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| Greg's diary |
| June 2021 |
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| Tuesday, 1 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 1 June 2021 |
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Tortillas again
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Huevos rancheros for breakfast this morning, like on most Tuesdays. And once again experiments with the tortillas. I've been using the El Maizal masa since January, and I'm not very happy with it. In particular, it seemed to want very little water, and I started off with a ratio of 1:1.45 masa to water.
But since starting on the second packet, I've found that it can take more water. Last week I went to 1:1.6. And today I tried 1:1.65, which also seemed to be good.
Why the difference? Was the first package different in some way?
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Battery recalibration, part 2
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, technology | Link here |
Yesterday's PV recalibration was short and sweet. But it's also Tandem-like: “So nice, so nice, we do it twice”. Today we had another one, in principle almost identical to the first one: start charging at 12:40 and 51%, charge until 100%, then stop:
I hope there will only be two.
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More GPS navigator fun
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Planning to go into town today, despite the lockdown, to mcPhysio. I don't really need a GPS navigator to get me there, but it's an interesting position because the parking area is on Anticline Lane, behind the clinic, and my previous navigators couldn't find it.
OK, add the coordinates to the user.upoi file, and once again it worked. And for some reason it wanted to take me only to the junction of Anticline Lane and Eyre Street, and that via a different route from normal, via Ascot Street. That's not optimal, but I did have the route set to “short”, and maybe it was.
More setting the thing showed me that I appear to be missing some functionality with this software: no speed limits, and no speed display. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much in view of the fact that I didn't have to pay for the navigator.
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Physiotherapy again
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Topic: health | Link here |
Off in the afternoon to see Heather Dalman about my Epicondylitis, which hasn't improved. Despite the “lockdown”, they were open. OK, this time needles. What, acupuncture? No, we don't call it that, because it's Western medicine. But yes, the same kind of needle, and it works by stimulating the release of certain chemicals. Will hurt for a few days, but then it should be OK.
It's a strange feeling. Certainly not the kind of pain that you'd expect from a needle, but unpleasant nevertheless while the needle is in there. But after that, there was almost nothing. Certainly it feels no more painful than before. We'll see how it works in the next couple of weeks.
| Wednesday, 2 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 2 June 2021 |
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More noodles
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Time for another batch of noodles today, this time chow mein or mì xào fresh noodles. Well, they were fresh when we got them, but they've been in the deep freeze for over 6 months.
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How long do I cook them? The instructions say 45 seconds!
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What does that mean in practice? Put them in boiling water, bring back to the boil, taste after 45 seconds? They were still a little firm, but of course it took me nearly as long again to fish them out of the water. They'll probably be OK, but they're not for immediate consumption, so I'll find out some other time.
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Upgrading dereel again
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
The build of FreeBSD 13 on dereel completed without incident yesterday. Time to reboot and install the world.
Failure! Something about creating a symlink C, which already existed. What directory? It's too polite to say that, but it was related to nls. OK, go looking:
=== root@dereel (/dev/pts/0) /usr/src 2 -> find / -xdev -name C | xargs ls -ld
...
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 19 Jan 09:18 /usr/share/nls/C
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 7 19 Jan 09:18 /usr/share/vi/catalog/C -> english
The only symlink was the second one, but clearly that has nothing to do with nls. It looks more like the first one, but that's a directory. But I forgot to log the output, so try again, for the 4th time, and this time with logging.
It worked! Why? The suspect commands were:
install -l s -o root -g wheel -m 755 -T "package=utilities" "C" "/usr/share/nls/POSIX"
install -l s -o root -g wheel -m 755 -T "package=utilities" "C" "/usr/share/nls/en_US.US_ASCII"
I don't understand that. install -l s means “install as a symlink”. But without a path name C should be the same, and the second should fail. Are all three of the strings after the -T (tags) option tags for mtree? Do I want to know? In any case, the directory has now been replaced:
drwxr-xr-x 2 root wheel 512 2 Jun 12:32 /usr/share/nls/C
Next, update the ports. That's always fun, but this time there was another issue:
===== Wed 2 Jun 2021 12:35:17 AEST on dereel: pkg upgrade
pkg: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected. Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended
Updating FreeBSD repository catalogue...
pkg: Repository FreeBSD has a wrong packagesite, need to re-create database
OK, we can do that.
===== Wed 2 Jun 2021 12:35:36 AEST on dereel: pkg bootstrap -f
pkg: Warning: Major OS version upgrade detected. Running "pkg bootstrap -f" recommended
pkg(8) is already installed. Forcing reinstallation through pkg(7).
The package management tool is not yet installed on your system.
Do you want to fetch and install it now? [y/N]: y
Installing pkg-1.16.3...
package pkg is already installed, forced install
Somehow those messages appear to be self-contradictory. But it worked, and modulo the usual silently deleted packages, everything went well.
Which packages were (almost) silently deleted? It seems that Emacs is an old, worn-out magic word. What we had was:
Installed packages to be REMOVED:
gstreamer: 0.10.36_6
gstreamer-plugins: 0.10.36_13,3
gstreamer-plugins-bad: 0.10.23_4,3
gstreamer-plugins-good: 0.10.31_3,3
gstreamer-plugins-ogg: 0.10.36_2,3
gstreamer-plugins-theora: 0.10.36_2,3
gstreamer-plugins-vorbis: 0.10.36_2,3
gstreamer-plugins-vp8: 0.10.23_7,3
hal: 0.5.14_34
hugin: 2020.0
opera: 12.16_6
py27-cairo: 1.18.1_1
py27-gobject: 2.28.6_9
py27-gtk2: 2.24.0_5
OK, py27 is Python 2.7, which is also an old, worn-out magic word. gstreamer and friends? No idea. The same for opera. And you can't really blame it for hugin: that was my personal rebuild, and it was easy enough to reinstall.
In comparison with the average upgrade, then, things went really smoothly. Do I want gstreamer and opera? Not at the moment, anyway.
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Where's my phone?, part 2
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Today was the generously measured “arrive by” date that eBay set for the arrival of the phone I bought 8 days ago. The only sign I have that anything happened was that a tracking number had been assigned 3 days later. And since then, nothing.
Could that be AusPost? Very possible, They're anything but diligent in keeping the information up to date. But it's equally possible that the phone hasn't been shipped yet. OK, how do I cancel the transaction? Off to fight the eBay web site, which tells me that I can't request a refund yet, because the delivery date hasn't happened yet:
I didn’t receive my item: We found 2 answer(s)
Your item may still be on its way
The estimated delivery date for this item is 01 Jun, 2021.
What happens if you don't receive the item soon?
If you don't receive the item by the delivery date, just request a refund or more information from the seller. We're here to help if you and the seller can't resolve the problem.
1 June? That was yesterday. Well, not in eBay-land. But where's the second answer? These people are completely confusing. But almost in passing, I saw that the tracking information had been updated:
| 1 Jun 2021 | Item processed at facility | |
| 1:21pm | STRATHFIELD, NSW | |
Oh! So they really did take a whole week before sending it. Checking the AusPost tracking information showed that it had progressed further. Round the time
| In transit to next facility in MELBOURNE SOUTH EAST VIC | Wed 2 Jun, 10.31am | |
| Item processed at facility SYDNEY SOUTH NSW | Wed 2 Jun, 10.27am | |
| SYDNEY WEST NSW | Tue 1 Jun, 1.21pm | |
| Shipping information approved by Australia Post | Sat 29 May, 2.13am | |
| Shipping information received by Australia Post | Fri 28 May, 7.55pm | |
That's backwards, of course. But it makes it a bit late for cancelling the transaction. When will it finally get here?
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Yet another battery recalibration!
