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| Greg's diary |
| August 2026 |
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| Saturday, 1 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 1 August 2026 |
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More exiftool investigations
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Followed up on yesterday's plan to isolate the exiftool bug. To install the latest version, first remove the current version, once I found the name that it had been given:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/20) /etc 56 -> pkg delete p5-Image-ExifTool
Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
Deinstallation has been requested for the following 2 packages (of 0 packages in the universe):
Installed packages to be REMOVED:
hugin: 2025.0.1_2
p5-Image-ExifTool: 13.36
How I hate the Ports Collection!
So I decided to install it on dereel, my test machine. The help from Google Gemini was less than perfect. It gave the wrong URL (https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-13.10.tar.gz), and it took me a while to find the correct one. Or was it? It confused me by downloading a file called download:
=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 26 -> fetch https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-13.59.tar.gz
fetch: https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-13.59.tar.gz: Not Found
...=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 29 -> fetch https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-13.10.tar.gz
fetch: https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-13.10.tar.gz: Not Found=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 30 -> fetch https://sourceforge.net/projects/exiftool/files/Image-ExifTool-13.59.tar.gz/download
download 7730 kB 3113 kBps 03s=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 31 -> mkdir exiftool=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 32 -> ls -l
total 176
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 7,916,358 28 May 02:44 download
...=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 34 -> cd download
su: cd: download: Not a directory=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg 35 -> cd exiftool/=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool 36 -> tar xvf ../download
x Image-ExifTool-13.59/
...
I wasn't done yet: it extracted into a subdirectory. But then things worked as described:
=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool 37 -> l
total 1
drwxr-xr-x 8 501 staff 512 28 May 02:44 Image-ExifTool-13.59=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool 38 -> cd Image-ExifTool-13.59/=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool/Image-ExifTool-13.59 39 -> perl Makefile.PL
Checking if your kit is complete...
Looks good
Generating a Unix-style Makefile
Writing Makefile for Image::ExifTool
Writing MYMETA.yml and MYMETA.json=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool/Image-ExifTool-13.59 40 -> make
cp lib/Image/ExifTool/IPTC.pm blib/lib/Image/ExifTool/IPTC.pm
...
"/usr/local/bin/perl" -MExtUtils::MY -e 'MY->fixin(shift)' -- blib/script/exiftool
Manifying 1 pod document
Manifying 209 pod documents=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool/Image-ExifTool-13.59 41 -> make install
Manifying 1 pod document
Manifying 209 pod documents
Installing /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/Image/ExifTool.pod
Installing /usr/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/Image/ExifTool.pm=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /var/db/pkg/exiftool/Image-ExifTool-13.59 43 -> exiftool -ver
13.59
After setting up some symlinks, I was able to confirm that the latest and greatest still has the same bug.
What next? My own version?
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Finishing the bird netting
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Bruno is due back tomorrow. Time to finish bird netting the dog run. Paul Donaghy along to do the work, while I put in a token appearance:
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The next step was to cut the netting to shape. But we couldn't! Even the strongest cutters couldn't get through. I suppose it takes a cat to bite through it. Still, while we're investigating, the run is pretty much escape-proof. The rest is just the keep small birds out.
And then Loretta Sayers called to say that she would have to postpone: she has laryngitis. That's a valid enough reason, but we've seen how she has been agonizing about having to return him, and I wouldn't be surprised if they found a way to keep him.
| Sunday, 2 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 2 August 2026 |
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Understanding the exiftool bug
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
As planned, spent some time today investigating the exiftool -geotag bug, in the process seeing a new claim for a download link: https://exiftool.org/Image-ExifTool-latest.tar.gz. Problem: this link also doesn't exist. The twins clearly have their limits.
First step was to reduce the GPS log to a readable format:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) /src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo 8 -> sed 's:.trkpt lat="::; s:" lon=": :; s:".*time.2: 2:; s:Z.*:Z:' < 20260729.gpx
-37.800248333333336 143.75107333333332 2026-07-28T20:03:38.000Z
-37.80028333333333 143.75113166666668 2026-07-28T20:03:41.000Z
-37.80030166666666 143.75116333333332 2026-07-28T20:03:44.000Z
...
The Z at the end is part of the military time zone designations, representing UTC (or possibly GMT), so they're 10 hours behind. The first entry corresponds to 6:03:38 local time, and not surprisingly the coordinates show me to be at home.
The first surprise was that the specified location of the first image I discussed on 31 July was indeed exactly an hour before the image. It was taken at 8:11:04, but the location was stored as -38.0297806,144.0656194. And looking at the sanitized log file, I see:
-38.029781666666665 144.06561833333333 2026-07-28T21:11:04.000Z
That's 7:11:04 local time, exactly an hour before I took the photo—I had thought 40 minutes. And the coordinates stored in the image are the same—almost. In fact, they show a location 15.1 cm to the north-east. Why? The time is exactly one hour before.
So, is my time conversion simply out by one hour? No. Many of the images are exactly correct. So it seems that some, and only some, of the images get dated an hour too early.
The next step is to investigate why all the image taken at Leigh Grand Junction Bridge were given the same location. But even these sanitized log files, with their precision (most definitely not accuracy) of round 1 nm, are amazingly difficult to read. Some other time.
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A new GPS mapping app?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been using GPS Visualizer to draw maps from my GPS logs for nearly 10 years, and it works well enough. But it doesn't show where I was at a particular point on the route. Is there nothing else available? Once again a question for Google Gemini.
Yes, quite a few. Ignoring the easy drag-and-drop solutions, discovered GPXSee, which is available via the FreeBSD Ports Collection.
It installed an amazing number of dependencies, but no instructions at all. Well, not quite. It tells you how to install it (though not on FreeBSD) and how to report bugs. But not how to use it, not even on the web site.
Played around with it anyway, and it seemed straightforward enough. It was also blindingly fast compared with GPS Visualizer—clearly an advantage of running on my machine. And yes, it had popups (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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The problem: they're all the same!
