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| Greg's diary |
| July 2025 |
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| Tuesday, 1 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 1 July 2025 |
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A new dishwasher, day 7
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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.
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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.
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Modern security
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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.
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Living with SMS
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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.
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Glorious photos
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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:
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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:
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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 | |
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Catchup day
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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.
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Preparing for birding outing
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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 |
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OM System birding meeting
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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:
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But I wasn't expecting the sun to rise exactly on the freeway in front of me:
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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:
While talking to Aaron, showed him my OM System OM-1 Mark II with the white spot in the “live view” viewfinder. He tried—again—to remap pixels, and of course it failed again. So, he says, send it in for servicing. I'm not looking forward to discussing the matter with CCCWarehouse, but having his view will (hopefully) make things easier.
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:
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The last was taken with the 150-400/4.5 shown here, along with the inbuilt 1.25× teleconverter:
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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:
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And then there's this bird, the only one of its kind.
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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
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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.
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Shopping in Geelong
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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:
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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:
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Interestingly, the Japanese text on both sides reads “Chinese noodles” (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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They also had a number of “instant noodle” dishes with the difference that they were made in Malaysia, despite the Vietnamese and Thai claims:
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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.
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Understanding Microsoft networking
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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.
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Another defective kitchen appliance?
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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 | |
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More photo insights
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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:
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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:
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But that's messy, with lots of artefacts. How about cropping it in DxO PhotoLab and then put it through “Perfectly Clear“?
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That's much better, but too dark. In fact, the output of DxO looks the best:
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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.
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Oven insights
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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.
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LG ThinQ?
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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 |
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OM-1 problems?
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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.
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Still more ExifTool pain
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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.
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Hat trick
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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?
| Sunday, 6 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 6 July 2025 |
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Breakfast guests
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Topic: food and drink, general, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
Linda and Graeme Swift along this morning for breakfast. They have bought a new “smart” TV, with which they are well pleased. It's interesting to hear the opinions of normal users. They agree that the thing is far too complicated, and that it would be nice to single step images. But what choice do they have?
They also tell me that they have free access to Prime Video. That sounded unlikely, and later I tried it out on hires, my “smart” TV. No access. Do they maybe have an Amazon Prime account? But looking at what was on offer, I didn't find anything to interest me further.
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A new rug
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
One of the rugs in our lounge room is looking the worse for wear:
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Yvonne has been looking for a replacement for some time. They're not cheap. She tells me they sell for upwards of $800. But she has seen a number of second-hand rugs round the $100 mark.
We have the money. Why should we buy a second-hand rug? The obvious reason is because it's cheaper, and if it does the job, why pay more? Today she found one in Canadian, 2×2.9 m in size, for $120. Off to take a look. Yes, it didn't look bad, and we got it for $100. Back home with it, arousing the interest of the dogs:
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And what is it? A Turkish Kashgar, not a name greatly associated with rugs. The ones I have seen look very different.
It wasn't until later that I realized how well Bruno blends in:
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That's not all good. At one point I trod on him because he had blended in so well.
| Monday, 7 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 7 July 2025 |
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Tidying up
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Topic: general | Link here |
Once again I'm behind on daily things. My mail queue, an indication of my overload, is up to over 80 messages. Spent some time today trying to tidy things up, and managed to get my mail queue down to 13. Some of those are particularly important ones that I have let drag for months.
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A new lagoon
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Yvonne's machine, lagoon.lemis.com, is seriously down-rev:
=== grog@lagoon (/dev/pts/9) ~ 2 -> uname -a
FreeBSD lagoon.lemis.com 12.1-STABLE FreeBSD 12.1-STABLE r355358 GENERIC amd64=== grog@lagoon (/dev/pts/9) ~ 3 -> l /boot/kernel/kernel
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 31,364,536 12 Dec 2020 /boot/kernel/kernel
I had started to upgrade it over two years ago, but somehow didn't finish. But now I have a new machine, the one I bought for running Microsoft Windows 11 a few months back, but which proved to be only marginally faster than distress. So I ordered a new SSD, found I had the wrong kind, returned it and finally got a functional one.
What a pain these Lenovo motherboards are! I've already been through all that when I got it, but I had to go through it all over again today.
Finally it was in place, and I was able to establish that the “BIOS” setup doesn't report it, at least not in any form that I can see. But FreeBSD finds it and was able to install on it. It also enabled me to check the speed of the “disk”. It's no speed demon: dd reported read speeds round 700 MB/s. To be checked again when the system is up and running.
Now to configure the beast. But where are my notes? They're not in my HOWTO page. Did a bit of obvious configuration to bring it into my network, but it looks like I'm in for another search for the notes that I know I made.
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Another gochujang-based chili sauce
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Seen in the New York Times today: a recipe for Gochujang Burger With Spicy Slaw. “Slaw" indeed! But the Gochujang proved to be a sauce very similar to my chili sauce.
How do I compare them? With difficulty. The ingredient table mixes the sauce with the “Burger”. Here's my best attempt to extract the sauce ingredients and compare with mine (first two columns):
| Ingredient | my quantity | NYT quantity | ||
| Gochujang | 100 g | 3 Tsp | ||
| vinegar | 15 g | 3 Tsp | ||
| sugar | 20 g | 1 Tsp | ||
| garlic | 25 g | 4 cloves | ||
| olive oil | 3 Tsp | |||
| sesame oil, toasted | 1 Tsp | |||
How does that compare? The olive oil looks wrong to me. The sesame oil is one of the ingredients in bibimjang that I deliberately omitted from the recipe when I derived this one.
And the quantities? Who can tell? How much does a clove of garlic weigh? I've established that it could be between 1.2 and 32 g. An average might be 7.5 g. And even the relatively straightforward ratios of 1 or 3 tablespoons say nothing about the weights. So if I do try it, I'll probably guess. Certainly the 1:1 ratio of gochujang and vinegar seems very acid, and surprisingly for a US recipe the sugar might be on the low side.
| Tuesday, 8 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 8 July 2025 |
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Still more system installation
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Where did I put those notes that I made a while back the last time that I tried to formalize system installation? Spent some time searching my file systems and my diary, but I drew a blank. Gradually I had a recollection of a series of configuration files and Makefiles, but I couldn't find anything to match. Mañana.
I did, however, build a new world, and after that tried more speed tests on the SSD:
=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/0) /usr/src 28 -> dd if=/dev/nda0 of=/dev/null count=10000 bs=128k
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
1310720000 bytes transferred in 1.487479 secs (881168964 bytes/sec)=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/0) /usr/src 29 -> dd if=/dev/nda0 of=/dev/null count=10000 bs=128k iseek=10000
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
1310720000 bytes transferred in 1.143293 secs (1146443065 bytes/sec)
The speed difference was repeatable. Why should it matter where you read from?
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Buying wine on the web
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Topic: food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
Mclaren Vale Cellars have a special Sauvignon Blanc at the moment, with a whopping 43% discount for regular customers.
OK, check it out. How do I log in? There's a wobbling button saying LOGIN TO SAVE, but clicking on it does nothing interesting. But checking “My account” shows my previous orders, so clearly I'm already logged in. But the price stubbornly refuses to change.
Tried all sorts of things, to no avail. Finally clicked on “Chat”. And how about that, I got a response from a Real Person, whose name turns out to be Tom (Curtis? He didn't say). And he was interested enough to call me up and discuss the matter in some detail. We came across a whole lot of issues in the course of 25 minutes trying things out, and I nearly managed to get the correct price in my “cart”. But the price ($96) was under the magic $100 for free freight, so I added a bottle of another wine, and bang! the price for the first went back to $168 again!
What went wrong? I tried on firefox on hydra.lemis.com, Chromium on hydra.lemis.com and firefox on distress.lemis.com (Microsoft). The behaviour was different on Microsoft. I think I managed to log in, but that was the only difference.
In the end we gave up. Tom sent me an invoice for the correct price and all was well. But clearly they have a number of things to discuss with their web programmers.
