Cooked another batch of nasi lemak today.
That requires the “high” burner on the stove cooktop, the one that JG King put far too close to the wall. So I put
our well-stained aluminium foil between to protect the wall. I didn't realize just how hot
it got: it caught fire! Sadly I didn't get a photo—after all, I had a fire to put out—but
the mess is obvious:
It's been 17 years since I (re)started this online diary!
Even at my age, that's nearly a quarter. Of course, another way to look at it is to say
that I left a 30 year gap since my last diary, which I stopped nearly 47 years ago. At that time I had been keeping a (paper) diary for over a
third of my lifetime, from age 14 years, 3 months to age 22 years. And I really regret that
I stopped. Reading that old diary now is really interesting.
But then it occurred to me: I have now kept a diary for a larger proportion of my life than
I had then. In October 1970 I had kept it for 93 of 264 months, or 35.2% of my life.
Adding in the additional 17 years, I've now kept a diary for 297 of 827 months, or 35.9%.
Not completely by coincidence, today was spent tidying up diary files. Obviously I
finished the file for August 2017. Less obviously, I
finished entering the file for March 1965. I'm entering 4
days per day, and I had one left over, 1 April 1965. And that was
the only day remaining in April 1965, so I finished that too. Another couple of months and
my entire diary will be on line.
Picking up my “new” Sansui San110 wasn't easy. The seller responded to my messages quickly
but inaccurately, and by this morning (intended date of pickup) I still didn't know much in
the way of details. He appeared to refuse to divulge his address. The correspondence went
something like this:
Groggy: How about Saturday late morning? That would be a whole lot easier for me.
Seller: ok will have to be the am
Groggy: OK, give me a time and an address.
Seller: just call that number as im out and about in the am for the directions about 10 to pickup by 11 then I have to shoot off
So I called at 9:00 and got voice mail. OK, try again at 10:00 and got him with a barely
intelligible mobile phone connection, but was just about able to understand the
address, and some garbled statement about meeting him in his car near mumble. Finally
off and got there. Car was there, with cat in it, and finally the seller emerged from the
house. Took the amplifier and remote control from the car, handed it
to me, drove off, and that was that.
The pickup itself was straightforward enough, but the arrangements were really irritating.
Still, I have the amplifier—possibly the biggest I have ever seen, at 39 × 43 × 13 cm (21.8
litres). By contrast, my old Technics amplifier is 30 × 41 × 12 (14.8 l), and the receiver
in the lounge is 33 × 44 × 13 (18.9 l). Certainly the volume/price ratio is good, but it
means that it won't fit where I had the Technics. One of
the SPARCStation pizza boxes is
going to have to go.
Over 50 years ago we lived in Kuala Lumpur, in a street (lane) called
Lorong Kuda (“Horse Lane”) on the edge of the racecourse, on the edge of the town. Some
decades later one of our friends from the time, now a big businessman, got involved in
replacing the racecourse with an enormous building complex, which for a while included the
tallest habitable buildings in the world, and called it
“Kuala Lumpur City
Centre”. Why Centre? It was several kilometres from the accepted centre of town.
Clearly that has made its mark. To get
from Dereel to the western suburbs
of Ballarat we take a way that, although
obvious, is completely ignored both by Google
Maps and all navigation programs I know. The last part involves going down Cherry
Flat Road, across the Glenelg Highway into Wiltshire Lane.
Over the last year or so there has been considerable building work on the corner of Cherry
Flat Road and the Glenelg Highway. And on Thursday the complex was opened: a shopping
centre called DelacombeTown Centre.
OK, you could hardly call Delacombe a city—it's only a suburb of Ballarat, after all, with a
current population of 6,297—but you could also hardly call the location a centre. Today it
had a sort of second opening (“celebrations”) with lots of events. Since we were in town
anyway, we decided to go and take a look, particularly since there was the chance of special
offers.
Getting in isn't the simplest thing in the world. It's on a corner, but the entrance is at
the southern end of the complex, down Cherry Flat Road. And where are the parking spaces?
