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| Greg's diary |
| March 2026 |
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| Sunday, 1 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 1 March 2026 |
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Happy birthday!
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Topic: general, health, opinion | Link here |
Today was Yvonne's birthday, and of course I had planned something good to eat—with her participation both in preparation and eating. But she was feeling faint and spent much of the day in bed. Nothing special for dinner.
What was the problem? Blood pressure and pulse were both a little low, but not overly so (107/70 and 55), and the ECG showed normal sinus rhythm.
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Foamy coffee
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Topic: food and drink | Link here |
Despite all the flushing that I did yesterday, there was still detergent in the coffee machine:
I still don't think that it's dangerous, but it relativizes the expediency of flushing the machine with descaling solution.
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Autofocus limitations
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Taking the photo of the foam from the coffee machine wasn't easy. The autofocus on my OM System OM-1 Mark II didn't want to know. So I tried it manually, setting focus peaking (which also didn't want to know) and a larger view. And that worked: the camera was able to autofocus on the enlarged view.
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Many birds
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Topic: animals | Link here |
From time to time we see sulphur-crested cockatoos near the horse water trough. But today there were a surprising number, although it was relatively wet:
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On closer examination, they're not sulphur-crested at all: they're corellas of some kind, at least the ones I looked at:
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That's a 99.9% crop of the first photo, far too small to recognize the beak, but from the chest colouration I think they're long-billed corellas. Presumably their presence is because of the large number around generally. Later in the afternoon I saw a swarm of what must have been 300 birds fly past. No hope of getting a photo.
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Bruno's fate
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Marion Stolk along today to take a look at Bruno. She's an animal rescuer, and we thought she might be able to find a place to suit him. And yes, she had found a place just like what we were thinking of: a hobby farm far from the road, where he can go out stalking in the daytime and come back in the evening. She had also found and placed a cat there, so not a choice for Bruno.
She wanted to take him with her to her house in Wendouree to see how he got on with other cats, and whether they would calm him. That wasn't our intention at all, though then he could potentially come back to us, but it could have some potential to see how we could keep him without him going ballistic. We'll also see if he's happy being allowed out into only a small outside enclosure (about 3×4 m).
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Hugin camera for sale
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Topic: photography, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
While watching TV this evening, saw this frame:
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It's from the German TV series „Rosenheim Corpse“, specifically season 11, episode 19. There is no such camera, of course.
| Monday, 2 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 2 March 2026 |
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lagune problems?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Seen in the overnight log mails, from lagune:
(da0:umass-sim0:0:0:0): Polling device for readiness
nvme0: async event occurred (type 0x1, info 0x01, page 0x02)
nvme0: temperature above threshold
I haven't seen that before. And it seems to be the disk in the machine. From dmesg:
vme0: Allocated 64MB host memory buffer
hdacc1: <Realtek ALC662 rev3 HDA CODEC> at cad 0 on hdac1
hdaa1: <Realtek ALC662 rev3 Audio Function Group> at nid 1 on hdacc1
pcm2: <Realtek ALC662 rev3 (Analog 2.0+HP/2.0)> at nid 20,27 and 24,26 on hdaa1
pcm3: <Realtek ALC662 rev3 (Analog)> at nid 21 and 25 on hdaa1
hdacc2: <Intel Kaby Lake HDA CODEC> at cad 2 on hdac1
hdaa2: <Intel Kaby Lake Audio Function Group> at nid 1 on hdacc2
nda0 at nvme0 bus 0 scbus7 target 0 lun 1
nda0: <SAMSUNG MZVLQ256HBJD-00BH1 HPS1NFAV S672NX1T440905>
nda0: Serial Number S672NX1T440905
nda0: nvme version 1.4
nda0: 244198MB (500118192 512 byte sectors)
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Rain!
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
It's been a very dry summer, and it shows in the garden, despite my watering. One thing that I have been particularly concerned about is my Corymbia ficifolia. In previous years it has flowered in January or February, but as of the beginning of the month there were plenty of buds, but no flowers.
But then it rained. And sure enough, the first flowers are out, with presumably many more to follow:
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And my long-suffering Hibiscus rosa-sinensis “Uncle Max” is also not doing too badly, though it currently has only one flower (at the top):
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Give Trump the Nobel Peace Prize!
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
Donald Trump, that arch pacifist, has done it again. Before the end of negotiations, he and his even more peaceful friend Bibi have launched a bombing campaign and killed a head of state. Bravo! Give that man a Nobel Peace Prize!
Yes, the current regime in Iran was not good. Khamenei was not good. But you don't go around killing heads of state. Arguably the wrong head of state got killed.
How can I express my disgust? The fact that even Trump's advisers warned against attacking is almost irrelevant, though it's interesting to note that yesterday the war was planned to last 3 days, and now it might take a month. Given Trump's insistence that he could solve the Russo-Ukrainian war in 24 hours, we need to multiply his estimates by over 400.
He has achieved one thing, though: joining the territories of the disaster in Iraq with the disaster in Afghanistan. But I doubt that he considered that. Probably he couldn't find any of these countries on a map without aid.
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Another long telephoto lens?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's photo of the Corella was less than perfect:
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Yes, it was massively cropped, round 99.9%. Clearly I would have needed a longer lens. But my Exif calculations show that the effective focal length was 1841 mm. No lens on the market comes close; apart from toys, the longest are round 1000 mm.
Still, that's a long way from the longest focal length I have, the Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3. And there are longer lenses. For a while I have had my eye on an OM System 150-600 mm super-tele. It's expensive, of course. The cheapest I have found cost round $3,200 new. But it seems that it's made by Sigma, who have their own version. And not only is it only half as expensive, it's available second-hand for under $1000.
There are differences, of course. The big one is that the Sigma is not available for OM System. Surprise, surprise. But it seems that there are mount adapters that do autofocus (a must in this situation), so I spent some time looking at a Viltrox adapter, for which I found conflicting reviews.
And then it occurred to me: a year ago Tom Smith came along with his Sigma 300–800mm f/5.6 EX DG HSM. That's even longer, and it would work with the same adapter. But at the time I found it particularly unwieldy. Should I even try for a longer focal length than the Leica? Maybe a teleconverter would be an option.
| Tuesday, 3 March 2026 | Dereel → Werriebee → Dereel | Images for 3 March 2026 |
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Australian pieces
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
While preparing breakfast this morning, came across this:
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What is it? Read the fine print: pineapple. Why would you want to know that? The important thing is that they're “pieces”, and not “wholes”.
