|
| Greg's diary |
| December 2013 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 1 December 2013 | Dereel | Images for 1 December 2013 |
| Top of page | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
NBN installation, bad language and survey
|
Topic: rant, general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Where do I put the network termination box for my NBN service? It's designed to be mounted on a wall inside the house, preferably close to a power point. We're going to be moving house in the foreseeable future, so it makes sense to consider where the new owner of the house would like to have it.
Clearly it should be somewhere near the existing network infrastructure. That's mainly the south half of the house; my powerline network adapters that connect to the north are so flaky that they may not be as fast as the NBN downlink. And most of the rooms in the south of the house were intended as bedrooms, though we're using two of them as offices. We could put it in my office, but if that ends up being a child's bedroom, it might not be the most appropriate. Maybe the storage cupboard in the middle of the house? I already have cvr2, my computer video recorder, in there, so it would be out of the way and easy to connect into the network. But how to get the cable from the roof into that cupboard?
Went to the NBN web site, which gave me little concrete information. I suppose I'll have to talk to the installer. The quality of the information is reflected in their HOWTO page, which states:
Please note that your existing DSL and cable modems may not be compatible with the NBN, so check your equipment with your internet service provider.
What kind of nonsense is that? Of course an ADSL or cable modem won't work with the NBN. That's why they supply their own “modem”. Either they're terminally confused, or they're participating in the bad language that I ranted about last week. But this time there's a difference: it specifically refers to components that require a modem. Probably the best guess is that the person who wrote the text was also confused by the bad language.
Once again I was asked if I wanted to do a survey. Now that I know I'm a resident, and not a user, I was able to do it. Glacially slow, and no particularly interesting questions, just “do you have any comments?” at the end. Do I!
Specifically:
This site and the general level of information supplied by NBNCo are both terrible. I was able to find what I was looking for today, but that's an exception. NBN fixed wireless has been available in my area since 25 November, but on 27 November I was told that it was not available and that the probable date of completion would be August 2014.
Not directly related to the site, in the past I have been asked on three occasions to do a survey after calling NBNCo on the phone. On each occasion I left my phone number and was promised a call back within one business day. I have never been called back.
The information you provide is misleading at best, in part completely wrong. Today I read http://www.nbnco.com.au/get-an-nbn-connection/connect-fixed-wireless.html, which states:
Please note that your existing DSL and cable modems may not be compatible with the NBN,...
It's difficult to comprehend the confusion that could have lead to that claim. Firstly, it's wrong. Without any doubt, DSL and cable modems are not compatible with the NBN. Secondly, you install the "modem" (which you call "connection box" in the documentation) yourselves. This information is repeated in the document "Preparing for the NBN/Fixed Wireless Connections" (http://www.nbnco.com.au/content/dam/nbnco/documents/preparing-for-the-nbn-fixed-wireless-connections.pdf), along with a sentence beginning with a lower case letter.
Even this survey is broken. It pops up as a window measuring 100x100 pixels and needs to be enlarged to see anything at all. One of the first questions I had to answer was what kind of visitor I was. No possibility to answer "end user", so I put it in other. But it seems that whoever wrote this survey is so far removed from such concepts that the only valid answer appears to have been "Resident", which, without qualification, could even mean NBNCo staff. It was also glacially slow.
Further information at http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-nov2013.php#D-20131127-225033, http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-nov2013.php#D-20131128-233625 and http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-nov2013.php#D-20131129-234436
Looking at this 10 years later, I think I understand the confusion. Once modem was a term for a device that converts between local digital signals and analogue signals for remote transmission. But now it means “gateway and network address translator”, and maybe “firewall”.Languages change, of course, but this change irritates me because it's based on ignorance.
|
Keeping EXIF data in a database
|
Topic: photography, technology | Link here |
I have something like 100,000 distinct photos on my system, and with all copies in different sizes, data formats and qualities, it's over 500,000. How do I keep track of the EXIF data? Specifically at the moment I'm wondering which lenses I use the most, and at what focal lengths. Clearly l need to store the information in a database.
