|
| Greg's diary |
| October 2016 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Saturday, 1 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 1 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Day of rest
|
Topic: general | Link here |
After a week of fighting MythTV, I took it easy today, apart from writing up what I have done so far. There's only so much pain one can take, and I also had other things to do, like the house photos.
|
Ubuntu system names
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I had puzzled over the strange default system name that Ubuntu gave to my computer: greg-GA-MA785GT-UD. Peter Jeremy came out with an explanation: it appears to include the model number of the motherboard!
Apart from the question about how it found the name, what earthly use is that? It would make (marginally) more sense to describe the appearance of the box. I never cease to be amazed.
|
Trump: sticking in the knife?
|
Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
I continue to be horrified about how a person like Donald Trump could be in the running for election as President of the United States of America. I'm sure that in China leaders are pointing to the fact as evidence that democracy does not work. Worse, he stands a non-zero chance of being elected. For the first time ever, I've been following the US election campaign.
Four months ago I was worried about the outcome of three votes: the British referendum on leaving the European Union, the Australian Federal Elections, and the US Presidential Elections. So far two of my fears have been fulfilled; hopefully the third will not. That would more than make up for the other two.
Gradually there are signs that things might improve. I had privately hypothesized that people would bring out dirt on Trump closer to the election day (now only 5 weeks away): people tend to forget, so it doesn't make sense to do it earlier. And now two newspapers have weighed in: first, The Arizona Republic, a conservative newspaper that has always endorsed the Republican presidential candidate, has broken with 126 years of tradition and endorsed Hillary Clinton as president. And USA Today, the largest circulation newspaper in the USA, has broken with tradition of not expressing opinions on the presidential candidates. They didn't endorse Clinton: they simply disendorsed Trump.
That in itself is unusual, and there are others. But following up on these endorsements, I was amazed how strongly they were worded. The Arizona Republic even made fun of his behaviour, arguably somewhat below the belt. USA Today doesn't go that far, but does state:
Republican nominee Donald Trump — is, by unanimous consensus of the Editorial Board, unfit for the presidency.
Whether through indifference or ignorance, Trump has betrayed fundamental commitments made by all presidents since the end of World War II. These commitments include unwavering support for NATO allies, steadfast opposition to Russian aggression, and the absolute certainty that the United States will make good on its debts. He has expressed troubling admiration for authoritarian leaders and scant regard for constitutional protections.
Elsewhere there are many caricatures of Trump, notably of his gestures. This one was clipped from the first televised debate:
| Sunday, 2 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 2 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Sasha's eye
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
Yesterday Sasha developed an irritation of his left eye, and despite treatment it was worse today, so over to see Pene Kirk, who took a look under his (anaesthetized) second eyelid (what an amazing amount of space there is there!) and found nothing. New ointment, and hopefully it'll go away.
|
Bad weather and damned renewable energy
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
The weather hasn't been good lately. Lots of wind and rain, though fortunately most of it occurred in South Australia, where for a while 100,000 households were without power.
To bring that into context, South Australia has 1.5 million inhabitants. Outside Adelaide, the population is only 500,000 odd, so 100,000 is a fair chunk of the total number of households.
But the Government knows why the power failure was so bad: a large part of South Australia's electricity is generated by renewable energy, and that's why the power failed:
It's high time that politicians should be made accountable before law for their actions.
We weren't completely unscathed. On the way back from Pene's, we noticed that a tree had been uprooted at the Yeardleys. I think it was the old Acacia with the looped branch, seen here 5 years ago:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And almost before I knew it, we found another one:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
No way of moving it; we had to drive around it.
|
Identifying motherboards
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I commented on the strange system name that Ubuntu thought out for my new ceeveear system, apparently the model number of the motherboard. Peter Jeremy also came out with an explanation of how to find the number: it seems that the BIOS provides it. With FreeBSD I can get it with:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/8) ~ 44 -> kenv | grep smbios.planar
That was on eureka, and it looks like some kind of sysctl, but it isn't. It's also interesting to see how many of these parameters are not set:
And on Linux? A quick search shows this page, which also has other interesting information:
=== root@ceeveear (/dev/pts/12) /home/grog 2 -> dmidecode -t 2
And not only was it a bizarre choice of name, it's modern: the name was truncated to greg-GA-MA785GT-UD.
|
External editor for firefox
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
A week or so ago the It's All Text addon to firefox stopped working. Why? It seems that the developer uploaded a corrupt version to the web site.
Why should that stop the locally installed version working? Because. My best guess is that automatic updates are so clever that they first remove the old version, then check if the new one works.. I waited a while, sent a message to the developer, which remains unanswered, and went out looking for an alternative. What I want is a way to get a sane editor (Emacs) to edit text fields in firefox.
Surprisingly, there are very few. About the only one I could find was withExEditor. I tried that, and nothing happened. No error message, nothing except an entry in the Extensions list. Left feedback on the web site, and this time the developer (Kazumasa Hasegawa) contacted me, and we worked through the problem. Today I discovered that it worked fine on tiwi and ceeveear, but not on eureka. What's the difference? The version of firefox, maybe? eureka was running version 44, tiwi 45, and ceeveear presumably the latest and greatest.
OK, off to upgrade firefox. But that's another story.
In passing, it seems that there's a new version of It's All Text, but it has a different URL. Too late. For the time being I'll stick with withExEditor.
|
Package upgrade: the pain
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So I am finally forced to upgrade firefox on eureka. I've been reluctant; the package system is much better now, but there seems to be a maze of twisty little interdependencies, all different. Every time I have tried to upgrade firefox, it has tried to remove Emacs. Not an option.
So how about rebuilding from source? Started that—not for the first time—and not for the first time and into endless pain: all the packages that needed removal before I could build the new version. The worst seems to be rust, which bills itself as “an open-source systems programming language that runs blazingly fast...”. I can't judge that, but the installation process doesn't bear it out. Normally the build is the long part of installing a port from source, but in this case, after building, the installation ran for fully 30 minutes, using lots of CPU time in the process. What was it doing? I don't know. And I don't care.
After that, gave up and tried removing and reinstalling the firefox package, which seemed to have made peace with Emacs. The dependencies are amazing!
That's amazing enough in itself. 25 years ago it would have cost me a little over a million DM to download that much data (and would have taken the best part of a week). And what are they?
So to install firefox you also need two complete other browsers? And both LibreOffice and OpenOffice? And Hugin? And samba? I'm amazed.
But that was just the first iteration. Then I found:
That went on into the evening. In the meantime I checked whether chromium had been upgraded. Yes. But not well. There were serious rendering issues on eureka:0.1, the monitor with 2560×1440 resolution; the others were OK:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
What caused that? Some monitor size sensitivity?
| Monday, 3 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 3 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
MythTV pain, the fourth
|
Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been trying for a week to install a new version of MythTV, so far without success:
How can things go so horribly wrong? For a couple of days I didn't even want think about it, but I came to the conclusion that the installations can't all be that bad, or the project would fold. So it seems logical that I should try a completely standard installation, DHCP, stupid system name and all, and see how that went.
First thing is clear: there really is an issue with Mythbuntu at the end of the installation: it just hangs instead of rebooting. This time I had the display:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The ^C was my attempt to get it to do something. In the end, again, I had to press RESET.
After that, I was able to run mythtv-setup, which proceeded relatively smoothly, but even locally it is very slow. This time I didn't even try to use a listings grabber; I can always (?) add that later. Set up to use EPG (or “EIT”, as Myth calls it). All seemed to run well, and I was able to access MythWeb:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
In passing it's interesting to note that the encoder status now shows two encoders per card. I wonder if that works. Theoretically it's possible, as long as both recordings are on the same transport stream.
But I still couldn't access the programme listings, presumably because there were none yet. So I tried to set up a manual recording. No go:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Subsequent checking showed that I did, in fact, have plenty of programme information in mythconverg.program, nearly 2,000 entries, as in fact the status screen showed. But I still got:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What's the cause of that? Off to google for the error message, and found both an open bug report and this thread, which seems to indicate that it was a broken upgrade of MySQL. It refers to another bug report that was closed... when? 5 months ago! The system really seems designed to hide the dates. But that would suggest some time in April or May this year, round the time the distribution was made. So why hasn't it been updated? Or at least supplied with a warning? This is really amazingly bad. I wonder how many people really use it.
|
Lost: Emacs bindings
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Decades ago, my first experience with firefox was anything but positive. Since then I've learnt to live with it, but it seems to continually try to annoy me. On the very first occasion, I discovered that it had replaced the standard X key bindings with, as I said at the time, “something Microsoft-like”. At the time I found a way round the problem, but after today's upgrade it stopped working.
What's wrong this time? Sometimes I despair. Twenty years of web browsers, twelve years of multimedia software, and they continually conspire to make life hard. But this time I found a firefox addon to do the job for me, firemacs. Installed it, and yes indeed, it gives me back all the missing bindings—and more. Now searching is with c-s, like God intended, and of course c-r is search backwards. But that's what firefox uses for refreshing the screen. I'm going to have to reconfigure and rethink.
| Tuesday, 4 October 2016 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
MythTV: First success
|
Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
So yesterday's issue with MythTV was a MySQL configuration issue? Dug through the bug report, which offered at least two alternative solutions, and chose the correct one:
After that, oh wonder, MythWeb worked! Done! After only 9 days!
Well, not quite. I still need:
On the positive side, it does seem as if MythTV can now record two programmes from the same transport stream, which should eliminate most of the conflicts I've had where there were three programmes to record:
As the device names show, the first two encoders are the same card.
In passing, it seems that the install program didn't truncate its stupid system name after all; it just displayed it in a box that was too small.
|
Photo copyrights?
|
Topic: general, photography, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne received a nasty message via Facebook today:
It has recently been brought to my attention that you have uploaded photos of my horse, Magni, to an online album taken during the recent Historical Dressage clinic.
Given the continuously negative way you have treated me since I have begun owning Icelandic Horses and as Magni is not your horse I would like you to remove them from your album and delete what you have taken of him from your personal files.
In the future if we both find ourselves at the same clinic I would prefer you to not point your camera in my direction and allow me to learn in peace.
What's all that about? Yes, it seems that Yvonne took two photos of Magni, out of a total of 108:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
What should she do? The images are of surprisingly poor quality, and possibly that's enough reason to remove them. But presumably the body in the saddle is the owner, so she must have seen that Yvonne was taking the photos. If she had objected, that would be the time to do it, not after Yvonne put them up on the web and they have doubtless been sucked in by countless search engines.
What does the law say about this kind of situation? It depends strongly on the country, as I considered a few years ago. The copyright belongs to Yvonne, and in general it's a good idea to get a model release if you're taking photos of people. But who ever does that? And in the environment of a riding “clinic”, lots of people take photos. So why should these particular photos be removed? Because of the “continuously negative way she has treated her”? What does that mean? Yvonne asked, but got no sensible reply.
