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| Greg's diary |
| January 2025 |
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| Wednesday, 1 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 1 January 2025 |
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A quarter of a century!
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Topic: history, opinion | Link here |
It seems like only yesterday (alright, a couple of months ago) that I sat in my office and
watched the “angel of death” (the Y2K bug) pass from Christmas Kiritimati via New Zealand to us and on.
That was the turn of the century. 25 years ago! The new century is a quarter over,
already.
And somehow that divides my life into 3 parts. On 1 January 1950 I was living with my parents in Nunawading (I think; it's possible that the house there was not finished yet, but I have no recollection). On 1 January 1975 I was in Hamm celebrating Christmas with my fiancée Doris Pischke and her family. And now it's 50 years later!
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New Year's letter
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Topic: history, technology, opinion | Link here |
For 12 years now we have been sending out annual newsletters, originally at Christmas, but now as close to on the dot of New Year (UTC) as I can manage. And it's a pain.
First, the good news: this year's letter is out, and I managed to attach a PDF version. But it took several hours, and there are still big mail systems that refuse mail from me.
The big difference from last year is that SPF records have become an absolute requirement. Even last year's workaround of sending the messages via Aussie Broadband no longer work:
<groggyhimself@gmail.com>: host mail.aussiebroadband.com.au[121.200.0.25] said: 550
5.7.23 <groggyhimself@gmail.com>: Recipient address rejected: Message rejected
due to: no SPF record. Please see
https://www.aussiebroadband.com.au/help-centre/internet/changes-to-spf-and-how-it-affects-you/
(in reply to RCPT TO command)
OK, I have an SPF record. In fact, I have three, for mail.lemis.com, lax.lemis.com and www.lemis.com. None of them seem to work. The pages I found telling me how to set up an SPF record had one thing in common: they didn't specify the host name. The ones that tested confirmed that my SPF record was correct, but that didn't help. OK, set up a fourth one for lemis.com:
=== grog@lax (/dev/pts/1) ~ 26 -> nslookup -q=txt lemis.com
Server: 45.32.70.18
Address: 45.32.70.18#53
lemis.com text = "v=spf1 a:www.lemis.com ip4:192.109.197.0/24 ip4:45.32.70.18 ip4:121.200.0.0/24 ip4:96.47.72.0/24 ip6:2403:5800:3:25::/36 ~all"
lemis.com text = "google-site-verification=AxIZbg-VfVkVCvz6FLBCQfhCt9JWf_6GLQdQTYc_I8c"
And after that, lots of things worked. Gmail now accepts my mail, though it took a few minutes and a number of rejections before it checked the record again. Bigpond seems to have been happy. Only two sites were left over, I think: first outlook.com:
<Edna.Scott@creativebydesign.com.au>: host
creativebydesign-com-au.mail.protection.outlook.com[52.101.149.1] said: 550
5.4.1 Recipient address rejected: Access denied.
[SY3PEPF0000A725.ausprd01.prod.outlook.com 2025-01-01T00:58:05.766Z
08DD28BBCA590057] (in reply to RCPT TO command)
What does that mean? Is the email valid, and outlook is too secure to talk to me, or is it something else, in which case what? It rejected nearly all my messages, though
Date: Wed, 1 Jan 2025 11:07:32 +0000
From: postmaster@outlook.com
Subject: Delivered: Happy New Year from the Leheys
Your message has been delivered to the following recipients:
nickhola@hotmail.com<mailto:nickhola@hotmail.com>
...
Received: from lax.lemis.com (45.32.70.18) by
DB1PEPF000509E9.mail.protection.outlook.com (10.167.242.59) with Microsoft
SMTP Server id 15.20.8314.11 via Frontend Transport; Wed, 1 Jan 2025 01:41:56
+0000
It's not clear whether this is because it was hotmail.com and not outlook.com, but what is clear is that the confirmation came well over 9 hours after outlook received it.
And then there's this one:
<axp@bnc.net>: host mail-in.bnc.de[194.39.192.116] said: 575 groggyhimself@lemis.com
sender requires a secure TLS connection (in reply to MAIL FROM command)
Why?
It's on days like today that I wonder if it's worth running my own mail server. But why give up after over 30 years?
And what sting does the SPF record have in its tail? I first set up a record over 20 years ago, and I've had lots of trouble as a result. From recollection it caused messages to be rejected that had been sent to mailing lists, and I removed it in August 2020, though I didn't mention it here.
So what will happen with the mailing lists? Good question. What happens if I send with a different sender address (groggyhimself@FreeBSD.org comes to mind)?
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Paella portions
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
We at left-over paella valenciana for dinner tonight. It was clear that we wouldn't finish it:
But how much do we really eat? Today I guessed at portions:
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That's for “eats like a bird” Yvonne (225 g) and and me (535 g). Admittedly, that was without the additional seafood. As it came to the table, it looked like this:
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And Yvonne couldn't finish it!
We had 720 g left over, enough for a double portion in the deep freeze.
| Thursday, 2 January 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 2 January 2025 |
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Letting Mona outside
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
We've been letting Bruno outside the house for three weeks now, and things seem to be working. The dogs have decided that they want to play with him, by chasing him, something he doesn't find so amusing. So he stays in the part of the garden (NW) where the dogs can't get in.
And Mona? She really wants to go outside too. OK, we let her out this morning for about quarter of an hour:
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Yes, things worked, but we wanted to keep our eyes on her, and we didn't have time.
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More wildflowers
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
I've seen these tiny flowers before, but for some reason there are a surprising number of them at the moment:
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New glasses again
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Topic: health | Link here |
It's a New Year, time for new glasses.
Why? My insurance covers most of the cost of a new set of glasses every year. After my cataract operation I had two new glasses made, one for computer work and a general purpose multifocal one. But now that I can see so much more sharply, the limited field of view for the multifocals proved irritating. So: a single focus pair with an offset of 0.25 dioptres to match the 4 m distance to the TV.
All went well, but Tamara wanted to give me a 0.5 dioptre offset. Why? And at some point she thought that it would be better to have no offset.
All that proved to be irrelevant: Laura, the salesperson (or whatever her job title is) who handled details of frames and lenses, really wanted to sell me a pair. Together they would cost me $13 out of pocket. OK, at that price, let's take 2, and the second one could be a no-offset one.
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A bad day for Google Maps
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
When I go into town, I get Google Maps to plan the way for me. But today I couldn't send the route to my phone:
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Huh? Why don't I have the latest version? Why, don't I have the latest version? How do I find out? The info page shows me:
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But how do I know if an update is available? No idea. Let's ask Gemini. Ah, I'm looking in the wrong place:
To update Google Maps on your Xiaomi Android phone, you can follow these steps:
Isn't that simple and obvious? And that told me that the app was up to date. Left hand, right hand syndrome?