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And it's wrong. It gives a time of 20:03:35, by which time I had long been home (never mind that the date is out by 2,000 years). Clearly the other information is meaningless. Quite possibly this is a result of there being no instructions. But before I move on to one of the others I should try to find out how to use it. One thing's clear: the elevation graph at the bottom shows a spike of up to 1,025 m. That's clearly wrong: nothing round here is anywhere near that high.
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Choucroute again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Choucroute garni for dinner tonight, something that we eat from time to time. And it's still a lot of work getting the proportions right. One thing is clear: all recipes that I have ever seen want far too much meat. I'm left with the feeling that they don't really like Sauerkraut.
| Monday, 3 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 3 August 2026 |
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DeliBen mi udang
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
For breakfast today tried one of the pastes that I bought in June, the DeliBen mi udang paste:
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The paste was in a second package inside the first. That proved to be good: it's very firm, and my guess is that I only got round 70% out before I had to rinse several times to get the rest. Even then, after cutting open the foil, there was quite a bit left over, which I was able to rinse out:
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And the taste? Not bad, but not as good as the Tean's paste. It has more chili (I think Teans has become milder since I first used it), but less prawn flavour. I don't think I'll buy it again as long as I can get Tean's.
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Scales accuracy
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I bought my new scales for two reasons: firstly, they're big enough to put things on, and secondly the scales I have appeared to be very inaccurate.
The bigger size has its ups and downs. Yes, I can now weigh a serving plate normally, whereas on the old scales it obscured the display. But on the other hand, there's the question of where to put it.
Regarding accuracy: I make 1600 g of mi udang from time to time. I do it in a pot that weighs 568 g, or maybe 576. So with the broth it should weigh 2176 g. But I find that I need at least 2200 g. Where do those 24 or 26 g go?
Today I made another batch, weighing with both the old and the new scales. Yes, the old scales are not very consistent, but in fact they're not that inaccurate after all. At the end there was only 1 g difference between the two, which is quite acceptable. Where did the rest go? Evaporation? That seems unlikely. Still, the convenience of being able to read the display more than makes up for that.
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Tomatoes: winter produce
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Topic: gardening, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Tomatoes are interesting things. In general our garden is not doing well. Plants are dying for no obvious reason, including the tomatoes that we planted. But then there are the volunteers. Yvonne picked these today, in late winter:
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We got none worth mentioning in the summer, and few in autumn. And there are more still ripening. It's a stark contrast to the first spring flowers:
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Which aperture?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
The background of the spring flowers was disturbing. Bring it out of focus with a large aperture, the largest I have: f/0.95:
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That doesn't really work. The background is still evident, but some of the flowers are also out of focus. I did a four image bracket, with apertures of f/0.95, f/2, f/4 and f/8. Probably, for this kind of image, f/4 is the best choice, but basically I need a different background.
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More playing with GPXSee
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Spent some more time with GPXsee today, with little to show for it. Yes, there is a kind of documentation, but once again it doesn't tell me what I want to know. It did, however, give me an idea why the results were so bad last year:
Can't find dimensions for 'Track.jpeg'
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What went wrong there? Looking in more detail
-38.00496 144.589895 2025-07-03T00:07:21.000Z
-38.00496333333333 144.589895 2025-07-03T00:07:23.000Z
-38.00496333333333 144.589895 2025-07-03T00:07:26.000Z
...
-38.00496333333333 144.589895 2025-07-03T01:07:40.617Z
-38.02714 144.56247166666665 2025-07-03T01:07:51.505Z
-38.02713166666667 144.56248666666667 2025-07-03T01:07:54.000Z
That's the Little River Bird Hide, but according to the log I was there for almost exactly an hour. And in that time the coordinates did not diverge by 1 nm. There were more cases of the same coordinates being recorded again and again. I can only assume that the GPS receiver malfunctioned, so my idea of taking two phones was good. I need to keep a much closer eye on these things.
| Tuesday, 4 August 2026 | Dereel | |
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More map software
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I give up with GPXsee. Based on the documentation, it's not even clear that it intends to do what I want, showing useful data for any point on the trail. But there's more, so today I tried a couple of web-based tools.
QuickMapTools GPX Viewer looked the best choice. But what a mess!
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Can that be improved? I didn't check. What I did find was the popups:
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A tastefully incomplete popup showing nothing of interest except the time, tastefully retained in UTC. You have to scroll down inside the popup to find any further information, and then it's just speed (conveniently displayed to the nearest mm per hour) and course:
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Why no coordinates? But clearly the product is useless. How about gpx.studio? At least the map is saner, but...
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The promised popup only occurs when the cursor is set on the altitude graph at the bottom, and then it only shows, well, altitude and gradient. It does show a blue point on the map, but that's all.
I'm baffled. Both of these products have all that it takes to show the location. You'd think most people would find that more useful than hdop, vdop and pdop, whatever they may be. Why don't they show them?
More investigation of my logs from last Wednesday round the Leigh Grand Junction Bridge showed other information. I took photos between 11:43:07 and 11:47:00. What did the log file say?
-37.81048 143.91852166666666 2026-07-29T01:43:00.000Z
-37.81048 143.91852166666666 2026-07-29T01:43:03.000Z
...
-37.81048 143.91852166666666 2026-07-29T01:48:40.000Z
-37.810475 143.91855833333332 2026-07-29T01:48:43.000Z
-37.810435 143.91856166666668 2026-07-29T01:48:45.000Z
-37.81037833333333 143.918565 2026-07-29T01:48:48.000Z
-37.81028166666667 143.91855333333334 2026-07-29T01:48:51.000Z
Oh. I didn't stand still, but once again it claimed that I didn't move more than 1 nm in nearly 6 minutes. What about hirse, my backup phone? I only had it set for one observation per minute, but what I saw was:
-37.81055749 143.91838268 2026-07-29T01:43:11.718Z
-37.81050092 143.91855529 2026-07-29T01:44:13.709Z
-37.81052095 143.9185512 2026-07-29T01:45:14.941Z
-37.81061508 143.91846138 2026-07-29T01:46:17.705Z
-37.8104297 143.91848828 2026-07-29T01:47:19.702Z
That's more plausible. Clearly that's an issue with the phone or the software. Set hirse to update every 2 s. And what about enzian, the old Redmi 9A? Booted it. It seems to be even slower than I remember, but the GPS logging works. Next time I'll take all three with me and maybe have something to compare.