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Spot that cat
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
Seen this evening:
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There's Bruno hiding again. Where? Hard to see, but with some photo processing he's there:
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Hopefully he won't get hurt.
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Health care by script writers
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Topic: health, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
One of the more improbable German TV series is Bettys Diagnose, about the nurses in a clinic in Aachen.
This evening we watched episode 11/2, „Außer Kontrolle“. A person arrived with methanol poisoning. How could they tell? She was very drunk and saw double. Only those are not the symptoms: yes, methanol is very dangerous for the eyesight, but Google Gemini tells me the symptoms are blurred vision, Photophobia (sensitivity to light), "snowstorm vision" or "halo vision", decreased visual acuity, complete or partial blindness (often permanent), dilated pupils, optic disc hyperemia (redness of the optic nerve head) and retinal oedema. Seeing double is something completely different. And she had only drunk one glass of contaminated spirits, which wouldn't have left her seriously drunk the following day.
But then the script writer found something useful:
Methanol wird von der Leber anders verwertet als gewöhnlicher Alkohol: Es entsteht Ameisensäure und Formaldehyd.
“Methanol is metabolized to formic acid and formaldehyde”. Well, yes, though in the opposite sequence. But then the script writer seems to have lost interest in his sources:
Wir beschäftigen jetzt Ihre Leber mit Alkohol, damit diese das Methanol nicht umwandelt in Ethanol.
“We will occupy your liver with alcohol, so that it (the liver) doesn't change the methanol into ethanol”. Clearly he doesn't have the foggiest idea what ethanol is. One can only hope that people watching the programme don't believe the nonsense presented there.
| Wednesday, 9 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 9 July 2025 |
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Finding the configuration information
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So where did I put the information needed to update my local systems? I had some recollection that I had a set of Makefiles to do the work. Off searching, and after only half an hour I found them: in /src/Sysconfig/Install.
/src/Sysconfig is a remnant of an attempt I made decades ago to automate my updates, so it's not completely inappropriate, but I was trying to get rid of the system. Still, I can't see any alternative. Off to try out the things that I had in there, in the process finding additional symlinks that I needed to make, and also some missing in the list. And more ports to install. s3cmd was a surprise. pkg spells it py311-s3cmd:
py311-s3cmd-2.4.0_3 Unix-like tools to manipulate stored files from the command line
And after installation, I couldn't start it. Further investigation showed that it didn't install anything like an executable:
=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/2) /home/grog/Install 24 -> find /usr/local/ -mmin -60 | grep s3c
/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/s3cmd-2.4.0-py3.11.egg-info
/usr/local/share/licenses/py311-s3cmd-2.4.0_3
/usr/local/share/doc/s3cmd
It installed fine from the port (which calls it net/pys3cmd). What am I missing?
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OM-1 warranty repair
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
I've been dragging my heels on getting the sensor problem with my OM System OM-1 Mark II repaired, but it has to be done. How do I go about it? CCCWarehouse has a contact page that seems a
good start. “Send A Help Desk Ticket” (clearly their capitalization), with the promise “We
will reply promptly by email (typically 0.5-1hr during business hours)”. Sent the message
off at 13:54 and heard nothing for the rest of the afternoon. But at 02:26:24
-0700 19:26 I got a response: please send images.
OK, I can do that. I'm still worried that this could be an uphill battle, though arguably OM System support might have reacted similarly.
| Thursday, 10 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 10 July 2025 |
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More cardiac problems?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne up this morning to report chest pain consistent with cardiac issues. Her KardiaMobile 6L reported no problems.
Mail to Professor Peter Kistler and Dr Rodney Reddy, but Reddy is on holiday for the next two weeks and recommends contacting Paul Smith, who is also not available until early August. About the best information so far is that it seems to be not overly dangerous.
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Miso ramen soup
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
After buying the Chinese Japanese ramen noodles last week, it was clear that I needed to use them.
I really don't have a good feeling for Japanese food. Everything I try seems to be influenced by Chinese food. Looking for recipes didn't help. My cookbooks don't even mention ramen, and online recipes are all a bit strange. I've established that there are three different types of ramen soup, shoyu (soya sauce based), miso and shiyo (salt). I had a lot of miso left over, so that's what I chose.
But what broth? Some kind of dashi, of course. Ah! I have some instant dashi, which I have never used:
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It comes in sachets weighing 10 g each, with instructions about how to use 4 g to make 600 ml of broth:
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Sometimes I wonder what people are thinking. Wouldn't it be easier to say that the sachet makes 1.5 l, or that 1 g makes 150 ml? In passing, it's worth noting the 200 ml cups.
And the other ingredients? Fish cake, fried pork or chicken and ramen eggs (make the day before). They all have one thing in common: I don't have them. So I cheated based on my experience with Chinese soups. My recipe for next time is here.
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OM-1 repair, day 2
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Topic: photography | Link here |
Message to CCCWarehouse today with a number of images showing the problem on the OM System OM-1 Mark II. No response today, which somehow didn't surprise me.
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What's that bird?
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
While walking the dogs today, saw this bird at the entrance to the house:
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What is it? Yvonne thought that it was a Kleiber (nuthatch), particularly because of the way it climbed up the tree. It also made a continuous beeping noise. But it doesn't look much like the nuthatches in the photos I found online. Once again Google Gemini to the rescue, maybe. It could be a Daphoenositta chrysoptera, which even Wikipedia calls a varied sitella, but none of the images show the orange spot on the cheek, and the plumage looks different.
And then I discovered that I had taken the photos at 100,000/51° ISO! I had set that for demonstrating the sensor problems on the camera, and then forgot to reset it. Under the circumstances, I'm surprised how good the image looks.
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Loading dishwashers
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Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
I'm still trying to get used to our new dishwasher. It's glacially slow, taking up to an hour longer than the Bosch machine, which was already slower than the Whirlpool. But I'm still having difficulty getting all my things into the machine, especially the top shelf. Part of the issue is the way the top shelf is divided. Somehow the designers expect a very different load from what I have, and the divisions don't work for me.
This isn't a specific issue with LG. The top shelf is laid out almost identically to the Bosch. But the Whirlpool seemed to do it better. Is this just what I'm used to, or a difference between me and the world? I'm taking a series of photos to follow my progress. Today I wasn't able to get everything in, whereas I'm sure I would have done with the Whirlpool. Here I can either get the Chinese bowl or the beer glass at front right:
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It's not full, but there are spaces where I can't put anything useful.
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How to ruin a pizza
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
ALDI had fresh pizza dough on offer last week, so Yvonne bought some, and we tried it out. It's very difficult to roll out. This is the best that she managed:
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OK, that will have to do. But there was a problem: the raw dough was on the paper, and we couldn't lift it off! Nothing for it, put it up against another tray, peel off the paper, turn back again. To my surprise, most of the topping stayed where it should have been:
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But I still couldn't get the pizza off the tray! In the end put the tray into the oven on top of the pizza stone:
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And I still couldn't get the pizza off the tray. In the end I had to destroy it:
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It wasn't until much later that we realized what had gone wrong: normally I pre-cook the base before topping it. Probably because of the different procedure we forgot this time. Still, there's nothing about the dough that suggests that we should repeat the experiment. Our own dough is just as good and costs much less dough.
The good news is that the oven worked normally. I don't know what went wrong last week, but it heated up normally, and the stone reached 272° before cooking. A pity that it didn't help much, since the pizza wasn't on it.
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18 years in Dereel
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Topic: history | Link here |
Eighteen years ago today we moved into the house in Kleins Road. That's nearly a quarter of my lifetime!
| Friday, 11 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 11 July 2025 |
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Breakfast chicken wings reconsidered
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I eat deep-fried marinated chicken wings with nasi lemak. How do I marinate them? After some consideration I had come to the conclusion that they need to be cooked in the marinade, which I then freeze as broth for other dishes.