There are a few when you arrive, but most are on the north side. And to get there every
single car has to go between the two buildings, and across a pedestrian crossing. Here's
the current aerial (“satellite”) image from Google Maps, made some time before completion:
Not surprisingly, things were seriously clogged up. I wonder what it'll be like in a
month's time. The car parks were full to capacity, and I chose to park outside on the
highway:
And sure enough, we found lots of special offers, mainly fish. But somehow the whole place
looks dingy and unfriendly. Each of these two images was taken in a different building:
Where did that come from? It seems to be from shin height, clearly optimized for something
else than “customer experience”.
Across the road to Kmart. Yvonne was concerned about whether we would be allowed in with our
Woolworths trolley. I had no such concerns, but she asked anyway. And they advised her to
leave it outside: it seems that they automatically lock up if they're taken further than a
certain distance from the shop. While that's potentially a good idea, it would probably
mean that we couldn't get it back to the car out on the highway. Not good.
At Kmart we found a frying pan “frypan” that we had been looking for: 24 cm,
supports induction, and cheap. But where do you pay? Here's the entrance:
That's my car on the extreme right. I had been the only car there when we arrived 40
minutes earlier.
Since we were pointing west, and the traffic in town was particularly bad, decided to take a
long way home via Ross
Creek. I wish I had an overview of what the GPS navigator thinks it's doing. In the
end carried on
through Napoleons, and saw a
garage sale near Sullivans Road, just south of Napoleons. I don't think we've ever been to
a garage sale where Yvonne didn't buy something, and this
time it was two rubbish bins for $30 together. Normally you pay about $100 each. But of
course we were in the wrong car, so we had to go home, and then I out with
the Commodore to pick them
up.
After picking up the rubbish bins, headed down Misery Creek Road again to see how things
were progressing. Once again I saw plants that I can't identify:
The Grevillea bedggoodiana
are still not really in flower. It's interesting in passing to note their preferred
habitat, hanging down the edges of the road:
On the way home, down Peppermint Track, which I thought might lead back to our house. After
reaching East Dozed Track (where do they get these names from?), found a barrier:
That's a pity. As a check on the map shows, I was only 1.6 km from home, and the track went
on for at least another 300 m (if you believe the map), or possibly even joins with Stones
Road (if you believe the aerial view).
This week we ate trout that we found in
the Delacombe Town Centrethis morning. There were a
couple of differences from normal. Firstly, Chris Bahlo wasn't there:
Finally got round to installing the amplifier today, requiring a bit of rearrangement of my
desktop (the area above the desk). But apart from the usual issues with cables, everything
Just Worked. For one system, anyway. Connecting to dischord (nomen est omen?)
didn't work, but that seems not to be due to the amplifier; the inputs worked when connected
to eureka.
What really got me was the difference in sound quality. This is no
high-end Hi-Fi system, but with the old
loudspeakers it's much better than the toy Logitech speakers I've been using so far.
Well worth the trouble.
About the only issue is the user interface. When I turn it off, it forgets its settings:
which channel? How loud? What balance? My old Technics had mechanical memory (switches
and potentiometers), but here it's all digital. I wonder when digital interfaces will
attain the level of maturity that analogue devices had 20 years ago.
Or did we? The recipe that Yvonne found included both grapes and
raisins. It also wanted the quails wrapped in smoked bacon, something that we didn't have.
In the end we faked it:
We were too lazy to peel the grapes, especially as the instructions (“put into boiling water
for 30 seconds to loosen the skin”) didn't have the desired effect. The result was not bad,
but I can see us improving on it further.
CJ Ellis has problems with his MyNetFone connection again! It's the third time now: for reasons that nobody has been to
explain, outgoing calls function normally, but incoming calls divert immediately to voice
mail. This first happened two
years ago, then repeated six
weeks ago. CJ is non-technical and deaf, and has difficulties understanding
non-Australians (including Yvonne), so I offered to talk to
support for him.