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More periodonty
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Topic: health | Link here |
Off to Wyndham Periodontics in Werribee again today for another session with Leela Movva, this time to treat the other side of the mouth. Not much to report that wasn't already described last time. At least this time I didn't have to buy any medicine, so the whole thing took a little less time.
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More Corymbia ficifolia
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
The BoM promised us between 20 and 80 mm of rain over the last two days. What did we get? A total 17.2 mm for both days. But it was enough for my Corymbia ficifolia to flower.
Then today outside the periodonic practice I found this tree:
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As I feared, the colour rendition isn't accurate. It was lighter in colour than mine, and with a slight blue component. But it seems to be an indication that there's nothing much wrong with mine.
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More telephoto issues
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I did some thinking about adapting long telephoto lenses with mont adapters, without coming to any conclusion. But today there was a total lunar eclipse—just what I would want a long telephoto lens for.
Should I take photos? Surprisingly, the sky was clear. So I took some photos with my Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 (set to 400 mm, of course), none of which were any good. Firstly, of course, it's too short—exactly the reason for yesterday's considerations. But there are other issues too: getting the moon in focus is not easy, and this time my autofocus failed completely. Today it tried to focus correctly when the moon was brighter, but after totality started the camera just gave up. Magnifying the image didn't help: there was so much optical noise that I couldn't recognize anything, and
In addition, there's the question of exposure: f/6.3 is not enough, and I had to crank up the sensitivity and use slower shutter speeds than make sense. That was very clear in some of the stars:
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I thought that the differences in colour were due to sensor problems, but the same two stars appears in most of the images. It also shows that it's slightly out of focus.
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I thought that it didn't look as good as last time:
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But in fact, it's slightly better. If only I had been able to get it into focus. So what do I do next time? No more total solar eclipses here until 4 April 2220, by which time I will probably not be here. And a total lunar eclipse on 1 January 2029.
In passing, it does make some things clear: focus is even much more difficult than I had expected, so the idea of adapting a lens is probably not worthwhile. And the f/6.3 was too small. Put in a 1.4× teleconverter and reduce that to f/8.8 and it's even worse. Should I buy a telescope with tracking hardware? Or just give up?
| Wednesday, 4 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 4 March 2026 |
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Another quiet day
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Topic: general | Link here |
Once again nothing much happened today.
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Summer flowers
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
It's early autumn, but we have flowers that should bloom in summer. Our Corymbia ficifolia, now dry, is flowering in part:
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And this, found on the corner of Bliss Road and Stones Road (thanks, Android, for stopping my GPS logging process unasked) looks like a white Agapanthus.
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Both it and the Corymbia should flower in summer.
| Thursday, 5 March 2026 | Dereel → Cape Clear → Dereel | Images for 5 March 2026 |
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Vaccinating Bruno
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Topic: animals | Link here |
We've more or less come to the conclusion that Bruno should go to Marion Stolk for a month or so to see how he gets on with other cats. Problem: he's not vaccinated, since he doesn't come in contact with other animals. Off today to Pene Kirk to get him boosted.
While I was there, discussed the matter with Pene. She doesn't think it's a good idea at all: it will just put the cat under a lot of stress, really not what he needs. More food for thought, but it gives me incentive to build a cat enclosure on the south side of the house, where he could get in and out through the laundry door (and, for that matter, the rear garage door or my bedroom window if they were open). Yvonne called up Paul Donaghy, who will come around tomorrow and view the situation.
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Changing landscape
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
“And he sees the vision splendid\nof the Golden Plains extended”. Not quite the words of Clancy of the Overflow, but close. And there's a nice view from south the Dereel-Rokewood Junction road.
But it doesn't quite look the same any more:
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What's special about that? It's hard to see on such a panoramic photo, but one detail shot shows:
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And it's like that from one end of the view to the other. The whole landscape has changed.
| Friday, 6 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 6 March 2026 |
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A new cat run?
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
So we're off the idea of sending Bruno to Marion Stolk after all. What could we do to be able to keep him? Let him outside, of course. How about a cat run to the south of the house? I've been mulling the idea since yesterday, and Yvonne had already called Paul Donaghy to come and take a look:
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The white plastic droppers indicate the approximate boundary of the the enclosure. The existing fence would go, of course, but the plants would stay. Paul looked, said yes, came up with remarkably few issues, and went again, leaving me to consider the surprising number of commercial offerings. Time for a page to summarize what we're doing. It doesn't look easy.
| Saturday, 7 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 7 March 2026 |
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House photo tweaks
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
House photo day again today. Last week's changes worked, but they were a nuisance because I had to change lenses. The real issue isn't the lens, it's the view of the panorama bar at the bottom. After putting things together, I crop it off. Why not before? So today I did so to the component images while converting them to TIFF.
The result: as expected. It Just Worked. And of course the results are more directly compable to two weeks ago:
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So for the moment I'll leave it at that.
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Web site failure avalanche
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Topic: technology, general, animals, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's considerations for cat runs included creating a page about cat enclosures. Where do I put it? In the subdirectory... oh. I had stones-road and Stones-Road.
There can only be one. Put the contents of stones-road into Stones-Road and remove stones-road.
It didn't take long to come and bite me. Processing my house photos failed with the RCS checkout of ~/public_html/stones-road/photo-dates.php. OK, not an issue. It's now at ~/public_html/Stones-Road/photo-dates.php. But where's the control file? There was a ~/public_html/Stones-Road/RCS/, but it didn't contain the control file.
Much searching. It's not in the nightly backup either! Lots of crawling through backups to discover that it was a symlink to /eureka/home/Sysconfig/MasterRCS/home/grog/public_html/stones-road/RCS/, which last got backed up at the end of last month. Reinstate it and all was well.
Well, for a while. Looking through my failure log, I went to /grog/stones-road/exterior.php, first the local version, which was fine. But things on the web site looked very different. The page contains links to the weekly photos of a particular view since 2015 or so. That works fine—locally. But on the web site, the pages are all empty!
How did that happen? Some debugging brought me to this code, in ~/public_html/stones-road/exterior-view.php (that directory again):
foreach ($alldates as $date)
{
$dir = $imagedirs [$size];
if (file_exists ($_SERVER ["DOCUMENT_ROOT"] . "/$who/Photos/$date/$dir/$view.jpeg"))
It's looking through photo-dates.php (here giving a value for \$date) for the files locally. That works here, but my external files have been on DigitalOcean for 8½ years. So it finds... nothing.