At one point I cooked them sous-vide, but decided against it because it's so messy. But two things speak for sous vide: firstly, cooking them in the pot produces more broth that I can use, and secondly the meat doesn't quite fall off the bone. Is it better sous vide? Yesterday I tried it sous vide again, this time cooking 1 kg (8 wings) for 20 hours at 82° setting (which displayed as 79° or 80°). The result?
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They were rather softer than I expected, but the real surprise was the amount of broth produced, round 800 ml. That's nearly the weight of the wings!
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I had a second batch, so for comparison's sake I cooked them for only 8 hours. Mañana.
In passing, it's interesting to note how much heavier the wings have become. Once 2 kg were 22 wings. Now they're only 15, a 50% increase in weight.
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OM-1 repair, day 3
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Still no response from CCCWarehouse. Try a “chat” again? Yes, almost immediate response from Michael L, who appears to be the only person in the department, unless it's a generic name for anybody there. He was also the name who gave me the information I got on 22 November 2024.
It quickly became clear that he hadn't read the message I sent. Once again the suggestion that I try pixel remapping. And then he stated that he couldn't find the order number, which I had not sent him. So clearly he hadn't followed up at all.
In the evening, he did:
Based on the existing information, we can not accept your claim because our warranty policy does not transfer to new owner when the product is re-sold.
But the other general expectations are dead pixels are possible and can be dealt with via post processing, and re-mapping
Somehow he can't get past the pixel remapping issue, maybe because he hadn't read carefully. And yes, I knew that CCCWarehouse claimed that the warranty wasn't transferable. That's why I contacted them 2 days later and got the confirmation that the warranty was valid. But that's going to be difficult to prove, even with the transcript that I have. I need to consider all options here; maybe one would be to send the camera to an OM system service centre overseas that respects the warranty that I have (and which makes no mention of transfer of ownership).
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Where do the CAPTCHAs come from?
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Topic: technology, general | Link here |
I'm getting more and more CAPTCHAs. Why? Are they trying to make me walk crossly? Or are they targeting specific browsers?
| Saturday, 12 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 12 July 2025 |
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Chicken wings, the second
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's chicken wings seemed a little overcooked, so I cooked the second batch for “only” 8 hours instead of 20. Surprise: there was much less juice, only about 300 g instead of 800 g. And they were marginally less inclined to disintegrate. So today I ate a nasi lemak with one wing from each batch.
But despite the long cooking, they still didn't fall off the bone. What else can I do?
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More Schlumbergera colours
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Topic: animals | Link here |
I've known Schlumbergera (sometimes called Christmas cactus or Easter cactus) for decades, and they always had the same coloured flowers:
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But two years ago Yana brought some cuttings with her, which have gradually started flowering. The first was the white-flowering one two months ago:
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It's flowering again already:
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And there's a new one with salmon-pink flowers:
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There are two further ones that haven't flowered yet. One isn't looking happy, and may not survive.
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CAPTCHAs spare Microsoft
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've investigated this irritating increase in CAPTCHAs. It happens on FreeBSD with either firefox or chromium, but not on distress (Microsoft) with firefox. Are they maybe tracking browsers that haven't been updated recently?
| Sunday, 13 July 2025 | Dereel | |
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Another catchup day
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Another day spent catching up (reducing my mail inbox size), with only moderate success. I still have messages months old (over 2 years in one case) that I really need to answer.
Instead I made an equally half-hearted attempt to complete the installation of the new lagoon.lemis.com for Yvonne. The next step was X, particularly the Nvidia driver. lagoon has an ancient GeForce GT 710 card, but it does the job for Yvonne. How do I set up a second machine with the same card? Simple, as it turns out: I have a second one, though it has a sticker on the fan housing saying “noisy”.
And so it was. The fan is clearly sticking, and it took a couple of attempts after power-up for it to run at all. And the nvidia-driver-440 no longer exists, so I tried nvidia-driver-470. And to my surprise it Just Worked.
Next step? Procrastinate. But I need to set the machine so that it comes up automatically (/erc/gettytab and /etc/ttys. And in passing, since lagune (the new machine) was hibernated, I needed to wake it. That's simple enough, maybe: it's already in /etc/ethers as disdain. Well, at least on hydra. That's another file that needs to be NFS mounted across the network. And once again I get the message “/usr/local/libexec/Xorg.wrap: Only console users are allowed to run the X server”, which I need to fix in /usr/local/etc/X11/Xwrapper.config.
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Where's my library login?
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
We've been watching “A Town like Alice” on TV. Where's the book? We don't seem to have one. Yvonne wanted to buy a copy, but what are libraries for? The Central Highland Libraries must have a copy.
Yes. Well, they can get one from the library network. But inappropriately for a library, they lose information. Both Yvonne's and my login details are no longer valid, and attempts to reset a password don't produce the promised email.
We've seen this before. They let cards expire and don't even bother to inform you of the fact. And somehow their web site is as broken as ever. Mañana.
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Pronouncing Ukrainian vowels
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
Interesting question in the German Quora: “Is it true that the words for “whale” and “cat” are the same in Ukrainian?”
Simple answer: no. “Whale” is “кит”, cat is “кішка”. But that reflects the sex of the cat: in German, it's „Katze“, feminine. A male cat is кіт. So we're looking at the pronunciation of the letters и and і. And that seems more complicated than I thought. In the process, came up with the following sites that may help with pronunciation:
What a choice. Well, no. easypronunciation wants a subscription and doesn't do Ukrainian anyway, uni-halle has a very limited range of offerings, and babla doesn't play nicely with ad blockers, so I didn't try.
Result from https://hellpanderrr.github.io/wiktionary_pron/?lang=Ukrainian:
| Word | translation | pronunciation | ||
| кит | whale | [ket] | ||
| кіт | (tom)cat | [kʲit] | ||
| кішка | female cat | [kʲiʃkɐ] |
In principle that's fine. But Stefan Speck, who has a particularly good understanding of languages, comes up with the possible pronunciation [кɨт] for кит.
Why is this all so difficult? Even 60 years ago I had difficulty getting my mouth round [ɨ] (ы).
| Monday, 14 July 2025 | Dereel | |
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Who is responsible for scams?
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Interesting article in the news today: Ian Williams, a man in Bendigo, was defrauded of $1,338 a few years back. Two items were paid for via Google Pay on his mobile phone. The bank (National Australia Bank) refused to refund the money: he had identified himself with a fingerprint, so he must have been there.
Williams wasn't happy with that, and he sued NAB. The case is ongoing, but his evidence is convincing. He's asking for $379 million in payout, using rather implausible reasoning, and I'm sure he's not expecting to get more than a fraction of that.
But somehow he's barking up the wrong tree. Yes, banks should take more responsibility for abuse. In cases like my Centrelink exploit nobody seemed to care that my money had been transferred to another bank account due to their negligence. With appropriate legislation the bank could have reverted the transfer. In the current case, where food was bought with fraudulent use of the mobile phone, things are different: the shop (Coles) was only marginally involved. The real culprit is Google Pay. Their security checks are inadequate.
How could they improve them? I don't know. That's why I don't put any sensitive information on my mobile phone. But it's time that the government got its act together and found a better security system, like a single reliable (hah!) method of identification, rather than relying on driver licences or dates of birth.
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Fixing exiftool
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Topic: photography, technology | Link here |
Finally I have got round to posting a message about my issues with ExifTool on the OM System OM-1 Mark II on the exiftool forum. There's a question as to where the blame lies. The issue only happens with DxO PhotoLab, not with out of camera images. What if it's a DxO bug? Tried it with OM Workspace, the official processing software?
Surprise, surprise. It didn't behave the same way; it broke in a different manner. Here first OM Workspace, then DxO:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/9) ~/Photos/20250703 9 -> exiftool -geotag=/src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo/20250703.gpx P7032039.jpg
Warning: [minor] MakerNotes tag 0x8000 IFD format not handled - P7032039.jpg
Error: [minor] RawDev2IFD tag 0x8000 IFD format not handled - P7032039.jpg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/9) ~/Photos/20250703 10 -> exiftool -geotag=/src/GPS/Tracklogs/Phones/GPSLogger/albo/20250703.gpx P7032091_DxO.jpg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - P7032091_DxO.jpg
Error: Can't write multi-segment EXIF with external pointers - P7032091_DxO.jpg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors
Response from Phil Harvey the author: “It seems that you mean "Any plans for better OM Workspace support?"”.
