The weather forecast was right. We had 27 mm of rain overnight, and another 7 mm in the
course of the day. My seed trays, none of which were looking happy in the first place, had
another issue to contend with:
Yvonne discovered an electronic organ on Freecycle the other day, and yesterday the owner called
up to say we could pick it
up—in Clunes, 75 km away.
Borrowed Chris' Yeardley's
Landcruiser and off, not
helped by my GPS navigator (or, more accurately, the maps), which are extremely inaccurate
in Clunes—the house we were looking for was decades old, but the maps don't know the house
number. Found the place anyway, and had no particular difficulty transporting it.
Put it in “4”, the room opposite the lounge room (“3”). It's has two manuals of 3 octaves
each, the upper with 6 stops, the lower with 3, and a one-octave pedal with two stops:
In addition, of course, there are lots of electronic special effects which don't seem to add
much to the system. But it works well. What do we do with it? Yvonne has a number of
ideas, but if none of them come to fruition, she'll just have to learn to play it and
accompany me.
Chris Yeardley is flying to Queensland
with Tiger Airways, an
el-cheapo subsidiary of Singapore's
el-cheapo airline of the same name.
It's so el-cheapo that
the Civil Aviation
Safety Authority suspended their license for 5 weeks earlier this year due to safety
concerns. Presumably they're now satisfied of their safety, but there seem to be other
issues. It seems that you need to get your ticket by email and print it out yourself (or,
presumably, find another method that costs more). Chris tried that, but the ticket didn't
come through:
Oct 1 07:23:13 w3 postfix/smtpd[35444]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[202.172.235.32]: 450 4.7.1 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname, [202.172.235.32]; from=<itinerary@tigerairwaysnews.com> to=<cyeardley@narrawin.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<crsmail1.tigerairways.com>
Oct 1 07:23:37 w3 postfix/smtpd[35453]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[202.172.235.32]: 450 4.7.1 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname, [202.172.235.32]; from=<itinerary@tigerairwaysnews.com> to=<cyeardley@narrawin.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<crsmail1.tigerairways.com>
It used to be common that companies were too lame to have
reverse DNS, but it's been a
long time since I've seen that problem. Given that the company encourages email contact,
they could at least play by the rules.
This particualr one was a cultivar “Yankee <mumble>”, and
they didn't have them in stock, but they had others. Decided that we should first plan a
place for the thing and then buy one, probably in the autumn. Instead, bought only
some artichokes and
an Asphodeline liburnica, or “Jacob's
rod”.
After that, back home via Bunnings to buy
some pots and potting mix, and also ended up buying
an Aphelandra squarrosa,
apparently also called “Zebra plant”, which Yvonne wants to hang in the bathroom. I'm not
sure that's the right place for it, but we'll see.
How long does it take to roast beef? I have dozens of answers, all apparently wrong. One
problem, of course, is to know what you're trying to achieve. roastingtimes.com has suggestions, including for
“rare”, “medium” and ”cardboardwell done”, but doesn't say what those terms mean.
Wikipedia gives
USDA recommendations, currently without reference, and with some reason for doubt: apparently
they claim that “medium rare” is a range between 130—140 °F, but that the recommended value
for “medium rare” is 145 °F, in the “medium” range.
In the past I've decided on a temperature of 54° in the middle, probably a little on the
high side (“medium rare” in my book, I suppose). And for that I wrote “about 35 minutes per
kg at 180° with recirculation”. Today we had a roast of 1.27 kg, so it should have taken
about 45 minutes. In fact, it took 66 minutes. It's difficult to compare with
roastingtimes.com, because they use different roasting temperatures, no recirculation, and
they don't accurately define what they're aiming for. But like most recipes, they have a
fixed time component independent of weight (30 minutes at 220° without recirculation), then
20 minutes per kg at 160°. Ignoring the temperatures, that would have made about 55
minutes.
So what do I do next time? Just about everybody has a fixed time at the beginning
independent of the weight of the cut (clearly an approximation; you can't roast a 100 g
piece of meat for 30 minutes at 220° and expect it to be edible), then a time dependent on
the weight. Probably what's needed is a second-order equation. For the time I'll just note
the cooking time, and I can fit curves later.
As I've noted on many occasions, I don't have a
completely functional laptop. I must have about 7 of them, but the most recent is 6 years
old, and only two seem marginally functional: the Dell Inspiron 5100 which seems to be
shutting down more and more frequently, and the Inspiron 1150 with the dead USB bus.
Currently only the 5100 has a functional disk. But for things like visiting the Friends of the Ballarat Botanical Gardens I don't need
USB: I can just move the disk from the 5100 to the 1150.