What went wrong there? Did I have a different version of exterior-view.php on the web sites? No, I don't think so. If that were the case, it wouldn't have been overwritten, and it's not the sort of thing I do: I keep all my backups locally. It looks as if it has been broken for nearly 10 years! Attempts don't show up in the logs, but nobody has complained. Does anybody care? Or should I just leave it like that?
And in the process I found numerous false positives in photo-dates.php. It contains only dates, in YYYYMMDD format, and it starts
19651001
20081208
20140104
Those first two are clearly wrong: I didn't start this series until 2014. And the code above means that it doesn't become evident. But what about the third one? I had to look: yes, it's wrong too. I did take corresponding photos of the Kleins Road house, but not of Stones Road. I'll have to go through and weed it out... if I care.
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Food labels again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Sweet and sour fish for dinner tonight. No longer the horror it was 50 years ago, but it's still work. And I ran out of vinegar (“Chinkiang”, which should really be spelt “Zhenjiang”, but the label still uses the old transliteration). Instead I found a bottle labeled “beauideal Shanghai Rice Vinegar” from a company transliterated as “Baoding Tianyu”.
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OK, not a problem. The amount of acetic acid is critical. It should be 5 g (I actually write 4.95 g in the recipe). The remaining 30 g of Chinkiang vinegar (5.5%) account for 1.65 g, so I need another 3.3 g. How strong is the Shanghai vinegar? They don't say:
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Who cares about how much fat or protein there is there? And who drinks a “serving” of 100 ml? This is vinegar. And they don't say how much it is, though it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that this silly pasted-on label has obscured it. Asked the twins, who tell me that Shanghai vinegar contains between 4% and 5% of acetic acid. OK, at 4.5% I need another 73 g.
It was eatable, but there was too much vinegar! I'm going to have to guess at least 5%. Now wouldn't it be nice if labels tell you what you need to know instead of what some bureaucrat wants?
| Sunday, 8 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 8 March 2026 |
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lagune fail
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne into my office this morning to tell me that she had problems with lagune, her computer. Not for the first time. But this time it didn't react at all: it was powered down.
Oh. That was the machine that powered down during the power failure last weekend. Jamie Fraser had suggested that it might be a power supply issue, and this seems to point in that direction too. Damn. It's one of our newest machines: we've only had it for a year, and I had problems with it right from the start. What do we do now? It powered up normally, and the occasional power down isn't that serious, though it goes against the grain. And I have other machines that I can use instead if I have to.
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The pain of electronics
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Topic: food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
Today we celebrated Yvonne's birthday in cooking. Her birthday was a week ago, but she was not feeling well, so we postponed until today.
She had planned what we call “Swine Bismarck”, a play on the name “Beef Wellington”. We've had it frequently before, surprisingly often round this time of year. It's Yvonne's recipe, and we've been waiting for her to write it up for years. But four years ago I found an entry in this diary, where we called it by its canonical name porc en croûte, and which told me what I wanted to know: for a pork filet weighing 330 g, cook for 26 minutes at 200°, by which time the meat temperature should reach 80°.
Once upon a time cooking was easy, if not overly repeatable. Now, of course, I had to find our meat thermometers—at least three of them, with four probes.
And each of them showed something different! I know that the probes are not all the same, but one of them jumped all over the place, from freezing to oven temperature and back from one second to the next.
Finally I found combinations that agreed with each other and which didn't seem to be too wrong. Cooked the roll, but it wouldn't come close to 80°. Finally took it out after 37 minutes (compared to 26 last time), by which time it was showing 66° but looking well browned:
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And it was more than cooked. My guess is that the thermometer lied. It wasn't until I looked later that I found that one of the probes was off by round 17° (below), here in the centre display:
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From left to right: 21°, 4°, 22°.
It seems that it's that probe that's causing the problems. Plug it into a different display and the error goes with the probe. And the jumping about? Contact problems, or potentially a defective cable? One way or another, it's time to label the probes so that I can distinguish them. The one that reads 17° too low is now number 4.
One way or another, I really should use two (or three?) thermometers in future, especially since a further source of error might be where the sensor is placed in the meat.
A hoarse voice whispers “TMR”.
| Monday, 9 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 9 March 2026 |
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Anorexia
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've been keeping an eye on my weight, which is not excessive, but over the years it has been climbing. Lately it has been round 89 kg, up from 86 or 87 kg a couple of years ago (BMI 22.9, 23.1, 23.6). So for the last few days I have been eating less, and now I'm back to mid-87 again.
KL Hokkien Mee for breakfast today, the usual quantities. I could hardly finish it! I need to reduce my quantities, but how? In particular, many dishes use noodles that are pre-packed in weights round 60 g. How do I reduce that? To be considered.
In the evening I ate less to compensate, fully expecting to be hungry later on. But I wasn't. Is this maybe a matter of habit?
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Strange X issues
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For some time I have noticed strangenesses in my standard X display. I can't copy marked text from one display to another. And sometimes the cursor seems to go crazy, run away and reappear on a different display. It's certainly possible that I'm doing something strange, but gradually I'm beginning to suspect a bug in fvwm3.
And today my long-running main Emacs went crazy, reacting completely differently from what I expected. Type c-x c-s should save the current buffer (clear-trailing-junk-and-save), but it divided the screen. And when I enter c-h c-k (describe key), I get:
help-fns-short-filename: Wrong type argument: stringp, 47
What's going on here? Stopped the Emacs instance and restarted it, and all was well. But that was not the best choice in retrospect: first, the Emacs had been running for months, and secondly I was no longer able to find what the problem was.
Somehow this upgrade from eureka to hydra was not what I expected.
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Still more subtitle strangenesses
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Topic: multimedia, technology, opinion | Link here |
We watch most TV programmes with subtitles, not because we're hard of hearing, but because the dialogue is frequently vague or mumbled. Yesterday we were watching „Die Bergretter“ (specifically year 15, episode 5), and the subtitles just stopped for no obvious reason.
That's not the first time I've had difficulties with subtitles. The issues are many and varied, and some point to bugs in mpv: doesn't understand some subtitle entries, or the subtitles are in a different file with no relationship to the video file, or they're given a file name extension not related to the content type. But this is the first time it just stopped in the middle of a film.
