|
| Greg's diary |
| June 2026 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 1 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 1 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Completing the TUHSI documentation
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Spent much of the morning completing the minutes for the TUHSI Annual General Meeting. That involved comparing my notes with the Zoom transcript, which was much more work than I expected. And we still don't have an official announcement, though that shouldn't take too long.
|
More web server overload
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Once again I had massive web server overload, to the point that I no longer received mail:
May 31 22:45:43 lax sm-mta[2203]: rejecting connections on daemon Daemon0: load average: 112
May 31 22:45:58 lax sm-mta[2203]: rejecting connections on daemon Daemon0: load average: 116
Clearly something has to be done. Time to consider two possibilities: web server upgrade (try mod_evasive), and see what happens if I use a much larger VM.
First yet another test VM, this time, for the fun of it, in Singapore (sin.lemis.com). Next time I can try Helsinki, so that I can go from sin to hel (and yes, those really are the airport abbreviations).
Taking and restoring snapshots on Vultr takes forever! Started with a snapshot of fra, which must have taken 30 minutes. And it took at least another 30 minutes to restore it, after which it showed state “stopped”. Why that? A bit of digging brought up the message
A snapshot is currently being restored. This process can take up to 60 minutes to complete. Most server actions will be unavailable until this has completedServer Information 139.180.145.65 Singapore Created 15 minutes ago
Finally it was done, and it came up running. All I needed to do was to change the host name. But the I discovered that the firewall wasn't running:
=== root@sin (/dev/pts/0) /home/grog 11 -> ipfw show
ipfw: retrieving config failed: Protocol not available
The module hadn't been loaded. That's straightforward enough:
=== root@sin (/dev/pts/0) /home/grog 12 -> kldload ipfw
FOOL! You've cut off the branch you were sitting on. The first thing that the module does after loading is to block all network traffic. Under the circumstances, rebooted the machine, something I almost never do.
Next step is to configure mod_evasive. But that can take a while. In the meantime, try my second option: a much bigger VM, 12 CPUs, 24 GB memory, 500 GB “disk”, for all the difference the disk size makes.
And to my surprise, the system hardly had any load. Is that because of the larger machine, drop in load (it did drop significantly in the early afternoon) or because the DNS hadn't propagated yet? I had already set TTL to 1 second, effectively blocking caching, but after an hour the system was still over 90% idle.
That's surprising. I still need to get my head around it. One thing is clear: despite the extreme load on the other servers, the hit rate was not overly high (well, less than 20 hits per second at a guess).
I wish I had better tools.
| Tuesday, 2 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 2 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More cabbage noodles
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I still have cabbage left over, so made cabbage fried rice noodles for breakfast this morning. I've made them before, but since then it has occurred to me that most of these dishes want the cabbage charred. OK, can oblige:
The result:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Somehow there's still something missing.
|
More web server load investigations
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yet another day today where the web server load was over 100, closer to 200, and once again blocked email as a result. An ideal situation to try yesterday's potential solutions. First was to stop the web server on lax.lemis.com so that the mail went through Set up mod_evasive on sin.lemis.com. The result? Nothing. I couldn't detect any improvement at all, nor even entries in the log file. That's disappointing, but maybe related to the fact that, despite the high load, I wasn't actually serving very many requests. For the UTC day 1 June, fra had 358,928 hits, or about 4 hits per second, and today it was 478555, still only 5.53 hits per second. That's not very many. Why the load? But the load was similar across all 3 web servers.
Then I tried another larger server, toronto.lemis.com (forgetting the planned hel.lemis.com, which, it proved, wasn't available anyway) with 4 CPUs and 8 GB memory. And just when I wanted to compare performance, the load dropped world-wide.
Tomorrow? In any case, it looks as if I should be setting up a separate mail server to avoid problems with web server overload.
|
Strange message of the day
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
While setting up toronto.lemis.com, Vultr told me:
This subscription is not currently active, you cannot manage it.
Huh? More investigation showed that it's their way of saying “snapshot is still being loaded”. It's not very forthcoming with information about when the snapshot is finished. I have taken to pinging it to find out when it comes up.
| Wednesday, 3 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 3 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
TUHSI: done!
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Gradually the effort regarding formation of The Unix Heritage Society Inc. is reducing. We're there, after some discussion I sent out an announcement that the association had been formed. But we still have nothing much on the web site, and somehow it kept me busy again most of the day. But there's light at the end of the tunnel—as they say, most likely an oncoming train.
|
Web server issues
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
No web server overload today, load averages less than the number of CPUs. Time to get rid of toronto.lemis.com, which is just eating up money.
One thing came out of the web server overload of the last few days: I shouldn't be running mail on the same system as the web. At first I thought that I could nice the web server to make other things more responsive, but that won't help the mail system: it just looks at the load average.
But how do I set up a new mail server? Start with the smallest and increase until it can handle the load. But Vultr blocks port 25 (smtp) by default, and I have to raise a support ticket to get them to free it. It doesn't take long, but it makes testing difficult.
OK, how about a blanket freedom for that restriction? Opened a ticket, and how about that, in Vultr's inimitable markup:
You're account is set to unblock SMTP port. All you will need to do is edit your OS level firewall and open the port.
|
More bad language?
|
Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
Seen today:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What is it? I had asked Yvonne to buy chicken thigh fillet, and this looked relatively similar. Just a new case of bad language? That's more something I associate with Woolworths than with ALDI. But once again Google Gemini came to my aid: it's an Australian term for a deboned entire thigh, probably pronounced in a way that would make a US American wince (“Mary Land”?). So it's close enough to what I was looking for.
|
How do you cook chicken kebab?
|
Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Chicken kebabs again for dinner today. Looking back, it's clear that I haven't decided how to cook them. On November 2021 I fried them, and on October 2024 I grilled them in the “hair dryer” air fryer.
Which is better? I left the decision to Yvonne and ended up grilling them:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
One thing that I hadn't recorded before: they tend to stick to the grill, requiring some effort to remove them and leaving bits behind, which are also difficult to remove:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Frying could be better after all.
| Thursday, 4 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 4 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Cat destruction
|
Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Somehow the cats (probably only Bruno) are frustrated. This morning I found:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
We've been letting Bruno into the dog run after dark, when no birds can get in. But despite my attempts, he got out into the open this evening. High time to finish the netting.
|
Rain!
|
Topic: general | Link here |
The Bureau of Meteorology had forecast much rain today, between 5 and 25 mm. The number to look at is the low range: at least 5 mm. Typically we'll see forcasts of 0-3 mm, meaning no rain.
But today the weather excelled itself: 30.2 mm. And it remained cold throughout the day, barely hitting 10°. The power consumption was corresponding:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
1.82 kW PV generation, 58.82 kWh power consumption, an average of 2.45 kW throughout the day. And it was thoroughly miserable.
|
Registering with myCAV
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
One of my tasks as the secretary of TUHSI is to register with Consumer Affairs Victoria, with whom the association is registerered.
I wasn't looking forward to doing so, and my concerns proved justified. It started with their stupid password rules: at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, one digit and one special character. How about “1s that OK?”? Nope, invalid password, though it exactly matches their requirements. I've seen that before: implicitly no spaces allowed. Instead they got a correspondingly insulting password, which, however, was accepted.
Then these security questions. I was allowed to create one and then choose one from their limited range, “Who is your best friend?”, for example. Again answers that nobody could guess.
And after all that, a CAPTCHA. And another. And another. Normally I give up on sites that require CAPTCHAs, but I didn't have that option this time. When by the eighth iteration I got to walking angrily (“cross walk”), I gave up and tried with chromium instead of firefox. It worked immediately. One big bad mark for the CAV webmasters, but also another indication that I should change to chromium.
OK, log in. “You have forgotten your password”. No, idiot, I just entered and copied and pasted it. You forgot my password. Reset to another even more insulting one, and I was finally able to log in, check my details, and discover that I couldn't even submit the minutes that I was supposed to submit, not until 30 JuTIFFne.
Why didn't we have anything like this when I was secretary of AUUG?
| Friday, 5 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 5 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More web overload investigations
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Today I had yet another web server overload, ideal for my tests on larger VMs. It didn't work well. First I created a VM called toronto.lemis.com with 4 CPUs and 8 GB memory. After the usual eternity reading in the snapshot (of lax.lemis.com)), it was marked as “running”, but I couldn't access it. Finally found that I could access the “console” much more easily than before. But what it showed was surprising:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It was hanging in this early part of the boot. Why did it reboot? And why did it hang in the boot? It worked yesterday. It was repeatable, always in the same place. Setting a verbose boot gave me no additional information.
OK, I'm sure that the details were exactly the same. Delete the instance, create a new one with the same dimensions. Restore the snapshot. Wait another eternity. Same thing. Delete the instance, create a new one with the same dimensions as lax. Restore the snapshot. Wait another eternity. Same thing. Create a new instance with the same dimensions as before, but restore the other snapshot (of fra.lemis.com). Wait another eternity. It worked. Delete the instance, create a new one with the dimensions that I wanted (4 CPUs, 8 GB) and restore the snapshot of fra. Wait another eternity. Worked.
This can only mean that the snapshot of lax was corrupted. Looking at the snapshot list showed an interesting detail:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
Clearly Vultr is confused. The first emblem (for fra) is the new, “sanitized” FreeBSD emblem, so it does know the OS. And the second (lax)? Looks like a CD. Could that be a clue?
No. The same emblems are displayed against the overview entries for fra and lax respectively. I was going to leave the hanging instance there and raise a ticket, but I forgot and removed it and the snapshot.
By this time I was losing track of which servers I have and what they're called. It didn't help that I chose the same name (toronto) for two different VMs, and ended up with the wrong IP addresses in the DNS zone file. But after finally getting my act together, there was some possibility that the larger toronto (4 CPUs, 8 GB memory) was less loaded than the others. But by that time the load was diminishing. And the Vultr web site didn't help: like the slowness in restoring snapshots, the site is also very slow. And the error messages don't help. What does this mean while trying to restore a snapshot?
Cannot take snapshot when server is locked
At first I thought that it happened because I aborted a snapshot restore and tried again. Only later did I see that the VM had been running all the time. So in this context, “locked” means “running”.
All in all somewhat inconclusive. About the only thing that I could confirm was that mod_evasive has not done anything useful. Am I maybe getting hits from too many different IP addresses? And clearly I should choose a different name for each instance. Playing with DNS (6 updates today alone) also showed that a large number of sites ignore a TTL of 1 second and carry on hammering the sites long after they ceased being www.lemis.com.
|
The annual sshd death
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
While syncing my photos, ran into an issue: lax.lemis.com and sin.lemis.com worked normally, but fra.lemis.com refused a connection. And yes, the same thing happened with an ssh connection. Never mind (apart from the fact that console access now works), I had a couple of windows open. And they showed that the master sshd died. Looking at /var/log/messages, I saw:
Jun 3 05:53:32 fra sshd[857]: fatal: server_accept_loop: RAND_bytes failed
What does that mean? It was trivial to restart, but it would be nice to know why it happened. And just by coincidence, the same thing happened a year ago.
| Saturday, 6 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 6 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Preparing for high speed Internet
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Next week my Internet link speed will increase from 25/5 Mb/s to 250/20 Mb/s, almost a tenfold speed increase. It's worth looking back over the years at how my link speed changed:
| Date | Uplink | Downlink | ||||
| (Mb/s) | (Mb/s) | |||||
| 6 March 1992 | 0.0096 | 0.0096 | Dialup | |||
| 1 January 1994 | 0.064 | 0.064 | ISDN, date guessed | |||
| 17 July 1997 | 0.056 | 0.056 | Dialup | |||
| 18 September 2001 | 0.400 | 0.056 | Satellite down/Dialup up | |||
| 8 June 2005 | 1.500 | 0.384 | ADSL | |||
| 15 May 2007 | 3.488 | 1.500 | ADSL-2 | |||
| 18 July 2007 | 0.056 | 0.056 | Dialup | |||
| 20 December 2007 | 3.000 | 0.256 | Satellite, guessed | |||
| 12 December 2013 | 25.000 | 5.000 | NBN fixed wireless | |||
| 13 June 2026 | 250.000 | 20.000 | NBN "Homefast" |
Is it the biggest jump that I have had? No, from 56 kb/s to 3 Mb/s was much more. But I had to look back to realize that. More to the point, will it buy me anything? Twenty-five years ago we upgraded our house network from 10 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s, and only when we moved into Stones Road did we get gigabit networking in the house. Now I need it for the Internet link too, and the interface in eureka is only 100 Mb/s.