Tried that, and FreeBSD came up with almost no
problems. Just not a mouse. I've seen that before: there's some flag to be set, and I knew
that I had mentioned it here somewhere. But Google seemed a better choice, and led me to this article, which had the
advantage of referring to identically the same laptop. Just add
After that, things worked as if nothing had changed. Conveniently, the article also had a
date on it, and that gave me a pointer to the diary article on the subject.
But I normally run Microsoft on this box (thus the system name pain). Tried that
too. The system spontaneously reset, even in “safe mode”. This machine has only 384 MB of
memory, compared to 512 MB on the other machine. I wonder if the system is expecting to
find all the memory, or whether it just doesn't want to work on even marginally different
hardware. What a pain this Microsoft stuff is! And how aptly named the system!
Plenty of things to do in the garden today, and did some of them. The Meyer lemon was
clearly in need of attention, and repotted it in one of the pots I bought yesterday, in the
process pruning a little and planting some of the cuttings.
I was expecting the roots to look unhappy, but there was no obvious problem. About the only
issue is that they looked quite dry. It's interesting to note that the leaves fell off a
couple of branches only, but then completely. Am I maybe not watering enough? I'm
beginning to think that I'm missing some important understanding about keeping plants in a
greenhouse. It has been finished since April, and it's only now that things are getting
warmer. To be on the safe side, left the lemon out of the greenhouse in the north-facing
area in front of the shade area, where it'll get a moderate amount of sun and still be
protected from the wind.
Also planted the Asphodeline
liburnica in the Japanese garden, and the
Aphelandra squarrosa into a
hanging pot. We still don't have a hook in the bathroom, so hung it outside on the
verandah:
Found Piccola on the verandah today, meowing at
the jasmine. It looks as if
there was some animal in there. Put a stepladder there for her, but she didn't like the
position. But maybe she's found a way that animals get on to the roof, so put the other
ladder on the other side of the jasmine and took her up onto the roof. She spent a lot of
time there, so left her until she wanted to get down again—she doesn't seem to be able to
get down by herself. But later found her up there again. It seems she can climb up the
ladder, but not down it. I wonder if she caught anything.
I've heard from Carlos Eduardo G. Carvalho, better known as Cartola, who's very active on
the panorama scene. He's also yet another FreeBSD user in the Hugin community—all the more surprising that the latest version doesn't build under FreeBSD.
Spent some time looking at the instructions that I had put up
on the Panotools wiki. They're completely
wrong. And despite the volume of this diary, I didn't describe the method in sufficient
detail when I did it. Spent some time
working on the description, but I'm still not done, especially since they've released a new
stable version since then, one that is missing code necessary for the FreeBSD version.
I've been waiting for the weeds to die in the veggie garden, which they have now done, and I
had the artichokes to plant, so finally in and tidied up a little bit. The artichokes are
planted, but the potatoes (due two months ago) are not. Much more attention needed.
Also moved more plants out of the greenhouse to in front of the shade area, next to the
Meyer lemon, where I hope they'll feel happier.
I'm gradually coming to the conclusion that I haven't been watering the plants in the
greenhouse enough, and that that, combined with too-high temperatures, might explain the
problems with the lemon, the seedlings and some other plants. We'll see if they do better
here.
The Friends of the Ballarat Botanical Gardens have a problem: their printer isn't working. And I have taken it upon myself to look after
their computer stuff, though it's all old Microsoft-space stuff. Spent the morning
preparing: collecting seedlings
for Hebes
and Betula pendula. Into town,
got rid of my seedlings, and to look at the printer:
Presumably you don't need to be a computer expert to see that the thing is out of ink. And
for that I came into town. Went looking for Mike Sorrell, but was told that he had left
round midday. Spent some time looking for plants, and while discussing his disappearance
with Yvonne, he came back. Spent some time looking at the equipment and discussing web
pages with him: he wants to create his own content, which makes sense. I'm trying to make
it as easy as possible to write web content, but I can't see my way past using an editor,
and that seems to be a no-no in the Microsoft space. In any case, we weren't able to
complete the discussion: the doors shut at 16:00, and we hadn't got much done by then.
It wasn't a complete waste of time, though: the Gardens have apparently just completed an
exhibition of Cyclamens, and they had
dozens of plants to give away, still mainly in bloom. Took 7 pots with me, all but one
still blooming better than I have ever managed myself:
We sent Yvonne's defective Canon IXY 200F back to Hong Kong on Thursday. Today I got
a message from the seller: they have received and repaired it already. I'm surprised that
the thing has even made it there by now.
As I had half suspected, it seems that the problem was dust in the lens mechanism. Given
the way Yvonne treats her cameras, that's not surprising: she usually takes them riding with
her. They enclosed some photos, taken with a Panasonic DMC-FT1 purporting to show a scratch
and various places with dust on them. They're probably right, but the photos were so bad
that I couldn't recognize it. The first image is supposed to show a scratch, the other two
dust:
One way or another, that suggests that the Canon is far too sensitive to dust. I was
thinking of a hermetically sealed replacement, but looking at the image quality of the
DMC-FT1, which is “toughened”, I'm having second thoughts.