Took a look at the file again today. The problem is here:
sub699
00:42:38.320 --> 00:42:40.560
* Das Handy klingelt weiter. *
sub700
00:42:45.520 --> 00:42:47.000
Tobi, wo steckst du?
subd699 displayed normally. sub700 didn't. Nor did any further subtitles.
There are a couple of things there: there's an empty line between the time and the text, the text is indented, and there's a line consisting of only 8 spaces afterwards. Did one of those do it?
Yes. Change to:
sub700
00:42:45.520 --> 00:42:47.000
Tobi, wo steckst du?
And yes, that works. But that's a bug, and I don't know which of the three anomalies stopped it.
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More flash synchronization problems?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday's issues with the thermometers merited a photo, and I got it. But I also got this (first image, (run the cursor over an image to compare it with its neighbour):
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What went wrong there? I've seen it before with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark I, but it's the first time I have seen it with the OM System OM-1 Mark II. With any luck it's an issue in the flash hardware, not the camera itself.
| Tuesday, 10 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 10 March 2026 |
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Another breakfast experiment
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Following yesterday's surprise lack of hunger, experimented with breakfast today, in particular using (once again) cabbage instead of gai lan and a smaller quantity of noodles. The result:
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Not to be repeated. Cabbage and Chinese-like soups don't mix. Frying is a different matter.
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Where are the Makernotes?
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Topic: photography, technology, history, opinion | Link here |
Looking back through my diary, found this article about Exif and Makernotes. But the link to the Makernotes was broken, and on searching the replacement, found that it was self-referential and contained no information. There's not even much point in searching for them: they'll be out of date too, and clearly the Exif data for the OM System OM-1 Mark II must contain much more information, since it has overflowed the original storage area.
Fifteen years ago Olypedia contained a lot of useful technical information. Others did too, but I can't find anything any more. The best is here, but I know that they're not complete. Why? Have people lost interest?
| Wednesday, 11 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 11 March 2026 |
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Another mouse bites the dust
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Topic: animals | Link here |
The cats were particularly interested in a particular place in the garage last night. When I went in this morning, I saw that it was somewhat rearranged:
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Who did it?
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And why? That was the first thing that I saw:
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More cat enclosures
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Topic: animals, general | Link here |
Paul Donaghy around today to measure up the dog run for keeping Bruno in. We got as far as the basics: we'll need no fewer than 6 columns 6' × 4-5" (yes, that's the way they measure things in this metric country) and lots of timber (about 22 m of 3" × 2") to hold up the roof, which is really only there to hold up the netting to keep birds out. What we currently have is: the run is 7.15 × 12.25 m and 1.75 m high. Covering that in netting will use the surprising quantity of 155.9 m². Now if only the birds would stay away, we could get by with a fraction of that. Started keeping a page, but I'm not sure that it will stay.
Should we use steel instead? It would be much less obtrusive and potentially cheaper.
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Oil prices
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Topic: politics, general | Link here |
Thanks to the world pacifists Donald Trump and Bibi, the world oil prices are going through the roof. This page seems to give a useful overview.
| Thursday, 12 March 2026 | Dereel | |
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Hunger!
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Topic: health, food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've been trying to reduce my food intake to get back to the weight I had a couple of years ago, about 87 kg; lately I've been closer to 89 kg. And it seemed to be working. This morning my scales showed 86.7 kg, down from 87.4 only yesterday, and the lowest in over 6 months. How did that happen? I wasn't conscious of having eaten much less.
But it came back to bite me. In the early afternoon, I was really hungry and had to eat a snack, something I almost never do. And I stayed hungry—for an hour or two. Then things got better, and I ate a “normal” quantity in the evening.
What does this tell me? I don't know yet. Certainly that eating to stave off hunger doesn't work immediately. And I don't want to overdo the fasting.
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Strange weather
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
The Bureau of Meteorology is good for at least one guess about tomorrow's weather (and sometimes yesterday's weather too), frequently two. And they almost invariably predict temperatures lower than we experience, and rainfall that is higher.
Not today. They predicted temperatures from 9° to 28°, and rainfall from o to 4 mm, but we got a really strange temperature curve maxing out at 25.1° and 5.7 mm of rainfall, much of which fell in a deluge just as Yvonne was returning from shopping:
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More cat enclosure thoughts
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday Paul Donaghy and I discussed the netting over the cat enclosure, requiring no fewer than 6 posts about 11 cm in diameter and over 20 m of battens. And that to hold up a really light net! How about using steel trusses instead? Off to investigate, once again involving Google Gemini. It came up with a third option: a steel cable, much cheaper. But there were lots of details, which I saved in this file. Somehow I'm still not convinced. Should I get somebody in the profession to come and take a look?
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More Olympus firmware update information
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
I've grumbled several times in the past that the Olympus firmware update method is particularly fiddly, and that it would be simpler to load from an SD card. A good year ago I found one way to do it, but today I found another one, which differs by the fact that it's so complicated (first write a special XML file).
All of these things have the disadvantage that they can brick your camera, silly in itself. Why can't a camera have a safe mode, like toys such as Microsoft have? The real issue I have, though, is finding a way to update my old Olympus DSLRs (E-1, E-300 and E-330). Maybe there's something there if I look hard enough.
| Friday, 13 March 2026 | Dereel | |
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Strange Emacs issue?
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Topic: technology | Link here |
I have a number of Emacs functions that I use almost all of the time. One is (insert-abbr-href), bound to M-F6, which takes a one character argument and inserts a link with URL and name. In this case I entered M-F6-G, which should produce
<?php href ("https://gemini.google.com/", "Google Gemini"); ?>
But instead I got
<?php href ("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods_and_services_tax_(Australia)", "GST"); ?>
Huh? Where did that come from? Checking the file (~/.emacs) showed yes, indeed, that's what's in the file:
("G" "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goods_and_services_tax_(Australia)" "GST")
How did that get there? Fortunately I keep the files under RCS, so I could check. It was revision 1.301, RCS timestamp 2024/12/21 01:53:59! The current is 1.305! Check out the current revision, load it, and all was well. But how could that have happened? I restarted Emacs a couple of days ago, an occurrence so rare that I mentioned it here. But that shouldn't have changed any configuration files. My best bet is that it happened earlier, but since I didn't load it, it didn't have any effect until I restarted Emacs. But why (and when, of course) would I have done that?