So how about the spare interface in hydra.lemis.com? It's 2.5 Gb/s. I can at least use it to check whether I can establish a gigabit link. Just reconnect the cable.
Oh:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Why did I put the card there? It makes it very difficult to remove the cable. But that was the only problem I had.
Well, almost. I had to wait the obligatory 20 minutes for upstream DHCP to come to its senses, but then I had an immediate connection. Well, hydra did. What about eureka? Reset the default path to point to hydra, and it still didn't work. Oh. hydra was not set up for routing:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) ~ 56 -> sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
net.inet.ip.forwarding: 0 -> 1
And then it worked. I didn't need to change anything on the other systems. Yes, they access the Internet first via eureka and then via hydra, but that's barely a problem. Since I don't expect this to be permanent (the Internet link should really be on eureka), I won't change it.
But then I noticed that I wasn't getting mail. A quick check on lax.lemis.com, currently still mx1.lemis.com, the mail server, showed: showed
Jun 6 02:09:44 lax postfix/smtp[52420]: BC61E280B2: to=<grog@lemis.com>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[121.200.11.253]:25, delay=0.96, delays=0.08/0/0.7/0.18, dsn=4.7.1, status=deferred (host mx0.lemis.com[121.200.11.253] said: 454 4.7.1 <grog@lemis.com>: Relay access denied (in reply to RCPT TO command))
Oh. That's the external network interface, so it was talking to hydra. Why did I do that? Yet another DNS change to make mx0 to be the internal interface of eureka, and all was well
Or was it? Independently I downloaded the ACDSee Gemstone 16 installer. That worked fine, but when I tried to run it, it hung. Change the default gateway (or whatever Microsoft calls it) and all was well. Why was that?
All in all, it went relatively smoothly. I can do with more of this.
|
Rogue web clients
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As part of my experimentation on web server load, I removed lax.lemis.com from the list www.lemis.com. Existing requests completed, but since the DNS TTL was set to 1 second, no more should have come. And indeed the server load dropped to normal proportions.
But out of interest I checked the server log. Still lots of
74.7.227.175 74.7.227.175 - - [06/Jun/2026:04:33:34 +0000] "GET /grog/photos/Onephoto.php?image=/yvonne/Photos/20200120/corto-2.jpeg&size=3 HTTP/1.1" 200 13033 "http://www.lemis.com/yvonne/photos/Photos.php?dirdate=20200120" "Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; GPTBot/1.4; https://openai.com/gptbot)"
And they kept on coming, always from 74.7.227.175. After two hours they were still coming:
=== root@lax (/dev/pts/5) /var/log/www 17 -> grep ^74.7.227 www.lemis.com.log | wc -l
12736=== root@lax (/dev/pts/5) /var/log/www 15 -> grep 74.7.227.175 www.lemis.com.log | wc -l
12676=== root@lax (/dev/pts/5) /var/log/www 16 -> wc -l www.lemis.com.log
12882 www.lemis.com.log
That's nearly two requests per second. Time for a firewall, which of course stopped them.
And then it occurred to me: why is sin.lemis.com so much more heavily loaded than fra.lemis.com (load average 150 vs. 4)? No firewall! Put that in and things became normal.
Why do I have to do this manually when mod_evasive should be doing this for me? In passing, it's interesting that this is from openai.com. Should I give them special (negative) treatment?
| Sunday, 7 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 7 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Catastrophe
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
During the night it occurred to me that I had missed one issue in my network link transition: the firewall. It was still running on eureka, but now the network link was on hydra. OK, not an issue, as long as I remember not to cut off the branch I'm sitting on. But in this case there wasn't much choice: kldload ipfw from hydra on an xterm running on hydra:0.1.
But it hung anyway! Why? Could it be that the xterm was communicating via TCP? OK, move to a vty, which doesn't. But everything hung! I had no choice but to reboot hydra! What a catastrophe.
But that was just the beginning. I couldn't access NFS file systems. Further investigation showed that DHCP had overwritten /etc/resolv.conf with Aussie Broadband's view of the world. That in itself wouldn't have been so bad: it could find the names from the Internet. But the all-important first line was missing:
search lemis.com
So it could have found, say, eureka.lemis.com, but not eureka.
I've been there before: chflags schg /etc/resolv.conf works around the problem. I should find what the real answer is.
Then I had difficulties starting X. It didn't find the second monitor, only the first, third and fourth. And there were no windows on the display, and the window managers didn't respond. But server 1 did work, and all monitors were found.
ps gave me the partial answer: the window managers were stuck in a death spiral, creating ever new ones. It seems that I had made a minor change (probably just added a & where it shouldn't have been). But that wasn't the complete answer: the .xinitrc contained:
$FVWM -display $DISPLAY -f $X/.fvwm/fvwm3rc-$me$DISPLAY.0 &
# For the moment (20260112), we only have one display
# $FVWM -display $DISPLAY.1 -f $X/.fvwm/fvwm3rc-$me$DISPLAY.1 &
# $FVWM -display $DISPLAY.2 -f $X/.fvwm/fvwm3rc-$me$DISPLAY.2 &
# $FVWM -display $DISPLAY.3 -f $X/.fvwm/fvwm3rc-$me$DISPLAY.3 &
Removing the first & got it to work, though I still needed to start the other window managers. But how did I ever get it to work? Clearly it's time to find a more robust way to start fvwm3, which really wants to have one instance to control multiple screens. But even after all that, I couldn't start a remote xterm (on eureka). I was able to connect to eureka, but it refused my ssh key. Thus the inability to start the xterm.
And then I discovered that, although I had an Internet link, I couldn't use it. Nothing even tried to go over interface re1. Investigation showed: 121.200.11.253
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) /home/grog 34 -> netstat -rn
Internet:
Destination Gateway Flags Netif Expire
default link#2 US re1
121.200.8.0/22 link#2 U re1
121.200.11.253 link#3 UHS lo0
127.0.0.1 link#3 UH lo0
192.109.197.0/24 link#1 U re0
192.109.197.129 link#3 UHS lo0=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) /home/grog 35 -> ifconfig
re0: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=60251b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
ether 04:7c:16:eb:66:09
inet 192.109.197.129 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.109.197.255
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex,rxpause,txpause>)
status: active
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
re1: flags=1008843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST,LOWER_UP> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=60251b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
ether 40:ed:00:ec:d7:d1
inet 121.200.11.253 netmask 0xfffffc00 broadcast 121.200.11.255
media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
status: active
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
Why is the interface address of re1 routed to lo0, the local host interface? Removed that. No improvement. And then I realized that I still hadn't enabled IP forwarding. In the configuration, yes, but I still needed one final step:
=== root@hydra (/dev/pts/12) /home/grog 47 -> sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding=1
net.inet.ip.forwarding: 0 -> 1
And finally most of my environment was functional.
But what is wrong with ssh on eureka? I've had difficulties before, but this is the worst. Interestingly, I could still connect from other systems, but not from hydra. Running ssh -v was interesting. On tiwi I got:
OpenSSH_8.8p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1q-freebsd 5 Jul 2022
...
debug1: Offering public key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_rsa RSA SHA256:S7sZHLcY4dgw53/rF70vrScdPuGef3enHdJzuYA1WDo agent
debug1: Server accepts key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_rsa RSA SHA256:S7sZHLcY4dgw53/rF70vrScdPuGef3enHdJzuYA1WDo agent
Authenticated to eureka.lemis.com ([192.109.197.137]:22) using "publickey".
But on hydra I got:
debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_9.9
debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_6.6.1_hpn13v11 FreeBSD-20140420
debug1: Fssh_compat_banner: match: OpenSSH_6.6.1_hpn13v11 FreeBSD-20140420 pat OpenSSH_6.6.1* compat 0x04000002
...
debug1: Offering public key: /home/grog/.ssh/id_rsa RSA SHA256:S7sZHLcY4dgw53/rF70vrScdPuGef3enHdJzuYA1WDo agent
debug1: send_pubkey_test: no mutual signature algorithm
...
debug1: Next authentication method: keyboard-interactive
(grog@eureka.lemis.com) Password for grog@eureka.lemis.com:
What's that “no mutual signature algorithm”? Google Gemini tells me
Your SSH client is brand new (OpenSSH 8.8 or later), which disables SHA-1 by default, while the remote server is older and only knows how to use SHA-1 for RSA keys.
But that was only part of the story. Yes,tiwi's ssh is older, but still (coincidentally) version 8.8, and the software on hydra hasn't changed. But I've had other issues with eureka, running:
OpenSSH_6.6.1p1, OpenSSL 1.0.1p-freebsd 9 Jul 2015
And there seem to be key mismatches that make ed25519 fail. Time to look more carefully, also at this ssh-add bug that has bitten me again today, as Warren Toomey informs me: it was on a tuhs.org system.
Other loose ends: could it have been a firewall issue that stopped ACDSee Gemstone 16 from installing yesterday? Maybe they had chosen a protocol that I didn't allow. And then, for reasons that evade me, tiwi:/home/grog/public_html, a symlink to eureka:/home/grog/public_html, just disappeared. Like the initial failure of screen 1, I suppose I will never know.
|
Mushroom season
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
Seen walking the dogs today:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What is it? It bears a resemblance to Amanita muscaria, but it doesn't seem to be one. And we have a surprising number of smaller ones coming up in our garden:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 8 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 8 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Fake Udon noodles
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
We ate asparagus over the weekend, leaving the hard ends of the stalks behind. From experience they can be fried and eaten with noodles, with the exception of maybe that last 5 to 10 mm. And I also found some Udon noodles in the fridge:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Where did I get them? They were made in 22 December 2025, so it can't be very long ago. Or at least, that's what I thought. To my surprise, Google translate was able to decipher the dot matrix Chinese script:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
“Best before”. OK, they have to do. Asked Google Gemini for a recipe, but it was surprisingly uninteresting: noodles, “protein”, soya sauce, shiitake mushrooms, asparagus. Nothing out of the ordinary for my normal breakfasts.
In the end, I improvised:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 6 g | Shiitake mushrooms | 1 | ||
| 45 g | beef | 2 | ||
| 12 g | Spring onions | 3 | ||
| 41 g | Asparagus ends | 3 | ||
| 3 g | Dried chili | 3 | ||
| 15 g | Garlic | 3 | ||
| 200 g | Udon noodles | 4 | ||
| 35 g | Miso | 5 | ||
| 21 g | Soya sauce | 5 | ||
| 10 g | Dark soya sauce | 5 | ||
| 10 g | Oyster sauce | 5 |
The result was relatively predictable:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
A little salty maybe. Is there salt in the enhanced Miso that I used? And maybe the chili wasn't such a good idea after all. About the only other thing of interest was that the noodles were almost inseparable, and many just broke off. I have something in the back of my head that they should first be heated in a microwave oven. I should try that next time.
|
More tidy-ups
|
Topic: technology | Link here |
Yesterday's catastrophe had long consequences. One of the strangest was that I ended up with a couple of circular symlink loops on eureka: public_html/public_html and public_html/programs/emacs/emacs, each a self-referential entry. How did that happen? eureka wasn't even involved, but I had seen yesterday that tiwi had lost a symlink to eureka. Are there more?
And then I still can't get ssh to behave correctly on eureka. Yes, it's old and out of date, but somehow all the advice doesn't help. It starts with this entry in /etc/ssh/sshd_conf:
# PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes=+ssh-rsa
Yes, the # indicates that it's commented out. But it's supposed to indicate the default, and the entry didn't even exist at the time! A lot of searching showed that I had added it in September 2025, the last time I tried to solve this problem.
But one thing was clear: I should be using the ed25519 key. Much experimentation resulted in failure. Yes, ssh on hydra presented the key, but sshd on eureka seemed to ignore it, although it was set up to accept it. Why?
