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| Greg's diary |
| November 2024 |
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| Friday, 1 November 2024 | Dereel → Melbourne → Dereel | Images for 1 November 2024 |
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To Melbourne again
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Topic: health, opinion, food and drink, general | Link here |
Off to Melbourne today to take Yvonne to the Melbourne Private Hospital for her catheter ablation. Somehow going to Melbourne becomes more and more unbearable. Here part of the way after leaving the freeway:
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The third photo was before a police check of some kind:
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A policeman indicated (I think) to me that I should go into the channel on the right, where a number of policemen stood about 3 m apart with light sabres, making confusing gestures reminiscent of our experience four years ago. They all ultimately waved me through. I didn't take any photos, because I thought that in this free country it might be forbidden, and that my previous photo might have been the reason I was chosen, but I suspect they just wanted the opportunity to look at the car more carefully.
Finally arrived at the Melbourne Private Hospital. They don't seem to have any drop-off point, not even a place to stop!
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That's the hospital in the middle of the photo, and Yvonne walking towards it. I'm baffled.
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Memory lane
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Topic: history, opinion | Link here |
From about September 1952 until April 1954 I lived at 123 Park Street, Parkville, Melbourne N2. That doesn't exist any more: it sounds much better to call it Park Drive.
It's just round the corner from the Melbourne Private Hospital, so I had planned to park round the corner and walk around a bit. But I couldn't. There were no public parking spaces at all, only permit areas for residents. After a lot of searching, I finally found one single space:
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So I parked in one of the many empty spaces for residents. After all, once I lived here.
I haven't been here for over 20 years:
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Somehow it doesn't look anything like the same. When I was a lad I can't recall any trees, nor even a divide in the road, though it's like that there was at least the divide. But now the place is almost overrun by poplars. Today the same view looks like this:
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Yes, the trees in the first photo are still recognizable, and it's two months later in the season now, but it's nothing like the way I remember it.
Past the house of Miss Fisher from Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, about 200 m away:
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Then down the back alley behind the house, where I'm sure I haven't been for over 70 years, about 1.5% of recorded history. I really have little recollection of that, just that I cut my leg open on the top of a corrugated iron gate just before leaving for Malaya, to the immense consternation of my mother. I still have the scar. The gate has now been fixed. It was replaced by a roller gate:
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But I remember it as a very narrow alley, and in fact it is quite wide. And it's not Gatehouse Street (one further west), but Redpath Rise.
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Victoria Market: past its prime?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Off to the Victoria Market to spend a lot of money on things that we can't get in Ballarat, notably (from my perspective) 2 kg of Appenzeller cheese. They had that, not only because I had rung up to confirm in advance. And I was able to get rid of this horrible Mitsubishi $100 gift card in partial payment.
That was about the only thing that went well. Yvonne had given me a long list of things to buy at the Polish delicatessen, and they had almost none of them. The proprietor tells me that Standom, our preferred Adelaide smallgoods maker, has stopped making less popular items. And the swordfish that Yvonne had wanted was also not to be found.
I was able to find some sausages that didn't look too bad, not here at the Bratwurst shop (which looks more like a café):
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But here I found “Bratwurst”, along with many other kinds:
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Spicy Bratwurst! Beef, pork and chili. But nearly all the sausages I saw looked strange, and the Toulouse sausage (if that's what it really is) and Italian sausage don't have chili in them, and they don't look bad. We'll find out later.
Leaving the market was interesting. There are no tickets any more, like at Central Square in Ballarat. Instead they take a photo. To pay, you have to fight one of these horrible ABC glass keyboards that the makers of parking meters seem to love, but I only had to enter the first three letters for it to show me a photo of my car:
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That's quite clever. Getting out wasn't: there is still a card reader, but no instructions. Did they want my receipt? Why no camera? Ha ha, only joking. We're just too slow to open the gate immediately. While I was trying to establish contact with the equally slow help behind the help button, the barrier went up.
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Malaysian Laksa House
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I had planned to get some KL Hokkien Mee for brunch today, and I had established that the KL Bunga Raya was nearby and offers it. But it didn't open until 11:00, a little too late for me, so I decided to have a Laksa at the Malaysian Laksa House instead.
Oh. No Katong laksa. No assam laksa. Only curry laksa:
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So I had nasi lemak instead:
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That's the “Nyonya chicken” version. It's served on the smallest banana leaf plate I have seen, only about half the size of mine. It tasted alright, though the chicken thigh was a little on the undercooked side. There was so much rice that I couldn't quite finish it, unusual for me:
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Would I go back? No, but not because of the food. There are so many restaurants to visit, and I'm almost never in a position to visit one.
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Google Maps: blessing or curse?
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
As always, I used Google Maps for the trip. Annoyingly, as so often, it had forgotten the detailed itinerary that I had sent yesterday, but it was really helpful getting off the freeway, showing the exact lane I needed to fight my way through the tangle that is the road system.
But then it avenged itself. It got upset that it couldn't take me to the entrance of the Melbourne Private Hospital, so it switched to pedestrian mode to help me. And I couldn't get it to switch back to car! Maybe there's something about the user interface of mobile phones that I just don't understand, but I tried everything I could think of without success. In the end I stopped it and restarted it. And then I had the issue: I was going by car, so the Queen Victoria Market was not my real destination. I wanted the entrance to the car park in Franklin Street. Out of sheer frustration, I chose the Malaysian Laksa House, which would take me past the entrance.
But no, Google Maps saw through that and took me to the local Peugeot and Citroën dealers instead. I had to start all over again. And it didn't help, because Franklin Street has been blocked off at the western end, and the entrance to the parking area is now an exit. Clearly the market is siding with Google Maps against me.
On the way home it wasn't as good as earlier. In almost exactly the same place that it helped me find the correct lane coming in, it gave me the wrong lane going out, and only the map display helped me find the right one. And later I decided that I should try a cross-country route from Lara, the one we used before the freeway was completed. Left the freeway, off towards Lara. The road was blocked, and they wanted me to go back towards Melbourne on the freeway. No way. On towards Geelong, as planned.
But then Google Maps took me off the freeway via a different route, one that I have never seen before. I can only assume that the route recalculation in Lara had made it change its mind. In the end I cut across country, going via Meredith and Mount Mercer—and got back home 6 minutes earlier than originally calculated for the normal route. I usually end up at my destination earlier than originally planned, so it's not clear how much of that was due to me and how much due to the route.
What is the route? So far, no idea. Once I could use the “Timeline” feature of Google Maps, but since they moved it to the phone only, it seems to be terminally broken. What I see for today is:
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Total of 4 km by foot (much of it in the middle of the night) and 1 km by car? Even the map traces show that that's wrong. I have a log, which I also use for geotagging my photos, and that shows that the phone knows where I was. What's wrong with this thing? To be investigated when I have time. For now it's interesting that it shows the route I took home. It's also interesting that I passed along part of my original route, coming from a different direction than ever before, and yet I recognized it immediately. But that was just a small part of the total, at 90° to the rest of my previous itinerary. So it seems that this might be a better route, though it took me across some pretty bad roads.
| Saturday, 2 November 2024 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | Images for 2 November 2024 |
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Catchup
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Topic: general, health | Link here |
Lots of things have happened over the past couple of days, and I spent most of the day catching up. Into town just before noon to pick up Yvonne, who had come back by train after a night of continual ECGs and a snoring room neighbour, but who, according to Professor Peter Kistler, had had an very successful operation. It certainly left its mark:
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Hopefully that will be the end of the heart problems, at least for the foreseeable future.
| Sunday, 3 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 3 November 2024 |
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KardiaMobile causes atrial fibrillation
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Yvonne woke up this morning feeling still tired, but well. OK, take ECG and blood pressure readings.
That was a problem even before we started. She hadn't been able to take any ECG readings last night, and I had spent an inordinate amount of time finding out why not. The display should look like this:
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But instead it looked something like this:
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Why the photos where a screen shot would do? Ah, that's insecure (or some such nonsense):
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One of my many gripes about the KardiaMobile 6L. I'll go into more detail below. OK, Connect. Somehow it's such a pain. The last thing you need is stress when you have a heart condition. And somehow by the end of it Yvonne had atrial fibrillation again, probably not helped by my cursing the device.
