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| Greg's diary |
| July 2019 |
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| Monday, 1 July 2019 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 1 July 2019 |
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Into Ballarat again
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Topic: general | Link here |
Into Ballarat today for a number of things. First to Bakery Hill to pick up some wine glasses that I had been offered on Freecycle. The place turned out to be only 130 m from the Dorevitch pathology centre where I have my blood tests done, but I had never noticed it before, nor the Coles supermarket set back from the road. The place is a legal aid centre, and it looks it, with large locked doors with 15 cm thick glass. I wonder what kind of clientele they get.
While in town, also had my hair cut.
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New lens
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
My M.Zuiko DIGITAL ED 7-14 mm f/2.8 PRO lens, serial number AC8A22385, arrived today, one of the reasons I went to town. Since I was in town, thought of what I could take photos of. Nothing reached out and grabbed me, but then I thought of Sovereign Hill. Now that I can get in for free, there's no reason not to go for 15 minutes or so, so off there on the way home.
7 mm (14 mm “full frame equivalent”) is really very wide for a rectilinear lens. Not overly surprisingly, my photos were more unusual than good:
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But I did get one relatively impressive photo, which after straightening cropped to this:
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Of course, a lot is in the cropping:
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I suppose that's one of the unavoidable issues with extreme wide angle rectilinear lenses, though I suspect that the subject helped.
And maybe this one isn't so bad either:
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Back home, the obligatory three-way comparison with my Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm f/1.8 Fisheye PRO:
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That's the fisheye lens converted to rectilinear, then the fisheye without remapping, and finally the new lens. The fisheye image is much wider, even after conversion to rectilinear coordinates. And surprisingly, there's little in the sharpness between the two, though I was impressed by the sharpness of the new lens. That's not something I usually pay much attention to, but this time it stood out:
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Woolworths renovation
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Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne told me a while back that the Woolworths supermarket in Sebastopol has been renovated. She liked the result, and that I should take a look myself. I was looking for chilies, so in.
Not impressed. It doesn't help that the chilies I found were packaged in their own weight of completely unnecessary plastic, nor that they cost $150 a kilo! But the way they have laid out things means that you have to be about 80 cm tall to easily read the price labels. The trays are angled downwards to the front, and nobody has thought of where to put the labels, so they point downwards too. From my perspective, they're completely invisible:
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From the front it's not much better:
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You need to go to waist level to see them properly:
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Who thinks of these things? Supermarkets and labelling aren't exactly something new.
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Video copy: done!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
The video backup copy that I started completed today at 13:58:12, not quite 48 hours after starting. 5.4 TB, about 31 MB/s. Not spectacular, but of course it's a SMR disk, so it kept taking breaks to rearrange the mess it has collected.
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More wine
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Rather to my surprise, a courier delivered the wine that I bought on 20 June today, significantly violating the delivery guarantee of 25 June. “Keenans Bridge”. Tried a bottle in the evening. Not bad; and that's for only $75 per dozen, including delivery and (apparently) storage.
| Tuesday, 2 July 2019 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 2 July 2019 |
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To the cardiologist
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Off with Yvonne to St John of God to talk with Rodney Reddy, a cardiologist: Yvonne has been having various pains that could point to heart issues. The result was good news and bad news. The bad news: yes, some valve insufficiency, but not (yet) very serious. Symptoms would be shortness of breath after exertion (which she doesn't have), but not any chest pains. And that was the good news: whatever the chest pains were, it wasn't the heart, though she has to go through further tests, including an X-ray today and a six hour perfusion test next week. As Yvonne said: this modern medicine is really a pain. In the Good Old Days you developed heart problems, you died, and you were done with it.
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End of rein?
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
While waiting at St John of God, “Pomegranate”, their in-house magazine, caught my eye. Why “Pomegranate”? I didn't find out. But they were talking about Virtual Reality for operations.
Virtual Reality? I have always associated that with the unreal. To quote Wikipedia:
Virtual reality (VR) is an experience taking place within simulated and immersive environments that can be similar to or completely different from the real world.
They were talking about it as visual assistance for surgeons. They claim that what they were doing was a first, but I think the “first” was really the use of the term in this connection.
But while leafing through the magazine, found this, which hit me in the face:
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“Hands over reigns”? Clearly his reign was at an end, but was he also at the end of his tether? I wonder if anybody noticed the spelling error.
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Mouldy sourdough
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Started a loaf of bread today. More sourdough problems, mould in the corners:
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Time to look for a sourer, more vigorous starter?
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Dark crystal
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
The wine glasses that I picked up yesterday were brand new, possibly a gift to a since-deceased parent, and quite pretty. These were advertised as being 12 cl, which roughly matches the crystal glasses that we already have that hold 100 ml of wine:
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But when I poured a normal glassful of wine, I only got 70 ml. OK, they'll do as sherry glasses, but why does the maker claim 12 cl? Volume full to the brim? No: on checking, I managed to get 106 g of water into one of them. I might have got a few drops more before it overflowed, but never 120 g:
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And is that the way you measure wine glasses? It's certainly not the way you measure beer glasses, which are measured (and marked, if they're not too polite) by the volume that they hold when filled normally:
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The mark about the number („Eichstrich“ or “Oak stroke”) is the point to which the glass is to be filled, leaving plenty of space for the head. Wine doesn't have a head, of course, but the glasses aren't intended to be filled to the brim.
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Another power failure
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Topic: general | Link here |
Another brief power failure this evening at 23:44:56.
| Wednesday, 3 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 3 July 2019 |
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NBN: three days planned downtime!
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
From time to time I get messages from Aussie Broadband telling me that the National Broadband Network is planning yet more downtime for my network link. The last ones were particularly draconian:
The best thing that I can say about that is that they're the first scheduled outages since the end of April. But so far I have saved 35 emails telling me of scheduled outages in the last 34 months. That's more than one a month!
Today, fortunately, no outage was planned. That didn't stop them, though: at 8:42 we went off the net. Bloody NBN! The was no signal on the NTD, so it pointed at the NBN.
The morning dragged by. The only difference was that the ODU light lighted up again, red: fault. Could it be that, by some coincidence, the problem wasn't with the NBN? Tried the Aussie Broadband App, which told me that there were no known outages. Tried to report a fault, with the same results as last time: stuck in a hanging test. Dammit, people, I can see that the thing isn't working! And why it says that loopback works when there's no connection just doesn't make sense.
Called up Aussie, worked my way through their menus, and got misdirected anyway: after 2 minutes I was connected with sales, who didn't understand when I said “My network link is down“, but promised to get me called back. That, it seems, wasn't possible, but she called me back and transferred me. 25 minutes to reach a support person (Chris), who confirmed (after some checking) that there was a scheduled outage, that they were upgrading the towers (what, again?), that it would continue for the next couple of days, that my service would then get better, and that they had had significant issues with fixed wireless. Why, oh why, didn't they install fibre 6 years ago? It would probably have ended up cheaper.
Chris also told me that I should reboot my NTD at regular intervals, and didn't believe me when I told him that that wasn't necessary. While we were talking, the link came back up (without reboot, as I pointed out). At 14:08:50, 19468 seconds (5.4 hours).
OK, I've had enough of this. Can I make a formal complaint? Yes, indeed, they'd be happy to, and I can expect a call back from NBN in one to two weeks. That's fast by NBN standards, as Chris laughingly agreed.
Still, there are issues that Aussie should address too:
And finally, of course: hopefully the planned outages for next week (9 hours!) won't happen.
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Upgrading teevee
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
OK, time to upgrade teevee. Put the new 8 TB disk in my test box as a second disk, with the still-waiting eureso as the first. Partition, copy data, both the root file system from teevee and the video data from the backup disk.
Based on previous experience, time to turn off soft updates journaling on the file system. That's easy enough, but reenabling it requires removing the file .sujournal in the top-level directory. It's not easy: the file is protected by all sorts of strange flags that I've never heard of before. There must be room for improvement there.
That was all I could do today. Once again, days' worth of file copying. Tomorrow I'll upgrade the system on the root file system.
| Thursday, 4 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 4 July 2019 |
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Katong Laksa?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I eat two different kinds of laksa for breakfast: asam laksa and curry laksa. Well, that's what they're called nowadays. When I was a lad we called them Penang laksa and Singapore laksa respectively, and I greatly preferred the Penang laksa. But in the last few years I have developed a taste for curry laksa too.
I buy pre-prepared laksa paste, which typically only needs coconut milk and some kind of meat or fish, along with the noodles. I've more or less settled on the Richmond asam laksa and Tean's curry laksa pastes:
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But I'm always trying new things, and last time but one I was in Geelong I bought some “Katong laksa paste”, which somewhat put me off by wanting an addition of condensed milk:
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As a result, it took nearly a year for me to finally try it, today (without the condensed milk). It's very different! It has a nice smell of prawns, but it's hardly pedas at all, more like a coconut soup:
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Katong is known for its laksa, and it occurred to me: this is the Singapore laksa that I had when I was a boy. The curry laksa is something I haven't had before. And yes, I find the Katong laksa boring. It must be what we were given in Singapore in July 1995.
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Upgrading teevee, day 2
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So now I have the teevee file system on the new 8 TB disk, masquerading as tiwi.lemis.com. Boot up. Oh:
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What's that? Spent some time scratching my head. Clearly init is there, but what's this reference to /dev/dev? Error 2 is ENOENT, “no such file or directory”.
OK, put the eureso disk back in front of the tiwi disk and boot. And it had difficulties too: couldn't mount linprocfs. That's not really necessary right now, but how did it happen? It seems that it somehow booted from the wrong disk! Is that an issue with /boot/loader.conf? I've had systems confused by whether the first disk is disk0 or disk1, but in this case the loader parameters were clearly disk0p2:, which has to be right.
And why just now? Now there's a kernel on /dev/ada1p2, which must be disk1p2 to the loader. Presumably it tried before, found nothing, and went back to /dev/ada0p2. But why? None of this makes sense. I'm still in catch-up mode from the things that have happened in the past week, so I had a good excuse to put it off until tomorrow.
| Friday, 5 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 5 July 2019 |
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Pink eggs
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Once a week we eat poached eggs together. One for Yvonne, two for me. Problem: Yvonne eats duck eggs, I eat hen eggs. So they're not interchangeable. After an “accident” last week I suggested putting a bit of food colouring on the duck egg. OK, that's what she did:
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Well, it worked. Maybe she didn't need quite that much.
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teevee upgrade, day 3
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Why am I getting these errors with the teevee upgrade? Did something go wrong with copying the disk image from teevee? In particular, did I somehow end up with a node /dev that wasn't a directory? First tried rsyncing the file system again. Changes, of course, but none that pointed to a problem copying the files the first time.
OK, one step at a time. I have two disks: the disk that is intended to bootstrap eureka, and the one that will become the new teevee. Both are GPT volumes, and both are partitioned in the same manner: they have two system partitions and a larger file system for everything else. Here the current disk on teevee:
=== root@teevee (/dev/pts/8) / 34 -> gpart show
gpart is too polite to spell out what should be obvious: the third column of the partition entries is the partition number, so they're named /dev/ada0p1 (boot partition) to /dev/ada0p5 (large partition). /dev/ada0p2 and /dev/ada0p4 are both root file systems for two different systems: the idea is to install a new system on the alternative partition, something that has never worked that well, but not badly enough to reject the concept.
When I put only the first disk in the system, it boots normally from the second partition (/dev/ada0p4). That's controlled by /boot/loader.conf—in the first FreeBSD partition (/dev/ada0p2), which contains:
The loader doesn't believe in any of this ada nonsense, so it renames it to disk: disk0p4 corresponds to what the rest of FreeBSD calls /dev/ada0p4.
By chance, the disk on my test box also has this layout and boots from the second partition, /dev/ada0p4. The procedure, as I understand it, is:
The first problem I have: after I populated /dev/ada1p2 (the first FreeBSD partition on the new (second) disk), the loader loads the kernel from that partition instead of what is specified as rootdev in /boot/loader.conf on /dev/ada0p2. Why? I still don't understand. Looking at the loader variables at boot time shows another variable, loaddev, that is set to disk1p2: (note that colon at the end) and can't be changed. It is barely mentioned in the man page:
Then, devices are probed, currdev and loaddev are set, ...
And that's all. How does it get set? Where is there a memory of /dev/ada1p2? I still don't know. But I've discovered that if I try to boot from /dev/ada0p2 instead of /dev/ada0p4, things work as expected. For the moment, that's going to have to do.