That's so clear, in fact, that there must be software out there that does it. But a Google search didn't come up with anything very promising. What was there was mainly part of large programs, rather than a standalone application. I'm reminded of:
Hoare's Law of Large Problems:
Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out.
This thread—coincidentally in an Olympus forum—shows that others also feel a need for this kind of representation, but I couldn't find an implementation. So it looks like I'll have to do it myself. What do I need? Modern photos have lots of EXIF data—exiftool produces about 200 lines of information from my photos. That's 100,000,000 records for 500,000 photos. There are a number of considerations:
Clearly I can improve things there by having only one record for each image, but that's not so easy. How do I establish which photos are derived from the same original? Photos are stored in FAT-32 file systems, so the granularity of a timestamp is 1 second. Given that modern cameras can take up to 12 photos a second, the timestamp isn't sufficient to identify an image.
What about panoramas? They're not derived from a single image.
How do I handle EXIF format differences? For example, EXIF data from my Olympus E-30 includes these lines:
Clearly the former is preferable, but Nikon, for example, only supplies the latter. In general, there are enough differences from maker to maker to make the analysis quite complicated. Do I really need 200 records per image? Should I maybe restrict things? I already have a function on my web pages to format the EXIF data. It's over 700 lines long, and it would need to be expanded to support conversion to database format.
Should I have one record per image, or one record per EXIF datum? The former is cleaner, but it requires me to know all the possible EXIF data that I want to store. The latter is easier, but it generates millions of records, and it's not as easy to query.
Probably I'll have to do something like that, but it was worth a quick hack to get a feel for it. As I suspected:
That's with only about 70,000 photos. The data file was already over 1 GB in size. Clearly I need something better. But at least it has told me what I wanted to know: I take a very large proportion of my photos at either minimum or maximum focal length. So the new M.Zuiko 12-40 mm will indeed be restrictive compared to the Zuiko Digital ED 12-60mm F2.8-4.0 SWD, with which I have taken 2,203 photos at 60 mm.
| Monday, 2 December 2013 | Dereel | Images for 2 December 2013 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Suddenly summer
|
Topic: general, technology | Link here |
It's summer! And the weather shows it:
That's a big difference from the last two months, which were far cooler than the seasonal average:
And for some reason, weather station readings were very erratic—at times over 30 minutes passed without a reading coming through. That's almost certainly due to transmission problems from the external unit, but which? It's not easy to trace, and I don't really want to write hundreds of log messages for intermittent errors.
|
New camera: slower than from overseas
|
Topic: general, photography, opinion | Link here |
So my new camera got sent from Sydney on Friday. Today I got a message from a company called Startrack—maybe. They pointed to a web site http://www.startrack.com.au/. The news was good:
|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
I waited all day, but it didn't arrive. Then I took another look at the tracking site:
|
|
||||||||
|
|
||||||||
So they had driven it around all day and taken it back to Ballarat! Wendouree is just an inner suburb of Ballarat. Called up Startrack, who do a good job of hiding their number (13 2345), and waited fully 17 minutes listening to recorded announcements like “We deliver to every address in Australia, door to door”. Finally got connected with Chantal, who told me that they don't deliver to Dereel, and that the package will be delivered to Australia Post tomorrow, and I will get it in two day's time. That's 6 days after postage! I've had deliveries from overseas that are faster than that. And if that happens again, it's quite possible that I won't get my new lens until Monday, a week after shipping.