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Topic: Stones Road house, general, opinion | Link here |
I wasn't really serious when I suggested yesterday that there would be another PV battery recalibration again today, but there was. This one was relatively trivial, since the SOC was already 93%, and again it just climbed to 100%, so the whole thing was over in 17 minutes. But gradually it's starting to irritate me.
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Finally better backup compression?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
It's been nearly a month since Daniel Nebdal sent me suggestions for better compression for backups. Yesterday was the first day of the month, time for a level 0 dump (whole system), and thus also high time to choose a better compression program.
For eureka things were clear: pbzip2 is the best that I have installed, and I didn't want the pain of building a port on a 6 year old system. teevee was also uninteresting, since I use rsync to back it up. Left lagoon, which has zstd. OK, make zstd -T4 the compressor.
Today I had two unexpected results:
...
DUMP: 52.64% done, finished in 6:13 at Wed Jun 2 11:15:14 2021
bzip2: I/O or other error, bailing out. Possible reason follows.
bzip2: Permission denied
Input file = (stdin), output file = (stdout)
DUMP: Broken pipe
DUMP: The ENTIRE dump is aborted.
So I had to try again. Link to the correct script, and I got:
dump -0uf - / | nice zstd -T4 > /dump/lagoon-FreeBSD/0/root.bz2
mksnap_ffs: Cannot create snapshot //.snap/dump_snapshot: /: Snapshots are not yet supported when running with journaled soft updates: Operation not supported
dump: Cannot create //.snap/dump_snapshot: No such file or directory
Huh? That has been working so far. Reinstated the local version of the script and got:
dump -0uf - / | zstd -T4 > /dump/lagoon-FreeBSD/0/root.bz2
DUMP: WARNING: should use -L when dumping live read-write filesystems!
DUMP: Date of this level 0 dump: Wed Jun 2 10:58:09 2021
...
DUMP: finished in 1402 seconds, throughput 24293 KBytes/sec
DUMP: level 0 dump on Wed Jun 2 10:58:09 2021
DUMP: DUMP IS DONE
So what's the difference? It's repeatable, but it makes no sense to me.
More interesting, of course, was the time and size for the /home file system. Here the times.
April:
DUMP: DUMP: 267036894 tape blocks
DUMP: finished in 43573 seconds, throughput 6128 KBytes/sec
DUMP: level 0 dump on Thu Apr 1 22:05:34 2021
DUMP: DUMP IS DONE
This month:
DUMP: DUMP: 267124094 tape blocks
DUMP: finished in 4801 seconds, throughput 55639 KBytes/sec
DUMP: level 0 dump on Wed Jun 2 11:21:33 2021
DUMP: DUMP IS DONE
Somehow I lost the output of the level 0 dump at the beginning of May, but it would have been similar. Clearly zstd is round 9 times faster than bzip2. And the sizes?
=== root@eureka (/dev/pts/4) /usr/local/etc/postfix 340 -> l /dump/lagoon-FreeBSD/0/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 222,482,452,587 2 May 13:06 home.0.bz2
-rw-r--r-- 1 root wheel 224,567,247,652 2 Jun 12:43 home.bz2
Yes, marginally more. I think I can live with that. But what is causing this issue with dump failing?
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Marinated chicken drumsticks
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Decades ago I used to make a dish with soya-marinated chicken drumsticks. For some reason we haven't made it for years, and I can no longer find the recipe. But we have had some drumsticks taking up space in a freezer for some time now, so it's time to revive it, or, as proved to be the case, reinvent it.
For 3 or 4 portions
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 0.5 g | cloves | 1 | ||
| 2.5 g | cinnamon | 1 | ||
| 25 g | ginger | 2 | ||
| 30 g | garlic | 2 | ||
| 80 g | light soya sauce | 2 | ||
| 20 g | dark soya sauce | 2 | ||
| 250 ml | water | 2 | ||
| 1 kg | Chicken thighs (about 6) | 3 | ||
| 2 | star anise | 4 |
Finely divide the cloves and cinnamon in a spice blender.
Mix ginger, garlic with soya sauce and water. Blend with the spice powders until uniform.
Marinate the drumsticks in the marinade for 30 minutes on each side:
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Cook with the whole star anise for 20 minutes on a side.
Dry, then deep fry or “air fry” for a few minutes to get the desired consistency:
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And the results? Yvonne was very happy, but I wasn't. Maybe I've outgrown this kind of food. The recipe is here in case I do improve on it.
| Thursday, 3 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 3 June 2021 |
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Download failure
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Seen while trying to download a video with MediathekView today:
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I wonder what that means. It only applied to one file, and it was consistent, so I suspect a configuration error at the other end.
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New password restrictions
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
It seems that I'm not the only person who finds password strength checkers stupid. Here's a reductio ad absurdum:
Your new password must include the full text of one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, plus at least 48 characters from three different alphabets.
Bear in mind that you cannot use a Shakespearean sonnet that you have used in a previous password and you must include at least three numbers and no more than eight, but at least six upper case letters.
There are further restrictions. I wonder what frustration led to that.
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“Air frying” sardines
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Sardines for dinner tonight. How do we prepare them? With the “air fryer” again? The instructions are as helpful as they are for sausages:
Food Temp (°C) Time (min) Recommended accessories Fish 230 10-15 Pan and/or high rack
Once again pretty useless. Same thing for a sardine or a large chunk of salmon. OK, what makes sense? In fact, the values might be worthwhile, so I started like that. But it soon became clear that 230° is too much. Round the time the temperature reached 220°, I turned back to 210°. Ultimately they were in there for 17 minutes, probably too long. Before and after:
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Next time I'll try for round 8 minutes.
| Friday, 4 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 4 June 2021 |
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More garden work
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
The gardeners along again today, this time 3 of them: Bryan for the first time in months, and a new bloke called Simon. They certainly made a difference. Here one before (20 May) and after:
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And this was once a straggly tomato plant and a Persicaria odorata, which I know better as Daun Laksa:
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That's certainly more extreme than I would have expected. I hope that Bryan is right that it'll come back quickly.
He wasn't. The pruning was totally inappropriate, and it took nearly 2 years to recover.
He was clearly happy with what they did, and took some photos to put up on some Facebook page:
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I suppose that's a good idea: if they advertise with the appearance of the garden, they'll also ensure that it looks particularly good.
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Access only with QR code
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Topic: health, technology, general, opinion | Link here |
The latest lockdown in Victoria is now loosened. For us out in the sticks, there are only a few restrictions. What are they? I wish I understood. Despite over a year of this kind of issue, the government still doesn't have a single place to go to to tell you what you may and may not do. But in the news I heard that access to shops is now only with QR code.
What does that mean? Presumably some mobile phone app. Why did I only hear it on the news, to which I only listen sometimes. Yvonne hadn't heard of it (and didn't know what a QR code is anyway). Off searching and came up with this page, which tells me
How to check-in
And yes, the spacing is original.
As an afterthought, it also tells you to go to the Google toy shop and download the Service Victoria app. Damn! Another run-in with this horrible keyboard replacement. OK, did that:
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Install it and discover:
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“Contains ads”? The devil take Service Victoria! OK, install it anyway, start it and discover:
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Now isn't that helpful? How do I activate it? Waved it in front of a QR code and sure enough, it recognized it and translated it with no input on my part and no further problems. But that's not quite what the instructions said.
More investigations, checked on a Real Computer, and discovered:
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This needs interpretation, of course. Samsung GT-I9100 is Google's name for what Sλmsung sold as “Galaxy 2”, the only phone I currently have, and Nokia TA-1020 is their name for my now-defunct Nokia 3. And indirectly this shows that my new Xiaomi Redmi 9T still hasn't arrived.