Things didn't stop there. When I left for Ballarat, navigation stopped after about 1 km, and I couldn't get it started again. When I was at the optometrists, I tried setting the next route, and I got
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It started working again some time later, and when I got home I found that it had recorded the entire journey during which I hadn't had any guidance:
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A bad day for shopping
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Topic: general, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
After the optometrists, I went to Coles to look for some bread. All the packages look the same! But Yvonne had warned me: there's a much smaller label on the back that tells you what kind it is. To find what you're looking for, you need to turn over every package until you find one that matches. And in my case, there was none.
Apart from that, finding your way around is difficult. There are no signs, and the only entrance to the supermarket itself was at the other end, which again I had to find by a process of elimination. Somehow Coles is not my kind of supermarket. A good thing, probably, that I had nothing to do with their self-service checkout.
Then on to the Fruit Shack, where things were even worse: they're shut for the Christmas break, and they won't be back until Monday. What a waste of time!
| Friday, 3 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 3 January 2025 |
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Fixing leaks
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Topic: general | Link here |
Woke up in the middle of the night to hear our water pump cut in and out about every 2 minutes. That sounds like a leak, but where? An obvious culprit could be one of the cats which accidentally pushed against a tap lever. We don't want to waste water, so got up and took a look. No, the cats were innocent. Nothing in the bathroom. What about outside? I have a double protection there: below the tap I have a timer, just in case I forget to turn off the tap and the hose leaks. And yes, the tap was on. Turned it off and the pump cycling stopped.
But the timer should have prevented any leaks. When I got up, out to take a look:
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Some protection that is! I only bought it some time after the last disaster.
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Chasing down the Christmas letter stragglers
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I still have 6 recipients for the Christmas message to whom I haven't been able to deliver the message. I've already established that one is too secure to talk to me, but there are a lot of other bounces, notably from outlook.com, that I need to interpret. There are so many different ones! Spent some time today chasing them up.
<Richard_Tunbridge@ghd.com.au>: host
ghd-com-au.mail.protection.outlook.com[52.101.149.2] said: 550 5.4.1
Recipient address rejected: Access denied.
With the help of Google Gemini, was able to establish:
The email error code 550 5.4.1 indicates that the email was rejected because the recipient's email address was not found on the recipient's server.
So why don't they say so?
Then there's this one:
<gincy@together.net>: host mx04.earthlink-vadesecure.net[147.135.98.120] said:
550 5.5.1 Recipient rejected - ELNK001_403 -
https://postmaster-earthlink.vadesecure.com/inbound_error_codes/#_403 (in
reply to RCPT TO command)
What does that mean? Take your pick. This page tells me
The email error code 550 5.5.1 indicates that the sending server didn't follow the protocol, and the MailPlus Server rejected the SMTP connection. This could be due to a number of reasons, including:
The sending server is considered untrustworthy
The email is likely a phishing or spam attempt
But at least the rejection message provides a link to https://postmaster-earthlink.vadesecure.com/inbound_error_codes/#_403 , which tells me
This mailbox does not exist here.
That makes sense: Yvonne tells me that Gincy died last year, though it's not a foregone conclusion that that would cause a bounce. I had two other people who have been dead for round 10 years who received my mail with no trouble. The interesting one was Jürgen Lock, who died on 8 August 2015. His DSN message said:
<nox@jelal.kn-bremen.de>: delivery via uucp: delivered via uucp service
That's doubly interesting. I think that's the last time I've seen UUCP used in earnest in this millennium.
There was also a 550 5.1.1 which seems to mean the same thing. But why this obfuscation? How can end users cope with that?
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Google Maps: How did you like...
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
I use Google Maps a lot for various reasons, including navigation. I enter corrections which are occasionally applied, though in some cases (Harrisons Road for example) they're particularly reticent. And for some reason they don't have the Exeter Guildhall, the oldest continually operating municipal building in England, but I can't find a way to submit the entry without hundreds of details (opening times, phone number) that I don't know. That doesn't stop them from asking me how I liked the Guildhall car park (which they do have on their list). This morning I got another one:
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You'd think they'd know enough to realize that this is a theatre, and that I haven't been
within 10,000 km of there in the last 30 years. But somehow there's a failure to
distinguish between different uses, even when they're done on
different computersdevices.
| Saturday, 4 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 4 January 2025 |
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Heat wave
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Topic: general, gardening, opinion | Link here |
Today was supposed to be the second day of a heat wave, a term that I had associated with multiple days over 40°. The forecast was for “only” 38°, and in fact it hardly got any hotter than that. But some of the plants suffered. This Abutilon seems to have suffered doubly. First, its leaves are drooping, something that will presumably go away when it gets cooler. But there are also some branches that are clearly dead, and I can't see why:
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The branches with the dead leaves are connected normally to the rest of the bush.
Also, one of the spikes of this Phormium (if that's what it is) has bent and is about 1.2 m above the ground, at least giving me a chance to get a better photo of it:
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Superb fairy wren
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
Seen in this panorama of the south of the house:
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That's a Superb fairywren. It's in the Buddleja in the middle of the photo. Yes, of course it's not very sharp, but I find it amazing that it's visible at all at that distance. The field of view corresponds to a 300 mm lens (600 mm “full frame”), not bad for a fisheye lens.
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Another fisheye?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
I carry the old Olympus E-PM2 with me in my handbag, along with a couple of lenses: the Leica DG Summilux 15 mm f/1.7 ASPH. and the Panasonic Lumix G 20 mm f/1.7. That's mainly because they're small and have wide apertures. I'd like something wider, but how wide? And how small? The LEICA DG Summilux 9 mm f/1.7 ASPH. might be a contender, but it's both too big and too expensive.
If I'm going to go wider, why not really wide? There are a number of circular fisheye lenses with focal lengths in the 4 mm range, and they're all relatively small and affordable. Is that an alternative for when the normal lenses aren't up to it? They have a maximum aperture of f/2.8 (corresponding to a real aperture of 1.4 mm), but that should be acceptable.
| Sunday, 5 January 2025 | Dereel | |
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Mobile phone power consumption
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
albo.lemis.com, my “new” mobile phone, has significantly higher power consumption than hirse, its predecessor. It really needs charging at least every other day, and every day if I use it for navigation.
But in the past couple of days its power consumption has increased significantly. I charge overnight, and at the end of the first day the charge level is typically round 60% to 70%. If it's lower, I charge. If not, it's typically round 25% by the second evening.