Yes, it takes all kinds. But it might be a good idea for participants in this kind of event to sign a model release when they register.
|
Bread rising problems solved
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
For some time I've had difficulty with bread rising, both last time and the time before. And last time I noted that the dough had not risen completely overnight. So this time I started 2 days ago and left it for two nights and a day, during which it rose considerably more. And when I finished the dough this morning, it rose in only 80 minutes, by far the fastest I have ever experienced. In addition, the dough was much smoother. Hopefully that will translate to better taste when I get round to eating it.
| Wednesday, 5 October 2016 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Next day of MythTV pain
|
Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
My current status is that MythTV is running on a machine called greg-GA-MA785GT-UD3H, and I can record up to four programmes at a time. Done? Hardly:
But everything's so fragile! I have three installations on the disk, conveniently all Ubuntu 16.04, so that the boot menu is almost impossible to understand. Currently the partitions on disk are:
| Partition | Use | Size | ||
| /dev/sda1 | mythbuntu 1 root | 46 GB | ||
| /dev/sda5 | swap | 9 GB | ||
| /dev/sda6 | /home | 326 GB | ||
| /dev/sda7 | ubuntu/mythtv root | 15 GB | ||
| /dev/sda8 | mythbuntu 2 root | 68 GB | ||
The intention is to share the /home file system (which takes up most of the disk) between such root partitions as remain. /dev/sda1 contains a configuration that fits my environment better, so today I copied the MythTV and MySQL configuration from /dev/sda8 to /dev/sda1 and booted from it, in the hope of being able to use it with minimal changes.
Things didn't quite work out like that. Somehow I must have missed parts of the configuration, and what I got at the end was an utter mess. And the tuner card configuration didn't work because the capturecard table has a column hostname, which I didn't change in time. As a result I ended up with four cards, two local, two “remote”. And for some reason the local configuration ended up being different from the first time round, though the cards themselves are identical. Admittedly, I've seen and marvelled at this before.
So in the end I gave up and reverted to the system on /dev/sda8. Even that wasn't easy. I ended up connecting the video output to the TV so that I didn't need to crouch on the floor, but for some reason the system didn't like the EDID:
Along with hundreds of these messages, it dumped the EDID on the console in hexadecimal. OK, it's correct: the EDID is broken, but the reaction was surprising: it continually powered the TV off (something that I didn't know was possible), even when the TV had another input selected. And on at least two occasions the TV ended up in a state where it was powered on but didn't react to the controls; I had to disconnect power to get it to respond again. And logging in to the system was complicated by the fact that I had no ssh keys, and that the login name (greg) didn't match the other systems. Another frustrating day.
So what do I do next? In the short term, boot greg-GA-MA785GT-UD3H again. Next, I think I'll try a new installation on /dev/sda1, first adapting the system to the network, and then trying to set up MythTV. At least there's no pressure any more.
|
Another new lens
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
At Photokina last month, Olympus announced a whole lot of new equipment. Some of it is already on the market, notably the M.Zuiko Digital ED 30mm f/3.5 Macro.
Why should I want that? I already have a Zuiko Digital ED 50 mm f/2.0 Macro, a Olympus Zuiko Digital 35mm f/3.5 Macro and a M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro, not to mention the SMC Macro-Takumar 50 mm f/4. Isn't that enough?
Sadly, not any more. Most of them have their uses. The old Macro-Takumar is good because it has a physical diaphragm ring, so I can put it on bellows and reversing rings. The 50 mm Zuiko is a good all-round lens, though a little long in focus. That's why I bought the 35 mm lens.
But then Olympus came out with focus stacking, and very few lenses support that. The only macro lens was the 60 mm lens. So I had to get one of them, only three months later. The problem with that lens is the same as with the 50 mm lens: it's very long focus (mid-telephoto). It also has a filter size that doesn't match my ring flash. So I still use the 35 mm lens, though it can't do focus stacking.
And that's where the 30 mm lens comes in. It does do focus stacking. Or does it? How sure can I be? In any case, it's on sale in Australia for prices lower than I've seen anywhere in the world. How long will that last? And do they have an Olympus warranty? Some claim a one year warranty, some two. Where's the licensed dealer list?
Time to call up Olympus, who annoyingly no longer answer on the normal number (02-9886-3999), so I had to pay to call 1300 659 678. Spoke to Kelly, who told me that Olympus offers a two year warranty on micro four thirds lenses. That's nice to know, but not what it says on the web site:
This Warranty, is ... for a period of two years for purchases of an Olympus Micro Four-Thirds camera, ten years for purchases of Olympus Binoculars and one year on all other Olympus products.
I can't see that the two year warranty applies to lenses only. But no, she was adamant, and seemed reluctant to draw the discrepancy to the attention of anybody else. Regarding the support for focus stacking, she said that she couldn't comment, since the new camera is still under development. But I was sure I had seen it somewhere, I just wasn't sure where.
Finally she put me through to Mark, who also didn't know. But he checked and called me back: yes, will be supported, as page 8 of the announcement confirms:
Lenses compatible with Focus Stacking mode: M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f 2.8 PRO, M.Zuiko Digital ED 8mm f 1.8 Fisheye PRO, M.Zuiko Digital ED 12 - 40mm f 2.8 PRO, M.Zuiko Digital ED 40 - 150mm f 2.8 PRO, M.Zuiko Digital ED 300mm f 4.0 IS PRO, M.Zuiko Digital ED 30mm f 3.5 Macro, and M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f 2.8 Macro
It's also mentioned here, but that's a document from the USA that has no legal meaning in Australia.
Finally I could order the lens, which went smoothly.
Talking about the warranty issue on IRC was interesting. Peter Jeremy pointed me at this document from the ACCC, which states, at the end:
It is important to remember that you must honour any promises—whether verbal or in your warranty—that you make, regardless of how the rights in the ACL apply to that particular transaction.
So it looks as if I do get a 2 year warranty, but only on the grounds of Kelly's verbal statement. Time to record today's phone calls:
| Date/Time | From | Called Number | Duration | Cost | Destination | Category | Direction | |||||||
| 05/10 11:38:06 | 61353461370 | 0417397062 | 00:00:08 | 0.2000 | Australia - Mobile | Fixed to Mobile | Outbound | |||||||
| 05/10 11:39:26 | 61417397062 | 61353461370 | 00:00:29 | 0.0000 | Australia-MOBILE | National | Inbound | |||||||
| 05/10 12:40:19 | 61353461370 | 0298863999 | 00:00:00 | 0.0000 | AUSTRALIA - CAPITAL - SYDNEY | National Untimed | Outbound | |||||||
| 05/10 12:42:02 | 61353461370 | 611300659678 | 00:11:06 | 0.2500 | Australian 1300 | Special | Outbound | |||||||
In the process, look at that destination: “AUSTRALIA - CAPITAL - SYDNEY”. Who on earth labours under such delusions?
In passing, it's interesting to note again the truth distortion of the announcement. The 60 mm lens has a magnification of 1:1, as they state. The 30 mm lens has a magnification of 1.25:1, as stated on the lens barrel (here courtesy of B&H:
But the web pages claim 2.5× magnification (2.5:1). That's just plain dishonest: it refers not to the magnification, but to the smallest field size relative to an (unrelated) full frame sensor. Here's a more honest overview, relative to the four-thirds sensor:
| Lens | closest focus | magnification | field area | v - f | magnification | field area | ||||||
| (m) | (mm²) | (mm) | (extension | tubes) | ||||||||
| 30 mm m.Zuiko | 0.095 | 1.25 | 13.9×10.4 | 37.5 | 2.12 | 7.7×5.8 | ||||||
| 35 mm Zuiko | 0.146 | 1.0 | 17×13 | 35.0 | 1.74 | 9.9×7.5 | ||||||
| 50 mm Zuiko | 0.24 | 0.52 | 33.3×25 | 25.0 | 1.02 | 17.0×12.7 | ||||||
| 50 mm Takumar | 0.234 | 0.5 | 33.3×25 | 25.0 | 1.02 | 17.0×12.7 | ||||||
| (FF) | 72×48 | 1.52 | 23.7×15.8 | |||||||||
| 60 mm m.Zuiko | 0.19 | 1.0 | 17×13 | 60.0 | 1.43 | 9.5×7.1 | ||||||
v is the effective focus distance at closest focus, and f is the focal length, so v - f is the extension, on which the magnification depends. (FF) refers to using the Takumar on a full-frame camera. The columns with extension tubes assume my (total) 26 mm automatic extension tubes for the Olympus, and the (total) 61 mm tubes for full frame. It's clear that however it's described, the Olympus macro lenses come much closer.
| Thursday, 6 October 2016 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Photos: rights or harrassment?
|
Topic: general, photography, opinion | Link here |
The alleged copyright issue I reported on Tuesday hasn't gone away. The person in question (whom so far I don't intend to name) was particularly unfriendly and threatening, and in the end I decided to take over the matter and ask for resolution by email. Today I got a response from her husband, who may or may not be informed on the matter. Salient points from his message:
In terms of the most recent issue, Yvonne has taken photos of my wife and her horse at a recent clinic and then posted them publicly. My wife saw them and asked that they be removed. It seems a simple issue of invasion of privacy ...
Some people are happy to display their lives for everyone to see. Others seek more privacy.
Clearly there are contradictions here. Firstly, Yvonne did not take a photo of the person in question, only of her horse. Do we need a model release for that? I don't think so. Secondly, the person is by no means “private”; I found several similar images which she had posted on Facebook, including one with Arne Koets. I wonder if she has a consent form from him.
So were we invading her privacy? Privacy laws vary considerably between countries. Called up the Free legal aid service on 1300 792 387 and discovered that they only handle criminal law. They did give me some pointers, though, including the Central Highlands Community Legal Service on 1800 466 488, and a reference to the Fitzroy Law Handbook, which is available on line.
What I found was surprising. About the only document I could find that addressed the matter in an Australian context was this one, It relates to children and young people, and contains this paragraph:
69.111 As with other forms of personal information, the coverage of images is limited by the scope of the Privacy Act. For example, an image is not covered by the Privacy Act if it was taken by an individual who is acting in their private capacity.
This page has a non-linkable section “Entities to which the Privacy Act applies”, which includes:
The PA 1988 does not apply to personal information that individuals collect, hold, use or disclose for the purposes of their personal, family or household affairs. In other words, the PA 1988 does not apply to an individual’s handling of personal information unless it is done in the course of running a business.