“We're too modern for your old, worn-out smartphone!”. Isn't that wonderful? Instead, Google offers some other scan program that works on the phone.
What's wrong with this picture?
Discussion of the matter on IRC. Callum Gibson thinks that it's justified not to offer a scan program for old versions of Android: it's too difficult. My version of Android is 4.1.2, about 8 years old. And clearly scan programs do work on it, so it's quite possible. If the government is imposing regulations, it should ensure that people can follow them.
It turns out that there is an alternative, but they don't bother to make that clear either. The page is structured as a FAQ, but there's no entry for “What do I do if I don't have a smartphone?”. Instead you need to read the entry My phone won’t scan. How do I check-in?, which really only addresses issues like “If you cannot check-in using the QR code because of technical or network issues like poor signal or low battery”. But it seems that it's up to the venue to provide an alternative, like signing a log. That's reasonable, but why do they hide it? It seems that everybody involved with this system is far removed from reality.
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X on dereel, next attempt
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
In August last year I spent two weeks trying to configure X on dereel, and ultimately gave up postponed
the effort. The issue was almost certainly a bug in the nvidia driver: no matter
what I wrote in the X configuration file, it put the displays in the same sequence, and not
the one I wanted.
Since then I have upgraded the system, and it makes sense to use dereel as my workstation and eureka as the house hub. So let's take a look at that X configuration again...
It has changed completely! I didn't get very far, but what I saw today was (from /var/log/Xorg.0.log):
[196913.340] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Fri Jun 4 17:17:50 2021
[196913.340] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/local/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
[196913.340] (==) No Layout section. Using the first Screen section.
[196913.340] (==) No screen section available. Using defaults.
Last August I had:
[ 248.887] (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.1.log", Time: Mon Aug 3 15:13:35 2020
[ 248.887] (==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
[ 248.887] (==) Using system config directory "/usr/local/share/X11/xorg.conf.d"
So it can't find the config file. Why not? Oh. I removed it, probably as part of my testing (it was probably a symlink to one of my test config files). I really shouldn't put things off this long.
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Backup problems solved
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
My replacement of backup programs brought an unexpected problem, as I noted a couple of days ago. The backups failed with
dump -0uf - / | nice zstd -T4 > /dump/lagoon-FreeBSD/0/root.bz2
mksnap_ffs: Cannot create snapshot //.snap/dump_snapshot: /: Snapshots are not yet supported when running with journaled soft updates: Operation not supported
dump: Cannot create //.snap/dump_snapshot: No such file or directory
Today I tried the obvious: copy and paste the first line. It worked!
Huh? Time for more examination of that script:
echo dump -${level}uf - $fs \| nice $PRI $BZIP \> $dumpfile.bz2
if [ "$dummy" != "Y" ]; then
...
dump -L -${level}uf - $fs | nice $PRI $BZIP > $dumpfile.bz2
Oh. That's clear enough: my echo command didn't match the command I actually tried to execute. Remove the -L from the command and it worked.
| Saturday, 5 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 5 June 2021 |
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Who destroyed my garden?
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Looking out the bedroom window this morning, I saw:
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That looks like a lawn with a couple of shrubs on it. But a couple of weeks ago I was just rejoicing in the first snowdrops of autumn, and in the second photo the daffodil shoots are clearly visible in the background:
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Where are they now? Whippersnipped!
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Clearly the gardeners did that yesterday. But why? Surely they could have seen the flowers, and last time we were here I discussed the matter with Nathan.
And that's not all. They completely removed many plants further to the west, including the violet ground cover and a prickly bush that we also discussed last time. Here last week and now (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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About the only thing they left behind was my Epazote bush, an annual that I was going to harvest. They pruned it! Again here last week and now (run the cursor over an image to compare it with the other):
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So far I've been very happy with Bryan and Nathan, but they've certainly put their collective feet in it this time.
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More dereel fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
A little more playing around with dereel today. First, take the memory out of eureso and put it in dereel, increasing dereel from 8 GB to 16 GB.
Booting wasn't quite what I expected. Firstly, it failed:
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Haven't I seen that before? I'll have to check. And don't I just need to enter boot to boot? Yes. But then I saw:
real memory = 12884901888 (12288 MB)
avail memory = 12384124928 (11810 MB)
Why not 16 GB? Did I seat one of the SIMMs incorrectly? The rear slot (on the left in the image) is unusually difficult to get at for a ThinkCentre. It's underneath the CPU cooler:
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Take it out, put it back in again, no difference. Check the SIMM. Dammit, they're only 2 GB SIMMs!
And that's about as far as I got. Somehow my time is so taken up with other things, including this diary, that I have little time for this kind of work. But it'll happen soon, I promise.
In passing, I should recall where the D-Sub connection for the display card is. It doesn't have a patch panel:
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That's why the adjacent slot is open.
| Sunday, 6 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 6 June 2021 |
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Bad photo alignment
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's comparison photos of the garden bed destruction were from my weekly house photo series, specifically one of the views from the south:
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They're taken from the same place every week, so they should look the same:
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Yes, they're aligned somewhat differently, but with fisheye projection they're all just on the surface of a sphere, so it shouldn't matter. Hugin aligned the images well, but when stitching them I got (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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Why is that? More head-scratching needed.
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dereel X upgrade, next pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I managed to avoid doing any work getting X configured on dereel. In principle all I needed was to get the configuration to arrange the three displays in the correct order, which in this case means :0.0 on D-Sub, :0.1 on DVI and :0.2 on HDMI. That's necessary at least because only the third display has an HDMI input, and on the second the D-Sub input is already in use.
Irritatingly, that meant that the non-X display was on the middle monitor, and it's stupid enough to change displays if one goes away. So when eureka:0.0 (on the same monitor) does a screen blank, it changes to dereel and doesn't come back when I restore the eureka displays. But when things are over and done with, that will no longer be a problem.
What was a problem, though, was that X wouldn't start. /var/log/Xorg.0.log said:
[ 11784.536] (II) LoadModule: "nvidia"
[ 11784.550] (WW) Warning, couldn't open module nvidia
[ 11784.550] (EE) Failed to load module "nvidia" (module does not exist, 0)
[ 11784.550] (EE) No drivers available.
...
[ 12110.446] (EE) NVIDIA: Failed to initialize the NVIDIA kernel module. Please see the
[ 12110.446] (EE) NVIDIA: system's kernel log for additional error messages and
[ 12110.446] (EE) NVIDIA: consult the NVIDIA README for details.
Oh. Where's the nividia driver? pkg said nothing about throwing it out. But it wasn't there. OK, install it, which worked fine. Start X. Only the middle monitor (on DVI) came up, and that in 640x480 mode. Why?
[ 12730.721] (II) NVIDIA(0): Validated MetaModes:
[ 12730.721] (II) NVIDIA(0): "NULL"
[ 12730.721] (II) NVIDIA(0): Virtual screen size determined to be 640 x 480
[ 12730.721] (WW) NVIDIA(0): Unable to get display device for DPI computation.
The others showed the same message, but no display at all. Only later did I see:
[ 12730.409] (WW) VGA arbiter: cannot open kernel arbiter, no multi-card support
Why is this all so difficult? I didn't even get as far as I had been last August. How I hate this stuff!
| Monday, 7 June 2021 | Dereel → Napoleons → Dereel | Images for 7 June 2021 |
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Pedro still not house-trained!
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
It's been nearly a week since Pedro last forgot his house-training. Dare we hope? We dare, I suppose, but that doesn't help. This morning I found another puddle in the hallway. And Yvonne, who had to clean it up, carefully avoided mentioning it.
When will he finally be house-trained?