And the second problem (the real one)? Why am I panicing on boot? In the evening it dawned on my: I had copied /dev/ada0p4 on teevee to /dev/ada1p2 on tiwi. The /boot/loader.conf still pointed to /dev/ada0p4. And, of course, the boot messages told me that much. From yesterday's boot messages:
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OK, that's something to try tomorrow. It still doesn't explain my boot problems with two disks. Found various man pages that I suspect are significantly out of date. It looks like time for some UTSL.
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A bone! A bone
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Walking the dogs today, Leonid found a dried-out bone (kangaroo?). Nikolai does this too, and brings them back home to eat them. But Leo seldom makes it that far. He plays around with them and finally drops them:
| Saturday, 6 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 6 July 2019 |
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Jefferson airplane coming in to land
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
Donald Trump has done it again: he hijacked the US Independence Day celebrations to put himself in the limelight. Yawn. Even many US news services didn't bother to cover the event.
That proves to be a pity. Trump excelled himself:
“Our army ... took over the airports”. He was talking about the Continental Army in 1775. Or was it 1777 (Valley Forge)? Or maybe 1812 at Fort McHenry? He mentioned all three, but only the mention of airports got people's attention. And then he blamed it on his teleprompter! Parodies abound:
The Guardian has many more. But how is it possible that this has not concerned his supporters? Do they maybe not know that there were no airports at the time? Nobody seems to have noticed the other historical inaccuracies.
And then there was a reference to that great American, Alexander Graham Bell. Well, he was born in Scotland, but he emigrated to Canada and became a Canadian citizen. Is that American? For me it is, but the US Americans seem to think that they're the only Americans, and it was clear from the context that Trump thought that Bell had been a US American citizen. Doesn't anybody check these things? Or was that also the fault of the teleprompter?
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Panoramas with 7-14 mm lens
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
House photo day again today, and of course I had to try it out with the new M.Zuiko DIGITAL ED 7-14 mm f/2.8 PRO. Despite being the widest available rectilinear lens for the Micro Four Thirds system, it's considerably narrower than the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm f/1.8 Fisheye PRO, so I mounted it vertically and took images at 60° instead of 90° steps.
Things worked out quite well. Here a comparison with fisheye (first) and rectilinear lenses:
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One of the things that had impressed me by both Olympus fisheye lenses (the other being the Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 8 mm f/3.5) was the extreme lack of flare. By comparison I had seen images from the Zuiko Digital ED 7-14 mm f/4 with extreme flare. That, too, was considered an excellent lens in its day. How would the new one do?
Much better, but still not as good as the fisheye. Here an example, first fisheye, then 7-14:
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That's an extreme case, straight into the sun, and neither lens does perfectly. Here in more detail:
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There are more reflections from the 7-14, and in particular the entire image is more washed out. Still, I'd say that's quite acceptable.
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teevee upgrade, day 4
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So was my issue booting the new teevee just because of the incorrect entry in /etc/fstab? Yes! After that it booted, and I was back in familiar territory building a new world:
What's that? The usual Subversion repo corruption, which I've seen far too many times before. Renamed the tree and checked out again, and everything worked, though this old machine took all day to build its world.
That still leaves the question open about why the other disk boots the kernel from the wrong disk.
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New tracks
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Topic: animals, general, opinion | Link here |
We know the area round Stones Road pretty well by now. We first investigated it nearly 7 years ago when the property on the corner of Westons Road and Stones Road was on the market, and it's been 5 years since I got our car jammed in Westons Road.
Seven years ago I took a photo to the north of Westons Road:
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And a couple of weeks ago I took another look, this time further west from the road:
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It looks as if we can't go any further along that path (maybe still Stones Road, though Google Maps thinks that the neighbour's driveway, off at an angle, is the continuation).
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But today, on looking further, I discovered that there's an unmade path off to the west, going probably 1 km. Went down for a few hundred metres and took this view to the north:
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That's Enfield State Park in the distance. Maybe I'll find the elusive way into the park along this path.
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Steamboat again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Another attempt at Steamboat this evening, this time using a starter paste:
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In the past we haven't found it necessary to have a starter, just the broth. But it proved to be a good idea. Now I just need to find the right balance. Yvonne was happy with the result, but somehow I feel that there's something missing.
| Sunday, 7 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 7 July 2019 |
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A real bone!
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
As if to show Leonid what's what, today Nikolai found a more interesting bone than the one that Leo found on Friday:
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What is it? The obvious choice would be sheep or kangaroo. Did a bit of research and discovered that sheep have no front teeth on the upper jaw. And this page shows clearly that it's a kangaroo. Here an image from that page:
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That's a Red kangaroo, which we don't have round here. It's pretty clear that this would be an Eastern grey kangaroo, but the dentition is almost identical.
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Bulgogi on table grill
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
More by accident than design, ate Bulgogi for dinner tonight. How do you grill it? We have a table grill, though I don't know where: we haven't used it for years. But we have the new raclette grill:
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It comes with a metal top (in fact, the only way to use it; the stone in this photo hadn't been used yet, and the first use scarred it for life). Problem: it doesn't get hot enough. It also gets very dirty, and since it's PTFE-coated, it's not clear how to clean the crusts off it. I'll have to dig out the gas grill before we try it again.
Strangely, we've done this before, on 28 October 2001. On that occasion I didn't have any issue with the heat. But that was a different grill.
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Selfies and present from the tooth fairy
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Topic: photography, health, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne showed me this photo (from Facebook) a couple of days ago:
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Who's that? And what has happened? Our daughter Yana had her wisdom teeth removed a few days ago, and this was the first photo afterwards. I didn't recognize her. It wasn't for the white stuff foaming out of her mouth: it was the perspective (arms length). I suppose in these days of selfies, that should be easily recognizable, but it completely confused me.
Late this evening, a knock on the door: Donovan, a friend of Yana's, with a box:
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That's the elusive Seppeltsfield sherry that Dan Murphy (not the author of TECO) no longer carry, a "thank you" for financial support for the dental work. I am clearly indebted to the Council of Fairies.
| Monday, 8 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 8 July 2019 |
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teevee upgrade, day 5
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
In to the office this morning to discover that nothing had gone wrong with the port upgrade on tiwi, the new teevee:
Well, almost nothing. It had deleted a number of ports, still fewer than expected. But I had been prepared for that. That's why I copied the output to a mail message to myself.
But where was the mail message?
Damn! Mail loop. But why? I get other mail from tiwi. To be examined. I'm guessing a misconfiguration on eureka, because I have no issues sending this kind of mail from teevee. But at the moment that's not the issue: I now don't have any record of which ports were deleted. Was the message saved in some postfix directory? Not that I can see. Next time I should use the more reliable alternative of Log:
There were also something like 1500 lines of output from various upgraded ports. Fortunately they were still on the xterm display, so I was able to copy them. Am I going to read them? Only if something goes wrong.
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Bentong, 50 years ago
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Topic: history, opinion | Link here |
Fifty years ago I had just returned to Kuala Lumpur and was playing around with my Citroën Traction avant. I set off with Ahmad bin Mahmuddin for Bentong, where he has family. Not very far, only about 70 km, but across the Genting Simpah pass with a car in less than perfect condition, it was almost an adventure.
How times have changed! Almost more to the point, today was also the anniversary of my arrival in Dereel, 12 years ago—nearly a quarter of those 50 years! The recollection had one good thing: finally got round to answering a 6-month-old email from Ahmad (now simply Haji Ahmad Mahmuddin, without the old “bin”).
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Rest for the weary
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Topic: general, animals, opinion | Link here |
I never cease to be surprised by the amount of litter that we find on the side of the road when walking the dogs, mainly old VB cans. But today I saw something that puzzled me:
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Is that litter? Lost? Left on the roadside by a considerate person for people or kangaroos to rest?
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Dot Matrix meets Sir Christiane
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Topic: general, fiction, opinion | Link here |
Some things you think can only appear in films, especially in parodies like Spaceballs, like this character (“Dot Matrix”) from Chosen One of the Day: Dot Matrix:
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And then in the afternoon I saw:
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| Tuesday, 9 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 9 July 2019 |
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MediathekView pain
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Topic: multimedia, technology | Link here |
Every morning I use MediathekView to update my list of German TV programmes. But today I got a message: „Das Laden der Filmliste hat nicht geklappt“ (“Loading the film list didn't work”). Why? Ah, this is a modern program (written in Java, no less). Don't annoy the user with information.
OK, this has been running for a while (and using gigabytes of storage). Let's shoot it down. Oh, no, please don't do that! I'll have to dump core.
And dump core.
And dump core.
Why did it take so long? It dumped 6 GB of core, and at an average transfer rate of 60 MB/s, that's still 100 seconds. I think that's the biggest core dump I have ever seen. Time to restrict the size of my core dumps. What human can analyse a 6 GB Java core dump? Well, in this case most people could. Ultimately it says “Signal received, core dumped”.
Restart MediathekView. Same problem. Tried it on a different system. Same problem. I've seen this before: there appears to be something in the film lists themselves that triggers problems. Check configuration. Nothing obvious, but there's a second menu path to “Load film list” there, and it works.
And for how long? I can see more pain coming.
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teevee upgrade?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So now effectively teevee has been upgraded. What do I need to do?
Modify /etc/rc.conf:
Shut down system, move disk and display card to teevee.
Reboot teevee.
Simple, isn't it? But the devil is in the detail. Why move the display card? I've continually had issues with the Nvidia display cards that I have been using for years: the drivers keep changing, and they don't always work. That's one of the main problems I've had with upgrading. And then, by chance, I received a Radeon card with a computer that I bought. It Just Worked. And it just works in tiwi now.
Problem: it doesn't have an HDMI output. My TV doesn't have any other sane input. So either I buy an adapter (another can of worms?) or a new card. In the meantime I can't really use it. I'm left with two options: reinstall an Nvidia driver for the new system, or buy a new Radeon card.
Actually there's a third option, the one I have so far chosen: procrastinate.
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Which ports were removed?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Yesterday's port upgrade had a problem: I lost the log file. Peter Jeremy commented that there's a way around it: pkg (which also calls itself pkg-static some of the time) logs them:
How many of those do I need? I install things like MySQL, Samba and BIND as a matter of course, but I don't actually use them. Maybe I should just wait and see. At least this time it didn't remove Emacs.
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Qantas pain
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
It's been over 13 years since I last travelled in an aeroplane, and I'm happy that way. But next month Yvonne has to fly to the Gold Coast for a seminar. OK, time to use some of the frequent flyer points that I still keep accruing.
Log in to the Qantas frequent flyer portal. Sorry, wrong PIN. Dammit, the PIN was correct. What's wrong with their system? OK, select “forgot PIN”, and they sent me an email, conveniently in HTML but with a URL in plain text:
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OK, paste that URL into the browser and get:
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What answers should I give? My saved information didn't include any information for maiden name and date of birth, so presumably I supplied the correct information. Postcode? Date of joining? How should I know? When did I last update my profile? Where's my card? The last one expired years ago, and I threw it away. And they're too polite to annoy me by sending me new cards when I clearly don't fly any more.
They offer an alternative method. Click on it and get:
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What's that number? There is no phone number that matches that pattern: +610 is invalid. More to the point, though, without asking me they sent a security code to a phone number that is no longer registered with me. That's a blatant violation of security, though probably, if the number is in service, the receiver wouldn't be able to do much with it.
OK, nothing for it, call them on the phone. Tried their automatic reset thing, but of course that didn't work. Call again, connected to John, who couldn't hear me: something wrong with the phone connection. Call again, connected to mumble, something like Loo, but proved to be spelt Elue. With almost no checking, she connected me to a phone-based system where I could type in a new PIN. Done! Well, please wait for the phone survey at the end. Willingly! And of course, after a long delay, it just hung up on me.
OK, let's update my profile. OK, tell me your post code and date of joining. Dammit, that's what I'm trying to find out! Another phone call, this time with Jing, who changed my phone number and address (the latter incorrectly). So I could get a security code sent to my phone. HOW I hate this concept of expecting any phone communication to be secure!
FINALLY updated my profile, discovering that I could be on Christmas Island:
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OK, after all that (an hour?), try to make a points redemption:
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Why prices? Ah, if you really want points redemption, you also need to select “Use Points”:
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What does all that mean? I had planned to book a business class flight, but look at that price! I think I sent her first class to Lima and back for less than that 17 years ago. Clearly they've increased the number of points you need to compensate for the smaller number of points you receive for any transaction.
Yes, we can afford that, but the only flights are at the wrong time. OK, let's take a look at a flight round the time that she wants:
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What's the difference between those three? Who knows? They're even too polite to remind me of the date of the flight or tell me what equipment they use. Spent some time searching, and coming to the probable conclusion that the price had nothing to do with the seats, along with the definite conclusion that any change would cost roughly the same as the cost of the flight.