But in the last couple of days the charge level has been round 35% on the first evening. That's more than double the power consumption that I typically see. What's causing it? The battery tabs in the phone settings don't seem to help, but I suspect certain flaky apps. But what the settings page shows me includes apps that aren't running, and maybe some running apps are missing from the list. In addition I don't trust the claims it makes about individual apps, so I'll have to make my own observations. At the moment I suspect Vic Emergency, so I'll keep an eye on that.
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Fisheye lens: a good idea?
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Watching more video presentations about fisheye lenses today. It's becoming clear that my intended use is anything but typical, and my attempts to “defish” images with DxO PhotoLab were catastrophically bad, apparently a problem with DxO. Maybe I'm stretching things too far.
| Monday, 6 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 6 January 2025 |
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Defishing investigated
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
My reasons for buying a third fisheye lens are very different from the other two. I want this one because it's small, and I want to coax rectilinear images from it. And yesterday's attempts to “defish” an image from one of my candidate lenses with DxO PhotoLab was a complete failure.
So: is that the fault of the lens or DxO? Tried it with an image from my old Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 8 mm f/3.5 fisheye lens. Not a complete success, because DxO is still broken and recognizes lenses only by their focal length and maximum aperture, so despite the contradictory info in the Exif data, it claimed that it was a Panasonic lens.
But I knew that. More to the point, it did a good job of defishing. But that was a full frame fisheye. So: maybe it can't handle circular fisheyes. Found a real image:
Camera: NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D810, serial 3000311
Lens: AF-S Fisheye Nikkor 8-15mm f/3.5-4.5E ED
And how about that, DxO failed in the same manner as with the 7Artisans lens. It can't defish circular fisheye images.
OK, what else is there out there? Hugin, of course. What does it use to change projections? I've always only done it with the GUI interface, which is messy. It did a reasonable job of changing the projection, though.
What else do I have? Went through the list of programs on distress and came up with:
ACDSee
Affinity
Aiarty Image Matting
Ashampoo Pro 3
DxO
Luminar (expired)
Perfectly Clear
Photomatix
Zerene Stacker
Olympus Studio 2
OM Workspace
Which of these could defish? ACDSee? Affinity? OM Workspace? For the first two, a quick chat with Google Gemini told me that I would have to do it manually with “distortion” correction. I also found a video reference to using OM Workspace to do the job, which I haven't looked at yet, but since it's only a GUI, I see it being painful.
Further searching shows that there's very little available. Hugin seems to be the only free alternative. Found a whole lot of pages by Paul Bourke, who goes into a lot of technical detail but includes the detail that the source code “is only available on request for a small fee.” That's potentially useful, but let's find the alternatives first. Hugin seems the obvious one, since it offers a bewildering variety of projections. All I need to do is to find a non-GUI invocation.
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More noodles
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Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
A couple of months ago I bought these noodles at the Fruit Shack:
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I thought I had already bought them: they look very similar to the Shan Xi noodles that I have had in the past, but clearly it's a different province. And Google Translate comes up with an interesting claim:
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I already have “Shandong Ramen”, but they look completely different:
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Somehow the noodles from this supplier all look the same with the exception of the way they're cut. While checking this this time, found that they all have this recommendation, here made intelligible with the help of Google Translate:
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Here, too, Google Translate (upper text) is needed to understand the statement.
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WhatsApp madness
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
In the late afternoon Yvonne came to me and told me that she was having difficulty adding a contact to WhatsApp. In to take a look. It took me 20 minutes and lots of swearing: basically, you can't do it.
Well, that's not what the helpful web pages told me. Only what they told me had nothing whatsoever to do with what I saw.
Finally one page explained: FOOL! You shouldn't be using a Real Computer, you should be using a smartphone! And then you do this and that and the other thing and type everything in on a smartful glass keyboard.
Only that didn't work either: it seems that the interface has changed since then. I was able to find out what to do, but I've seldom seen anything that counter-intuitive. I can't imagine that it has been like that for very long: I'm sure I have added contacts before. But sometimes I wonder what makes “smart phone” users tick.
| Tuesday, 7 January 2025 | Dereel | |
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Still more defishing approaches
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Continued yesterday's investigation of “defishing” today. As expected, OM Workspace has little to offer. It can do automatic defishing for Olympus lenses only, but DxO PhotoLab does that too. And it can't even defish any third party full-frame fisheyes. And of course all requires the GUI.
But then I found this article, where the author (“_sem_”, living on Pitcairn, of all places) came up with a Microsoft script using Hugin's nona. That's doubly useful: first, it confirms my initial expectation that nona is the correct program, though clearly part of the Hugin GUI emulates it, and secondly it gives me a basis for my own program. The clue is that (almost) all controls to nona go via the project (.pto) file, described (from nona's point of view) here . So my next step is to use this information to build a program that will at least defish and preferably convert projections. And it's time to revive my fisheye thoughts page.
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Sick?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
I'm usually pretty healthy, especially for my age. But today in the early afternoon I had a very mild migraine aura, and after that diarrhoea. And then for the whole afternoon I felt relatively unwell, to the point that I didn't eat a normal evening meal. I did pick up after that, however, and consumed a number of nuts.
Is this worth mentioning? On its own, no. But if worse is to come, it's good to have a record.
| Wednesday, 8 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 8 January 2025 |
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Pork and dofu again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Pork and dofu for breakfast this morning. In the past I've been eating it with rice, but it seems that noodles could also be a good opportunity, especially as I have these new Shan Dong noodles. Unpacking them was interesting. There were 10 packets of slightly over 110 g each:
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Given that “the kind of having tasty noodle is to eat it as soon as it is done”, as stated on the label, it seemed better to make just one of them, in the process confirming that 8 minutes is about right. And yes, the pork and dofu tasted fine like that, though it seems that my modifications last month weren't enough. Still more sauce, less dofu, smaller dofu cubes (not reflected here):
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New Holland Honeyeaters
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Topic: animals | Link here |
We have a Kniphofia uvaria bush outside the dining room, and New Holland honeyeaters like them:
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I've taken any photos before, but these seem to be the only usable ones.
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Defishing with nona
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
As planned, played around with Hugin today to produce some project files to feed to nona. I started with this sample image from DPReview, which I can no longer link to:
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The photo was taken on 24 July 2017, so that's the directory where all the files are. I saved the project files with the names cyl.pto (cylindrical), equi.pto (equirectangular), equip.pto (equirectangular Panini), mil.pto (Miller cylindrical), pan.pto (Panini) and pang.pto (Panini general). The results (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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There's less difference there than I had expected, and none of them looks really good. Part of that is that even a rectilinear lens would have had trouble with this view. But the Panini and Panini general views look best, in particular with regard to the skyscraper on the left. Panini general has some knobs to tweak, but I'm looking for an automatic conversion. I should probably try different views.
And the project files? They're much longer than the ones that “_sem_” created, all of them exactly 54 lines long. Much of that is boilerplate comments, like this one. The only important part is the p line, first for cylindrical, then Panini, then Panini general:
# hugin project file
#hugin_ptoversion 2
p f1 w3000 h2568 v132 k0 E15.5463 R0 n"TIFF_m c:LZW r:CROP"
p f12 w3000 h2568 v132 k0 E15.5463 R0 n"TIFF_m c:LZW r:CROP"
p f19 w3000 h2568 v132 k0 E15.5463 R0 P"100 0 0" n"TIFF_m c:LZW r:CROP"
m i0
Clearly the f parameter is the projection, and w and h are the dimensions. Most of this is described in the nona documentation, though I had to guess about w ns h. What else is there to tweak there? There's the input line:
i w7360 h4912 f2 v257.744773120496 Ra0 Rb0 Rc0 Rd0 Re0 Eev15.5462784498849 Er1 Eb1 r0 p0 y-0 TrX0 TrY0 TrZ0 Tpy0 Tpp0 j0 a0 b0 c0 d0 e0 g0 t0 Va1 Vb0 Vc0 Vd0 Vx0 Vy0 Vm5 n"Nikon-fisheye-sample.jpeg"
That's at least interesting because the width and height parameters are different. I should play around with the output dimensions a bit and see what difference it makes. f2 says that the input image is a circular fisheye, and most of the parameters are of no interest for my purposes.
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albo charge
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
A few days ago I was puzzled by the power consumption of albo, my phone. It had used 65% charge in something like 14 hours (4.6% per hour discharge), and I suspected Vic Emergency.
But no, I've had the app running all the time, and the phone tells me that it's using almost nothing. And yesterday evening it was still charged at 82%, so I didn't recharge it. This morning it was 74%, and this evening 54%. That's 1.6% per hour. Why the difference?
| Thursday, 9 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 9 January 2025 |
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Bruno gone a-wandering?
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Bruno and Mona now regularly go outside in the morning, and they come back some time later, Bruno usually later than Mona. They usually stay in the garden, where the dogs can't get in and chase them, or at least close to the house. But while walking round the garden this morning I saw out of the corner of my eye what appeared to be Bruno running in the neighbours' front garden. That's concerning: it's close to the road, and potentially there could be dogs there who are less cat-friendly than ours.
But the cat's out of the bag, literally. Can we get it back in? Do we want to? Choc and Monty were both run over by cars, but on reflection that was Battunga Road in Echunga, a straight highway with 100 km/h speed limit. Stones Road also has a 100 km/h limit, but nobody in his right mind would go nearly that fast, so the danger of an accident is less. I'm still not happy.
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Garmin (mumble)
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Topic: technology, language, general, opinion | Link here |
One of the more interesting news reports recently was the case of Hadi Nazari, a hiker who got lost in the Kosciuszko National Park over Christmas, and who was found alive and well 13 days later. The news details are very hazy: how far did he go? How did he, an experienced hiker, get lost? What did he do during that time?
One thing is clear, though: with mobile communications he would have been found much more quickly. How much does it cost to install mobile coverage in national parks? How much did the search cost (300 people for 13 days, along with infrastructure)?
But there's an alternative: satellite trackers. ABC had a news article on the topic today, which I have not been able to find again. But Jane Ashhurst has something similar, a Garmin inReach® Mini 2. Is that a tracker? They're too polite to say. When Jane showed me hers, I was horrified by the prices they charge: over and above the $679 purchase price is the subscription, which comes up to another $300 to $5100 per year. Nothing in comparison with what your life is worth, at all, but it wouldn't be necessary at all if there were complete mobile phone coverage. That's very expensive, of course, but under those circumstances it would seem fair to expect the mobile phone companies to subsidize the devices. And wouldn't it be nice if Garmin could put a name or brief description to their products?
Another alternative, of course, would be a portable mobile phone tower. I think it's reasonable to assume that all hikers have a mobile phone with them, and if they know that such a tower could be installed, they would leave it on. That, too, could reduce the time to hours. I wonder if anybody is thinking about something like that.
| Friday, 10 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 10 January 2025 |
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A use for a printer
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Topic: animals, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've been exchanging mail with Fritz Jörn, who had as yet unspecified problems reading my New Year's letter. Apart from that, there were character set problems, caused by his use of Microsoft “Outlook”:
Greg, thank you \226 but please send me a readable version \205 \226 and ...
I first grumbled about this breakage in “Outlook” over 25 years ago. This claims to be a ISO 8859-1 encoding, but those characters (conveniently represented in octal) don't belong to the set.
But Fritz and I have been at odds with this sort of thing for much longer than 25 years. Fritz used to be the press contact for Tandem Computers in Germany, and he sent out press releases designed for printing—on a Qume daisywheel printer with a German wheel. And these wheels—by complete coincidence I have two on my desk at the moment—have locations for the letters äöü and ß that don't match the 7 bit encodings of the time. The results were that the text could look just plain ridiculous when displayed on a terminal.
That was well over 40 years ago, but some things haven't changed. I suspect that Fritz had difficulties printing out the PDF version of the New Year's letter, though I had specifically recommended the web version.
Yes, I use printers too, but not the way Fritz does:
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More honeyeaters
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Topic: animals, photography | Link here |
Wednesday's honeyeater photos didn't look bad, but there's a little camera shake:
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That's not surprising for a photo taken at 1/320 s and a “full frame” equivalent focal length of 900 mm. But I have better equipment. I took this photo with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark I and the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-200 mm f/3.5-6.3. The OM System OM-1 Mark II has better image stabilization, but so does the Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3, unfortunately not at the same time. Still, with that combination things look better:
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That appears to be an Eastern Spinebill, not a name I recall.
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Portable phone base stations
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Discussed the Hadi Nazari issue on IRC. Daniel O'Connor came up with a surprise: my idea of a portable mobile phone base station has already been implemented—on a drone! And where? In Bimbimbie, also in the south of New South Wales, not that far from where Nazari got lost. And the same people were involved in the rescue operation. The test implementation was done over 18 months ago. Why haven't they followed up on it?
| Saturday, 11 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 11 January 2025 |
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Reporting OM-1 Exif issues
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
I've had issues with Exif data from the OM System OM-1 Mark II almost since I got it. Clearly there's something about the format that confuses exiftool. And after looking at the forums, it seems that nobody has mentioned exactly this problem.
OK, report it. It seems to happen with some images and not others; I suspect this is related to the location of the data. But for that I need a clear statement and examples. I came up with three.
The first one (5 December) is in portrait orientation, but nothing I can do can persuade it to change from this view:
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For reasons I don't understand, it's inverted. Attempts to change the orientation information fail:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/25) ~/Photos/20241205 563 -> exifcopy orig/AC050194.ORF foo
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/AC050194.ORF -all>all -title=AC050194 foo
Warning: [minor] Writing large value for MakerNotes - foo
1 image files updated=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/25) ~/Photos/20241205 566 -> cp foo bar=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/25) ~/Photos/20241205 567 -> disorientate bar
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -Orientation=Horizontal bar
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - bar
Error: Can't write multi-segment EXIF with external pointers - bar
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/25) ~/Photos/20241205 571 -> exiftool Lost-banana-1.jpeg foo bar | grep -i orient
Orientation : Rotate 270 CW
Orientation : Rotate 270 CW
Orientation : Rotate 270 CW
It's interesting that the first exifcopy completes without reporting errors.
But while writing this up, I discovered that I also have this version:
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Unfortunately, I no longer know how I got it. The Exif data is greatly truncated (104 entries instead of 280). But clearly it can no longer serve as an example.
Then I found this example on 3 January. I had this photo and cropped it with xv:
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And I couldn't update the Exif data on the cropped version. But today I could! So that one fails as well.
Finally, there was this crop:
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And yes, that fails:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/25) ~/Photos/20250110 619 -> exifcopy PC/Birds-on-Kniphofia-15.jpeg Birds-on-Kniphofia-15-detail.jpeg
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile PC/Birds-on-Kniphofia-15.jpeg -all>all -title=Birds-on-Kniphofia-15.jpeg Birds-on-Kniphofia-15-detail.jpeg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - PC/Birds-on-Kniphofia-15.jpeg
Error: Bad ExifIFD offset for MakerNoteUnknown - Birds-on-Kniphofia-15-detail.jpeg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/25) ~/Photos/20250110 620 -> exifx Birds-on-Kniphofia-15.jpeg Birds-on-Kniphofia-15-detail*
File Birds-on-Kniphofia-15.jpeg
Date taken: Friday, 10 January 2025, 11:10:02
Exposure: 1/250 sec, f/5.6 (EV 12.9), 200/24 ISO
Camera: OM System OM-1 Mark II, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3
Focal length: 280.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 560 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 3.645 m (3.63 - 3.66 m)
Field of view: 2.7 horizontal, 3.5 vertical, 4.4 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: On, Mode 1
Size: 3888 x 5184 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Copyright: Greg Lehey
File Birds-on-Kniphofia-15-detail.jpeg
Date taken: Friday, 10 January 2025, 11:10:02
Exposure: 1/250 sec, f/5.6 (EV 12.9), 200/24 ISO
Camera: OM System OM-1 Mark II
Focal length: 280.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 0 mm)
Meter mode: Multi-segment Program AE
Size: 3881 x 2387 pixels (9.26 megapixels)
Copyright: Greg Lehey
But is that enough for a report? Clearly there are other things that I can't easily repeat.
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When is solar noon?
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Topic: technology, photography, general, opinion | Link here |
At this time of year I take my house photos round solar noon to keep the sun as high as possible and out of the image. And for that I use the NOAA Solar Calculator, which shows things like azimuth and time of solar noon:
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So today solar noon was at 13:32:39. That's when the sun is due north, right? Well, no, according to NOAA. It will be at 0.17° (10') East. It won't be due north until 13:32:51:
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Huh? Is this a bug, or am I missing something? Checked for Greenwich, where I found the same thing: solar noon at 12:07:49, azimuth 179.95°. It wasn't until 12:08:01 that the azimuth reached 180°:
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Why? Is this a bug in the NOAA calculator, or am I misunderstanding something fundamental?
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Larissa progress
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Larissa loves carrying twigs when we go walking. But today she found something better, a dead snake, fortunately without a head:
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CPU hogs?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
While checking something completely different today, discovered that iftop was using 50% of a CPU core on eureka. Why that? It should use almost nothing. It was working normally, and when I stopped and restarted it, it used almost no CPU again. A memory leak issue? Unfortunately I didn't check how long it had been running, but there's always a next time.
And something similar seems to be happening with albo, my mobile phone. Yesterday evening I discovered:
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The battery charge was down to 50%, and Mendhak GPS logger was using 80% CPU. This evening things were even more obvious:
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Down to 34%! OK, let's run without the GPS logger for a while and see how that looks.
| Sunday, 12 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 12 January 2025 |
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Reinstalling scanner
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've had my Epson “Perfection” 4990 Photo scanner for over 17 years, but it still works. I think. The computer that drove it, dischord.lemis.com, self-destructed in sparks a few months ago, and now I need to find a way to install a driver under Microsoft.
I recall that it was a pain the last time, but I forgot to write down how I worked around it. OK, I won't make that mistake again.
First, where is the driver? I thought that Microsoft would recognize when an unsupported device was on the USB bus, but I couldn't find anything today. OK, search the web for “Epson Perfection 4990 driver”. Yes, they found Epson support, and I found a Drivers and Downloads page. Select your OS. Did that. Nothing happened.
OK, web search, which brought me to something called “Epson Event Manager”. Install. Does nothing useful.
Another web search, this time using the magic word “driver”, which finally brought me to this file, which proved to be in ZIP format. Download it, try to run it.
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Dammit, Microsoft, you know what a ZIP file is. Why on earth would you think that a media player would be the best choice to “open” it? I have 7zip on the machine, but it doesn't offer it.
It didn't make things any easier when I had finger trouble and selected VLC media player as the default program. Off to ask Google Gemini, which told me that I can go to Settings/Apps/Default apps, scroll all the way to the bottom to Choose default apps by file type. OK, how do I set 7z.exe? It doesn't offer c:\Programspacefiles\7-Zip\7z.exe, and the stupid Microsoft search function doesn't help at all:
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More by chance, I discovered that the “Windows Explorer” (graphic file browser) does understand ZIP files:
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OK, next question: what do I do with these files? They look like regional alternatives. Click on PER499_EURO_WIN 30u 41.ZIP and get... another set of files!
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Then I found a “Start Here” sheet, which was even older, dated in 2004. At least it explained how to install the software: start by putting the CD in the computer, which will recognize it and Do The Right Thing. Clearly that's out of date, but it was the vital clue: this is a CD image. And one of the files in the ZIP file I chose is called Setup.exe. Run that, and it installs!
What's wrong with this picture? Everything. It would have been so easy to put two sentences on the download page to describe how to do the installation. As it was, it took me several hours (admittedly, including writing up this description).
And why did nothing happen when I selected my OS at the beginning of this ordeal? No idea. It works now.
| Monday, 13 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 13 January 2025 |
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Blocking XSS exploits
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
A week ago I received email from J K Tamim, an apparently honest cracker, who pointed out that an address like http://lemis.com/grog/diary.php/%22%3E%3Csvg%20onload=alert(document.domain)>%3E was vulnerable to XSS.
What's that? “Cross-site scripting”, thus the TLA. I had no idea that any such thing exists. Much web searching came up with many web pages telling me what to do, most of them using .htaccess files. Somehow none of them make much sense to me, and there's a definite feeling that “one size fits all” doesn't work. These search results show the pain.
But look at that URL. There are three parts:
Experiments show that the glue is crucial. Remove any character and the exploit fails. But all three characters have a thing in common: they shouldn't appear in any URL that I process. So ultimately I caught the characters, and if I find them I do something unexpected.
Is that enough? What other dangers lurk in the uncharted depths of the specifications?
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More bloody atrial fibrillation
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne's ECG device has detected atrial fibrillation again. Damn! In three weeks she has an appointment with both Rodney Reddy and Professor Peter Kistler. Hopefully things won't get worse in that time, but I have a feeling that that meeting won't be the last in the foreseeable future.
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Inverted images?
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
On Saturday I puzzled about the fact that this photo is inverted, and nothing can fix it:
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But that's on my local web server. While messing around on the external web server today, I discovered that it isn't inverted there: it's rotated by 90°!
Why? It's the same image, and as far as I can tell the Exif data is the same. I really need to understand Exif better.
| Tuesday, 14 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 14 January 2025 |
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More bloody atrial fibrillation
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne's health has not improved. Despite taking the double
dose of flecainide, as
recommended for this situation, her heart rhythms did not stabilize all day long. We
reported it to Dr
Rodney Reddy, who said that she should go to the hospital emergency service if she was
feeling really bad, otherwise “take two aspirins flecainides and call me in the
morning”. My estimate is that the interminable waits at the emergency department would make
her feel worse than she already was, but I have the feeling that there's a lot more ahead of
us.
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Cleaning the water filters
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
I don't know how long it has been since I cleaned the house water filters, but it's at least several months. Gradually the water flow has diminished, so I had to check and clean the filter:
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It's slimy, not gritty. My guess is that there might be a gram or two of dry matter there, out of a guessed 50 m³. It wouldn't clog anything. Do we really need a filter?
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Stick frying pans
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
It's been over three years since I was really happy with my acquisition of a ceramic-coated non-stick frying pan:
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I bought a number more before I discovered that the non-stick property quickly deteriorated. Today was the ultimate: fry a crumbed “chicken schnitzel”, which promptly stuck to the surface to the point that I had difficulty separating it:
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What do I do now? I'm beginning to wonder if steel pans aren't a good alternative after all.
| Wednesday, 15 January 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 15 January 2025 |
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Still more atrial fibrillation
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne's atrial fibrillation is still continuing! It doesn't seem to be getting any worse, but despite double medication, it doesn't seem to be getting any better. She spent much of the day in bed.
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Shopping again
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
As a result of Yvonne's problems, I did the shopping today. First to pick up her car, which had had a lot of work done on it: over $1,200 to pay! That may be the highest bill I have ever had for non-crash damage. Left my car there for examination; potentially there's that much work due on it too, but I don't think the car is worth that much any more.
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New glasses
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Topic: health | Link here |
While in town, called up Specsavers to see if my glasses had arrived. Yes, but only just: one pair was downstairs, one was upstairs but hadn't been unpacked yet. Under those circumstances I can hardly complain that I hadn't been informed.
Went round and picked them up. Just what I asked for, though I'm still wondering what I'll do with the second pair. The first pair was for watching TV, and in the evening it proved to be just what I wanted. They're not very strong, but they offer just the correction I wanted.
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Fun at Woolworths again
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Part of shopping was done at Woolworths. I hate the place so much that I'm prejudiced when I go in, but they lived up to my prejudices. “Salt and Pepper Squid” on offer for only $1 more than the other brand, with no obvious advantage. And I looked for the deep-frozen prawns that Yvonne had told me about last week. There was plenty of other stuff, but no prawns. Fortunately I found somebody replenishing the freezers. He told me that they were at the other end of the shop, about as far as they could be from the other similar items.
Last month I was relatively pleasantly surprised by the checkout, but clearly it was an error. Then they didn't want me to “bag” the items one by one, but now they did. And for some reason I have this feeling that processing should go from left to right, probably because that's intuitive. But for the Woolworths programmers, you need to go the other way. Yes, with a bit of analysis it's clear that they have scales there:
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An assistant, Rosie, tells me that they have always been like that. But no, she's wrong: two years ago the scales were on the right:
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As far as I can tell, this was in exactly the same place. But why should you need to second-guess their work flow? And why did they change them? Replacing the units is a significant cost, as is annoying their customers. And somehow the workstations are still too unresponsive. Here an attempt to pay for avocados:
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No response when I press OK. Maybe that's why it was brighter in colour (“bright-greened out”). But while trying to get a response from the thing, it woke up:
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Nonsense! Where's the “delete” button? There isn't one! Rosie came to delete it, taking about 30 seconds with multiple entries. Why? People steal things! Sorry, Woolworths, that's a fact of life, but you should be addressing your honest customers, not potential thieves. Rosie proudly showed me all the video surveillance that they have, including a camera on her own chest. I suppose that helps marginally, but not completely.
As it is, I discovered that one of the items that I bought doesn't appear on the statement. Why not? Not my intention. It's either a performance issue or a user interface issue. But their theft prevention cameras didn't see it.
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Food for illiterates
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Also seen at Woolworths:
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Dog food? That's a reasonable assumption if you know what a dog looks like. The inscription simply reads “Meat & Vegetables[sic] Roll”. And I'm sure that I can find other food intended for humans where a friendly animal face to advertise the product.
There is information in small print stating that it's dog food, but for that you have to rotate the roll and read carefully. Arguably it's not dangerous for humans, but in these days where things like “security” go above all else, why don't they make it clearer?
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Air-fried salt and pepper squid
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Ate the cheaper, not-on-special salt and pepper squid today. How should we prepare it? I was for the deep fryer, but in case of doubt RTFM. It's modern food, so I had the option of oven or “air fryer”. OK, 10 minutes at 200° in the “hair dryer”.
They came out unevenly browned—typical for “air fryers”—and rather pale. Maybe that's intentional: overcooking squid turns them into rubber. But no, marginally underdone. I should really try these things in a deep fryer.
| Thursday, 16 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 16 January 2025 |
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AF: Over
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne into my office this morning with the good news: a normal ECG recording. And it stayed that way, though she stopped the double-dose medication. Thank God for that!