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The pain of selling horses
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Topic: animals, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne has decided to get rid of Josy, whom she has had for less than 4 months. Why? It seems that she's an expert in going through fences, and that causes Yvonne a lot of repair work. It wasn't clear to me why she wanted her in the first place.
Today somebody came to take a look at her. Clearly not a good match: she (the somebody) has ADHD, and she found Josy far too sensitive and reactive. No go, and under the circumstances it's not clear that she will ever find a horse suited to her. But after Yvonne had spent a couple of hours demonstrating the horse, she received a message (via Facebook, of course), complaining that Yvonne had wasted her time and petrol with an unsuited horse.
There are two sides to suitability, and also to waste of time.
| Saturday, 14 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 14 March 2026 |
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Fixing web site bugs
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I have my failure reports for the web sites working again, and they're very active. My 404 page notes broken internal links (where one of my pages links to a non-existent file in the same server), and reports them. In my mail I see things like:
5 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /grog/Canard-a-lOrange.html <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/recipes/dinde-au-whisky.php
7 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /grog/merry-bloody-christmas.html <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-dec2000.php?subtitle=LinuxSA%20Christmas%20dinner&article=D-20111210-213259
9 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: http://www.lemis.com/yvonne/Photos/20040522/tiny/flamenca5.jpeg <- http://www.lemis.com/yvonne/Thumbnails-20040522.html
12 N + 12-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /.well-known/apple-app-site-association <- http://www.lemis.com/yvonne/
17 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20160804/big/PPT-address-detail.png <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20160804/big/PPT-address-detail.png
24 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /microsoft-breakage-2.gif <- http://www.lemis.com
41 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /RotateCookies <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/Gemini/Cat-enclosure-construction_files/RotateCookiesPage.html
78 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: http://www.lemis.com/grog/Photos/20131215/big/L-Fn.gif <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-dec2013.php
82 N + 13-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /grog/mago-negro.html <- http://www.lemis.com/yvonne/index.php
86 N + 14-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-dec2007.html <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-jan2008.php?dirdate=20080109&imagesizes=11111111111111112
98 N + 14-03-2026 To grog@lemis.c World Wide Web Owner ( 6) N + FAILURE: /net/nbnlinkstats.png <- http://www.lemis.com
The Subject: shows the referred page, a simulated arrow, and the referring page. But what I see here are a number of things:
But what are <?php oneimage
("/grog/Photos/20131215/big/B-Fn1.gif", "B-Fn1 button symbol", 30, 0, 1); ?>, <?php oneimage
("/grog/Photos/20131215/big/B-Fn2.gif", "B-Fn1 button symbol", 30, 0, 1); ?> and
<?php oneimage ("/grog/Photos/20131215/big/L-Fn.gif", "L-Fn button symbol", 30, 0, 1); ?>?
Here the images are inline, so showphoto isn't appropriate. I need a new function, and currently I was thinking of a new function. But I have oneimage() already, so I just need to modify that. I suspect, though, that some of the references don't use oneimage().
But out of 11 error messages, only 4 are my fault. How can I identify (and not report) the others cleanly?
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A new auction site?
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
Watched some YouTube videos today, including one that told me which vintage Nikon lenses to buy.
Once again the Nikkor 105 mm f/2.5 (at number 2, barely not number 1). Strange. I never thought very much of it, and my favourite Nikkor 85 mm f/1.4 didn't even get a mention. But it seems that a particularly famous image of Sharbat Gula was taken with exactly the equipment I have, the Nikon FM2 and the 105/2.5:
That's not overly important: the photo could have been taken with just about any good camera. But the video was interesting for another reason: the author of the clip is in Melbourne, and he paid about $300 to $400 for each lens. Once again it brings home what a bargain it was to buy the FM2 and 5 lenses (not to forget the flash unit and steel case) for a total of $150.
But he came up with another interesting thing, in his paid promotion: Buyee, a Japanese auction site where you can find camera stuff much cheaper than on eBay. Sign up and get 10% off!
OK, did that. Can I now finally afford (well, justify) an OM System 150-600? I had thought that I could consideranything under $3000. And yes, there were a couple, but so little below that I couldn't be bothered. What about the alternatives, the original Sigma or the Tamron 150-600? To my surprise, found a used Tamron for round $400. Yes, not as good as the Zuiko, but a price that I could justify. How does it compare with the Sigma? I haven't found anything really useful, but there are suggestions that it could be better, and in any case it's lighter.
| Sunday, 15 March 2026 | Dereel | |
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More web site failures?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So, yesterday I established that I could fix some web site errors by modifying the oneimage() function to change the location of the image. Time to take a look:
/* Make sure URLs are fully qualified */
$src = complete_url ($src);
if (! (islocal ())
&& (substr ($src, 0, strlen ("http://www.lemis.com")) === "http://www.lemis.com") ) /* we need DigitalOcean */
/* Should remove old domain, but somebow DigitalOcean handles it. */
$src = str_replace ("http://www.lemis.com/", "https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/", $src);
Oh. It's there already, and yes, it works. Change my statistics: 3 of the error messages were my fault, 8 the fault of the client (presumably relying on old content rather than really accessing the pages).
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Buying cheap long teles
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Spent more time today looking for long teles on Buyee. Like so many sites (Aliexcess for example) it's a pain to navigate, and it can't decide whether to present its data in English, Japanese or (surprisingly) French. No way to select by details. Many listed items are just "ha ha, only joking, you can't buy this item". And there are significant contradictions, like the same item being marked both “In excellent condition” and “Junk item”. Still, it's worth following. The good news is that I can find autofocus adapters from round $60 plus unspecified shipping, and the twins tell me that it should be Canon mount. But there are a surprising number of lenses for sale with defects in the focussing, including autofocus. Is this a problem with this model, or simply an indication that this site is a resting place for dead lenses?
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TV: Enough?
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Topic: multimedia, general, opinion | Link here |
We've watched TV after dinner for decades, usually pre-recorded stuff so that we can replay and single-step. Typically we watch 3 ¾ hour sessions, cutting longer recordings into suitable chunks.