Well, no. But at least he'll look at the issue. Am I the only person to run into this problem?
| Tuesday, 15 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 15 July 2025 |
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Clematis in winter
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Seen today:
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Yes, it's a very sad-looking Clematis “Edo Murasaki”. But today is literally the middle of winter. It shouldn't be flowering at all. Does this bode well for the next season?
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The pain of autofocus
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
My first photos of the Clematis “Edo Murasaki” weren't impressive, even taking account of the season. They were out of focus:
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It's not difficult to see why: the camera had focused on the trellis. I saw it at the time and thought I had worked past it, but clearly I was mistaken. This was taken with the “T” layout of focus points that Aaron Harivel had recommended for bird photography. Clearly it's not good for this kind of photo. Back to single point focus it is:
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More dishwasher pain
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Topic: food and drink, general, opinion | Link here |
I'm still working on the new dishwasher, and I've managed to find a programme (“turbo”) that finishes in acceptable time. Instead of 2:45 hours it finishes in 59 minutes. Or 1:40 if set to “extra dry”. Today I did it without, and Yvonne, who take the dishes out, didn't notice any big difference.
But I'm still not much closer to loading the shelves, particularly the top one. Here a “before” and “after” trying to put one more item into the shelf:
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The item was the empty jar in the middle of the shelf, and it required a significant reorganization of other items in the shelf. Even there the shelf is anything but fully loaded, but I can't get anything else in: all the distances are too small to add anything else. The instruction manual is no help: it shows things that I don't use, like stemless glasses. I must compare with the old Whirlpool machine, which I'm getting to miss more and more.
| Wednesday, 16 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 16 July 2025 |
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Instant Phở
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Cooked one of the instant noodle dishes that I bought in Geelong two weeks ago:
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It's interesting because it's made in Việt Nam, so it should have some claim to authenticity.
So, how do I cook it?
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Now isn't that clever, hiding the instructions in a fold on the package? Presumably the image designer never saw the packaging. But basically it translates to “add hot water to the ingredients and wait 3 minutes”. That most certainly won't give the results in the image, where at least raw beef and spring onions are included. But I know that from my phở bò recipe.
OK, open. Some pretty normal rice noodles:
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And then no fewer than four sachets marked only in Vietnamese:
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What are they? The illustrations could be helpful, but they're difficult to recognize at normal size. The green one proved to be dried vegetables, the colourless was the broth. And the other two? The yellow one contained a clear astringent liquid, and the red one a couple of drops of chili oil. OK, mix them all in, add some beef, spring onions red onion:
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And it didn't taste bad. But quite different from my standard recipe, probably to the detriment of my standard recipe. As I wrote in that recipe,
This paste comes from Por Kwan, a Thai company. I have tried things like their Laksa and found it wanting. My guess is that the phở paste is also not very authentic.
What have I learnt from the effort? Certainly that I should look further. I made it exactly as the instructions specified, including 400 ml of water instead of my usual 300 ml. But it didn't seem too much. Later it occurred to me that most of the additional 100 ml would have been absorbed by the noodles, which I forgot to weigh.
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Google Translate fantasies
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
What's written on the sachets in the phở package? Google Translate to the rescue:
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That doesn't help much. “Similar OT”? “Paradise”? Ah, we can do better:
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Clearly I shouldn't have continued. I wonder where it gets that from. Under the circumstances, and looking at the image, it's clear that the prostitution is really a particularly boring tasting garlic juice. Google Translate is getting better, but it's clearly not there yet. Is it any better with a Real Computer? No. The browser implementation tells me that the colourless sachet contains “JUICE bone GROUND MEAT”, and the yellow one is “DAMN LOUD”. It's been a long time since I've seen such bad translations, and it doesn't seem to be related to the clarity of the text.
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The daily dish washing
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Am I being unfair to the new dishwasher? Is it really so much more difficult to load than the old one?
Yes. Here's the (dismembered) top shelf of the old dishwasher:
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It's not completely full: there's still space at the front right. But I couldn't get the contents all into the top shelf of the new dishwasher. Here an attempt:
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The bowl is on top of the serving dish to show what won't fit.
What's the problem? The distances are all too small. I can't get anything to the left of the saucers, and I can't just put the glasses against the side of the basket:
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The space on the other side is also too small for two rows of the kind of bowl that I use:
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The result is a lot of unused/unusable space. Clearly my crockery doesn't match what the designer intended, but wouldn't it be possible to offer alternative baskets? For what it's worth, the Bosch machine has the same problems.
Today I ran it on the “Turbo” programme again, this time with “Extra Dry”, increasing the time from 49 minutes to 1:40. We couldn't see any difference in the dryness. Presumably our bowls and cups with the dip in the bottom are also to “blame”. But somehow, unless a machine can guarantee complete dryness when it's finished, it's not worth the trouble. Leave the dishes hot and let the human dry out the water. The heat will evaporate the rest.
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Banking “security”
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
I have a fair amount of money invested at Macquarie Bank. Today I received a message from my accountants:
We’re reaching out to let you know about some changes Macquarie is making to how we manage bulk payments through your Macquarie Cash Management Account (CMA). These updates are designed to enhance security, reduce fraud risk, and modernise digital processes.
As part of these updates, Macquarie is removing the general withdrawal authority effective 1st August 2025. This means we will no longer be able to transact on your CMA account without your direct approval via the Macquarie Authenticator app.
Do I understand this correctly? In the name of “security” the bank is requiring me to install an authentication app on my phone? How would that improve security? In that connection it's interesting to look further down yesterday's article on mobile phone scams, the section titled “If Ian Williams didn't do it, who did?”. I've learnt a new term, “Ghost tapping”, which seems just to be becoming known: theft (and abuse) of mobile phone credentials. It appears to be another case of the “all eggs in one basket” syndrome that people so encourage.
But what does this have to do with bank transfers? How about nominating specific bank accounts as recipients of any transfer? I have little hope that Macquarie will think of something so obvious, so it looks like I'll have to find a new bank.
| Thursday, 17 July 2025 | Dereel | |
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Which photo software?
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Topic: photography, technology | Link here |
Understanding the problems that I have been having with ExifTool isn't easy. Phil Harvey is working on a fix, he says, but where does the real blame lie? So far we have established that the problem only occurs with OM Workspace and DxO PhotoLab, and in each case with different results. What about others? And what about using up-to-date versions of the software?
With OM Workspace that was simple: after lots of pain accessing the update server, it came back and told me that the software is up to date. I know DxO isn't: it's release 5, and the current release is 8. Out of recognition that I have been using DxO for over 10 years, they have an upgrade price for me: $239.99. The normal price is $239.99. What do I get for that? None of the annoyances appear to have been fixed, though they have even better noise reduction. But that's not enough. Still, I can try it for 30 days without paying anything.
Oh. I did. And I can't do so again. OK, DxO, I'll wait until version 9 and try that. In the meantime, what other photo software do I have installed on the machine? I only found ACDSEE Gemstone Photo Editor 12, an old version with nothing remaining on their site, though there's a video which claims “Gemstone Photo Editor 12 is a multi-document editor with features like RAW editing, layered editing, and artificial intelligence”. OK, fire it up. “Don't recognize .ORF”. I gave up at that point, though maybe I should try again.