Two hours messing around got me no further. Install a new version of ssh? How do I do without upgrading the system, which I really don't want to do?
|
To-do list
|
Topic: technology, history | Link here |
It's clear that I have a lot of things to clear up to get fix my various configurations. Time for a file, with a name like todo.
Oh. It exists. The contents are interesting:
Telstra
Call Dad
Doctor
Aligi
Tandem chapter
Heise subscriptions
Particularly “Call Dad” is strange. He's been dead for over 17 years. And the other items look similarly ancient. But the file is that old:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/2) ~/public_html 18 -> l todo
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog lemis 130 22 Mar 2008 todo
Clearly it didn't help much then, or I would have removed the items. Will it help now?
| Tuesday, 9 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 9 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Still more web site load issues
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Whatever it was that was hammering my web sites has gone, either away or into hiding. My two current sites, fra.lemis.com and sin.lemis.com, were almost idle.
In fact, sin was idle. It wasn't logging any requests at all. But it was active: I was able to access it perfectly normally under the name sin, and it was one of the addresses for www. tcpdump showed that it was receiving some traffic on port 80 (http), but they weren't being logged by the server, neither as hits nor as errors. What's going on there? Did I make some subtle change that I didn't notice?
One way to find out: take another snapshot of fra and move it to Paris (cdg.lemis.com) and see what happens. After the eternity to get it running, the same thing happened there: almost no hits. It wasn't the DNS: I had updated my zone file to include cdg in the www list, but it didn't seem to sink in. And the TTL was 1 second, so it should have been almost immediate.
But what about lax? The web server was still running there, though it was no longer on the www list—and it was still getting hits, days after being removed from DNS! It looks as if many clients, notably the ones that I want to throttle, are not paying much attention to DNS updates. Still, at the moment things are relatively calm. I can do some more thinking about how to handle the next overload. One might be a large server to handle the transient load.
|
More symlink pain
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I've noticed a number of strangenesses about symlinks: some went away, some tied themselves in knots. And it's not over yet. teevee:/home/grog/Photos was once a symlink to eureka:/Photos/grog, but it was gone. Why is this? Nothing seems to have had anything to do with my problems on hydra.
But definitely the worst was that /Photos had a symlink /Photos/grog/Photos pointing to /grog/Photos. This morning, after 24 hours or so, my nightly photo backup failed:
rsync: readlink_stat("/Photos/grog/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/Photos/20230930/Hugin/e-from-house-9.tiff") failed: Too many levels of symbolic links (62)
By that time it had filled the 16 TB disk with copies—I must find a way to ensure that rsync copies links rather than entire files—and it took me much of the morning to remove them again. I wonder what other dangers lurk.
|
More ssh strangenesses
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I failed to get sshd working correctly on eureka. All the more surprising that today I saw:
eureka: Warning: Permanently added 'cdg.lemis.com' (ECDSA) to the list of known hosts.
That was connecting from eureka to cdg. But the connection in the other direction still failed. I wish I knew what is going on here.
|
M.Zuiko 150-600?
|
Topic: photography, general, opinion | Link here |
I'm still lusting after an OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm lens, one of the longest super-telephoto lenses available, corresponding to 300-1,200 mm on a “full frame” camera. And with a 2x teleconverter it would get a “full frame” equivalent focal length of 2,400 mm.
But do I need it? I already have the Leica Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm lens. Do I really need another one? At the very least I can investigate.
First, how do the lenses compare? Thomas Eisel produced a useful comparison video, comparing the 300 mm prime, the 150-400 mm lens that I tried last year, the 150-600, the 100-400 mm and the 75-300 mm lens, which he put in that order. He didn't mention my Vario-Elmar, though I have heard that it would come behind the 100-400 mm M.Zuiko. Apart from considerably better image quality, it also has considerably better image stabilization, about 4 EV better than the Olympus 100-400, and probably even more than the Vario-Elmar (Panasonic/Leica are too polite to mention the value). So from that point of view, it sounds like a good choice. The question remains: do I need it? Interestingly, it's also useful as a macro, and I've run into issues with close-ups of small, distant things, for which it could be useful.
The other question is: where can I get one cheaply? From time to time I look at things on Buyee, and sure enough, there's one available in good condition for 288,000 ¥, about AUD 2,550. But can I trust them? There are additional prices: Buyee commission (“Proxy Service Fee", about $3 to $5 US), shipping and Australian GST (10%).
How much is the shipping? They don't divulge the exact prices, which depend on size and weight, but they could be reasonable. All in all I should still be under AUD 3,000. And the next cheapest is $2,732 from Japan, a more reliable sum. That corresponds to about $3,005 after GST. Both of these are used. Or I could buy a brand new one for $3,505 in Australia, with Australian warranty.
Which do I choose? Buyee still sounds suspicious to me. The item in question is interesting:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Only listed 40 minutes ago! But I saw it yesterday! Now maybe they automatically renew if they don't sell, but it seems fishy to me.
There's a solution to all this, of course: don't buy anything. But it's interesting to note that I have been quoted $3,689 for the current version of the Vario-Elmar. That's over double the $1,628 that I paid nine years ago.
|
Larissa
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Wednesday, 10 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 10 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Ha ha, only joking
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Unexpected email from Aussie Broadband this morning:
Recently, we sent you an email about changes to your NBN 25Mbps/5Mbps Unlimited ($75) plan(s).
Please disregard these changes, this was an error.
Your NBN 25Mbps/5Mbps plan(s) will not be changing from 1 July 2026.
And that after all the problems I had updating my system! Can they maybe allow me to try out the current “plan” and then return to the old legacy plan if I don't like it? Called up Aussie and spoke to Hayden. No, that won't work, as I expected, though it would have been in their interest. So the upgrade test would cost me $164 in the first year and $144 from then on. Not interesting for me, so it's all off again.
Now if the had only told me that last week.
|
Still more broken symlinks
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Wanted to save mail this evening while on teevee. ~/Mail/foo doesn't exist. In fact, ~/Mail doesn't exist. It should have been a link to eureka:/home/grog/Mail, but it was just gone.
What's behind all this?
|
How many lentils?
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Linsensuppe (lentil soup) for dinner tonight. We had cooked it a while back and froze it in 350 g portions, to which I had written “2 portions”.
But it looked so little, and I had written in the recipe
On 26 June 2024 I established that 700 g is too little for the two of us. Currently we're aiming for 800 g.
Oh. That was supposed to be a single portion. But even a second only ended up weighing 670 g. A third? Too much, even for the serving pot. In the end I put half back and ended up with 890 g. And we ate it all!
| Thursday, 11 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 11 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Feijoa
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Paul Donaghy came by on Tuesday and brought a box of strange fruits:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What are they? Paul had said that they were pineapple guavas, which prove to not be guavas at all, and better known as feijoas. Tried one today:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Somehow not my style, boring. Yvonne tried later and came to the same conclusion. About the most interesting thing about the plant are the flowers, here from Wikipedia:
|
KardiaMobile: in ΛΑΛΑΛΑΝΔ
|
Topic: health, technology, language, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne came in yesterday morning: her KardiaMobile 6L was not responding.
How I hate this thing! A mobile phone app that is so vague that I didn't know if it was telling the truth or not. In principle it sounded like a dead battery, but the app wasn't saying so. How about the one on my phone? No, the battery must be OK: my phone showed that it was “paired”. How about “unpair”ing it? Worked, of course, and a vague Bluetooth scan couldn't find it.
OK, check the easily removable battery:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
How many cardiac patients even have the tools to remove the cover? But yes, the battery was very dead: instead of an initial 3.2 V it only had 2.3 V.
I've been here before. KardiaMobile claim that the battery will last for “a couple of years with 4 or 5 readings a day”. This battery must be the one that was inserted 18 months ago, during which time I would estimate that it has been used between 1 and 2 times a day. So their claims are incorrect.
I wouldn't have mentioned this except for the fact that this was the last of 5 CR2016 batteries (all of which, I suspect, went into this device), and I had to order more. And today I get a message from eBay:
4 10-06-2026 To groggyhimself@lemis no.reply@ebay.com ( 56) There are product safety concerns with the item you purchased
Is that kosher? Yes, it came from eBay relating to the batteries, and pointing to this official recall. Yes, correct battery type and maker, and the image matches. But it relates only to batteries sold between 1 June 2022 and 21 April 2023.
And Kardia in Λαλαλανδ? They confuse the Greek letters Α (alpha) and Λ (lambda). The closest example of this confusion that I can get is ΛΑΛΑΛΑΝΔ (more legible as Λαλαλανδ), which transliterates to “Lalaland”.
|
Videos from TV5mondeplus
|
Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
We're watching an old favourite, « Le château des oliviers » on TV at the moment. Or we're trying to. The image quality is pretty terrible, and there are no subtitles. I in particular have difficulty with French films, and I really need the subtitles.
Where else can I find the series? Google Gemini pointed me to TV5mondeplus, and yes, they found it for me. And they even promised free downloads, just what I'm looking for.
But even normal replay failed: the display just hung. Spent an inordinate amount of time today investigating, including signing up for membership, which took forever. Finally I got a response:
|
|
|||||||||
I signed up in French, but got a reply in mixed English and German. Why German? My guess is that they're still using ancient geolocations based on my IP address, which has been in Australia for years.
But it didn't help. I discovered that things worked marginally better on Chromium, though it still hung, and on Microsoft Edge on distress it continued running at a snail's pace, though it did have valid subtitles.
How about—oh horror!—a mobile phone? Installed their app, which seemed to work some of the time. And the display ran at normal speed. But that's a tiny image! Where's the “download” facility that they claim? I couldn't find it.
Once again, ask the twins.
(on mobile phone) Accessing Offline Content: Once downloaded, the videos are stored securely within the app's sandboxed data environment and can be accessed under your profile/favorites menu without an active internet connection.Note on Desktop: There is no official way to download a local video file (like an .mp4 or .mkv) directly from the tv5mondeplus.com web browser interface. The browser version uses standard digital rights management (DRM) to prevent direct caching or extraction of raw stream data to your local storage.
So the only way to download the videos makes them useless! What are these people thinking?
| Friday, 12 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 12 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More Powercor destruction
|
Topic: general, gardening, opinion | Link here |
The tree loppers are in the area again, mutilating trees:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Do they really need to trim the trees that much? How far do they need to be from the (here invisible) power lines?
|
Old film sensitivity
|
Topic: history, photography, opinion | Link here |
Two years ago I receive a Zeiss Ikon Ikophot light meter. Followed the link to a web page with misspelt name, and today I found a way to fix the page. But the meter shown there (first image) is not the same as mine:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
The one on the web page is model 1329C, if I can believe that detail. What is mine? Took it out of the leather case and looked everywhere. No mention of a model number, but a rather useless comparison table of Scheiner, DIN and ASA ratings, carefully hidden where you have to take the case apart and read very carefully to recognize anything at all. I forced high contrast on this photo to make the table legible:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
But the scales don't match! 21° DIN is 100 ASA (the values still used by the ISO system), but here it shows 21° DIN to be 80 ASA, ⅓ stop difference. Does that help me identify the manufacturing date of my light meter? It's interesting that the available instructions show the old model (1329C), but includes a table with a correct modern relationship between ASA and DIN (and omits Scheiner, instead including BSI). And it's amusing that the widest aperture shown is f/1.5 (the maximum aperture of the Sonnar), and the conversion table stops at 320/27°. The scale on the meter itself goes to incredible 800/30°.
So: were the pre-war models (1328/1) really called Ikonophot, or is that another typo?
|
Petra takes the feijoas
|
Topic: general, food and drink | Link here |
We've decided that the feijoas aren't for us, but Petra Gietz likes them. She came along today with lots of news and picked them up, later telling us that they were better than the ones she had had before. At least that's good news.
|
Comparing 100-400 mm lenses
|
Topic: photography, language, opinion | Link here |
I've now seen a number of comparisons of Olympus and OM long telephoto lenses, but they didn't include my Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3. Today I found this one:
That compares my lens with the very similar Olympus M.Zuiko 100-400 mm, which was in the other comparison. Interestingly, mine didn't come out at all badly, even though it can't cooperate with the camera IBIS.