And this discussion of model release forms statue:
If you intend to sell or distribute images that include people, then it is worth getting your subjects to sign a model release form as this will protect you against any comeback.
If, however, your photo is to be used in some sort of educational context, such as in a journal, industry newsletter, newspaper or otherwise, typically a model release won’t be required due to the educational and informative nature of the photo.
What I haven't been able to find is what kinds of images could be considered private. Even in Germany, where privacy is strictly enforced, outside photos of buildings are allowed. What about animals?
And outside Australia? This British document includes:
An individual has certain rights to control the use of their image. The specific details will vary from one country to another depending on national legislation, although the general rule seems to be to protect a person against defamatory or offensive use of their image.
If you intend to sell or distribute images that include people, then it is worth getting your subjects to sign a model release form as this will protect you against any comeback.
That actually makes more sense to me than the Australian legislation. But here again the requirements are generally limited to commercial use of images of people. Defamation and offensive use are a different matter, of course, and I assume that Australian law has adequate remedies for that, but there has so far been no question of that.
Then there's the question of copyright. The law states:
If you operate a website, and someone else posts copyright infringing material (e.g. someone else’s photo or music) to your site, you are likely to be liable for copyright infringement. For this reason, most sites usually contain terms and conditions of use which state that users will not infringe copyright. It is a good idea to respond quickly to complaints about infringing content on a website that you operate.
That's the other way round, of course, and certainly it makes sense.
|
Goodbye Helen, hello Petra
|
Topic: general | Link here |
Helen Miller has been cleaning our house for a couple of years now, but now she has found a real job, and she can't continue with us. She did come up with a replacement, however, Petra Gietz, from Ginnheim, later Hamm am Rhein. Unfortunately she doesn't speak much German: she came here when she was about 1½ years old. But so far she has made a good impression.
| Friday, 7 October 2016 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 7 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Eureka Hostel again
|
Topic: general | Link here |
Off with Yvonne, Nikolai and Leonid to visit the Geoffrey Cutter Centre and the Eureka Village Hostel. I'm getting the distinct impression that Niko isn't enjoying it particularly. It's also sad to see how quickly some of the residents are ageing.
|
Where's my lens?
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Two days ago I bought a M.Zuiko Digital ED 30mm f/3.5 Macro with understanding that it would be shipped the same day. The tracking information was entered, and I waited for it to be updated. For two days nothing happened. Then this evening I got:
|
|
||||||||
If this looks confusing, it may be because Australia Post doesn't know top from bottom. But it looks as if, despite promises, Cambuy took more than 48 hours to despatch the lens. And I was half hoping to have it by tomorrow. Thanks, Cambuy. That's the last thing I buy from you.
| Saturday, 8 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 8 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Dereel wildflowers
|
Topic: photography, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Off to the Dereel Hall today for a meeting of the Dereel Camera Crew. Lisa Hunter, the convener, did a presentation about the wildflowers round Dereel. I'm amazed how many there are, and how few I have been able to find myself.
After the presentation, off to Swansons Road to an area where Lisa knew a number of wildflowers. It's just on the edge of the area where we used to take the dogs for a walk when we lived in Kleins Road. Probably the biggest reason I didn't find very much is that the flowers are generally just individuals spread out among an uninteresting background.
I came prepared with lots of equipment, but in the end didn't use much of it. I brought a normal tripod and the “Mantis” that I bought a couple of years ago:
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
But both proved to be too complicated, and since we had good light, there didn't seem to be much of a need, as others also discovered:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I also brought two cameras: my E-M1 with the 60mm f/2.8 Macro, and Yvonne's E-PM2 with the 35mm f/3.5 Macro. The latter combination proved to be as good as useless: I couldn't get any good autofocus. I think this lens is going to go once I get the new M.Zuiko Digital ED 30mm f/3.5 Macro, which should focus much more quickly with the E-PM2.
And the flowers? I still need to identify them. Here are some:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 9 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 9 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Still more bad weather
|
Topic: general | Link here |
The good news about the weather is that it has got dryer and warmer, and yesterday we had quite a pleasant outing. But it didn't last: today we had some of the heaviest winds we've had in a long time, and there were multiple reports of fallen trees. Even Graeme Swift from next door rang up to tell us that a pine tree of his had fallen across our fence line, near the western end of the properties. Down with the dogs to take a look. On the way, found two more fallen trees, both Acacia melanoxylon:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And further down the back, the wind was so strong that it had blown the (taut) electric braid (the white one) over the barbed wire:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And further west again was the “real” fallen tree:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Hopefully this spring's weather isn't a portent of things to come.
|
Still more MythTV agony
|
Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
What happened to this mornings Deutsche Welle news? For some reason, it didn't get recorded. Usually that's an indication that something much more important has come up, like a football game in Uraguay. But no, today it was broadcast, it just didn't get recorded. And when I tried to schedule another recording, the system just hung.
OK, reboot—after all, Ubuntu emulates Microsoft—and then the recordings were already scheduled. But what went wrong? That's a problem I've never had before.
But that reminded me that I was still planning to retry a Mythbuntu installation on /dev/sda1. The intention was to set the IP address and system name as it was supposed to remain. I did that, and also installed a couple of programs (Emacs and various minor things), all before configuring MythTV.
All went relatively smoothly, and I was able to complete the configuration almost without problems. But when I tried to access Mythweb, I once again got the undefined function error that I had seen 10 days ago.
OK, it's an undefined function. Let's define it:
That worked, of course, but then I ran into the next error:
Is it any more legible if untangled?
Yes, indeed: frame 2 is a call to custom_error() with a text starting “Unable to conne”. At least that's something, but what extraordinary efforts I need to even get the error message! And clearly it's a bug that's easy to wake.
Frustration. I'll think over my next move. In the meantime, back to the functional version (greg-GA-MA785GT-UD3H) on /dev/sda8. And I couldn't log in! It wasn't the password: firstly I knew exactly what it was, and I could log in on a character-mode terminal (what we'd call a vty in FreeBSD), and secondly I could change it to something much simpler and still not log in.
Why do I have such incredible problems with this stuff? Ubuntu is supposed to be for non-technical people. Is it taking its revenge? The only good news was that it didn't seem to be a serious issue: I don't want to use the graphical interface anyway, and the recordings and MythWeb still work.
Two weeks and still more problems than I can understand!
|
More sunset photos
|
Topic: photography | Link here |
Getting a really good sunset photo is amazingly difficult. Here are some of today's attempts:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 10 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 10 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More focus stacked flowers
|
Topic: photography, gardening, opinion | Link here |
While walking the dogs today, came across a number of wildflowers, none of which I seemed to have found on Saturday. Brought a few back for photography, using focus stacking with the M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro. Once again, not an unqualified success. The images were taken with studio flash—at least this time I remembered to set the shutter speed to 1/10 s—but getting start and end focus right is almost impossible. This one started right at the closest petal, but didn't make it to the other side of the flower:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
This one looks better:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I think I took the first with a focus step of 3, and the second with 5. Things were also not made any easier by the fact that for some reason focus peaking didn't work. I still need to work out what went wrong there.
Hopefully the OM-D E-M1 Mark II will make this easier.
|
Meat from ALDI: no thanks
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Last week ALDI had a special offer: rack of lamb for only $16 a kilogram. They didn't look bad, so we bought one. But the results were terrible: yes, the meat in the middle was tender, all 5% of the total. The rest included parts that are normally trimmed from the chops, and the whole thing was barely edible. At least the dogs are happy. But once again our opinion is confirmed: ALDI is good for lots of things, but fresh meat is not one of them.
| Tuesday, 11 October 2016 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Suspicious rcfile
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I automatically file a copy of all incoming mail in ~/Mail/backup, and quite frequently refer to the folder after deleting the primary copy of a message. So it was today. But the last saved message was yesterday at 14:20, 20 hours before.
What went wrong? Looking in ~/Mail/procmailerr, I saw lots of:
What does that mean? Took a look at the file, and it looked perfectly normal. No reason to not be able to read it. Neither it nor the procmail executable had changed in months. OK, time to roll up sleeves and UTSL. What I found made my hair stand on end:
What horrible code! Clearly written by somebody who hates white space, or maybe it was written on a mobile phone. But there's nothing obvious in the code that would explain the problem. How could fstat() or stat() fail? And why doesn't procmail report the error? Added this to the report:
And how about that, I got an error 13, EACCES: access not allowed. Why not? Further logs proved that, as expected, the code used the fstat() branch. The man page for fstat(2) clarifies the circumstances under which fstat() can return EACCES: not at all. Checking the file descriptor showed that the file was already open (fd 4), and ktrace showed:
So how could that happen? Gradually it dawned on me: this code uses goto! There's a call to stat() between the call to fstat() and the message. What really happened was:
How can you read that? About the only intelligible part is the comment, which in fact is relatively useful. Checking, I found:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/12) ~/Mail 22 -> l -d ~
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/12) ~/Mail 23 -> chmod 755 ~
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/12) ~/Mail 24 -> l -d ~
Yesterday I had had an accident setting permissions, and it seems that I set GID my home directory. After fixing that, things worked again.
Of course, I took the hard way—and that before breakfast! Instead of UTSL I could have used RTFM, which tells me:
In general, this matches the inscrutable permissions checking code.
|
A new slicer?
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
It's been over a month since we decided we needed to do something about our kitchen slicer, and gradually I got round to it. It just doesn't cut well enough any more. Is the motor wearing out? Or is it just the blade? Replacing the blade is trivial: it's designed to be removed for cleaning. So I called up the agents and discovered that the replacement blade costs $46.50, nearly a quarter of the price of a new unit. That's a lot to bet on that being the solution to the problem.
So off again looking for alternative slicers, which start at about $70. And again I found nothing useful. A Google Search for meat slicer review australia brought up this page, which was strange for a number of reasons. Firstly, it didn't mention any model I had seen before, including particularly our current Sunbeam model, and secondly all the details were in obsolete units like pounds and inches. It took me a while to realize that it's a US page, which is pretty useless here. Only the prices are converted to Australian dollars. I'm not sure why they bother.
But then there's a Luvele Razor Meat Slicer (which I fear might be intended to be pronounced “lovely”) on the market for prices round $115. On the face of it, it doesn't look bad, and it comes with two blades, including a serrated blade for bread. That's not even available for the Sunbeam. and it's one of our main concerns. But how does it compare? I discovered the following differences:
| Brand | Cutting height | Power | Max slice | Price | ||||
| Luvele | 13 cm | 180 W | 15 mm | $115 | ||||
| Sunbeam | 15 cm | 135 W | 20 mm | $209 | ||||
That difference in cutting height could be crucial. And I'm concerned that no reputable supplier offers it; it's almost only from the manufacturer and on eBay.