What a pain these people are! I'm glad that it's Yvonne flying, and not me.
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NBN: We have worse in store
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been complaining more than usual about the National Broadband Network recently. Maybe they've noticed and tried to make things even more difficult. Today I received Yet Another email announcing long planned outages:
Yet more daytime work! Over 7 business days they're planning a total of 30 hours of downtime! The window information is inaccurate, since they're clearly planning to do this in normal working hours.
Will this never stop? Is there no accountability?
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More Enfield State Park
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Topic: general, animals, opinion | Link here |
Walked the dogs past the end of Stones Road and to the edges of Enfield State Park again today, this time going a little further, until we discovered a fence. For some reason I didn't take a photo, but though it was knocked down in places, it precludes getting through by car or horse.
On the way back, evidence of a bygone day:
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I wonder when that was built, and why.
| Wednesday, 10 July 2019 | Dereel | |
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50 years of Unix?
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Topic: technology, history | Link here |
Unix is 50 years old, more or less. At the start it seems to have been a way for Ken Thompson to get out of visiting relatives in summer 1969. In three weeks, so the stories go, he laid the foundations of Unix on a "little-used PDP-7”. What he actually did then depends on whom you ask. In a recent interview he stated that he spent a week each writing an editor, an assembler and an operating system. But we still don't know exactly when.
Warner Losh has been doing some investigation of the “little-used PDP-7” and came up with this photo from DEC sales literature:
The interesting thing there is: no disk. Warner has found the DEC service records, according to which only 99 PDP-7s were produced, a number currently at variance with the Wikipedia page. And only two of them (not including the one in the photo above) had disks! Ken's machine (serial number 34) had an RB09 disk, also called RD10, with a whopping 1 MB of storage! And the other one had a different disk (RA01) So Ken's PDP-7 was the only machine in the world that could run Unix in 1969, and it seems that one of the reasons that the machine was "little-used" was that it was already obsolete.
It's amazing how little we knew about the real origins of Unix.
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X configuration revisited
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So how did my upgrade of teevee work out? Finally dragged out a mouse and tried things out. My all-important mpv worked, but not without grumbling:
Playing: 6-Schnitzel-dell-arte--6_6--20190422-163000.mp4
(+) Video --vid=1 (*) (h264 1280x720 50.000fps)
(+) Audio --aid=1 (*) (aac 2ch 48000Hz)
(+) Subs --sid=1 '6-Schnitzel-dell-arte--6_6--20190422-163000.srt' (subrip) (external)
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
[vo/gpu/opengl] GLX not found.
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
[vo/gpu/opengl] GLX not found.
Xlib: extension "GLX" missing on display ":0.0".
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment.
error: XDG_RUNTIME_DIR not set in the environment.
[vo/gpu/vulkan] vkEnumeratePhysicalDevices(vk->inst, &num, NULL): VK_ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED
Failed to open VDPAU backend Shared object "libvdpau_r600.so" not found, required by "mpv"
[vo/vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[vo/xv] Warning: this legacy VO has bad quality and performance, and will in particular result in blurry OSD and subtitles. You should fix your graphics drivers, or not force the xv VO.
AO: [oss] 48000Hz stereo 2ch s32
VO: [xv] 1280x720 yuv420p
AV: 00:05:38 / 00:44:44 (12%) A-V: -0.000
Admire these emetic but easy-to-read coloured output lines.
Where does GLX come from? It's in the Xorg.conf file on teevee, but here I'm using a Radeon card without any X config file. How do I get it loaded? Yes, of course I can create an Xorg.conf, but the whole idea was that that sort of thing was no longer needed. And what's this reference to VDPAU? Do I need that, or was that an attempt to recover from missing GLX? VDPAU seems to be an Nvidia thing, so maybe sticking to Nvidia cards would be the easier way.
Other programs were less forgiving. Hugin refuses to run without GLX. So one way or another I'm going to have to select it. More procrastination while I decide how.
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More power failures
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Topic: general | Link here |
I should run my MySQL queries every day. Today we had not one, but two short power failures, at 19:35:15 (1 second) and 20:46:04 (2 seconds). And of course that was the only way I could find out about them.
| Thursday, 11 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 11 July 2019 |
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teevee: back to Nvidia
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Enough procrastination with tiwi, the new teevee. Time to test with the Nvidia card, of which I had one lying around. I wasn't overly surprised when I couldn't start X:
To be fair, it also referred to /var/log/Xorg.0.log, but I knew that. There I found the explanation that should have been in the startup message:
That's part of the pain of using Nvidia. OK, install the old driver. What's it called? pkg wants exact names.
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 8 -> pkg search nvidia-driver
OK, remove the current driver (nvidia-driver-390.87_3) and install the 340 version (nvidia-driver-340-340.107_4).
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 15 -> pkg delete nvidia-driver-390.87_3
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 16 -> kldunload nvidia
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 17 -> pkg install nvidia-driver-340-340.107_4
Why on Earth does a graphics driver require MySQL client, and a specific (down-rev) version at that?
=== grog@tiwi (/dev/pts/1) ~ 3 -> pkg info | grep mysql
OK, what the hell, we can tidy up later.
Yes, do it already...
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 18 -> kldload nvidia
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 20 -> kldstat
Dammit, I specifically kldunloaded the driver, and it didn't complain. Do it again:
=== root@tiwi (/dev/pts/0) /etc 22 -> kldunload nvidia
Dammit, I'm going to have to reboot! OK, did that, and it came up and worked, without the GLX error messages that I got yesterday.
And then I discovered the contents of /boot/modules:
I already had a copy of the old driver there! I really should look before I do these things.
But there was something wrong with the mouse: I couldn't mark text normally. It jittered in a way that I've only seen when the window manager gets stuck in a restart loop. But that wasn't the case here. What could it be? I've seen significant issues with Logitech mice, almost certainly a bug in the completely opaque FreeBSD driver. In this case the mouse was identical with the one on eureka, right next to it. The mouse on eureka seemed to be working correctly, but I don't understand how the (wireless) mice pair with the dongles, and I wouldn't put it past there being some kind of interference. But that's enough pain for one day. Mañana.
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Another bloody NBN outage! Another! Another!
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
In the middle of the morning, got an unexpected “site not accessible” error. Dammit, I'm off the NBN again! Off out of the office, furiously cursing, but discovered that the outage wasn't that long, “only” 20 minutes. But it wasn't alone. Two more, a total of 35 minutes in a 90 minute period:
When is this ever going to stop? And why wasn't it reported? Oh, it was. When it came back, took a look at the warnings that seem to be a standard part of my Aussie Broadband home page:
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And how about that, they're all there, in random order:
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But look at it! Four scheduled outages between 8 July and 2 August, covering a total of 15 days out of 25 (13 work days out of 20), 2 of them twice, and potentially 323 hours!
Words fail me.
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Lies, damn lies and Statista
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
I get at least one statistic every day from Statista, and some are quite interesting, though I often have my doubts about the depth of their research. Today was particularly interesting. The heading for the mail message read “Australian 5G Slower than 4G”.
OK, that looks interesting. And sure enough, that's what their bar chart shows:
And they state in the text:
Elsewhere, the fact that the technology is not fully mature is certainly evident in some countries such as Australia where 4G outperformed 5G in download speed.
People, look at your own chart! It shows that Australian 5G is in the middle of the chart, well ahead of the United Kingdom and all mentioned European countries except Switzerland. I would certainly be happy with a download speed of 792 Mb/s, though I'm not sure what I'd do with so much speed. But it seems that Australian 4G leads the world with 960 Mb/s!
Is that right? Nominally I'm connected to the National Broadband Network with 4G, though that's not exactly typical. Maximum speed: 50 Mb/s.
Where in Australia can you get nearly gigabit speeds with 4G? Discussion on IRC. Nowhere that anybody knows of. Typical speeds reported were 10-20 Mb/s. A reference would have been good, but (atypically) they didn't supply one. This greatly detracts from their credibility, especially as they clearly didn't look carefully at their own data.
| Friday, 12 July 2019 | Dereel | |
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teevee upgrade, day 9
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I haven't exactly been in a hurry upgrading teevee: there was no hurry. The only issue was the impending filling up of the /spool file system, which today still had 50 GB free.
So: what was there still to do? Why did the mouse not work correctly? Grabbed the mouse from teevee and plugged it into tiwi. Works normally. So it seems that my suspicion of some interference between the two Logitech mice might really have been the issue.
OK, what else?
Did that, and the box came up as tiwi! Where were my mods to /etc/rc.conf? Not there. They were on the other disk, the one I should have moved. Did that, and everything Just Worked.
What a relief! But really it shouldn't be that difficult. What were the real issues?
On an unrelated note, MediathekView updates now work normally. What caused that difference? It's not the configuration, which I copied unchanged.
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Still more NBN outages!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Aussie Broadband again today:
NBNCo has let us know that they are planning network maintenance in your area, and that your service at 29 STONES RD, DEREEL VIC will be affected.
The details are:
- Start date and time: Mon 15th July 2019 23:00 AEST
- End date and time: Tue 16th July 2019 06:00 AEST
- Window: 7.0 hours
You may experience the following interruptions during the maintenance
- 270 min
OK, I know that. I received notice on 25 June, and it was in yesterday's screen shot (which politely omitted the duration). What's new?
It's no longer in the outage list! Ha ha, only joking, read the Subject: line:
Subject: CANCELLED: NBN is planning some maintenance in your area
And that was the only place in the entire message that the fact was mentioned.
| Saturday, 13 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 13 July 2019 |
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Analemma photos?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
I've recently discovered a (small) number of photos of an analemma, the locus of the position of the sun at mean solar noon throughout the year:
That's from “Colorado Analemma” (and not analema colorada), in the Northern Hemisphere. I've only seen one photo of an analemma in the Southern Hemisphere (upside down, of course), but it's not complete. Wouldn't that be something for me to do?
What are the issues? It proves that mean solar noon here is almost exactly 12:25:00 (to be more exact, that's in the middle of our property; in front of my office it's 12:25:0.29). I need to find a view of the sun in the middle of winter—pretty much now, as it happens. The elevation in mid-winter is 28.79° (today it was 30.35°), and in mid-summer it's (logically enough) 75.58°. The easiest thing would be to set a lens with an angle of view of 80° or 85° and the one side at ground level.
Another thing: I'm pointing directly at the sun. Won't that damage the sensor? This is one case where a DSLR might make more sense, since it only exposes the sensor when the shutter is released. But I've taken photos with the sun in them on frequent occasions, even today with my house photos. Still, it pays to be cautious, so let's take the photos with the Olympus E-PM1.
Finally, what exposure? I want both the sun and the surroundings to be well exposed, so possibly a couple of stops underexposure? Now's the time to try bracketing.
Finally out to try things out. Dammit, I forgot that this thing doesn't have a viewfinder. No time to go in and find the VF-2, I had to point and shoot.
The results weren't encouraging:
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My guess at the horizon was way off, and the sun was a big blob, nothing like what I was looking for. The first image, with -2 EV compensation, looked better:
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But there's still significant flare. Probably I'll have to experiment with other lenses. I've already established that the M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm f/1.8 Fisheye has less flare, but the angle of view is (probably) too wide, and I'm not convinced there either. And clearly I'll have to reconsider the angle of view: the fence at the bottom is good for alignment.
And the exposure compensation? Just another photo to merge, I think.
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Trust your mobile phone!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
In this diary I've made it abundantly clear that I don't share the general enthusiasm for mobile phones, and in particular that I don't consider them secure. My friends laugh at me, but as long as I don't understand the security implications, I don't trust them. And they're just too complicated to be safe. Just a few days ago I had a case where Qantas sent a security code to an expired mobile phone number. How much information was in there? Probably not enough to be dangerous, but who knows?
And then today How-To Geek published an article on mobile phone theft, including identity theft. I don't know if it could happen in Australia, but I don't care: it's just one thing that I wouldn't even have thought of if I tried to analyse mobile phone security.
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Food!
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Topic: food and drink, general | Link here |
Chris Bahlo is so busy lately that our weekly Saturday evening dinners, which we've been doing for nearly 12 years now, are becoming less frequent. But today she showed up just before dinner, bearing gifts. She had had an issue with sheep on her property, not for the first time. But on previous occasions she knew who the owners were. This time, it seems, she didn't, and she wasn't able to establish who they belong to.