But today we couldn't be bothered. Are the TV series getting worse, or are our tastes changing? In some cases, of course, the series are getting worse to the point that we don't want to watch them any more, like “A Country Practice”, which by season 6 had become completely uninteresting.
| Monday, 16 March 2026 | Dereel | |
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Research day
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Topic: general, photography | Link here |
Spent most of the day researching things, paticularly the availability of long telephoto lenses for my camera. It's really not easy, but this page gives me some interesting insights: the Tamron 150-600 comes in two versions, named G2 and (after the event) G1. The twins gave me some thoughts about the difference, including two identical pictures of the G2 to help me tell the difference, but not what this page tells me: the G2 is optically superior, particularly at the ends of the focal length range. So if I buy one, it should be the G2.
But do I need one? When would I use it? Birding is an obvious choice, but I'm getting older, and it's not certain that I will ever go birding again.
But there are other things for sale, of course. One that occurred to me is one of the gaps in my old camera collection: old Japanese rangefinder cameras, in particular Nikon and possibly Canon. The Nikons are hard to find, but on Buyee I found a number of auctions, most starting at 1 JPY (somewhat less than 1 ¢). They won't stay that way, of course, but the difference is amazing. So the next part of my research is to find out which camera would be appropriate.
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Interesting map site
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Topic: technology, general | Link here |
During my research, came across this map site, which contains a number of partially interactive historical maps. So far I have difficulty navigating, but it looks interesting.
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Why no panorama support?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Vaguely interesting article on mu-43 today: why do the latest OM System cameras not have support for in-camera panoramas?
I've been there before, of course. The Olympus E-510 had “support” decades ago, but it was useless. But it seems that the Olympus E-M10 marks III and IV had it, but no more expensive models.
It seems that the E-M10s have a different system, where you just pan the camera to record a panorama. So why only the cheapest models? My guess (which theoretically I should check) is that it's not reliable enough.
| Tuesday, 17 March 2026 | Dereel | |
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Even less activity
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Topic: general, photography, opinion | Link here |
I really haven't done much in the last few days, but today I managed even less. About the only positive thing is that, for the first time in years, I have an empty email inbox.
Am I going to continue to be so inactive? About the only things I managed was to come to a conclusion about long telephoto lenses and Buyee: no. I really don't need a longer telephoto lenses, and the pricing doesn't look nearly as good as it seems, especially since they will add 10% GST and 500 ¥ (about $4.50) to the indicated sales price.
| Wednesday, 18 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 18 March 2026 |
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Bore pump fail
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Topic: general | Link here |
Somehow the sprinkler system is always coming up with something new, including excessive dripping round the front door. Looking outside this morning, though, things looked different. The sprinkler should have been running, but nothing happened.
Pump lost pressure? No, it was running, but it was leaking somewhere beneath the base plate. That's nothing for me. Called up UPI, and Alice gave me the good news that it could take 2 weeks. Hopefully we can do much better than that.
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More Android fail
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
It's been some time since we had problems with Android phones, but they hadn't gone away, just into hiding. Today Yvonne tried to call me, but just got voice mail. I tried calling her back, but didn't get an answer in time. She tried calling me again. This time the phone rang, but there was no popup of any kind to allow me to answer it. Rebooting helped once again, but why do these things happen? The phones are less reliable than the old steam telephones we used 70 years ago. No wonder people seldom make phone calls on their “smart” phones.
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FreeBSD through the ages
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
A month ago was the 30th anniversary of the first edition of what became “The Complete FreeBSD”. But lately I've had less and less and less to do with the project, and a point I hardly mentioned was keeping a FreeBSD system up to date.
Today I had a different issue: why don't I have a computer in the kitchen any more? Instead I use this horrible Android mobile phone, which continues to frustrate me. I have a couple of laptops left, including an HP EliteBook 8570p that I inherited from Bruce Evans, and which I have hardly used. That would be fine.
Oh. It has two network interfaces, em0 (normal wired Ethernet) and ue0, presumably a wireless interface. That's the one that I need, but it tells me “no carrier”.
Off to investigate, once again with the help of the twins, which came up with a plethora of information. What, you just want to configure the interface? No, you need the iwn driver, and you need to load the firmware. Then:
In FreeBSD, physical wireless devices aren't used directly; you must create a wlan cloned interface.
That's news to me. But I haven't used WiFi on FreeBSD in a while. Why is this so complicated? It should be becoming simpler. Still, they go on:
# kldload if_iwn
# ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev iwn0
# service netif start wlan0
And that worked, sort of. But there was still no carrier. Ah, say the twins, you need to scan:
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/1) ~ 5 -> ifconfig wlan0 scan
But that still didn't work. Maybe because it doesn't have an IP address? Added that, and it worked.
OK, before I reboot I might as well build a new world, since the old one must be a couple of years old.
Off it went, and took 7½ hours. By comparison, 30 years ago “Installing and running FreeBSD” quotes (page 193):
This procedure can take some time, up to an hour on a slow machine.
A “slow machine” in those days was several orders of magnitude slower than any machine nowadays, probably a 20 MHz 80386. But we're modern! We have found ways to keep bored processors occupied!
In the meantime, how about getting X running? Logged in as myself. Oh. Login hangs. A quick look with ps showed nothing obvious. Ah, there, fleetingly:
1007 71194 70085 2 86 0 448 364 - R+ v1 0:00.00 /bin/sh /home/grog/.ssh/epass Bad passphrase, try again for /home/grog/.ssh/id_ed25519:
Now that helps, doesn't it? But then it occurred to me that epass is a script that I wrote. Where did this “Bad passphrase” happen? Still, I have numerous compatibility issues with ssh. I can look at that later, when the system is up to date, and completing login was as simple as hitting ^C. So I ran startx. The display scrambled and then went blank.
Did it work? Yes! I was able to start an xterm on the display, but not focus on it: no window manager. Once, anyway. Start X again and it complained that it couldn't find fvwm3.
OK, install. Switch back to /dev/ttyv1 with C-A-F2. Screen went blank and stayed that way. It was dead in the water. A good thing I had a couple of xterms (on hydra) to play with. Install from there.
Installed packages to be REMOVED:
apache24: 2.4.54
chromium: 110.0.5481.177
emacs: 28.2,3
ffmpeg: 4.4.3_2,1
firefox: 110.0_3,2
mpv: 0.34.1_2,1
xf86-input-libinput: 1.2.0_1
xorg: 7.7_3
xorg-drivers: 7.7_7
There were more, but that was enough. Essentially it wanted to remove (and not replace) just about everything on the machine. There, too, it sounds like a good idea to wait for the new system to be running. And to make things worse, I had set pkg to automatically answer questions with “yes”, not a good idea for exactly this reason. But where did I set it? A quick RTFM didn't help, and once again I was dependent on the twins, who told me to set these values in /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf:
DEFAULT_ALWAYS_YES = false;
ASSUME_ALWAYS_YES = false;
So that was enough for today.