So what do I do? I'm not looking for the cheapest unit, just one that I can use. Should I look at more expensive alternatives? To be continued.
| Wednesday, 12 October 2016 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 12 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Gone shopping
|
Topic: general | Link here |
Into Ballarat today, primarily to have a haircut, but also did some other shopping. To a kitchenware shop, primarily to buy some knives, but also took the blade of the kitchen slicer to see if it could be sharpened. At least they knew a knife sharpener, just round the corner, but for some unspecified reason it was closed. We'll have to try again another time, maybe not exactly at lunch time.
Then to Christies to finally order a cabinet for my bassoons. Should be there the end of next week.
What didn't I do? Get my hair cut. On the way in there were too many people waiting, and on the way home it was raining heavily, so I decided to put it off. But it'll have to be soon.
|
Clearing my throat
|
Topic: health | Link here |
While in town I went to UFS to look for a mucolytics to clear my throat. Long discussion with the pharmacist, and I ended up with some surprisingly expensive tablets, “Bisolvon Chesty Forte”, whatever that's intended to mean. It does suggest that it's not intended for throats. They're made by Boehringer Ingelheim, a German company, so they come with a „Waschzettel“, a descriptive leaflet that tells me that they're probably not the ideal formulation for me. They contain (only) Bromhexine hydrochloride, in an unspecified quantity. Still, they might help.
|
Pharmaceutical web sites
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
What concentration is the Bromhexine hydrochloride in the tablets I bought? Off to the Boehringer Ingelheim web site to take a look. It has a “feature” I haven't seen before: the country localization page shows pretty (and useless) emblems with a stylized map and a that goes as far as the Czech Republic:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
Then you have to click and wait several seconds for the next page. If you live in remote places like the United Kingdom or the United States of America, you have to click four times, taking about half a minute in all. What a triumph of web mastery!
They have no less than 9 products called Bisolvon, ordered by symptom. What's in them? Ah, with a bit of careful mouse positioning you can select “Find out more” for all of them, and in some cases it doesn't take you back to the same page. And another click and you discover that many of them contain bromhexidene hydrochloride, mine with 8 mg per tablet. There's also a “Bisolvon® Chesty Natural Bisolvon® A Herbal Medicine that helps clear mucus from the chest”, but they're not letting on on the details; the “Find out more” just takes you back to the same page.
|
Yet another macro lens
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
On the way home, picked up my new macro lens, the new M.Zuiko Digital ED 30mm f/3.5 Macro, serial number ACBA04378. I now have five macro lenses, three of them purchased in the last 12 months.
Why so many? Do I really need them all? I'm seriously considering getting rid of the 35 mm lens. But looking at them shows some surprising things.
Macro lenses tend to extend considerably when focusing close. According to the thin lens formula, for a 1:1 magnification the lens needs to be extended by its focal length, which in my case is up to 60 mm. The results are clear. Here the SMC Macro-Takumar 50 mm f/4, the Zuiko Digital ED 50 mm f/2.0 Macro and the Olympus Zuiko Digital 35 mm f/3.5 Macro:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
In fact, only the 35 mm lens can focus 1:1 (35 mm extension). The two 50 mm lenses only focus 1:2, an extension of only 25 mm.
So why does the 50 mm Zuiko extend more than the 35 mm? Trickery. Certainly the Takumar is a conventional lens (a Tessar variant), so the extension should be exactly 25 mm. But the 35 mm lens is not that simple: when it focuses close, the internals change shape (second image):
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But those are more or less “normal” lenses. The two m.Zuiko macros look very different when focusing:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
No change! It all happens internally, quite an achievement for lenses that have a logical extension of 60 mm and 37.5 mm. In passing, it's interesting that the 30 mm lens (theoretical aperture 30/3.5 or 8.6 mm) is thicker than the 60 mm lens (theoretical aperture 60/2.8 or 21.4 mm). The difference is very clear looking at the fronts of the lenses:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Doubtless it's related to the trickery with the focus.
Other observations: the new lens comes with a 78 page “instruction manual” with the lowest signal to noise ratio yet. Here's the sum total of the instructions:
|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
Apart from that, there's also the obligatory diagram showing how the lens caps fit, a subset of the specifications (doesn't mention magnification), and claiming a fixed field of view of 40° (measured along which dimension?). And two pages of safety instructions and statutory regulations. All that in 32 languages, including some that I haven't yet identified.
And the truth? The field of view is measured across the diagonal, and at 1:1.25 magnification (the unmentioned maximum) it would be 18.2°. And the exposure compensation table is just a toy; it doesn't even specify the points there you need 1 EV and 1⅔ EV compensation. Of course, that information should be displayed in the viewfinder. Maybe they'll do it one day.
And apart from that? I wasn't expecting how close you have to get to the subject at full extension; it can only be a few millimetres from the front element. Tried it with my extension tubes, and of course it got even closer, so close that I'm not sure it would be practical. I'll have to experiment more.
So: should I get rid of another lens? What advantages do each have? Here's an update of last week's table:
| Lens | closest focus | magnification | field area | Advantages | Disadvantages | |||||
| (m) | (mm²) | |||||||||
| 30 mm m.Zuiko | 0.095 | 1.25 | 13.9×10.4 | High magnification, focus stacking | Short subject distances, no ring flash, problems with extension tubes? | |||||
| 35 mm Zuiko | 0.146 | 1.0 | 17×13 | High magnification | Poor focus with E-PM2 | |||||
| 50 mm Zuiko | 0.24 | 0.52 | 33.3×25 | Large aperture | Not so high magnification | |||||
| 50 mm Takumar | 0.234 | 0.5 | 33.3×25 | Reversible, manual aperture | No autofocus | |||||
| 60 mm m.Zuiko | 0.19 | 1.0 | 17×13 | High magnification, focus stacking | Long subject distances, no ring flash | |||||
So for the moment, at any rate, it seems that each lens has its unique advantages.
|
Roti maker
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
What's roti? It's a word I know from earliest childhood, the Malay word for “bread”. It comes from some Indian language, probably Hindi, where it also means “bread”. But nowadays in English it's applied specifically to Indian breads; I always thought of chapati, and that's what Wikipedia says. Google Translate also tells me that it's the Romanian word for “wheel”.
Why this pedanticism? Today ALDI had a “roti maker” on special, a grill for making flat breads. Just what I need, and I bought one. It claims not only to bake the bread, but to form it too, rather like a tortilladora. If it can do that too, it'll be excellent.
Reading the instruction manual is the usual mess, but they included two recipes, one for roti and one for chapatis.
Huh? I've just gone to great lengths to establish that they're the same thing. But not in ALDI-land. Here their recipes:
| Ingredient | Chapati | Roti | ||
| Wholemeal flour | 1 cup | 1½ cups | ||
| Bread flour | 2 cups | |||
| Plain flour | 1 cup | |||
| (Total flour) | 2 cups | 3½ cups | ||
| Salt | 1 tsp | 1 tsp | ||
| Water | ¾ cup | 1½ cups | ||
| (Ratio water: flour) | 0.375 | 0.429 | ||
| Olive oil | 2 tbsp | |||
What's wrong with these recipes? More than is right, it would seem:
My real interest in these recipes was to compare them to my own. In particular, should the dough be softer for this machine? But the recipes are so far from any concept of accuracy that I can't really decide.
|
Accuracy in advertising photography
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
You can't sell anything now in a plain box. Even cigarettes have photos on them (courtesy of The Australian):
Clearly advertising photography is a big business. And what appropriate photos they produce. Here are two that I saw in the last week;
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
This was on the packaging of the roti maker. The roti on the right looks plausible. But what's the pot? A kuali? That's not used in Indian cooking. And the food in it? I suppose you could think of it as a curry, but just barely.
And I use sweetener tablets for my coffee. A recent update of the obviously too boring image on the package had this serving suggestion:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
I can't decide whether this is indicative of stupidity or beating the system.
I'm starting a page with similarly inappropriate photos.
| Thursday, 13 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 13 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Private email server: good or bad?
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
One recurring theme in the current United States of America election campaign is Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server. Three months ago I commented on the matter. But I still don't understand: I also run a private mail server (in fact, at least 3 of them). But in my language a mail server is a Mail Transfer Agent, something like a post office: mail is only stored there until it can be delivered. And indeed, Wikipedia agrees with me:
A mail server is a computer that serves as an electronic post office for email.
So what is this server? Why is it a security risk? Should she have been accessing her mail via her (implicitly secure) mobile telephone? Was she allowed to access her mail at all outside the State Department?
In the meantime, it seems that some official server of
the US Democratic
Party has been hacked compromised. and
hundreds of email messages involving John Podesta have been
published on Wikileaks.
How can this happen? Apart from relatively simple precautions against intrusion, it's simplicity Itself to encrypt emails. Why didn't they? Are they that stupid? Are they suffering from terminal Microsoft brain rot? This isn't the politicians' fault: it's the fault of their IT people. And again, the observation that I made three months ago: potentially the private server might have been more secure. At least it could have been security in obscurity.
Yes, messages from Clinton's server have been posted too. But they weren't stolen; they were released officially by the State Department. And how did they get hold of them if they weren't stored on their servers?
|
More macro experiments
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I compared my macro lenses in size and appearance, but I didn't actually take any photos. I did, however, notice the extremely short distance between the front element of the new M.Zuiko Digital ED 30mm f/3.5 Macro lens and the subject.
Today I did some testing. In general, it bore out what I suspected. Here photos of graph paper (1 mm squares, emphasized every 1 cm). I did the shots with artificial light and didn't bother to set white balance, thus the colour.
First, the new 30 mm lens by itself, then with a 10 mm extension tube, then with both tubes (26 mm), all at closest focus:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
As I feared, the lens comes so close to the subject that extension tubes are just not practicable. In particular, with both of them, the subject gets almost no light, and the angle relative to the front element must be in the order of 75°, thus the extreme distortion. The exposure times also have something to say: although the illumination stayed the same, the exposure diminished from 4.6 EV to 1.6 EV, then 0.6 EV. Yes, the closer you get, the more exposure you need, but it's only 1 EV between them:
The real reason for the difference was that the lens was obscuring the subject.
The other thing that's obvious is that the lens shows noticeable pincushion distortion at close range. That should no longer be an issue when DxO Optics “Pro” releases support for the lens.