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Performance issues, part one
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Why is enzian, the old Redmi 9A, so slow? Asked Google Gemini, which came up with several suggestions, mainly using adb (“Android Debug”, nothing to do with the adb that we have known since long before Android came along. I should try that, some time.
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Performance issues, part two
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
My external web server lax.lemis.com is overloaded again, with load averages over 100. Strangely, fra.lemis.com, which also answers to the name www.lemis.com, is unaffected. More DNS frobbing: cut out the name www for lax to watch what happened. Unlike previous occasions, the web traffic really did stop. But fra didn't get any busier! And lax didn't get much busier when I reinstated the www entry.
I really don't understand what's going on here. But one possibility remains: set up dereel.lemis.com (to my right on the desk top) as another www. That will probably overload my current network link, but we can increase that.
First, copy the web site across. That should be simple: the connection to eureka is 1 GB/s.
But I had an unexpected problem: I can't use ssh keys to connect from eureka to dereel. Yes, I know I have problems with ssh on eureka, but I didn't think that they were that bad. I don't understand the issue: eureka offers a valid key, but it doesn't get accepted:
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Offering RSA public key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Trying private key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Trying private key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_ecdsa
debug1: Offering ED25519 public key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_ed25519
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password,keyboard-interactive
debug1: Next authentication method: keyboard-interactive
Password for grog@dereel.lemis.com:
I recall that RSA keys are no longer modern, though it's still in ~/.ssh on dereel, but it should have accepted the ED25519 key. What's the issue?
The main one, of course, is that the ssh on eureka is over 10 years out of date. But the protocols haven't changed, and apart from authentication everything works. I tried running hydra's ssh on eureka, running into one missing library after another, but culminating in:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/0) ~ 133 -> /hydra/usr/bin/ssh dereel
/lib/libc.so.7: version FBSD_1.5 required by /hydra/usr/bin/ssh not found
That's fatal: for reasons I don't understand, /lib/libc.so.7 appears to have been around for over 10 years, and I can't just change it. So I'm going to have to dig into the distasteful innards of ssh.
| Wednesday, 5 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 5 August 2026 |
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A year of Yaris
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
It's been just over a year since Yvonne got her new Toyota Yaris. She's very happy with it.
Not so I. Right from the start I had difficulties with it, but then I don't have to drive it. Well, not often. One of the problems is that we still have the VZ Commodore, which I now drive. And because of the photovoltaic equipment in the garage, it can only be parked on the right. And Yvonne has difficulty parking her car on the left, so yesterday, after parking my car too far to the left, I had to do it.
I understand Yvonne: it's not easy. There's a certain amount of dead play in the accelerator, and then it makes up for it by lurching forward. It's really difficult to park as accurately as I would have wanted.
But that's nothing compared to this morning. Not for the first time, I forgot that the ignition switch needs two steps to really turn it off. After turning anticlockwise as far as it will go, you need to press the key in and turn it further. If you don't, it drains the battery really quickly. This morning it was already down to 9 V. Nothing for it: send Yvonne off with my car and put hers on charge.
But once again how do you open the bonnet? Once again I had difficulty. Somehow it's really confusing. But it was nothing like the issue with the boot, which is controlled electrically. We couldn't find a way to open it. Later I asked Google Gemini, which told me to fold down the rear seats, crawl into the boot space (removing any contents if necessary), take a screwdriver and fiddle around in the dark to open it. What a mess!
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Web server on dereel
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
How do I replicate a web server installation? It's not difficult, but there are tricks along the way. Today I installed it on dereel.lemis.com:
apache24_enable=YES
This is needed even if you just want to start with apachectl start.
After that, it worked. But: it thinks that it's local (it is in the 192.109.197.0/24 net block, after all). So it doesn't find the photo hierarchy. I could fix that with a symlink, but what I really need to do is to find a better way to decide whether I'm local or not.
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Pizza fail
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
We have a new, large pizza stone, and I should give feedback on eBay. First we should check if it doesn't fall apart when heated.
Good news, bad news: the good news is that it behaves as expected. The bad news is that the big pizza bases that Yvonne found are difficult to handle, and in scraping one onto the stone I folded it:
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And that left lots of mess afterwards:
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Not the fault of the stone, but how do I avoid a repeat?
| Thursday, 6 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 6 August 2026 |
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Unusual spam
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Seen in my mail today:
896 + 06-08-2026 To Lehey Greg Advice (1518) + Confirmation that you are now a Responsible Person for The Unix Heritage Society Inc. [SEC=OFFICIAL] CRM:005100123009
Now doesn't that look like spam? Whoever the spammer is, he got my name the wrong way round. And “Responsible Person”? It's no secret that I'm involved (as secretary) with The Unix Heritage Society Inc., so that doesn't mean much.
OK, open carefully. The first thing I look at in HTML attachments are the links: search for http. And there I saw:
href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.acnc.gov.au/for-charities/manage-your-charity/charity-portal__;!!B2FmhzcL8Q!WJocNKMMVqdL3y-CvJ7hvimY6_RETOXNrzoEVhGkw14pJtWwuV8N63MwQqRK9L8xdCrXeY-vELblW7nUhIg$"
https://urldefense.com/? That doesn't look like an Australian Government site. More searching.
Oh. It's a protection service, and the following URL does look like an Australian Government site. OK, display the attachement:
Dear Lehey GregCongratulations on being appointed to the governing body of The Unix Heritage Society Inc. (47295586494) as a Responsible Person (also known as board or committee members, or directors). The Unix Heritage Society Inc. is registered as a charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC).