It's amusing that the presenters are Peter Forsgård (Swedish speaker, Olympus, from Helsingfors) and Matti Sulanto (Finnish speaker, Panasonic, from Helsinki).
| Saturday, 13 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 13 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More web site overload and Vultr corrption
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Another case of web server overload today, just what I needed to see if a very beefy server would help. Created a “performance” instance with 4 CPUs and restored the lax.lemis.com snapshot. Once again I had a case where it hung in the early stages of booting:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Of course it shouldn't have booted in the first place. OK, this time I'll investigate more. Left that instance hanging, created a new instance and restored the same snapshot. Once again it hung in boot. OK, a new snapshot, this time of fra.lemis.com. It, too, rebooted, but this time differently: it got further, onto the second page of the boot, and then spontaneously rebooted.
Was it a “hardware” incompatibility or a corrupted snapshot? Created an instance identical to lax. Restore snapshot. Boot loop again.
This is more serious than it seems. At least in today's experience, which was spread over the whole day, I wasn't able to restore any snapshot. Google Gemini suggested that it could be a mismatch between storage systems, which seems reasonable, so I created Yet Another instance with a fresh FreeBSD installation. /etc/fstab was identical. And of course by this time the overload was over, so there was no more that I could do.
|
Winter meets spring
|
Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Amanita muscaria are in full “flower” at the moment. Here some more further south in Stones Road:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Still cheaper 150-600 lenses
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Earlier this week I established that there wasn't much difference in price between a used OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm (roughly $3,000) and a brand new one with warranty (round $3,500). And somehow the new prices are dropping: it's the end of the financial year, time for bargains. Yesterday I found the best yet: $3,499 from Camera House. I still can't decide whether I should buy one or not.
What do the twins say? Apart from Camera House there are others. Apart from Camera House, they mention digiDirect, Georges and Ted's. OK, time to compare. Georges were a non-starter: $4,498, discounted by $1 from $4,499, only $500 more expensive than the manufacturer's recommended price.
I later discovered that the manufacturer was offering a $500 discount at the time, something that they didn't think worth mentioning on their page, so the George's discounted price was $1 less than the list price.
Presumably that's their way of saying “we have no stock”, but wouldn't it be better just not to offer it? Ted's had it for $3,639, still not competitive. And digiDirect? They're varnishing their web server (error 405, which should mean “method not allowed”).
But that's nonsense. I'd say that it's a web server problem. But what's this “varnish”? The twins came up with a surprising statement:
The creator, Poul-Henning Kamp, named it "Varnish" because it is designed to be an ultra-thin, smooth, protective layer that coats your existing web server architecture to make it look better and perform faster—just like putting a layer of varnish on wood.
How this relates to your 405 error
When a website uses Varnish, all incoming traffic hits the Varnish cache server first. If Varnish is misconfigured—or if a browser tries to send data (like a login or checkout form) using a method the Varnish server isn't programmed to accept on that specific page—the Varnish server itself will block the request and throw a "405 Method Not Allowed" or "Error 405: Varnish cache server" message.
That still doesn't make sense to me. One of the strangest parts is Poul-Henning's involvement. I didn't think that he had anything special to do with web servers. I'll go with “if Varnish is misconfigured” and try again tomorrow.
| Sunday, 14 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 14 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Still more 150-600 investigations
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
I'm still agonizing about the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm. About the only thing that's clear is that I won't buy a second-hand one from Japan. But is it worth it? How much does it cost per photo? I have this Zuiko Digital ED 35-100 mm f/2.0 lens that I bought on a whim over 10 years ago for $1,500. It's big and heavy, almost as heavy as the 150-600, and I have barely used it.
Nothing for it. Finally write what I had been intending to write for years: a database collection of my Exif data. Oh, look, it's there, and it has been for nearly 13 years, though I didn't note it in this diary:
revision 1.244
date: 2013/09/25 01:53:57; author: grog; state: Exp; lines: +325 -237
exposuredetails: First cut at MySQL output.
It needed a lot of work, of course, but in the end I was able to
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/21) ~/Photos/20260613 190 -> exifx Amanita-muscaria-3.jpeg
File Amanita-muscaria-3.jpeg
Date taken: Saturday, 13 June 2026, 9:55:11
Exposure: 1/80 sec, f/4.5 (EV 10.7), 200/24° ISO
Camera: OM System OM-1 Mark II, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 57.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 114 mm)
Focus: MF; C-AF, MF, Imager AF 2.055 m (1.97 - 2.14 m)
Field of view: 17.3° horizontal, 13.0° vertical, 21.5° diagonal
Meter mode: Center-weighted average Program AE
Stabilization: On, S-IS Auto
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels, 1:1.33)
Copyright: Greg Lehey=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/21) ~/Photos/20260613 191 -> exifx -m Amanita-muscaria-3.jpeg
replace into photos values ("/Photos/grog/20260613", "Amanita-muscaria-3.jpeg", "2026:06:13", "09:55:11", "OM System OM-1 Mark II", "BJRA15001", "Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO", "ACC214354", "57.0", "2.055", "1.97 - 2.14 m", "MF; C-AF, MF, Imager AF", "4.5", "1/80", "200", "Normal saturation", "Center-weighted average", "Program AE", "0 EV", "", "Fill-in", "", "+0", "", "Bounce or Off", "", "2.0", "None", "3888", "5184", "3888", "5184", "", "0", "0", "Greg Lehey", "Greg Lehey");
With that, I was able to fill the database:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/10) ~/Photos 77 -> find 202* -name '*.ORF' | xargs exifx -m | mysql photos
That ran for ever, and at the end I had my confirmation: for $1,500 I had used the lens 26 times! That's nearly $58 per photo!
But that wasn't the end of it. That's just the last 6½ years. Continued with the years 2000-2009 and 2010-2019, which took an eternity. Finally I was through, and things looked a little better:
mysql> SELECT lens, lens_serial, count(lens_serial)
FROM photos
GROUP BY lens_serial
ORDER BY count(lens_serial);
+--------------------------------------------------------+--------------+--------------------+
| lens | lens_serial | count(lens_serial) |
+--------------------------------------------------------+--------------+--------------------+
| Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 Asph. | 14111100346 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro | AC5205389 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 45mm f/1.2 Pro | 349000062 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 17mm f/1.2 Pro | ACDA00469 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R | ABIP10006 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO | ACC217283 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 | ABM290456 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO | ACC251771 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R | ABG200241 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2.0 | ABD001175 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 R | ABK200167 | 1 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12mm f/2.0 | ABF000015 | 1 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 | 102421030 | 2 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm f/4.0-5.6 R | ABK235877 | 2 |
| Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm f/1.2 Asph. Power OIS | 13111500260 | 2 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-200 mm f/3.5-6.3 | 350000254 | 2 |
| Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 | 06AIF21G038P | 2 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 14-35 mm f/2.0 SWD | 180001188 | 2 |
| Olympus Body cap lens | H694154 | 2 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 150-400mm f/4.5 TC1.25x IS Pro | 34B00006400 | 3 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 | ABSA06173 | 3 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 50mm f/2.0 Macro | 010002018 | 4 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-150 mm f/4.0-5.6 | AAK211247 | 5 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/4.0 | 110002240 | 7 |
| Panasonic Lumix G 20 mm f/1.7 Asph. | 19JG3043144 | 8 |
| Asahi Optical Co Super-Takumar 50 mm f/1.4 | 3077746 | 10 |
| Lumix G Vario 45-150mm f/4.0-5.6 Asph. Mega OIS | 04GX1144426A | 10 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 150-400mm f/4.5 TC1.25x IS Pro | 34B00006401 | 18 |
| Asahi Optical Co SMC Macro-Takumar 50 mm f/4 | 4417365 | 26 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-150 mm f/4.0-5.6 | AAK208277 | 26 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 | 212721917 | 27 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17mm f/2.8 Pancake | AB9202060 | 43 |
| Lumix G Vario 14-140 mm f/4.0-5.8 | 09042052629 | 89 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75mm f/1.8 | 344018628 | 170 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital 35mm f/3.5 Macro | 192054704 | 178 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 EZ | AC4B13531 | 252 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 45mm f/1.8 | ABSA46896 | 277 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8 Pro | AC8A22385 | 425 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 II R | ABH956018 | 529 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6 | 212197195 | 758 |
| | | 960 |
| Panasonic Lumix G 20 mm f/1.7 Asph. | 09LG3074803 | 1117 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital Pro ED 35-100mm f/2.0 | 170001015 | 1169 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 | 256006812 | 1293 |
| Leica DG Summilux 25mm f/1.4 Asph. | 13091100310 | 1503 |
| Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 | 27CIF16G019P | 1935 |
| Leica DG Summilux 15 mm f/1.7 | 75SIC307120N | 2087 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 14-35 mm f/2.0 SWD | 180002977 | 2666 |
| Leica DG Vario-Elmarit 12-60mm f/2.8-4 Asph. Power OIS | 07DX6132475D | 3110 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 30 mm f/3.5 Macro | ACBA04378 | 3439 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro | AC5218267 | 4605 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 50mm f/2.0 Macro | 010110933 | 6242 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-200 mm f/3.5-6.3 | 350104535 | 7384 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 60 mm f/2.8 Macro | ABQ227050 | 8196 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 14-150 mm f/4.0-5.6 | AAK263738 | 9243 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 12-60 mm f/2.8-4.0 SWD | 230033616 | 14379 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4 IS PRO | ACC214354 | 20552 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 8mm f/3.5 Fisheye | 000000000 | 21215 |
| Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 8 mm f/1.8 Fisheye PRO | 347009963 | 45482 |
| Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 9-18 mm f/4.0-5.6 | 300102323 | 60005 |
+--------------------------------------------------------+--------------+--------------------+
60 rows in set (1.94 sec)
Still some points of interest:
Why only one image taken with the Leica Summilux 25 mm f/1.4? I use it relatively frequently, including a number of shots taken with it today. But that's the advantage of the table: there are two different 25/1.4 Summiluxes (Summiluces?) there, and the query goes by serial number. This one was used for a test shot that I downloaded somewhere. I have used my Summilux 1,503 times. This also explains most of the “only once” entries, including lenses I have never even seen.
To my surprise, I used the 35-100 more than I expected, a total of 1,169 times, still a price of $1.28 per shot. By comparison, I have used the current Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 1,935 times, still 85¢ per shot.
Still, the numbers are interesting. It seems that I used the 35-100 a fair amount in the first 4 years that I had it, but then stopped. I need to think out more queries.
The lens that I used the most was the Zuiko Digital ED 9-18 mm f/4.0-5.6, which I barely use at all any more. The explanation here is that I used to use it for my house photos in Kleins Road with the E-30. Each panorama took up to 24 views, and because of the limitations of the camera I needed 5 exposures for HDR, a total of 120 images for a single view. By contrast, I now only take 18 (6 views, 3 exposures per view). And still I have taken more, but with two different 8 mm fisheye lenses, which come in at place 2 and 3, which I used to replace the 9-18.
|
digiDirect web site
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
What was the problem with digiDirect's varnish yesterday? Who knows? In any case, the varnish is now dry, and yes, they really do have the lowest price, $3,490.95.
But how much is the shipping? Asked their “AI bot”, which seems to be stuck at the intelligence of a moron. It didn't understand the question. Google Gemini did: $8.95, making the total price $3,499.90. That's quite reasonable shipping, but it makes the total 90¢ more than Camera House.
|
Bloody VicRoads again!
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Mail from VicRoads today, with license renewal invoice for the Commodore—without our senior's discount! We had been told 8 months ago that things had been sorted, though even then I had my doubts.
How I hate these things! The issue is that both cars are registered in Yvonne's name, and I have none in my name. But we have a „Zugewinngemeinschaft“. Oh. That's a German word, of course, and a legal term—but there's no English equivalent. Still, there must be something similar for married people who don't have a marriage contract, so the name on the registration should be relatively unimportant.