OK, the law is clear on that: they're hers. So a week ago a friend of hers butchered one of them, and today her gifts included a rack of lamb, 2 bags of minced lamb shoulder (cold and frozen), a leg, and another piece from the leg. Looks like we have enough lamb to keep us going for a while, especially since there's another lamb fattening up on her property. One result is that she's interested in the old freezer that we replaced in January, and which I haven't got round to putting on eBay yet:
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That'll save a lot of work.
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Old TV series
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Topic: multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Watching series on TV instead of individual films has a significant advantage: you know what to expect. Films, especially from the USA, seem to try to push the envelope and present different, problematic situations, frequently violent.
So we watch a lot of TV series, most of them not from the USA. We did that over 50 years ago too, and I noted some in this diary at the time. Many are still available. The Flintstones? We downloaded some episodes. What a load of nonsense! Other things, like The Munsters and Get Smart, are better, and they have a certain cult following. We also took a look at the very first year of Doctor Who, which was amazingly badly preserved. In the end, we have given up on most of them.
Then Yvonne came up with a German series, “Die Firma Hesselbach”. Yes, I had heard of them, but didn't think they were worth watching. Still, she wanted to see one, so downloaded a couple of episodes, and today we looked at „Der große Kunde“, first broadcast on 11 April 1960, by far the oldest TV production I have ever seen (Doctor Who was first broadcast on 23 November 1963, nearly 4 years later). Part of that might have to do with the TV standards at the time: the BBC still used the old 405 line standard, while Germany had been using the 625 line standard that later became PAL. I think, though, that it was recorded on film, not tape.
But the interesting thing is that the episode seemed plausible. You can't say that for any of the other ones we've looked at from those days—nor for many of the series we look at nowadays.
| Sunday, 14 July 2019 | Dereel | |
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Understanding Trump supporters
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Topic: politics, technology, opinion | Link here |
Question on Quora today: “If you live outside of the United States, what do you personally think about Donald Trump?”.
Just the thing I like to answer:
Like nearly everybody outside the USA, my feeling towards Trump is a mixture of amazement, contempt and fear. Amazement that the USA could elect such a person to rule them, contempt for his behaviour, and fear for what he might still do to the world economy.
Of course I got a comment from a Trump supporter:
All that matters is the American workers. And $ is not the only thing of importance. I would hate to live in a nation where most citizens only elect those who will increase their incomes. It would be worth some sacrifices to get factories back here, even if we have to pay more for products. MADE IN AMERICA! And Trump is defending our sovereignty. We need to close our border to the south to stop the barbarian invasion. Don’t want to wind up like Europe, but there is some hope with them because they are shutting down borders to the hordes of savages trying to enter.
Clearly a well-balanced perspective. So I answered like that. And got an answer: “Thank you”.
So: did he get the better of me, or did he really miss my point and take it as a compliment? I think that Hanlon's razor applies here.
It's also interesting to note that the comment was tempered with the realization that things are not as rosy on the financial front as Trump once claimed. Has he been able to dupe them yet again?
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Smart kitchens?
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Topic: technology, food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
A few weeks ago HowTo Geek had an article on “smart bedrooms”, which I tore apart. They're at it again, this time with smart kitchens.
The same nonsense? Not necessarily. I really don't see significant applications of independent, non-standardized technology in the bedroom, but it's already there in no uncertain terms in the kitchen. And I've already argued against interoperability in the case of refrigerators. So it was worth reading.
But it immediately became clear that we weren't looking in the same direction. They start off with a “smart speaker” and a “smart display”. OK, I've been using laptops in the kitchen for decades. What's the advantage of their devices?
With a smart speaker, you can set multiple named timers to keep track of your food cook times.
Yes, we have that too. Just conventional timers. Is it really easier to set a time via a “smart speaker”? Possibly, but I don't have enough confidence in the interface to bother to try them out. Maybe I can simulate something on a laptop, but I haven't found the need.
It goes on:
If your recipe calls for a measurement you don’t have, you can ask for a conversion, like “how many teaspoons in two tablespoons?” or “how many cups in a liter?” when you need to convert to another measuring system.
No, that way madness lies. How can a smart speaker tell me how many teaspoons there are in 2 tablespoons? That depends on where the recipe comes from. And if I have a recipe in archaic units, I first spend some time sanitizing it before I start cooking and find myself in a bind.
But then it gets better: with a smart display you can show the current state of the timers you set. That implies that with a smart speaker you have no idea what's going on between setting a timer and it completing. Sorry, that's a great disadvantage compared to a $5 digital timer, and confirmation of my lack of confidence in the technology. There are other things too, none of them confidence-inspiring:
And they can speed up the grocery list. Rather than spend an hour or two once a week looking through what supplies have to determine what you need to buy, you can make a grocery list as you go. Every time you use the of something [sic], you can tell Google or Alexa to add “ketchup” or “cumin” to the shopping list.
And you can't just write it down on a pad? Arguably it means that you don't need to dry your fingers, but again I don't see enough advantage.
Next they go on with “smart lights”. I've already mentioned that in my article on smart bedrooms.
That was the first half of the article. What kitchen-related stuff is there? Almost nothing. But now it starts. A “smart oven”. Yes, I've thought of that too: have a computer control the individual heating elements and monitor temperatures in different places. I'm sure that I could find useful things to do after a bit of experiment.
Ah, but that's not what they're talking about. Their smart oven is a glorified toaster oven:
What's the advantage? No guesswork?
Most smart ovens look like an oversized toaster oven and work off similar principles. Typically they house a camera pointed at the food you place in the oven. Artificial intelligence examines the food, recognizes the ingredients, and then determines an optimal temperature and cook time. Some smart ovens have automated cooking programs; you choose the dish through an app, and it walks you through steps and finishes up the cooking for you.
That sounds so far from anything that could work that I'd really like to try it. But only if I could return it, because I'd almost certainly do so. You can see the lack of relationship to reality with:
If you’re the kind of person who can never remember how long it takes to hardboil [sic] an egg, you’ll appreciate the simplicity of putting an egg in your oven, choosing hardboil in an app, and walking away.
Hard boil an egg in a toaster oven? What have these people been smoking? And their “smart oven” has a significant disadvantage compared to a real oven: it's far smaller, and almost certainly doesn't have the flexibility of a real oven.
And then there's a smart faucet (a US American word for tap):
With Google Assistant or Alexa integration, you say things like “dispense two cups of water” or “turn off.”
It would be interesting to see how accurate these things are. Certainly they're (currently) clumsy—even the article notes that, contradicting itself:
The voice commands aren’t very intuitive. For Alexa, you’d say, “Tell Delta to dispense one cup of water.”
I can just imagine the frustration of trying to find the right incantation to turn the tap off while it continues to spray water everywhere. And how do you control the temperature? This very positive article describes their favourite in some detail.
Revisiting this article 5 years later and tidying up the broken links, this one stands out because they can't decide how to spell “Delta”. The URL https://www.gearbrain.com/dalta-touch2o-smart-faucet-reviews-2616253365.html implies “Dalta”, and in the text there are several mentions of “Detla”. That would be more understandable with a less common word than “delta”.
No mention of temperature control. Some other “smart faucets” do have temperature control, but they're not voice-operated.
And gradually they're running out of ideas. Smart scales?
For recipes that originate outside the U.S., a smart scale may come in handy. They usually connect through Bluetooth and give you a readout on your phone or tablet.
Why only for recipes that originate outside the USA? Presumably because the US Americans use volumetric measure. But what's the advantage? More technology, same result as a conventional scale that displays directly.
And, apart from a cleaning robot, that's it. At least they specifically advise against smart refrigerators, though not for same reasons that I reject them: they're concerned about security aspects. Somebody might see the size of your truffles and break in?
In summary, what useful ideas are there? Maybe a dictation system for the shopping list. If the smart ovens came in the same format and flexibility as conventional ovens, and if they allowed direct control (not just an “app” written by somebody who doesn't know what I want), they might be useful. Internet access to check on things, just barely possible. The smart display does that, in order to show you, far too late, a YouTube video of a recipe similar to the one that you're currently cooking. A laptop can do that too, but I've never found a use for it in the kitchen.
And what's missing? At the very minimum, temperature control. It would be really nice to find something that would fry steaks correctly without careful observation, or bring food to the boil and then simmer at a constant rate. But that's too complicated.
So, once again, with the possible exception of dictating shopping lists, a useless set of tools designed by people who don't cook, and nothing that I didn't have 20 years ago. A pity.
| Monday, 15 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 15 July 2019 |
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Pension adjustments
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
There has been a certain amount of talk about pension increases in the Australian media, and on checking I see that pension rates have increased slightly in the time that we have been receiving the age pension, though it's marginal. So when I received a surprising amount of mail today, the two from Centrelink (the intuitively named Australian Social Services) looked exciting.
Ha, ha, not for you. Pension down by $7 per fortnight (the bizarre time unit they use). Thank you, Centrelink. This kind of fluctuation (it also goes up) seems to happen several times a year for reasons that they're too polite to explain, but I can't recall it ever being very different from the current levels, though maybe we're at the lowest rate right now.
But wait, there's more. Another letter from the deutsche Rentenversicherung. Change in pension. Another 33.95 € per month, along with details of how to complain if you're not happy („Rechtsbehelfsbelehrung“, literally "Rights be-help instruction") and a certificate to be filled out („Lebensbescheinigung“, literally “life certificate”), to be filled out by a Justice of the Peace who has never seen me before, but not by my General Practitioner.
That more than makes up for the shortfall with Centrelink, and in fact we don't have any financial concerns. But somehow it seems that we're getting more and more money from Germany and France, and nothing much seems to change in Australia. Can I be bothered to go back 5 years and see what things were like then?
| Tuesday, 16 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 16 July 2019 |
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Winding up LEMIS
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Topic: history, technology, general, opinion | Link here |
I founded LEMIS pretty much exactly 40 years ago, at a time when microcomputers were becoming a force to be reckoned with. Almost nobody knew about them—even at work few people had any contact with them—but I could see that there was to be a great future. This was two years after the introduction of the Apple II, and two years before the introduction of the IBM PC, the computer that would bring microcomputers into the mainstream.
Microcomputer? Isn't that PC? Yes, it is now. It wasn't at the time, and that's why I called the company “Lehey Microcomputer Systems”, abbreviated to “LEMIS”. I even gave notice at my well-paid day job in order to be able to address the job full time. Fortunately my company talked me out of it: I would have gone bankrupt within months. I may have seen the technical side of things, but I've never been a businessman, and I had absolutely no plan about how to earn money.
Thirteen years later I finally did leave my company and found LEMIS GmbH, a company that I kept running until I left Germany. Then it was LEMIS Pty Ltd in Australia. In each case, I made enough money to survive.
That ended twelve years ago when I retired. But I didn't wind up LEMIS. It required a certain amount of administrative effort, and who knows, I might need to revive it again. So I've been paying my annual fee to ASIC for thirteen years, and nothing has come of it.
Enough! Get Thomas Elford of PPT to do the necessary. I might be able to do it myself more cheaply, but that way more procrastination lies.
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First signs of spring
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
It's been less than a month since the winter solstice, but gradually there are signs that spring is on its way:
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I'm particularly happy with this Camellia japonica, which hasn't looked very happy since we moved here, but at least it has lots of buds this year.
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Towards a 28th amendment
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
The founding fathers of the USA were remarkably far-sighted people, and it's a sign of that far-sightedness that the constitution that they wrote has survived intact with only 27 amendments. The French constitution has been rewritten several times during that period.
One of the weaknesses that I see in the constitution as it stands is the fact that the president has too much power. The lawmakers have seen that too, and at least two amendments try to limit that power: the 22nd amendment limits a president to a maximum of not quite 2½ terms in office, and the 25th amendment addresses presidential succession. Currently it's under discussion because it could arguably be used to force Donald Trump to step down. And then there's the 12th amendment, which arguably also seeks to limit power by ensuring that the president and vice president should not be too close to each other.
But somehow it's not working. Donald Trump treads on the ideals of US independence. Consider:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Never mind what he does to non-US Americans (against which the Declaration does not discriminate). What does he do to the citizens of his country? He tweets divisiveness and downright lies:
So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!
These people are representatives of the US population, the people whom he has sworn to defend! And who is he to tell people how to run this once great nation?
The people in question are Ayanna Pressley (born in Cincinnati), Rashida Tlaib (born in Detroit), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (born, like Trump himself, in New York City) and Ilhan Omar (by some mishap born in Mogadishu, but a naturalized US citizen).
So what do they have in common? They're Democrats (the party), and they're “women of color”, a term many US Americans use to describe anybody who is the slightest bit “tainted” by non-white blood.