Oh. It's an official Australian Government message masquerading as spam, and it brings good news. I suppose it's typical that it turns my name around and mentioned the real purpose of the message in a subclause. Looking in more detail, it mentions all members of the committee. It has kept David Arnold's and Warren Toomey's name the right way round, but swapped Clem Cole's and mine, and then apparently sorted the entries alphabetically, rather than the more normal sequence of President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer. And of course there are syntax errors, like “Who the charity helps”, which sounds like a literal translation of German „Wer dem Verein hilft“, but apparently meaning exactly the opposite.
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More web site performance problems
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Continued installing dereel.lemis.com as my third web server. That went relatively smoothly, but in the process I discovered strangenesses with the other two. Until I understand them, there's no point taking dereel online.
The load on lax is relatively low, under a load average of 10, but I was getting response times of up to 25 seconds—only when I wasn't looking. Spent some time trying to understand wireshark again. I have always had difficulty, but this time I didn't get it to work at all. Instead I ran tcpdump and confirmed that everything responded immediately.
But then there are other strangenesses. Trying to access it site with lynx got errors like
HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Is that because it's trying https first—there I do return a 301. But why should it try https when I specify http? And why does it take so long to recover?
Is it time to finally set up https?
| Friday, 7 August 2026 | Dereel | |
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Opening the Yaris boot
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Topic: general | Link here |
As expected, the battery of Yvonne's Toyota Yaris was charged this morning. But the boot still wouldn't open. She was going into town, so I suggested she took it to Sovereign City Auto to get them to take a look.
That proved not to be necessary. She tried opening several times on the way, and finally it opened by itself. I can only guess that it only works if the battery is fully charged, not just charged enough to start the car. What a stupid design!
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More firewall hell
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Now dereel.lemis.com is working as intended, almost. The web server does what it should, but I'm getting lots of messages like:
Aug 7 08:04:51 dereel sshd-session[10042]: error: maximum authentication attempts exceeded for invalid user ubuntu from 125.140.145.62 port 56762 ssh2 [preauth]
Aug 7 08:04:59 dereel sshd-session[10046]: error: maximum authentication attempts exceeded for invalid user ubuntu from 125.140.145.62 port 56849 ssh2 [preauth]
Aug 7 09:25:22 dereel mountd[858]: mount request from 149.88.27.158 from unprivileged port
Aug 7 10:14:27 dereel inetd[12388]: cannot execute /usr/local/sbin/smbd: No such file or directory
Aug 7 11:46:28 dereel sshd-session[13972]: error: maximum authentication attempts exceeded for root from 65.49.139.223 port 57436 ssh2 [preauth]
Nothing serious, but it reminds me that I should be running a firewall. OK, I've had pain with that in the past. Log in as toor with only local directories in the path. Run from the console:
=== root@dereel (/dev/ttyv1) ~ 2 -> kldload ipfw && ipfw add 1 allow ip from any to any
Hang! Why? I suppose I should really run ktrace to find out what it's trying to access, but for the time being this should help:
kenv net.inet.ip.fw.default_to_accept=1
What a pain!
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Choucroute ratios
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Ate more of Sunday's Choucroute garnie this evening. No, it's clear: even now, after reducing the meat:Sauerkraut ratio from 89% down to 40%, there's too much meat. And also far too many potatoes. Reduce the meat ratio to about 36%, and the potatoes by 40%.
| Saturday, 8 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 8 August 2026 |
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Cabbage and capsicum stir-fry
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I have a lot of cabbage and capsicum left over from previous meals. What can I do with it? Ask Google Gemini, which came up with this recipe. Once again I had difficulty with these silly US units, but with a couple of iterations managed to create this version.
It was relatively straightforward after that, though I noted that the gochujang stuck to the frying pan:
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The finished result:
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It didn't taste bad, but I wonder what use the capsicum is. It would be just as good, if not better, without the capsicum.
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Uneven lighting
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Topic: photography | Link here |
What's wrong with this photo?
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Yvonne didn't see anything, but it's clear that the top is slightly underexposed. It's taken with the studio flashes pointed at the kitchen area, so tried a couple of times to adjust them, with little effect. The only surprise was the view looking down to the cooking area:
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I don't see an easy way to get rid of those highlights. And yes, here again the top is slightly underexposed. But there are many potential reasons for that, and in this case at least one of them is that I took the photos at 1/320 s, when the flash sync speed is 1/250 s.
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dereel on the web
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As planned, gave up on finding my firewall issues on dereel.lemis.com and used the same workaround that I had used previously:
=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/1) /home/grog 2 -> kenv net.inet.ip.fw.default_to_accept=1
net.inet.ip.fw.default_to_accept="1"=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/1) /home/grog 3 -> kldload ipfw=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/1) /home/grog 4 -> ipfw show
65535 0 0 count ip from any to any not // orphaned dynamic states counter
65535 64 8352 allow ip from any to any
What's that first line? Is the // a comment or part of the syntax? In any case, after that I was able to load my rules and make dereel one of the addresses for www.lemis.com. And sure enough, in came the usual flood of requests. But what I wasn't expecting was the load: the load average stayed below 2 (on a 4 CPU machine), round 80% idle—but the output traffic (“upload”) soared way beyond what the other servers had. lax.lemis.com averaged round 300 kB/s, though it could hit 1 MB/s; fra.lemis.com was a little higher at round 400 kB/s. But dereel went way over 1 MB/s, and my “5 Mb/s” uplink went as high as 12.9 Mb/s, clearly not very well implemented throttling.
So: for the time being I removed dereel from the www list. I should try a second network link with a higher upload limit and see where it settles. But it's surprising that dereel should generate so much traffic at such a low load.