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Where's my phone?, conclusion
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Where's the phone that I bought nearly 2 weeks ago? On Friday they sent it to Wendouree, apparently too late to get it to the post office on the same day. OK, what does AusPost tracking say today?
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And yes, the times are consistent wrong way round chronological. So it was transferred to the (unspecified) post office at 6:42 and then put in transit 7 minutes later. What does that mean? Called up the post office on 5342 0455 and was told that the packages were just being unloaded from the car, and that it would take about an hour, after they had scanned them.
Scan? Would that show up in the tracking? Yes!
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So the entry at 6:42 simply meant that it had been “carded” (presumably an 20th century word for “scanned”), which also explains the lack of a post office name.
So off to Napoleons after breakfast to pick it up, which happened without incident at 11:53, according to the now-completed tracking. At least I have learnt something.
|
MARION for breakfast again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Some years ago I tried some Malaysian-style spice paste combinations from MARION'S KITCHEN (for some reason they have to shout). I found them acceptable but too expensive. Two years ago I tried their Phat Thai, which worked, but I tried different noodles. The package comes with its own rice sticks, and I should have tried those:
In the process of tidying out the pantry I found that I still had two packets of the mix. OK, let's do it more or less the way they intended. The rice sticks weighed 200 g, and they were to be cooked for 7-8 minutes. Did that and decided that it was too long. They also swelled up to 570 g, which should be enough for 3 portions. MARION said 4, and last time I decided it was only good for 2.
And under those circumstances the quantity of “meat” (in my case, a combination of chicken, dofu and prawn balls) was about right. The result:
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It tasted OK, but nothing special. Certainly nothing that would justify MARION's price (about $2 per portion), when the ALDI paste comes in at about $0.70.
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Setting up Xiaomi Redmi 9T
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Unpacked the new Xiaomi Redmi 9T phone with some difficulty: it had been wrapped tightly in bubble foil, and I had difficulty unwrapping it.
The first thing I saw was a USB charger, outside the box. Why? There was another charger with European plug inside the box. Clearly not an Australian model. But what I wasn't expecting was how much bigger it was than previous phones:
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From left to right: Sλmsung G9100, Nokia 3, Xiaomi.
Documentation looked better than I expected. Warranty documentation written in flyspeck, and 100 pages of instructions, admittedly also in flyspeck! Better than I expected.
But worse than it looked. The instructions are in 15 languages, and most of them is the obligatory security boilerplate. Here is the entire usable content of the instructions:
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I had to take a photo to read them, but it wasn't worth the trouble. This is a really modern phone! And the link www.mi.com/global/support/userguide gave me a model list that didn't include the Redmi 9T, only the Redmi Note 9T, which I believe is a different model. But it didn't make any difference, because it was just a copy of the printed version.
Searching on the web found this manual, which did differ from the printed version, but only by the breakage in the PDF, which produced hundreds of these but no display output:
Syntax Error: Invalid page count in page tree
Syntax Error: Page tree object is wrong type (stream)
Syntax Error: Page tree object is wrong type (array)
Finally I found this page, which at least describes the MIUI user interface, though it's not yet clear if it's any use.
OK, this isn't my first Android device. Plug it in and set up. First, of course: what shall I call it? It will usually be part of the house network, so it needs a Domain Name System entry. Previous phones have been called flachmann, talipon and taskumatti (Finnish for flachmann). And this one? Decided ultimately on hirse.
Next, setup:
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Amazing! What languages are that? Melayu I recognize, but how many do? Vælg sprok? Danish or Norwegian? What a combination! Of course I was able to scroll down and set my language, but that's an amazing violation of POLA! Presumably this phone was intended for the Malaysian market, though that doesn't explain the Danish heading.
Carry on with the setup, including the obligatory upgrade to a newer version: Android 10 QKQ1.200830.002, presumably not a date, but also “security patch level” 2021-05-01. Also MIUI Global 12.0.9 Stable. And during the process it installed all the apps that I had on taskumatti, my Nokia 3.
But then I get questions like:
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Damn you, Xiaomi Cloud! You don't tell me who you are or what you do, but you want to use my phone to make phone calls! Somehow there's something seriously wrong here. They talk about security all the time, but they don't tell me any details.
One thing that I did really like is the fingerprint sensor to turn the thing on. Instead of some silly password or geometric “swipe”, just hold your finger (or, in my case, thumb) over the power button. Setup wasn't completely straightforward, though:
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And yes, that's the entire text. Clearly it's confused. Continued, and sure enough:
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OK, I've taken a number of screen shots. Time to download them to a real computer. But where's WiFi File Transfer? Oh. The list of apps isn't sorted. How do I do that? Of course, since this is a new version of Android, everything has been hidden somewhere else. Google searches were not very helpful. Some said that it wasn't possible. Others told me to open the “app drawer” by “swiping” up from the bottom. But that opens a voice assistant. OK, ask the voice assistant:
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Now isn't that helpful? It's just plain wrong! Pressing on the “apps” icon does nothing useful
Then I found this page which looks like it could possibly be useful, but requires more work then I wanted to go through at the time. After squinting at the app pages for a considerable time, came to the conclusion that the app simply wasn't there. But the toy shop told me that it was installed on all my “devices”.
What does the toy shop know? Went searching on hirse and found that it wasn't installed. OK, installed and started:
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Marvellous! Checking for an update didn't help, of course. Started it anyway, and it worked. For a while. Then, for no obvious reason, it hung. After a fair amount of retrying managed to get it working again. But somehow this is frustrating: the only two Android apps I really find useful are this one and the Mendhak GPS logger, which has also disappeared.
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Pedro goes fishing
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
While walking today, Pedro disappeared off the side of the road and came back with something in his mouth:
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What's that? A Yabby!
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Who would have thought to find one on the side of the road?
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hirse camera
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
hirse, my new Xiaomi Redmi 9T mobile phone, advertises a really high-resolution camera: 48 MP, more than double that of any real camera I have. How good is it? While setting it up, I took a photo of the screen in front of it:
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Completely out of focus! And “only” 12 MP. It offers 48 MP as an extra, presumably the same way as my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II offers 80 MP. OK, try that:
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It's hard to say how good that could be, but clearly image stabilization is unknown to this device: the shutter speed was 1/50 s in each case. Later I tried under more controlled circumstances. Here at 12 MP and 48 MP, with the E-M1 Mark II for comparison:
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At that size, the images don't look bad. How about some details? Here's a natural crop from the 12 MP and 20 MP images, along with a 50% reduced version of the 48 MP image:
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And here's the natural size of the 48 MP image, along with a 100% expanded view of the Oly:
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I suppose that's not bad for the Xiaomi, but clearly not good either. Still, I had never intended to use it for photography. And only later did it occur to me that hirse is an anagram of “hires”.
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Telling time with Android
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Another issue with all Android phones that I have seen is that they don't want to display seconds in their times. hirse came with a clock app that nicely did so, even by default. But what about on the screensaver? No, then the seconds go away, and there's no way to get them back.
Why? I can only assume that this is an energy saving thing. But I wish they'd offer it, at least as an option.
| Tuesday, 8 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 8 June 2021 |
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Microsoft disk thrashing
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Topic: technology | Link here |
What's wrong with Microsoft “Windows” 10? Since last month's forced update, it seems to be trying its best to kill the disk: for no apparent reason, the system processes use 100% disk for minutes on end. I suppose I should replace it with an SSD, but what does it happen in the first place?
How I hate Microsoft!
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More Android fun
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I managed to set up hirse, my new Xiaomi Redmi 9T mobile phone, without too many difficulties. But of course there were many loose ends.