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Sign of the times
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Topic: politics, general, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne went shopping today, and also filled up her petrol tank at Pearl, the cheapest place in town. Last time she paid $1.54 per litre. Today things look different:
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A 50% increase! Bravo, idiot Trump!
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Cooking insights
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Nothing special to eat today, but a couple of insights.
First, in the morning. Yet Another noodle dish using the cabbage that Yvonne bought last week. It's getting to the point where I don't need to write things down. But today I had the idea of adding some Sichuan pepper, 0.6 g, ground in a mortar. The result was interesting, but it's also pedas enough that I could have done without the 0.5 g of dried chili.
Then in the evening we had breaded chicken schnitzel. In the past we had fried them with varied success. But I was sure that we had also deep fried them once, though I can't find any reference. And this brings me back to a question that I have been asking almost since I started keeping this diary over 60 years ago: what should I record in this diary, and what should I omit? In this case I should have recorded the chicken. As it was, I deep fried them at 180° until they looked brown enough (about 4 minutes), and they were fine.
And the chips? I have had lots of problem cutting chips from raw potatoes. Today I tried a different kind of potato, “white” instead of “red”. Success! They cut really easily. But the settings of my deep fryer are still wrong: the second fry is supposed to go for 5 minutes, but after 3 minutes the chips were dark brown—but still not cooked! Somehow the settings are all wrong. Why do they even bother?
And then there's another issue: Schweinshaxe. We're planning it for dinner on Saturday, but it's not on my meat cooking times page. In this case it's in this diary, but I should really add it.
| Thursday, 19 March 2026 | Dereel | |
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More garden work
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Topic: gardening | Link here |
Jesse Walsh along today to do more garden work. It kept him busy for 5 hours, and he still wasn't finished, although things did look a lot better at the end.
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Praying for WLAN
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Finally my “make world” make buildworld kernel has finished,
and I was able to reboot bde. And that went without problem. I was even able to
perform a pkg upgrade without removing everything, and installing fvwm3 was also no problem. Progress!
Yes, but we're not there yet/ wlan0 was there, in contrast to before, and it recognized the SSID of the local network. But its status was still “no carrier”. Did it really recognize the SSID? Yesterday a scan worked. How about today?
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/1) ~ 5 -> ifconfig wlan0 scan
SSID/MESH ID BSSID CHAN RATE S:N INT CAPS
L3M15 f4:3e:61:48:6c:b2 10 54M -72:-95 100 E HTCAP WME
Ingeteam_0AM172B16A22_2261 00:25:ca:0b:fe:05 10 54M -77:-95 100 EP RSN HTCAP
E-M1MKII-P-BHUA20626 b0:72:bf:9b:a5:25 6 54M -71:-95 100 EP RSN HTCAP WME
Yes, I really have two, maybe three “networks”. The second is the PV inverter, which pretends to be an access point. The third is my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, which is equally stupid. But scanning didn't help. Do I need to tell it which to choose?
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/1) /usr/src 28 -> ifconfig wlan0 ssid L3M15=== root@bde (/dev/pts/1) /usr/src 29 ->
It didn't complain, but nothing changed much. A later attempt with Ingeteam_0AM172B16A22_2261 also generated no error messages, but also no change.
Much messing around. How about removing the interface and starting again?
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 23 -> ifconfig wlan0 delete=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 24 -> ifconfig wlan0 start
ifconfig: start: bad value=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 25 -> ifconfig
wlan0: flags=8c43<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
...
ssid L3M15 channel 165 (5825 MHz 11a)
...
status: no carrier=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 26 -> ifconfig wlan0 delete
ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCDIFADDR): Can't assign requested address
What sort of nonsense is that? At the very least its a bug in ifconfig. Still, there's an obvious potential culprit:
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 27 -> cat /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
network={
ssid="L3M15"
psk="Your_Secret_Password"
}
What's this password stuff? Ah, it's not a “password”, that's just an obfuscatory spelling for “Pre-Shared Key”, which you can set in a wireless network. I don't have one. How about just removing the key and writing this?
psk=""
Then restart wpa_supplicant. No change. What does ps tell me?
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 28 -> ps aux | grep supp
root 323 0.0 0.0 18716 3744 - Ss 09:38 0:00.70 /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -s -B -i wlan0 -c
That's the old process. Did it read in the new information? Tried to restart it:
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 29 -> kill 323=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 30 -> service wpa_supplicant restart=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 31 -> ps aux | grep supp
root 38708 0.0 0.0 12932 2164 2 S+ 16:02 0:00.00 grep supp=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 32 -> service wpa_supplicant start=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 33 -> ps aux | grep supp
root 38807 0.0 0.0 12932 2156 2 R+ 16:02 0:00.00 grep supp=== root@bde (/dev/pts/2) /usr/ports 34 ->
restart and start both don't work! It wasn't until later that I read in /var/log/messages:
Mar 19 16:02:19 bde wpa_supplicant[322]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
Mar 19 16:02:19 bde syslogd: last message repeated 1 times
Mar 19 16:02:19 bde wpa_supplicant[322]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING
It's not clear what that means, even whether it's an error or not, but it was only once. OK, run it manually. More RTFM showed that it runs in the foreground by default, and that -d will give debug information. After a couple of failures, got it to run. A single -d produced an amazing amount of information:
=== root@bde (/dev/pts/3) /home/grog 25 -> wpa_supplicant -d -Dbsd -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_supplicant v2.10
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
Initializing interface 'wlan0' conf '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' driver 'bsd' ctrl_interface 'N/A' bridge 'N/A'
Configuration file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf' -> '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'
Reading configuration file '/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf'
...
wlan0: 1: f4:3e:61:48:6c:b2 ssid='L3M15' wpa_ie_
_len=0 rsn_ie_len=0 caps=0x1 level=-72 freq=2457
wlan0: skip - no WPA/RSN proto match
wlan0: No suitable network found
The man page states that -d can be issued multiple times. I can't begin to imagine what -d -d -d would look like. Still—for once—the message is clear. Maybe it really wants a PSK, though why, since it worked without one yesterday. Still, euroa, my Microsoft laptop, has WLAN, and none of the issues I've had. How do I find the PSK? Once again the twins had a way:
Open the Control Panel and go to Network and Sharing Center.Click on your Wi-Fi Network Name (SSID).In the status window, click Wireless Properties.Navigate to the Security tab.Check the Show characters box to reveal the PSK.