How I'm looking forward to fixing this!
|
Woolworths obfuscation
|
Topic: food and drink, language, opinion | Link here |
Decades ago I grumbled about Woolworths obfuscatory description of the fat we use for our deep fryer:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But it's not oil at all! As they themselves wrote on the back,
|
|
|||||||||
That really annoyed me. Many people have restrictions on what kind of animal fat they can use, if any at all. But time has moved on, and finally, it seems, they have given up this stupid claim of “oil”. Here two different packages. The one on top is a few months old, and the one on the bottom was bought last week:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
So it's “beef tallow”, something that I know as dripping. But it doesn't taste that much of beef. Hindus beware.
|
Mona in the dark
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
I've been trying for some time to get a picture of Mona outside the window in the dark. She appears there and is almost invisible. But this time she was much more visible:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 15 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 15 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More photo software comparisons
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
One of my background projects is to reprocess old scanned-in photos of the 1960s and 1970s. Currently I have free trial offers and greatly reduced prices from ON1 software and ACDSee Gemstone 16. I've tried both at the end of last year and decided against.
But now there's a new version of each. I re-gave up on ON1 relatively quickly, but I've
been trying to make sense of ACDSee Gemstone
16. Once again it's hindered by inappropriate documetation. The ACDSee For Beginners (their
capitalization) starts with a comparison with previous versions and with non-essential
details. It doesn't show how to take a photo and process “develop” it. And what
it did show was so different from what I had that I gave up, sending appropriate feedback.
But I don't like giving up. Today I went searching the entire menu tree for what they showed. I drew almost a blank. Only “Help/About” showed me something interesting: I was running Gemstone 12, which I got for free 2 years ago. Now wouldn't it be nice if they had made that clearer?
OK, try the correct version. “Your trial period has expired”. I wonder if they would
reinstate it under the circumstances. But for now, there's always PhotoGlory, which I bought a year ago. There's a free
upgrade waiting! But it wants my license key, and when I entered it, I got an error 734.
With far too much searching I found this page, which told me
that I was trying to activat the demo version of the current release, which couldn't be
activated. So why did it prompt me to do so? I had not only to remove it, but to remove
entire directoriesfolders before reinstalling what I already had. And the next
download apparently installed the same version again! No Glory.
|
More VicRoads fun
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
I've been dreading calling VicRoads about the registration concession for the Commodore, but it had to be done.
But how? There's lots of stuff on the home page, but no “contact us”. Somewhere I found one, but it led to a page with no contacts. Google Gemini to the rescue: the number is 13 11 71. Called that, fought my way through their voice non-recognition system, and was connected to Sharon, who was in fact quite helpful, but had to speak to Yvonne, since the car is registered in her name. What happened then I don't know, and Yvonne didn't understand, but she was transferred and put in a hold for over 30 minutes.
Just as I was beginning to wonder whether it wouldn't be easier just to transfer the vehicle into my name, Tony answered and said that, with my permission, I could transfer my concession to Yvonne's (second) car. Only the computers were problematic, and they weren't answering. There! Yes, he could do it, and he did. No reference number, just his name and the time (15:10). He will send email.
And my feedback? For that, I first had to log in on the web site. And it had forgotten my password! OK, reset password. Wait for PIN to come by mail. None came. Oh:
Jun 15 05:21:36 lax postfix/smtpd[93544]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[54.240.27.61]: 450 4.7.25 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname, [54.240.27.61]; from=<0101019ec9ba0a8c-1a1ef6aa-1b05-4119-ab11-4766ce32b342-000000@us-west-2.amazonses.com> to=<drivers@lemis.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<a27-61.smtp-out.us-west-2.amazonses.com>
In other words, just for this function VicRoads have outsourced their password management to Amazon SES, and Amazon SES crowned themselves in glory by not having reverse lookup.
Or maybe it was a transient lookup failure. Quite some time later I received not one, but two PINs: I had tried retransmit, enabling me to try first with the wrong PIN. Finally left my feedback, which they had turned into a message.
Some time later I received mail from them:
We’ve received your enquiry, and your reference number is RLS00270736.
What enquiry? The request with Tony, or the feedback, now transformed into an enquiry? How can I find out? Do I want to?
| Tuesday, 16 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 16 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Huevos a la tigre again
|
Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Lately I've been cooking leftover ingredients for breakfast. One that happens every week, and which Yvonne used to give to the dogs, is egg white. And then there was some left-over cooked potatoes and some red capsicum. Time to fake huevos a la tigre?
This time I modified it slightly: no tomatoes, and 55 g capsicum instead of 30 g. And for the fun of it, some chile guajillo powder, amusingly written as “juajillo”. That proved to be slightly hotter than I wanted, but the real surprise was how soft the potatoes, including added fresh ones, became.
|
Our house has burnt down!
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
When we moved to Dereel, we had the first-ever weatherboard house. We were very concerned about the house catching fire, and of course we took what precautions we had, including buying fire extinguishers that were probably far too small.
But now our worst fears have been realized: the house caught fire, and though the structure still stands, it's not worth salvaging:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Despite the thousands of photos I took of the house over the years, I don't have anything that quite matches. Here's the best I can find, from 30 May 2007 and 30 May 2012:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
What a good thing we moved out of the house 11 years ago! But I feel sorry for the owners. This wasn't one fire, but two, apparently two days apart. From the online version of the Ballarat Courier, for some reason a truncated version of the print edition:
Firefighters have tackled two separate house fires at the same house at Dereel, with fire investigators now probing the cause of the twin blazes.
CFA firefighters were first called to the Kleins Road home, about 35 kilometres south of Ballarat, just before 2.40pm on Saturday, June 13. They arrived to find a weatherboard home on the 20 acre property about 50 per cent engulfed in flames. CFA crews tackled a house fire at the same home in Kleins Road, Dereel, twice over the weekend. It took firefighters about 50 minutes to bring the blaze under control, and it was not declared safe until 6.18pm. CFA had crews from five brigades at Dereel and surrounding areas at the scene, supported by Fire Rescue Victoria. A little more than 24 hours later, the CFA was called back to the four bedroom home and found parts of the remaining structure on fire. Six CFA crews attended the scene on Sunday and took more than an hour and a half to control the fire. A CFA spokesperson said the fire was declared under control at 8.25pm and safe at 11.44pm. Fire investigators were scheduled to attend the scene on Monday to determine the cause of the fires, but they have not been deemed suspicious.
Not suspicious? I see that differently. Apart from the two fires in the house, there was also a fire in the shed, and it was also on this property that the devastating bushfire two years ago started. The newspaper states that the fires are not being treated as suspicious, but I have my doubts.
|
VicRoads again
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Email from VicRoads today: pay your rego. The full, undiscounted sum.
Somehow this seems familiar, the old left hand, right hand issue. Will I get a third one in a couple of days asking for the concession rate?
|
150-600: enough!
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
So do I buy the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm or not? I've certainly spent more time investigating than ever before. So: yes! After much searching, the Camera House price, $3,499, seemed the best.
But wait, there's more! Sign up for our newsletter and we'll give you a $10 discount voucher. And OM are offering a $500 “mail in” rebate. Yes, I knew about that, but what I didn't realize was that it was on top of the $500 lower price that Camera House offer. So in the end I will pay only $2,989. That's a no-brainer: the cheapest second-hand, unwarrantied lens from Japan or similar would cost me more.
But where's my $10 discount? I got a confirmation email, but no discount code. Asked their emetic bot, which told me:
Me: I was promised a $10 signup discount. How do I apply it?
Bot: You should receive the code via email, and when you check out, there is a section to add the code in.
Me: I have received an email, but no mention of the code. How long does it take?
Bot: This email can take a few hours after the first email.
OK, let's hope. It's too late for this time, but hopefully it will still apply for my next purchase.
And then, only now, Google came up with other prices. E-infinity offers it for $3,299. Not a big issue: it's warrantied, but not from OM System, so I won't get the $500 mail-in rebate. But then there's Woolworths, of all people. $3,479, also delivered from Camera House. That's another explicit $20 rebate. And most annoying of all, Ted's Cameras offer it for $3,399.96, $100 cheaper. That wasn't like that on Saturday, where they were asking $3,639. Clearly I ordered too early: the financial year has another 2 weeks to go, and the sales are just starting. Still, the $500 rebate softens the blow.
|
Dangerous batteries
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Today I received the CR2016 batteries about which I had been warned last week. No, not sold between 1 June 2022 and 21 April 2023. They were made in January 2025.
Still, check the official warning. They weren't dangerous at all! The only issue was that they were missing a “do not swallow” warning:
Why the product is recalled:
The product was sold without a warning label that is required for products containing button/coin batteries. This warning label may be missing from the battery.
Hazard: There is a risk of choking, severe internal burn injuries or death to young children if they gain access to the button batteries and ingest them.
Now isn't that clever? If young children gain access, are they going to read the warning label first?
| Wednesday, 17 June 2026 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Slow down again
|
Topic: general | Link here |
I've been pretty busy over the last few days, but finally I have time to slow down.
|
Where's my lens?
|
Topic: photography | Link here |
My OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm lens was paid for yesterday, and the promised immediate shipping. But all day long it was marked “in progress”. And I also didn't receive the $10 bonus code.
Doubtless things will be sorted out, but so far Camera House has not endeared itself to me.
|
Kleins Road house determination
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
The CFA have determined the cause of the fires in Kleins Road: electrical fault.
Oh. Somehow I feel that I might be somehow to blame, since I have to do with electrical things. But that's silly. I didn't do anything remotely dangerous. And somehow people have only looked at the house. What about the bushfire two years ago, allegedly started by a defective electric fence actuator. Somehow that's too much electricity.
|
Birding locations round Dereel
|
Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
In the last 12 months I have been on two birding photo sessions organized by OM System at the Western Treatment Plant near Lara, and that's the kind of thing that sparked my interest in the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm. But there are other places too, and today I asked Google Gemini for locations. And to my surprise, it came up with quite a few:
It would seem that none of these are as reliable as the Western Treatment plant, though Anakie Gorge, Cobbledicks and the Werribee locations are on the way to my six-monthly periodontic checkups in Werribee, so I could take a look.
But what does it cost to get personal access to the Water Treatment Plant? Surprise, surprise: $20 for a day pass, or $20 for two years (along with a refundable $50 deposit). That could be worth it: it costs me more than that in petrol to get to one of the OM System events (next planned in a month). I could combine the visits with a visit to Leela.
| Thursday, 18 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 18 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Where's my lens, day 2
|
Topic: photography | Link here |
Still no update about the whereabouts of my lens, and Camera House have shown themselves to be really hard to reach. They don't even have a phone number! Instead I have to call one of their retail outlets. Chose the closest, in Geelong, phone +61 3 5229 2224 and spoke to David, who was in fact informed about the order, and told me that that meant that it had been sent (yesterday), and that it would be here tomorrow or Monday. That's not very likely, but it's out of his hands.
Now where's the tracking number?
|
Birding sign-up
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
Spent more time looking at the Western Treatment Plant birdwatching details, including a map of the area. To my surprise, there's considerably more there than I saw in my two visits last year. Certainly worth $10 a year, so I applied for a key, reference number MWBWP-17306.
Unfortunately it will be allocated at bureaucratic speed, taking up to 28 days. So it probably won't be there by the time I go to Werribee on Tuesday. But then neither will my new lens.
|
Summer meets spring
|
Topic: gardening | Link here |
We have had the usual cold snap at the beginning of the month, but the Hibiscus × rosa-sinensis seem to have weathered it well:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And, somewhat late, the first Narcissus (plant) are also flowering:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
The need for a tele-macro
|
Topic: gardening, photography, opinion | Link here |
Why didn't I get this photo to fill the frame?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Simple: I couldn't get any closer. It's about 2 m away, and even at full 100 mm focal length, I couldn't come close to filling the frame.
But there's hope in sight: my new OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm can focus down to closer than that at 150 mm (0.56 m), though it's further at longer focal lengths. At 150 mm it still wouldn't fit the frame? Where's the sweet spot? OM is too polite to give that kind of detail. I'll have to experiment.
| Friday, 19 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 19 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
There's my lens, day 3
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Still no information about the whereabouts of my new OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm lens. Camera House has clear problems with documentation.
What does that mean? OK, send a message via their web site, which promises an answer within 24 hours.