Finding a definitive link to the DMC-FT1 proved almost impossible. Even Google couldn't
help on the Panasonic web site. Finally ended up at a page that tells me:
That's with no restriction on the search. What a broken site! And of course their
lists of digital cameras show only current models. Finally tried their support pages, but even
there I couldn't find it. Maybe this is a perspective-dependent model number, like Canon's:
it differs depending on where you look at it from. Certainly it's no advertisement for
Panasonic.
Of course, part of the issue is the non-deterministic nature of Google's search engine.
After writing this, Jashank Jeremy did almost the same Google search that I had tried, only on the Australian site and came up with a link on the
Australian web site.
I've had pretty good network connectivity over the last few months, but today I ran into
more trouble: the modem went into UMTS mode
and stayed there even when I was trying to download large quantities of data. We've seen
that before. It seems to need physical removal and replacement of the modem in the USB
connector. Did that, didn't get connected until the third attempt, and it dropped the
connection immediately. Further investigation showed that the antenna connector had become
dislodged. What horrible flimsy things these USB modems are!
After that, it ran for a few hours, then disconnected for 10 minutes (while I was outside,
so I couldn't check what was going on). And later again things went to hell:
1317793494 0.29719 5 # Wed Oct 5 16:44:54 EST 2011 1682.424 ms
1317793592 0 3 hub www.mysql.com # Wed Oct 5 16:46:32 EST 2011
1317793648 0 1 hub www.mysql.com ozlabs.org ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:47:28 EST 2011
1317793662 0 5 # Wed Oct 5 16:47:42 EST 2011
1317793758 0 3 www.auug.org.au ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:49:18 EST 2011
1317793783 0 4 ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:49:43 EST 2011
1317793829 3.73015 1 hub www.mysql.com www.auug.org.au ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:50:29 EST 2011 134.043 ms
1317793865 0 4 hub # Wed Oct 5 16:51:05 EST 2011
1317793932 0 0 hub www.mysql.com www.auug.org.au ozlabs.org ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:52:12 EST 2011
1317793957 3.83839 3 www.mysql.com www.auug.org.au # Wed Oct 5 16:52:37 EST 2011 130.263 ms
1317793992 0 3 hub www.mysql.com # Wed Oct 5 16:53:12 EST 2011
1317794006 4.07787 4 www.auug.org.au # Wed Oct 5 16:53:26 EST 2011 122.613 ms
1317794041 0 3 www.mysql.com ozlabs.org # Wed Oct 5 16:54:01 EST 2011
1317794076 0 4 ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:54:36 EST 2011
1317794133 0 1 hub www.auug.org.au ozlabs.org ftp.netbsd.org # Wed Oct 5 16:55:33 EST 2011
1317794179 0 2 hub www.mysql.com ozlabs.org # Wed Oct 5 16:56:19 EST 2011
1317794225 0 3 hub ozlabs.org # Wed Oct 5 16:57:05 EST 2011
1317794227 5.04286 5 # Wed Oct 5 16:57:07 EST 2011 99.150 ms
That shows me barely able to contact the next hop, and packet loss was round 50%. Called up
Internode Support and was connected to Tristan
(with whom I have spoken before) almost
immediately—a far cry from my recent experience with TransACT. He wasn't able to do much: things cleared
up almost immediately. He did note the incident and explained how they allocate dynamic IP
addresses: they try to give the same address again, assuming I get connected to the
same server. But there seem to be two servers they could connect to
in Melbourne, and today I got connected
to the other one, so clearly I didn't get the same IP address.
My firefox configuration is the
result of years of bumbling, made easier by the lack of documentation and clear migration
paths. Lately I've noted that the size of headings has changed, for no apparent reason.
And then Jashank Jeremy told me about the “awesome” bar on the new firefox, something
that I don't have.
Do I want it? The name sounds so stupid that it's reason enough not to use it. But it
occurred to me that maybe I'm missing out on something useful too. So how about starting
reconfiguring it from scratch?
Did that, with a new profile called Cold-turkey, and in deviation
from firefox's obfuscatory directory names (can you remember 7v0n6ir5.Default
User, with a space in it?), called the directory Cold-turkey too.
Stopped the instance of firefox, restarted, and... no Cold-turkey profile.
Yes, the directory was there, but not the profile. Further investigation showed that the
file ~/.mozilla/firefox/profiles.ini was set to be writable only by root.
No idea why, but I suppose it's to be expected that firefox would ignore such a
problem when trying to write the profile information.
So I set permissions correctly, updated profiles.ini and stopped the instance
of firefox. Started again:
