|
| Greg's diary |
| July 2025 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Tuesday, 1 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 1 July 2025 |
| Top of page | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
A new dishwasher, day 7
|
Topic: general | Link here |
As promised, Brett Younger showed up today to install the new dishwasher, just as we were about to prepare breakfast. Why didn't he tell me when he was coming, as arranged? Oh, he did: he sent me an SMS ¾ hour before.
Should only take about 10 minutes, right? Wrong. It took him nearly an hour. Admittedly he put it in more tidily than I would have done, but I was still surprised.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And when it was done, the thing wouldn't work. After some concerns about DOA, it seems that this particular model takes a long time to wake up the first time it is used. After that, all seems to be normal.
First time use was easy enough, though I still need to work out how to load the thing. To my surprise, the “Auto” setting took over 3 hours, much longer than the other machines. And in passing I discovered that not only does the machine have a setting 0 for water hardness, it was set that way when I got it. Other machines have always insisted that the water has some residual hardness, which is not the case with rain water.
And how does “Extra Dry” work? Not worse than the other machines, but also not completely dry. The Bosch is better than the Whirlpool, and this seems better than the Bosch, but in each case glasses and bowls in the top shelf retain water and need to be dried with a tea towel, so there seems to be little advantage in more drying.
|
Modern security
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Security is important of course, especially on the Internet where so few people really understand what's going on. But current methods are just plain ridiculous. I hate CAPTCHAs with a vengeance, and I suspect that my refusal to fill one out confused The Good Guys' computer system, and maybe that's why I haven't received a single email from them during the entire fiasco.
But is it necessary? Yesterday I went in to the Ballarat shop and had to pick up an invoice that they could more easily have sent to me by email. And the only identification they wanted was a phone number. Anybody could have picked it up.
Somewhere in between is the question of multi-factor authentication, typically a message sent to your mobile phone. That can work, though it's irritating. But what if you have initiated the transaction from the same phone? I've seen a couple of cases like that, and under those circumstances it has no use whatsoever. I wonder what security will be like in 10 years' time.
|
Living with SMS
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Another pain is SMS. It should no longer exist. It grew up in the early days of digital phones, where phones and Internet had nothing to do with each other, and to enter text you had to use the numeric (only) keypad with multiple presses per letter. Now every phone has Internet standard email, but not only do people not use it, there seems to be an insurmountable barrier between the two.
Of course, neither SMS nor email are appropriate when you want to contact somebody quickly and be sure that they get the message. There phone calls are more appropriate, as would have been this morning when Brett contacted me. But for some reason (maybe difficulty in using the app) voice calls seem to be decreasing. I just can't understand how anybody can go through the pain of a glass keyboard for a quick message.
In passing, The Good Guys' sent their cancellation message by SMS, and it took me a day to find it. If I hadn't found it today, things would have been very different: instead of $733, they are asking $999, fully $266 or 36% more than I paid. That would certainly have been worth a breach of contract complaint.
|
Glorious photos
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
How do you restore old photos? Both Affinity and ACDSee offer functionality to do it. But there are no tutorials to back it up, and my attempts have been less than successful.
Ask Google Gemini? Yes, what you need is PhotoGlory.
Oh. I had never heard of it. Out to take a look, and yes, it seems to offer just what I want. Download the trial version, which at least allowed me to rotate images and change their exposure. But to use the features for which it's intended, I have to buy the product!
OK, it's only (US) $39.20 for a lifetime license for the PRO version. I can do that. But I ended up paying $7.45 more: they had decided that I was in Germany (why? Do they have outdated geolocation software?) and charged me 19% EU GST. Sent their support line a message, but got no response.
Trying it out was almost intuitive, and with little effort I was able to restore some old photos. Here a couple taken in late 1957:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
On the whole, things look a whole lot better, but there are plenty of artefacts that appear to have been inserted where it couldn't work out what to do, like on my left foot here:
|
|
|||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
And the aspect ratio seems to change. Maybe there's a way round that. After all, I spent very little effort to get these results. It also offers other things, like colouring old photos, and that could be interesting.
| Wednesday, 2 July 2025 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Catchup day
|
Topic: general | Link here |
We have a dishwasher! No day 8.
Well, I still need to learn how to use it, in particular how to stack glasses without wasting lots of space, something that no dishwasher does well. But that's for another day. Today I caught up with much of the stuff that I have let lie.
|
Preparing for birding outing
|
Topic: general, animals, photography, health, opinion | Link here |
Today I spent far too much time preparing for my planned outing to the Western Treatment Plant, one of the best places in the southern hemisphere to see wild birds. It's arranged by OM System, I suspect to help sell their telephoto lenses, but how do I prepare? Should I accept the fact and wear boots, the first time in decades?
It proved to be more difficult than I thought. It took me nearly 10 minutes to put on two socks and one boot. It brings home how old and stiff I have become. I will be able to do it tomorrow if I must, but I should first check if I need to. And why has it taken me so long to prepare? I'm taking 4 cameras, 6 lenses, 5 spare batteries and a monopod. What else?
| Thursday, 3 July 2025 | Dereel → Lara → Geelong → Dereel | Images for 3 July 2025 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
OM System birding meeting
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Up in the middle of the night (well, 6:00) this morning to participate in OM System's bird photography meeting at the Western Treatment Plant near Lara. On the way, things didn't look promising, lots of rain and drizzle. But round 7:30 things cleared up and I saw one of the prettiest sunrises in a long time. It took me a while to decide to stop and take a photo, by which time it had diminished significantly:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
But I wasn't expecting the sun to rise exactly on the freeway in front of me:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Got there at 7:55, wondering if anybody else would be there. But they all were, all ten of them including Aaron Harivel, the OM System representative who arranged the event. Discovered a number of things:
I'm still sorting out the nearly 400 photos that I took today. First impressions: surprisingly few useless shots (only about 5%), but clearly nearly all that will need cropping, something that will keep me busy. Here a couple that won't:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
The last was taken with the 150-400/4.5 shown here, along with the inbuilt 1.25× teleconverter:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
That's at 500 mm, the equivalent of a 1000 mm “full frame” lens, hand held. But somehow I don't see the real advantage over my Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3, and Aaron agreed that you'd really need a good reason for it.
I'll need to do something with photos like this, but I'm not sure what yet:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
And then there's this bird, the only one of its kind.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
That's surprising considering that I was less than 8 km from the end of runway 36 of Avalon Airport, and the plane must have been a couple of kilometres closer. But clearly it wasn't a commercial plane. I guessed a Cessna 172 or maybe 152 (the model in which I trained decades ago). And how about that, the resolution was good enough that I could read the registration, VH-NHL
|
|
||||||||||
And Flight Radar 24 tells me that yes, it's a Cessna 172, it belongs to RMIT, and it lives at Avalon Airport. So maybe it had really just taken off from runway 36. It's just surprising that we didn't see any other planes. And the image quality is surprisingly good for a hand-held 6000 mm “full frame” equivalent focal length.
|
Shopping in Geelong
|
Topic: food and drink | Link here |
After the birding meeting, off to Geelong to look for Chinese and Malaysian foodstuffs that I couldn't find in Ballarat. First to a place that I had marked with the hope of getting a good lunch, but it seems that I marked the wrong place on the map, and ended up at Fresh Land Food, 153 - 161 Shannon Ave in Manifold Heights:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
That was interesting. They have an amazing amount of stuff in a very small area, including more Japanese and Korean food than I have seen elsewhere, such as these Udon and Ramen noodles:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Interestingly, the Japanese text on both sides reads “Chinese noodles”:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
They also had a number of “instant noodle” dishes with the difference that they were made in Malaysia, despite the Vietnamese and Thai claims:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
They will be interesting to try, if only to get a feeling for what Malaysian people consider edible.
On then to the Gourmet Asian Grocery in Belmont for my usual Tean's Gourmet spice pastes and Chung Hing dòufu, drawing a blank for the latter: it seems that nobody likes them any more, or maybe they have gone broke. A pity either way.
|
Understanding Microsoft networking
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
I had 380 photos to process today. DxO PhotoLab is slow at the best of times, but today it took several minutes to even display the initial screen. Looking at local network traffic, I saw a lot of
15:46:03.538507 IP eureka.lemis.com.microsoft-ds > distress.lemis.com.52560: Flags [.], seq 366736144:366737604, ack 63457, win 12575, length 1460SMB-over-TCP packet:(raw data or continuation?)
15:46:03.538625 IP distress.lemis.com.52560 > eureka.lemis.com.microsoft-ds: Flags [.], ack 366346324, win 65534, length 0
15:46:03.538631 IP bad-len 0
15:46:03.538748 IP distress.lemis.com.52560 > eureka.lemis.com.microsoft-ds: Flags [.], ack 366355084, win 65534, length 0
15:46:03.538753 IP bad-len 0
What does that mean? ACK length 0? That makes no sense, and tcpdump said so. But somehow things moved on: the ACK value incremented in steps of 8760 bytes (why?), and eventually things worked out. But why? Is this a bug in Microsoft, DxO, Samba or tcpdump? In any case, it's no longer as obvious that DxO alone is to blame for the glacial performance.
And since I had taken many photos at 30°/800 ISO, I ran the whole thing with “DeepPrime”, taking a total of 7 hours, 34 seconds.
|
Another defective kitchen appliance?
|
Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
Pizza for dinner tonight. That requires something like 20 minutes pre-heating the oven to reach the 250° that it can barely achieve. But today, after 30 minutes, it was still heating FHU (“fast heat up”), and it was having difficulty getting any further.
Has an element burnt out? It wouldn't be the first time. But how do I find out without having somebody come out here, dismantle it and say “It's broke. It'll cost $500, but it's not worth it. Today's bill comes to $100”.
So yet another investigation of new kitchen appliances. Yes, it's 10 years old and yes, I hate it, but will I like a newer one any better?
| Friday, 4 July 2025 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More photo insights
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
I hadn't planned to do much photo stuff today, since there's clearly a lot to do to process yesterday's photos. But one was easy, the Skyhawk:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
That's in dire need of cropping. How hard can it be? With various excursions, it took me several hours. The simple thing is just to crop it:
|
|
||||||||||
But that's messy, with lots of artefacts. How about cropping it in DxO PhotoLab and then put it through “Perfectly Clear“?
|
|
||||||||||
That's much better, but too dark. In fact, the output of DxO looks the best:
|
|
|
||||||||||
And as I said yesterday, that's really quite impressive for a hand-held image corresponding to 6120 mm “full frame” focal length.
But why should that take much time? The Exif data. I still couldn't get ExifTool to play nice with the OM System OM-1 Mark II. OK, time to post a question on the ExifTool forum. Prepare an example:
Oh. I've been trying to write to the JPEG output of DxO PhotoLab. That's not ideal for blaming ExifTool. Try again with the raw image.
Oh. The problem doesn't occur with the raw image! What happens if I try to copy the Exif from raw to the JPEG image?
That works, but it causes more non-reproducible problems. But it seems that I can update the Exif data on the raw file and then copy it. I still don't understand what's going on, and why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but I can live with it unless it comes back to bite me again. A couple of scripts to change, and I have worked around the issue.
|
Oven insights
|
Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
So, a new oven? Off to take a look. I wasn't expecting it to be easy, and I wasn't disappointed. Appliances Online didn't want to know about 90 cm ovens! Well, maybe it does, but it gave me no way to select them.
Back to The Good Guys. They have 90 cm ovens ranging in price from $1399 to $4190, still considerably cheaper than the $11,500 that Appliances Online want for a 60 cm oven.
What do I get for that money? Hard to say. Somehow the comparison shows things that are uninteresting to me, and I can't find out what I want to know. How much power do they use? For the (maximum) four that I “compared”, they only showed 2. The Omega OBO9011AM, the cheapest they offer, also uses the most power, an advantage for an oven. And how hot do they get? Again only two ovens divulge that information. 240° for the Haier HWO90S10EX2, 250° for the Omega. And I was hoping for a higher temperature.
Somehow this is all too much pain. Back to our current oven to try to guess which (if any) element is burnt out. It doesn't seem to be the rear (fan) element, nor the bottom element. I need to let it cool down between each attempt, and I didn't get any further. But potentially I had just forgotten how long it takes for the oven to heat to 250°. More investigation needed.
|
LG ThinQ?
|
Topic: technology, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Our new LG XD5B14PS dishwasher comes with advertising for LG ThinQ.
What's that? Buzzwords galore, a way to increase the pain of your smart phone by communicating with the dishwasher? About the only thing I could establish is that you can select custom wash cycles, though it's not clear what. Downloaded the app from the toyshop and started it. Please log in! Create an account! Dammit, LG, will I need an account to use your appliances next? And why do you subject me to the pain of entering text on a mobile phone?
Ah, you can sign up with a Real Computer too. Maybe. And it wants to know my date of birth! Dammit, what are you playing at? Of course there's no way for it to know, which is good, because I can't even enter it (though there's a field for entering it in the wrong format, today being 7/4/2025). I have to select from a toy calendar.
For some reason (masochism?) I tried it. It hung. Tried again. It hung. Tried again with a different browser. It hung. Tried to send mail to support. What kind of device do you have? What's wrong with it? No option to complain about their appalling web site. Selected some random stuff and sent off the real report in the text attachment (at least they allow that). No reply.
LG, what are you playing at? Are you Yet Another company who just wants to annoy their customers?
| Saturday, 5 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 5 July 2025 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day |
|
OM-1 problems?
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
One of the nice things about the OM System OM-1 Mark II is that I can charge the battery from USB. After downloading files from the camera, I simply turn it off and leave it to charge. As a result, I have never used the two spare batteries that I bought along with the camera.
But today I came into my office to find the “battery empty” indicator flashing. It was still connected to the USB cable. Disconnect. No change. Turn on and off. No change. Finally I got it to stop by removing and replacing the battery, after which it showed 100% charge.
What happened? It seemed that hydra didn't want to let go. Looking at the system log, I had:
Jul 4 17:05:19 hydra kernel: (da3:umass-sim1:1:0:1): fatal error, failed to attach to device
Jul 4 17:05:19 hydra kernel: da3 at umass-sim1 bus 1 scbus9 target 0 lun 1
Jul 4 17:05:19 hydra kernel: da3: <OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII 1.00> s/n BJRA15001 detached
Jul 4 17:05:19 hydra kernel: (da3:umass-sim1:1:0:1): Periph destroyed
Jul 5 08:02:54 hydra kernel: ugen0.3: <OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII> at usbus0 (disconnected)
Jul 5 08:02:54 hydra kernel: umass1: at uhub2, port 12, addr 90 (disconnected)
Jul 5 08:02:54 hydra kernel: umass1: detached
So yesterday evening, when I was finished, the system noted the event and removed the “disk” device /dev/da3. But it didn't see a disconnect until this morning. Why? I'll have to keep my eye on it.
|
Still more ExifTool pain
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Today I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to document my success in copying Exif data to images from my OM System OM-1 Mark II, with little success. Every time I think I have got a workaround, I find they don't work or are not repeatable. Today I tried geotagging:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 872 -> exifx orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
File orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Date taken: Thursday, 3 July 2025, 11:23:58
Exposure: 1/1600 sec, f/6.3 (EV 16.0), 800/30 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1
Lens: LEICA DG 100-400mm f/4.0-6.3
Focal length: 400.0 mm
Meter mode: Multi-segment Aperture-priority AE
Comp: +1.3 EV
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 873 -> geotag orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
GPSLOG /src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo/20250703.gpx
exiftool -geotag=/src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo/20250703.gpx orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
1 image files updated
All well and good. But then I copied the Exif data from the raw file to correct the time (the camera was running 80 s too fast):
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 875 -> exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/A7032091.ORF '-all>all' orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] Writing large value for MakerNotes - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
1 image files updated=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 876 -> geotag orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
GPSLOG /src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo/20250703.gpx
exiftool -geotag=/src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo/20250703.gpx orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Error: Can't write multi-segment EXIF with external pointers - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors
Why? It already had that data. But ExifTool is trying to update the existing Exif data in A7032091_DxO.jpg. What happens if I remove it all and just copy it? First, how do I remove the Exif data? Google Gemini to my aid again:
To remove all EXIF data:exiftool -all= your_photo.jpg
OK, I can do that:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 861 -> exiftool -all= orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
1 image files updated=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 862 -> exifx orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
File orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 863 -> exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/A7032091.ORF '-all>all' orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] Writing large value for MakerNotes - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
1 image files updated=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 864 -> exifx orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
File orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Date taken: Thursday, 3 July 2025, 11:22:36
Location: 38.00496 S, 144.58989 E
Exposure: 1/1600 sec, f/6.3 (EV 16.0), 800/30 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: 400.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 800 mm)
Focus: MF; C-AF, MF, Imager AF 127.39 m (118.50 - 137.72 m)
Field of view: 2.5 horizontal, 1.9 vertical, 3.1 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Aperture-priority AE
Stabilization: On, Mode 1
Comp: +1.3 EV
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250703 865 -> exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/A7032091.ORF '-all>all' orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg
1 image files updated
But it's not repeatable. I think there's a secondary effect in play, maybe related to the location of the data in the image file. It would be really nice to find a solution. Does it have something to do with DxO PhotoLab, maybe? After all, it seems possible to update the raw image.
|
Hat trick
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
As if all that wasn't enough, while processing my house photos I got this message on stopping Hugin:
Crash Annotation GraphicsCriticalError: |[0][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=314.609) |[1][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=512.092) |[2][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=1200) |[3][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=1561.49) |[4][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=2263.19) |[5][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=81123.4) |[6][GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process (t=81163.4) [GFX1-]: Detect DeviceReset DeviceResetReason::NVIDIA_VIDEO DeviceResetDetectPlace::WR_POST_UPDATE in Parent process
What a mess! Is that an indication of problems with the display hardware, or just a Heisenbug?
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
| Top of page | Previous month | Greg's home page | Today's diary entry | Greg's photos | Copyright information |