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Whence the 301 errors?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
One thing that had puzzled me were the 301 error returns (“moved permanently”) from my web servers. With dereel functional, but before opening it to the masses, I checked:
freefall.freebsd.org - - [08/Aug/2026:14:15:47 +1000] "GET /grog HTTP/1.0" 301 277 "-" "Lynx/2.8.9rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 OpenSSL/3.5.7"
freefall.freebsd.org - - [08/Aug/2026:14:15:50 +1000] "GET /grog/ HTTP/1.0" 200 22943 "-" "Lynx/2.8.9rel.1 libwww-FM/2.14 SSL-MM/1.4.1 OpenSSL/3.5.7"
That simple! Give it a directory name without the trailing /. Presumably the browser retries. But look at that time! It took 3 seconds to retry. Why?
| Sunday, 9 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 9 August 2026 |
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More mi experiments
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Somehow I have so many left-over cooking ingredients. Today it was basil, which I'm growing in a pot, but not eating. It has to go. And then there were left-over prawn heads. You can make a broth out of them. So I crushed them and boiled them up, yielding about 200 ml of broth. The a variant of my normal breakfast:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 65 g | Chef Lo noodles | 1 | ||
| 60 g | Chicken | 1 | ||
| 30 g | Small prawns (4 g) | 1 | ||
| Prawn broth | 1 | |||
| Basil | 1 | |||
| 40 g | Gai Lan stems | 1 | ||
| Dried chili | 1 | |||
| 10 g | Ginger | 1 | ||
| 15 g | Garlic | 1 | ||
| 15 g | Soya sauce | 1 | ||
| 10 g | Fish sauce | 1 |
Given the enormous quantities of cabbage and capsicum that I still have, I should have used some of them, but I couldn't face it. The result was different from what I expected, but not unpleasant. I should use more prawn broth and fish sauce.
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More web site investigations
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Why did yesterday's web server trials look so strange? dereel.lemis.com, my local ThinkCentre, wass barely loaded, but it provided more traffic than both Vultrs put together.
The more I look at it, the more it seems that the Vultrs aren't providing full value. They're shared machines. What happens if all the VMs are busy? Their performance drops. That would also explain why lax.lemis.com is overloaded much more often than fra.lemis.com.
And then there's the issue with the name servers. named on lax keeps crashing. That might be due to the fact that lax is seriously down-rev:
=== root@lax (/dev/pts/3) /usr/src 85 -> uname -a
FreeBSD lax.lemis.com 12.0-RELEASE-p8 FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE-p8 GENERIC amd64=== root@lax (/dev/pts/3) /usr/src 86 -> ls -l /boot/kernel/kernel
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 31297432 3 Aug 2019 /boot/kernel/kernel
OK, let's make a copy in San Francisco. Oh, no can do. “Silicon Valley” is the closest, and so I have sjc.lemis.com. Restore from a snapshot of lax and try to upgrade.
Not good. Trying to build FreeBSD 15.1 dies almost immediately:
cc -O2 -pipe -fno-common -I/usr/src/tools/build/libc-bootstrap -ffile-prefix-map=/usr/src=/usr/src -ffile-prefix-map=/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/tmp=/usr/obj -g -gz=zlib -MD -MF.depend.fspacectl.o -MTfspacectl.o -std=gnu17 -Wno-format-zero-length -Wsystem-headers -Wall -Wno-format-y2k -W -Wno-unused-parameter -Wstrict-prototypes -Wmissing-prototypes -Wpointer-arith -Wreturn-type -Wcast-qual -Wwrite-strings -Wswitch -Wshadow -Wunused-parameter -Wcast-align -Wchar-subscripts -Wnested-externs -Wold-style-definition -Wno-pointer-sign -Wdate-time -Wmissing-variable-declarations -Wthread-safety -Wno-empty-body -Wno-string-plus-int -Wno-unused-const-variable -Qunused-arguments -I/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/tmp/legacy/usr/include -c /usr/src/tools/build/fspacectl.c -o fspacectl.o
cc: error: unknown argument: '-ffile-prefix-map=/usr/src=/usr/src'
cc: error: unknown argument: '-ffile-prefix-map=/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/tmp=/usr/obj'
*** [fspacectl.o] Error code 1
The oldest tree I could find was 14.3, which went a little longer:
c++ -O2 -pipe -fno-common -I/usr/src/lib/clang/include -I/usr/src/contrib/llvm-project/llvm/include -D__STDC_CONSTANT_MACROS -D__STDC_FORMAT_MACROS -D__STDC_LIMIT_MACROS -DHAVE_VCS_VERSION_INC -DNDEBUG -DLLVM_DEFAULT_TARGET_TRIPLE=\"x86_64-unknown-freebsd14.3\" -DLLVM_HOST_TRIPLE=\"x86_64-unknown-freebsd14.3\" -DDEFAULT_SYSROOT=\"/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/tmp\" -DLLVM_TARGET_ENABLE_X86 -DLLVM_NATIVE_ASMPARSER=LLVMInitializeX86AsmParser -DLLVM_NATIVE_ASMPRINTER=LLVMInitializeX86AsmPrinter -DLLVM_NATIVE_DISASSEMBLER=LLVMInitializeX86Disassembler -DLLVM_NATIVE_TARGET=LLVMInitializeX86Target -DLLVM_NATIVE_TARGETINFO=LLVMInitializeX86TargetInfo -DLLVM_NATIVE_TARGETMC=LLVMInitializeX86TargetMC -ffunction-sections -fdata-sections -gline-tables-only -MD -MF.depend.Support_Program.o -MTSupport/Program.o -Wno-format-zero-length -Wdate-time -Wno-empty-body -Wno-string-plus-int -Wno-unused-const-variable -Wno-tautological-compare -Wno-unused-value -Wno-parentheses-equality -Wno-unused-function -Wno-enum-conversion -Wno-unused-local-typedef -Wno-address-of-packed-member -Wno-switch -Wno-switch-enum -Wno-knr-promoted-parameter -Wno-parentheses -Qunused-arguments -I/usr/obj/usr/src/amd64.amd64/tmp/legacy/usr/include -fno-exceptions -fno-rtti -gline-tables-only -std=c++17 -stdlib=libc++ -Wno-c++11-extensions -c /usr/src/contrib/llvm-project/llvm/lib/Support/Program.cpp -o Support/Program.o
/usr/src/contrib/llvm-project/llvm/lib/Support/Program.cpp:46:49: error: no viable constructor or deduction
guide for deduction of template arguments of 'optional'
PI, SecondsToWait == 0 ? std::nullopt : std::optional(SecondsToWait),
^
/usr/include/c++/v1/optional:683:41: note: candidate template ignored: couldn't infer template argument '_Tp'
_LIBCPP_INLINE_VISIBILITY constexpr optional(nullopt_t) noexcept {}
^
/usr/include/c++/v1/optional:689:24: note: candidate template ignored: couldn't infer template argument '_Tp'
constexpr explicit optional(in_place_t, _Args&&... __args)
OK, I already have a built tree on dereel. Upload that and then let's see how things work. But at 5 Mb/s, that's for another day.