How serious was it? There are so many open questions. Spent some time looking at videos about how to interpret an ECG, but didn't finish. About the only thing that sticks out is that the ECGs from the KardiaMobile 6L look quite different from the sample images, including those that I made for control purposes. I need to investigate further.
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Kualis, woks and new cooking experiences
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I'm gradually giving up on my “no-stick” frying pans. What's the alternative? A small
kuali wok? I have a normal size one, so tried that first.
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And I discovered that they hold their heat much better than a normal modern frying pan. I need to get used to that. It didn't help that I was trying to cook dòufu, which has its own problems: it tends to stick to the pan. I hypothesized that it might be better if I put it into hot oil, and it seems that it was:
At least it didn't stick. But this particular dòufu is particular moist, and it boiled for a long time. I need to think further.
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Taufu? Tofu? Dòufu? Dofu? Kuali? Wok? Huò?
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Topic: language, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
When using words from languages with non-Latin character sets, I try to come as close to the original as possible. No Eye-racks for me. This is a particular issue with East Asian foodstuffs. One item is dòufu. As a child I learnt that it was called taufu. But it seems that most people in the West now call it tofu, which appears to be a Japanese take on the word. Years ago in China I was told that it was dofu, and that's the spelling I have been using, but it seems that a better spelling might be dòufu.
What do I do? I suppose I should call it dòufu after all.
And then there's the kuali. That's the Malay or Indonesian word. Everywhere else it's called a wok. Should I adapt? It seems that wok is not a Chinese name, as the Indonesian Wikipedia entry states:
Wajan atau kuali (bahasa Inggris: wok) ...
In English:
A wajan or kuali (English: wok) ...
It seems that the Chinese word is huò. “Wok” is an approximation to the Cantonese word.
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Flare?
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Topic: photography | Link here |
Some of the photos I took yesterday showed signs of flare. Why? The protective filter in front of the lens was dirty. But was that all? Here's Mona against the sun:
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Yes, that's a “well don't do that then”, but I'm still surprised.
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Update your emergency details!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Notification from Aussie Broadband today: you have 8 unread messages! Maybe there were, but they went back a couple of years. Then, later, a message with incorrect emergency numbers:
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Then know that these numbers are wrong. They're the VoIP numbers that I have never used, and they're not even the ones they have on record for other contact details! And if that weren't enough, they did this six months ago, though on that occasion it seems that I forgot to note whether I was able to update the details or not.
OK, follow the link.
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Now doesn't that show Aussie from their best side? OK, log in on a Real Computer and reset there.
Oh. Password invalid. They did that last time too. Sorry, Aussie, that's not my fault. You appear to have changed it. Nothing for it: request a password change. For that, they send an SMS to my mobile phone, the one they allegedly don't have on their records. Then I get a mail with a link:
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OK, follow that.
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On the second attempt it worked. But I couldn't find anywhere in the “My Aussie” hierarchy to change the phone numbers.
Somehow this ISP is going further downhill.
| Friday, 17 January 2025 | Dereel | |
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Trump does the impossible
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
It's no secret that I'm no friend of Donald Trump. But if I can believe the news I got this morning, he has done the impossible, arranged for ceasefire in Gaza. If it's true, that's marvellous news, and he should be thoroughly commended for it.
“If it's true”. Another approach is “I'll believe it when I see it”. And that proved to be appropriate, as the Israelis came up with their usual tricks. But in the meantime, it's worth thinking about how Trump, a president-elect, could achieve so much so quickly. And that's not really that difficult: the US withholds its weapons. My guess is that his envoy also used some heavy-handed tactics, something that Bibi can't even complain about, since he's not (yet) an official representative of the USA. But either way, it's a doubly welcome move: maybe the upcoming Trump presidency won't be that bad after all.
| Saturday, 18 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 18 January 2025 |
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Frying pan choice
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
My attempts with a “wok” were interesting, but somehow not completely successful. Possibly the biggest issue, which I didn't mention at the time, is that it's difficult to scrape the contents out of the wok. With a frying pan you hold the pan by the handle in one hand and scrape (using some implement) with the other. But the wok is to heavy for that.
So: today KL Hokkien Mee in a normal steel frying pan. That worked well; I can't see any disadvantage compared to a wok. It's light enough that I can scrape the food out, and though there was some sticking, it was no worse and possibly better than with my worn-out “non-stick” pans.
So: stick stay with the steel pans? I'll try for a while. One thing is that I
can't put them in the dishwasher.
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Clematis recovery
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
The Clematis “Edo Murasaki” continues to recover from the damage done by Nick Macdonald or his mate. Now the other stem has a flower, and the first is over a metre long, with another bud coming:
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| Sunday, 19 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 19 January 2025 |
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More clogged filters
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Topic: general | Link here |
On Tuesday I cleaned out the mess in the house water filter. I've left it in the water I used to wash it off to see what happens. It's settling very slowly:
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But the water flow has diminished again, and I went back to check the filter. It's clogged again, already!
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What caused that? Have the tanks maybe been accumulating crud until it reaches the outlet? Do I need somebody to come and clean the tanks? If so, hopefully it can wait until we have more rainfall.
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Resin!
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Yvonne in with some of the hair in Dana's tail:
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That's resin (apparently the technical term is kino) from one of the trees in the paddock. What an amazing quantity!
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Let my people go
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
Today was the day set for the Three-phase Israel–Hamas war ceasefire proposal. At 6:30 UTC (17:30 here), fighting was to stop and the first prisoners exchanged: 3 Israeli hostages for 90 Palestinian prisoners. If that sounds uneven, it's in the same order of magnitude as the ratio of the number of people killed by Hamas on 7 October 2023 to the number of people killed by Israel Defense Forces since then.
But that's not the way things seemed to unfold. At 17:30 I watched live TV just to hear that Bibi had delayed the ceasefire on a technicality, and the bombing continued.
Bloody Bibi! As Yvonne said, may he rot in hell. Can't he abide by any agreement? What was the technicality? He has been coming up with technicalities for months while killing innocent people in Gaza. This time they wanted the names of the hostages to be released.
Hamas came up with the names, and the ceasefire started at 9:15 UTC, 2¾ hours late. By that time, Israel had killed another 26 people, more than 2% of the total casualties of 7 October 2023.
So what was the issue? Hamas only gave the names of the three hostages released today. They were to be released: why did Israel insist on their names ahead of time? And why did Hamas not comply immediately? My guess is that the Hamas representatives genuinely didn't know the names, and Israel wanted to check that the people being released were really the hostages mentioned. But my gut reaction was that Israel are the bad guys—Yet Another Delay—and Hamas are the good guys. That's far from the truth, of course, but Israel are really fostering antisemitism with their actions.