But I have so much other software on the machine. Where is it? The only one I could find was Affinity Photo 2, but that had expired. I couldn't find anything else. Time to make a list, helped by the fact that I did much of the work 6 months ago.
| Friday, 18 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 18 July 2025 |
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Trusting digital devices
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Topic: health, general, technology, opinion | Link here |
My normal weight over the last few years has been between 87 and 88 kg. But a little over a year ago I was concerned that I was losing weight: it had dropped to 84.7 kg, enough of an anomaly that I talked to my doctor about it. He wasn't concerned, and over the next few weeks it returned to normal
But now, for some reason, I'm putting on weight. Nothing to be alarmed about, but between 88 and 89 kg. Until this morning, where my scales told me that I suddenly weighed 90.1 kg, the highest I have ever measured. Why? Weighed myself on Yvonne's scales. 89.1 kg.
What's wrong with my scales? It took a while to consider that it might be batteries. Yes, AAA non-rechargeable cells, showing 1.41 V. OK, put in some more. Oh, no more. Rechargeables? Yes. The scales were all over the place, going between 88 and 92 kg. OK, put in some Nickel-Zinc batteries. They seem to work, though it's interesting to see how the brightness of the display reflects the voltage of the batteries. But it's interesting to consider the difference between these scales and the good old mechanical ones. The old ones worked as long as they weren't damaged. Digital devices have so many potential sources of error that it's really hard to detect them. Time for a second set of scales for comparison?
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Power fail!
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Grid power failure this morning, the first in over four months. But the inverter cut out for at least 15 seconds, possibly closer to a minute: I had time to walk into the garage and confirm the situation before it powered on again.
Why? The only explanation I can think of is that the inverter was overloaded. Looking at the inverter logs, this doesn't seem to be the case:
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The power (purple trace in the middle) was out from 10:37 to 11:03, but the highest power registered before the dropout was round 2.5 kW, tending less. It should handle 6 kW with no trouble. On the other hand, how reliable are these graphs? They show a minimum power consumption of 621 W while the inverter and grid were both out. It would only have taken the air conditioner to decide to turn on at this point and there would have been a spike over 6 KW.
OK, time to finally put that UPS back in circuit. Oh. It doesn't work. Connect to power, turn it on and it grunts to itself a couple of times before screaming incessantly, not responding to the RESET button (described as a circuit breaker in the manual). Dead already? It's only 2½ years old! Conveniently it had a 2 year warranty. Somehow that purchase was particularly bad. So I had to bring them up again without a UPS.
As it was, I had to restart hydra and eureka, not helped by cable issues: eureka is normally not connected to a monitor, and I had forgotten which of the two monitors had a cable to which of the four display outputs. Finally, after some searching, found that it was the wrong one, but that the cable had come loose.
Bringing the systems up wasn't that difficult. About the only issue was that hydra's syslogd wouldn't log to eureka. That seems to be related to the fact that hydra was up and running before eureka was listening, and for some reason syslogd had given up trying. newsyslog didn't help: I had to restart syslogd.
Then there were issues with mouse buttons. My script to do it failed because it was looking for a specific mouse. In principle it's simple:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/19) ~ 7 -> xinput
⎡ Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)]
⎜ ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ System mouse id=6 [slave pointer (2)]
⎜ ↳ Telink 2.4G Mouse id=10 [slave pointer (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)]
↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ System keyboard multiplexer id=7 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ Power Button id=8 [slave keyboard (3)]
↳ vendor 0x0430 Sun USB Keyboard id=9 [slave keyboard (3)]=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/19) ~ 8 -> xinput set-button-map 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 2 2
This sets the thumb buttons (8 and 9) to button 2.
And of course my cold start HOWTO was out of date. That's something that I really need to pay attention to.
But things still didn't work right! firefox hung after restarting. Other profiles worked, but I wanted to recover this specific session. Lots of searching before I got this popup:
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Bloody Adblock! Far from blocking all ads, it produces its own from time to time, and somehow this time it managed to break things. Goodbye, Adblock, and good riddance! On Juha Kupiainen's recommendation installed uBlock Origin, which confuses things by claiming not to be an ad blocker. We'll see how that works.
To add insult to injury, the messing around seems to have broken my firefox configuration. Text sizes, once almost under control, are now all over the place. Maybe it's really time to leave firefox and try to live with Chromium).
| Saturday, 19 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 19 July 2025 |
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“Wise” transfers: the pain
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne has found a new horse training course, TRT Method. They want money for it, €197 (or, as they put it, 90% off €2142). Another scam? No, Jane Ashhurst and Shelly Cooper have both bought it and found it excellent.
OK, so I have to pay for it. More fun with this horrible Wise web site. I need to stock up my funds, involving transferring money from my bank. In the past that was so complicated that I created a (local, clearly) page with details of the hoops I had to jump through and the account to which I should transfer the money. But is that still valid? Their help told me to do the impossible, go to the home page (find your own way, we won't give you a link or any other help) and press on the + symbol. And there was none, just Send, Add money (huh?) and Request. On the face of it, Add money sounds the most likely. Click on that and it divulges no further information; first I have to “Enter the amount you wish to add”, not where it's pointing, but above the text.
But even then it wasn't clear what to do. Going through all the motions, though, and yes, I was able to transfer the money. And yes, the account details were completely different from the ones I had saved. Why do they make it so difficult?
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Goodbye ANZ, part 1
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Topic: general | Link here |
While fighting bank web sites, finally closed down my ANZ credit card, the one I have had since 1997. Once they were free, but now they cost round $300 a year. Why should I pay that? So for the first time in decades, we don't have any credit cards.
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Online courses: the pain
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Topic: animals, technology, opinion | Link here |
So Yvonne has her TRT Method course. Came into her office for something unrelated and found her cursing at her computer. They wanted her to log in, but it wasn't working.
Not her fault. It's broke:
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But surely they would have found that out very quickly. Much searching. It works with Microsoft! So it's a server issue—as the error display stated—and not a network issue. After much more grumbling, came to the conclusion that this was trtmethod's inimitable way of saying “Your browser is out of date”.
Guilty as charged. I've been working at a snail's pace to upgrade lagoon.lemis.com, but it looks as if I'm going to have to speed things up.
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The last steamboat?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Steamboat again for dinner this evening, with the intention of using up some food that's been around for ever. In fact, we had much the same ingredients only 4 months ago. This time I found it alright, but Yvonne left behind all the delicacies that I had chosen. I'm disappointed. I wonder how long it will be before we each eat our own food for dinner. I have so many foodstuffs in the pantry that I can't serve to her.
| Sunday, 20 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 20 July 2025 |
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More work on lagoon
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's pain with web browsers makes the upgrade of lagoon.lemis.com more urgent than ever. Once again it's more a question of record-keeping than the work itself, and once again I find myself updating an old web page, new lagoon. Still, I'm gradually making progress, and I was able to get most things running. The only real issue that I don't understand is why it comes up unable to mount NFS file systems. It seems to be a race condition that I have seen before, but I would have thought that had been fixed by now.
The other big issue is avidemux, which has caused me so much pain in the past. But that's one of the ports that I forgot today, greatly improving my blood pressure.
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FreeBSD on the desktop?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
When I rejoined the FreeBSD Core Team three years ago, one of the things that I wanted to promote was FreeBSD on the desktop. It seems that I trod on a couple of peoples' toes in the process: “We're already promoting FreeBSD on the desktop!”.
But sorry, people, I see heartily little evidence. Installing the new lagoon, I went looking for Chromium. What I found was (after removing false positives):
=== grog@lagune (/dev/pts/5) ~ 17 -> pkg search chrom
chrome-gnome-shell-10.1_3 GNOME Shell integration for Chrome
linux-chrome-133.0.6943.126_2 Google web browser based on WebKit
ungoogled-chromium-137.0.7151.103_2 Google web browser based on WebKit sans integration with Google
So I have a choice of a Linux version (133, where Microsoft tells me that the current version is 138) or “ungoogled-chromium”, only one release out of date. OK, small choice in rotten apples. Install ungoogled-chromium and find that yes, it installs a binary ungoogled-chromium. People, web browsers are central to a desktop. How can we get away with that?