That wasn't on the plan. Yvonne called up the hospital, but no emergency help was there. “Go to the emergency department”. That way madness lies. We sent off the ECGs and blood pressure to “Peter Kistler”, really reception@melbourneheart.com.au, but of course nothing came back today.
What do we do? Yvonne wanted to take a Flecainide tablet, but you don't take medications without advice from a medical professional. There's an online service, INTU Healthcare, that is available on the phone (1800 46 8800) “after hours”, but it's not really open all the time, only 12:00 to 16:00 today, and with a promise of a call back within an hour. So the earliest we could speak to a medical professional would be round 13:00, 2½ hours ahead. And there was every likelihood that the response would be “Go to the emergency department”, where she could spend the rest of the day.
So at 11:00 I gave in. And within 30 minutes the ECGs were normal again. I don't like going against medical advice, but this time we didn't really have any.
Why the AF? My guess was the stress of the reading this morning, not helped by my cursing and swearing at the device. I need to be much more gentle with Yvonne in the future.
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I hate KardiaMobile!
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Topic: technology, health, opinion | Link here |
There's no doubt that the KardiaMobile 6L toy ECG device is useful. But it annoys me on every possible occasion, starting with this silly deliberate confusion between the letters A and Λ. That's not as trivial as it seems: the first time I tried it, I recognized the letter V and used it upside down. And how do they market the thing in Greece? Then there's this refusal to let me take screen shots. Why?
Much more important, though, is that I get the feeling that they're out to grab money. On every occasion they ask for me to sign up for a really expensive service of dubious utility. Rodney Reddy has already commented that there's nothing useful, but why do they retain this information?
Then there's the device itself. To use the “6 lead” functionality that sets it aside from other similar devices, you need to put your fingers on two contacts and place the device itself on your (naked) knee: it has a contact below as well. But Yvonne had great difficulty getting it to respond at all. It seems that her skin is too dry, and on a hunch I tried moistening it. Yes, that worked, but none of their documentation mentions it.
In general the documentation is pretty useless. Finding the issues with connection yesterday took me half an hour, mainly guesswork: the documentation didn't offer any help whatsoever. I guessed—correctly, as it proved—that it was a Bluetooth pairing issue, but the display on the phone suggested that the battery was discharged (top right):
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Clearly that's why it needs to connect. But how? Press the CONNECT area and nothing happens. So presumably it's saying that the battery is dead, especially since pairing via the phone settings didn't work either. And neither did “Connect”. The display shows:
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But that appears to be incorrect. Until you put your fingers on the device (sorry, Device), it doesn't react at all. It wasn't until much later that I discovered that to connect you need to put two fingers on the top contacts and press the “Connect” area with a finger of the third hand. Without finger contact it doesn't respond to a pairing request. Or at least, that's what I understand at the moment. Why it should show a dead battery is a mystery.
And then there's the management of the recordings. They store them, and if you ask nicely (and jump through hoops), you too can get a copy. All you need to do is:
Perform ECG.
Scroll down to list of ECGs for the day.
Select ECG.
Scroll down to More Options/DOWNLOAD PDF and “click”.
Skip password protection.
Choose browser top open PDF report.
In the browser, select Download.
With FTP, download the ECG report to a Real Computer.
On the phone, go back two steps with the bottom arrow to access the list again.
The whole procedure takes about 20 seconds per ECG.
And there are other messages that I don't understand, like “you're on a roll!”. Is that dangerous? Maybe the result of jumping through too many hoops?
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INTU: remote temperature sensor
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Topic: technology, health | Link here |
Seen on the home page of INTU, a phone health service:
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It's amazing all the things they can do by telephone.
| Monday, 4 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 4 November 2024 |
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Academia surpasses itself
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Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
On a daily basis I get emails from Academia.edu with subject lines like “$1, 30 day trial. Are you the “G. Lehey” cited in Operating Systems papers?” or even “Are you the Greg Lehey who wrote "Treasurer"?”. Based on that information, there's no way to know; I have to pay to correct their records.
But now they've come out with another tack:
69 ND 03-11-2024 To grogac@lem ( 903) Mentioned by Greg Le ND $1, 30 day trial. “G. Lehey” mentioned by “Greg Lehey”
They want me to pay for mentioning myself! Sometimes I think I should accept just to see what nonsense they have come up with, especially in the case of “Treasurer”
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Friday's tracking revisited
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Why did Google Maps give me such a ridiculous timeline on Friday?
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It could be Google Maps, or it could be my phone. Today I checked the track log collected by Mendhak GPS logger, as processed by Wikiloc:
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So it's at least Google Maps. But looking at that Wikiloc trail in more detail shows, at the east end of my journey:
Can't find dimensions for 'Wikiloc-3.jpeg'
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That position in the extreme south-east is fully 400 m from where I was, at the Malaysian Laksa House. Potentially that's related to these strange displays from Google Maps:
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And at the other end, it shows me jumping around all over the place:
Can't find dimensions for 'Wikiloc-4.jpeg'
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There's a distance of 2 km, none of which relate to my real position, between the end points at the west and the south-east. How can the GPS receiver get so confused? I should try taking two phones with me. hirse.lemis.com is functional except for mobile telephony, so that could do the job.
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More Android pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
A few days ago Yvonne's phone started producing random backgrounds when turned on. They're really irritating, and today I investigated what was causing them.
Ah, that's not a bug: it's a misfeature, called “Wallpaper Carousel”. I suppose that it's modern that that page describes only security implications, and not how to turn the bloody thing off. When I did find out how (Settings → Lock Screen), it seemed surprised that I would want to stop it. But thankfully it's gone now.
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More KardiaMobile pain
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Topic: technology, health, opinion | Link here |
It seems that yesterday's guess about how to pair the KardiaMobile 6L was not completely accurate. It will display an “empty battery” symbol even if it thinks it is paired. I didn't get a photo (and it's too secure to allow screen shots), but basically it shows it as being normally connected, only the empty battery symbol is displayed. Sometimes it will come to its senses (or is that sensors?) if you put your fingers on it. Other times, like this evening, it won't. Lots of messing around and eventually it worked, but I still don't understand what the issue is.
The good news is that Yvonne seems to be recovering well. That's particularly good since we still have had no feedback from Professor Peter Kistler.
| Tuesday, 5 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 5 November 2024 |
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Mouldy bread?
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
We usually eat German „Abendbrot“ (bread, sausage and cheese) twice a week, Monday and Friday, and from time to time I leave a slice over, which goes into a plastic bag in the fridge. That happened last Monday, but Yvonne was in hospital on Friday, so it wasn't until today that we looked at it:
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What's that mould? I've seen it before, and clearly it's worse because of the time that has elapsed, but where does it come from? Could it be the mould on the Brie cheese that we eat? In that case, it's harmless, but to be safe and for optical reasons I should freeze the bread that's left over.
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RIP Darl McBride
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Topic: technology, history, opinion | Link here |
On 16 September of this year, Darl McBride died. Who? He was the man who turned SCO around. In early 2002, then called Caldera International, they released the source code to older Unix free of charge under a liberal license. Were they ever the good guys! But a little over a year later, after changing name, management and direction, they sued IBM for (to quote the current version of SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp.):
SCO claimed that IBM had, without authorization, contributed SCO's intellectual property to the codebase of the open source, Unix-like Linux operating system.
And the man behind all that was Darl McBride. We were all up in arms about that, of course. Having worked for IBM until just before everything happened, and I kept a large number of pages showing the stupidity of the whole thing. Somehow it's fitting that nobody noticed McBride's death until now, 6 weeks after the event.
