To make up for that lack of documentation, there were 3 more sheets of paper: warranty information (does anybody look at this stuff?), regulatory information and a pre-printed QA report that showed that the monitor conforms to exactly the middle of the range for Color Temperature, “Gamma” and Color Difference (ΔE). Even this document didn't include the model number.
Yes, I have already downloaded the manual, but why do people do things like this? The last panel of the “quick setup” sheet of paper shows the confusion:
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That's from the downloadable version, and has the advantage of colour. But there's no text to it at all. What it is saying is that there's a joystick for the menu under the middle of the frame.
OK, connect the thing to hydra. A good thing there's only one DisplayPort connector. No inscriptions on the back panel:
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Oh, yes, there are. You just need to take a photo of the thing and turn microcontrast up to the limit, and then it's there and almost visible:
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And some of the details are not obvious: SS is clearly their abbreviation for USB, and only one of the ports supplies power (elsewhere I read that the device contains a hub, but I haven't found the details yet).
OK, connect up the cable to hydra. Nothing. What's wrong there? Tried the HDMI port (2, as it turned out). That worked, but it complained about the resolution (1366×768) from the tiny Acer monitor. Why doesn't it understand DP? Connected the DP port to another monitor, where it still didn't display. Has something damaged the display card output? DP connectors are hot-pluggable, aren't they?
More playing around with nvidia-settings, which didn't find the DP port either. OK, try with nvidia-xconfig. It found everything, including the long-gone Acer monitor, but not the new LG monitor. What a mess this thing is! And where did it get the information from? Old xorg.conf? Yes, there was one there, so I removed it. It still found the Acer. What a load of junk!
OK, there's a good chance that the DP port had hung itself up. Power cycle? This machine has been up for 2 months. But it looked likely, so first build a new world.
Oh! I update the source tree every night, but somehow what hydra sees hasn't changed since the beginning of the year. I had the wrong tree. That alone was a good reason to rebuild. That worked without problems, but the reboot was strange. It came up without mounted NFS file systems, and with an unexpected prompt:
mysql#
What's that? I don't have MySQL configured yet. Exited that, logged in as root and mounted the NFS file systems with no issues. But for some reason, when I logged out, I went from the normal prompt to another strange one:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 15 ->
root#
I was able to log out again, but where did it come from?
And the X configuration? Still no HDMI connection. That proved to be due to a loose connector; I must have accidentally pulled on it while changing the DP connection next to it. But after that, I was able to configure things so that all four monitors worked as intended.
Still, it wasn't without more surprises. The mouse middle button didn't work. More investigation showed that my instructions for setting the middle button last month, based on my notes last year, are not cast in concrete. Last month the index for the mouse was 10; now, for some reason, it's 11. Still, once the transition is done, it will no longer be relevant.
On a (much) more positive note, my issues with Emacs on eureka are now gone. I can use it normally. Unfortunately, the same doesn't apply to x2x. But that, too, will pass.
On the other hand, I now have new issues with firefox: start an instance on one screen and it will jump to another screen without even asking. Maybe I need to set up a per-screen “profile” and explicitly request it via the menu.
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Bloody reproducible builds!
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Topic: rant, technology, opinion | Link here |
My last kernel on hydra reported itself as:
FreeBSD 13.2-STABLE #1: Wed Oct 18 14:00:06 AEDT 2023
But the new one says:
FreeBSD 13.2-STABLE GENERIC amd64
Where did the date go?
There's something silly about the difference. If you build two kernels with the second kind of string, they will be the same. Build two with the first kind, and they'll be different: the date is different. And that worries some developers.
But what does the normal user (myself included in this case) care? I want to know when the kernel was built. Yes, I can fix it—I think. Something about reproducible builds, and that you have to explicitly request it if you want the additional information. But where? /etc/make.conf? No, not that.
Spent nearly 30 minutes searching this diary and also the web before I found it. It's /etc/src.conf. As I said the last time:
=== grog@tiwi (/dev/pts/2) ~ 161 -> cat /etc/src.conf
# Don't drop build date, dammit!
# What a silly name for the knob.
# It's about as "intuitive" as the name of this file.
WITHOUT_REPRODUCIBLE_BUILD=dammit
The file should really be in the source tree, not /etc, and it should have a far more logical lame. And of course WITHOUT_REPRODUCIBLE_BUILD should be the default. But clearly /etc/src.conf was there two months ago. Where did it go? Did the install process remove it?
With features like this, who needs bugs?
| Tuesday, 12 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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hydra: What now?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I didn't do much work on hydra today, just documenting the day before. This seems to be becoming a habit: one day work, one day write-up. In principle things are looking good, but while I have the opportunity, I should really get round the issue of configuration files. And that's taking for ever. I really need to think how to do this cleanly; for the past 30 years or so I've been kludging things.
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Misbehaving blood pressure monitors?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne into my office in the morning with some alarmingly low blood pressures, something like 100/60. This time, though, she didn't feel bad, and her pulse wasn't overly high.
OK, try another monitor. And how about that, she was back to norma.: Defective monitor? Tried both myself, and got:
| Monitor | Systolic | Diastolic | Pulse | |||
| Mine | 120 | 70 | 81 | |||
| Yvonne's | 117 | 71 | 86 |
I'll take that as the same. So whatever she measured earlier was probably correct. Now how do I get her to accept her condition and act accordingly?
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10 years NBN!
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Topic: history, technology, opinion | Link here |
Ten years ago today we had a significant development:
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We've been connected to the Australian National Broadband Network for ten years!
It would be nice to say that all our network problems went away in one swell foop, but that wasn't the case. We probably had more network outages than before. But when the net was up, it was up, and throughput was reliably good.
In recent times the availability has also improved. And possibly independently of the NBN, the traffic limits have increased dramatically, to the point where I have no limit any more. Fifteen years ago I was limited to 6 GB per month, 3 GB of which were “off peak” (small hours of the morning, I think), with an unreliable bandwidth round 3 Mb/s, and that cost me $95. Now I'm using round 600 GB at 25 Mb/s and paying only $69 for it. That's about 20 GB per day. So things have improved, almost beyond measure.
| Wednesday, 13 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 13 December 2023 |
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Aussie does it again
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
I had just written yesterday's article on the National Broadband Network anniversary when I received mail from Aussie Broadband. In the article I had written that I'm now only paying $69 per month for my Internet connection. And the message from Aussie, formulated as a reminder (“Your new Critical Information Summary Important information updated”), told me:
A friendly reminder that as of 21 November, our internet plans have changed price, and your new plan will be reflected in your December invoice.
Affected plan: **NBN 25Mbps/5Mbps Unlimited ($69.00)**
That's the first I've heard of it. Not a reminder. And I had to read the attached PDF document to discover that they're now charging $75 a month, and that there were uninteresting alternatives starting at $71. But the highest was 50/20 Mb/s down/up (for $85, too big a difference to be interesting). Still, they told me that my service was good for a minimum 8 Mb/s upload speed, not bad for one rated at 5 Mb/s.
But I was sure that there were others, including 75/20. Off to the My Aussie page, which first wanted a 2 factor authentication, and then with some coaxing showed me one alternative, and one only: 75/10 for $85, the same price as the 50/20. So what's this nonsense with the other tariffs? How do I select them?
And yes, less than 2 hours later I received a monthly invoice showing the new prices. I'm not overly worried about the price increase, but once again Aussie has shown itself from its worst side. A “reminder” that is the first I've heard of it, sloppy table giving incorrect information. the inconvenience of 2FA for things that really don't need it, a completely different view of the world from what their message contained. I'm beginning to think it's time to start looking for a new ISP. But somehow it's not so much that Aussie is getting worse than other ISPs; it's just that they're now no better.
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More fun with X
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Did some half-hearted playing around with X on hydra. Once again the LG 27UP850-W monitor didn't get any signal. Switch back to /dev/vty0 and it displayed along with the rest. But nvidia-settings claimed that it was “disabled”. Somehow I managed to get it to enable it, but I could no longer set screen positions relative to other screens.