On each occasion the MyNetFone support people told me that
the ATA (a Mitron MV1) was not registered. Wrong! The ATA was registered, otherwise CJ would
not have been able to make outgoing calls, including the ones he made to report the problem.
What they meant was that the ATA was showing up in their system as “not registered”: a
network problem, not a hardware problem. And they should really notice the difference.
OK, just because it has happened twice doesn't mean that the same symptoms this time have
the same cause. First, check the settings on the MyNetFone web site.
Login failed! How come? Checked again and in the end asked for a password reset (“Enter
email address...”). But it didn't like the (custom) email address, the one to which they
send all notifications! Why does this sort of problem happen so often?
In the end gave up and called the MyNetFone number. For further reference: select 1 for
“residential”, and then 2 for support. Once again I had to put up with really flaky hold
music, which sounded as if it had a poor network connection, and the classic announcement:
While you are waiting, please consider this: Please stay on the line for the next
available operator.
Finally connected to Shakeel, who laboriously spelt out his name, then asked me for my name
and date of birth, and after being given the ticket number asked “How can I help?”,
presumably the next line of his script. I suggested he looked at the ticket, after which he
told me that the cable to the ATA was flaky, and that the ATA itself—sold to CJ 2 years ago
as part of the bundle—was obsolete, and should be replaced. While writing this up, I
checked: it really seems that CJ got the last of the stock, as this article, posted at 4:48 PM 2 years ago, describes.
With a bit more encouragement he decided that the ATA was not registered. I explained once
again the one-way nature of the problem, but he kept going on about the flaky cable. To
quote last time, literally, I asked him to escalate it, but said he couldn't. Asked to
speak to his supervisor, but he couldn't connect me, and I could expect a call back in 24 to
48 hours!
Finally I lost my temper when he repeated things yet again, and he hung up on me. At the
time, completely by chance, CJ was standing in front of me, something that happens no more
frequently than twice a month. I told him “He says the ATA isn't registered”. CJ: “Then
how can I make outgoing calls?”. If a 78-year-old non-techie can see that, why can't the
support people?
So I called back and asked to make a complaint. They wanted details all over again, but I
refused to give them: too much time wasted already. Connection to the complaints department
took a while, but finally I was connected with Ash(ley), who sounded more sensible, and who
knew all the details. It seems that somebody must have checked the calling number and done
a lookup, something more complicated than I would have expected. Ash arranged to have a
senior techie call me back again.
Finally that happened round 16:10: Cory called and we discussed the matter, in particular
the discrepancy between the support view and the view from the ATA. He understood, but
there was a problem: the ATA was now registered, which I was able to confirm. Clearly there
was nothing he could do under those circumstances, but he promised to have somebody keep an
eye on it from time to time, and gave me a number to call if it happened again.
Why do these bugs go into hiding just as you're about to catch them? People often bring up
conspiracy theories: first they fix things, then they claim that there has never been a
problem. I think it's more likely that they fix things while investigating, and don't
notice the fact.
When taking panoramic photos, alignment is very important: you rotate the camera about
the entrance pupil of the lens.
How do you determine where it is? If you can find them documented online, and you trust the
data, use it. For Olympus
lenses there's a table on the German
Olypedia, but it hasn't been maintained for a long
time, so modern lenses aren't there. I've adapted this to my equipment. Panotools also has an entrance pupil “database”, but
it currently doesn't include any Micro Four Thirds cameras.
Then there's the alternative of measuring it yourself. This page seems to be the easiest to
understand. But the method relies on successive approximation and is slow, tedious and
inaccurate.
But then it occurred to me: how does parallax manifest itself when stitching a panorama?