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Attracting rosellas
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Lately we've been seeing a lot of Crimson Rosellas outside the lounge room window, from which I took these photos:
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They seem to like the rotten tomatoes in the bed below:
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Unfortunately I couldn't get a good one of the bird actually eating a tomato. And it's interesting that the bird was by itself; normally they come in pairs.
| Monday, 10 August 2026 | Dereel | |
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Network performance issues?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
I had expected yesterday's upload of an installable world to take a while. But I was still surprised when I came in this morning to discover that the upload was still going—at 5 kB/s! The “time to finish” was another 18 hours off.
What went wrong there? Network issues? No, no obvious issue in my network monitoring. Throttling? Some rumours claim that too much traffic can cause the RSP to throttle the link. But that should only happen after a warning. And it wasn't that: I could upload elsewhere at normal speeds. So it seems that it's an issue with this one machine.
About the only thing that I did discover (why now?) was that the object tree was orders of magnitude larger than the source tree, nearly 8 GB. That's too much to make the approach worthwhile. The alternative is to install a new system and set up packages to run on it. What do I need?
And that will take a while. Mañana. Destroy sjc.lemis.com and think about it.
But while I was looking around later, I found that the upload was continuing:
=== grog@dereel (/dev/pts/3) /home/var/tmp 13 -> scp /home/var/tmp/15-obj.tgz sjc:/var/tmp/
15-obj.tgz 968% 2723MB 3.4KB/s 23:12:15
And yes, the values were changing. But where is the data going? sjc is dead and gone. A ktrace showed:
30338 scp RET writev -1 errno 4 Interrupted system call
30338 scp PSIG SIGALRM caught handler=0x16c70871b970 mask=0x0 code=SI_KERNEL
30338 scp CALL sigprocmask(SIG_SETMASK,0x16c707633ccc,0)
30338 scp RET sigprocmask 0
30338 scp CALL setitimer(ITIMER_REAL,0x16c707633c30,0x16c707633c10)
30338 scp STRU itimerval { .interval = {0, 0}, .value = {1, 0} }
30338 scp STRU itimerval { .interval = {0, 0}, .value = {0, 0} }
30338 scp RET setitimer 0
30338 scp CALL sigreturn(0x16c707633d40)
30338 scp RET sigreturn JUSTRETURN
30338 scp CALL getpgrp
30338 scp RET getpgrp 30338/0x7682
30338 scp CALL ioctl(0x1,TIOCGPGRP,0x16c70763425c)
30338 scp RET ioctl 0
30338 scp CALL write(0x1,0x3b9537a72000,0x6e)
30338 scp GIO fd 1 wrote 110 bytes
"\r15-obj.tgz 968% 2723MB 3.4KB/s 23:14:11"
30338 scp RET write 110/0x6e
30338 scp CALL writev(0x4,0x16c707634350,0x1)
30338 scp GIO fd 4 wrote 4096 bytes
And tcpdump showed that data was going out to 45.156.87.147. What's that? No reverse lookup. But it wasn't sjc: that had the address 45.32.140.218. What's going on there? Where is 45.156.87.147?
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/20) /src/FreeBSD/git/stable/15 103 -> traceroute 45.156.87.147
traceroute to 45.156.87.147 (45.156.87.147), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 radiation-tower.aussiebb.net (121.200.8.1) 34.484 ms 22.323 ms 35.706 ms
2 10.241.5.108 (10.241.5.108) 109.665 ms 138.321 ms
10.241.5.116 (10.241.5.116) 130.179 ms
...
10 193.109.190.124 (193.109.190.124) 272.320 ms 278.570 ms 280.740 ms
11 193.109.188.211 (193.109.188.211) 342.744 ms 302.116 ms 380.321 ms
12 ae18.1179.edge-vrf.cr1.egh.as49581.net (185.91.127.86) 279.044 ms 300.283 ms 277.925 ms
13 45.156.87.147 (45.156.87.147) 297.883 ms 305.009 ms 356.571 ms
Somehow traceroute is becoming less and less useful. But the time for the second step suggests “overseas” somewhere, and there are additional delays at step 10 and 11. Then there's the only real reverse lookup at step 12: as49581.net. whois tells me:
Domain Name: AS49581.NET
Registry Domain ID: 2682927775_DOMAIN_NET-VRSN
Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.antagus.de
Registrar URL: http://www.vautron.de
Registrar: Vautron Rechenzentrum AG
That's just the registrar, of course. But it's in Germany, nowhere close to sjc. I'm baffled.