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The only thing I could do was to physically drag themto where I wanted them. It took a lot of messing around to discover that I had 8 screens (which nvidia-settings calls displays), not 4:
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I had to select “X screen 0”, not “LG ULTRAFINE”. and then it worked:
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A little more messing around, enough to discover that firefox has new tricks up its sleeve. With the default configuration (one display over 4 screens) I can't get a full screen display on the LG monitor. It works where each screen has its own display.
But I still need to rewrite my config files, and I didn't have the energy today.
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ALDI quesadillas
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Our experience with the bhajis and roti paratha from ALDI was quite positive. They also have Mexican-style foods. Today Yvonne bought some “Cheesy beef quesadillas”. Surprise, surprise, no cheese! Just a folded-over tortilla which proved to contain almost only beans; I didn't find any beef either. Another pack claiming to be “cheese and beans quesadillas” can go back. Clearly the quality varies, possibly depending on the purported national origin.
| Thursday, 14 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 14 December 2023 |
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Comparing “air fryers”
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Nasi lemak for breakfast today. For that I need to roast peanuts, which I normally do in the “coffee machine” “air fryer”. But today the “hair dryer”. was on the counter, so I used that.
Does this look OK?
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I “fried” them at 170° for 7 minutes, just as I do in the “coffee machine”. But they look darker. They tasted OK, but I'll have to compare next time.
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Garden recovery
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
A few weeks ago I forgot to water the plants on the verandah long enough for all the leaves on this potted oak to dry out:
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But of course it's deciduous, so it wasn't surprising that it has recovered:
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Still something not to be repeated. The curry tree is still planning to flower, but it's taking its time:
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ARD does it again
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Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
Trying to download a video from ARD today was unsuccessful:
=== grog@tiwi (/dev/pts/9) /spool/Series/Großstadtrevier/36 26 -> yt-dlp https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL2dyb8Ofc3RhZHRyZXZpZXIvMjAyMy0xMi0xMV8xOC01MC1NRVo &
[ARDBetaMediathek] Extracting URL: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL2dyb8Ofc3RhZHRyZXZpZXIvMjAyMy0xMi0xMV8xOC01MC1NRVo
[ARDBetaMediathek] Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL2dyb8Ofc3RhZHRyZXZpZXIvMjAyMy0xMi0xMV8xOC01MC1NRVo: Downloading JSON metadata ERROR: [ARDBetaMediathek] Y3JpZDovL2Rhc2Vyc3RlLmRlL2dyb8Ofc3RhZHRyZXZpZXIvMjAyMy0xMi0xMV8xOC01MC1NRVo: Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable (caused by <HTTPError 503: Service Unavailable>); please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U
What's that? It seems that ARD has changed access to its “Mediathek”, and currently yt-dlp can't access it. OK, follow the instructions and upgrade to the latest and greatest, which has the same problem. Follow the instructions and enter a bug report, not easy. First I need a github account. OK, got that. Password wrong! No, I don't think so. I wrote it down at the time, and it worked. My guess is that they have changed the rules. OK, new password, one that reflects my opinion of this sort of thing.
Next, has it already been reported? It doesn't seem so—at least there's nothing obvious, and my search failed. OK, fight my way through all the requirements, enter the report. Within minutes it was closed: Duplicate of #8731. Read that: the issue is still open. A mention of a workaround, but not enough detail for me to want to pursue it..
OK, what does the MediathekView Forum have to say about the matter? Nothing that I can find. Is it maybe not affected?
But what about web browsers? The online mediathekviewweb.de has various undocumented symbols. It can certainly display the ARD programmes (but then, of course, so can the ARD websites). What are the undocumented symbols? One appears to be a floppy disk (“download this video to 1,800 floppy disks”). Selected that. Nothing happened. But then the Help told me that firefox is too polite to do that sort of thing and offered a hard-to-understand workaround.
But what about Chrome? Tried that, pushed mouse cursors around and... it works! So I have a particularly painful workaround for the time being, as long as I can keep track of the names. Here videos as downloaded with yt-dlp and with Chrome:
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog home 1,366,329,160 15 Dec 14:09 Nicht_reanimieren.mp4
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog home 1,201,144,931 15 Dec 10:59 JOB_409444_sendeton_1920x1080-50p-5000kbit.mp4
A caveat: I managed to blow away all my tabs by accepting “restore previous session”. Yes, it restored the previous session, but it didn't merge the new ones.
In passing, it seems that it's a bad idea to install yt-dlp from the Ports Collection. If you do, you can only upgrade via the Ports Collection, which is far less up to date than the most recent version:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/1) ~ 22 -> yt-dlp -U
Available version: stable@2023.11.16, Current version: stable@2023.10.13
ERROR: Please use the command 'pkg upgrade yt-dlp' to upgrade.
Instead, it's simple just to install from the original site:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 108 -> pkg delete yt-dlp
Installed packages to be REMOVED:
mpv: 0.36.0_5,1
yt-dlp: 2023.10.13
Look at those packages to be removed! Why does it want to remove mpv?? Still, I can reinstall it.
Continuing,
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 109 -> fetch https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases/latest/download/yt-dlp
yt-dlp 2883 kB 1452 kBps 02s=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 111 -> mv yt-dlp /usr/local/bin=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 116 -> chmod +x /usr/local/bin/yt-dlp=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 117 -> yt-dlp --version
env: python3: No such file or directory=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 118 -> pkg install python3
...=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 119 -> yt-dlp --version
2023.11.16=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 121 -> yt-dlp --update-to nightly
Current version: stable@2023.11.16 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp
Latest version: nightly@2023.12.13.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
Current Build Hash: 0b122b45079b60ef720ebf4f72cbe53139f284b11492a42673cf6aa52d1432d8
Updating to nightly@2023.12.13.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds ...
Updated yt-dlp to nightly@2023.12.13.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
You have new mail in /var/mail/grog=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 122 -> yt-dlp --version
2023.12.13.232710=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 123 -> yt-dlp -U
Latest version: nightly@2023.12.13.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds
yt-dlp is up to date (nightly@2023.12.13.232710 from yt-dlp/yt-dlp-nightly-builds)
And of course reinstalling mpv didn't help: it ran into some strange dependency issue. Clearly the right way to go about it is simply to rename yt-dlp rather than removing it.
And that on a day when I wanted to do some real work!
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How to eat up memory
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Seen today on hydra:
Mem: 2248M Active, 166G Inact, 1274M Laundry, 7708M Wired, 1314M Buf, 10G Free
10 GB free out of 192 GB! How did that happen? A massive backup, I think, most of which is probably still in the 166 GB of “Inact” memory.
| Friday, 15 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 15 December 2023 |
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Another wasted day?
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Topic: multimedia, technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Somehow I once again spent all day writing up my fun with downloading ARD videos. It's beginning to look like an unintentional bug rather than any deliberate intention to limit access: the news programmes have a well-hidden “download” button, but it doesn't work any more, at least not with firefox. But the excruciatingly complex method for downloading with chrome almost works:
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But it doesn't download the subtitles. That's the bottom line of the multiblob menu, and despite promises, it doesn't download: it just displays the subtitles as an XML file, something that I can't (yet) process.
| Saturday, 16 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 16 December 2023 |
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More gardening
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Jesse Walsh around to do more weeding today. As he says, he's a strange person: he enjoys it. But somehow I didn't even find time to look at what he had done.
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Still more thoughts on ARD downloads
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Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been waiting for a couple of days for the enxt “nightly” update of yt-dlp, but somehow it has got stuck. I have a number of alternatives:
Clearly alternative 4 is the best, but that's a way down the list of things to do on hydra: in all likelihood, it will involve installing a recent Linux release, since the application, written in portable Java currently doesn't work on FreeBSD, I'm too stupid to understand Java dependencies, and the authors don't care about FreeBSD.