First, what about a GPS logger? In the past I had used the Mendhak GPS logger, but that was no longer an option: the toy shop didn't know about it. I had had this problem before with taskumatti, and I had installed two others, both titled “GPS Logger”: BasicAirData and Peter Ho. They weren't a raging success: in fact, I couldn't get either to work. BasicAirData only ever showed this screen:
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That wasn't a hardware issue: the GPS status app showed a surprising number of satellites. And Peter Ho is too modern for me: no documentation, no obvious means of functioning. Yes, it displays coordinates, and it might save them, but it's far too polite to say where or in what format. So off Googling for mendhak, and I actually got a result from which I could download the app. But even more interesting was the content of that page, which I'll discuss below.
And while I was walking the dogs, I got another notification. And once again it was gone before I could see it, and the trick I had learnt (“swipe” down from the top) only brought me this screen:
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How I hate Android!
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Android compatibility: the truth?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Last week I grumbled about the fact that Service Victoria's app doesn't support my old Sλmsung I9100: Android 4.1 is too old for it. And Callum Gibson defended the choice because of the effort involved in supporting such old (over 8 years!) systems.
And then I discovered that some apps are too old for modern Android! I had difficulty with the WiFi File Transfer, because it was too old. And today I spent some time looking for the Mendhak GPS logger. When I found it, the author explained the reason why it's no longer in the toy shop:
The core of the issue (why it gets removed) has been that GPSLogger supports a lot of older devices and frameworks, whereas the Play Store is always trying to get everyone onto the latest versions.
So: not a technical issue at all (well, not primarily), but a political one. Google, don't be evil!
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More cooking times
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
“Schinkengriller” (sausages, which I call stinking gorilla) for dinner tonight. “Hair dryer” air fryer again? They're made with collagen skins, of course, and I've had my fun with them in the past. And somehow I don't expect them to get very brown. Started at 200° and watched them burst, one after the other:
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They weren't the only thing that wouldn't brown. The last couple of bags of chips seem not to want to brown either. They're done when they start to float:
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But they're not brown. Last time I left them longer. They didn't brown, but they did get very hard. I wonder if Australians don't like browned chips?
| Wednesday, 9 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 9 June 2021 |
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Still more Android fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Presumably as a result of practice, setting up hirse, my new Android phone, wasn't as difficult as I had feared. Of course, there were still things to be done. One was just plain finding installed apps. Much discussion on IRC, and lots of experimentation, and finally I got roughly what I was looking for. It seems that MIUI has two different ways of displaying apps. By default it's the old way, in pages “swiped” sideways, the way it was on my Sλmsung I9100. The problem is that I didn't find a way to sort the icons alphabetically, so I had to search the entire collection. The other way is the way it was in the Nokia 3: one long page, “swiped” vertically, and ordered alphabetically. And that, apparently, is what they call the “app drawer”. It seems that it can be subdivided into categories, but I didn't investigate. It's not even clear that it's a good idea. As I recall it,
Shrink display with 2 fingers, revealing “settings” at the bottom.
Select Home Screen “with app drawer”.
With the app drawer and without categories I get a ^ at the bottom which I can “swipe” up and get a mainly sorted list of apps:
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It wasn't all plain sailing. One app that I clearly need to use is the toy shop. That's called “Google Play” in the app list. But all I found was “Google Pay”, which sounds ominous. But that was just a little trick they play: it's now called “Play Store”, and it's sorted accordingly.
And what about the Notifications display? I had become used to “swiping” down from the edge of the device, but when I did that I only got:
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By chance, Chris Bahlo came along, so I asked her. Simple: “swipe” down from the edge of the device. And it worked! Maybe Android just doesn't like me.
It took a little bit of experimentation to discover that you can't just “swipe” from anywhere. From the left of the top side of the phone, you get Notifications. From the middle or right you get Control centre. Obvious, isn't it? That's presumably why it isn't documented.
And while grumbling about GPS log apps, I tried the BasicAirData GPS logger again. How about that, it worked! And maybe it would be useful. But first I needed it to stop finding satellites, and it seemed to be remarkably sensitive. Even inside it claimed to find a number of satellites. So I put it inside the pantry, and it still claimed to find something. In the end I put it in a Faraday cage of a couple of dog feeding bowls:
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That's remarkably sensitive. For the fun of it, put the phone in a real Faraday cage, one of the microwave ovens.
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/14) ~ 22 -> ping hirse
PING hirse.lemis.com (192.109.197.226): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.109.197.226: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=142.930 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.226: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=332.963 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.226: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=491.393 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.226: icmp_seq=4 ttl=64 time=202.241 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.226: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=199.340 ms
^C
--- hirse.lemis.com ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 28.6% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 142.930/273.773/491.393/125.410 ms
Not exactly spectacular performance, but how come it works at all?
And what about the status of WiFi File Transfer? Discovered that I was also using an FTP server for automatically downloading GPS track logs; why not use it for other things. There aren't very many: photos and screen shots, mainly. Wrote a primitive shell script, which will change:
fh ()
{
case $1 in
-g) # GPS logs
ftp -i ftp://$user:$password@hirse:2121/Android/data/com.mendhak.gpslogger/files/ ;;
-p) # photos
ftp -i ftp://$user:$password@hirse:2121/DCIM/Camera/ ;;
-s) # screen shots
ftp -i ftp://$user:$password@hirse:2121/DCIM/Screenshots/ ;;
*) # home directory (/storage/emulated/0/)
ftp -i ftp://$user:$password@hirse:2121/ ;;
esac
}
But that requires listing and deciding what to download. Almost before I used it, I thought of something more tailored to the matter at hand:
getss ()
{
DATE=$1
# This will fail badly unless the directory name is a date.
if [ "$DATE" = "" ]; then
DATE=`pwd`
fi
DATE=`basename $DATE`
DATE=`echo $DATE | sed 's:\(....\)\(..\)\(..\):\1-\2-\3:'`
cd orig
echo mget '*$DATE*' | ftp -i ftp://$user:$password@hirse:2121/DCIM/Screenshots/
# set the modification timestamp to time of shot
datescreenshot
cd ..
}
That's just a hack, and it will change, but it works.
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Pedant's revolt
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
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Mobile phones and supercomputers
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
When I started in the business, the supercomputer was the Control Data 7600, and for a long time I measured all computers by its performance. Basic parameters: 2 CPUs, each with 8 functional units (I think; it's surprisingly difficult to find details). Cycle time 27.5 ns, so if all 16 functional units were running (which never happens), it would run at about 580 MIPS.
And my new Xiaomi Redmi 9T mobile phone? According to it has “Octa-core (4x2.0 GHz Kryo 260 Gold & 4x1.8 GHz Kryo 260 Silver)”. How many functional units? I couldn't find out. But it seems that they would have to be faster.
OK, try a benchmark: xOPS Cross-Platform CPU Benchmark, which shows its results in tastefully illegible red on black:
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Yes, that would outperform a 7600. According to the Wikipedia page, the 7600 could deliver 10 megaflops with hand-assembled code. Here we have nearly 1000 times that much. But I'm left wondering why a machine with a cycle time of 27.5 ns and 16 functional units can only deliver 10 megaflops. Did the multiply and divide operations take multiple cycles? I really need to find out more of the details that I knew 50 years ago.
Now to find a 7600 emulator that will run on a mobile phone, hopefully in real time.
| Thursday, 10 June 2021 | Dereel → Napoleons → Dereel | Images for 10 June 2021 |
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Power fail
|
Topic: Stones Road house, general | Link here |
The weather has been terrible all week, and we were expecting power outages. As a result, I had set my photovoltaic system to keep the battery charged between 60% and 80%, just in case we had a longer outage.