What disgusting behaviour! Is that worthy of a president of the USA? No, of course not, and the House of Representatives, even the vast majority of the Republicans, condemned it in no uncertain terms. Omar stated that Trump had “openly violated the oath he took” by allowing “human rights abuses” at the US-Mexico border, amongst other things. And yes, his oath was to the constitution, of which the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom. In passing, it's surprising that I couldn't find any reference to this statement in a mainstream US newspaper.
More to the point, though: he lied. That's nothing new; the Washington Post is keeping a fact checker's database which currently has tallied 10,796 lies. And of course there's the old saw:
How do you tell if a politician is lying?His mouth is open.
But Trump has taken this far beyond normal lies. There are lies that he repeats again and again, even after being called to account. Three of these representatives were born in the USA. Barack Obama was born in the USA. But he repeats the lies again and again, and people believe him.
Clearly the USA needs to do something to limit this damage, which is tearing the country apart. One thing is obvious: a large minority of the US population don't care that he is eroding the democratic principles of the US constitution. Pandering to them gets votes, but it damages the country in the process.
I'm sure there will be a post mortem after the Trump presidency (hopefully in 18 month's time). Will they create a 28th Amendment? What would be in it? At the very least, much more adherence to the ideals of the constitution. And somehow there should be a method to call any politician to account and get him to retract claims that are demonstrably untrue. It won't be easy, but it's necessary.
This is only part of the issue, of course. I haven't even mentioned how the president is at odds with Congress about foreign policy, but that he gets his way, something that has a more direct effect on most people in the world. But that's a different can of worms.
| Wednesday, 17 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 17 July 2019 |
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More signs of spring
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
It should still be deepest winter, but more flowers are coming out. The “Uncle Max” Hibiscus is now flowering about as much as I have ever seen it;
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There are also a large number of buds on their way. Why now? Maybe a reaction to fertilizer? This photo also shows the Epazote at front right: the two that got the fertilizer are growing much better than the other two.
Roll on springtime.
| Thursday, 18 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 18 July 2019 |
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Another NBN outage!
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
More mail from Aussie Broadband today:
OK, nothing new that we have an outage. But isn't this in the middle of the behemoth 9 day outage that I grumbled about last week (not the first time this month)? Yes, indeed:
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Still, I suppose it must be difficult to schedule an outage during periods of normal service when there are so few of them.
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BN services are now available
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
It has proven to be a good idea to put a permanent answering service on my main phone line. The number of spam calls has dropped to 8 in the last billing period, and of course nobody left a message to be called back.
Until today. Then I got a voicemail message:
BN services are now available in your locality. So, for uninterrupted service, press 1 to speak to a technician.
BN? A robocall that doesn't recognize an answering service message when it hears one, and thus doesn't wait for the beep.
But more to the point: what is right about this call? There were four of them, all faking different caller numbers: 0355677048, 0359406341, 0350468074 and 0353938766. Apart from the legality of this faking, why do they bother? And yes, it's correct that we have National Broadband Network coverage the majority of the time, but that's been the case for nearly 6 years now. And of course the promise “for uninterrupted service” is just plain ludicrous.
I wonder what company is behind it. Clearly one to avoid. Would you trust a company that shotgun spams and can't recognize an answering service?
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Garden flowers in mid-winter
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
It's mid-winter (close to a month after the solstice), time for the monthly garden photos.
Somehow we don't seem to be doing very well. While walking the dogs down Westons Road, we saw these beds in the property that we looked at but didn't buy seven years ago:
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In particular, that Hardenbergia violacea in the second image looks very different from ours:
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Why? It looks as if the ones in Westons Road aren't watered at all.
Somehow there's nothing very unexpected this month. It's mid-winter, of course, which helps. But despite the milder-than-usual weather, the things that normally do well in winter, like the roses and the tomatoes, look anything but happy this year:
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Still, they're looking better than the Hibiscus and Hardenbergia violacea (above) that had been looking bad for a while:
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I still don't know why they died.
The Petunias that struggled through the summer are now struggling through the winter:
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And the first yellow Narcissus (plant) are now flowering:
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And the succulent bed continues to improve:
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And that's about the lot. Not a very inspiring collection this month.
| Friday, 19 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 19 July 2019 |
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Toothache?
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Topic: health | Link here |
For the past couple of days I've had pain at the back right of my lower jaw. That's not the first time, and last time it proved to be due to mechanical problems with my wisdom tooth, which I thought had been fixed. Clearly, though, it's related to the work done on my gums some while back. OK, assume that something is stuck in the gums, clean them out as best I can, and rinse with chlorhexidine before going to bed last night.
That didn't help much. Woke up two hours later with considerable pain. More scraping, pressing (confirming that the pain was on the front of the hindmost wisdom tooth), rinsing, and finally got back to sleep.
To my surprise, this morning there was almost no pain. Did the pressure help? In any case, a good thing that I didn't have to go to the dentist again.
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Skin removal
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Topic: health | Link here |
Yvonne has had some skin issues that proved to be related to actinic keratosis (called “solar keratosis” in Australia). I've had that in the past, too, and it was removed with cryotherapy (liquid nitrogen). But Yvonne had left it too late for that, so she had to submit to a surprisingly complicated course of treatment. First two weeks of skin softening, then today to have the lesions removed. She was warned that the first few days would be less than pleasant, and they were right:
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It didn't help that she also has a cold. Not a good day for her.
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Range hood illumination
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Topic: general, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've grumbled on countless occasions about our horrible SMEG range hood: it just doesn't work as advertised. It has another less objectionable but just as irritating “feature”: the lighting. There are two halogen lamps on the underside of the device:
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The first issue is clear: they're halogen lamps, which are not standard, and they burn out. So I had to get them specially about a year ago.
And what did I do with them? I had 20 odd of them, and I put one in the hood. The others? No idea. In the meantime, both globes have burnt out, including the one that I put in over a year ago. Nothing for it, order another 20, which arrived today.
What a pain this thing is! Apart from my ability to lose the replacement globes, we have:
You can't replace them in place, because the position is too complicated.
Removing the inset is complicated by the clips holding it in place. In principle you should pull it straight out, but how? And pulling one side out puts it at an angle that makes it different to get the other side out.
Then there's this rim that holds the glass in place:
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That doesn't come out easily. The best I could do was to unhook one of the three clips, allowing the glass to fall onto the cooktop. Fortunately it didn't break.
Removing the lamp wasn't that difficult, but putting the new one in was: you need to push from a position that isn't reachable.
Then you need to replace the glass and the clip. But the glass doesn't want to go into the right position, preventing the clip from closing.
The whole thing took about 15 minutes, of course not including getting the globes. I should have taken photos, but somehow I was too busy just doing the work.
Why don't the makers think of maintainability?
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Equivalent apertures again
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
A frequent objection against the Micro Four Thirds system is that there is too much depth of field. People talk of “equivalent apertures” and such nonsense.
What's an equivalent aperture? People have known about that concept for over a century: if you increase the length of a lens, you must increase the diameter of the aperture in proportion. If you can get a certain exposure on a 60 mm lens with an aperture of 15 mm, you'll need a 30 mm aperture with a 120 mm lens, and a 50 mm aperture with a 200 mm lens.
That's why nobody talks about the diameter of the aperture any more, just the ratio of the aperture to the focal length (f): each of the above apertures are f/4. Of course, people nowadays have forgotten about optics, and they call it F4 instead, which has little intrinsic meaning.
And of course different size images have been around forever too. When I started in photography, “5x4” cameras (12.7x10.2 cm, diagonal 163 mm) were the norm for “serious” photography, and 35 mm was still considered inferior.
Of course, the difference in depth of field between the two formats was enormous. A 35 mm (“full frame”) camera with a circle of confusion of 15 μm and a 50 mm lens at f/4 focused at 10 m has a depth of field from 8.065 m to 13.158 m, a depth of 5.093 m. For the same angle of view a 5x4 camera needs a lens with focal length of 188 mm, and it will get a similarly sharp image with a circle of confusion of 56 μm. With those parameters, the depth of field at f/4 and 10 m is 1.273 m (9.404 m to 10.677 m). To get corresponding depth of field the 5x4 user would have to stop down to f/15.
The same applies in the opposite sense to smaller sensors than 35 mm. But now people talk of “equivalent aperture”, something I've never heard before. Conveniently, Micro Four Thirds has almost exactly half the image diagonal of 35 mm, so the equivalent focal lengths are also half. And looking at the previous example, the depth of field corresponding to 50 mm f/4 would be 25 mm f/2.
What a horrible disadvantage! That's why Micro Four Thirds cameras need such wide apertures! Of course, that leads to overexposure, so photos taken on a Micro Four Thirds camera at 25 mm f/2 and ISO 200 compare to photos taken on a “full frame” camera with 50 mm f/4 and ISO 800. Some people claim that this is an advantage of “full frame”.
The real issue, of course, is: what's the primary importance of setting an aperture? Set it wrong and you get underexposed or overexposed photos, every time. You also get a different depth of field. But how often is that important? And how often do you want a shallow depth of field? Looking back at the photos I took 50 years ago, a large proportion with the 50 mm f/1.4 Super Takumar, I'd guess that for every one where the depth of field came out well, there were 100 where it was too shallow, and where I missed the correct focus.
All this came out today when I saw something bright red in a Grevillea rosmarinifolia bush. The flowers look like this:
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But what I saw was:
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OK, I can blow that up:
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Damn! Missed the focus, which ended up on the twigs in front of the bird:
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If this had been a “full frame” camera, things would have been even worse.
| Saturday, 20 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 20 July 2019 |
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Moon landing: jumping the gun
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Topic: history, general, opinion | Link here |
On radio news today I heard that various people round Australia were celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first human landing on the moon.
Why today? The anniversary is tomorrow, as I knew at the time. Checking brought me to this Apollo 11 timeline, which confirmed: landing at 20:17:39 GMT on 20 July 1969. That was 4:17:39 in Kuching (where I was at the time) and 6:17:39 here in Eastern Australia. Interestingly, the time I found (and didn't refer to) when I entered the diary (1 November 2016) was 4:17:40. I'm more inclined to believe nasa.gov.
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Cold!
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne still not feeling at all well today. The main cause seems to have been a cold that she picked up earlier in the week, and which has (hopefully) now fully developed, but clearly yesterday's skin treatment didn't help. She stayed in bed all day and ate nothing, and the dogs and cat kept her company:
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What terrible things colds must be!
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New dog walk route
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Topic: general, animals, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Walking the dogs by myself, of course, and decided to go up Spearys Road, past where Lorraine Carranza lives. We've been there before, but at a time when we didn't walk such distances regularly. Noted with amazement that the neighbour across the road from Lorraine has installed 16 solar panels (presumably for electricity) facing south-east, on the shed to the north-east of the driveway:
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Those light strips are not the panels, which must have been installed later, but that's where they're located. Now why did they put them there? They can only get any sunlight before about 10:00 in the morning, and the north-west roof of the house would have been far more suited.
Didn't get very far beyond there: it's very muddy.
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But I found an interesting plant that I can't identify:
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What is it?
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Towards analemma
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
I'm still thinking about photos of an Analemma, like this one that I considered last week:
The first thing, which I didn't manage last week, is getting a good image of the sun. Clearly it needs much less exposure than the surroundings, but we can do that: just merge two images taken at different exposures.
But photos into the sun are ideal for flare and diffraction artefacts:
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Which lens should I use? And at what aperture? I have four to choose from: the Zuiko Digital ED 9-18 mm f/4.0-5.6, the Zuiko Digital ED 8 mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, the M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14 mm f/2.8 PRO and the M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm f/1.8 Fisheye PRO. If I continue with my plan to buy a DSLR to avoid sensor damage, I'll be limited to the first two. Tried them all out on the E-PM1, again with less than stellar results. The photo above was taken with the 7-14 mm, and these with the 9-10, 8 mm FT fisheye and 8 mm μFT fisheye PRO:
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Ultimately there's small choice in rotten apples. Whichever I choose, I'll have to tidy up the image to make it into a circle again.
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Useless historical TV series
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Topic: multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne stayed in bed this evening, so I tried to watch some of the historical TV series that she doesn't like. After a couple of attempts, I think that I agree with her. The Tudors has so little to do with history that I had difficulty finding a relationship; the second episode appears to refer to the Field of the Cloth of Gold, but it's so vague that I can't be sure. What it does resemble is all these other horribly violent shows that come from the USA, though it seems that other countries are responsible for it as well.
OK, try Harlots. That's fiction, of course, but it is supposed to take place in 18th century London. Unfortunately, it's boring. And why are there so many rich black people in it? That doesn't seem the slightest bit plausible. At least there's no significant violence, at least in the half episode that I was able to stomach.