So what about alternative 3? Spent some time looking at it. The original quote shows the download failing pretty much as it does for me:
yt-dlp -v https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/tinkas-welt/tag-10-das-grosse-jahrestreffen-s03-e10/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvLzZmOGIzOGZiLThmMGItNDhlZC04ODkzLWJjNzk4YzJlY2M2OQ
[debug] Command-line config: ['-v', 'https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/tinkas-welt/tag-10-das-grosse-jahrestreffen-s03-e10/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvLzZmOGIzOGZiLThmMGItNDhlZC04ODkzLWJjNzk4YzJlY2M2OQ']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, pref UTF-8, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version stable@2023.10.13 [b634ba742] (zip)
[debug] Python 3.10.12 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - Linux-5.15.0-91-generic-x86_64-wi
yt-dlp -v https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/tinkas-welt/tag-10-das-grosse-jahrestreffen-s03-e10/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvLzZmOGIzOGZiLThmMGItNDhlZC04ODkzLWJjNzk4YzJlY2M2OQ
[debug] Command-line config: ['-v', 'https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/tinkas-welt/tag-10-das-grosse-jahrestreffen-s03-e10/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvLzZmOGIzOGZiLThmMGItNDhlZC04ODkzLWJjNzk4YzJlY2M2OQ']
[debug] Encodings: locale UTF-8, fs utf-8, pref UTF-8, out utf-8, error utf-8, screen utf-8
[debug] yt-dlp version stable@2023.10.13 [b634ba742] (zip)
[debug] Python 3.10.12 (CPython x86_64 64bit) - Linux-5.15.0-91-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.35 (OpenSSL 3.0.2 15 Mar 2022, glibc 2.35)
[debug] exe versions: ffmpeg 4.4.2 (setts), ffprobe 4.4.2, rtmpdump 2.4
[debug] Optional libraries: certifi-2020.06.20, mutagen-1.45.1, pyxattr-0.7.2, secretstorage-3.3.1, sqlite3-3.37.2
[debug] Proxy map: {}
[debug] Loaded 1890 extractors
[debug] Using fake IP 53.68.26.185 (DE) as X-Forwarded-For
[ARDBetaMediathek] Extracting URL: https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/tinkas-welt/tag-10-das-grosse-jahrestreffen-s03-e10/br-fernsehen/Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvLzZmOGIzOGZiLThmMGItNDhlZC04ODkzLWJjNzk4YzJlY2M2OQ
[ARDBetaMediathek] tinkas-welt/tag-10-das-grosse-jahrestreffen-s03-e10/br-fernsehen: Downloading JSON metadata
ERROR: [ARDBetaMediathek] Y3JpZDovL2JyLmRlL3ZpZGVvLzZmOGIzOGZiLThmMGItNDhlZC04ODkzLWJjNzk4YzJlY2M2OQ: Unable to download JSON metadata: HTTP Error 503: Service Unavailable (caused by <HTTPError 503: Service Unavailable>); please report this issue on https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/issues?q= , filling out the appropriate issue template. Confirm you are on the latest version using yt-dlp -U
And the solution is:
the workaround with the URL from master.m3u8 works:
yt-dlp https://br-i.akamaihd.net/i/geo/MUJIuUOVBwQIbtCCBLzGiLC1uwQoNA4p_2ZS/_AJS/_2FP_-4g5H1S/6f8b38fb-8f0b-48ed-8893-bc798c2ecc69_,A,E,X,HD,C,.mp4.csmil/master.m3u8?__b__=200
But what do the two have to do with each other?
| Sunday, 17 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 17 December 2023 |
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Christmas photo
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
The year is coming to an end, and we need to prepare for are annual Christmas
New Year's newsletter. That starts with a
photo of us with as many animals as practical.
And that's the problem. Bruno is an indoor-only cat, and since he's new, we definitely want him in the photo. So that really only left the same position as 2 years ago:
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OK, exposure? There's a flash conveniently positioned on top of the display cabinet to the left of the TV.
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Does it have a receiver for a remote flash trigger? Turned the power on, press the flash control. Nothing. Damn, I'll need to add the one to the left of the couch, which does have a receiver. But that was a non-starter:
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So I had to do it with available light. Once again we had our fun getting any kind of photo, not helped by the slow shutter speed (1/13 s).
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Our current “best” one is:
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That will still require cropping, and I'm planning to replace the background with something more interesting—if I can think of something.
And the flash trigger? Later I discovered:
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I had removed the flash because Bruno kept jumping up there.
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Peking duck, ALDI style
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Last Thursday I picked up a “Peking Duck” from ALDI:
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Today we tried it. Instructions include heating in a conventional oven or a microwave oven, but clearly this is a case for an “air fryer”, in this case the “hair dryer”. But what temperature? How long? There's quite a bit of meat on the legs, so it shouldn't be too hot. The instructions wanted 190° and 15-20 minutes in the oven, but I chose 200°. After 15 minutes they looked relatively cooked:
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How were they? Acceptable, possibly slightly undercooked. Not as good as a real Peking duck, of course, but given how difficult it is to get any duck round here, quite acceptable. The sauce seemed to be pure hoisin sauce; next time we'll make a plum sauce if we can't find one in the supermarkets.
| Monday, 18 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 18 December 2023 |
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Consolidating X configuration
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So how do I reorganize my X configuration files? The obvious solution is in a directory hierarchy. I already have /home/local/ to match /usr/local/, so programs used in the network are stored in /home/local/bin/, for example. So I created a directory /home/local/X/.
What do I move there first? .Xdefaults, since that's what I want to use more. And before I start building it with a script, it makes sense to play around with the contents.
The most important ones were the font and its size, which I want to set differently for each screen, since they're not all the same size. And the preprocessor variable that I had discovered at the beginning of the month seem ideal for that. Here an excerpt:
! screen 1 resources
#if SCREEN_NUM == 1
xterm*Geometry: 110x64
xterm*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono
xterm*faceSize: 12
#endif
! screen 2 resources
#if SCREEN_NUM == 2
xterm*Geometry: 100x50
xterm*faceName: DejaVu Sans Mono
xterm*faceSize: 10
#endif
So, try that. It works! So restart X server 0 with the latest and greatest X configuration file that I built last week, which also worked with no issues. Start an xterm from the window manager as described in the window manager configuration file:
/usr/local/bin/xterm -name "xterm-r" -bg BlanchedAlmond -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.3 -geometry 90x50-53+0 -fn 10x20 -e /usr/local/bin/bash &
But I got the wrong size, font and background. The background is particularly strange, given that it was stated explicitly. Enter the command in that xterm, and the new one came up correctly. Why?
While scratching my head about that one, thought about Emacs. In .Xconfig I have:
Emacs*Geometry: 110x64
Emacs*faceSize: 12
But I got a tiny window and tiny characters. Playing around with the -fa and -fs options suggest that Emacs doesn't understand them. I got enormous windows with still-tiny text. So what do I do? I can configure Emacs internally, but then all screens get the same values. Clearly a case for RTFM, but which? This is not even as simple as I expected.
| Tuesday, 19 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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Gardening again
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
When did I last do any garden work? I've done almost nothing for years. Today, though, the condition of the fuchsias in the house entrance finally got the better of me. Here the decline over the past year:
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So I repotted them. Not much work, but more than I have done for a while.
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More X configuration fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Why am I having so much trouble getting my X configuration sorted out? It's the work of decades. I found this comment in my fvwm2 configuration file:
# Stuff added by Grog, 20 April 1996
I wasn't keeping a diary at the time, but I'm pretty sure this was round the time that I started transitioning from mwm to fvwm (fvwm2 wasn't around yet). And I basically just changed details of the base configuration without really understanding what I was doing.
Today I spent a lot of time trying to find out why my xterms weren't being started with the correct parameters. I had established that this didn't work:
/usr/local/bin/xterm -name "xterm-r" -bg BlanchedAlmond -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.3 -geometry 90x50-53+0 -fn 10x20 -e /usr/local/bin/bash &
Remove the parameters one for one. -name "xterm-r" was the culprit! Could this be the name I should be using in .Xdefaults? So maybe there is hope for more control in the .Xdefaults file after all. I just need to understand what the parameters mean. But there are still issues that I shouldn't forget:
| Wednesday, 20 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 20 December 2023 |
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X configuration: failure
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So yesterday I came to the guess that my xterm configuration problems were related to the -name parameter on the startup line. Tried it again today. It still doesn't do what I want.
Why is this all so difficult? I suspect that part of it is that I've spent over 30 years working around issues that I don't understand, and only now have I decided to try to understand and Do The Right Thing. But maybe I should just give in. In another 30 years I won't be around. Let's move on?