Where is my lens? Why is the status showing "in progress" and not "sent"? Why is the tracking information blank? Where is the $10 discount you offered for signing up? Why can't I call you on the phone?
Then I checked the web site, and the status had changed. Instead of “In progress” it now reads “Complete - Direct Ship”. On the face of it, it means “the customer now has it in his hot, sticky hands”. And that was clearly not the case.
And almost immediately I got a phone call. From David in the Geelong shop. Yes, the lens has been delivered and is awaiting me at the Napoleons post office, tracking number MM4506235101000934506.
What's wrong with this picture? One the one hand, it's excellent: I had never expected the lens to arrive that quickly. But why did I have to ask twice for what should have been communicated when the object was sent? And why did David have to go to the trouble? He confirmed that he had no financial interest in the matter: the online side of things doesn't reimburse the retail outlets.
|
Investigating the M.Zuiko 150-600
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Not surprisingly, off to Napoleons to pick up my new OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm lens, serial number 30300907000. Back and unpacked it. Item as described—apart from information on how to collect my $500 “redemption”. Is that because it didn't work, or just another indication of their sloppiness?
OK, how does it look?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
That little white thing on the right is the camera, a Olympus E-PM1, the smallest compatible camera, to make the point. It comes with a carrying strap without a logo to attach to what you might expect to be the centre of gravity of the lens. Not quite:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
That's fully extended, of course, but it still all hangs down at shortest length. Still, it's good to have some kind of strap attachment on the lens, even if the clips were incorrectly placed.
It's not the biggest lens I have ever used. That honour goes to Tom Smith's Sigma 300–800mm f/5.6 EX DG HSM lens (first image).
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It's not clear from that comparison, but the Sigmonster has a front diameter round 50% more than the M.Zuiko. And the angle of view? The same as my Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3. The M.Zuiko is much “longer”. Here the angles at longest focal length:
| Sigmonster | M.Zuiko | |||
| Horizontal FOV: | 2.58° | 1.65° | ||
| Diagonal FOV: | 3.10° | 2.07° | ||
| Vertical FOV: | 1.72° | 1.24° |
I tried a couple of shots to match the ones I took last year, with only limited accuracy. Here again the Sigmonster on the left:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That comparison also suggest that the M.Zuiko give better contrast. And how about hand-held?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That was taken at 600 mm f/11 at 1/50 s. Conventional wisdom from my youth was that a lens could be hand-held at the reciprocal of the focal length (for a 35 mm camera, of course). That would mean 1/1600 s. 1/50 s corresponds to 5 EV of stabilization, less than what is claimed for it. At the normal size it looks fine, but what about full size?
|
|
|||||||||
No doubt, that can be sharper, though it's not clear whether that's camera shake, focus or lens aberrations. It does show some chromatic aberration. And my version of DxO PhotoLab (version 5) can't support the lens. Should I upgrade? It could be time.
And then yesterday's Hibiscus × rosa-sinensis? Yes! The flower itself is past its prime, but now it fits better into the view, at 229 mm focal length and 2 m distance:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
There's much more to do, but for a first indication it's quite positive.
|
Multilingual Wikipedia
|
Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
A few days ago I asked Wikipedia about something to do with the Occitan language. It told me, but it was so happy about being discovered that it wouldn't go away. Now English Wikipedia comes up in three languages, mainly English, but with markup in French and Occitan:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The text is in English, but it has the subtitle « Un article de Wikipedia », which is French. That much of the markup (« Acuèlh ») on the left, for example, is Occitan.
This only happens on firefox, which is showing its age in myriad ways, including losing mouse cursor position after viewing video. I hated firefox since I first started using it over 20 years ago, but attempts to move to chromium have proven less than easy. It looks like it's time again, especially since many sites that use CAPTCHA, notably Camera House, insist on pattern matching with firefox, while they're happy with a mouse click on chromium.
|
More photo software
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
ACDsee have a special offer on at the moment: 500 copies of all their products for USD 59. I've been trying out the latest version of Gemstone 16, with spectacular lack of success. Tried some more testing today, but I didn't have time to do it justice. About the only thing of interest is how slowly the cheap copies have gone away. Today there were still 10 after a couple of weeks.
Dammit, buy the products, which also include video processing software and other stuff of questionable utility. That way I have the time to try them out. And maybe it can fix the Chromatic aberration on the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm. Hopefully it'll be worthwhile.
| Saturday, 20 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 20 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Goodbye Bruno
|
Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
It's over. Today Loretta Sayers, her husband Nick and her daughter Remy came and collected Bruno.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
He certainly seemed happy to see them, and even got into the transport basket by himself:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
Now he's in his new home, and Loretta confirmed that he arrived well. I can't say that I'm happy, but they seem to be really concerned about giving him a good home.
|
Camera House sends mail
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Mail from Camera House today. Details of the cash back? No, I had to go to the OM System Site for that, during which I discovered that I could have bought the lens cheaper direct from OM System. Camera House just asked me if I were ready to buy the lens. Amazing.
|
Lies, damn lies and Woolworths
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Escaloppes of veal for dinner tonight. We buy “sizzle steaks” from Woolworths on a regular basis. 400 g, $8, or $15 for two. But now they have a lower price!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
450 g for only $13.50, $30 per kilogram! Previously they were much more expensive at $20 per kilogram.
How can they get away with lies like this? Certainly they're doing nothing to make me like them more.
| Sunday, 21 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 21 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Learning Gemstone
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Now that the pressure has dropped, I have time to inspect my next purchase, acdsee Photo Studio Ultimate („das Letzte“). One of my complaints had been that I couldn't find any introductory information. But after buying it, I received an email pointing me to the documentation, which had been waiting on YouTube all the time. And it was relatively useful, at least as far as I got, though it put a lot of emphasis on their database capabilities, which are effectively useless because they're a layering violation: they only work within acdsee. Still, that fixes one of my main gripes about the product. A lot more to watch.
One thing's clear now: it's an order of magnitude faster than DxO PhotoLab. I wonder how its raw converter will compare with correcting the Chromatic aberration on the M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm
|
What use wide apertures?
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
The photos that Yvonne took yesterday were at ridiculously high ISO ratings, like this one at 3200/36° ISO:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
Why? It was taken at maximum aperture, f/5.1.
When I started with digtal SLRs 19 years ago, one of my complaints was that the lenses were so slow. I already had the 50 mm f/1.4 Super Takumar on my Asahi Pentax “Spotmatic”, and I also had a Pentax Z1 with a 28/85 mm f/3.5-f/4.5 zoom, but all I had here was an f/3.5-5.6 zoom. At the time I was under the impression that that was the best to be had.
That wasn't the case even then, and over the years I have accumulated a number of lenses for Four Thirds and Micro Four Thirds system with apertures under f/2: 3 f/1.8, 2 f/1.7, and one each f/1.4 and f/0.95. That photo was taken at 48 mm focal length, so it could have been taken with the M.Zuiko Digital 45 mm f/1.8 at 800/30°.
Why didn't I give it to Yvonne for these photos? Apart from the fact that it would have been inconvenient to change lenses all the time, and despite better autofocus, wide aperture lenses have such shallow depth of field, even on μFT cameras. I almost never use my 25 mm f/0.95 lens as a result. It's easier to crank up the sensitivity and put up with a little noise rather than end up with much of the image out of focus. Maybe f/1.8 or f/2 would be a good compromise.
|
South African biriyani
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've been planning and partially preparing this dish for two months:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It's complicated, of course, part of the attraction, but the recipe seems so strange: so much meat (750 g), but also 3 potatoes of unspecified weight and only one “cup” each of rice and lentils. I had already cooked the meat part last month (and frozen it), in the process coming to the decision that 3 South African potatoes weigh 450 g.
Today was the rest: rice, lentils and assembly. I took a number of photos, most of which looked uninteresting. Here the lentils and rice after cooking:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Then layer. ½ each chicken, then lentils, then rice. Then repeat:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
From outside:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Somehow the layers aren't as recognizable as I had hoped.
The cooking details: South African “cups” proved to be 250 ml, and a cup both of rice and of lentils proved to weigh exactly 200 g. Cook the rice with 340 g of water (1.7x) and 4 g salt. That gave 639 g of rice, only 5 g less than the components before boiling. I cooked the lentils with 500 g of water, which proved to be too much; 400 to 450 g would be better. Also 4 g of salt. That gave 725 g of result, 150 g of which I didn't use.
The result? Boring! After all that effort, it was edible, but not much more. At least it wasn't too hot for Yvonne to eat, though surprisingly she thought that it needed more salt. I didn't see that. But all in all, very disappointing for the amount of work that went into it.
I still have two-thirds of the meat left in the freezer, but no more spices for rice or lentils. I'll fake something next time, and with any luck it will taste better.
| Monday, 22 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 22 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Garden flowers in mid-winter
|
Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
It's the winter solstice, time for the monthly flower photos.
More and more I wonder why I do this, especially in the middle of winter. But the alternative is worse, so here it is. Once again there's little to report. Despite the cold weather, the Hibiscus × rosa-sinensis that was flowering last week has managed another bloom:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
We still have a couple of roses:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The Banksia serrata is in flower:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
The Grevillea that we planted near the entrance is braving the conditions and growing:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I must check where it came from.
The much suffering Alyogyne huegelii is also looking happy:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And the Abutilons seem happier than they have for a while:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Toy networking in the time of Android
|
Topic: technology, multimedia, language, opinion | Link here |
I've been trying for some time to get a version of the Château des oliviers with subtitles. It's available without on YouTube, but it's hard for me to follow. And TV5mondeplus offers it, but they have severe technical problems which results in the display going blank when viewing on a web browser.
But I can see it on a mobile phone! That's a smaller display than the smallest TV sets of 90 years ago! Can't I improve the situation?
Yes, of course. “Cast” it to your “smart” TV, probably involving swiping on the phone (in real English, throw it at your painful TV, probably involving dealing a stinging blow to the phone). I've spent a couple of days trying. Firstly, though it runs on something like the IP, the higher-level protocol is clearly broken: it can only connect over the same Wi-Fi network, and device discovery goes via multicast DNS, if it works at all. In my case it didn't. Diagnostics? Hah! Just “make sure you're on the same WiFi [sic] network”.
I've been asking Google Gemini for help, and after some experiments it seems to be a function of the TV, a Hisense something-or-other. What “operating system” is it running? Not Google? No, I have VIDΛΛ, which proves to be a misspelling of VIDAA. For that, I need to install an app on the phone. And how about that, part of the installation involved displaying a PIN on the TV, which happened so quickly that I was caught by surprise.
But that didn't help with TV5. The instructions told me that I had to go to the “cast” screen on the TV. Still nothing. More help from the twins. You need to set “casting” in the phone settings. Where? They made a guess, but it was wrong. The right answer is under “More connectivity options”, and that worked. A second success after only a few days' searching!
Back to TV5. Yes, now I can display the screen on the TV as well. Start playing the video. After repeatedly asking for them, I get subtitles! And sound! But the video itself is blank. A comparison with videos from ZDF shows that it works there, so my guess is that this is a new view of the old TV5 problem that also shows blank displays on web browsers.
Probably it's not such a problem. The display is so slow that it's hardly worth it. It displays at normal speed on the phone, but the lag on the TV is painful.
Two successes, only one failure. Isn't modern consumer technology easy?
|
Linkt English
|
Topic: language, general, opinion | Link here |
Mail today from Linkt, the Melbourne road toll collectors. Changes in contract conditions. I don't really understand:
When your Tag account is suspended or cancelled, your tag will beep 4 times to notify you if the account is suspended or cancelled,
When? If I understand the text literally, after (for some reason) suspending my account, the tag, sitting in my car in the garage, way out of range, will beep when there's nobody there to hear it.
You don’t need to take any action to your account, but we encourage you to read the CSA so you are across the changes.
With little difficulty I established that “CSA” means “Customer Service Agreement”. But how am I “across the changes”? I think they mean “you become cross about the changes”. Under those circumstances I won't read the CSA.
| Tuesday, 23 June 2026 | Dereel → Werribee → Dereel | Images for 23 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Tooth checkup
|
Topic: health | Link here |
Off to Werribee today for a periodontic checkup. Apart from the 3 hour drive, there was nothing of interest to report.
|
Time for birding?
|
Topic: photography, animals, opinion | Link here |
To make the journey more interesting, planned to visit Serendip Sanctuary, and went to a lot of trouble to set up cameras, including of course the new M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm.