In the meantime, I had received another copy of my invoice from Digital Camera Warehouse. It looked identical to the previous one, and it said that all had been paid, so it wasn't really clear why they had sent me another one. Then it dawned on me: the words “Backorder” against the lens were missing. This seems to be their way of saying “your lens has arrived”. So I called up to ask them to send via civilized means. No, sorry, lens already gone out. I complained about their courier, and asked why they didn't send with Australia Post. Because it's too expensive, and they want a signature for delivery. Too expensive? They charge $19 for shipping. Checked later, and discovered that, although Australia Post charge only about $15, that's without insurance. And with insurance for $2,400, the price rises from $17 to $54.50. Why do they do that? That's a premium of 1.5% of the item value. To warrant that, they'd have to lose one package out of 67. But I suppose it explains DCW's choice, though presumably they could get a better courier.
|
Summer Holiday, 50 years on
|
Topic: music, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
When I was a boy, before the Beatles came on the scene, Cliff Richard was probably the leading British pop singer. I've never been a fan of pop music, but I found some of his songs quite acceptable. He also made a couple of musical films, The Young Ones and Summer Holiday, both of which I watched and enjoyed.
Summer Holiday was on TV recently, and so for the fun of it we watched it. Yvonne had never seen it before. It's interesting to see how things have changed since 1963. The most interesting thing is similarities in the choreography with the film version of West Side Story, which came out a couple of years earlier. The quality of the film is nowhere near that of West Side Story, of course, but it seems to be in a similar tradition. And the music is primarily melodic rather than the extreme percussion and stress that seems to pervade most modern “music”. I was surprised how much things have changed.
| Tuesday, 3 December 2013 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 3 December 2013 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
To the vets again
|
Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Off to Ballarat this morning to have Zhivago examined again. All seemed OK except for bilirubin in his urine, which Aaron thought could be indicative of liver problems. Had a complete blood test done—another $250 in total—and heard back in the evening that the results were all fine. What a lot of money we're spending on vets lately!
|
ABS survey
|
Topic: general | Link here |
We've been selected to complete a survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. We don't get the choice: we're required to. It involved an interviewer coming along and asking lots of questions that she then typed into a laptop. The whole thing was scheduled to take 1½ hours, but in fact we got it done in an hour. Why can't we just do it online?
|
E-M1: first impressions
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Despite the problems we had yesterday, my new Olympus OM-D E-M1 camera did arrive today. As I suspected, it was really sent by Australian Air Express, about whom I have complained in the past. In passing, it's interesting to note that that name is showing up less and less. The AAE link now links to Qantas freight. I wonder why the name changes.
And my lens was already in Ballarat waiting for its drive around town. Before leaving for town, called Startrack and asked if I could contact the driver and pick it up. No, they “can't stop on the side of the road”. Clearly they have to stop somewhere—why not arrange something? But no, nothing to be done. Hopefully it'll be here tomorrow.
Picked it the camera up on the way back from Ballarat. Without a lens I can't take photos with it, of course, but there's still plenty to learn about it.
The first impression is how small it is. I won't take photos until I have a lens to put on it, but it's about half way between my E-30 and Yvonne's compact camera.
So: what can I do without a lens? Examine the camera. The tripod mount is offset to one side, by about 12 mm! And that on a professional camera! How do I calculate entrance pupils? I'll have to mount it at an angle on the focusing rail and recalculate all the distances. Why did they do that? There's no obvious restriction.
Also took a look at the instructions. Clearly this is a modern camera: there are none! Well, almost none. I had already downloaded the manual from the web, only 165 pages of it—not very much for a camera of this complexity. But do I get it with the camera? Yes, but only on CD-ROM. The printed manual was in 3 languages, only 24 pages each when you exclude the boilerplate safety instructions. It doesn't even tell you how to get your photos off the camera! Olympus should be ashamed of themselves to not even include a printed version of the manual in a camera of this class. And the PDF version doesn't have any indexing, so I have to search the entire document for anything I want.