The M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm f/2.8 Macro did better (here corrected with DxO; I don't know how much difference that makes):
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
So did the SMC Macro-Takumar 50 mm f/4, here with a reversing ring and the 4/3 extension tubes:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Once I find my old M42 reversing ring, I'll be able to mount the Macro-Takumar on my bellows. But it needs to be reversed because of the stupid built-in lens hood. Here's what the 50 mm f/1.4 Super Takumar does, which will be pretty close:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And the fields of view? I only calculated them for the 30 and 60 mm lenses. Here's a comparison:
| Lens | Field area | (mm×mm) | ||
| expected | measured | |||
| 30 mm m.Zuiko | 13.9×10.4 | 15.5×11.5 | ||
| + tubes | 7.7×5.8 | 6.3×5.0 | ||
| 50 mm reversed | 14×10 | |||
| 50 mm bellows | 3.5×2.5 | |||
| 60 mm m.Zuiko | 17×13 | 17.3×13 | ||
Most of those values compare nicely. Only the 30 mm without tubes diverges significantly, and I'm wondering if I focused it as close as it would go. Even so, the field of view is noticeably smaller than that of the 60 mm lens.
One thing, though, is clear: my hopes of using the 30 mm lens with extension tubes are dashed. That's a pity.
|
More fallen trees
|
Topic: general, gardening | Link here |
Back down the the west of the property with the dogs today. It's the first time Yvonne has been there since the trees got blown down. Graeme Swift from next door has removed most of the pine:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But to make up for that, another tree has fallen over:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That's our business, but Graeme has agreed to cut it apart for us.
|
A clever head
|
Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
Mail from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung today:
Wir danken Ihnen für den großen Zuspruch. Leider sind unsere IT Server zusammen gebrochen. Unsere IT Experten haben das Problem gelöst- Sie können das Abo jetzt wieder bestellen.
For once, Google Translate does a reasonable job of translation of the original intent:
We thank you for your great support. Unfortunately, our IT servers have collapsed. Our IT experts have solved the problem - you can now order the subscription again.
What a confession! And if that weren't enough, the spelling: „zusammen gebrochen“ means “together broken”. They meant „zusammengebrochen“, for which “collapsed” isn't too bad. In addition, they have removed the obligatory hyphen in „IT-Server“ and „IT-Experten“.
Once the FAZ was the intellectual newspaper in Germany, even if their advertisement („Dahinter steckt immer ein kluger Kopf“, “there's always a clever head behind it [newspaper]” reminds me of the slogan for the tabloid Bild-Zeitung: „Bild denkt für mich“: “Bild thinks for me”.
O tempora! O mores!
| Friday, 14 October 2016 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 14 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Another power issue?
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Round 8:45 this morning I heard a once-familiar beeep, and went into the kitchen to find the oven with power, but the microwave oven without. They're on separate breakers, so clearly that was a circuit breaker issue. And sure enough, the same circuit breaker had tripped that continually tripped when the UPS was connected to it. Clearly that wasn't the cause this time. What was? I had thought that it might also be related to the overly high supply voltage, but that too has been fixed. Some unexpected device? Maybe the switch itself?
|
File, folder or directory?
|
Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Bartosz Fabianowski today, wondering why I, of all people, should refer to folders in an article yesterday. But that was in connection with email, and there the term makes sense. And its meaning is distinct from either file or directory: MUAs typically store messages either in files (Mbox) or directories (Maildir), though I suppose many products in the Microsoft space now store them in databases. In each case, though, the usage “folder” applies. Yet another reason not to apply it to directories.
|
Healthy walking
|
Topic: health, animals, opinion | Link here |
One thing that most medical professionals agree on is that people of my age can benefit from frequent walking, up to an hour a day. And we do walk the dogs, though usually not quite that long. But somehow the health benefits are mixed: On 24 April 2014 Nikolai pulled me over and bruised my ribs. On 15 January 2015 he jerked just as I was tying him to a signpost, with spectacular results:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And on 1 April 2014 Niko cut a groove in my finger, which for some reason I didn't photograph.
In the course of time things have got better: I have learnt to keep my balance, and I'm careful what I do with the leash. But today, on the way back, we saw Emily Spiteri from next door with her dog Brudus. Yvonne gave me Leonid's leash, telling me that he pulled. True enough. The first time I held him back, the second time he pulled the handle out of my hand. And while I was trying to pick it up, Niko jerked, knocking me over. It didn't hurt as much as last time, but my hand didn't look quite right:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Off to the Ballarat Base Hospital, where the appearance certainly produced results. I was able to go straight to the front of the queue, and the nurse took me in to a doctor (Adam Straub, if I recall the name correctly) even before they finished registering me. He gave me Nitrous oxide, which I thought was obsolete, but apparently it's still very much in use. I thought it was going to knock me out, but it seems it was only a pain-killer. Then he bent my finger straight again and bound it to the next:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Then off to have the hand X-rayed, showing no breakage. I'll have to keep the finger bandaged for a week or so, and that's about all. Certainly much better than I expected, and far faster than I have experienced before. Within 100 minutes of the accident we were back home again, and 60 of those minutes were spent in the car:
| Event | Time | Elapsed | ||
| Accident | 15:22 | |||
| Photo | 15:24 | 2 | ||
| Hospital | 15:58 | 36 | ||
| Triage | 16:02 | 40 | ||
| Doctor | 16:05 | 43 | ||
| X-Ray | 16:22 | 60 | ||
| All clear | 16:30 | 68 | ||
| Home | 17:02 | 100 | ||
| Saturday, 15 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 15 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Preparing for spring
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
Spring is half over, but it's been a terrible start. Last month we beat (by 11%) the record rainfall for September. So far this month we have roughly equalled a typical month's rainfall for October. And we've had wind like never before. Will it ever stop, or is this part of climate change?
Today Mick and Mick came along to tidy up the garden, somewhat hampered by lack of preparation. They didn't get very far: Mick² ran out of whipper snipper wire, and it was so windy that Mick¹ couldn't complete laying weed mat. Hopefully later, but it strikes me how expensive gardeners are. Maybe we should really do more ourselves.
As if to make that point, Yvonne returned having visited the Ryans in Kleins Road, and brought back a couple of birches, a couple of Salvia microphylla, two Nandina domestica and many cuttings of Buddleja, which required planting. Time to tidy our garden stuff up.
|
Greg: not a cat
|
Topic: general, animals, opinion | Link here |
After yesterday's accident, Yvonne showed me this photo:
The text translates as: “You were right. Humans really don't land on their feet”.
|
Debugging chromium
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I'm not the only person to have problems with chromium (correct name, but the executable is called chrome) version 52. Last week I entered a bug report and had it almost immediately closed as a duplicate of this report. And that one has been open since 22 August, without any action. I don't know how to interpret this: you'd think that something as important as a web browser would get better attention.
On IRC today, Callum Gibson told me that he had no problems with exactly the same release. On his suggestion, I created a new user, logged on as he, and started chrome. It ran normally.
So: some configuration file issue? I had already removed the ~/.cache/chromium and ~/.config/chromium directories. What else does it touch? Took a look at the files that the new user created; nearly 250 of them. Can I bear to look for the culprit?
|
Lasagne quantities
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Lasagne for dinner this evening. I never cease to be amazed how much sauce béchamel it uses. Today I made 900 ml for 750 g ragù bolognese, which should have been correct, but it seems that I could have used 30% more.
| Sunday, 16 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 16 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Roti maker in practice
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Huevos rancheros for breakfast today. That requires tortillas. And that's close enough to whatever ALDI thinks roti is that I could try making them with the new roti maker.
It's supposed to replace the tortilladora too, but to be on the safe side I made the tortillas in my own tortilladora—after all, it's no more work. Turning the thing on for the first time caused more smell than I expected, along with some suspicious looking smoke out of the thermostat cover. But that went away.
According to the “instructions” (two pages of an 18 page booklet concerned mainly with safety precautions), I should only use the cover to press the dough into shape:
|
|
||||||||
That tiny ball of dough has a diameter about ⅕ of the diameter of a real doughball, so instead of the normal 40 odd grams, it would weigh about 0.3 g. After that I should cook the roti with the device open and turn it over to cook the other side. Clearly it only heats from below. And the result looks like a cake, not a roti:
|
|
||||||||
The whole thing is supposed to go very quickly: 15-20 seconds on one side, 20-25 on the other, a few seconds on the first side, and ready! Done in less than a minute.
With tortillas it wasn't like that at all. This one took round 4 minutes:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But it was relatively well done, possibly a little dry. I can compensate for that.
So in the evening we ate something with chapatis, using my standard recipe. This time I tried flattening them in the cooker. Slip! And the doughball shot sideways out of the cooker. Not once, but three times, after which I got the tortilladora and discovered, to my surprise, that it worked very well, and the chapati was almost perfectly round. Previously we always rolled them out. This time I used a little more water (80 g instead of 77.5 for 100 g atta), but I don't think that would make a big difference.
So I tried to demonstrate the slipping dough to Yvonne. And it flattened with no problems. Probably the doughball needs to be pretty flat before it goes in. Unfortunately, it wasn't very round, so for the last chapati I used the tortillera again.
And the speed? More than a minute, but much faster than with the tortillas. The other strangeness is that the upper side also heats, but it's not mentioned in the instructions. I tried it, and it didn't work well: the top is hinged, so it lies on the roti at an angle.
I still need to gain more experience with the thing, but so far it looks like a good acquisition.
|
Garden flowers in mid-spring
|
Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
The exact middle of spring was so windy that I couldn't take my monthly photos. Today I managed it before 13 mm of rain fell. What a weather!
And there's really not much to show for it. The last Canna from last year is just about dead, and the last Petunia is also more of interest that it's there at all.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The spring bulbs have all but faded, even the tulips, of which we evidently didn't buy enough. Here's what's left, including, paradoxically, a snowdrop which passed its flower-by time months ago:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The Westringia fruticosa that we planted in autumn are flowering relatively well, and the Camellia japonica hasn't quite stopped flowering:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The Hibiscus rosa-sinensis in the lounge is flowering again, but today, for the first time, it had a pink flower:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What caused that? Lack of fertilizer? Random mutation? I'll address the first possibility first.
And apart from that? Not much. Yvonne is right that we should plant some new flowers.
|
English curries revisited
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
In the 1960s I lived in Kuala Lumpur and went to school in England. It was quite a culinary experience, but in general not a good one. In particular the British concept of Asian (mainly Indian) food was bizarre to say the least, I have a recollection of some greenish thick flour sauce over tasteless meat, served with curry powder for those who liked it “hot”.
Fortunately those days are over, but despite massive immigration of Indians and Pakistanis to the United Kingdom, the British concept of curry remains strange. Last week I bought some Pataks pre-mix “Chicken tikka masala” sauce, whatever that may mean: fry chicken pieces, add, cook for 15 minutes. It was worth a try, and today was the day.
Too much fenugreek—something I recall from 50 years ago—but apart from that not too bad. I'm just left wondering what the “tikka” means.
| Monday, 17 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 17 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Facebook: behind the times?