Leonardo? This one is from the United Kingdom, but it's even more violent than the US American ones. And historical relevance seems to be irrelevant to the plot.
What a pity! A well-thought-out historical series would be quite interesting. It seems that there's another Leonardo coming out this year. Will it be any better? I have little hope.
| Sunday, 21 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 21 July 2019 |
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Moon landing anniversary
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Topic: history | Link here |
The people who jumped the gun on the anniversary of the moon landing yesterday were either in the minority, or they joined the people who celebrated it today. One particularly interesting page was “Apollo 11 in Real Time”, which showed the landing as it happened, even with a (now useless) synchronization 50 years to the second after it happened.
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We don't need no steenking computers
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been thinking of uploading some panoramas of places round here but outside the Street View range to Google Maps. I've seen plenty of them, but how do you upload? The map pages are too polite to assume that I don't know, but with a bit of googling I found this thread. Simple: you can't. You need a mobile phone to do it!
O tempora! O mores! There are two basic but very serious issues:
I really don't know what to say.
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Android and computers: bridging the gap
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
While looking for something else, came across scrcpy, a program that can display Android screens on a real computer, and access them with keyboard and mouse, something that I've been looking for for a long time. It's even in the FreeBSD ports collection. So installed it, started it, and got “an error message”:
=== grog@teevee (/dev/pts/5) ~ 1 -> scrcpy
adb: error: failed to get feature set: no devices/emulators found
ERROR: "adb push" returned with value 1
That's not what the instructions said. It looks like I'm going to have to go beyond RTFM to UTSL. But it also looks as if it might be worth it.
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Yvonne still sick
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Topic: health, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne's cold has really disabled her, and she spent today in bed as well. That's been nearly a week, and she's only just getting over the worst of it.
| Monday, 22 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 22 July 2019 |
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Mojo: not working
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
A few months back I examined a pack of Asam Laksa that I have had for some time, made by a company calling themselves “Mojo Karé-Karé”. It was complicated enough that I took the easy way out and cooked something else.
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But I have to eat it some time, and my rations of laksa paste are running out. OK, look at the issues:
In the end I came up with a total of 1.4 l of liquid, including the paste, some weak chicken broth and 75 g of tamarind concentrate. That also corresponds well with the difference in weight between the other pastes (which include the tamarind) and this one.
But look at the stuff!
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That looks nothing like Penang laksa. The blackish scum on the surface is pepper! The original has no pepper at all.
And that's the way it tasted. Not enough salt, which suggests that I added more water than they had intended. But on the other hand it was so hot as to be unpleasant. No thanks, this mojo doesn't work.
In passing it's interesting how different hotness from pepper is from hotness from chilis. This burnt my tongue; chilis burn the back of the mouth.
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More solar electricity issues
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Topic: Stones Road house, technology, opinion | Link here |
It's been sunny lately, and we've been generating a fair amount of electricity. But today the daily report came from Spain:
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Huh? Almost no power! But we had lots of sunshine. Time to look at my database:
I've seen that before, and we spent a lot of time looking for the cause on that occasion. The status isn't so important in itself, but the attribute PacPV was: it wasn't using any power from the array, despite bright sunshine. But this time it had been going on for a long time, and (at 12:50 on the 22nd) it was still continuing, after 42 hours:
What to do? Restart the inverter? I suppose I should contact Fred first. Did that, and after a while he called me back and said that he didn't have adequate access, and that he would come by.
Off to walk the dogs, and when I got back I found:
What happened there? Suddenly it started working and delivered a good 4 kW, as I would have expected. Was that Fred? At the time he should have been on his way here.
When he arrived, he first updated the firmware to 3.11.2, and then checked a lot of things (and confirmed that he was happy that I hadn't just reset the inverter). But while looking at the graphs, we came across something strange. Here's the graph for Saturday, 20 July, when things started round 18:50:
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The khaki-coloured area represents the battery state of charge (left axis, 0 to 100%). The magenta line is the power from the PV array, and the purple line is power from the grid (conveniently inverted), both on the right axis (W). So at 18:50, the battery state of charge dropped to 20%. That's a signal to start charging from the grid, up to 50% as I had it set, like the steps in the early hours of the morning. But it didn't stop at 50%! It went up to 100%.
And then? A new day, more surprises:
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Yes, it started to discharge after hitting 100%. But it didn't stop at 20%! Instead it dropped all the way to 0%, which, as Fred had confirmed, is a good way to destroy the battery. And it did it again, all the way to 100%, three times in the course of the day.
And the PV array? Disconnected for most of the day. Why?
Things continued like that today:
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Once again a brief burst of power from the PV array in the early morning, but then it stopped.
Also spent some time trying to get information from the battery pack. Finally Fred had it on his laptop:
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What does that mean? Clearly that the programmer didn't know up from down, but what else? Fred went out to the web to find out, but the results that he got were inconclusive. Serious issue, anyway: level 2. And the durations varied from 53 seconds (at 13:8:18 today) to 8 minutes, 10 seconds (from 17:29:25 yesterday).
Comparing the times with the graphs above, I expected to see a relationship with the deep discharge, and indeed that's what I saw, sort of:
There's a question about whether the battery time is synced correctly, but until 3:33:49 the inverter was drawing power from the battery, and then it started charging. During the discharge phase it didn't draw any current from the grid, and then of course it not only took its power from there, but also enough to charge the battery.
And what happened today at 13:09?
The same thing as before, except that this time it drew power from both the grid and the PV array, all the way up to 100% Why? It should have stopped drawing power from the grid after 50%. In any case, things seemed to be working again.
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Power fail!
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
While Fred was here, we had what appeared to be network issues. In to my office. No power. The RCD in the switchboard had tripped, presumably while we were working on the inverter, and I hadn't found out until the office UPS had powered its heart out.
Damn! Just when I needed it. And for some reason I had these eternal boot configuration errors again. What's all this LUA crap? I thought this system was too old for that. So, is it disk0p4 or disk1p4? The former was set, and the boot failed, so I tried the latter. Still fail. After some time accepted the parameters as they were and typed in boot and—it booted. So what was all that about?
But I couldn't get X to come up. The second monitor from the left wasn't recognized. After a bit of messing around, replaced the monitor, and it worked. Is the monitor defective, or was there some communication issue? Mañana. At least I had a replacement monitor.
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Finally rid of the old fridge
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Topic: general | Link here |
Chris Bahlo over this afternoon to pick up the old fridge that I still haven't sold on eBay. I have certain reservations about the power consumption, since she's on only photovoltaic power, but we can try it out. Loading and unloading was easier than I thought:
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Power fail!
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
As if the day's fun hadn't been enough already, another (real) power failure this evening at 23:02:02.
I didn't discover this outage, like a number of others, until 13 August.
| Tuesday, 23 July 2019 | Dereel | |
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Analysing the power issues
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Topic: Stones Road house, technology, opinion | Link here |
Call from Fred early this morning: he had heard from Spain that the behaviour we had heard is normal. Hrmph. I don't like the idea of having my system run out of specs and not using available solar power. He's going to find out how often they intend to do this.
Spent a lot of time analysing the data, and came to a number of insights:
During the battery discharge phases, both PV and grid power were not used at all.
During the charge phases, both PV and grid power were used as available. This explains the sharp cutoffs here:
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The magenta line is the power input from the PV array. It starts round sunrise, increasing gradually, then cuts off sharply when the battery state of charge reaches 100%. So does the grid input (purple, and inverted in sense).
The “recovery” at 13:09 yesterday seems to be a coincidence. It's exactly the same as at 4:00, except that now the sun is shining, so we have input from the PV array:
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It's not clear that the discharge/charge cycle was finished then. By pure chance we reset the inverter just as the battery state of charge hit 99%. What would have happened if we had waited a couple of minutes more? Yet another cycle?
The system was installed on 18 April. The first “recalibrating” event was on 19 May. And the second was on 20 July. With the exception of June, that looks like once a month. But checking the graph generator suggests that, apart from having bugs setting the time, there was no similar incident a month ago.
So what does it all mean? I have a number of questions:
Why do we need recalibration? Presumably it's so that the inverter can make accurate decisions base on state of charge. For example, currently my inverter settings say “when SOC drops to 20%, start charging from grid; when SOC reaches 30%, stop charging”. Clearly it's important to know these values relatively accurately.
How much damage does the recalibration do to the battery? Only yesterday Fred told me that it's bad for battery life to go below 5%. This is a vicious circle, of course: how do I know when I have gone below 5%?
Why measure things by SOC? I noted that there was a very sudden decrease in battery voltage (orange) as the state of charge drops:
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Wouldn't battery voltage be a better choice of metric than SOC? Not only is it more sensitive, it would have the immense advantage that it wouldn't need calibrating.
How often should recalibration take place? As noted above, I had begun to think that it might be every month, but last month nothing happened.
How much does it cost? At a vague guess I lost 20 kWh over this matter, and that's in the middle of winter. In summer it could easily be 50 kWh, or $15 each time. And that's assuming that it really wanted to stop just as we reset the inverter.
How long should it take? This time things were very different from 2 months ago, where I didn't see the same effects (though I haven't finished examining the logs). But it it went on for 44 hours, and I suspect that it would have continued if we hadn't resetted the inverter. I get the feeling that it had somehow got stuck in a loop.
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We're the great killers of Iranians!
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
Article in the Times of Israel today:
Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi boasted Sunday that Israel is the only country in the world that has been “killing Iranians.”
Regional cooperation! Let's all get together and string up some niggas Iranians!
Don't “be worried about the Trump administration’s “cautious” response” to the current
situation with Iran!
I had hoped that the article might carry some kind of condemnation of such abhorrent behaviour, but no, I can't see anything beyond “boasting” that suggests that the Times of Israel, normally not overly aggressive, disapproves of such conduct.
One I greatly admired the Israeli government. But that was half a century ago. Clearly, to preempt criticism from some rabid Israelis, I have become anti-Semitic because I disapprove of racism and violence.
| Wednesday, 24 July 2019 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 24 July 2019 |
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Infection!
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
There's no question about it, Yvonne has infected me with her cold.
Cold? I don't get colds! Well, at any rate, I have a sore throat, runny nose and a cough. Is it a cold? Apart from those symptoms, I feel fine. But the cough is a concern: when I get one, it tends to develop into bronchitis, and only antibiotics will solve the problem. Called up the doctors, and of course Paul Smith isn't available until Monday, so ended up with an appointment with Matt Pilkington.
To my surprise, Yvonne decided that it was time to see a doctor too, so we double-booked the appointment, which pleased Matt little. But he confirmed normal temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygen for both of us, and some noise in the lung for Yvonne, but not for me. Never mind, he prescribed us both Amoxycillin, 15 tablets over 5 days. And then stop, though the packages have 20 tablets. I had always heard that you should finish off the package.
Off then to have a complete stranger confirm my identity and that I was alive (Justice of the Peace signing a „Lebensbescheinigung“ or “Certificate of Life” for the Deutsche Rentenversicherung at the police station), since Matt clearly wasn't qualified, and on to ALDI, where I discovered that I wasn't qualified to use the trolleys:
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This proved to be the case: in the fun of taking the photos, I forgot how to use the things and didn't clip it into the daisy chain, leaving my $1 token behind.
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Grr.
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The world run by idiots?
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
In the mail this morning:
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Certainly I'm no fan of Boris Johnson, and I fear that he might do his country almost as much harm as Donald Trump has done to his country. But they're not comparable. Trump has no redeeming virtues; Johnson at least has some idea of what he's doing, even if it's not in anybody's best interest.
And maybe the British parliamentary system (the one the US Constitution was supposed to improve on) will prove less subject to manipulation. One way or another, Johnson has a hard job ahead of him.
| Thursday, 25 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 25 July 2019 |
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More throat issues
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Spent a bad night thanks to my chest or throat problems. Ended up with a lot of phlegm (“green slime”) that didn't want to come up, involving a lot of painful coughing. Do I have a cold now? No temperature, don't feel bad apart from the phlegm. But maybe that phlegm is a sign that the antibiotics are working.
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¿Como hacer una tortilla de masa harina?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've been making tortillas from masa harina for ten years now, and gradually it's becoming relatively simple. But in those 10 years lots of YouTube videos have come online. Spent some time looking at some of them, noting how much difficulty I have understanding Spanish with no subtitles. Como Hacer Tortillas De Maseca - Masa Perfecta Para Antojitos sounded like a particularly good choice, since Maseca is one of the better brands available round here, even if I haven't used it in a while. And she gave quantities. Well, sort of: 2 cups Maseca, 1¾ cups of water.