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Spam from your site
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Message in the mail today:
From: Ensite <antispam@ensite.com.br>
This is an abuse report for an email message sent by mail server lax.lemis.com [45.32.70.18] on Sun, 09 Aug 2026 07:15:36 -0300
For more information about this abuse format below, see https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5965
Feedback-Type: virus
User-Agent: SPFBL/3.2
Version: 1
Original-Mail-From: [test@lemis.com]
Original-Rcpt-To: [alexia@nwnet.com.br]
Arrival-Date: Sun, 09 Aug 2026 07:15:36 -0300
Reporting-MTA: dns; cp7.americanet.com.br
Source-IP: 45.32.70.18
Authentication-Results: cp7.americanet.com.br; smtp.mail=test@lemis.com; spf=pass
Removal-Recipient: alexia@nwnet.com.br
Huh? Somebody spoofing my domain name? The important thing there is the source IP, 45.32.70.18. That's lax.lemis.com! OK, they gave me a time, so off to take a look in /var/log/maillog:
Aug 9 10:15:25 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 59152287FF: from=<>, size=15287, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Aug 9 10:15:26 lax postfix/smtp[45196]: 59152287FF: to=<test@lemis.com>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137]:25, delay=0.8, delays=0.03/0.04/0.55/0.19, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (host mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137] said: 550 5.1.1 <test@lemis.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table (in reply to RCPT TO command))
Aug 9 10:15:26 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 59152287FF: removed
Aug 9 10:15:38 lax postfix/smtp[45159]: 5B78528774: to=<alexia@nwnet.com.br>, relay=mail.nwnet.com.br[187.17.160.109]:25, delay=47, delays=0.77/1.2/22/24, dsn=5.0.0, status=bounced (host mail.nwnet.com.br[187.17.160.109] said: 550-5.7.1 SPFBL this message was detected as possible malware. See 550 http://spfbl.net/en/feedback (in reply to end of DATA command))
Yup, guilty as charged. But that wasn't all:
Aug 9 10:15:38 lax postfix/cleanup[45142]: 86BFF287FB: message-id=<20260809101538.86BFF287FB@lax.lemis.com>
Aug 9 10:15:38 lax postfix/bounce[45155]: 5B78528774: sender non-delivery notification: 86BFF287FB
Aug 9 10:15:38 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 86BFF287FB: from=<>, size=13748, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Aug 9 10:15:39 lax postfix/smtp[45196]: 86BFF287FB: to=<test@lemis.com>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137]:25, delay=0.79, delays=0.02/0/0.57/0.2, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (host mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137] said: 550 5.1.1 <test@lemis.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table (in reply to RCPT TO command))
Aug 9 10:15:39 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 86BFF287FB: removed
Aug 9 10:16:37 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 144572815B: from=<>, size=2950, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Aug 9 10:16:37 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 1C3C3286CD: from=<test@lemis.com>, size=2914, nrcpt=50 (queue active)
Aug 9 10:16:37 lax postfix/qmgr[865]: 069FA286A9: from=<test@lemis.com>, size=2914, nrcpt=50 (queue active)
What is that? Where did it come from? Further investigation took me to
Aug 9 20:11:42 dereel postfix/smtpd[32034]: connect from mame.habit.net[210.196.200.19]
Aug 9 20:11:51 dereel postfix/smtpd[32036]: B036148242E: client=mame.habit.net[210.196.200.19]
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/cleanup[32040]: B036148242E: message-id=<>
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/qmgr[1045]: B036148242E: from=<test@lemis.com>, size=2568, nrcpt=50 (queue active)
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/smtp[32777]: using backwards-compatible default setting smtp_tls_security_level=(empty)
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/smtp[32778]: using backwards-compatible default setting smtp_tls_security_level=(empty)
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/smtp[32778]: B036148242E: to=<alexgv@aari.ru>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137]:25, delay=181, delays=181/0.01/0.01/0.06, tls=none, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 45B4E26359A)
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/smtp[32778]: B036148242E: to=<alexgrey@alexgrey.com>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137]:25, delay=181, delays=181/0.01/0.01/0.06, tls=none, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 45B4E26359A)
...
Aug 9 20:14:50 dereel postfix/smtp[32778]: B036148242E: to=<alexia@nwnet.com.br>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137]:25, delay=181, delays=181/0.01/0.01/0.06, tls=none, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 Ok: queued as 45B4E26359A)
dereel is set up by default as an open relay! And it sent hundreds of messages, sorted alphabetically. A good thing that it was caught so early. Yet Another firewall rule. I've been running my own mail for well over a third of a century, but I can't recall this happening to me before.
| Tuesday, 11 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 11 August 2026 |
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Indian Cabbage
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
What do I do with the cabbage I still have left over? Ask Google Gemini, which came up with a number of recipes. In the end I adapted the last one, Alu-patta-gobhi-ki-sabzi.php:
The usual: these silly US American measures, and in this case also missing salt in the ingredients, and also a requirement for “garish masala”, which proved to be a typo for garam masala. And how many portions? I adapted it for the quantities I had, which made roughly 2 portions:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 238 g | potato | 1 | ||
| 10 g | ghee | 2 | ||
| 3.4 g | cumminseed | 2 | ||
| 0.3 g | asafœtida | 2 | ||
| 10 g | ginger | 3 | ||
| 1–2 | green chillies, slit lengthways | 3 | ||
| 3 g | turmeric | 4 | ||
| 2 g | red chilli powder | 4 | ||
| 3 g | coriander powder | 4 | ||
| 20 g | ghee | 5 | ||
| 360 g | cabbage | 5 | ||
| 50 g | peas | 6 | ||
| 3.5 g | garam masala | 7 | ||
| 2 g | amchur (dry mango powder) or a splash of lemon juice | 7 | ||
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To my surprise, I didn't have any chili powder! I used 9.4 g chili oil instead, which proved to be too much. And there weren't enough other spices. I should probably double or triple them.
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Census
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Topic: rant, general, language, technology, opinion | Link here |
Today was census day, which for some time now we have been doing online. Once again fun with logging in: they provide an identification and password clearly delimited with spaces, but it seems that you must not enter those spaces when logging in. And while the questions were reasonable enough, somehow the bureaucrats have difficulty with normal English.
First, of course, I needed to set up a temporary password. Followed all their rules, but the came up with another one:
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I still can't understand why people make this restriction. But there are more important issues: where did I spend the night of 11 August? When was the night of 11 August? All I got was:
We will ask who will stay at this address and who will be away on Tuesday 11 August 2026, to make sure that we count everyone.Who will spend the night of Tuesday 11 August 2026 at 29 Stones Road?
From midnight to 7:00 (7 hours) or 19:00 to 24:00 (5 hours)? I presume that they meant the latter, but they didn't say anywhere. And what if I hadn't returned home until after midnight? Then it would have been 12 August.