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Whetstones
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne back from shopping today with a couple of whetstones:
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That's worth a photo just to record the grit (or “grid”, to use the term in the listing) of the individual stones; the inscription may fade. They also included a couple of frames and a single sheet of paper printed from the listing, missing important information like which grit to select or in which direction to move the knife:
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But how do I tighten the holder? There's a threaded part to the rails, but how do you tighten them? It's a good thing that it didn't seem to need to be tightened, and that's how I used it, but later I found the image in the listing:
Oh. Not quite the same. Time for the seller to complete the delivery.
So: how do I really use the thing? Off to YouTube, who is getting really obnoxious with its advertisements. And I found a reasonable explanation, which YouTube forgot about, and I forgot to save the link.
But then I saw another: Whetstone Sharpening Mistakes that Most Beginners Make. That sounded like it was worthwhile, and indeed it was. In particular, none of the instructions I had seen so far mentioned how much pressure to apply. And it's much more than I expected: 4 to 6 lbs (1.8 to 2.7 kg) for a relatively sharp knife, and up to 8 lbs (3.6 kg) for a blunt knife.
Tried the thing out with a blunt knife and a relatively sharp knife. And maybe they got sharper, but even after multiple attempts, the “cut through paper” didn't work for me. I'll see how sharp they are next time I use them, and then probably repeat the procedure.
| Thursday, 21 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 21 December 2023 |
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Still more X investigation
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I decided to postpone further investigation of my X configuration problems. So of course I didn't.
In fact, it seems as if almost everything does work as expected. The only thing that doesn't, and for no obvious reason, is the background colour of the xterms. I have selected a colour called BlanchedAlmond, but when I start the xterm from the window manager, it gets a white background. Why? It might just as well have got inverse video (a black background and white foreground). And if I set the colour in the invocation, all seems to work correctly. In particular, the font, size and icon location are all as I want. So now my invocation line is
LC_ALL=en_AU.UTF-8 /usr/local/bin/uxterm -name "xterm-r" -bg BlanchedAlmond -s -sl 2048 -sb -ls -j -rw -display :0.2 -geometry 100x65-53+0 -e /usr/local/bin/bash &
That's still not done, of course. Why do I need to set the locale environment? Why uxterm rather than xterm? That dates back to last year, where I was trying to solve another problem with even less understanding of the issues than now. So I should investigate that more
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Still more Joking
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
It has been less than two months since Bruno locked Yvonne of her toilet. And now she's locked out again!
No, this time Bruno wasn't to blame. These appallingly bad door latches! I've already had to replace one because it failed, and in anticipation of another failure, I bought a second—and mislaid it!
But that wasn't our primary problem. The latch had failed shut: we couldn't open the door. Tried to access the thing as best I could, but it wasn't good enough. In the end we had to call a locksmith, Jim of Locks on call, who came along pretty quickly, destroyed the latch, and presented us with an expected bill for $150.
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Now we still need to find a new latch. But why are these things so horribly unreliable? That's the third in 18 months (the third was at Chris Bahlo's place, and it was her second since moving in.
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Striving for the stars
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Seen on our range hood cover today:
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The yellow markers are where Bruno put his paws in an attempt to reach the ceiling. It's really difficult to see, and I need to find a way to enhance these photos:
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| Friday, 22 December 2023 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 22 December 2023 |
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Amazon doesn't deliver
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Topic: technology, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Message from Amazon today:
Due to a lack of availability, we will not be able to obtain the following item from your order. We've canceled the item and apologize for the inconvenience. If you see a charge for the canceled item, we will refund you within 1-2 business days. If youare still interested in purchasing this item, it may be available from other sellers. Please visit the detail page for this item below.
Order #503-...
Placed on Sunday, September 17, 2023
Hock Lee Prawn Paste 225 g
Sold by Amazon Commercial Services Pty Ltd
I was half expecting this; after all, the order was 3 months ago, and they had promised delivery in 4 days. So I was mainly interested to see how long it would take them to give up.
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More medical issues
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Off with Yvonne to see Dr Rodney Reddy at Ballarat Cardiology for a follow-up. Today was the last working day before Christmas, and I was expecting bad traffic, but in fact things were really quiet, and we had no difficulty finding a parking place.
First an ECG with a particularly friendly nurse, Rebecca:
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Then in to see Rod, with no delay. He seemed relatively unconcerned about Yvonne's problems 2 weeks ago, and simply gave her some advice and tweaked her medication (no more blood pressure medication until her systolic pressure regularly exceeds 140 mm Hg; currently it's round 110). He did, however, raise the spectre of a pacemaker.
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No carby for you
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Then on to Jono and Johno to get a carburettor for our lawn mower. It took forever. A bloke came in just before me and confused the hell out of three employees by wanting to pay for something that he had received but not had put on the invoice. By the time I finally got somebody to look at me, and told her twice that it was for a 17.5 HP lawn mower motor (“is that for a chainsaw?”) she discovered—slowly—that they had none in stock, and that they expected them in in early January. Left empty-handed with the impression that I should have as little to do with Jono and Johno as possible.
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Still more shopping
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Topic: general, animals, language, opinion | Link here |
On to Bunnings in the Delacombe Town Centre to buy a couple of door latches, then to Petstock to buy a litter tray for Bruno. Found one marked for $33, but it proved to be an incorrect label. The somewhat flaky looking tray also had a piece missing, but it was still listed at just under $100. Across the road, where Yvonne found something better at a discount shop for $30. Also looking for noodles, a real problem at Woolworths:
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I've been there before, but we don't shop here normally, and it made it all the more difficult to understand the thought processes that the Woolworths people have. Fool! You don't want noodles, you want pasta:
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But finally it was done.
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Garden flowers in early summer
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Summer solstice today, today for the monthly garden flower photos.
Over the last few years it seems that each page looks worse than the one before. For once, that's not the case. Yes, things still look bad, but there are signs of improvement, notably the Hebes:
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As I suspected last month, that's probably due to the improved irrigation.
That's probably also the reason for the improvement in the roses. They're not all there yet, but things like the Lili Marleen are flowering for the first time in a long time:
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The second lime tree that I planted a long time ago is at least getting some fruit:
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And the Corymbia ficifolia that had caused me so much concern seems to be doing better too:
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The Buddleja x weyeriana that we planted in a bed a year ago is already flowering, a couple of weeks too early:
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That's a far cry from last year:
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The one in the pot is also looking happy enough:
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Time to find a place to plant it.
The best news, though, is that relatively few plants seem to be dying. Sadly, the Camellia japonica in front of the house seems to be on its last legs:
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But we had expected that; it has never been happy there, and it has endured 8 years.
The Maple “Chantilly lace” is also not happy with its position:
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We had been warned that it didn't like the sun, but we thought it would get little enough facing east. Like the potted oak, though, it is getting new shoots:
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Time to move it to the south of the house.
We've had varied results with the Strelitzias. The Strelitzia nicolai is flowering, as every year at this time:
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But the Strelitzia reginae has been unhappy for years. Since dividing and replanting, I'm keeping an eye on the plants:
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And our waterlily seems to be running out of space:
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I had seen some flowers a while back, but there doesn't seem to be any space for them any more. Time to divide?
| Saturday, 23 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 23 December 2023 |
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More weeding
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Jesse Walsh along again today to try to remove the sorrel that has sprung up around the roses. This time he went 10 cm deep. I have little hope that it's eradicated, but a bit of poison should help reinforce things.
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Many photos
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Double whammy today: yesterday's garden flower photos and today's house photos. I had planned to do them on hydra, but it proves that server 1 is still not ready for prime time. And surprisingly, despite a number of strange issues, I got everything done. Now
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Paella again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Paella valenciana for dinner today, for once just for us. That means a smaller size, of course: the standard recipe is for 6 to 8 people.
The normal paellera that we use has a diameter of 35 cm. Half size (25 cm)? Sorry, no can do. The smallest we have is 30 cm, so we had to use that:
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And yes, it was OK. But at the end of the recipe I found
The most recent time was on 25 March 2023, and on that occasion I came to the conclusion that the quantities needed rethinking, but that I would put that off until next time.