Woke up at about 6:45. It was cold. Should I turn on the air conditioner? First check whether we have mains power or not. Outside and saw the oven clocks blinking. Yes, we had power, but we had also had a total power failure:
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From 1:26:27 until 4:15:01, nearly 3 hours. And although at the beginning the battery was charged at 79%, it only lasted until 3:23:33.
How could I have done better? Once again, the air conditioner is the culprit. The dirty green spikes show when it cut in, three times. If I could finally find circuitry to disable the air conditioner when the mains fails, we would have survived the outage.
On the other hand, it wouldn't have made much difference if it had happened in the daytime. It was particularly dreary, and I think we had the lowest daily PV power generation I have seen, only 2.61 kWh. Even on normal rainy days in winter I expect the best part of 10 kWh.
|
Recovering computers
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
How did the computers weather the power failure? Frustratingly, eureka's hardware doesn't recover from a power failure: I have to manually power it on, and no UEFI setup option can change that. distress, the Microsoft “Windows” 10 box, came up in its usual disk-eating state. teevee came up with no problems at all, but I still needed to start X and set the key map. lagoon came up, but couldn't mount NFS file systems from eureka, so I thought it easier to reboot it after eureka was up.
And eureka? It doesn't want to boot, presumably a variant on the issues I have with dereel:
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In this case, my guess is that I installed a newer variant of the boot code, but that the support in the file system was missing (no directory /boot/lua). Somehow things seem to be more fragile nowadays. It's simple to recover: just type boot at the prompt and all is well.
But how do I enter boot? The hardware also doesn't like just any USB keyboard, including the Sun Type 7 keyboard that I normally use, so I had to try two others.
After that, all came up well. But there are things that I can't start from the boot scripts, notably the PV and network monitoring stuff. Time to start an “after boot” page.
|
Pedro: still not house-trained
|
Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Came into the kitchen this morning to find Yvonne mopping up yet another puddle left behind by Pedro. Dammit, when is he ever going to be house-trained? She spends probably over an hour every day keeping an eye on him and taking him outside, and it's still not working.
I'm completely fed up. We bought this dog—for a surprisingly high sum—to be part of the family. So far, he's just been a complete pain. I checked how it was with other dogs, and it seems that they all were clean within a couple of days. Yes, they spent more time outside than Pedro does, but not all of them (Leonid and Sasha, for example). Should we put him outside more? That would mean putting Nikolai out as well, which he wouldn't like, and for which he has done nothing wrong.
End of the month? Clean or gone? Yvonne won't like that, but we need to do something to restore our peace of mind.
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iGO to Napoleons
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Topic: technology, health, opinion, photography | Link here |
A rather soggy “you have mail” slip from Australia Post in the letter box today: my newest Nikon F was waiting for me at the post office. Time to try out the Android version of iGO on hirse. That's effectively the same software that I use on my standalone navigators.
I had tried installing it 9 months ago, but failed to install any maps. Try again. Yes, it installed, even very quickly: this phone seems to have much faster networking than the Nokia 3: it displayed rates of over 2 MB/s, coming close to the speed of my network link.
The iGO interface is different, but vaguely familiar. I still need to find my way around it, but it seems to be missing some data that the standalone version has, notably the “Points of Interest”.
The real question, though: why are the maps so expensive? The Australia maps cost $27.02 (what kind of $?) and don't even seem to include POIs.
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COVID-19 QR scan
|
Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
While picking up my camera in Napoleons, I had to wait while two other people were served. And then, in the middle of the shop, I saw a lonely-looking QR code. Ah! That's the thing I was talking about last week. In the meantime I have installed the app on hirse, so set to to register.
It worked, but not without a surprise:
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Who's Mabel Torres? Presumably the proprietress. But who knows that? And of course it couldn't register things immediately, because I disable mobile data. Instead, I got:
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But probably the silliest thing was that I had to enter my name and phone number on the spot. There wasn't any option to set things up ahead of time:
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No idea why it was greyed out.
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What size mobile phone?
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
One of the really frustrating things about using a mobile phone as a computer is that they're so tiny. My old Sλmsung I9100 has a display with 11 cm diagonal, about 4⅓" or 0.33% of the area of our TV display. That's barely usable. And when I first got involved with Android, I chose a device with a marginally larger display: a 10" tablet, a whopping 1.7% of the TV display.
But tablets are obviously too big. Phones are the way of the future: they need to fit into your shirt pocket, it would seem:
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Still, my Nokia 3 had a somewhat larger display than the Sλmsung, 5" or 0.44% of the TV. That meant that it no longer completely fit into the shirt pocket:
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Still, that was nothing that upset me. It wasn't until I got hirse that things became obvious. Now it's 6.53", 0.76% percent of the TV:
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Yes, that's considerably better. The tiny percentages hide the fact that it now has 2.3 times the area of the Sλmsung. But then it has a resolution of 1080x2340 pixels (a little over 2.5 MP). In principle I think that's better. But gradually we're running out of pocket.
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firefox display refusal
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Today's photos started off with a photo of the garden and two screen shots, the first a detail of the second. But one of my firefoxes didn't want to know:
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That text on the right is displayed when the image can't be displayed. Why? Other browsers can show it, so it's clearly not an issue with the image.
But look at that name! What an obscenity! http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20210609/small/Toyshop-advertisement.jpeg. My ad blocker (and others) wanted nothing to do with it, though they were happy enough with the name of the detail image, http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20210609/small/Toyshop-advertisement-detail.jpeg. Change the name to http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20210609/small/Toyshop-exhortation.jpeg and all was well.
| Friday, 11 June 2021 | Dereel → Cape Clear → Dereel | Images for 11 June 2021 |
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USB file system confusion
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Into the office this morning to find that my nightly backups didn't work as intended: the backup file system for eureka had overflowed. Further investigation showed that the four external USB disks had been probed in the wrong sequence, and I had backed up to the /dump file system instead of the /backups file system.
Another item for my “after boot” page. But shouldn't there be an option to mount based on the disk label? I had some recollection, but I couldn't find it. Maybe it's was something that I did with Vinum decades ago. For now, put a file /Iam on each root file system so that I can at least identify the disks.
|
Pedro?
|
Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Up this morning to find Yvonne crying: I wanted her to get rid of Pedro.
Huh? Yes, I'm fed up with his inability to be house-trained, but I hadn't said anything, and my consideration, not even yet an intention, was to set a deadline for the end of the month.
Gradually she calmed down, and we considered what we could do. How about a crate? That should at least stop him wandering around when we can't see him. Some discussion and asking around, and Pene Kirk had a crate that she could lend us. She was busy, so I was just to go down the back by the horse sheds.
Off in the afternoon with these rather vague instructions, but couldn't find anything matching. The closest was this:
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Surely that wasn't it? No, Pene had taken pity on me and brought it up the front of the house.
Back home and erected the cage:
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As usual, he didn't have any issues going into the cage, though we haven't left it closed for any period yet.
|
More Android surprises
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I'm gradually coming to terms with hirse, my new Xiaomi Redmi 9T mobile phone. But there are typical modern things like this:
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Clearly a feedback page. But for what? Ah, it's too polite to say. I may never know, so certainly I can't feed anything back.
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More navigation apps
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Going to Pene Kirk's in Cape Clear gave me an opportunity to try out more navigation apps. This time I decided to compare iGO and Sygic.
I didn't have an address for Pene. I know where it is, and I easily established the coordinates, but how do I enter them? iGo knows that I'm in the USA or somewhere like that, so it offers a west (negative) longitude by default:
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But it accepted my guess of an E to represent east. And it took me down my short cut via Harrisons Road, which, like just about every map I've seen lately, it calls Stones Road. Sygic wanted to take me down the main road.
The map display was similar enough. Here iGO, then Sygic.