It wasn't the only one. Como Hacer Tortillas De Maseca looked good too until I discovered that she wanted wheat flour in the tortillas. To make them hold together better, maybe?
Back to the normal one. What's that in sane units? Went to some difficulty to measure out a “cup” of my current masa, and discovered that 150 ml of masa weighed 80 g. For that I was supposed to have 131 g of water for 80 g harina, or a ratio of 1:1.64. Surprisingly, that's less than I had been using (1:1.8): somehow the dough looked softer than mine.
Tried the new quantities, and not surprisingly, not much changed. Somehow in the videos the tortillas inflate and cook quickly without browning. Mine brown and cook slowly without inflating. It can't be that the comal is too cool; I had temperatures round 250°. And somehow they managed perfectly circular tortillas, while mine are a little uneven at the edges.
| Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
At ALDI yesterday I bought some coffee sweetener pills. Normally I use—what? I thought it was Aspartame, but why not check?
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We're too polite to reveal that! But it contains Phenylalanine. No, fools, it doesn't. Phenylalanine is an amino acid formed as a breakdown product of Aspartame, and it's only mentioned because it can cause problems for people with Phenylketonuria. So yes, indirectly and because of my prior knowledge (but not susceptibility, clearly), I can confirm that the sweetener is Aspartame. Why do they hide the fact? And why isn't the fact displayed more prominently? The small print, coupled with the low contrast, meant that I really had to scan it in to find out what it said. Wouldn't that be a basis for a damages suit by somebody suffering from the condition?
I'm quite happy with this sweetener, but I also like to try things out. Today they had an alternative, in a green box instead of a blue one, and for some reason (accident, maybe) they divulged the contents: “Stevia sweetener”. OK, worth trying.
What a catastrophe! It took 20 seconds of playing around to get the bloody tablet to dissolve And when it did, yes, it was a little bit sweet, but also bitter, and it spoilt the whole cup of coffee: I had to throw it away, something I almost never do.
It can go back, of course, but why do they have the stuff? For people with phenylketonuria? How many of them are are there? One in 12,000 babies, they say, so about 2,000 in all of Australia. How many of them use ALDI sweetener and know that the green stuff is OK for them and the blue stuff isn't?
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No hot water!
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Topic: Stones Road house, opinion | Link here |
In the shower this morning I noted that the hot water wasn't as hot as it should have been. That's not the first time: has the circuit breaker in the water heater tripped again? Out to check. No, not tripped. Turn on boost at the meter box, back to measure. No voltage. Flaky switch not functioning? Tried turning it a couple of times, no change.
Back to the meter box and discovered that the main circuit breaker for the hot water system had tripped. OK, turn on. Trip. Turn on. Trip. The heating element must have shorted.
Damn, I should have contacted the plumbers the first time it happened., only 10 months after we moved in. But it was working again, so it wasn't that urgent. And so it continued for every time since then.
But clearly now we need to do something. Who was the plumber who installed the stuff? Checked my documents and found only Chromagen, the manufacturer of the cursed thing.
OK, what did it say in the contract? Where is the contract? Couldn't find it where it should be, and I couldn't find it in my house directory on the computer. Well, not for some time; for some reason I had put it in the Plans subdirectory, so it was called ~/Stones-Road/Plans/Lehey-1312BAA319---Final-contract-spec-(REVISED2)---11-7-14.pdf. And it was only the contract, not the supplements that describe the equipment in more detail. All I had was:
8 - 1 Provide Electric solar HWS with 3.6kw electric booster, 3 x panels, frost valve and 400 ltr tank in lieu of standard (NG) solar hot water system.
OK, ring up JG King and speak to <mumble>, who told me that it would have been Reanial, phone number 5334 3272. Who? I had a recollection of a name, Irish or something, but no, Renial. Finally she spelt it out for me: “O'Neil”. sigh.
Called up O'Neill, who told me that they only install the things and don't service them. I should contact Chromagen... Somehow I'm going round in circles.
Found the generic manual for the unit, including warranty periods. In general, only 5 years, with exceptions, including one year for the electric element! I might just have got away with that if I had reported it the first time it happened, but now I have no hope.
What do I do? This system has caused infinitely more problems than any other hot water service I can recall. Repair or replace? Checked the web for hot water supplies in Ballarat and found that Waldron does them. They sound a whole lot better a mob—they supplied the air conditioner—so called up there and arranged for somebody to come out tomorrow.
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Still more Hibiscus
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
For reasons I don't understand, the “Uncle Max” Hibiscus rosa-sinensis is flowering more than ever before:
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Six flowers in full bloom, and more on the way.
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First Pterostylis of winter
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Topic: photography, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Walked the dogs down to the „Große Linde“ (really a conifer) today, and as hoped for, found a single Pterostylis flower:
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That's with the new, improved autofocus on the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II. Not a good advertisement, especially since it highlighted the flower in the focus box. But at least I have the GPS coordinates.
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37 years of Yvonne
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Topic: history, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Thirty-seven years ago today I met an Yvonne Ködderitzsch, and we hit it off from the start. We've been celebrating the anniversary ever since, though this year we wondered if we were feeling well enough. But various people came along with food:
So in the end we had a fondue de fromage which, despite our condition, we almost completely finished. We decided to keep the réligieuse for tomorrow to see how it would keep, in the process marvelling at the ease with which I got it out of the caquelon:
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Power fail
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Topic: general | Link here |
Another power failure this morning at 8:56:21.
I didn't discover this outage, like a number of others, until 13 August.
| Friday, 26 July 2019 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 26 July 2019 |
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More health issues
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Topic: health | Link here |
Another bad night last night; somehow this infection is not going away as quickly as I had hoped.
Into Ballarat again on an unrelated health issue to St John of God to talk with Rodney Reddy, the cardiologist, about Yvonne's heart tests. Nothing immediately obvious. There's a possibility of a constricted artery, though he thinks that it could also be related to the riding accident that she had last year. Strange that Paul didn't mention that issue. In any case, Rodney has planned an angiogram, to take place at the beginning of next month. Yvonne not happy. You'd really think that she would rather die.
While Yvonne was waiting, I went off looking for a chemist pharmacy. Not the
sort of thing they have in hospitals, it turns out: gift shops galore, and cafés, but when I
finally found a pharmacy it was hidden in a corner and only served a very small range of
medications. Discussed my persistent cough with Lee, the pharmacist, who offered me with
glee an expectorant,
“Senega & ammonia mixture” that
she said would taste terrible but work.
Back home and discovered good news and bad news: the good news was that it didn't taste that terrible after all. The bad news was that it also doesn't seem to work.
We've had better days: Yvonne has now had a cold for nearly 2 weeks, and my infection is also 3 days old, something that I can't recall happening before in my adult life. Early to bed.
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New hot water system?
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Topic: Stones Road house, opinion | Link here |
Steve from Waldron along to take a look at the hot water system today. It didn't take him long, but he won't be able to get a quote to us until Monday. He wasn't convinced that they'd be able to re-used the solar heating tubes. I think if that's the case, we might end up repairing what we have.
| Saturday, 27 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 27 July 2019 |
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Cough! Cough!
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Topic: health | Link here |
What a night! I spent 13 hours in bed, but during the first 10 I didn't sleep more than 10 minutes at a time before waking up with a fit of coughing.
When I got up, tried to make a doctor's appointment. Discovered that Health First only have a token presence at weekends: one doctor on Saturday mornings, and he was, not surprisingly, booked out. They recommended contacting Eureka or MedicAid. I've had enough of Eureka, and MedicAid sounds like a health insurance fund. But no, they're a doctor's practice like the others. Called them up. Yes, they're active every day of the week, but booked out until tomorrow 15:40. Dammit, make a booking and then think of the alternatives.
One of the alternatives was: why am I still coughing? Why did this cough mixture not work? One clue was that I was no longer coughing up phlegm. That would make sense: the Amoxycillin should have put paid to the bacterial infection. So maybe the coughing was coming from the expectorant. Into town to UFS and discussed the matter with a pharmacist, who gave me some “Dry Tickly Cough Medicine” which proved to have 0.1% w/v Pholcodine (which, for unclear reasons, they write as 5 mg / 5 mL). Back home, took some of that, and things got better.
But not for long. After a while I got random sharp irritations in my throat that forced me to cough. They went away in one place and came back elsewhere. Why? By the time we went to bed (at least we both held it out to 22:00, our normal bedtime) it wasn't too bad, but things are still taking far too long.
| Sunday, 28 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 28 July 2019 |
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Coughing, day 5
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
The coughing continues! But last night wasn't as bad as the night before, though I took nothing to address the cough. But I'm coughing up slime instead, though this time it was of a different colour, somewhat yellower than the last lot. A different infection?
Still, I was feeling good enough that I don't need to go to MedicAid, and Yvonne agreed, so we canceled the appointment. Instead I'll go and talk to Paul Smith or Matt Pilkington at Health First tomorrow.
While writing up my diary for yesterday, investigated Pholcodine, which proves to be an opioid that is available over the counter in the United Kingdom (and clearly here), but completely prohibited in the USA (same classification as Heroin). You'd at least expect some kind of warning on the bottle. As it is, it doesn't even say how to take the stuff: swallow immediately or let it slowly run down your throat?
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We stole your password!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
One of these irritating Bitcoin scams again today:
From: Margette Train <mnfreelandtx@outlook.com>
To: "groggy0037@lemis.com" <groggy0037@lemis.com>
Subject: grog : F O A D!
Thread-Topic: grog : F O A D!
Date: Sat, 27 Jul 2019 20:53:27 +0000
Message-ID: <HE1PR0502MB370591AA06F8BFB5C011312BC0C30@HE1PR0502MB3705.eurprd05.prod.outlook.com>
X-OriginatorOrg: outlook.com
i ám well aware F O A D! is your passw??rds. Lets get r??ght to the point. Not a single person hás compensatd me to check yo??. Y??u d?? n??t know m ánd y??u're probably w??ndering why you'r gett??ng this e máil?
Apart from indicating that outlook.com is not doing a very good job of suppressing this kind of message, they're right: this is the password that I use on a lot of sites where security isn't important. But I do change the email address, so by comparing the email address and password I can guess which site was compromised.
Surprise, surprise! It's forums@freebsd.org. They're hardly going to be able to do much harm there. But it would be nice to understand how they got hold of the password.
Yet another proof, though, of the advantages of keeping separate user/password pairs for each site. Log in with Google? Facebook? That way compromises lie.
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Bake a pie?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Steak and kidney pie for dinner this evening. We make individual pies in porcelain forms, with dough both below and above.
Problem: how to you ensure that the dough below is cooked enough? The porcelain keeps it relatively cool. Decided on heat mainly from below at 210°, in the assumption that the pastry on top would brown well enough by itself. It didn't quite work the way I expected: yes, the pastry on top browned, but unevenly, and the pastry below didn't really crisp:
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Maybe we should omit the pastry below, or make them some other form.
| Monday, 29 July 2019 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 29 July 2019 |
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Cough! Keuch!
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Topic: health | Link here |
I'm still coughing, and gradually it's developing into a wheeze („Keuch“ in German, the same root as “cough”). Yvonne also hasn't shaken her cough. Time for more doctor's appointments. Once again Paul Smith is not available, and we had to make two separate appointments with Matt Pilkington.
I in first, barely having time to shower at Chris Bahlo's place before heading off rather faster than the police allow to Ballarat, arriving only a minute late, and with some time before Matt called me.
In the course of the examination he confirmed that the Amoxicillin hadn't done what one had expected of it, and prescribed Doxycycline instead. And for the cough? I showed him my collection of products, including the Bisolvon tablets, but he barely looked at them, and when I mentioned Pholcodine he simply said that the effectiveness of traditional medications are in doubt. He appeared not to listen when I pointed out that Pholcodine is an opioid. In the end I got nothing for the cough.
Instead he went back to my medical history. What, smoker, 60 a day? Well, yes, towards the end in 1976. Never mind, it's the lifetime total number of cigarettes that makes the difference. Maybe I have scarred lung tissue as a result, and that's why I keep getting bronchitis (I think the last must have been 25 years ago). Maybe it's even pneumonia, though he didn't hear the tell-tale crackling. So: time for a chest X-ray.
And then didn't I once have asthma? Yes, but the last reported attack was over 52 years ago. Still, did I have inhalers? As a matter of fact yes, as I said, coming on 8 years ago, because Vani Peddi had misdiagnosed a side effect of the coversyl that she had prescribed me and made me buy a lot of expensive inhalers that had no effect. The coughing went away when I changed the product.