But of course that brought back ancient history, just the sort of thing to interest members of The Unix Heritage Society. A number of mail threads arose: this was the first. And of course there were people more intimately involved than I, notably Mark Rochkind, who was involved as an expert witness in the court case. To my surprise, all the stuff we thought was off topic. To quote a message,
The breach of contract part of the case wasn't about IBM putting System V code into Linux. It was about IBM putting IBM code into Linux, and McKinney's [Paul McKenney] RCU was a good example. Nobody thought this was System V code or that it had anything at all to do with AT&T. I think the LTC [Linux Technology Center] was staffed with a lot of former Dynix (not sure I remember the name correctly) people, right? And they put some of Dynix into Linux.
Oh. If that's the case, we were all barking up the wrong tree. Things are still unfolding, but now, over 20 years after the event, I have learnt something new.
| Wednesday, 6 November 2024 | Dereel | |
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A new camera
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
A few months ago, after the failure of my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark I, I had the choice: buy a new top-of-the-line OM System OM-1 Mark II for $3,350, or a used E-M1 Mark I (same as the old camera) for $350? I chose the latter, at least partially because
In addition, the OM-1 Mark II is relatively new in the market; it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the prices will drop by more than the price asked for the E-M1
And today that happened, sort of. A marginally used OM-1 Mark II (100 odd shots) with Australian warranty for what proved to be $2,397 after discount, nearly $1000 less than the cheapest new camera back in May. So I bought it. Total expenditure for the two cameras: $2,747, $603 less than I would have paid for the OM-1 alone in May.
Did I do the right thing? Now I have three OM cameras. Keep the E-M1 Mark I as a backup?
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AF? No worries
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Response from Professor Peter Kistler today:
OK, not unexpected to have AF in first 6 weeks
You can take Tambocor as needed at this stage.
Well, it may not have been unexpected for him, but it caused us considerable concern. At the very least he could have told Yvonne that before he left the hospital. And the hospital didn't know about this on Sunday, and they were either unwilling or unable to contact Peter, suggesting that we spend the day on a wild goose chase in the emergency department instead. Clearly the operation went well, but this detail is less than encouraging. It's good to know that our action was correct.
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More NBN outages
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
In mid-morning we went off the net-again! This time was different, though: the display on the NTD was normal. But nothing was going down the “wire”. And of course the terminally broken Aussie Broadband phone app showed that the connection was up.
OK, for the fun of it, power cycle the NTD and restart dhclient. It worked!
Oh. For nearly a minute. Then it went offline again. This time the ODU LED was red. Nothing much to do there. Aussie still claimed that I was up. OK, maybe if I run the diagnostics they'll see the error of their ways. “Check Connection”. You're CONNECTED!
Nonsense, of course. How about the Loopback test, which (presumably) really sends data down the link. It hung for several minutes, until the app got bored and signed me out for security reasons.
With diagnostics like those, who needs support?
The link came back after almost exactly 10 minutes. Then it went down again after another 5 minutes and came back 21 minutes after the second time.
My hypothesis: the NBN took the link down briefly three times. dhclient took its time to recognize the change in status, so I stayed down longer than necessary. I should check how often it retries when the link is down and maybe change it.
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Catastrophe!
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Topic: politics, general, fiction, opinion | Link here |
Eight years ago we watched the progress of the US election as counting went on. We were horrified to discover that Donald Trump had won. How could it happen?
Today was election day again, and once again Trump was a candidate. I have been so terrified of the prospect of him winning that I have been ignoring the news as much as I could, but it's difficult. And once again he was elected, by a far wider margin than the polls predicted!
Trump has made no secret of his intention to violate all (well, much) that the US Constitution holds dear. In that respect he reminds me of Adolf Hitler, though Hitler was much more intelligent.
And the world? Aid to Ukraine will dry up, Putain will get Ukraine, his first step in his quest for Europe. The USA will step up its support for the Israeli genocide. What a world!
You read it here first: in mid- to late February 2025 unknown terrorists will burn down the US Capitol. That we should live to see such a day.
This didn't happen, of course, and I didn't expect it to, thus the “fiction” category for this article. It draws a parallel to the Reichstag fire.
| Thursday, 7 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 7 November 2024 |
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KardiaMobile: battery dead?
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Topic: health, general, opinion | Link here |
We're having continual problems with the KardiaMobile 6L toy ECG device, certainly not helped by the brain-dead error recovery and documentation. But surely it can't be that bad. Could it be that it's old stock, and the battery is on its last legs? According to what second-hand documentation I could find, it should last for a couple of years with 4 or 5 readings a day. We've done a total of 44 readings.
The obvious thing to do is put in a new battery and see what happens. It's a pretty standard CR2016 battery. But I don't have any, just CR2032, which won't fit mechanically. Contacted the seller, who denied that it was old stock, but was prepared to pay for a new battery if that would fix it. Off to eBay again, where I found them, postage paid, for $1 for a single battery. How about 3? $3.75 from the same seller. OK, we can do that. Ordered one battery 3 times and paid $3. Why do people do this?
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Bloody Multi_key again!
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
For reasons I don't understand, the Multi_key on my Emacs stopped working again. Why? I spent a lot of pain, starting last December, to get it to work again, which involved installing the development version of Emacs and fixing it to play nice with X. But ”I didn't change anything”, and now it no longer works. Off again to look on the web, and found this bug report: the original Multi_Key problem has been resolved. OK, update my development version. It wasn't a big step, 31.0.50.20240718,3 -> 31.0.50.20241017,3. Multi_key works, but I was back with other problems with Wayland, and for reasons I don't understand, it claimed init file errors, though it was too polite to say which. And maybe as a result it came up with a completely different font size.
OK, how about the released version (29.4)? Yes, that now works. I only have this (unify-8859-on-decoding-mode) to contend with. But I've been trying to configure hydra for over a year now, and it's still not done.
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OM Capture
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Investigating my coming OM System OM-1 Mark II today. There's a lot of documentation. Eleven years ago the Olympus OM-D E-M1 came with a 165 page manual. The OM-1 Mark II has 566 pages, more than 3 times as much. Hopefully I'll find what I'm looking for.
One thing that I did find was a reference to (but no URL for) a software product called OM Capture, which connects a camera to a Real Computer (well, one running Microsoft, anyway). Why hadn't I heard of it, especially as it seems to work with at least my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II? That's missing functionality that I had been grumbling about for some time. They don't include Yvonne's Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, but it's quite possible that it will work there too.
Oh. I had heard of it, ten years ago. But it wanted to connect the camera via USB, and that took away any advantage that it might have had. But after some searching I found:
The OM-1 Mark II is available with wireless camera control via Wi-Fi.
The placing makes it very likely that only this camera will work with Wi-Fi. But I'm getting one, so I can try it out.
Downloading was interesting. I got the message
Thank you for downloading.It may take some time before the download starts.Please wait for a while.
And then, some minutes later, it came with no warning, so I ended up with two downloads.
| Friday, 8 November 2024 | Dereel | |
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du reporting incorrectly
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Yesterday I answered a question by Dewayne Geraghty on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list: why does du produce incorrect output?. Why, does du produce incorrect output? No, it doesn't, as I explained in my answer.
But I missed one point: there's a new option, --si. Why two --? That looks so Linux-like. But no, it's been there for 7 years (so eureka doesn't know about it), and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't need to be there at all. From the man page:
--si "Human-readable" output. Use unit suffixes: Byte, Kilobyte,
Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and Petabyte based on powers of
1000.
I don't like ”human-readable” output, which I find very difficult to read. And using powers of 10 instead of 2 gives rise to issues like the one that confused Dewayne:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/7) ~ 155 -> echo foo > foo=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/7) ~ 156 -> ls -l foo
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog lemis 4 9 Nov 12:41 foo=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/7) ~ 158 -> du -sk foo
4 foo=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/7) ~ 159 -> du --s foo
4.1k foo
That's all as it should be, of course. But then he came up with something else:
The file ./src-ports-migration.tar.xz is 11787028, but
du reports as 11552 while
11787028 / 1024 = 11510.