And the result? People are no longer being bombed. Food is entering Gaza. What a relief! But the international press focuses on three Israeli women who are in apparently good health. That's such a small part of the catastrophe. And tomorrow Donald Trump will be the president of the USA, with a history of strong support of Israel. This may be the only good thing that he has facilitated—not to stop the suffering of 2 million people, but to save 33 hostages, only 1.3% as many as they killed during the delay implementing the ceasefire. Somehow the focus is wrong.
| Monday, 20 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 20 January 2025 |
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Another fallen tree
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Topic: general, gardening | Link here |
Kiyoko Harris, an acquaintance of Yvonne, along today to try out some saddles. Getting here wasn't easy:
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Another fallen tree in Grassy Gully Road, less than a year since the last one, and this time the road was completely impassable. A good thing that we have the alternative via Harrisons Road, or we would have been cut off from the world.
I had half expected something like that; last time we went down there with the dogs, I heard a branch creaking. But that was about 100 m from where this one went down. I wonder when we'll have the third incident.
Another report to the council, and presumably it was tidied up.
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Thai basil issues
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Topic: gardening, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Five weeks ago I planted some Thai basil seeds. They didn't do very well: only two have germinated!
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While rummaging through other stuff, I found some old seeds:
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Oh. I no longer have the “new” seeds to compare, but they were much smaller. Were they even Thai basil? Currently the two seedlings look like this:
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I suppose I should try some new ones, and if these seedlings ever grow, I can find out what they are.
| Tuesday, 21 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 21 January 2025 |
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Larissa catches a kangaroo
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Larissa is always good at finding bones and things on the side of the road, but today she excelled herself:
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As far as I can tell, it's a whole back leg and part of the spine:
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What part of the spine? The vertebrae seem to be fused together.
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More seed planting
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Clearly my Thai basil is not progressing well. Time to plant the other seeds. But where are they? I suspect that Mona has stolen them—for some reason she loves small plastic bags. Never mind, these are old and they're cheap, so I ordered some more on eBay.
Also planted some of the remaining epazote seeds that I first planted six years ago. Here, too, the question arises of their age, but unlike Thai basil I can't find any seeds any more.
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Time for eBay reform
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Buying things on eBay is becoming increasingly frustrating. People are abusing the system, making it more difficult to find what I'm looking for. Over the past few days I've seen a particular number of practices that eBay should prohibit, in their own interest:
The real issue is that eBay doesn't have any complaints process, nor a way to upvote or downvote listings. There's feedback, but that's for the item and the order process, not the listing, and it requires people to buy something first. It's really in eBay's interest to ensure that the listings are in good faith.
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Glacial hydra progress
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I tried to print something out on hydra yesterday. “lpr: error: no default destination". What, haven't I configured printing yet? I've had the computer for 15 months already!
Some searching. /etc/printcap is the configuration file. It's identical with the one on eureka, which works. Missing spool directory? It should be /var/spool/output/brother. No,that's there too.
What is the problem? A web search pointed me at CUPS. Oh. I've seen this before:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~ 2664 -> wh lpr
6174412 -r-sr-sr-x 1 root wheel 14856 23 Juni 2024 /usr/local/bin/lpr
5296379 -r-sr-sr-x 1 root daemon 40056 28 Juli 09:03 /usr/bin/lpr
CUPS uses the same program names as the Berkeley printing system used in FreeBSD. I have chosen to put /usr/local/bin ahead of /usr/bin in my path, and there are good reasons to do so, so CUPS gets preference.
But why install CUPS if I don't want to use it? Many ports require it as a dependency.
And why don't I want CUPS? It's so long ago that I have forgotten, but a dig down
memory lane in my diary shows that I tried it 21 years ago and was greatly annoyed. Possibly it has improved since, but regarding
Berkeley lpr, “if it ain't broke, don't fix it”.
| Wednesday, 22 January 2025 | Dereel | Images for 22 January 2025 |
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Garden flowers in mid-summer
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
It's a month after the solstice, time for the monthly garden photos. There's not much to see, but this one was a shock:
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That's my Grevillea robusta last month and this month. After years it had finally started growing—and then the horses ate most of the foliage! Hopefully it will recover.
The Clematis “Edo Murasaki” that Nick Macdonald and mate mutilated seems to be improving all the time:
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The Strelitziae reginae aren't exactly flourishing, but they're looking happier than they have done in the past:
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And the Solanum laxum that died (drowned?) along the fence in front of the water tanks has a sole survivor:
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I wonder if I can transplant it to somewhere that it would like.
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More weeding
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Jesse Walsh along today to do some weeding. It's necessary, but somehow it didn't progress the way I had hoped.
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Where's Yvonne?
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne off into town for shopping, as every Wednesday. And once again Google Maps didn't want to show me her location. We've seen this before, and resetting is relatively simple, so I called her up and asked her to re-enable “accurate reporting”.
But this time it didn't work. Bloody Google Maps! OK, nothing for it, wait for her to come back home.
Later I saw on my phone that she had tried to call me. But I had my phone on “quiet” because of other things it annoys me with. Bad Groggy. Call her up. No response. Not no answer, not even a ring tone. How can that happen?
Tried again several times at various intervals. By 16:00 I was getting worried: she's normally home by 15:00 or 15:30. What if she had had a heart attack or an accident, and they had taken her to hospital and turned off her phone? No, they have enough information to contact me. But even so, what would I do? My car has been at the repair shop for the past week, Yvonne had the other car, so I don't have any transport. Rang up Chris Bahlo, who wasn't at home but confirmed that Yvonne hadn't been past her way (her last stop before coming home).
Finally, at 16:27, I reached her. She still hadn't been to Chris, but she was on her way home after a particularly gruelling shopping day. And she had been trying multiple times to call me, but she also got no response from the network, exactly the problem I had had trying to contact her.
Somehow this is a situation that couldn't have happened 30 years ago. No online tracking of her location, no mobile phones. Yes, I would have been concerned anyway, but somehow not as much as when I have technical support that let me down.
And what was wrong with her phone? Somehow it had ganged up with Google Maps and decided not to share her location with me any more. When asked, I was given the choice of sharing location for one hour or until I revoke it. Is this something wrong with the phone or with Google? If the former, it comes on top of the issues I have had with the KardiaMobile 6L. Time for yet another phone? They don't last long.
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Processing the analemmas
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
It's been well over 5 years since I started taking photos intended to stitch an analemma, and I must have taken about 1000 pairs in that time, every day when the sun was shining at mean solar noon. But I haven't processed them. Today was the day to start, during which I discovered that I had a surprising number of out-of-focus images. And somehow the sheer number of photos is an issue. I didn't even manage to align 12 of them. This could be (even) more difficult than I expected.
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