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There's not that much to choose from, though the Sygic display hides the current time. Instead it shows its guess of arrival time, 12 minutes, compared to iGO's guess of 17 minutes. That shows why I never pay attention to these guesses. And so far I haven't found a way of configuring Sygic to show other things.
Voice guidance: iGO promises street names, but doesn't deliver. Sygic delivers, but when turning it can't get used to the idea that it's the first turn that is needed; it said things like “take the second left” or “take the third right” when there were no other roads involved.
As shown in the first image, Sygic offers a functional icon even when other apps have the screen. As far as I can see, iGO doesn't offer that functionality. When it's not on the screen, it carries on running, but in delayed mode (about 1 km behind during my trip). I thought that the voice guidance had been muted, but some things came through, like “in 300 turn left”, about 500 m after the turn.
Is it worth pursuing iGO? It does seem to have more accurate guidance, at least in this case, but it's ridiculously expensive, and it's far too polite to say, for example, if updates are included in those prices. And compared to the standalone system, it doesn't seem to offer any POIs. I have until next Thursday to try it out, but only one journey planned in that time.
| Saturday, 12 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 12 June 2021 |
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Pedro: I do it deliberately
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne into my office this morning, looking not very happy. Pedro had escalated his behaviour: three urinations and one defecation overnight. He must go!
OK, time to look for a new dog. From the start I had wanted another borzoi, but Yvonne didn't. Too big. But Pedro is a big dog, and when he's fully grown there won't be much difference in size between him and a Borzoi bitch. OK, I can make some enquiries. Took a look at the puppies available page had precious little to offer: three “mature dogs” in Sale and a litter planned for next month—in Brisbane.
What about Facebook? Posted an enguiry on Borzoi Lovers Victoria. After posting the enquiry, discovered that the last action was in November 2020. Clearly not a high volume group.
OK, found Borzoi in Australia, which is much more active. And how about that, got a response about two different people, one of whom, Karen Nott, we met 10 years ago, but who didn't want to sell us a dog at the time. She's also not far from the others, in Stratford on Avon, where Gill and Kline used to run the theatre.
The other, Mandy Boyle, has in principle exactly what we're looking for: two 12 week old bitches. After working out how to handle Facebook Messenger, discovered that she appears to know us: “Hi Greg, I've got 2 x 12 week old girls if you were interested, they go back to some of the dogs you've had in the past”. Where is she? In Briagolong! That's close to the breeders in Sale and Stratford.
More discussion, and it seems that things aren't as clear-cut as we thought. It was she who put the adult dogs on line. But apparently they belong to Karen Nott. And more digging suggests that Karen is Mandy's mother. So if we go there, we could see all of them.
And will we go there? Yvonne had seen my posts—in other words, she had been looking at borzois too. So maybe we really will end up getting another borzoi.
And Pedro? We didn't let him out of our sight. While watching the news on TV in the afternoon, we put him in the crate, where he did quite well.
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Halfway through I decided to let him out and see whether nature was calling. Went outside, played a little with a somewhat reluctant Nikolai, and came back in again. I carried on watching TV for a couple of minutes, then got up to do something. In that time he had defecated and urinated in the kitchen!
That's not normal, and it's an order of magnitude worse than what he had been doing before. My guess is that he was pissed off (literally!) that I had removed the ottoman on which he so liked sitting, and that this was his means of protest.
Much soul-searching. Yvonne has got to the other side of her soul: he goes. Sally Reeve, who sold him to us, put in an advertisement for us. We'll see how well that goes.
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More Android fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
After yesterday's journey to Cape Clear, today was the time to evaluate the track logs. Where are they?
I know the ones for Mendhak GPS logger: /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.mendhak.gpslogger/files/. OK, take a look with ftp. Connection refused! The ftp server had stopped. Restart the server and try again. But there was no track log there! GPS logger had also stopped. So had one of the navigation apps. In fact, hardly anything was running any more. What's going on here?
OK, where are the track logs from iGO and Sygic? How do you find them? Presumably the app authors expect you to “swipe” all over the place with magic incantations instead of just specifying a path name. And ftp won't show a recursive file list. What I really need is interactive shell access. In the past I have looked for sshd and failed. But one can still hope...
Yes! “SSH/SFTP Server - Terminal”. Installed it and found:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/14) ~/Photos/20210612 103 -> ssh -p 2222 grog@hirse
Password:
:/ $ ls
ls: .: Permission denied
Well that's helpful, isn't it?
1|:/ $ echo *
*
:/ $ cd /storage
:/storage $ ls
emulated self
After a while, I got some information. In particular, ls -lR works, so I was able to establish that iGO stores its track logs in /storage/emulated/0/Android/data/com.nng.igo.primong.igoworld/files/save/tracks/profiles/01. And a number of other programs are available:
:/storage/emulated/0 $ ping eureka
PING eureka.lemis.com (192.109.197.137) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from eureka.lemis.com (192.109.197.137): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=41.1 ms
64 bytes from eureka.lemis.com (192.109.197.137): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=22.0 ms
64 bytes from 192.109.197.137: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=18.4 ms
^C
--- eureka.lemis.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2003ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 18.462/27.228/41.154/9.957 ms
:/storage/emulated/0 $ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/block/dm-3 2664512 2656376 0 100% /
tmpfs 2931444 1124 2930320 1% /dev
none 2931444 0 2931444 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
tmpfs 2931444 0 2931444 0% /mnt
tmpfs 2931444 0 2931444 0% /apex
/dev/block/dm-6 5008 4980 0 100% /apex/com.android.media@301800204
/dev/block/dm-7 18400 18368 0 100% /apex/com.android.media.swcodec@301700015
/dev/block/dm-8 836 808 12 99% /apex/com.android.tzdata@293500000
/dev/block/loop5 1688 1660 0 100% /apex/com.android.resolv@290000000
/dev/block/loop6 5196 5164 0 100% /apex/com.android.conscrypt@290000000
/dev/block/loop7 98392 98356 0 100% /apex/com.android.runtime@1
/dev/block/loop8 232 36 192 16% /apex/com.android.apex.cts.shim@1
/dev/block/dm-4 1354332 1350204 0 100% /product
/dev/block/dm-5 1278136 1274076 0 100% /vendor
/dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/cache 364504 2136 350572 1% /cache
/dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/cust 999320 735048 237404 76% /cust
/dev/block/bootdevice/by-name/userdata 111866748 12621656 99114020 12% /data
/data/media 111866748 12621656 99114020 12% /storage/emulated
It makes it look almost like a real computer, though there are some limitations:
:/storage/emulated/0 $ ps -A
USER PID PPID VSZ RSS WCHAN ADDR S NAME
u0_a309 19028 18788 33608 3224 __arm64_sys_rt_sigsuspend 0 S sh
u0_a309 19426 19028 36152 3876 0 0 R ps
Still, there's stuff to explore now.
Other issues that I have are that ftp mget commands don't work correctly: without any explanation, it doesn't always transfer all files. What's going on here?
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Phone image quality
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I took a couple of images with hirse, my new phone, in the darker corners of my office. How good are they?