Still, that doesn't mean that he's not right now, so he prescribed me more inhalers, this time much cheaper (is that because I'm now of age?). Got them and off to Lake Imaging, where they marvelled over the referral: “patient has persistent cough”. What kind of X-ray is that? I explained the situation and had my chest X-rays done, then off home.
At home took a look at the inhaler. There were two of them! Why that? Tried one out and discovered:
Coughing continued. Ended up taking a Bisolvon tablet, which somehow improved things.
I need a second opinion on all this. Called up to make an appointment with Paul Smith. Earliest is today in a week!
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Brainless parking
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Coming out of Lake Imaging, discovered a car parked partially in my parking space:
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Mine's the black car in the middle.
It wasn't that difficult; in fact, it took me some effort to make it look as if it was in my way. But clearly it was badly parked, and I like the name on the rear window.
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Dangerous shopping
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Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
On the way home dropped into the Pilipino food shop on Howitt Street in the off chance that I might find anything worth buying. Once again, no. Why can't they have some Malaysian or Chinese stuff?
Next door at the fresh food place found some loose bean sprouts at only $3.25 a kg, less than a quarter of the price of the plastic-packed stuff at Woolworths. But that was all. They have some deep freeze cabinets at the back with various Chinese stuff. I had hoped to find some bean curd puffs, and maybe I did, but the packages were written only in Chinese.
The cabinets are strange—I suspect bought second-hand from somewhere else—and I had difficulty opening them. I didn't discover until I left the shop just how much trouble:
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Bloody NBN!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Back home, discovered that we were off the net. In fact, we stayed off the net for 6¼ hours! That appears to be the first of the promised 4 outages this week, a total of 30 hours during the working week, which doesn't leave much change out of 40 hours. How can they be allowed to do this? It's been going on for as long as we have the link. And when the link came back up again, there was something like 10% packet loss:
That's the green line, which should be flat on the bottom axis.
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New camera
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Bought a camera on eBay today: an Olympus E-30.
Wait, that's not only a DSLR, it's a model that I have already had and sold. Why buy one again? Because I was looking for a DSLR for the Analemma photos, the price was right, and it's a cut above the E-410 and E-500 that I've seen on offer. It also comes with two barely usable lenses: a Zuiko Digital ED 14-42 mm f/3.5-5.6 and a 40-150 mm. I already have 7 lenses that will fit it, and arguably the Zuiko Digital ED 14-35 mm f/2.0 SWD and the Zuiko Digital ED 35-100 mm f/2.0 will work better on it than on my mirrorless bodies.
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Plumbing pain
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
It seems that Yvonne has been turning the nose of our swivelling, pull-out kitchen tap by pushing on the spray end, which wasn't really designed for that. Couple that with the overly firm mounting of the fixed part, and the result was:
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OK, we can find a new on on eBay. Can't we? Yes, we can, but it's clear that this is last year's popular item; today I only found one, and instead of the $35 odd that I paid in the past, it now costs $90. Maybe it's a good thing it didn't die any later; otherwise I might not have found a replacement at all.
| Tuesday, 30 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 30 July 2019 |
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Repairing the hot water system
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
A quote arrived from Waldron yesterday, as promised. Not as promised was the supply of not two, but three new solar heating panels: a complete new system, costing $5,184.81! And a comment
Note that we do not re use existing solar tubes
That wasn't what I discussed with Steve on Friday. Called him up and discussed the matter: it seems that Karl doesn't want to use them because of warranty issues. But clearly that kills it. And even if I accepted the offer, it would be 15 days before they could install.
OK, contact Chromagen to see what a repair would cost. This was still before 9:00, so I couldn't call them up, but I found a convenient “contact us” form on the web, wanting exact details, including model and serial number. They have a convenient web page there telling you where to find the serial number, on this sticker:
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But it wasn't there. Did lots of searching and found it in a completely different place, conveniently up against the wall:
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Somehow it was accepted and went off to the big bit bucket in the cloud. I didn't hear anything more about it.
They finally responded on 7 August
Finally called up Chromagen on 1300 367 565, as instructed on their web site, and pressed Option 3.
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Wasn't that nice of them to tell you which option to select? It would have been if it had been correct.
Wrong, fool! “A vaehlid respahns was not received”. And what's the choice? Ah, if you weren't listening, hard luck.
Somehow I finally got connected to somebody whose name I didn't bother to note, and got the price for the replacement part, a surprisingly high $480 odd, along with the number of a repairer: JC Plumbing. Called them up and asked for a quote, but they didn't know where Dereel is. What? Ah, but my mistake: I had originally written down the number as 5337 3557, but it was really 5447 3557. They're in Bendigo! It seems that nobody in the Ballarat area wants to touch Chromagen.
OK, looks like I wouldn't have any change out of $800 for a repair of this horrible device. Time for a new system. Who else is there in Ballarat apart from Waldron? “Airtasker” offers quotations from the 20 Plumbers in Ballarat. I've had very poor results from this kind of site, but why not? Now I know: I couldn't find a way to tell it my address:
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What didn't it like about the address? Maybe the greyed out “For your privacy we only need your area”? I wonder how they would want to get here. In any case, I couldn't use the site. Goodbye, Airtasker.
More web searches, and contacted:
Paul of Ballarat Plumbing Services immediately endeared himself to me by responding to my mention of Chromagen with “Ah, them!”. Yes, he can deliver heating systems, but he wouldn't recommend solar panels for the system: in Ballarat heat pumps are the way to go. He had a couple to offer, including a Bosch unit for $3,300 installed, and he could install today!
Not quite what I expected from a machinery point of view, but he discussed the alternatives in some convincing detail, noting that if it's solar, it has to be evacuated tube round here; otherwise the panels will freeze in winter, something that I can confirm. And he doesn't recommend the Apricus (the maker that Waldron quoted) any more: they used to be very good, but they have gone downhill, and he had had some poor customer service experiences with them. In that connection it's interesting to note that he offers after hours service, so if anything does go wrong with something he has installed, I won't have the problems I had with the Chromagen.
Thought about it for most of the day, did some investigations on-line that confirmed at least that heat pumps would be a good alternative to evacuated tube heating, and finally decided on an installation. Clearly no longer today, but at least we'll have hot water again by tomorrow evening. Hopefully that will be the last time we have problems with hot water.
But then there's the consideration: now I have two units, and the tubes are still on the roof. Why not connect the systems in series? First heat the water in the old Chromagen system when possible, and feed from there to the Bosch unit, so that it would only need to heat when there wasn't enough solar heat. Thought about it for a while, but leaving them both there would require a separate pad to put the second one on, something that would take a while (and not inconsiderable cost) to prepare.
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You're right, I'm wrong
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Topic: politics, general, opinion | Link here |
Answering questions on Quora is an interesting experience. Particularly when it relates to US politics, I meet characters whom I would never have expected to exist. So I wasn't overly surprised when I got this comment on my answer to a question “Why can't Trump get a deal done with Iran?”:
“they had an international agreement that included several countries, including the USA. “ They did not They had a deal between the mullahs( the Majlis did not vote or approve the deal) and Obama (Congress never voted on or approved the deal.)
OK, who are the mullahs? The word means learned man, but it seems that in the US it's used as a disparaging term. But which body in Iran? Not important, of course: the Irani government agreed on it. The real issue is the USA, and the thread that developed showed that this respondent (William Bilek) didn't really care much that this was an international treaty. But finally he got so far that he contradicted himself:
In the United States, the word treaty is reserved for an agreement that is made "by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate" (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution). International agreements not submitted to the Senate are known as "executive agreements" in the United States, but they are considered treaties and therefore binding under international law.
So of course I pointed that out. His response?
Didn’t notice that. You are correct.
Amazing! That certainly separates him from the rabid right-wing Trumpists.
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Bronchi and broccoli?
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
While talking about my bronchi (bronchia? bronchioles?) yesterday, Matt made the comment that the word had the same derivation as “broccoli”, something to do with branching. I pointed out that -coli was definitely related to cabbage, which surprised him: it seems one of his teachers at medical college had made this claim. So I promised to look it up. No. From the OED:
Seems that there's no reference to cabbage there after all. But I hope that the teachers are better at the subjects in which they're qualified.
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COUGH!
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
My coughing still isn't letting up. After checking the functionality of Bisolvon, it seemed the right thing to loosen the phlegm in my lungs and bronchia, so took some of them, with relatively good results. But in the evening things got really bad, so much that Yvonne asked if she shouldn't take me to hospital. That wasn't necessary, but I've seldom had so much coughing. I still don't understand that Matt has given me no medication whatsoever to deal with it.
| Wednesday, 31 July 2019 | Dereel | Images for 31 July 2019 |
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Shower?
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Topic: general, animals | Link here |
Over to Chris Bahlo's place again this morning for a shower. Good news and bad news: she wasn't there, but her dog Nina now remembers me well enough to allow me in, waiting patiently in the entrance:
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The bad news was that there was no water. I assumed that she had turned the pump off—I recall issues with the pump in the past—but I couldn't be bothered trying to find out how to turn it on again, so left without washing. I later confirmed that yes, that was the reason, and Chris claims that she had left a note on the bathroom door. But I didn't see it.
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New hot water system
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Topic: Stones Road house | Link here |
Paul Kinna from Ballarat Plumbing Services along this morning with his Dalek (his term) and the interesting information that he had once been a policeman and served a warrant to somebody round the corner (Progress Road?) who had had 6 kg of marijuana. He would have installed things very quickly had he not forgotten a couple of things and had to go back to Ballarat to pick them up.
Finally the thing was installed, not without producing “an error code” that I didn't see, but which proved to be saying “there's air in the system”. And gradually the temperature began to rise:
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But not enough for a shower today. OK, that's the whole tank full starting at 8.5°, and by evening it was hot. So far no cause for alarm. Still, the temperature display is a far cry from the Chromagen heater, which didn't have any indication at all. And the same display allows me to set the desired hot water temperature to 0.1° precision, compared to this for the Chromagen:
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Somehow it's like coming into a new century.
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Electrics
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Topic: Stones Road house, opinion | Link here |
Paul wasn't allowed to do any work on the electrics of the new hot water system. To be allowed to do that he would have had to take a 7 week course. How can he justify the cost? So while he was away, Brock from a still-unknown electrical company came along to replace the wiring.
While we were waiting for Paul, I asked him about fixing the odds and ends round the house, in particular the relay for the air conditioner and rewiring the RCDs in the switchboard, particularly with view to reliability: I don't want another random RCD incident take down all my computers. Agreed, every circuit should have its own RCD. And it seems that there are relays of the type that I want: turn the power from the inverter off if we're off the grid.
And the induction cooktop? No, can't connect it to two separate circuits; he'll have to run a separate 32 A line to the switchboard. That's what the regulations say. It's certainly not what the installation instructions (which I didn't have to hand) say:
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Still, it should only come to about $400, so maybe it's worth it.
Then he took a look at the broken power point in the kitchen. First, turn off the power to it the hard way: cause a short circuit, taking out 6 circuits in the process, including all the computers! eureka survived because of the second UPS in the office, but lagoon and teevee were toast.
And what was wrong with the power point? As I had assumed, the screws had been pulled through the frame, tearing the holes apart:
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But that's normal! I had screwed the things too tight. Maybe that's the case, but looking at the construction, it could equally well have been a too-tight grip on a power plug, and I wasn't aware of using excessive force when screwing it in. You'd really think that they'd make them stronger.
Paul came back and Brock attended to the wiring. What wiring? Everything was there. Ah, no, we need to replace the circuit breaker with an RCD, and as requested he replaced the malfunctioning switch for the booster element.
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It wasn't until we were done that I discovered that this unit doesn't have a booster element. And the unit itself has a maximum rating of 600 W. Why couldn't I have just connected it to the connectors on the left? Ah, can't do that, regulations require not only the RCD for the hard-wired circuit, but also that nothing else be on the circuit.
Somehow I'm reminded of Jim Lannen, who always justified his claims with regulations which proved in retrospect not to exist. Somehow he lost credibility in the course of the day. I wonder what his bill will look like.
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Daily NBN outage
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
More National Broadband Network outages again today, but not as bad as on Monday: only 2½ hours spread across two outages. But during that time got warnings of further outages coming in the middle of next month.
Will it ever stop?
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Cough?
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Topic: health | Link here |
My coughing gradually seems to be subsiding. Only a week! Was it necessary?
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Power fail
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Topic: general | Link here |
Another short power failure today at 12:35:21.
I didn't discover this outage, like a number of others, until 13 August.
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