And it seems that I did. My RCS logs show that in August 2023 I decreased the amount of chorizo from 400 g to 250 g, and increased the squid tubes from 100 g to 250 g. Both seem to be correct, but I need to mark this sort of thing more clearly in the recipe. And the diary entry shows that this time the chicken legs were not left over. This time about the only thing that occurred to me was that we needed a little more salt.
| Sunday, 24 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 24 December 2023 |
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Now that's a bone
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Larissa has an uncanny knack of finding parts of dead animals when we're out walking. After getting her to spit out a fresh rabbit leg, she found this:
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What did it come from? This time it clearly isn't a kangaroo.
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Beef with orange and broccoli again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Beef with orange and broccoli again for dinner today, only the second time we've eaten it. Probably one of the most interesting things is that it's fried in cornflour, making it a little crispy.
Last time I made it pretty much as the original recipe stated, but it seemed that it could be a little insipid. So no more water in the sauce, just orange juice. And I made the mistake of cutting the beef slices too small. It didn't do any harm to the taste, but it took forever to fry it. And the broccoli needed salt. The original recipe wanted it to be cooked in salt water, but in the only 45 seconds that they state, I'm sure it doesn't make any difference. So salt lightly after cooking.
| Monday, 25 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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No Christmas this year
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Topic: general, politics | Link here |
Today was the first day of Christmas, of course. You wouldn't have known it. In the Holy Land it has been cancelled because of Israeli aggression:
And here in Australia, in the middle of a long, hat summer? Maximum temperature of 22° and 100 mm of rain, ⅙ of the total annual rainfall. A good thing that we don't celebrate Christmas any more.
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More monitor fade
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
My Matrix monitor has been behaving itself for a while now, but today I came into the office and found the display off and the monitor quietly buzzing to itself. Play with the power button. It came back immediately. So it really does seem to be an issue with the power button. I wonder how much longer the monitor will last.
| Tuesday, 26 December 2023 | Dereel | |
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Next X on hydra pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
It's really time to cut over my desktop from eureka to hydra. What's holding it up? The X configuration, of course. The configuration for server 0 (individual displays) works, but for some reason I had issues server 1 (one display over 4 screens). In particular, it didn't want to recognize the new new LG 27” monitor. I had messed around with nvidia-settings and got a functional configuration. So I saved it, but the resultant configuration didn't work! Looking at it, it only had a single entry, for the first monitor. But for whatever reason, not even that came up.
OK, let's add the monitor definitions from server 0. It started, but once again it couldn't find the LG monitor. Something to do with this obscure metamodes option?
Option "metamodes" "HDMI-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, HDMI-1: nvidia-auto-select +5760+0, DP-3: nvidia-auto-select +7680+0, DP-0: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0"
Clearly that at least gives the position, but how does it know about the monitors? Is that the nvidia-auto-select? Played with the file and tried again. Still no LG monitor.
OK, there's an option that I hadn't tried when saving the configuration with nvidia-settings: “Merge with existing file”. That sounded dangerous, so I always saved to a new file. But what happens if I try it? Copy the config to a new file, save and merge to that file, and try it out.
It works! Now I have a functional configuration for server 1!
Well, almost. I still need to configure for the old, sick Matrix monitor. Plug it in, worry about the grumbling noises it makes, so power it down. nvidia-settings should be able to read the EDID data even when it's powered down.
But no, it couldn't. It couldn't even read them when it was powered on. But it did offer me the option to load the EDID data. I've been there before when I got the monitor. At the time the server had no trouble reading the data, but I wanted more. And I wrote voluminously but incompletely on the subject, not sufficiently to help me today.
Still, I recall reading EDID data and supplying it to the server. It must be in the config files somewhere...
=== root@eureka (/dev/pts/34) ~ 67 -> grep -i edid /etc/X11/*
....
/etc/X11/xorg-0.conf: Option "CustomEDID" "CRT-0:/home/grog/EDID/Benq-E2200HD.bin"
...
Yes! In /home/grog/EDID/. And there I also found a file for the Matrix monitor:
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog lemis 128 12 Nov 2012 FRT-27inch.bin
So I can try that when I have time.
So, back to the old configuration, involving reconnecting the second BenQ monitor. It wasn't recognized! I had to go through nvidia-settings Yet Again to detect monitors, position them, apply the “changes” and accept them! What a pain!
So what's the difference between the functional and non-functional configuration files that nvidia-settings saved? A couple of random comments, and, in the Device section:
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
I've seen that before. As I wrote at the time:
So clearly nvidia-xconfig is completely useless here. It could at least have produced a warning, better a link to the configuration documentation.
Plus ça change...
But nvidia-settings should be ashamed of itself to save a configuration file without that specification. Is it worth a bug report? Yes. Will I do it? Probably not. My previous experience suggests that it's not worth the trouble.
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The joys of online shopping
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne found a special offer online today, riding boots for something like 85% off the list price. Will I buy them for her?
Is this kosher? Somehow if online offers are that good, they're suspect. But no, says Yvonne, she knows the company, and they're serious.
OK, $37 is really a very good price for the shoes. And $17 odd postage is also acceptable. Try to pay for it. “Something went wrong. Please contact ANZ at 13 33 50”.
Now isn't that helpful? About the only interesting information is that the phone number wasn't the one written on the back of our credit cards (13 22 73). OK, Yvonne, call 13 22 73 and ask if the other number is kosher.
After 10 minutes she came back. She couldn't get past the automatic authentication and voice non-recognition system. Helped her a bit, and after a while she was connected to a consultant who spoke very quiet and bad English, and who still wasn't convinced that she was who she said he was, and who left long pauses before his replies (“Are you still there?”). He was more concerned about her identity, and I confused the hell out of him because he hadn't identified me. I asked to be connected to somebody else, but I wasn't, and I didn't understand his reply. Somehow, though, he let slip that yes, 13 33 50 is one of their numbers. But in the end I gave up.
Still, one thing was clear: the transaction was converted to US dollars. Not a good idea to pay with ANZ, who put a hefty surcharge on this kind of transaction. That's what “Wise” is for. Where are my credit card numbers? Log in, discover that I need another bloody SMS to identify myself. Look at the list of three credit cards (two virtual, or, as they put it, “digital”). Time to save them somewhere local. And for every card I had to log in again and get another bloody SMS!
Still, tried that, and apart from yet another SMS—5 and counting—I was able to complete my transaction.
Oh. That's what I thought. Yvonne received two confirmation messages from service@shoppfun.com. The second stated:
In order to process your order, we are asking you to send us the card copy for security reasons because of a growing number of not authorized transactions via stolen cards.
You may cover all the digits on your card except last 4 digits, so it is totally secure for you to send it. You can take the digital photo with the web, digital or cell phone camera. Please also send us a screenshot of the payment message you received from your credit card issue bank.
It is a one time verification so all your next purchases with the same card will be processed without any delays. Please send your copy to . Once we received the information, we'll start to process your order. You can expect receive it in 10-12 business days.
And yes, the “Please send your copy to .” is in the original.
So what's this about? The sender address doesn't match the web site address, and the requirement sets off alarm bells. It's also not exactly easy to take a photo of a virtual credit card. OK, to be on the safe side freeze my card. On login I got the message:
We've had to restrict your account
What's that about? Why don't I get any useful information from these people? Still, it can wait until tomorrow.
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Red Energy: save money!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
My last electricity bill from Red
Energy included the information that I might be able to save money by switching
my tariff “plan”. OK, check...
Yes. All charges remain the same, but I get 7¢/kWh for feed-in instead of the current 5.5¢. Not a big difference, and their suggestion that I might save $37 per year seems unlikely; for that I would need to feed in 13 kWh every day in the summer semester, considerably more than is the case.
But clearly it's a no-brainer. And it's not the first time. Why do they do this?
| Wednesday, 27 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 27 December 2023 |
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Replanting Camellia
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
It has been over 13 years since we bought our Camellia japonica, and in all that time it has looked unhappy. It seems to be getting much worse, and I'm pretty sure that it would die if we left it where it has been for the last 8 years:
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So: Jesse Walsh was here today, and I got him to plant it in front of my bedroom window:
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Will it survive? Who knows?
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Scam victim?