Hmm. Something to do with gzip? But truncate(2) should free any unused blocks at the end of the file. Much investigation. It's not documented anywhere, but du reports all blocks used by the file, including indirect blocks. That gives rise to confusions like:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/35) /var/tmp 3 -> dd if=/dev/zero of=baz bs=384k count=1; ls -l baz; du -sk baz
393216 bytes transferred in 0.000208 secs (1893921588 bytes/sec)
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog wheel 393216 8 Nov 11:59 baz
384 baz=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/35) /var/tmp 4 -> dd if=/dev/zero of=baz bs=385k count=1; ls -l baz; du -sk baz
394240 bytes transferred in 0.000375 secs (1052038886 bytes/sec)
-rw-r--r-- 1 grog wheel 394240 8 Nov 11:59 baz
448 baz
The first 12 block pointers (to data blocks of 32 kB each) are in the inode. Beyond that they're in indirect blocks. So a 385 kB file has 13 data blocks (416 kB) and one indirect block (32 kB). This continues for all larger files, though at some point second and third level indirect blocks are assigned, giving steps of 64 or 96 kB.
This isn't really du(1), of course. The information is returned by stat(2). Where do I document it?
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Understanding the OM-1
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
My new OM System OM-1 Mark II has been sunning itself in Malaga for the past 24 hours, if I can believe Australia Post. But presumably it will make it to Melbourne before the weekend is out.
According to the seller,
In as new condition, less than 100 mechanical shutter actuations (OK, so not quite opened and unused, but not used either, never taken out of the house).
OK, I can check that. Can I? I know how to do it with Olympus cameras, but OM System has changed the menus. Do the secret menus still work? Yes, according to this page. And that also gives information on how to really reset all configuration details, something that the normal reset apparently doesn't do.
Also received (unrelated) email from OM System: online sessions describing the features of the camera. There's one next week about the focus system, and it's free, so I signed up for it. It works with Zoom, and there's a limited number of participants (16 slots left when I signed up), so there's the potential for some interaction. It runs from 11:00 to 12:30 next Sunday—hopefully the camera will be there by then. There are other sessions on different topics, but they're all in the evening, not my preferred time. Let's see how this one works out first.
Of course, buying the camera isn't everything. Does it use the same batteries as the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II or the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II? No! This time it's called BLX-1. Of course it comes with one battery, but I need at least two. And for the first time with a serious digital camera, it doesn't have a charger! On the plus side, it can charge the battery in the camera, like Yvonne's Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, and it can (if I understand the documentation correctly) also take photos while powered from USB.
Off looking on eBay. Batteries sell for between $120 and $150. But then I really need a charger to charge the other battery. And they're available too, at prices round $45, with their own charger. I think I can live with that.
And other accessories? To my surprise, I don't really have an appropriate “standard” lens, though there are a number of options, such as the Zuiko Digital 14-35mm f/2 ED SWD or the Zuiko Digital ED 12-60 mm f/2.8-4.0 SWD. There are others. But first I need to decide how I'm going to use the new cameras.
And then there's the SD card. There's barely the chance that the camera will have one, though I doubt it. I'll wait and see; in the meantime I have older cards that I can swap around.
| Saturday, 9 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 9 November 2024 |
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Curry laksa quantities
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've been eating curry laksa for breakfast for over 7 years now, and almost from the beginning I've used “Tean's gourmet” paste. But I'm getting the feeling that the portions are too large (maybe just because I'm getting older). Initially I started with 500 ml per portion, but that quickly dropped to 400, then 320 ml. Somehow even that seems too much now; today I made portions with 267 ml (giving 6 portions per sachet). We'll see how that works, but the big issue now is simply that there's too much else in proportion to the soup.
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Israel: the USA is responsible for the genocide
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
Read in the Times of Israel today:
Elizabeth Pipko, speaking to Channel 12 news, blames Biden administration’s ‘back and forth’ for length of war, says US political considerations have caused ‘unnecessary bloodshed’
What insolence! Oh, Pipko isn't an Israeli. She's a Donald Trump aide. Another fan of H. L. Mencken, presumably. It would be interesting to see how Trump expects to fix the wars in Ukraine, Palestine and Lebanon, if it weren't so painful. Every indication is that he doesn't know what or where Sudan is.
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More camera preparations
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
More OM System OM-1 Mark II investigations today. Why can't I just wait until it comes? After all, if I had been in a hurry, I could have bought one months ago. But by chance there's this OM System session next weekend, and it would be good to have a functional camera by then.
Will it make it? We're in Australia, after all, and Australia Post has been storing the camera in Malaga for the past couple of days, if I can believe their tracking information. Has it maybe just not been updated? No, when I looked round midday, it had changed its estimated delivery time from Wednesday to Friday. That would be the last possible date.
So: what do I need? The cheap batteries look good, but there's one in particular that stood out: 2 batteries and a charger for $47. That's what others are asking for a single battery. That corresponds to something like $320 for the genuine items from OM System. But “only one left”. Dammit, go for it.
Checking back a few hours later, he had received new stock: now five available. I feel duped.
The other thing is the SD card. I really don't have a spare card, so if there's none in the camera, I'll have to borrow from another camera. But the new camera is one of the fastest on the market—up to 230 photos at 120 per second, if it has a fast SD card to write to.
So what are fast cards nowadays? It's been 7 years since I last checked memory speeds, and that page is out of date. It claims to have been updated in 2022, but it doesn't mention any OM System cameras, and even Yvonne's Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, now nearly 5 years old, isn't there. And presumably the more modern cards aren't either. So off to look for other information, and came up with this page, which mentioned brands that I didn't know. And somehow it's getting even more difficult than it always was to find clear information about transfer speeds. Tried Google Gemini, which came up with some interesting claims:
Here are some specific examples based on testing:
RAW+LSF JPEG:
DETAIL PRIORITY: Maximum write speed of 95.97 MB/s, taking 29.8 seconds to clear the buffer.
DRIVE PRIORITY: Maximum write speed of 170 MB/s, taking 16.1 seconds to clear the buffer.
RAW or JPEG:
The camera will not exceed V60 speeds, regardless of the "LOW ISO PROCESSING" setting.
It's important to note that the OM-1 Mark II cannot saturate the fastest SD cards, which can
approach 300 MB/s write speeds. However, a good V60 card is usually sufficient for most users,
especially if you're not shooting very long bursts or using very high burst rates.
So as I thought, there's no point in buying the fastest? But what does “V60” mean? I saw cards marked “V60” with completely different speed ratings, and eBay doesn't include it (or the presumably faster “V90”) in its speed selections. The query result also pointed to forum discussions here and here. Somehow neither had really useful information. What I want to know isn't that difficult:
But that seems too complicated for modern people. Still, the 170 MB/s figure looks useful. And another URL worth saving is from Digital Camera World. None of this would be so difficult if there weren't extreme differences in prices, which I think depend on speed, though the lack of information makes it difficult to be sure even of that.
And the tracking information? Updated again. Still in Malaga, but “now expected Wed 13 – Thu 14 Nov”. What are these people thinking?
| Sunday, 10 November 2024 | Dereel → Ross Creek → Dereel | Images for 10 November 2024 |
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Another garage sale
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Amber Sean Coleman's father is moving from his house in Ross Creek, and they're selling everything, including the house itself. There was a big garage sale, and Yvonne suggested that we went and took a look.
Yes, a big garage sale, with a lot of stuff that I wouldn't have expected, including an amazing number of books and magazines—one magazine that I picked up at random was printed some time in 1938—and a lot of equally old vehicles, some apparently tuned as hot rods:
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We did find something to buy: a lamb skin for Mona's new cat basket, which she doesn't use, a functional plunger for blocked drains, and a sack trolley that works. But somehow it's sad to see the collections of a lifetime mainly going to waste.
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More Sunday heart problems?
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Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
Just as we were leaving Amber's father's place, Yvonne felt unwell. Chest pain, suggesting heart issues. It wasn't much, and when we got back home she did blood pressure and ECG were normal, but it's still a concern, especially on a Sunday.