Still, it came with a CD with various software, including Olympus “Viewer” and the real manual, both of which I already had. But it also offers online registration. Tried that in my Microsoft box, but even that didn't work:
|
|
||||||||
That's possibly my mistake in believing that if I click on a file system icon, I will get some useful result. Finally found out how to start it. It required connecting the camera to the machine, so that it could read out the serial number. Then it started a web browser which wanted to know my date of birth—yet again! It also wanted my address, of course, but it would only let me live in the USA or dependencies!
|
|
||||||||
The manual was also older than the one I had downloaded, dating to April, 5 months before the camera was released. In sum, the CD-ROM is useless.
OK, how about the “wireless LAN function”? I had already discovered that the implementation is deficient, but today's experiments confirmed it. I can't connect to a network!
The wireless LAN function on the camera cannot be used to connect to a home or public access point.
According to the instructions it's got to be a smartphone, not even a tablet, and I need to install OI.Share, the smartphone app, whatever that is. The instructions give no help, and neither does the software download page. On the CD-ROM? Of course not. Once again I had to go to the toyshop, though there's some information on this olympus site, which I could only find with the help of Google.
I had in fact found and installed this app some time ago but not commented on it. Although the video I saw a few months ago shows it using a tablet in landscape orientation, it's clearly designed for smart phones, and my version displays only in portrait orientation. And yes, it's the latest version. Maybe things will be better when I have a lens, but the functionality is really minimal. There are so many things it could do, but not only does it not support networks, it disconnects the tablet from the network when it connects to the camera. Here a comparison of what I think it does (not helped by Android-typical lack of documentation) and what it should be able to do:
| Feature | Desired | Implemented | ||
| Connect to network | Yes | Only point-to-point connection | ||
| Control camera | From any machine | Only Android or iOS devices | ||
| Simultaneous remote and local control | Yes | No | ||
| Set time via ntp | Yes | Indirectly via tablet time | ||
| Transfer photos to computer | Yes | No | ||
This last point is particularly painful. I still have to transfer photos via USB. There should be no need for that with a fast network connection. Hopefully they'll improve things, but looking at the quality of Olympus Viewer, I'm not holding my breath.
|
TV reception problems revisited
|
Topic: multimedia, opinion | Link here |
I've been keeping records of TV reception problems for over 2 years now, during which time I've been able to narrow down the causes somewhat. There's a strong correlation between reception quality and channel. In particular, ABC TV is very bad, something that the ABC people refute. Lately it's been so bad that I have basically had to throw out all recordings.
Then yesterday, with outside temperatures of 36°, my daily recording of Al Jazeera news on SBS was also unusable; normally it's perfect. Something to do with the temperature?
Hard to say. The nightly recordings of Al Jazeera on ABC are usually useless—sometimes I get no data at all—but last night the second one was perfect, along with another recording. I can't make any sense of this.
|
Handkäs mit Musik
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
In Melbourne last week we bought a Harzer Roller, a kind of processed cheese. Yvonne wanted to make Handkäs mit Musik, which translates literally as “hand cheese with music”. It's marinated Harzer Roller, but a specialty of Frankfurt am Main, but I had never eaten it. Did some research and came up with a recipe.
And what's it like? Boring. But at least now we know.
| Wednesday, 4 December 2013 | Dereel | Images for 4 December 2013 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Power failure
|
Topic: general | Link here |
Another power failure this morning at 7:51. Contacted Powercor—finally, after 5 minutes of waiting—and was told that it was a widespread outage, and that it would take the standard 2 hours to fix. Had just shut down my computers when the power came back, after only 19 minutes.
|
OM-D E-M1 in earnest
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Today the lens for my Olympus OM-D E-M1 arrived, so I was able to start playing with it. It's also now time to compare it with other cameras. Yes, it's much smaller than the E-30, but nowhere near as small as a compact. In fact, with the lens it's considerably bigger than the Pentax SV. Here left to right the E-30, the E-M1 and the SV, each with standard lens:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
How do you approach a new, complicated camera? Taking photos is only part of the experience. I've always started by taking test photos, of course:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||