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
So who is shoppfun.com? What do the online sources know about it? Asked Bard, which came up with the interesting information:
Is shoppfun.com a legitimate business?
Determining whether shoppfun.com is a legitimate business requires careful investigation, as there are red flags and mixed information available. Here's what I found:
Red flags:
Limited online presence: The website itself is basic and lacks information about the company's location, history, or contact details.
Negative reviews: On Trustpilot, shoppfun.com has a mixed rating, with some positive reviews praising product quality and others complaining about delayed deliveries, poor customer service, and difficulties with returns.
Domain registration: The domain shoppfun.com was registered in 2022, which is relatively recent for an online business.
Mixed information:
Business registration: I couldn't find any official business registration information for shoppfun.com.
Social media: The website mentions social media accounts, but I couldn't find any active
profiles for the business.
Recommendations:
Exercise caution: Given the limited information and mixed reviews, it's advisable to exercise caution before making any purchases from shoppfun.com.
Research alternatives: Consider researching alternative websites with better established reputations and transparency.
Read reviews: Carefully read reviews from verified sources before making a purchase.
Payment methods: If you do decide to purchase, consider using a secure payment method like PayPal that offers buyer protection.
Overall, while shoppfun.com might be a legitimate business, the lack of transparency and mixed reviews raise concerns. It's recommended to exercise caution and do your research before making any purchases.
I particularly like the last line “do your research before making any purchases”. That's exactly what I was doing, though a little too late. But certainly that's a concern.
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Goodbye dereel
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Topic: technology | Link here |
My switchover to hydra is taking a long time, as planned. But I'm making progress, though slower than expected. In particular, X configuration seems to be getting more difficult with the passage of time, rather than simpler.
But I've been moving other services to hydra, and today I moved the daily source tree updates, which required installing git and cvs. And that was the last thing still running on dereel, which can now go back to being a test box when I need it. For now I have powered it down.
Of course, that's only part of the story. For reasons I don't know (probably historical), the update script includes the NetBSD source tree. And that didn't work because of a library mismatch. Now I can run cvs and... the tree is misconfigured. So for the time being I still have no NetBSD updates.
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hydra hang
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
While processing some photos today, one of the scripts hung. It proved that a program dateconv was hanging in D (short term disk wait) status.
Why? It's a really primitive little program that basically just converts a date in the form 20231227 into something like “Wednesday, 27 December 2023”. Yes, it's NFS mounted, but so are hundreds of other programs. But I couldn't stop it, and when I started another instance, it, too, hung.
A library, maybe? But that shouldn't hang forever. I recompiled the program, and it ran again. What's causing that?
| Thursday, 28 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 28 December 2023 |
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dateconv unhung
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Why did dateconv, a completely innocuous program, hang yesterday? It was still like that this morning, but reading the diary entries for yesterday suggested a possibility: dereel? Was the system hanging on trying to contact it?
That's easy to check: reboot dereel. And bang! the dateconv program stopped, leaving behind the smallest kdump that I have ever seen:
99298 dateconv RET open -1 errno 2 No such file or directory
99298 dateconv PSIG SIGINT SIG_DFL code=SI_KERNEL
And that's really all. I had set off a ktrace when it hung, but I had already tried to stop it with ^C (SIGINT), so as soon as it came out of its call to open, it stopped. No idea any more what it was trying to open.
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Unwise contact
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
So what do we do about Yvonne's boots? They want a copy of her credit card sent to .. (empty). They won't get that, but they can have an email reply:
I have received email of 26 December asking for a copy of my credit card and bank statements. I will not send you this information. You have no right to require it, and it gives me the impression that you are not a legitimate company. The payment has been deducted from my credit card. Please either confirm that you will deliver the goods, or refund the payment. Please reply by close of business on 28 December 2023 (today). If I do not hear from you, I will notify my bank and the relevant authorities.
The response?
This is the mail system at host lax.lemis.com.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not
be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
<service@shoppfun.com>: host mx.zoho.com[204.141.43.44] said: 552 5.1.1
<service@shoppfun.com> Mailbox delivery failure policy error (in reply to
RCPT TO command)
OK, and now? The silly thing is that it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they're
legitimate. How can they get VISA accreditation? Called Transferwise Wise on 02 8000 1247 and got a recorded message saying that the number had changed, and I
should get it from the web site.
If there's a number there, it's well hidden. About all I could do was to dispute the transaction, which can take months. That doesn't explain why I received this “We've had to restrict your account” message on Tuesday, and it's now gone.
Is it Wise to do business with these people?
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Processing Christmas photo
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
It's been a little over a year since I purchased a 15 month license for Luminar Neo. I've had mixed results: it's very difficult to use, and I just can't find my way around it. On the other hand, I have had good results, like this before and after comparison (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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But it seems to be just what I need to process this proposed photo for our upcoming New Year's letter. But how do I do it? I had to Google for tutorials, and found one that gave me the basics: select the image, go to “Tools” and select “Layer Properties”, then “Masking” and “Background Removal”. Simple, isn't it? It's an “AI” function, so I don't need to do anything else. It identifies the foreground and marks it in red:
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Well, that's intelligent, isn't it? What do I do now? Select the Brush.
Where's that? Off looking and found this clip:
Ah, of course! (Blue) Structure → Masking → Brush. Isn't that obvious? But when I brush with it, the markings disappear as soon as I let go. Clearly I'm missing something else that's equally obvious, but for the time being it's incredibly frustrating. I'm also left wondering how much use it will be, for reasons that are no fault of Luminar: what will I use for a replacement background? The kangaroos and horses? That would be amusing, but it would probably look really stupid.
So I have less than three months until my subscription expires. Should I renew? This product is so difficult to understand that I hardly use it. It confirms my aversion to subscriptions, especially since their promise of new features throughout the year has had rather underwhelming results. The panorama extension was a singular failure, producing results far inferior to (free) Hugin, and others seem to be of dubious value.
| Friday, 29 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 29 December 2023 |
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New MediathekView?
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Topic: technology, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
I still can't download videos from ARD. The alternative via a web browser is particularly painful, and I can't do anything with the subtitle files that it produces—why are they different from the .ttml or .srt files delivered by the MediathekView program and until recently by ARD themselves?
But it seems that the most recent versions of MediathekView can handle ARD. Install it! But there's a problem: I tried a more recent version last year and ran into some strange Java problem that I didn't want to investigate further. Neither did the authors: NIH.
OK, what are virtual machines for? A good excuse to install VirtualBox. In less than 10 minutes I found that it's called virtualbox-ose-6.1.48_1, and in even less time I had it installed.
First, load the kernel modules. There are three of them: vboxdrv, vboxnetadp and vboxnetflt. One of the last two loads the other, but I keep forgetting which. Still, vboxdrv comes first.
Oh:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) ~ 104 -> kldload vboxdrv
KLD vboxdrv.ko: depends on kernel - not available or version mismatch
linker_load_file: /boot/modules/vboxdrv.ko - unsupported file type
Check dmesg output for more information
Now isn't that helpful? Yes, I know that the kernel module is very sensitive to the kernel version, but this was a freshly installed module. And the information in dmesg or the system log was exactly the same text.
Dammit, build the port. For that it makes sense to finally migrate the FreeBSD source trees to hydra. I've been updating them from hydra for a few days now, but they're still physically on eureka. OK,
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) /home/src/FreeBSD/git/ports 202 -> git pull --ff-only
fatal: detected dubious ownership in repository at '/home/src/FreeBSD/git/ports'
To add an exception for this directory, call:
git config --global --add safe.directory /home/src/FreeBSD/git/ports
What's that nonsense? What's “dubious ownership”? A dubious program more likely. Still, the suggestion worked, so I moved on. Then I got:
> From https://git.freebsd.org/ports
e5daa0cbadb3..bc1211f42d79 main -> freebsd/main
9d60156f12f9..795851b3b0bb 2023Q4 -> freebsd/2023Q4
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
editors/emacs-devel/Makefile
Please commit your changes or stash them before you merge.
All the good old version control systems I knew would go on at that point, but no, git has to crash. OK, how do I “stash” the changes?