And then I received email from BUPA, our health insurance. A new service, Blua, complete with many links to an unreachable server https://url7072.marketingmsg.bupa.com.au/, presumably their test site. They offer free (for us) round-the-clock online consultations with a doctor. That was probably just what we needed last week, though I suspect it would still have ended up with a “go to the emergency room”.
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SD cards: the pain
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
I'm still looking for answers for yesterday's choice of an SD card. eBay is a catastrophe. How about digiDirect? Not much easier. Surely these people must understand what criteria people are looking for. Back to eBay and somehow managed to find a card that would do the job—32 GB, 270 MB/s, round $49 (as opposed to about $13 for slower cards). That's the read speed, of course. What speed was the all-important write speed? I can't find it any more: the last one must have been sold or fallen through their broken sort system. But while I was at it, found a 64 GB Lexar Professional 1800X SDXC UHS-II card which was honest enough to give its speeds: V60 II, 10 in an open circle, 3 in a bathtub, 4K, 270 MB/s read, 180 MB/s write. More expensive, of course, $59. But it comes with a discount code that brings it down to $47.20. Should I buy it? I really hate the difficulty that the sellers cause.
And amusingly, in this case the seller is digiDirect. Went back to their site, where they had the thing for the same price, but without the discount code. Who pays the discount?
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Shan biryani
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
I've had this packet of biriani mix for ever:
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Time to cook it. Detailed recipe—for the 60 g of spice powder, 1 kg of meat and 250 g of potatoes!
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Also the strange (for Asian tastes) idea of cooking the rice in much water and discarding the rest.
OK, let's use half the mix and keep the rest for next time. Filled it into a jar and tasted it—far too pedas (chili hotness)! Biriani is supposed to be mild.
OK, Shan, that's the end for you. I'll find a real recipe, and today we ate fake chicken tanduri.
| Monday, 11 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 11 November 2024 |
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Where's my camera?
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Topic: technology, general, photography, opinion | Link here |
Now it's Monday. I bought my new OM System OM-1 Mark II last Wednesday, and since Thursday, 4 days ago, Australia Post claims that it has been ripening in Malaga. Checked again round midday. No change!
Ah, but we were just testing you. Later in the day it had miraculously made its way to Bayswater, Victoria, a distance of 3,450 km, without passing through any airports:
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Where's Bayswater? Out in the extreme east of Melbourne, nowhere near the airport. What's it doing there? Did they send the camera via surface transport? Anyway, they have reestimated arrival time. Instead of Saturday's estimate of Friday, it's now Tuesday (tomorrow) or Wednesday.
But that's not the only strangeness. I also received mail from Australia Post:
From: Australia Post <noreply@notifications.auspost.com.au>
Subject: Your delivery from AMAZON is being packed by the sender
Date: Sun, 10 Nov 2024 23:31:45 -0600
AMAZON? I didn't buy anything from AMAZON. Clearly spam: how would they know what AMAZON is doing. But for the fun of it, followed up the Received: headers. The important one is:
Received: from mta23.notifications.auspost.com.au (mta23.notifications.auspost.com.au [136.147.141.225])
by lax.lemis.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9661C280F3
for <ebay@lemis.com>; Mon, 11 Nov 2024 05:31:46 +0000 (UTC)
This really was from Australia Post, with their trademark North American central time zone. With only a few minutes comparison, discovered that it was the batteries and charger that I ordered yesterday. And of course they had tracking for it, much more than for the camera:
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So they received it at 16:16, and then sent me email at 16:31, 15 minutes later, telling me that it was being packed by AMAZON.
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SD cards: decision
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Topic: photography, technology, opinion | Link here |
Spent far too much time trying to find an optimal SD card today, not helped by the poor choice of search criteria and apparent bugs in eBay's web site: change the order from “Best Match” (which I think means “fastest query”) to “Price + Postage: lowest first”, and many items disappear. The sort order is also not correct.
I must have spent 4 hours investigating this stuff. At the rates I charged as a consultant, I could have bought dozens of cards for less. But in the end I bought the 64 GB Lexar Professional 1800X SDXC UHS-II card that I was looking at yesterday.
What a pain!
| Tuesday, 12 November 2024 | Dereel → Sebastopol → Dereel | Images for 12 November 2024 |
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A new camera!
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Topic: photography, general, technology, opinion | Link here |
To my mild surprise, received email this morning: my camera is waiting for me in “NAPOLEON”. I had an appointment for a haircut anyway, so I was able to pick it up on the way home.
First impression: part of a kit that also included a M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm F2.8 PRO II. It came with the instructions for the lens (94 pages, 28 languages) and a “Basic manual” with only 300 pages, compared to the 566 pages of the full manual. But that's misleading: the manual is also in 28 languages, so there were fewer than 10 pages in English. A good thing I have the real manual.
OK, first check the claim of “less than 100 mechanical shutter actuations”. Oh. The page I had found for the secret menus was related to the OM-D series after all, not the OM-1. But there's a clip showing what to do, conveniently with menus in German:
And that showed:
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992 actuations! OK, two were accidents that I made while setting up the camera, but there's still a big difference between “less than 100” and 990. And to my surprise, there really was an SD card in the camera, unfortunately only 80 MB/s read (and politely unmentioned write speed), and it had some photos on it. The last had the name PB031356.JPG (JPEG, taken on B03 (3 November), the 1356th in sequence. Sorry, seller, that's not “Opened – never used” as claimed in the listing.
Spent a bit of time trying to adapt my OM-D menu settings, with only partial success. Then it occurred to me to download the existing images on the SD card.
I failed. Communication with the camera was possible some of the time, but there were lots of apparently random I/O errors, and I wasn't able to download the contents of the card completely:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241111 569 -> mdir -s d:
Volume in drive D has no label
Volume Serial Number is 0000-0000
Directory for D:/
ALBM <DIR> 2019-09-21 14:09
...
4B127653 ORF 17009830 2024-11-12 14:17
4B127654 ORF 16989646 2024-11-12 14:17
4B127655 ORF 16968211 2024-11-12 14:18
124 files 2 530 996 442 bytes
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241111 570 -> mdir -s d:
plain_io read/write: Input/output error
plain_io read/write: Input/output error
Error reading fat number 0
plain_io read/write: Input/output error
Error reading fat number 1
Could not read first FAT sector
Error reading FAT
Cannot initialize 'D:'
Tried with different SD cards, the same SD cards in my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, and both my own USB cable and the (unused) one supplied with the camera: the problem remained with the camera. Strange menu config maybe?
OK, time to call OM System, who made it particularly difficult to find the number 1300 659 678. Spoke to Leanne, who was quite helpful. She confirmed that there was no further menu item, but also that she had no record of this camera (serial number BJRA15001) being subject to an Australian warranty. The difference between the Australian warranty and the international warranty is significant: the Australian warranty is two years, international only one, and in the past I have been glad of the extra year.
So, it seems we have:
| Claim | Reality | |
| Unused | 1356 photos taken | |
| Australian warranty | International warranty | |
| Good condition | USB issues |
A quick look at prices on eBay shows that this camera can be had from Australian retailers starting at $3,368.84 (a strange price), and from international retailers from $2,609, or $760 less. With that background the selling price of this camera, $2550, looked good for an Australian warranty and only barely acceptable for a camera with international warranty.
What do I do? I have sufficient grounds to return it, of course, and that's probably what I should do. But under the circumstances, it might be a good idea to negotiate a hefty rebate with the seller. To be considered. I could give up the idea of a new camera altogether, but against better judgement I have already bought 2 new batteries, a charger and an SD card for the new camera. I can use the SD card elsewhere, but I don't really need it, and the batteries are useless without the camera.
In passing, the SD card swaps show that the SD card I have in the E-M1 Mark II is the same model as the one I just bought—only faster! And that after hours of comparison! What a pain!
But that's just the issue with the camera. What about my processing software? DxO PhotoLab doesn't want to know about the camera, claiming that the images might be corrupted. Looking at the list of supported cameras, the OM-1 Mark II doesn't figure, only the OM-1. Is that an indication that I should upgrade my PhotoLab? I'm currently running version 5, and the current version is 8. Price? $US 229!