Unfortunately, I went to less trouble with the timing, which I completely messed up. The result: no time for Serendip, just straight through to Werribee. Next time. There's an OM System event at the Western Treatment Plant near Lara at the end of next month, and I had wanted to have had some experience with the lens first. Maybe I can find something closer to home to experiment with.
|
East Asian food in Werribee
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
After the periodontics, off to Pacific Werribee, a surprisingly large complex located not in Werribee but in Hoppers Crossing. There's an East Asian shop there, called of course, Pacific Asian Supermarket, a surprising name for such a small place:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
As usual in this sort of place, it didn't have a number of things that I had been looking for, including fresh vegetables. In terms of variety, I think it ranks behind the Fruit Shack. But they have a number of things that I can't find in Ballarat, including the Teans Gourmet pastes that I have previously only found at the Gourmet Asian Grocery in Belmont, but also some other things that I thought I hadn't seen elsewhere:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It proves, however, that I had tried the curry laksa 6 years ago. At least I liked it.
It's interesting to note that Teans have changed the artwork on their packaging, now also in English. Here firt the old, then the new:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
They have also changed the instructions. The Mi Udang used to want to be mixed with 1.6 l of water, but now it's only 1.2 l. It still wants the same weight of noodles. I'll find out if they have changed the composition.
|
Cheapest petrol in months
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
The world economy will take a long time to recover from Donald Trump, but at least for the moment the oil prices have dropped. Today I paid $1.495 per litre, nearly $1 less than Yvonne paid two months ago:
|
|
||||||||||
The down side of that was that it was in Hoppers Crossing, and to get home I had to fight my way through the Werribee traffic, made worse by Google Maps' tacit decision to take me on the freeway instead of my chosen path.
I found this particular service station via Petrol Spy, a service that keeps track of petrol prices round Australia. It usually runs on my mobile phone, where it has proven to be one of the most useful apps, especially since it can interact with Google Maps and provide directions to the chosen service station. Given that, I can put up with the relatively few advertisements.
But I think I've had enough of the alternatives. Today I went back via Steiglitz, Victoria, and it was pretty dark by the time I got home.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Next time I may go on the freeway after all.
| Wednesday, 24 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 24 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
More cardiac problems?
|
Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne was complaining of exhaustion and shortness of breath today, and in fact had been suffering for a couple of weeks. Nothing for it, call up Ballarat Cardiology and make an appointment with Rod Reddy. But she got a call back that she should first talk with Paul Smith, our GP. And he was also not available, of course. Maybe we can do a phone call.
|
More photo stuff
|
Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
What can I do to add to my new M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm? It's “only” 600 mm long. How about a teleconverter? In principle I should gain a bit of experience with the unit first, but the end of the financial year is coming up, so it's a good time.
First, of course: which teleconverter? OM System has two: the MC-14 (1.4× magnification) and the MC-20 (2x). After some investigation, it seems that the MC-14 is a better choice: with the MC-20, 1200 mm (2400 mm “full frame” equivalent) could be unwieldy, the maximum aperture of f/12.6 is rather dim, and the image quality is noticably worse.
So: where do I get it? The list price is $429, but OM System are currently offering it for $339.15. Is that the cheapest? Off to look, with Google giving me the helpful information that the typical price is $790 - $793, and found few cheaper than OM System's own. On eBay found a used one in pristine condition with 90 day warranty forfor $299 from DigiDirect, from whom I had bought a number of items in the past, though a new one was still more expensive than OM System at $347.49. What about their web site? Surprise, surprise: much cheaper. The same used one (conveniently with serial number, AC6A23842) at $254.15, and the new one at $303.30.
Should I buy used? I have done so on numerous occasions in the past, and only had one bad experience, which I was able to fix relatively easily. That would have been covered by a 90 day warranty. And what can go wrong (... go wrong go wrong) with a fixed lens anyway?
So I braved their horrible web site, with which I have had problems in the past. It hasn't got better. The sales page for the teleconverter included information like “Frequently bought with used Canon EOS 6D body ($328.95, $58.05 off)”, or “used pana 7/14” (twice) But it didn't tell me how much shipping would cost. The eBay version had free shipping, but it's unlikely to be $35. Asked their chatbot, which shows a new level of artificial stupidity: no matter what question I asked, the answer was “Hmm, I didn’t get that — can you say it a bit differently?”. Somehow I managed to establish that standard shipping was $8.95.
OK, fill out the order, including bypassing their second-guess fill-in of the shipping address. Surprise, surprise. Free shipping! Second surprise: a “Payment and Handling Fee” that seems to depend on how I pay, but always comes up at $2.41. Total $256.56.
And an order confirmation? None arrived. Oh:
Jun 24 06:29:07 lax postfix/qmgr[68036]: A3B8128161: from=<bounces+9552996-39ef-iratecustomer=lemis.com@em9858.digidirect.com.au>, size=54380, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Jun 24 06:29:13 lax postfix/smtp[24380]: A3B8128161: to=<iratecustomer@lemis.com>, relay=mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137]:25, delay=6.3, delays=0.35/0/5.7/0.27, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (host mx0.lemis.com[192.109.197.137] said: 550 5.1.1 <iratecustomer@lemis.com>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown in local recipient table (in reply to RCPT TO command))
But that was the correct email address. Check my list. Oh again:
# https://www.digidirect.com.au/
# Can't update addresss
# digidirect@lemis.com grog@lemis.com
# leaked
# iratecustomer@lemis.com grog@lemis.com
I had changed the first one (digidirect@lemis.com) because I couldn't find a way to get them to accept my new physical address with the old address. And then the address was leaked, so I removed it altogether. Moral: always check secondary email addresses before using them.
Still, I got mail from PayPal with lots of information, including the order number and a number of surprisingly long URLs, up to 884 characters, clearly not eintended to be typed in. But when I selected them, I found that they started with https://www.paypal.com/mobile-app/package-tracking/! In other words, to track my package I need to install an app on my mobile phone! Bad PayPal!
OK, is their anything on my “Activity” tab on the web site? Yes: “See shipping details”. And that takes me back to the home page. Is everything broken today?
And on the DigiDirect site? They showed my orders from 9 years ago, but not from today! No attempt to contact me again. Found a phone number and called it, just to discover that I had called at 17:01, and they close at 17:00. Tried to send them a message, which looked as if it had failed, but in fact succeeded. No response today, of course. Grrr!
|
Dead camera battery
|
Topic: photography | Link here |
Watching a video on converting an Olympus E-PL2 for full spectrum today. That's interesting because it's very close to the E-PM1, and I have just that.
I haven't used it for a while, and I wasn't surprised that the battery was dead. I was surprised, however, by just how dead it was: it had swollen to the point that I couldn't get it out of the camera. Another good reason to leave the battery out when not using the camera.
As it was, how could I get it out? Clearly it's dead, so I didn't have to worry much about damaging it, but there's nothing to get hold of. I considered screwing a screw into it, but that could be dangerous. As it was, I was able to lever it out for a few millimetres, enough to get hold of with a pair of pliers:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I took a couple of photos with it, the first in a couple of years. More of a problem was that I was no longer able to focus. Do I care, or should I write it off as a failed experiment?
| Thursday, 25 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 25 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Where's my lens, yet again
|
Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
This morning checked my “account” with DigiDirect. No change. Have I bought the lens, or have they just deducted money from my PayPal account? Went back to their sales page, still showing serial number AC6A23842, and was able to add it to my “cart”. Once? No, I can add it again. And again.
Left it there and called up their customer number (02-8732 6400) and spoke to Mark, who told me yes, the lens is being processed. Was I logged in at the time? If not, it might not show. That's silly, of course, since I had to give my email address to buy the thing, but quite in keeping with their chaotic web site. He said that he would send me the confirmation by email. It didn't get to me. He was clearly having difficulty, and said that he would get the IT people to follow up. But yes, no question, the lens was on its way, and that it would get to me within 8 days.
What can I do? No tracking, so I don't have any way to follow it. Why are these things always so complicated?
|
VicRoads, yet again
|
Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
It's been 10 days since I last contacted VicRoads and was given the confirmation that my concession entitlement had been applied to the Commodore, but I still haven't received a modified invoice. Nothing for it, contact them again, now the third time.
A warning of extended wait times, but in fact I was connected fairly quickly to Rebecca, who had to authenticate Yvonne, who conveniently came in at that moment. Name, driver license number, date of birth, PIN sent to her phone. That's “authentication”. Yvonne gave her permission for me to handle things, and off we went. Oh, your concession. Name, driver license number, date of birth, PIN sent to your phone, please.
All fine and good, can be done, but not over the phone. You'll have to come to a VicRoads service centre. I told her that I had already been there, and that Tony had told me that he had done it over the phone. Oh, yes, you can. OK, hold on... done!
I've heard that before. Can I pay over the phone? Yes, but payment by credit card incurs a charge which proved to be $1.98. What an insult! But it will be illegal some time later this year, and the certainty of having paid was worth more than that. She promised to send email and an SMS to my phone. The email arrived, without any reference to what it was for. The SMS didn't.
Why don't I feel relieved? I really don't trust these people.
|
Still more web server overload
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
More web server overload today, strangely only affecting lax.lemis.com, though it shares the name www.lemis.com with fra.lemis.com, which showed normal levels of load. Why?
More attempts to analyse the clients, without coming to any clear understanding. But I can't keep it running like that: it's also my mail server, which is responding with things like
Jun 25 02:49:23 lax sm-mta[2203]: rejecting connections on daemon Daemon0: load average: 105
In the end I just removed the DNS entry for www pointing to lax. And how about that, it gradually wound down.
And the load on fra? Unchanged. I wish I understood what these bots are doing.
|
Mail for cdg
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
It's becoming clear that I shouldn't run mail and a web server on the same “machine”: I can end up with delayed or even lost mail. That's part of my consideration behind cdg.lemis.com.
But I should be setting up TLS too. Can the twins help? They certainly think that they can, and they gave me a main.cf file that purports to do what I want. I still need to get certificates, and also to check that it relays correctly, but it looks like a good start.
| Friday, 26 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 26 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Clarksdale Bird Sanctuary
|
Topic: general, photography | Link here |
I've been planning to visit other birding locations for a few days now, in particular Clarkesdale Bird Sanctuary, and Yvonne was interested enough to want to come.
Today wasn't the day: it was very cold, with an overnight low of 2°. But to my surprise, Yvonne thought that it would be a good idea. OK, off there. Not a revelation: it's very low-key, and we couldn't even find a parking space—not that it mattered: there was nobody else there at 9:40, so I parked close to the building, which proves to be called the “Clare Miller Environment Centre”. Finally I found maps, for what they were worth:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
At first I thought that the second map was out of focus, but no, it was in focus, as the corners show. It seems that it was hung up like that.
While we were looking, a car came along. Not another visitor: she seems to live there. She gave us an interesting overview of the place, and pointed to what proved to be the only “walk” on this (south-west) side of the road:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
It's quite pretty there:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
All it needs is... birds. It seems that we were there both in the wrong season and at the wrong time of the day. Took a bit of a look round, but decided to leave it at that. After the Western Treatment Plant it was rather disappointing, though we should come back in mid-spring, when there should be more activity.
On the way home, past the Misery Creek Bridge:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
That's a far cry from 12 years ago:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Google Maps fail
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As always, used Google Maps to get to the Clarkesdale Sanctuary. It underperformed significantly. I've been there before, but this time it wanted to take me the long way round via Rokewood Junction and Pitfield, a total of 37.3 km:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
But we can go via Berringa, which I had to explicitly ask for:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That saved over 10 km. But it wasn't until we followed its route that we found:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
It took us down a long little unpaved road with a rickety wooden bridge in the middle, speed limited to 10 km/h. Why? There's a perfectly good paved road past the Devil's Kitchen. But not according to Google Maps:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Drove past the Devil's kitchen on the way back. At this junction, while we were pointing east (marked with the pointer at the very bottom of the first image), it wanted me to turn right (south) down the dead end and then make a U turn:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Turning left took us back to the main road.