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/38) /src/FreeBSD/git/ports/editors/emacs-devel 104 -> git stash Makefile
fatal: subcommand wasn't specified; 'push' can't be assumed due to unexpected token 'Makefile'
push? I said stash! Off searching Once Again and came up with this page. It seems that I shouldn't put anything after “stash”, or git will come up with an incorrect and misleading error message. OK,
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/38) /src/FreeBSD/git/ports/editors/emacs-devel 105 -> git stash
Saved working directory and index state WIP on main: e5daa0cbadb3 security/kf6-kdesu: allow kdesu to use sudo or doas instead su (+)
What does that mean? My change was simply to remove an option that caused spurious error windows when starting Emacs. Still, after that I was finally able to update my tree.
Back to building Vbox. Off it went, downloading hundreds of dependencies, and finally failed:
Making all in web2c
--- w2c/config.h ---
sh: Syntax error: ";" unexpected
*** [w2c/config.h] Error code 2
I've seen that before, and even entered an error report. But on that occasion I was able to work around the bug with a shell with a clean environment:
$ env -i HOME="$HOME" bash --norc
So I did that. Done? No,
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/ports/print/tex-basic-engines 61 -> env -i HOME="$HOME" bash --norc
[root@hydra /home/src/FreeBSD/git/ports/print/tex-basic-engines]# make
===> Building for tex-basic-engines-20230313
--- all ---
/usr/bin/make all-recursive
--- all-recursive ---
sh: sed: not found
sh: sed: not found
I've seen that too, but not at this point. What's the problem? And why does it only bite me?
OK, this is all in TeX. Just install the whole damn package:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/ports/emulators/virtualbox-ose 68 -> mailme pkg install texlive-full
The following 22 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):
New packages to be INSTALLED:
adobe-cmaps: 20051217_4
...
xpdfopen: 0.86_2
Number of packages to be installed: 22
The process will require 7 GiB more space.
4 GiB to be downloaded.
Proceed with this action? [y/N]:
4 GB of packages! What a monster TeX has become. And so that was all I could manage today.
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Luminar: now you see it, now you don't
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
How do I remove the background from my Christmas photo? Yesterday I ran into problems just finding the buttons to press. After finally finding the Brush button, I couldn't get it to do anything useful.
So, just erase the areas that I didn't want, without any intelligence, neither artificial nor natural? But I couldn't get a remote desktop to distress on the screen. More debugging:
=== grog@tiwi (/dev/pts/2) /spool/Series/Die-jungen-Aerzte/02 517 -> /home/local/bin/dordesktop distress 1870x1030+0
User grog sword Ugh!
Connecting to distress
ATTENTION! The server uses and invalid security certificate which can not be trusted for
the following identified reasons(s);
1. Certificate issuer is not trusted by this system.
Issuer: CN=distress
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: Tue Oct 31 09:58:28 2023
To: Wed May 1 08:58:28 2024
Do you trust this certificate (yes/no)?
Why that? Is this the first time I've used rdesktop on tiwi since the end of October? Somehow things are just trying to annoy me today.
Accepted the certificate, and back to Luminar's “erase” function. Spent some time doing that, finally came up with an approximation. Press “Erase. “Erase can't be done, too big”.
Dammit, back to looking at other videos, notably this one. Ah, wrong brush! First I need to accept the mistakes that Luminar made by pressing Remove.
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Then the display changes:
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And then I could make the necessary changes. But I ran out of time, and I discovered that it's far too easy to lose the changes. In addition, it seems that Luminar likes to restart after coming out of hibernation. It doesn't lose the image data, but it does lose the window sizes, coming up with one of these far-too-small windows that seem to be so popular in the Microsoft world.
| Saturday, 30 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 30 December 2023 |
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The Russian danger
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
This was found on Facebook, and I can't establish any copyright. There was some indication that it might have a Polish origin.
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A new phở?
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Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
One of the dishes I eat about for breakfast once a week is phở bò, a Vietnamese noodle dish. Well, it's probably not very accurate: it's made from a paste that comes from Thailand, and I have established that most of the products made by this company, Por Kwan, are not very authentic.
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Still, it doesn't taste bad. And recently I found another paste from them, titled “INSTANT BEEF FLAVOUR PASTE”.
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What's that? Clearly something similar, and I bought a jar intending to try it out. Today was phở day again, so I decided to try it as a substitute.
But there's more text, written in at least four languages: Vietnamese, English, Thai and Chinese:
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Can my phone translate it? Yes, for once:
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So maybe it's just a real phở paste. And sure enough, it tasted good, and not as pedas as the one I normally use.
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Installing VirtualBox, continued
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
This morning, of course, the installation of TeX that I started yesterday had completed, and I was able to continue building VirtualBox. It's too polite to use the standard clang compiler. Instead it wants it own version of clang, a program that I swear spends more time compiling itself than anything else. Still, there was a certain satisfaction in seeing this output from top:
last pid: 23117; load averages: 32.92, 21.89, 10.63 up 18+17:06:40 09:34:58
437 processes: 34 running, 399 sleeping, 4 stopped
CPU: 96.8% user, 0.0% nice, 3.1% system, 0.1% interrupt, 0.0% idle
Mem: 16G Active, 151G Inact, 3741M Laundry, 10G Wired, 1544M Buf, 5907M Free
PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU COMMAND
23106 root 1 87 0 572M 451M CPU14 14 0:06 98.96% c++
22583 root 1 103 0 3756M 3148M CPU22 22 1:03 98.80% c++
23096 root 1 93 0 694M 574M CPU29 29 0:11 98.69% c++
23076 root 1 97 0 675M 551M CPU8 8 0:18 98.68% c++
23092 root 1 94 0 675M 498M CPU23 23 0:12 98.52% c++
23098 root 1 91 0 555M 461M CPU5 5 0:09 98.50% c++
23108 root 1 87 0 574M 449M CPU12 12 0:06 98.43% c++
23114 root 1 77 0 217M 144M CPU15 15 0:01 98.35% c++
23100 root 1 90 0 502M 412M RUN 20 0:08 98.33% c++
23080 root 1 97 0 693M 584M CPU17 17 0:17 98.32% c++
22581 root 1 103 0 4140M 3666M CPU9 9 1:03 98.26% c++
23110 root 1 86 0 490M 404M CPU3 3 0:05 98.25% c++
23113 root 1 79 0 263M 184M CPU25 25 0:02 98.23% c++
23104 root 1 88 0 574M 442M CPU16 16 0:07 98.18% c++
23101 root 1 89 0 554M 416M CPU0 0 0:08 98.10% c++
23089 root 1 95 0 790M 595M CPU26 26 0:13 98.05% c++
23111 root 1 84 0 434M 341M CPU24 24 0:04 98.03% c++
23109 root 1 86 0 490M 406M CPU7 7 0:06 98.01% c++
23103 root 1 89 0 571M 479M CPU30 30 0:07 98.00% c++
23048 root 1 100 0 1014M 800M CPU18 18 0:24 97.87% c++
23105 root 1 87 0 575M 449M CPU13 13 0:06 97.62% c++
22582 root 1 103 0 2850M 2456M CPU28 28 1:03 97.46% c++
23107 root 1 87 0 490M 409M CPU21 21 0:06 97.26% c++
22579 root 1 103 0 2850M 2510M CPU10 10 1:03 96.96% c++
23097 root 1 92 0 669M 522M CPU6 6 0:10 96.79% c++
23112 root 1 81 0 325M 245M CPU4 4 0:03 96.75% c++
23099 root 1 90 0 655M 495M CPU27 27 0:08 96.74% c++
22572 root 1 103 0 2860M 2519M CPU19 19 1:04 96.43% c++
23079 root 1 97 0 790M 658M CPU2 2 0:17 95.87% c++
Finally it was done, and after doing a hard reset on the xterm (Why do the ports reset the number of lines, so that the output appears in the middle of the screen?), I could start it.
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) ~ 104 -> kldload vboxdrv
KLD vboxdrv.ko: depends on kernel - not available or version mismatch
linker_load_file: /boot/modules/vboxdrv.ko - unsupported file type
Check dmesg output for more information
Dammit, that's exactly the error message I got yesterday! Off to check
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/ports/emulators/virtualbox-ose 77 -> l -l /boot/modules/
total 64
...