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Fesenjan?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Finally got round to cooking an interpretation of Fesenjan today. The pain, as ever, is in the quantities. All this cup and spoon nonsense! In passing, how do cup and spoon people shop for groceries. Even in the USA, food is sold by weight. If a recipe calls for “2 cups walnuts”, how much do you buy? 4 oz? 8 oz? 1 lb? My guess is somewhere round 8 oz, but how do I know? How does anybody know?
To be on the safe side, made what I thought would be a good portion for one meal, based on this recipe. It didn't seem very different from the other ones I had found. Only after I had started did I think of looking at YouTube videos, which showed things from a very different perspective. The ones I looked at were this one, this one, and particularly this one:
But by then I had started, so what I ended up with was:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 125 g | walnuts | 1 | ||
| 10 g | onion, in slices | 2 | ||
| 20 g | ghee | 2 | ||
| 500 g | bone-in chicken thighs, skin removed | 3 | ||
| 23 g | ghee | 3 | ||
| 350 g | water | 4 | ||
| 2.5 g | cinnamon stick | 4 | ||
| 2 g | ground turmeric | 5 | ||
| 2 g | salt | 5 | ||
| 1 g | pepper | 5 | ||
| 15 g | sugar | 5 | ||
| 120 g | pomegranate molasses | 5 | ||
The procedure is straightforward enough. First, grind the walnuts and heat in a dry pan until marginally browned:
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Is that brown enough? How do I know? But play on the safe side. Reserve and the onion into slices and fry in ghee:
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By this time I had seen a video showing that the onions should really be that dark.
Remove the onion, fry the chicken until lightly browned, then add the other ingredients and water. The recipe called for 3 cups of water, which I interpret as being both 720 ml and far too much. But in the end I messed up and put in almost as much. The result was correspondingly liquid:
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How much pomegranate molasses? I was thinking of 240 g, but after half that quantity it seemed enough. Maybe. The result:
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How did it taste? Sour. I really need to look at those videos before I try this again.
| Monday, 21 July 2025 | Dereel | |
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lagoon upgrade
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
More fun upgrading lagoon today. Samba?
=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/3) /home/grog 1 -> pkg install samba
pkg: No packages available to install matching 'samba' have been found in the repositories
Ah, I'm almost used to that. To install almost anything you first need to search the ports:
=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/3) /home/grog 2 -> pkg search samba
p5-Samba-LDAP-0.05_2 Manage a Samba PDC with an LDAP Backend
p5-Samba-SIDhelper-0.0.0_3 Create SIDs based on G/UIDs
samba-nsupdate-9.16.5_1 nsupdate utility with the GSS-TSIG support
samba416-4.16.11_8 Free SMB/CIFS and AD/DC server and client for Unix
samba419-4.19.9_9 Free SMB/CIFS and AD/DC server and client for Unix
samba420-4.20.7_7 Free SMB/CIFS and AD/DC server and client for Unix
What's an AC/DC server? Oh, AD/DC. What's an AD/DC server? Oh, a Microsoft thing. Anyway, guess at how to truncate samba420-4.20.7_7 (to samba420-4.20 in my case, though maybe samba420 would have done) and it installs.
Now, where was that configuration file? Something like smb.conf. Searching on my other machines drew a blank. Check The Complete FreeBSD. It's /usr/local/etc/smb.conf. Problem: it doesn't exist, but Samba runs anyway.
Some searching. Ah, it's modern! It's now called smb4.conf. Copy across, mess around with passwords, update /etc/inetd.conf to start smbd, test. Works up to a point. It seems that FreeBSD no longer starts inetd by default.
Things still weren't all plain sailing:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/6) ~/public_html 32 -> smbclient -L lagune -U grog
Enter grog's password:
protocol negotiation failed: NT_STATUS_INVALID_NETWORK_RESPONSE
What's that? The system log showed:
Jul 21 15:34:18 lagune smbd[61932]: daemon 'smbd' : Starting process ...
Jul 21 15:34:19 lagune smbd[61932]: [2025/07/21 15:34:19.150933, 0] ../../lib/util/pidfile.c:236(pidfile_unlink)
Jul 21 15:34:19 lagune smbd[61932]: Failed to delete pidfile /var/run/samba4/smbd.pid. Error was No such file or directory
Jul 21 15:34:19 lagune inetd[61918]: /usr/local/sbin/smbd[61932]: exited, signal 15
Some searching showed me two things. Firstly, the log messages have nothing to do with the problem. They seem to be random noise that I've had almost for ever, something that really needs fixing. And secondly, the error was nothing obvious: eureka has a down-rev version of smbclient, and it can't talk properly to lagune. The same test from hydra worked, though it still produced the spurious error messages.
That was the easy part. Now try on distress, the Microsoft side. It worked out of the box! Admittedly, there was nothing behind the mounted "file system”, but that just reflects the truth.
What else? How do I mount my NFS file systems, which still refuse to mount at boot time. /etc/rc.local? I know that's out of date, but what replaced it? Ask Google Gemini. /etc/rc.local, deprecated but not dead. Tried that. Gemini's wrong: it's dead, Jim.
Well, I later found that /etc/rc.c/local does try to invoke it. But it didn't work for me.
But there's another possibility to try next time I boot: a @reboot entry in the user's crontab. That seems more flexible than rc.local.
So where am I now? Everything seems to be working. Even avidemux installed out of the box, once I found that I had to install four ports: avidemux, avidemux_qt5, avidemux_cli and avidemux_plugins. But to test it I need more of Yvonne's environment, and I really want to second-guess all potential problems so that it will Just Work for her.
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Now you see me, now you don't
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I grumbled that there was no obvious Chromium package for FreeBSD. But that was yesterday. Today I found:
chromium-138.0.7204.96_1 Google web browser based on WebKit
That's what I was looking for, and it works. But why am I reminded of Donald Trump?
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New Chat GPT insights
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Topic: animals, language, technology, opinion | Link here |
Chris Bahlo pointed me to this, apparently by Julien Schricke:
| Tuesday, 22 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 22 July 2025 |
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Mee goreng mamak rethought
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
After dinner last week, we were left with 90 g of cooked spirali. What can I do with them? First, freeze and scratch head.
And then I came up with mee goreng mamak, a mixture of Southern Indian, Malay and Chinese styles. Why not add Italian? Instead of Hokkien Mee, use spriali and some added macaroni:
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How did it work?
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It wasn't bad. In fact, it seems to make more sense than with Hokkien mee, which requires chopsticks. About the only thing that I didn't expect is how filling it is. Time to reduce the quantities. Done!
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Little lagune work
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Spent most of today following up on a plethora of failure messages from my external web servers. My work on lagune was limited to building a world and checking whether the @reboot function of cron worked. It didn't for me.
Why is this so difficult? What I want is to mount NFS file systems at boot time. It should happen automatically, but some race condition prevents it. So try putting the command in /etc/rc.local. Doesn't get looked at, though it is mentioned in /etc/rc.d/local. And /var/log/cron shows that nothing happens at boot. Am I really the only person who has this problem?
| Wednesday, 23 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 23 July 2025 |
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Garden flowers in mid-winter
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Today's roughly a month after the solstice, time for the flower photos.
Somehow this winter has even fewer flowers than normal. By now the spring bulbs should be blooming, but about all I can see are these few Narcissus in front of my office:
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That's probably because of the extreme dryness we've experienced over the last year or so. There are signs that that is easing, but the damage has been done. Despite all attempts at irrigation, I think that I have to accept that my Camellia japonica has had it:
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And maybe that's why this is all we have to see in the way of roses:
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On the other hand, the Strelitziae reginae are looking happier than I have seen them:
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Can it be that things were too moist for them before?
My Hibiscus rosa-sinensis “Uncle Max” is looking better than usual at this time of year:
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And I think that the Grevillea robusta is finally taking off, after only 6 years:
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And the Grevillea in the driveway is also looking better than I have seen it:
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And the Solanum laxum near the water tanks is also recovering from what I had thought was death:
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Much of that must have to do with the drought. But I wonder why I still bother with the garden. Somehow it's too depressing.
| Thursday, 24 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 24 July 2025 |
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Time for a new car
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Off to see the shearing at the Smiths today. I got about 400 m before it became clear that there's something seriously wrong with my car: a loud, high-pitched whine with a frequency in proportion to the speed. No difficulty guessing what: one of the wheel bearings that have been complaining for over a year has finally given up. Turned round, went home and changed cars.