Even on the way back it wanted to take us past Cape Clear. But with my waypoints I ended up with a sane route:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Fake Japanese soup
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
While I was in Werribee on Tuesday, I bought these mushrooms:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
Yvonne had wanted to use them as a filling for stuffed chicken breast, but that seemed to be a waste; we can put other mushrooms in instead. So this inspired me to “fake a miso soup”.
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 132 g | Fresh udon noodles | 2 | ||
| 63 g | Firm dòufu | 2 | ||
| 25 g | Cooked prawns, 4 g | 2 | ||
| 2 packets | Instant miso soup | 2 | ||
| 8.4 g | Oyster mushrooms | 2 | ||
| 2 | Spring onions | 2 | ||
| 2.5 g | Bonito flakes | 2 |
The result? Boring!
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
It also needed considerable soya sauce to be palatable.
I wish I understood Japanese cooking.
| Saturday, 27 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 27 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Google Gemini recipes
|
Topic: food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
Pork and dòufu for breakfast today. I quite like it, but can it be improved? Off to ask Google Gemini.
Yes! It came up with some interesting suggestions. One I tried today: add 0.5 g Sichuan pepper. That proved to still be too much; maybe 0.25 g would be better, though I'm not sure if I like it that way. An alternative is to consider mapo dòufu.
|
Dying software?
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Today, as on every Saturday, I take my weekly house photo panorama. I've been doing this now for nearly 18 years, and I have developed a reasonably standard routine.
But today things were different. Part of producing the panoramas is removing the parts that don't fit, done with the masking tool. And it started misbehaving:
What's wrong there? Configuration issues? Off to look at the config file. ~/.hugin was empty! Changed yesterday afternoon, presumably when I stitched the panorama of Golden Lake Road.
But isn't ~/.hugin an old, worn-out magic word? Not according to Google Gemini. Did a half-hearted search for another config file, but drew a blank. Only later did I find that it's ~/.config/hugin.conf, and it gets changed on every start. It's not clear why ~/.hugin got cleared yesterday.
In the meantime, how about starting on eureka? Oh: Hugin is too polite to work across the net, and I didn't have a display. OK, how about a brand new install on bde, the laptop? That came up with a different issue: it crashed on startup!
ERROR: 08:37:15.422071 (/wrkdirs/usr/ports/graphics/hugin/work/hugin-2025.0.1/src/hugin1/hugin/GLViewer.cpp:157) SetUpContext(): Error initialising GLEW: Unknown error.
WARN: 08:37:15.431470 (/wrkdirs/usr/ports/graphics/hugin/work/hugin-2025.0.1/src/hugin_base/panodata/Panorama.h:639) isDirty(): modification status mismatch.
Abort trap (core dumped) hugin
Enter a bug report. But that doesn't help in the short term. Maybe I should turn on a monitor on eureka after all.
|
Filled chicken breast
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
One of the less interesting recipe web sites to which I have subscribed is chefkoch.de. But recently they came up with a recipe that didn't look too bad: Gefülltes Hähnchenbrustfilet im Speckmantel:
I'll work on getting the recipe into our format, but a partial reformat reads:
Für das Fleisch:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 2 | Hähnchenbrustfilets (475 g) | 1 | ||
| 12 Scheiben | Schinkenspeck | 1 | ||
| 50 g | Tomaten, getrocknete | 1 | ||
| 20 g | Knoblauch | 1 | ||
| 1 Scheibe | Weißbrot, getrocknet und in Milch eingeweicht | 1 | ||
| 75 g | Mozzarella | 1 | ||
| 30 g | Parmesan, geriebener | 1 | ||
| 30 g | Swiss Brown mushrooms | 1 | ||
| 0.5 Bund | Basilikum | 1 | ||
| Salz und Pfeffer | 1 |
Für die Sauce:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 50 g | Tomaten, getrocknete | 1 | ||
| 10 g | Knoblauch | 1 | ||
| 40 ml | Weißwein | 1 | ||
| 100 ml | Sahne | 1 | ||
| Salz und Pfeffer | 1 | |||
| 55 Min. | Gesamtzeit | |
| 30 Min. | Arbeitszeit | |
| 25 Min. | Koch-/Backzeit | |
Dazu schmecken Bandnudeln und ein frischer Salat.
Today Yvonne cooked it, with only minor differences. In particular, they wanted the breasts fried in a pan and then in the oven. They didn't specify the time in the pan, though „anbraten“ translates as “sear”, and 15 minutes at that temperature would not be enough to cook them. I cooked them in the “hair dryer at 180° for 25 minutes, by which time the meat temperature was 46°. Another 12 minutes at 200° looked good:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
They didn't taste at all bad, and I ate more than I should have. Only Yvonne was not happy. There was probably twice as much stuffing as planned, so we'll eat it again.
| Sunday, 28 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 28 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Mona finds a friend
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
Bruno seems to be getting on very well in his new home. Loretta keeps sending Yvonne video clips of him in the family, and all seems well. But we're a little concerned about Mona after his departure. It's the first time in her life that she has been without feline company, and Yvonne is considering options for yet another cat.
But Mona has found one:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Recipe pain
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
How do you make a sauce vinaigrette? It's the base recipe from which many variations have been derived, some of them bizarre. Off looking for them, and quickly came to the conclusion that I should restrict my search to French language recipes. This one (« vinaigrette classique ») shows the problem:
INGRÉDIENTS
1/4 tasse d’huile d’olive extra vierge
1 gousse d'ail, hachée
2 c. à soupe de moutarde de Dijon
1 c. à soupe de moutarde à l’ancienne
1/2 c. à soupe de sauce soya
1/2 c. à soupe de vinaigre de cidre de pomme
1 c. à thé de sirop d’érable
Sel et poivre
Measurements that I hate, and that from France. Well, no, the maple syrup gives it away: they don't say so, but this must be a Canadian site. And soya sauce? It's « soja » in French, but the Wikipedia page states:
Le soja, nommé soya au Canada
But how does that relate to « Classique »?
Ignoring that kind of recipe, I still had issues with quantities. In the end I came up with:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 100 g | Red wine vinegar | 1 | ||
| 10 g | Dijon mustard | 1 | ||
| 4 g | Salt | 1 | ||
| 8 turns | Black pepper | 1 | ||
| 170 g | Olive oil | 1 |
And I capitulated with the pepper. Others also go by turns of the grinder, though that's very subjective. But should I really weigh it? My guess is round 400 mg, and the proportions are not very sensitive. In particular, for some reason, the vinegar seems to go faster than the oil, requiring top-ups.
| Monday, 29 June 2026 | Dereel | |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
TUHSI Annual Report
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Tomorrow's the last day of the financial year. Time for me, as secretary of TUHSI, to send my annual report to Consumer Affairs Victoria.
Or is it? Maybe too late? Off searching through a maze of twisty little web pages, all different, and some with contradictory content. At https://www.consumer.vic.gov.au/clubs-and-fundraising/incorporated-associations/running-an-incorporated-association/annual-reporting/lodging-an-annual-statement I read:
Your association must lodge an annual statement with us every year within one month after its annual general meeting.
On or after your association's end of financial year date, we will email your association secretary a notification to lodge your annual statement.
This isn't a reminder: they state elsewhere that I can't submit the statement until I receive the email. And elsewhere they state that the AGM must take place in the first 5 months of the financial year,
So let's wait for the email.
In passing, I can't recall anything of this nature when I was secretary to AUUG. I wonder if it will even happen.
|
Digidirect surprise
|
Topic: photography, general, opinion | Link here |
Surprise from DigiDirect today: an invoice by email!
Or was it? It claims to be from 3PL Booktopia Warehouse, and that's what the header includes:
|
|
|||||||||
Still, although it was sent at 17:33 today, it is finally confirmation that I have really purchased the item. Still no tracking, of course, but it's a good start. Do they now have the item on my purchase history? I can't tell: their web server is “varnishing” again.
While following up, found a lot of information from Google:
digiDirect is a legitimate Australian camera retailer, not a scam. However, they are widely known for frustrating online inventory issues. While they offer great prices and authentic local stock, you should be aware of their fulfillment practices before buying.
Why Customers Think They Are "Dodgy"
Inaccurate Online Stock: Buyers frequently report that items listed as "in stock" on the website are actually on backorder with the supplier.
Order Delays: Because of the inventory discrepancies, you may experience significant waiting times without receiving proactive updates.
Customer Service: Multiple users mention that it can be difficult to get clear updates on your order progress or quick resolutions on refunds during delays.
The Positives
Legitimate Gear: They are an authorized reseller for major brands in Australia, meaning you receive genuine Australian stock with full manufacturer warranties (no grey imports).Competitive Pricing: They often have some of the most aggressive and attractive prices on cameras and lenses.ACCC History
In 2021, digiDirect paid over $39,000 in ACCC penalties after being issued infringement notices for misleading customers about advertised "storewide" sales that actually excluded hundreds of popular items.Tips for Shopping with Them
If you plan to order from digiDirect, consider these precautions:
Contact Them First: Always contact digiDirect via phone or online chat to verify the item is physically in stock before placing your order.Avoid for Urgent Needs: If you need gear by a strict deadline, you may want to look elsewhere or use an alternative like Ted's Cameras.Check Reviews: You can evaluate recent experiences by reading the Trustpilot digiDirect Reviews to gauge current customer satisfaction.What is the payment fee for digiDirect?
Online: All transactions include a 0.95% payment and handling fee. Instore: All non-cash transactions include a 0.95% payment and handling fee.
That last part is particularly interesting: that's the $2.41 that I grumbled about when I bought the item. Is that even legal? Prices should be the total, not much of it. A 1% discount for cash would still be legal. And in general it's good to know what's going on. I can still live with that.
| Tuesday, 30 June 2026 | Dereel | Images for 30 June 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day |
|
SMS, your reliable partner
|
Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Checking my phone this morning, found not one, but two SMS from Australia Post, including tracking numbers. But how do I follow the tracking from a mobile phone? I don't know what they expect: tapping on the number does nothing useful, and the only way I can think of is to manually start a web browser on the phone, navigate to https://auspost.com.au/mypost/track/search and manually type in the 23 digit tracking number. What a pain! Why can't they send me email, like they did in the past?
AirDroid is my friend, once I work past the way it wants to be used:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
On the one hand, that's good. Those must be the UV filter for my OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm and, more importantly, the MC-14 for which I only received a confirmation yesterday. But why didn't they send me the notification in a sane manner?
Found the tracking and a tab “Notifications: Set preferences”. That seemed reasonable, but first I had to log in. And once again it rejected my password. That seems to happen one times out of three when I access commercial web sites. OK, AusPost, send me a new password.
Nothing. Tried again with an old email address. Again nothing far beyond the 15 minutes that they had given themselves. Finally I gave up and signed up again with a new email address, something like auspest@lemis.com. Immediate response, followed quickly by an email notification for the two items:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
That's actually more information than I have had before. They actually divulge the sender name! So: what's wrong with this picture? It seems that they almost forgot my login, though they did have my phone number. Why does this happen so often?
|
Abandoned dog
|
Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Shortly after midday, Yvonne came to me to tell me of reports of a dog on the road in front of our house. Sure enough:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
She walked up and down the road and wouldn't let us approach her. Quick asking round the neighbourhood (by Facebook, of course) brought no results. Finally we called the ranger and got a quick call back from Mike, who sent a colleague around to pick her up. Yes, she had a “microchip”, so there's a good possibility that they will find her owners. But I have my doubts that they want her back: the way she was walking up and down the road suggests that she had been dumped there, and she was looking for a way back.
Not much to report, really, but it was quite upsetting and kept us concerned all afternoon.
|
Hugin: fixed?
|
Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
To my surprise, my bug report about my recent problems with Hugin received a quick response: a library problem, of course, and I was able to work around it with a relatively simple change of library. That also fixed my problems with the fast panorama preview.
But the issue with the masks is still there. Why is software still so buggy?
Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.
| Top of page | Previous month | Greg's home page | Today's diary entry | Next month | Greg's photos | Copyright information |