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I'm not overly concerned about personal security; I consider privacy largely a thing of the past, and I've adapted to it. This diary is one example: there's not much that I do that doesn't get published.
But somehow Facebook scares me, and the details I publish there are deliberately incorrect. In particular, I put in places that have interested me in the past. For some time now I was born in Kandahar, went to the Novosibirsk State Technical University, and lived in Kharkiv. But that's getting boring, and may be one of the reasons why I get so much spam in Pashtu, Russian and Ukrainian. Time to move on. One place that I somehow missed visiting on Gonbad-e Kavus (or is that Gonbad-e Qavus? Wikipedia can't agree with itself, but the spelling گنبد كاووس suggests the former. So today I moved there.
What did Facebook say?
Gonbad-E Kavus, Golestān, IranMoved Tomorrow
Why tomorrow? Clearly a time zone issue. By the time I “moved”, it was already past midnight UTC, so it would seem that Facebook is making assumptions that all the world is in the United States of America.
|
Beef and broccoli revisited
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
A couple of years ago I made a first attempt at Chinese beef and broccoli, mainly because I couldn't find any good recipes on line. Last week Yvonne bought some broccoli (green and white), and it was high time to get rid of it. So another attempt, starting with a renewed online search.
Things still aren't good.
The difference? No sugar, of course, and meat cut more finely, about 2 mm thick, 1×4 cm across. I used their “marinade”, which was far too thick, so I was no longer able to fry the result. And the idea of thickening the sauce was ridiculous: it was too thick already. Still, the result wasn't too bad, though a little sweet; adding sugar is just plain crazy. Probably a good basis for the next attempt. Here it is, for reference only. Here's the latest recipe.
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 300 g | beef | 1 | ||
| 100 g | oyster sauce | 1 | ||
| 100 ml | sherry | 1 | ||
| 10 g | sesame oil | 1 | ||
| 5 g | soya sauce | 1 | ||
| 250 g | broccoli florets | 2 | ||
| 15 g | garlic | 2 | ||
| 15 g | ginger | 2 | ||
| oil for frying | 3 | |||
| chopped coriander leaf | 4 |
Cut the beef into thin strips about 1×3 cm in size and about 3 mm thick. Mix with oyster sauce, sherry, sesame oil and soya sauce and marinate for 30 minutes.
Cut the broccoli into small florets. Finely chop ginger and garlic. Fry the ginger and garlic in the oil until about half-cooked. Add the broccoli and stir fry briefly. Add a little water, cover and steam until bright green.
In another pan, fry the beef until cooked.
Mix together on a serving dish, garnish with coriander leaf and serve.
| Tuesday, 18 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 18 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Another quiet day
|
Topic: general, photography, opinion | Link here |
It's funny how some days are really eventful, and on others, like today, hardly anything happens. Got through the last online course that I want to complete, online photography course by Marc Levoy, which tended to sag a bit at the end, but it still well worth watching. Sadly his treatment of panoramas was less than inspiring. But I think I've done enough online courses for the moment. Time to catch up with other aspects of life.
|
Sasha and Rani
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
Sasha and Rani seem to get on particularly well. Here an example, sadly not quite sharp (which, at 0.4 s exposure, isn't surprising):
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 19 October 2016 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Shopping again
|
Topic: general, gardening | Link here |
Into Ballarat again today, primarily to finally get a haircut. While there also did a number of other things that I have been planning for a while: to the knife grinder, who has a door that looks shut even when it's open—he was probably there last time. But he can't sharpen the blade of the kitchen slicer.
Then to Bunnings for some gardening supplies, including 15 plants planned to be a mixture of petunia and pansies, but in the end came back with 10 petunias, 4 tagetes and only a single (black) pansy. Now if only the soil would drain enough that we could plant them.
|
Verandah: next setback
|
Topic: Stones Road house | Link here |
It's been nearly 11 months since Jim Macintosh came to give us a quote to build the winter garden. And somehow that was the last we heard, and I let it slip. Today finally to look for some displays that I had found advertised on the web. The first one simply wasn't there—web rot? And the second didn't really have what I was looking for. One particularly unwelcome piece of information was that in a bushfire prone area the roof must be steel, not transparent. That almost kills it. The best we can do is something like the verandah in Kleins Road with transparent blinds. They can't prohibit that.
But which is safer in a bushfire? What do these designers think when they come up with these regulations?
| Thursday, 20 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 20 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Planting flowers
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
Somehow I'm running out of reasons to plant the flowers that we bought. Despite the high winds, I planted most of them, until I found some of the beds so wet that I couldn't do anything round them. And then it occurred to me that the current bandaged-together state of my right hand was not suitable:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
So I had an excuse after all—so I only got about two-thirds of it done. Tomorrow the bandages come off, and once the forecast heavy rain has drained, I can continue.
|
More focus-stacked macros
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
We currently have a couple of pretty flowers that I could use as objects for trying better macros. I didn't get very far; somehow there are two many tricks in setting up focus stacking. I'm gradually remembering that the shutter speed must be 1/13 s or longer for flash, but the menu settings keep baffling me, and I'm still not sure what exactly the correct approach is. Do it wrong and it only takes a single image.
Then there's the question of focus peaking, which seems to fail at very close distances, exactly when it's most needed. Finally took one photo, after which the battery failed. And of course I had forgotten the extreme cropping that focus stacking imposes, so I lost the edges of the image:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But even that shows that I need to improve the lighting. Hopefully things will be better with the OM-D E-M1 Mark II.
|
Bassoon cabinet
|
Topic: general, music | Link here |
Scott from Christies along this afternoon with the bassoon cabinet that I ordered last week:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
One of the unsolved questions has been how to attach the instruments. My original idea came from the Bate Collection, where Tony Baines (himself a bassoonist) had screwed lengths of thick, insulated wire to the back of the cabinet, which slipped into the bell:
|
|
|||||||||
I tried this in Wantadilla, but the results didn't look good. On the other hand, I didn't realize how completely the instruments fill out the height of the cabinet. It looks as if I will be able to screw pegs directly into the top plate of the cabinet.
|
Roti maker revisited
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Last week I bought a “roti” maker from ALDI and tried it out. No photos, and mixed results. Today I thought again. There are a number of issues:
The maker also presses the chapati, making it not only unnecessary to use a separate press (itself hardly any difference), but also unnecessary to move it once the chapati is pressed. And that's good, because it's easy to fold or tear the raw chapati when moving it.
The maker has two heated surfaces, so theoretically I could make it from both sides at once. Unfortunately, it's hinged at the side, so it doesn't close with the heating surfaces parallel:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
On the other hand, we have a sandwich toaster that looks very similar, and is hinged in the middle:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
So I made dough for 4 chapatis and tried various experiments:
Press the chapati in the maker. I tried this last week with mixed results. Today the results were clearer:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Once again the chapati slipped out sideways, but not before being partially pressed and partially cooked:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I was able to mainly recover it in the tortilladora, and maybe with some experimentation I could get it to work in the maker. But there's a basic conflict between pressing (should be cold) and cooking (should be hot). So for the moment I'll use the tortilladora.
The chapati in the sandwich toaster cooked nicely from both sides, but far too slowly. Apparently the temperature is lower, surprising given the difference in power (900 W for the roti maker, 2 kW for the toaster). So, sadly, that's not going to work unless I can find one with adjustable temperature.
Surprisingly, the chapati made with the roti maker closed didn't go too badly. Initially it cooked more on one side than the other:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Rotate by 180° and continue, and it came out relatively well.
But this time it took longer to cook them all, and as a result they were even dryer. I don't think I can compensate by making the dough even moister: I can only barely handle them now. One possibility might be to try to find out how to press them in the roti maker, in which case I might be able to start them off moister.
| Friday, 21 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 21 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Rain, rain, rain
|
Topic: general | Link here |
I've been complaining about the heavy rainfall for a month. By that stage we had nearly reached the record September rainfall, and ultimately broke the record by 11%. But October is hardly dry either. It doesn't look as if we'll break the record for this month, but by this morning we had exceeded the average monthly rainfall by 14 mm (80 mm compared to 66 mm), and today I measured another 30 mm. It shows:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
When will it finally dry out? Despite all the rain, nothing much is growing yet, and Yvonne is complaining about running out of hay for the horses.
|
Pink hibiscus: why?
|
Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
The Hibiscus rosa-sinensis that we have in the lounge room is bright red, the original colour of the species. But last week it produced a pink flower:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
At the time I suspected that it could be lack of fertilizer (trace elements), so I added some fertilizer. The next flower was pink as well, but the one after that was red:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Would a dose of fertilizer work that quickly? About the only other possibility I had considered was a random mutation, but the second flower seems to disprove that.
|
Sparse images
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Processing yesterday's images showed me something surprising:
Why is the orchid image so small? My first suspicion was that it was converted with the wrong compression rate, but I confirmed that that wasn't the case. It was generated in-camera with focus stacking, while the roti images were generated from JPEGs created by DxO Optics “Pro” (something that I should reconsider). And the originals look like this (same sequence, with the converted size added to the right):
Yes, the original out-of-camera JPEG is smaller than the ones from DxO, but the conversion compressed it by a further 80% odd, while the same conversion of the DxO JPEGs reduced the size by less than 50%.
The JPEGs are generated automatically by the focus stacking algorithm. Are they more heavily compressed? Like all modern system cameras, the camera offers me a choice of JPEG compression—if I select JPEG at all. But here it's automatic. More investigation required.
|
Facebook: now you see it...
|
Topic: food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
We're still looking for a kitchen slicer. Next week ALDI has one on special. Last time we tried one, it was useless, but who knows if they haven't fixed the problems. If not, we can always return it.
But then Yvonne told me that somebody had one to sell on the Facebook
Dereel Buy Swap and Sell channelgroup, so I went looking. Nothing.
Sales, including sold items, going back years, but this was supposed to be recent.
So she showed it to me on her screen. Sure enough, it was there, and she tried to contact the seller (who hasn't answered). But why didn't it display on my screen? In the end I restricted the view from “Anytime” [sic] to “2016”—and there it popped up.
Why wasn't it there before? Of course all Facebook stuff is in nominally backwards, so to be expected that I can hardly complain about it any more, but why does it show me stuff going back years and not currently active stuff?
How I hate Facebook!
|
Toaster temperatures
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
One of the things that puzzled me about yesterday's roti making experiments was that the sandwich toaster took longer to cook the rotis than the dedicated roti maker, although the toaster has a rating of 2 kW and the roti maker only 900 W. Turned them on again today and measured the temperatures: the toaster ranged between 200° and 250°, and the roti maker was around 200°. So why the difference? More experiments needed.
| Saturday, 22 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 22 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Tortillas in sandwich toaster
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
After yesterday's measurements, it seemed a good idea to try the sandwich toaster again as an alternative to the roti maker. Huevos rancheros for breakfast, so I did the tortillas in the toaster.