Repair? No, that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other things wrong with the car that I had already decided not to repair it, but to drive it as long as practicable. Now it's no longer practicable. Time for a new car.
That's a pain! I have the money, but I have to spend time choosing a new car.
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Oh the winter, it brings on the shearing
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Topic: general, animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
Off to the Smith's shearing shed down the Mount Mercer road to watch the shearing this morning. One result of the car problems was that I left my camera in the old car. All I had was my mobile phone.
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Bev Smith was there to show me around. It's not quite Sunday too far away, but the similarities are obvious:
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One of the questions I had was: why now, in the middle of winter? Simple: that's when they could get the shearers, and for that they may have to take some dead sheep into account. That, too, raises echos of “Sunday too far away”.
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Maggi instant mee
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Tried my Maggi instant “Tom Yam” noodles that I bought in Geelong a few weeks ago:
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On the one hand, it's made in Malaysia and for Malaysian people, as evidenced by the text only in Bahasa Malaysia. And on the other hand it's made by Maggi, a company with an international reputation. What's it like?
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Terrible! By far the worst “instant dish” that I have ever had. The noodles were acceptable, but the spice mix was mainly chili and tasted nothing like Tom Yam. And most of these things have dried vegetables in them, but this one didn't. The chicken was something that I added, so that doesn't count.
And I have another four sachets. What do I do with them? I can use the noodles for something, and maybe the spices will be usable if I add them to something else. But I've seldom been so disappointed.
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Processing mobile phone photos
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
So today I have taken real photos with my mobile phone. How are they? Parts of them are excellent.
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But why this strange aspect ratio (4000×1800 pixels, 2.22:1)? Doubtless I can change it, but that's presumably what the sensor sees. And then it's only 7.2 MP (“48 MP”). Clearly it looks better if I crop it:
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Amusingly, this crop has an even more extreme aspect ratio, but now we're down to 3.2 MP. And somehow the gradation is strange:
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That's an extreme crop, of course, only 224 kP, but it's very fuzzy. A pity I didn't have a Real Camera to compare with.
Inside things were worse:
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That's 1/50 s, f/1.7, 749/29.7° ISO. Not very high for a Real Camera, but here it's struggling:
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What causes that kind of distortion? It's not focus. It must be some guesswork
“AI” correction.
And then there's something quite surprising: the GPS coordinates for the images are all over the place:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/19) ~/Photos/20250724 208 -> exifx orig/JPEG/* | grep Loc | sort -u
Location: 37.65092° S, 143.88705° E
Location: 37.65148° S, 143.88535° E
Location: 37.68388° S, 143.98969° E
Location: 37.72628° S, 143.99309° E
Location: 38.26725° S, 143.90268° E
Those are not minor discrepancies: from the first to the last is a distance of over 70 km. And none of the coordinates are closer than 20 km to the real location. I haven't had any such issues with the phone before, and with Google Maps' help it guided me to the correct location, so it seems that it's the app. Why? Fortunately I have the tools to set the correct location (37.80037° S, 143.82850° E), but it greatly detracts from what I had thought was one of the big advantages of mobile phone photos.
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The daily lagune
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Topic: technology | Link here |
I had enough fun today with other things, so didn't get too much done with lagune. Fonts? Last year I found a way to work around FreeBSD's font breakage in X: copy the Ubuntu fonts. Tried that today, and it worked, sort of. Web browser fonts are now acceptable, but I still can't get Mutt to display them. Was I just lucky last year? This is probably not a show-stopper, but it's irritating.
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No more lard!
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
It's been three months since we started having difficulty finding lard in local supermarkets. Various web sites still offered it, but when Yvonne went to the shops, they had none.
OK, I know that it's made by York Foods, a URL that's obvious but surprisingly difficult to find. Call them up? Phone is 1800 466 332 87, a dubious number, according to some other site which also gives its address as PO Box 812, Goulburn, NSW, 2580. They don't have any information on their own site except the text
Due to circumstances outside our control York Foods 250gram Lard & Dripping will no longer be available, we thank you for your patronage and love of our products Since 1935.Bulk quantities - (18kg plus) will be available - enquiries can be made below.
Oh. What caused that? And where do I get lard now? Even eBay doesn't know.
| Friday, 25 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 25 July 2025 |
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Shearing again
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Topic: animals, general, photography, opinion | Link here |
Off to the Smith's shearing shed again this morning, this time with a real camera. I just made it before they finished, and was rewarded by finally meeting Bluey Smith. .
Didn't take many photos, not helped by the fact that the OM System OM-1 Mark II has different functions under the “video” button from earlier models, but the difference from yesterday's mobile phone photos is amazing. Here pretty much the same scene, yesterday (mobile phone) and today (OM System OM-1 Mark II):
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At that magnification both look acceptable. But look at that whiteboard again:
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Not only is the Real Camera image sharp, it has a completely different aspect ratio. How did that happen? Maybe a different viewpoint? And is the difference in the colours only attributable to the available light? Looking more carefully, it seems that the blue text in the real photo is the smudged text in the mobile phone photo.
Yes, this isn't a top of the line mobile phone. It's a Xiaomi Redmi Note 13, which I had considered a reasonably good middle-of-the-road phone. Can top quality ones really do that much better? The Tech λdvisor review claims “Reasonable results in good lighting, terrible night shots”, so yes, maybe others could do better.
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Noodle insights
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Somehow I never quite get things right with cooking rice noodles, specifically the Jack Hua noodles. In the past I had decided on one minute cooking time and then rehydrating them when I wanted to eat them. But how about cooking them just before use? Tried that today, and discovered to my astonishment that it took 5 minutes! Clearly the noodles continue to soften after cooking, even if cold.
I still don't know how to do it right.
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Israel finally condemned?
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
I've been horrified by the Israeli treatment of their Palestinian prisoners for over 12 years, and I've been amazed that the international community has done as good as nothing to stop them. Now they're engaging in textbook genocide. And gradually Western politicians are taking note of the fact. Today France finally recognized a Palestinian state, something that the Israelis sometimes said that they wanted too. Or maybe not. Or maybe we should just annex the “West Bank”. The Knesset has recently passed a motion to do just that.
Once again I'm amazed that they could have got this far. But only gradually are people doing anything about it. Even France (Emanuel Macron) hasn't gone as far as recognizing a Palestinian state; he has just announced his intention to do so in September.
What is taking them so long? How many more people have to die?
| Saturday, 26 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 26 July 2025 |
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New exiftool
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Topic: technology, photography | Link here |
No announcement, but on checking I discovered that exiftool 13.33 has now been released. In the release notes (called history) I find:
Decode a few more Olympus tags (thanks Karsten Gieselmann)
Handle Olympus RawDev2IFD tag 0x8000 (named it RawDevSubIFD)
Patched to avoid "multi-segment EXIF with external pointers" error when writing Olympus OM-1 JPG files converted by some utilities
July 2, 2025 - Version 13.32
The last one was my issue, and it seems to work. Looking at an example I had at the beginning of the month, I have:
=== 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.jpgError: Can't write multi-segment EXIF with external pointers - orig/A7032091_DxO.jpg0 image files updated1 files weren't updated due to errors
1 image files updated
The crossed-out lines no longer appear, and the update succeeds. Should the warning appear? I need to think about that. Now to go back and see what else I need to fix.
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Blast from the past
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Topic: general, technology | Link here |
Tidying up the kitchen, found these old scales:
I recall them, though I haven't used them for years. They have the advantage that the container is the (interchangeable) spoon at the end. But they don't work.
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Oh:
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That used to be relatively common in the days before modern batteries, but I don't know when I last saw one. And yes, the batteries weren't modern. They probably came with the device, and were the cheapest the maker could find. Replace them with rechargeables and all seemed to be OK, though the display is a little weak; maybe it really wants 1.5 V batteries.