But I'm a customer. For me, the upgrade price is only $229! They could at least have said that my goodwill had expired.
Still, I know enough of DxO to know that it just looks at the name of the camera in the Exif data. We can change that with exiftool:
=== grog@eureka (/dev/pts/17) /Photos/2-grog 57 -> exiftool -model="OM-1" -o P.ORF P2020553.ORF
Error: [minor] MakerNotes tag 0x2010 IFD format not handled - P2020553.ORF
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors
Huh? Tried again later and got:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241112 653 -> exiftool -model="OM-1" -o /Photos/2-grog/P2020553.ORF orig/P2020553.ORF
1 image files created=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241112 654 -> exiftool /Photos/2-grog/P2020553.ORF orig/P2020553.ORF | grep "Camera Model"
Camera Model Name : OM-1
Camera Model Name : OM-1MarkII
Ah, different machine, different version of exiftool. I was also able to do it with Emacs. Either way, after the rewrite, DxO happily processes the images.
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Dead washing machine
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
When I got home, Yvonne came with the joyous news that the washing machine has failed, spilling water all over the floor.
Well, it's been coming on 14 years since we bought it, but something doesn't seem right. It had stopped in mid-cycle (showing 48 minutes to go), with lots of water still in the drum, but she had been able to power cycle it, pump the remaining water out and run the spin cycle. That doesn't add up.
Still, time to call Geoff Richardson, who repaired the machine over 11 years ago and conveniently left a sticker his name and phone number on the machine. But I got no answer, not even voice mail.
OK, sit back and think.
| Wednesday, 13 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 13 November 2024 |
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The genocide will continue
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
The US Election is over, with one of the worst possible outcomes. All the articles and information that I read suggest apocalypse, but the election was surprisingly decisive. What are we all missing?
But there was one thing that I had been hoping for: last month Joe Biden set Israel a deadline to allow increased humanitarian aid to Gaza, with very specific requirements. As usual, Israel ignored it. Instead of increasing aid, they reduced it.
Now Biden has nothing to lose. Time to follow through with his threats not to supply any more weapons of mass destruction? No, they have done enough. Dammit, Biden, they have done nothing to alleviate the suffering. A comment I saw suggested that it was an election ploy. And I had hoped that Biden still had some common decency.
Somehow I don't understand how this can continue. With Donald Trump at the helm, things can only get worse.
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USB issues through the years
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Topic: technology, photography | Link here |
Why can't I connect my new OM System OM-1 Mark II to hydra via USB? Apart from the camera itself, it was the only invariable in yesterday's failure.
But it's not the first time I've had problems with USB. One of the few commits I've made to the FreeBSD source tree in recent years was a set of “quirks” to make life easier with other Olympus cameras. Since then the stack has learnt to recognize what it needs—it says:
Nov 13 11:55:47 hydra kernel: usb_msc_auto_quirk: UQ_MSC_NO_TEST_UNIT_READY set for USB mass storage device OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII (0x33a2:0x013a)
Nov 13 11:55:47 hydra kernel: usb_msc_auto_quirk: UQ_MSC_NO_PREVENT_ALLOW set for USB mass storage device OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII (0x33a2:0x013a)
Nov 13 11:55:47 hydra kernel: usb_msc_auto_quirk: UQ_MSC_NO_SYNC_CACHE set for USB mass storage device OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII (0x33a2:0x013a)
Nov 13 11:55:48 hydra kernel: ugen0.3: <OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII> at usbus0
Nov 13 11:55:48 hydra kernel: umass3 on uhub4
Nov 13 11:55:48 hydra kernel: umass3: <OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII, class 0/0, rev 3.20/1.00, addr 103> on usbus0
Nov 13 11:55:48 hydra kernel: umass3: SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0xc001
OK, what about other systems? distress, the Microsoft box, seems to have no trouble, but how do I know for sure? How about eureka, running FreeBSD 10.2? No problems! So it seems that we have yet another case where things have got worse over the years. But at least I can now read in the files.
At times like these I wonder whether I shouldn't change to Linux. There's also the question of a functional VirtualBox and X fonts. FreeBSD seems to be lagging behind. But I've been there before, and the horror of changing file systems keeps me away from it.
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New batteries
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Topic: photography | Link here |
My batteries and charger for the OM System OM-1 Mark II arrived today, really from “Amazon Returns”. I wonder what the background is there. The package was also marked “Road Transport Only”, presumably because of the Lithium-Ion component. That might confirm my suspicion on Monday that the camera had been transported by road.
All as expected, and the camera recognizes the batteries with no issues. I'll still keep them separate: charge the new batteries only in the charger, and the old batteries only in the camera, to avoid any compatibility issues. And somehow my battery charge page no longer makes sense. There's a good chance that even battery 1 will never completely discharge.
Somehow it's strange to think that this power supply has an LED display showing the progress of the charging, while the original BCX-1 charger only has LEDs. And the $46.99 I paid for the set is probably less than 10% of the $448 plus postage that OM System asks for the original components.
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Bruno catches first mouse
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Topic: animals | Link here |
In the evening, found Bruno scratching under the fridge:
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A little later he came past me with a dead mouse:
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Again, he wasn't very interested in it. Neither was Mona:
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He suspects more mice—the first photo was taken after he lost interest in the first mouse.
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OM-1 Mark II in earnest
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
The cat photos were also the first opportunity I had to take real photos with the new OM System OM-1 Mark II. I used the M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100 mm f/4.0 IS PRO, not exactly the best lens for low light. But to my surprise the focus was almost instantaneous, quite a difference from the OM-D E-M1 Mark II. And the image quality at 3200/36° ISO appears acceptable,though I don't have any direct comparison yet:
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| Thursday, 14 November 2024 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | |
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Another blood test
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Topic: health, general | Link here |
Into town early this morning for a fasting blood test. They're usually pretty fast, and this time was probably one of the longer durations, round 20 minutes. I had expected to be gone for an hour, but in the end it was closer to 1½ hours. What a pain that I couldn't combine the journey with something else.
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Following the USB issues
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Topic: technology | Link here |
Why can't I read data from my new OM System OM-1 Mark II to hydra? After reading my diary, it seems that I have seen it before. It's not hydra, it's FreeBSD. So presumably all will be well again after I add the corresponding entry to /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/quirk/usb_quirk.c.
But somehow that's tacky. You don't update your operating system for every new USB device, and other systems, including older FreeBSD, don't have the issue. There must be a better way.
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Refining photo processing
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
How do I fake a camera model for DxO PhotoLab? I did this years ago with a flag to my fordxo and fromdxo scripts. But there's an easier way: I identify my photos with an initial letter indicating the camera came from. 15199935 was taken on 19 May with my older OM-D E-M1 Mark I (the last one before it died), 4B127650 was taken on 12 November with my OM-D E-M1 Mark II, 9B070423 came from my newer Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark I on 7 November, and AB130012 was taken with the OM-1 on 13 November. The date coding is courtesy of Olympus or OM System. So all I need to do is recognize the A at the beginning of the name:
if [ "${FILE:0:1}" = "A" ]; then # OM-1 Mark II, fake Mark I
exiftool -model="OM-1" -o $DST/$FILE $i
else
ln $i $DST
fi
And that works fine.
But wait, there's more! When replacing the old name, I get
Warning: [minor] Writing large value for MakerNotes - /Photos/2-grog/AB140016_DxO.jpg
1 image files created
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - orig/AB140016_DxO.jpg
Error: Can't write multi-segment EXIF with external pointers - orig/AB140016_DxO.jpg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors
What does all that mean? The strange thing is that, despite the “0 image files updated”, the update seems to have been done correctly.
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The end of international order?
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Topic: politics, opinion | Link here |
At least since the beginning of the conflict with Ukraine, we've known that the government of Russia has been in defiance of international law. The only thing that tempers it is the US support of Israeli genocide. But so far, the International Criminal Court has only issued arrest warrants for Russians, including Vladimir Putain. That's clearly unfair: yes, it's justified, but US politicians are at least as complicit in international crimes.