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 501,032 22 Dec 10:48 vboxdrv.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15,840 22 Dec 10:48 vboxnetadp.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34,328 22 Dec 10:48 vboxnetflt.ko
22 December? I didn't do anything then. Ah:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/ports/emulators/virtualbox-ose 78 -> ls -lc /boot/modules/
total 64
...
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 501,032 29 Dec 15:03 vboxdrv.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15,840 29 Dec 15:03 vboxnetadp.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 34,328 29 Dec 15:03 vboxnetflt.ko
Now that's a time to which I can relate. Yesterday my error messages were logged as:
Dec 29 15:05:49 hydra kernel: KLD vboxdrv.ko: depends on kernel - not available or version mismatch
Dec 29 15:05:49 hydra kernel: linker_load_file: /boot/modules/vboxdrv.ko - unsupported file type
So clearly these are the modules installed by the package. But why? I deinstalled it and rebuilt the port. Are the modules elsewhere? I didn't find them. Off grepping:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/ports/emulators/virtualbox-ose 79 -> grep vboxdrv pkg-plist
No driver in the packing list! Where is one?
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/ports/emulators/virtualbox-ose 80 -> grep vboxdrv ../*/pkg-plist
../virtualbox-ose-kmod-legacy/pkg-plist:/%%KMODDIR%%/vboxdrv.ko
../virtualbox-ose-kmod-legacy/pkg-plist:%%DEBUG%%/%%KMODDIR%%/vboxdrv.ko.%%SYMBOLSUFFIX%%
../virtualbox-ose-kmod/pkg-plist:/%%KMODDIR%%/vboxdrv.ko
../virtualbox-ose-kmod/pkg-plist:%%DEBUG%%/%%KMODDIR%%/vboxdrv.ko.%%SYMBOLSUFFIX%%
Now isn't that clever? A separate port. A bit more searching shows:
RUN_DEPENDS= ${LOCALBASE}/etc/rc.d/vboxnet:emulators/virtualbox-ose-kmod
So, it seems that the sequence is:
What can we do there? I really don't know. I removed the modules, rebuilt them, and all was well. Now I just have the issue of redoing the configuration. I have some notes, but I'm sure they'll need updating.
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X on hydra: not there yet
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
House photo day today. Can I finally do the work on hydra? Switched to X server 1, which obligingly didn't display the fourth screen for quite some time. When it did, it was a duplicated of screen 3. And for reasons I don't understand, it takes a minute or two for screen 1 to come to life after I power it on (it's one of these silly old HDMI displays that displays a blue screen when the “screen saver” should get it to display nothing).
OK, start Hugin. Once again these white screens, and I couldn't get the “fast panorama preview” screen to display. Is this maybe a configuration issue? GLX or similar? So back to eureka for today.
Probably unrelated: the window manager on server 0, screen 0 crashed! Previously it only happened on :0.3, and I had thought that this was related to running x2x. Hopefully this will go away when I cut over to hydra for my main display. But this X migration has been even much more difficult than I had feared.
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We don't need no steenking notifications
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Last week I sent a message to the seller of my whetstone on eBay: a part was missing, as these photos show. The second is what I got.
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There should be retaining screws at the threaded end of the rails. Ask eBay to copy my email. I didn't get it.
Repeat. Same thing. And nothing in my eBay Messages tab. Was the photo too big?
Today I checked my messages, and discovered a number of messages that hadn't been sent to me, including one from the seller saying that the missing part was on its way, and giving a tracking number.
OK, ask AusPost, who have changed their tracking information. But yes, the item has been waiting at “NAPOLEON CPA” since yesterday morning. Inform me? Why should they do that?
Back to look at the eBay messages. I've read it, haven't I? So they deleted it.
What's wrong with people nowadays? Is this eBay policy or a bug? Given their track record, it's fair to consider that it's a bug.
| Sunday, 31 December 2023 | Dereel | Images for 31 December 2023 |
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Java: the pain
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Topic: technology, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Now I have VirtualBox installed on hydra, so I can install a Linux distro to run MediathekView. All I have to do is configure VirtualBox, find, install and configure a Linux distro, install MediathekView.
And that's the workaround! MediathekView is written in Java, so it should also run on FreeBSD. I'm just applying this workaround because I don't want to investigate what went wrong with my last attempt to install a newer version. That's silly.
OK, back to installing it on hydra. Download the tarball, unpack it into /usr/local/MediathekView, discover that it's all in a subdirectory, move around.
How do I start it? There's a script called MediathekView in the top level directory. Tried that:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/0) /usr/local/MediathekView 123 -> MediathekView
ELF interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 not found, error 2
No suitable Java Virtual Machine could be found on your system.
The version of the JVM must be 20.
Please define INSTALL4J_JAVA_HOME to point to a suitable JVM.
Clearly a Linuxism, probably related to the path. OK, how do I start it on eureka? The invocation is in the fvwm2 menus:
java -DproxySet=true -DproxyHost=allmine.lemis.com -DproxyPort=3128 -jar /home/local/MediathekView/MediathekView.jar
But that only gave me:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/38) ~/Downloads 119 -> java -DproxySet=true -DproxyHost=allmine.lemis.com -DproxyPort=3128 -jar /home/local/MediathekView/MediathekView.jar
bash: java: command not found
OK, that makes sense. How do I install Java? It's on eureka; what does pkg say there?
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/42) ~ 128 -> wh java
3468838 lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 21 26 Sep 2014 /usr/local/bin/java -> /usr/local/bin/javavm=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/42) ~ 131 -> pkg which /usr/local/bin/javavm
/usr/local/bin/javavm was installed by package javavmwrapper-2.7.6
OK, install javavmwrapper. No change. It didn't install a /usr/local/bin/javavm. A search through the packages showed nothing else. Is this an issue with licenses? I seem to recall something years ago, but surely that has been resolved. Off searching the web for install java freebsd, and found a number of hits. FOOL! It's not Java, it's openjdk21-21.0.1+12.1! How could you make such a mistake?
That was enough for today.
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Another MediathekView alternative
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Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
So installing MediathekView on FreeBSD and on Linux both went into the “too hard” basket. But there's even another alternative: install on Microsoft, specifically distress. That sounds like anathema, but if it works...
Installation is the typical Microsoft pain, not made any easier by the fact that the package didn't have Microsoft's quality seal. And once it was installed, I couldn't find it: not on the root screen, not on the task bar. I had to search for it. But it seems that I can manually “pin” it to the task bar. And then, how about that, I was able to start it. I still don't have the configuration, and I probably won't go that far: at some point I should have it running on hydra. But I was able to find the programmes that I wanted and download them.
And to my astonishment, they came in much faster than on FreeBSD. Programmes from ARD normally come in at about 200 kB/s. That seems to be related to the site, since programmes from SRF come in effectively at full line speed (about 2.5 to 3 MB/s). But today I got consistent results in the same order of magnitude from ARD—about 10 times what I got with FreeBSD!
On the one hand, that's clearly good. On the other hand, it's painful and shameful. Why is FreeBSD, arguably the heir to the oldest Internet implementation in the world, so much worse? My guess is that it's due to inappropriate tuning parameters. I looked at that a while back, but didn't come to any conclusions. It's certainly not a FreeBSD performance issue: all the traffic to distress goes via NAT and a firewall on eureka.
And of course there's another consideration: if I can max out the link, (25 Mb/s down, 5 up), should I maybe upgrade to 75/10? No, I don't think so. It costs $10 more per month, and I don't see any particular advantage, particularly since the bandwidth limitation is relatively generous (I frequently go over 30 Mb/s down), and the full speed link could suffer from performance limitations.
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Still more ssh issues
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Seen today while syncing my web pages:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/38) ~ 120 -> rsync /home/grog/public_html/photos/dirlist www:/home/grog/www.lemis.com/grog/photos
agent key RSA SHA256:S7sZHLcY4dgw53/rF70vrScdPuGef3enHdJzuYA1WDo returned incorrect signature type
Sun 31 Dec 2023 12:55:35 AEDT
I've had this kind of thing before, most recently last month, but I thought I had worked around them, and so far they have only ever occurred with freefall.freebsd.org. I can see more work coming up here.
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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