Not a success. First, both of them tore:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And once again it took too long, and the result was dry, brittle tortillas. I just don't understand why. I could try a moister dough, I suppose.
|
Carpobrotus: back from the dead
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
Last week we had planned to transplant a Carpobrotus bush. At least I think it's Carpobrotus, though I haven't found absolute confirmation. In any case, at this time of the year it should flower brilliant red:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But we're a long way from that at the moment. A week ago Mick¹ discovered that, though the plant wasn't dead, the stem had broken off. OK, they're tough, so we took the remains and put them in the kitchen to replant. And of course we forgot them. A couple of days ago they were looking particularly unhappy, so I finally trimmed the branches and put the rest in some water in a dog's bowl. Within a few hours they had sucked in enough water to look almost normal again, and later, to my surprise, they started flowering!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That's really tough stuff. It's a pity they only flower for a few days a year.
|
Signs of spring
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
The first Watsonias are flowering:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But further down the road, on the corner of Progress road, we found another case of storm damage:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That's sad. This was a particularly pretty red-flowering Eucalypt:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Flower photos: not there yet
|
Topic: photography, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Another attempt to take photos of my orchid today, along with an Ornithogalum that's currently in flower. The results weren't good. Two days ago I had numerous problems, but one was the background. Today I tried looking for a dark background, ultimately in vain:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Clearly the background material is too shiny. I can get some paper, and I think I'll do that. The other possibility is to move the background further back. This is all flash illumination, so that will automatically darken the background.
| Sunday, 23 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 23 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More rain damage
|
Topic: general | Link here |
A week or two ago, after the heavy rainfall, the council sent along a grader with some more (reddish) gravel to fix the south end of Stones Road, which is unpaved. Too early, it seems. It rained again, heavily. And now the road looks like this:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The top 15 cm or so of the fill have been eroded. I wonder when they will fix that.
|
Little more gardening
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
Somehow I can't bring myself to do any gardening work. I had to plant the Carpobrotus, and also did some other stuff, including the Nandina domestica, Salvia microphylla and Betula pendula that Yvonne brought with her last week, but when I found another birch, I just couldn't be bothered. Will this change?
|
Save money: buy Leica
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
I never cease to be amazed by the prices of Leica photographic equipment. But today I found one on eBay that blew my mind:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
That's right, $175 (Canadian, as good as the same as Australian) for an empty box! And as if that wasn't enough, another $90 for postage! Clearly this is aimed at people with more money than sense.
But then, maybe that's the case with all Leica equipment. As far as I can tell, the SL (Typ 601) is the current flagship model. And compared to the Leica M it looks very good. But it only just exceeds the capabilities of my Olympus OM-D E-M1, though it costs 7 times the price. I looked at this a year ago, but didn't add the prices. I've put them there, rather than repeat the whole table.
And the lenses? They have a partnership with Panasonic, and so there are Leica-branded lenses with names like Summilux. In particular, there's a 25 mm f/1.4 lens that is in competition with the new Olympus m.Zuiko Digital ED 25mm f/1.2 PRO.
But you can't sell lenses for normal cameras at Leica's prices. So there are two completely different f/1.4 Summilux price ranges:
| Lens | Fit | Price | ||
| 25 mm | mFT | $565 | ||
| 12 mm | mFT | $1,498 | ||
| 35 mm | Leica L | $3,099 | ||
| 50 mm | Leica M | $4,299 | ||
| 35 mm | Leica M | $4,533 | ||
| 24 mm | Leica M | $6.072 | ||
| 21 mm | Leica M | $7,031 | ||
| 28 mm | Leica M | $7,139 | ||
Those were just the lowest prices, from Staticice. If the mFT prices seem too low, you can pay more—up to $1,398 for the 25 mm lens. But why the enormous price difference? The cheapest Leica M lens is nearly 3 times the most expensive mFT lens. Are they that much better?
But my real issue is whether I can justify the price of the Olympus f/1.2 lens. It's just coming on the market now, at prices round $1,700. That's a lot more than the 25 mm Summilux. So when a second-hand Summilux 25 mm f/1.4 came up on eBay, I offered up to $405 for it, and won. So I've saved $1,300 and lost ½ EV lens sensitivity. I can live with that.
| Monday, 24 October 2016 | Dereel → Rokewood → Dereel | Images for 24 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Surprise visit
|
Topic: general | Link here |
Surprise visit from Nele Kömle this afternoon, along with a very quiet Nina from Graz. Seems they were in Ballarat to have Nelson looked at (allergies).
|
More flower photo attempts
|
Topic: photography, gardening, opinion | Link here |
More playing around with lighting my flower photos today. Things are looking better:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The only problem are specks of dust on the sensor. This isn't supposed to happen to Olympus cameras. My best bet is that they're random, but even after being shaken off by the sensor cleaner, they can fall back there. I think what I need is something to blow the dust out of the camera. These hand blowers are probably too weak, but I can't find anything mechanical that isn't far too strong.
Later, while walking the dogs, found our Dillwynia bush (just) in flower again:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Last year it was in full flower two weeks earlier.
|
Completing the verandah
|
Topic: Stones Road house | Link here |
We're still not sure what to do about the verandah, now that we're not allowed to put transparent roofing on the thing. In the meantime, a Troy from Rokewood came along to take a look, and there's a good chance he'll be able to do at least some of the work for us.
|
A new slicer
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Call today from a Mick, who turns out to be the husband of the person who offered the kitchen slicer last week. And they're in Rokewood, not Enfield, as I discovered just in time to avoid going off in the wrong direction. Off to take a look. It has this silly rotary thickness adjustment:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But the blade is serrated, and it seems to be mounted correctly:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
In addition, it has a single switch that you can set to run continuously. The Sunbeam one requires you to hold down the switch all the time. So I bought it—$24 can't be bad, only half the price of a replacement (non-serrated) blade for the Sunbeam. It wasn't until we got home and tried to cut some meat that a disadvantage showed itself:
|
|
|||||||||
Not immediately obvious, is it? The gap between the tray and the blade is about 7mm. When cutting meat at a thickness of, say, 3 mm (a reasonable thickness), the last piece to slice is 6 mm or less thick, and it falls between tray and blade. That could happen with the Sunbeam too, but with a gap of only 3 mm it wasn't nearly as much of an issue.
| Tuesday, 25 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 25 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Spring: finally?
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
It's gradually getting warmer—about time—and today we hit 24° outside. Some of the flowers are gradually catching up:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Planted most of the remainder of the plants that we bought recently; hopefully the ground will stay relatively dry now.
| Wednesday, 26 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 26 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Rye: meal or flour?
|
Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
Bread baking time today, started by the discovery that my D starter family has died out after 36 generations: it had gone mouldy.
And the current supply of rye meal has run out. Not a worry: we bought a new 25 kg sack last week. But looking at it showed that it was wholemeal. Here the new flour on the left and the old flour on the right.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
How could that happen? The sack is just printed “rye meal”. What's meal? What's flour? My understanding is that the word “meal” is generic (corresponding to the German word „Mehl“), and that flour is the most refined kind. The word is an alternative spelling of “flower”, and I've seen similar terms in French and German (we once bought a bag of flour in Germany with the name „Bäckerblume“ on it, literally “baker flower”). The OED confirms the meaning of flour:
Originally, the ‘flower’ or finest quality of meal; hence, the finer portion of meal (whether from wheat or other grain) which is separated by bolting. Also, in modern use, the ordinary name for the meal or farina of wheat as opposed to that obtained from other grain.Etymology: A specific use of flower n.; compare French fleur de farine the ‘flower’ or finest part of the meal. Johnson 1755 does not separate the words, nor does he recognize the spelling flour.
It's interesting that “flour” only refers to wheat. That would explain why the rye meal we have bought has always been called meal. But what went wrong? This is clearly wholemeal, and there's nothing on the packaging to indicate that. I'll bake a loaf (roughly 50/50 of each) and see how it turns out, but there's a good chance we'll have to return the sack.
|
Yet another kitchen slicer
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday Yvonne bought a kitchen slicer that was on special at ALDI, and today I unpacked it. It's almost identical to the one I got on Monday:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The most obvious difference from that perspective is the name, which makes it clear that the ALDI one is on the left. But looking more carefully shows a surprising number of minor differences. From the other side, the body looks very different (ALDI still on the left), and the adjustment scale is more uniform on the old machine. The new one has a larger gap between 9 and 10 mm:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Then the new machine has a kludge to make up for the flexibility of the head plate:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Also the distance from the tray to the blade is smaller:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Ahd then there are minor differences like the location of the switch (on the left under the tray on the old model, above the blade on the new one), and the alignment rod for the tray is now removable:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
In addition, the new model has a 200 W motor, while the old one has a 150 W motor. All in all, a surprising number of small improvements. I hadn't expected that.
Will we keep it? Probably. Together they cost $74, and the cheapest of this model that I can find on eBay costs $70 including postage. If something goes wrong with one of them, we can cannibalize the other.
| Thursday, 27 October 2016 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 27 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Doctor yet again
|
Topic: health | Link here |
To Ballarat this morning to see Dr Paul Smith. Once again a number of things have cropped up: phlegm in throat (referred to a specialist), non-healing lesion on hand (chilled out with liquid nitrogen) and my dislocated finger (can take another couple of weeks to heal completely). And at the end we both forgot a prescription.
|
Old lenses: oldies but goodies?
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Today my Leica Summilux 25 mm f/1.4 arrived, the first f/1.4 lens I have bought in over 50 years. Clearly time to do some lens comparisons. Last December I had already noted that the old Super Takumar 50 mm f/1.4 had significant coma when photographing my monitor background, so I chose that again and compared the Super Takumar, the Summilux and the new M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8, both at full aperture and f/1.8. Here some results from a corner. In sequence Super-Takumar, Zuiko and Summilux, first at full aperture, then at f/8:
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
Those results are amazing. Clearly the Super Takumar doesn't stand a chance at f/1.4, and even at f/8 it is not as good as the Summilux at f/1.4. The Zuiko is a little fuzzy at f/1.8, but is as good as the Summilux at f/8.
It took me over a year to note another detail: these are supposed to be the corner of the image, but the Super-Takumar is designed for full frame, so the crop is really only a little more than half way between centre and corner. Who knows what it would look like in the real corners.
And the Summilux doesn't seem to be any worse at f/1.4 than at f/8. That's better than I expected.
These are quick rough-and-ready photos; it's extremely difficult to align the camera exactly to fill the frame with the monitor, and to do things correctly I should have done it in total darkness. In addition, I should have tried the macro lenses as well. Maybe I will one day, but the difference are so amazing that I'm not sure there's anything to gain.