The Russians aren't taking it sitting down, though: they have fought back and “arrested” an ICC judge in absentia—a strange way of saying “issued an arrest warrant”.
Where is this all going to end? In the USA, Donald Trump has chosen an “anti-vaxxer” as Department of Health and Human Services secretary. His other choices are not quite as evidently bad, but everything I hear every day suggests that things will get even worse. In particular, I see nothing that will solve the issues in Ukraine and Palestine. How long will this horror last?
| Friday, 15 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 15 November 2024 |
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Telstra: we can do as well as NBN
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Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
A while back I had come to the conclusion that the continual National Broadband Network “planned outages” were “because we can”: they're a government monopoly. Would a commercial phone service with similar technology do the same sort of thing? Of course not! Well, until today:
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I wonder how long it will be. I still can't imagine that it will be an entire working day.
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A new washing machine?
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Topic: general | Link here |
So what's wrong with our washing machine? Yesterday I had tried it out again and confirmed that it's still leaking badly. The display it shows when it stops is 4E, not 48. Found a service manual online which tells me that this means there's something wrong with the water input: “Water not supplied”. Doesn't quite match the symptoms.
OK, clean the filter, requiring access to the back of the machine, clearly for the first time in a long while:
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OK, remove the filter. The instructions say to put a cloth beneath to catch any drips, but they understate the case:
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And the filter itself? Doesn't look much like a filter to me, and it doesn't look more than slightly dirty:
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OK, this looks like a “too hard” case. The error message doesn't match the symptoms. If I get somebody to come out here, the chances of it being fixed first time round are very slim. But it's 14 years old. Yvonne pointed me to Glen Castleman (0418 319 583), who had supplied us our (second-hand) clothes drier. Can he supply us with a replacement? Yes, a 7 kg Fisher & Paykel top loader for $220 delivered. That compares very favourably with the $276 that I paid Barclay's two years ago just to have an obstruction removed from the freezer. So he'll bring it around some time in the next couple of days.
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Where's my camera warranty?
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
Reported the issues with the OM System OM-1 Mark II to the seller today. He responded quickly and in detail, in particular supplying an invoice showing that the camera was bought from CCCwarehouse on 1 September. With that information, called up OM System, who told me that CCCwarehouse is a grey importer, and that the camera is not covered by an Australian warranty.
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Miscommunication in modern times
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Topic: technology, photography, general, opinion | Link here |
A fair amount of communication today. Discussing the camera problem with the seller via eBay is a pain: the email I got wanted me to log in to view the invoice, though I was already logged in. And then it claimed that my credentials were incorrect. How can that happen? My guess is that it wants my eBay USA credentials, if I still have them. What a mess these people are!
I was able to find the details from the eBay site, though only some of them were legible. Still, now I have his name and email address from the invoice, , so sent him email. Yes, outlook.com.au confirmed delivery, but I got no immediate response. Message to him on eBay. No, no email received. Damn, why is Outlook always such a pain? I'll have to see if I can get the thing to him via Gmail. Mañana.
And then there's SMS. I had promised Glen Castleman an SMS, but when I tried to send it I saw:
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Not sent? OK, try the Check options? That gives me the options Resend or Delete. Some option.
Is it maybe trying (badly) to tell me that the number is wrong?
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In principle there should be a 0 at the beginning of the number, but then in principle it should be +61-418-319-583, but Google contacts is user-friendly. What does my phone log show?
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The claims are wrong. The first was my discussion with Glen this morning, but the second was an attempt to send the SMS. But clearly the number is correct. Still, check others. Yes, they all have a 0 at the beginning. I had some finger trouble entering the number (which also wanted to be in Switzerland, +41). Fix that, but I still can't send the SMS.
Try again from scratch? Yes, that works, send to the same “contact”. So the number was wrong, but clearly the message app is too polite to tell you that you made a mistake, and it refuses to let you change the number. Once wrong, always wrong. Aren't mobile phones wonderful?
| Saturday, 16 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 16 November 2024 |
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How much is a warranty worth?
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Topic: photography, technology | Link here |
The seller of my OM System OM-1 Mark II has still not understood that his claim of an Australian warranty is incorrect. It doesn't help that his mail “service”, outlook.com, accepts my messages, claims delivery, but he doesn't receive it. OK, try again with Gmail. No response. On eBay he tells me that he wants to go via the official channels, even though he has seen the mess that they made of his previous message.
But that's his privilege, and eBay asks for people to do it where they can observe it. OK, send the message via eBay. A relatively short email had to be chopped into 8 messages, most of which are illegible. But at least I tried a saner method.
In the meantime, though: how much is an Australian warranty worth? In my last email I wrote:
Currently on eBay I can find grey imports starting at $2,609 (https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/145770557159), while the cheapest with Australian warranty costs $3,368.84 (https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/256423553439). That's a price difference of over $750.
Is it worth it? I've had numerous warranty claims with my OM-D E-M1 (multiple times, including after 19 months and one more time in that year, and my E-PM2 (after 22 months). Would those repairs have cost $750? The E-PM2 had a defective shutter, so it would have been scrap had I had to pay for the repair myself.
But why is there such a difference in price? I've had my Zuiko Digital ED 12-60 mm
f/2.8-4.0 SWD repaired out of warranty, and it cost an arm and a leg: $431.63 for a jammed diaphragm. But
that seems to be a problem with Olympus OM System Australia. Maybe the
alternative of sending them overseas is not such a bad idea after all. And certainly I now
have enough cameras that I could put up without one for a longer period of time—if indeed it
would take longer.
After more searching, I found cheaper cameras both with and without warranty. Without warranty $2,469 and $2,495, both from CCCwarehouse. Why two different prices? It depends on whether you take the plain box or the pretty box! The plain box has the advantage that it's easier to throw away. At first sight that compares well to the $2,550 that the seller got, but they have something like $40 shipping and obligatory insurance, and I got a discount on it, so I ended up paying only $2,397.
And then there's another one that appears to offer a camera with Australian warranty for $3200, with an emetic cashback of $250. Total price $2,950.
But there's even more. I can buy a 5 year extended warranty on the CCCwarehouse camera for $131.95, only a fraction of the price difference. Should I investigate that?
So, in summary:
| Warranty | Total price | |
| 2 years, full Australian | $2,963 | |
| 5 year, Australian retailer | $2,601 | |
| 12 month, Australian retailer | $2,469 | |
| current | $2,397 |
So what should I choose? Clearly keeping the current camera is the cheapest option, but maybe I should investigate the extended warranties.
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Slow SD cards
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Topic: photography, technology | Link here |
How important is the speed of an SD card? Today I took the weekly house photos and noticed something unusual: a flashing indicator in the viewfinder after the photos. Ah, yes, I took the photos with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II, but I had an SD card from the OM System OM-1 Mark II in it. And it was very noticeably slower. Not enough to be a problem, but clearly that could change if I were taking more than 3 images at a time.
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Bushfire! Panic!
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Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Today was one of those days where we said “looks like bushfires”: hot (35°) and windy. And sure enough, national news came up with news:
The CFA said an out-of-control bushfire was about 38 kilometres south of Ballarat at Camms Road, Dereel and was moving in a southerly direction towards Rokewood-Shelford Road.
But there's more:
The Country Fire Authority (CFA) has urged people living between Moffats Road and Reserve Road in Dereel to leave now.This is on top of an earlier warning to leave now for residents between Geggies Road and Gumley Road.
It carried on, elsewhere reporting two different bushfires. Leave now! You could be dead!
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Of course, maybe they meant one in Dereel and one in Ocean Grove, but others picked on it and ran.
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In fact, it seems that there was only one bushfire. Camms Road was not even shown on the maps! There can't be more than one or two houses there; the area was severely hit in the 2013 bushfire. Peter and Victoria Dilley lived there, and they lost their house and dog in the fire. But somehow the news reports spread fear and anxiety. Even Glen Castleman sent me an SMS asking if we were safe.