Once I guessed at their intention, I had the next problem:
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It took me some time to understand that they wanted me to click on “+ List person 1” to continue.
And then there were questions about comprehension or grammar. What is my gender? This question refers to how Greg currently identifies or expresses their gender...
OK, gender is a property. Describe with an adjective. I'm male. But they weren't prepared for that. I apparently belong to a Man gender:
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That's a syntax error: “man” is a noun, and they should be looking for an adjective. But there's not just syntax: they're also semantics. OK, let's assume that English is my second language. I speak it well, but some things are confusing, and there are plenty of people who don't speak English that well, but who are required to fill out the census How does Greg describe their sexual orientation. “Their” is an adjective referring to a group of people. Who is this group? How do they relate to me? Am I straight or bent? Gay or morose? What does that have to do with sexuality? Yes, the terms are colloquially used to imply heterosexual and homosexual, but how can the ABS assume that everybody they ask understands their ambiguous usage? Why not spell it out? Like most people, I'm heterosexual. Why not give me the choice to say so?
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On the positive side, I was able to enter Yvonne's country of birth correctly: “German Reich”. Five years ago I tried (and failed) to enter “Thüringen”. That was her nationality at birth, but she was born in the (last gasps of) the German Reich. That looks like my failure.
Ah, a good rant makes me feel better. But the criticisms are justified: there are people who don't understand the questions. The ABS should make it easier for them by using standard English.
And of course I gave them negative feedback for ease of completion:
It took me 7 attempts to log in and create a password. Why no spaces?
Why do you use terms that are not in standard English, like "straight" for sexual orientation? The correct word is "heterosexual". People who don't speak English well won't understand that, and other things like plural pronouns to refer to individuals.
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iChoose: Worse than expected
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne back from shopping today. The $500 iChoose card didn't work at all. Contacting them took me a long time to discover that the card had been cancelled, and that they would issue a new one. What a pain these people are!
| Wednesday, 12 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 12 August 2026 |
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Power fail!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Another grid power failure today at 10:08. And of course lagune failed, despite being behind a UPS.
Why does this always stress me so much? I can't do much about it except turn off heavy power consumers like the air conditioner. Powercor doesn't help by giving contradictory claims about power restoration:
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Finally the power came back at 14:17:15, after 4 hours and 9 minutes, just as they had changed their minds and set the restoration time to 16:00, and I had started to wonder what to do if it weren't restored by sunset:
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Fortunately the sun came out enough to charge the batteries, so we managed to hit 100% before the power came back, helped by the excessive duration. A good thing that it came back then: the sun went in, and the battery charge diminished quickly:
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One outage? Two!
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
As if the power failure wasn't bad enough, my Internet link died at 12:56:27. Clearly something external: the ODU LED on the NTD showed orange. But what could it be? Power to the ODU? I think that goes via the network cable. ODU failure? Who can tell? It seemed to be worth raising a fault with Aussie Broadband, not helped by the fact that it had temporarily forgotten my secret thumbprint and then claimed that my link was up. But in less than 10 minutes, during which I had been required to run the connectivity test three times, it finally accepted it. Fault 38813366. Will be “looked at” within 5 working hours, which could mean tomorrow morning.
But what if it's a consequence of the power failure? Power had been out at the radiation tower too, for 2 hours, 48 minutes. Maybe the National Broadband Network didn't envisage any longer power outage, and the batteries in the tower had run out.
That guess seems to have been correct. Power was restored at 14:17:15, the network at 14:29:45. So it seems that the radiation tower needed 12½ minutes to boot.
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Cat run done?
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Topic: animals | Link here |
In the middle of the outage pain, Paul Donaghy showed up to complete the bird netting in the dog run. As if to prove the necessity, found a small bird in there when we went out. In 3 hours Paul was done. There are still a couple of places where birds can get through, and Yvonne tells me that she has seen both a Crimson rosella and a red-browed finch in there. The rosella was perplexed that it couldn't easily get out again. Maybe they'll stop coming; otherwise there's patching to be done.
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| Thursday, 13 August 2026 | Dereel | Images for 13 August 2026 |
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Finding Joe Speelman
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Topic: history, music, general, opinion | Link here |
I've heard from Lokman Merican, who wanted to know about a song entitled “Pantai Chinta Berahi by Dodo Millinger. The name proved to be Mailinger, a Hungarian musician who arrived in Singapore in the 1930s:
Brought from Surabaya to Singapore in the 1930s by bandleader Joe Speelman to play piano at the Raffles Hotel. He was widely celebrated as one of the finest pianists in the Far East.
And once again I lost the URL. But though I had never heard of Dodo Mailinger, the name Joe Speelman is immediately apparent: he arranged my very first public performance, in the Selangor Club (not “Royal” at the time) in December 1960. That brings back memories. It's surprising that there's also a connection to Pantai Chinta Berahi; in those days I didn't know of any such connection.
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Bloody AAMI again!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Unwanted paper mail today: a “letter of demand” from Credit Collection Services, for the claimed damage against Helen Miller's car on 18 October 2022.
What, again? I went through a lot of correspondence with AAMI over two years ago, culminating in my assessment that the people there would not pass the Turing test, and their giving up and handing it over to a debt collection agency (ARMA debt resolution), who seems to be staffed by similar people. After something like 8 repeats showing that they did not read my replies, they seem to have given up. Is this going to happen again? There should be something that can be done against this kind of frivolous action.
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Getting a credit report
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
But what if these horrible debt collectors have entered something negative in my credit profile? Off to take a look and discovered that there are two credit ratings listing companies in Australia. Chose one at random, Equifax, who are prepared to give me a free credit report. Sign up with their password restrictions, and then enter driver license number and Medicare number.
Alarm. Those are exactly the data that were used to steal money from my Centrelink account five years ago. Yes, it's clear that I have to identify myself to Equifax if I want a report. But is the report worth the risk? As long as Australia has these stupidly inadequate identification rules, I think no. Sorry, Equifax.
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