The other thing that surprised me was the difference in exposure. The Zuiko had slightly longer exposure than the Summilux, but the images are also slightly lighter. Both were done with centre-weighted automatic exposure. Why the difference?
In the past I had assumed that the f/1.4 of the Super Takumar was really closer to f/1.8, but both exposures were as good as the same (1/15 s at f/1.4, 2 s at f/8). The slight difference in EV in the metadata is because the shutter speed at f/1.4 was 1/15 s and not 1/16 s. On the other hand, the background of the f/8 shot is lighter, so maybe there is a difference after all.
But that's 2 EV less than the Summilux at the same apertures. At full aperture, the Takumar was exposed for 1/15 s, while the Summilux was exposed for 1/60 s. What's causing that? It would suggest that the Takumar is really an f/2.8.
I can think of a couple of reasons: my assumptions of 50 years ago were correct, or the yellowing of the lens in that time led to a considerable decrease in the light transmission. Either way, the only thing it's good for is for comparisons, and maybe I'll do a few more of them.
| Friday, 28 October 2016 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Weekend preparations
|
Topic: general, food and drink | Link here |
Jörg Micheel is coming for the weekend, and we're preparing various food, in particular for Singapore-style nasi lemak, which involves revisiting my chicken wings for breakfast recipe. Last time I did them sous vide at 75°, and they didn't quite fall off the bone. So this time I've made them at 78°. Of course it won't be until tomorrow that we find out.
| Saturday, 29 October 2016 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 29 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Visit from Jörg Micheel
|
Topic: general | Link here |
As planned, into Ballarat today to pick up Jörg Micheel from the railway station. Not as planned, he didn't arrive at 11:41. The displays didn't help:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It seems that they really only show departures, not arrivals. A couple of disinterested porters told me that the train had been delayed, and would now arrive something like 11:55. Time to walk around and take a look at the part of town round the station, including some old buildings that I had never really looked at before:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Back to the station and discovered that there was no train scheduled at 11:41. It was due at 12:04, and it arrived three minutes early. Jörg seemed to be positively impressed, quite differently from the last time I went by train in Victoria.
Off after that to the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, partially because I wanted to show Jörg round town, partially because I hadn't been there for a while, and partially because we currently have a photo of the Statuary Pavilion on our calendar, and had one of William Wallace:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Had planned to walk around the shores of Lake Wendouree, but things weren't quite what I expected:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The whole of the wetlands area round the lake is flooded, and the plants don't look happy at all:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Special dinner for Jörg
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Since Jörg was here, we decided on something special, paella valenciana:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And then I discovered that that was what we served him last time. I really should consult this diary before planning meals.
| Sunday, 30 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 30 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Clinton server revisited
|
Topic: technology, politics, opinion | Link here |
So it seems that James Comey has suddenly become well-known after his decision to influence the US presidential election. God rest his soul if Donald Trump gets elected. And who will save his career if he doesn't?
But since Jörg was here, we discussed the technical details of the Hillary Clinton email controversy. I've never really understood the fuss. It's a security issue, right? Who writes about security from a technical point of view? Bruce Schneier is a good start. So I went Googling for schneier clinton server and came up with this interview. I didn't watch it, just found the transcript. And there's nothing there about security risks! His main concern was archiving the data. So it seems that whatever this server was, it was used as a repository for the data. And the other issue is that at the time the United States Department of State had a policy of deleting emails after 90 days. So maybe the idea wasn't that bad after all. In any case, I haven't seen any press reports of compromises of the server or loss of data.
But Google also gave me this page, which doesn't seem to refer to Schneier at all. I haven't finished reading it, but it seems that this wasn't a simple matter of mail routing, but that she had her own domain, clintonemail.com. Now isn't that stupid! The State Department IT people knew about and accommodated the external server; why didn't they just route officially addressed mail to it?
And then, it seems, she used the same email address for personal and public matters. What a stupid idea! It means, at the very least, than any analysis of the data includes her personal stuff as well. How difficult is it to create a second email address? On a real system it's as simple as adding a line to postfix/virtual, and even on the presumed Microsoft machine it can't have been that hard.
There are many more details I haven't seen yet. But so far it looks like boundless incompetence to me, not a specific security risk.
|
Bassoon cabinet relocated
|
Topic: general, music | Link here |
The new bassoon cabinet looks like it will do the job, but it's too low. We had a matching low corner cabinet, so since Jörg was here, I got him to help me put it under the bassoon cabinet:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Maybe marginally high, but I think it's an improvement. Now for the mounting pegs.
|
Power fail!
|
Topic: general | Link here |
About 20 minutes before Jörg left, we had a power failure. And I had a loaf of bread baking in the oven. It was nearly done, so it didn't make any difference. Jörg suggested connecting up the generator, but that doesn't work on the main UPS. It wasn't until I had shut down all the computers that it occurred to me that I always connect the office UPS to a generator. Somehow power failures always throw me out of balance.
The outage lasted 2½ hours. To be fair to Powercor, this is the first longer unscheduled outage in nearly a year. Last year we had a total of 20 hours of unscheduled outages between May (when we moved in) and the end of the year. This year it has been a total of 2 hours, 47 minutes of unscheduled outages, unfortunately worsened by the 7 hours, 22 minutes of scheduled outages. Still, this seems to be a marked improvement, and if the scheduled outages can reduce the number of unscheduled outages, they may have been worthwhile. And especially after all the bad weather we've been having, I'm relatively happy.
| Monday, 31 October 2016 | Dereel | Images for 31 October 2016 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day |
|
Baked beans again
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Time to make some baked beans again today. Somehow the herbs and Chorizo in the last version didn't seem to do it, so today I used Speck again, and no herbs. Here's the recipe, which will be modified; the definitive recipe is here.
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 500 g | dried white beans | 1 | ||
| 70 g | smoked pork belly (Speck) | 2 | ||
| about 100 g | bacon rind | 2 | ||
| 30 g | lard | 2 | ||
| 330 g | onion | 3 | ||
| 50 g | garlic | 3 | ||
| 240 g | tinned tomatoes (400 g can) | 4 | ||
| 50 g | tomato purée | 4 | ||
| 550 ml | water (to cover) | 4 | ||
| 25 g | salt | 5 | ||
|
Green onions?
|
Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
Some cookbooks I have use the term “green onions” to refer to “spring onions”, one of those strange ingredients that seems to have a different name in every country. The US Americans call them scallions, and some misguided Australians call them shallots, which is a completely different kind of onion (which they call echalotte, almost the French name, to compound the confusion).
But today while cooking the baked beans I saw a completely different kind of green onion:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What's that? I started with perfectly normal brown onions:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I pureed them in a blender, adding a little water to get it to mix well: after all, the next step is to fry them dry. But it seems that this water causes some chemical reaction, possibly relating to growth, and the things went green.
So don't do that then. But I have this method in numerous recipes. Now I need to find out how to purée onions without water. Oil is one option, but it wouldn't have worked here.
|
Lost cocky?
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
Coming back from walking the dogs today, we were approached by a Sulphur-crested cockatoo which sat around only a couple of metres from us while I took a number of photos:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
He didn't seem overly afraid of us. A lost pet? Yvonne tried to approach him, but he flew off.
|
Lens limitations
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Sixty years ago I had a quite good camera for the time and for my age: 35 mm (in those days you didn't need to say “full frame”) with a 45 mm f/2.8 lens. Nothing electronic in it, of course, and not even a rangefinder. Instead the distance indications on the lens were relatively detailed. But because of the lack of rangefinder and parallax, the closest focus distance was 90 cm. That was normal.
Then I got my Asahi Pentax SV with a 55 mm f/1.8 Super Takumar. Still no electronics, but with an SLR there's no parallax, and you get immediate visual feedback on the focus distance. So I could focus as close as 45 cm.
Nowadays that's still not very good. For the fun of it, I've checked what my current lenses can do. Most of this information is from this page.
| Lens | Focal length | Aperture | Close focus | Magnification | ||||
| Super Takumar | 55 mm | f/1.8 | 0.45 m | |||||
| Super Takumar | 50 mm | f/1.4 | 0.45 m | |||||
| Super Takumar | 50 mm | f/1.4 | 0.45 m | |||||
| Exaktar | 135 mm | f/2.8 | 1.35 m | |||||
| SMC Pentax-FA | 28-80 mm | f/3.5-4.7 | 0.4 m | |||||
| Sun-Zoom | 80-240 mm | f/4 | 2.4 m | |||||
| Hanimex | 300 mm | f/5.5 | 5.5 m | |||||
| Zuiko Digital | 70-300 mm | f/4-5.6 | 1.2 m | 0.5 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital | 12-60 mm | f/2.8-4 | 0.25 m | 0.28 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital | 9-18 mm | f/4-5.6 | 0.25 m | 0.12 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital | 50 mm | f/2 | 0.24 m | 0.5 | ||||
| SMC Macro-Takumar | 50 mm | f/4.0 | 0.24 m | 0.5 | ||||
| M.Zuiko | 12-40 mm | f/2.8 | 0.2 m | 0.3 | ||||
| M.Zuiko | 14-42 mm II R | f/3.5-5.6 | 0.25 m | 0.19 | ||||
| M.Zuiko | 14-150 mm | f/4-5.6 | 0.5 m | 0.24 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital Fisheye | 8 mm | f/3.5 | 0.14 m | 0.22 | ||||
| M.Zuiko EZ | 14-42 mm | f/3.5-5.6 | 0.2 m | 0.23 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital | 35 mm | f/3.5 | 0.15 m | 1.0 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital | 14-35 mm | f/2 | 0.35 m | 0.12 | ||||
| Zuiko Digital | 35-100 mm | f/2 | 1.4 m | 0.09 | ||||
| M.Zuiko | 60 mm | f/2.8 | 0.19 m | 1 | ||||
| M.Zuiko | 45 mm | f/1.8 | 0.5 m | 0.11 | ||||
| M.Zuiko | 30 mm | f/3.5 | 0.095 m | 1.25 | ||||
| Leica Summilux | 25 mm | f/1.4 | 0.3 m | 0.11 |
Under normal circumstances, magnification isn't as important as the minimum object size that can fill the frame. In my case today I wanted to take a photo of the brown onion. And the Summilux couldn't do that! Looking at the table, it's clear that it has one of the smallest magnifications of all my lenses. Is this the Leica heritage showing through?
For the case in point, a macro lens seemed the most obvious choice. Which? The 60 mm lens is too long, so I used the 30 mm. Once again it seems that it fills a need.
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
| Top of page | Previous month | Greg's home page | Today's diary entry | Next month | Greg's photos | Copyright information |