Of course, it wasn't quite like that, but with a bit of guesswork I found the page. And it says “No authentication (Open)”. That makes sense, but how do I input it? My first attempt failed, but finally I found something that told me to change /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to contain only
network={
ssid="L3M15"
key_mgmt=NONE
}
And FINALLY it worked. Well, sort of. It ended up getting an address from DHCP, and I still couldn't ping it! That seems to be an arp issue: once I pinged a system from bde, I could ping back. And when I tried changing the IP address, things no longer worked. But that's OK for the time being: the next step would be to set up lagg, the link aggregator, enabling me to use the same IP address with or without a wired connection.
But for the moment I have had far more than enough. I've spent two days on this (admittedly, much of it ranting). I consider myself more knowledgeable than most (after all, I did write the book on the subject). Why is it so difficult? Part of it is an almost complete lack of documentation. Much of what I found is not in any FreeBSD documentation (key_mgmt, for example, is only briefly mentioned in the man page, and for wpa_supplicant.conf(5), not wpa_supplicant(8), and not at all in the handbook), and I've been relying mainly on Google Gemini. But it's also a lack of attention to simplicity. After all, I can connect to this network with Android automatically with no action at all, one of the few cases where I find Android easier.
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Te supplico, dee mee
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Topic: language, opinion | Link here |
Where does this stupid name “supplicant” come from? The OED describes the meaning:
A person who makes a humble or earnest plea to another, esp. to a person in power or authority; a petitioner, a suppliant.
That's a long way from what we used to call commands. Who came up with the idea. Why? But the word brings back old Latin language prayers: “Te supplicamus, deus noster”: "We beseech thee, our God”. Do we have to pray that the thing will work? Based on my recent experience, yes.
But then there's another hot button: noun cases. At school I learnt that Latin has 6 cases. In the sequence I learnt (there are others), they were nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative and ablative. In Greek there were only four: nominative, accusative, genitive and dative.
The vocative is frequently the same as the nominative—Sanskrit, which has 8 cases, numbers them from 1 to 7. Nominative is 7 in the way I recall it calls the seventh “सप्तमी” (saptamī), and vocative comes in as a variant that I recall as “pra-saptami”, though I can no longer find anything like that on the web. So I was really puzzled that in the Ordinary of the Latin mass, the vocative doesn't occur at all, though it should occur in the quote above. The only occasion is in the Kyrie, which is in Greek. “Kyrie” (Κύριε) is the vocative of Kyrios (Κύριος), in a language which, I'm told, doesn't have a vocative!
So if I pray alone (in Latin, of course) that my WLAN should work, the incantation would be “Te supplico, dee mee”. That really looks funny, but I'm sure that it's syntactically correct, even if Google Translate can't get it right. Of course, it would be better to get the WLAN up without having to pray.
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Nano Banana?
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
I recently saw an amazing improvement in a photo processed by Nano Banana, a real Artificial Intelligence application. Tried it today, with spectacular lack of success. First I was diverted to a different site that wanted money for just about anything, and when I found the correct site, it seemed to be geared towards producing caricatures.
Doubtless there's a way, but I've had enough pain for one day.
| Friday, 20 March 2026 | Dereel | Images for 20 March 2026 |
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More WLAN? No thanks
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So I still don't have bde's WLAN running the way I want it. Continue? Yes, some time, but for the moment I have more than enough. Spent a lot of time writing up my pain, in the process learning more about what's going on.
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Carlotta returns
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Carlotta is back from New South Wales—again:
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I think that this is the last time. And Samba is happy.
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More web site overload
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Once again one (but only one, fra) of my external web servers showed excessive load, well over 100. Time to block more crawlers? One name stood out: baidu.com. Asked the twins, which came out with a lot of information, including firewall rules. An interesting one ws rate limiting:
ipfw pipe 1 config bw 10Mbit
ipfw add pipe 1 ip from 180.76.0.0/16 to any dst-port 80,443
But that didn't work:
=== root@fra (/dev/pts/1) /home/grog 1 -> ipfw pipe 1 config bw 10Mbit
ipfw add pipe 1 ip from 180.76.0.0/16 to any dst-port 80,443
ipfw: setsockopt(IP_DUMMYNET_CONFIGURE): Protocol not available
11210 pipe 1 ip from 180.76.0.0/16 to any 80,443
It's clear what I should be chasing, but mañana. Today I just blocked their three IP address blocks:
ipfw add 1100 deny ip from 180.76.0.0/16 to any dst-port 80,443
ipfw add 1110 deny ip from 220.181.0.0/16 to any dst-port 80,443
ipfw add 1120 deny ip from 116.179.32.0/20 to any dst-port 80,443
And the result was immediate, and the average dropped to round 1, and the system was up to 90% idle. Now to follow up this pipe idea.
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Power fail!
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Round 19:50 this evening, the house power failed. That shouldn't happen: the PV system is supposed to bridge any fails. But lately, it seems, it has been getting worse and worse, and my guess is that house power was gone for over 15 seconds before the inverter woke up.
Most systems weathered the outage well, thanks to the UPS systems. Only—once again—lagune failed.
But it didn't stop there. Fortunately the battery was at 73% charge, enough for a couple of hours. But to save power we went to bed early. It wasn't enough: at 22:49 the inverter turned off power and left the UPS systems to cry plaintively for another 15 minutes. Then silence. The power came back at 0:26. For the first time in I don't know how long all systems went down. Only bde (laptop) weathered the failure.
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Understanding oil prices
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Topic: general, politics, opinion | Link here |
I've been following the oil prices here for the last few days. But though it looks useful, the prices have little to do with what the news is telling me. Why?
FOOL! You didn't look at the TLAs. The heading makes it clear: CFDs on WTI Crude Oil. And everybody knows that a CFD is a financial tool, not a barrel of oil, and WTI is West Texas Intermediate. What I'm looking for is live Brent Crude Oil Prices. And yes, they're a lot worse. Bravo, idiot Donald Trump.
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