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Good enough if you're not fussy. How about a crop (the box next to the microscope at top left):
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That's not spectacular. Surely a Real Camera can do better:
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Oh. Yes, marginally better, but still not acceptable. That was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and the Leica DG Summilux 15 mm f/1.7 ASPH., which is closest to the phone in angle of view and aperture. But the light was different, so it was taken at 1/6 s instead of the 1/25 that the camera used. Could it be camera shake? Surely not with an E-M1 Mark II. Try at 1/25 s:
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Not camera shake, not good. I bought this lens second-hand. Could it be that there's something wrong with it? Try the Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-60 mm f/2.8-4:
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Better, but still not good! This was taken at f/2.9 because that's all it could do. Focus issues, maybe? It was focused on the middle of the image. Try setting on the box:
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Bingo! And back to the 15 mm Summilux:
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So maybe the phone would do better too if it focused on the box, though the shorter focal length should have given it much more depth of field. But how do I focus first? Cameras have a two-step shutter release, so I can focus with the first pressure, recompose and take the photo. I don't know how to do that with a phone.
| Sunday, 13 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 13 June 2021 |
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Begone foul cracker!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Into the office this morning to find 2000 mail messages, most of which looked like:
937 N + 12-06-2021 To grog@lemis.c ( 6) World Wide Web Owner N + FAILURE: /%29%20AND%204985%3D%28SELECT%20%28CASE%20WHEN%20%284985%3D4985%29%20THEN%204985%20ELSE%20%28SELECT%205052%20UNI
938 N + 12-06-2021 To grog@lemis.c ( 6) World Wide Web Owner N + FAILURE: /%29%20AND%207697%3D%28SELECT%20%28CASE%20WHEN%20%287697%3D6953%29%20THEN%207697%20ELSE%20%28SELECT%206953%20UNI
940 N + 12-06-2021 To grog@lemis.c ( 6) World Wide Web Owner N + FAILURE: /%27%20OR%20NOT%201661%3D2897%20OR%20%27rxVi%27%3D%27YQTNgrog/Rant/reverse-horror.php/ <- http://www.lemis.com:8
All from the same address, of course:
Remote IP: 45.146.166.55
Client: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.9) Gecko/20071103 Firefox/2.0.0.9
OK, time to finally set up a firewall to block idiots like that. We don't need much:
ipfw add 00051 deny ip from 45.146.166.55 to any
ipfw add 00400 allow ip from any to any
ipfw show
First, check that I'm not sitting on the branch that I'm sawing off:
=== root@www (/dev/pts/10) ~ 14 -> ipfw show
ipfw: retrieving config failed: Protocol not available
Oh. What do I need? eureka has:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/25) ~ 1 -> kldstat
Id Refs Address Size Name
...
10 2 0xffffffff82c1e000 114ed ipfw.ko
OK, we can do that:
=== root@www (/dev/pts/10) ~ 15 -> kldload ipfw.ko
Aaargh! No response! I have cut off my branch! And taken the server off the Internet. Just loading the module adds an implicit rule deny ip from any to any. Damn, how do I access the system console? Off to look for my Vultr “dashboard”. All sorts of things to choose from, but nothing that says “console”:
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Where is it? Settings? No. Finally off searching for how to do it. FOOL! Just click on the console icon:
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OK, got that, but not much help:
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OK, more FAQs. This page says:
If you see a gray screen with the Server disconnected message, you should restart your server.
(code 1006 image as above)
You may see a completely black screen. Try pressing ENTER a few times to wake up the server. You may have something running on the console that has blanked the screen. You can also try CTRL + C to interrupt the server.
If a reboot doesn't resolve the issue:
Ping the server by IP address to be sure it's running.
Run an MTR report.
Open a ticket to have your server rebooted. Include the ping and MTR results.
OK, it's clear that ping and mtr (which is presumably what they mean) won't work. And how do they expect me to reboot the server when I don't have any access? OK, send off a ticket:
I accidentally locked myself out of the server and require urgent access to the console, but I get an error 1006. I also get this from ffm.lemis.com, which is working normally, so this appears to be an issue with your interface.Please fix this urgently. The server is dead in the water. If you can't give me console access, please reboot the server.
That was sent at 2021-06-12 23:15:50 UTC. How long should I wait? To my surprise, I had an answer less than 2 minutes later at 2021-06-12 23:17:41.
The web console for the referenced instance is functioning presently. Please be sure to review your local firewall, browser, and proxy configurations. It appears that something within your network is blocking the noVNC console traffic.
Hmm. Yes, I have a proxy, but why should that be a problem. Tried a direct connection, and how about that, it worked!
Sort of. I seem to recall this from other occasions, but I can't find it in my diary. Many characters, including c, h and l, didn't echo and presumably didn't work. How about pasting into the window? Doesn't work either. But it offers a function “Send Clipboard”. OK, I hate clipboards, but we can do that. Fire up xclipboard and copy the commands to it. Click “Send Clipboard”. A new window:
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And nothing in it. What's this promise of a clipboard?
OK, paste into the window. That doesn't work either! I had to type my commands in, one at a time!
Finally it was done. To my surprise, I had been off the net less than 30 minutes. Here my list of inaccessible destinations:
1623538884 29.7903 5 0.0 # Sun 13 Jun 2021 09:01:24 AEST 19.943 ms
1623538955 30.0237 4 0.0 www # Sun 13 Jun 2021 09:02:35 AEST 19.820 ms
...
1623540543 31.0694 4 0.0 www # Sun 13 Jun 2021 09:29:03 AEST 19.209 ms
1623540547 30.9732 5 0.0 # Sun 13 Jun 2021 09:29:07 AEST 19.844 ms
So: full marks for Vultr support personnel. Very negative marks for their console interface and their documentation. In summary, wrote:
Thank you for the quick response. I was able to access the server and fix the problem.
Nevertheless, there appear to be serious problems with console access:
* This is the only application I have seen that doesn't work through a proxy. You should at least warn people when they use it. https://www.vultr.com/docs/vultr-web-console-faq/ is just plain stupid: "Restart your server" (how?).
* The interface is terrible!
I couldn't enter some characters, noticeably l and h.
I couldn't paste into the window.
The "clipboard" feature ignores the clipboard! Instead it opens a window to type into. I can't even paste into it!
I suspect that I'm not the first person to complain about this, but please add my complaint to the (presumably long) list. An alternative command-line interface would be far preferable.
Again a quick response. Will be forwarded to the developers, who presumably have a big bin of such messages.
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Unexpected finds
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Walking the dogs today, Pedro discovered something unexpected:
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Clearly a tortoise shell. I wonder how many tortoises there really are here in the wild, and if they breed here or whether they escaped from some home.
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Piccola's accident
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
In the evening, Piccola wanted to go into the laundry to finish off her dinner. Accident: she eats her food on a mat on top of the clothes dryer, which is on top of the second dish washer, far from the reach of dogs. But it slipped and landed on top of the washing machine:
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That sounded like a photo opportunity. It didn't quite work out the way I expected, but I did get some shots that were interesting because of the perspective:
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Cats and dogs
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Pedro may be a little rough with Piccola, but she forgives him:
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| Monday, 14 June 2021 | Dereel | Images for 14 June 2021 |
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Still more Android fun
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Gradually I'm coming to terms with hirse, my new Xiaomi Redmi 9T. There are still a few rough edges to work out, of course.
The most obvious one was the continual app disappearance: I continually needed to restart things, for no obvious reason. But Andy Snow explained: it's a feature, not a bug. The apps that get stopped are ones that use the most power, and this page explains how to fix it—if you happen to be using a 3 year old version of MIUI.
Still, it hasn't changed completely beyond recognition. The instructions about “becoming a developer” no longer seem to apply, I think, but this sequence seems to be the way I went:
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Turn off the tick marks in the last screen and hopefully things will be OK. It's interesting to note that the “COVID Safe” application was included in the shoot-down list.
And how much power will the thing use now? I've been surprised at how long the battery lasts. I'll have to keep an eye on it.
Apart from that, there's also an issue with the ftp server. To download the screenshots for a day I typically generate:
echo mget '*2021-06-14*' | ftp -i ftp://android:hidden@hirse:2121/DCIM/Screenshots/
That should work, but on many occasions it stops before it transfers all the files. Why? Whose fault is it?
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The new Nikon, finally
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Topic: photography | Link here |