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Dogs and cats together
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Topic: animals | Link here |
Mona is still not happy with the dogs, but she's prepared to coexist. Here they are together in Yvonne's bedroom:
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Mona is barely visible in the chair:
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Chicken biriani again
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Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
We've been planning a chicken biriani for 4 months now, and various things have got in the way, most recently the poor choice of spice mix. But today's the day. I have had this recipe for ever, so it must be good.
But it's been nearly 8 years since I last cooked it. Looking at it again, it seemed that there were—once again—not enough spices, and also not enough nuts and things. And there should be slices of onion, but they weren't there either. More modifications, with reasonable results:
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It shouldn't have been that dark: the “dum” (really steaming in this recipe) should have kept the rice from browning. It didn't spoil the dish, but clearly more investigation is needed.
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Larissa terrified?
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Topic: animals, opinion | Link here |
In the evening, Larissa wanted to come inside in a hurry. We've trained the dogs to knock, then wait. But no, not once, but three times she banged on the doors, to the extent that I thought she would break the glass. And when she finally got in, she hid under the dining table:
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What caused that? Smoke from the bushfire?
| Sunday, 17 November 2024 | Dereel | Images for 17 November 2024 |
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Understanding animals
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Topic: animals, general, opinion | Link here |
How do animals (in this case, cats and dogs) understand what is going on round them? Why was Larissa so terrified yesterday? Why did Mona leave this present in my wash basin this morning?
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I have marginally more understanding for that. To judge by the volume she had clearly been holding out for a while, maybe because she was afraid of jumping up from the new position of the old washing machine:
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In the early afternoon, Glen Castleton came and brought the new machine. And of course the cats had to inspect it:
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But what do they think? Clearly they're not capable of reasoning, but do they understand that we changed it? They were there when Glen installed it, but what was going on in their heads?
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How to use an OM System OM-1 Mark II
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Topic: photography | Link here |
At 11:00 this morning I participated in a Zoom session “Get To Know Your OM-1 Series: Auto Focus", one of many “events” of this nature. Why this one? It was the only one at a convenient time. Careful preparation, and things went fine from a technical point of view—until my laptop crashed! Bloody Microsoft!
But no, in this case bloody Greg! I had deliberately disconnected the charger to save the battery, and it ran out. So I lost about 5 minutes while rebooting and reconnection.
And the “event”? I suppose I learnt some interesting stuff, though it's frustrating not to be able to backspace and check things.
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Garden resurrection
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Topic: gardening, opinion | Link here |
Last month Nick Macdonald or his mate destroyed my remaining Clematis “Edo Murasaki”:
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The severed stem is in front of the relatively healthy lime leaves in the background
I was very saddened. I had been eagerly following its progress, and it had just started to flower. But today I found:
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Leaves! It looks like it might survive after all.
And then there was the wild grass with flower spikes that was mutilated last year. Here before and after from that disaster:
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But that, too, seems to be recovering:
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That's particularly surprising because it took something like 5 years for the first set of spikes to develop.
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More Exif issues
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Topic: technology, photography, opinion | Link here |
There's something strange about the Exif data of the OM System OM-1 Mark II, as I quickly noticed. In particular, exiftool sometimes works, and sometimes it doesn't. Initially I blamed that on the version of exiftool, but it's not that simple:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 844 -> make convert
...
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile /Photos/grog/20241117/PC/Monas-present.jpeg -all>all -title=Monas-present.jpeg /Photos/grog/20241117/Monas-present.jpeg
Warning: Malformed APP1 EXIF segment - /Photos/grog/20241117/PC/Monas-present.jpeg
1 image files updated=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 845 -> exifx Monas-present.jpeg
File Monas-present.jpeg
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 846 -> exifcopy orig/A*F Monas-present.jpeg
copying from the ORF raw image
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/AB170031.ORF -all>all -title=AB170031 Monas-present.jpeg
Warning: [minor] Writing large value for MakerNotes - Monas-present.jpeg
1 image files updated=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 847 -> exifx Monas-present.jpeg
File Monas-present.jpeg
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Exposure: 1/60 sec, f/4.0 (EV 9.9), 1000/31 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1MarkII, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 29.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 58 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 0.87 m (0.82 - 0.93 m)
Field of view: 33.2 horizontal, 25.3 vertical, 40.9 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: Off
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
exifx is a program that formats the exiftool output the way I like it. Why does the first attempt fail and the second attempt work?
Later I tried again:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 849 -> mv Monas-present.jpeg foo=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 850 -> make convert
/Photos/Tools/imgconvert AB170031_DxO Monas-present
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/AB170031_DxO.jpg -all>all -title=AB170031_DxO.jpg Monas-present.jpeg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 851 -> exifx Monas-present.jpeg foo
File Monas-present.jpeg
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
File foo
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Exposure: 1/60 sec, f/4.0 (EV 9.9), 1000/31 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1MarkII, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 29.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 58 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 0.87 m (0.82 - 0.93 m)
Field of view: 33.2 horizontal, 25.3 vertical, 40.9 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: Off
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
So far, that's as before. Then I copy from the .jpg (JPEG) image:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 852 -> exifcopy orig/A*g Monas-present.jpeg
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/AB170031_DxO.jpg -all>all -title=AB170031_DxO.jpg Monas-present.jpeg
Warning: [minor] File contains multi-segment EXIF - orig/AB170031_DxO.jpg
Error: Format error in file - Monas-present.jpeg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 853 -> exifx Monas-present.jpeg foo
File Monas-present.jpeg
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
File foo
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Exposure: 1/60 sec, f/4.0 (EV 9.9), 1000/31 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1MarkII, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 29.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 58 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 0.87 m (0.82 - 0.93 m)
Field of view: 33.2 horizontal, 25.3 vertical, 40.9 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: Off
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
And that didn't work. OK, copy from the raw image after all:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 854 -> exifcopy orig/A*F Monas-present.jpeg
exiftool -overwrite_original_in_place -TagsFromFile orig/AB170031.ORF -all>all -title=AB170031 Monas-present.jpeg
Error: Format error in file - Monas-present.jpeg
0 image files updated
1 files weren't updated due to errors=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 855 -> exifx Monas-present.jpeg foo
File Monas-present.jpeg
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
File foo
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Exposure: 1/60 sec, f/4.0 (EV 9.9), 1000/31 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1MarkII, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 29.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 58 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 0.87 m (0.82 - 0.93 m)
Field of view: 33.2 horizontal, 25.3 vertical, 40.9 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: Off
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Author: Greg Lehey
And that doesn't work either. But it's exactly the same thing as in the first example. Both these files have almost the same metadata:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/32) ~/Photos/20241117 859 -> exifx orig/A*
File orig/AB170031_DxO.jpg
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Exposure: 1/60 sec, f/4.0 (EV 9.9), 1000/31 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1MarkII, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 29.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 58 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 0.87 m (0.82 - 0.93 m)
Field of view: 33.2 horizontal, 25.3 vertical, 40.9 diagonal
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: Off
Size: 5184 x 3888 pixels (20.16 megapixels)
Copyright: Greg Lehey
File orig/AB170031.ORF
Date taken: Sunday, 17 November 2024, 10:38:03
Exposure: 1/60 sec, f/4.0 (EV 9.9), 1000/31 ISO
Camera: OM Digital Solutions OM-1MarkII, serial BJRA15001
Lens: Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO
Focal length: 29.0 mm (full frame equivalent: 58 mm)
Focus: S-AF+MF 0.87 m (0.82 - 0.93 m)
Meter mode: ESP Program AE
Stabilization: Off
Size: 5220 x 3912 pixels (20.42 megapixels)
So what's causing that? I upgraded to the newest version of exiftool (13.03, released on 12 November) and got the same results. More investigation needed.
| Monday, 18 November 2024 | Dereel → Ballarat → Dereel | |
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More catchup mode
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Topic: general, photography | Link here |