Why don't I use it any more? Maybe it's not as convenient as it seems. And how old is it? I took some photos of it six years ago, but the text "12/2012” on the back is probably a date.
| Sunday, 27 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 27 July 2025 |
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Loss of marbles?
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Topic: general, food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
Baking bread today. That's becoming less often than it once was, now that we have diversified our sorts of bread, but it's still every 5 weeks or so.
But yesterday I made a mistake mixing the starter: instead of 300 g of rye and 600 g of water, I used only 375 g of water, the way I did it until a year or two ago. Not a problem, in principle: add more water to the second rising. But not 225 g more, since some of the starter has been removed for next time. And it (144 g) contains 80 g of water instead of the 128 g of water in the correctly mixed starter.
OK, that's simple: calculate the new quantity of water. And I couldn't do it! It's simple, of course: take what I have, subtract it from what I need, add the rest. But it took me 4 attempts, and ultimately I added too much water because I had forgotten the total. Why the pain? Am I losing my marbles?
The result was that the bread rose much more than usual. Here after 20 minutes and at the end:
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Normally it would end up just above the rim of the baking tin.
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Buying cars: the pain
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
More thoughts about new cars. More fighting these horrible web sites, showing probably only some of the cars available. But then we had another idea: how about buying a new car for Yvonne, and I keep her old car?
Start all over again. The car must be red (apparently the most important criterion), and it must have automatic transmission. Searches showed that prices have risen dramatically since we bought our last cars. Then I paid $4,750 for the Hyundai and just shy of $10,000 for the Commodore. Now there is almost nothing available under $10,000, certainly nothing that Yvonne would like.
But then I found a 2012 Hyundai Accent Active RB with manual transmission for “only” $6,990, from All Auto Solutions Pty Ltd in Prest Street. That's almost exactly what I was looking for earlier in the year, but on that occasion he didn't have anything.
And it's red! Is Yvonne interested? No, she wants automatic as well as red. And the cheapest car that would come in question for her would cost nearly double. Maybe I'll stick to the original plan.
| Monday, 28 July 2025 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 28 July 2025 |
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A new car
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Topic: general | Link here |
As planned, called up Chris Polkinghorne of All Auto Solutions this morning. Yes, the Hyundai was still there, so off to take a look, stopping on the way at Sovereign City to ask Leigh about the choice. He wasn't there—off sick for a while, it seems. Hopefully he'll get over it. His mate Mike gave me some information, though: avoid Hyundai! It seems that their quality has deteriorated since my Elantra was made, and the fact that this one was made in Chennai certainly does nothing to suggest Korean workmanship.
On to the sales yard and took a look at the car. It looks tatty, inside and out, worse than my 2002 Elantra:
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They had another one, a 2010 model with 133,494 km for $8,990. Also tatty, with marking flaking off the controls on the dashboard:
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It didn't take me long to decide that I didn't need a car like that.
Then Yvonne had a bright idea: how about that Toyota Yaris over there? Nice and red, automatic, 2013 model. Only slightly over double the price of the Hyundai I had came to see.
But apart from that, it ticked all the boxes, including only 83,825 km on the clock. Test drive, all seems well apart from the fact that it needed help starting: flat battery. But that's understandable under the circumstances, and in any case there's a 1 year warranty. So we bought it:
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It still needs to go through a repeat roadworthy certificate, so we won't get it until Wednesday. At least that solved my concerns about paying for the thing via mobile phone.
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Give me my money!
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Back home, pay for the car. The $13,000 were slightly irritating because it meant digging into my high-interest savings account, losing $130 odd of interest in the process. But that wasn't the worst. Enter the payer details. Enter the sum. Work past Bank Australia's “are you being pressured? Are you being scammed?” page. Yes, send me an SMS.
Sorry, the sum exceeds your daily transfer limit. Please contact support.
What's wrong with this? Why didn't they tell me before? What's the limit? How do I contact support? I couldn't find anything on their web site, and their “help” section only offered PDF instructions. But I've been there before, so I found the information on my web site: call 132888.
Did that. “Due to unexpected circumstances you're in for a long wait”. While I was waiting messed around and found that I was able to transfer $5000, but that the site had forgotten all the transfer details. Finally I was connected to Hayley, who told me that my daily limit was $5000, and (after interpreting her way of expressing it) I had two alternatives: get them to do it for me, or increase my transfer limit. But it seems that they can only increase the limit temporarily for up to 72 hours, and it would take about half that time just to set it in place. Why? I couldn't get any sense out of her. Anyway, for that she had to send me an email offering me “VIP Access”. It started:
VIP Symantec (Phone or Tablet) provides the information required to assist you in downloading and registering VIP Access Token for smart phone or tablet.
Dammit, I don't want to have anything on my phone that has to do with security. Sorry, that's the only way. What are these people thinking of?
OK, do the alternative: she performs the transfer. First, identify me: date of birth and address, please. Dammit, half of Dereel can answer those questions. No wonder they're concerned about security: they have no idea.
It went on: She wanted me to read out all the information that she already had available on her screen for “due diligence”, a term that I don't think they understand. Then what do you want the money for? Dammit, why should I tell you? Because otherwise I can't do the transfer. OK, for a car. From a dealer or private? Hayley, what do you think when the recipient is All Auto Solutions Pty Ltd? This went on for a while while I grew increasingly annoyed, and then I discovered that it couldn't be sent until tomorrow evening. Why? Because that's the way it is.
Somehow this whole business suggests that they don't understand the issues. I have more than enough money in my accounts to pay my debts, and I can't because of arbitrary rules that they have made. Asked her to take a complaint, more beating around the bush, and then I said that was enough. “Anything else I can help you with today?”. You haven't helped at all. But yes, give me the complaint number. Sorry, we don't do complaints, only feedback.
Finally I got connected to her supervisor, Nikita, who said much the same thing, and that they're proud of their security. But yes, they do take complaints. I can find the details with a Google search!
After 45 minutes, I was no further. But it occurred to me that I could work around the problem: I've already paid $5000, another $5000 tomorrow and $3000 on Wednesday before pickup. Called up Chris and told him of my problems. He didn't seem in the slightest worried. He has probably seen more than enough of this sort of thing.
And then I received email: “Your Complaint - Ref: CAS-661500-T7N8Y8”. Somehow things don't seem to tie up. I'm not holding my breath for a resolution.
Then while looking for something else, discovered that I have had similar pain before. At the time I decided that I should stay with them. But that was before they denied me access to my money. I wonder whether it also applies to credit cards. The ANZ credit card that I have just cancelled had a $33,000 limit. I wonder if there were restrictions on individual transactions, and whether Bank Australia has something similar.
| Tuesday, 29 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 29 July 2025 |
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Insuring the new car
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
How do we insure the new car? It's not a legal requirement, since the registration includes basic liability, but we want at least third party insurance. Back to this horrible Budget Direct web site, where in fact things went relatively smoothly. Nowadays that's worth reporting.
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Australian Taxation Office exploit
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
The ABC's Four Corners team has a new episode, “No Return: Australia's Missing Billions”, about an online exploit on the Australian Taxation Office. Spent some time watching it today, in the process coming to a number of recognitions:
So after my various online experiences of the last couple of days, should I think like a cracker and plan (and document) exploits? How can I break the security of Bank Australia? I don't think I can, as long as I keep them off my mobile phone. And they claim to be able to recognize me by my voice.
But what if I have installed their app? One of the ways they identify me is to send me a “secure” SMS, whatever that might be—they're too polite to assume that I don't know. How does that work if the phone has been stolen? They claim that it does, but they don't say how.
And Budget Direct? I don't even have a password! To authenticate me they use this stupid date of birth and address. Any of my neighbours could steal my phone and log in as me. About the only good thing about it is that I can't think of what harm a cracker could do, though my lack of imagination is exactly one of the reasons why I don't trust phones for security.
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