Larger “error” values from the control point detector. And they should be proportional to
the distance from the entrance pupil. So if I take comparison shots with the lens
positioned at two different positions, I should be able to interpolate between the two to
find the correct position. To do that, I positioned two tripods in front of each other up
against a brick wall:
These photos were taken with my
Olympus Zuiko Digital ED 8 mm f/3.5 fisheye lens, which according to Olypedia, after
my adjustments, should have an entrance pupil setting of 84 mm. So I took two shots at 80
mm, then another two shots at 90 mm:
The first thing that occurred to me is that I really only needed one tripod close to the
camera. The wall was at a constant distance, so the error was very small, and the front
tripod really stood out. The corresponding control point displays were:
In each case, the control point on the tripod head is highlighted, and the error is more
than 10 times any of the others.
Next, there's an assumption: I assume that the entrance pupil is between the two positions.
The alternative is that it's outside the two positions. In either case, the error is
proportional to the distance from the entrance pupil position. If the entrance pupil is
between the two points, the 10 mm distance correspond to an error of 14.39 (6.21 + 8.18)
pixels. The entrance pupil should thus be at 80 + 6.21 ÷ 14.39 × 10 mm, or 84.3 mm—as close
as practical to what Olypedia says.
What if I'm wrong in my assumption? Clearly the entrance pupil is closer to 80 mm than 90,
but it could be less than 80 mm. In that case, the 10 mm correspond to an error of -1.97 mm
(6.21 - 8.18), so the entrance pupil position would be 80 + 6.21 ÷ -1.97 × 10, or 31.5 mm.
That's clearly ridiculous in this case, but in others it's not so clear. I don't have any
information at all for my Leica Summilux 25 mm f/1.4, so I guessed it would be somewhere near the front
element, at about 40 mm on the scale, and took photos at 30 mm and 50 mm. The results:
error 1.34 for 50 mm and 3.45 for 30 mm. In this case the entrance pupil could either be at
50 - 1.34 ÷ (1.34 + 3.45) * 20 mm (44 mm) or 50 - 1.34 ÷ (1.34 - 3.45) * 20 or 62.7 mm.
Which is it?
Based on position, I'd go for the former, but it's easy enough to check: more photos at that
position. I need to do that anyway to prove that my method works. And I also need to take
more photos to do a proper write-up, which will include real distances rather than the
markings on my focus rail.
What I've learnt so far:
The method seems to work.
You only need one tripod.
These photos should be taken at minimum aperture (f/22 where available, f/16 with the
Leica lenses).
It's worth being a little more generous with the distances between the measurements.
Off to Ballarat for a dental checkup.
Somehow I seem to be going to the dentist and periodontist all the time lately—today was the
fourth time since March. As
then, he found nothing wrong, but cleaned my teeth for me. I was dubious about the
necessity, as I was last time, but he handed me a mirror and showed how he cleaned the scale
off the inside of my bottom teeth. That's convincing, but why don't toothbrushes do their
job?
On the way home, as planned, took a look down Misery Creek Road, on the off chance that
something might have changed. About the only thing that has changed, apart from the weather
(for the worse), is all the Acacia bushes
in flower. Still, it looks like I have 3 months of observations ahead of me.
I've commented from time to time on the importance of shipping to the information age. I
can buy things in China and have them
shipped here for a total price of less than normal letter postage
in Australia. Not so from
the USA: I seldom buy things from there
because the postage makes it uneconomical. And this statistic bears it out:
At the time I linked to
https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_10922_parcel_shipping_volume_and_parcel_spend_in_selected_countries_n.jpg,
but that's an old, worn-out chart. They have updated it, but it's not the same thing:
Analysing this information, it seems that the average cost of a package in the USA is $7.40,
while in China it's $1.94. And presumably a far higher proportion of Chinese packages are
international, further skewing the relationship.
The other thing I don't understand is the speed. I really wish I understood why postage was
so slow. Decades ago I read a book
by Thomas
Hardy—Jude the Obscure, I
think, in which there were mentions of letters passing
between Dorset
and London by train. Letters were sent in
the morning, and a reply received the following morning. That can't possibly happen any
more, because there is only one postal delivery per day. But if things could have been so
fast then—late 19th century—why can it take over a week for packages to reach me
from Melbourne, a shorter distance?
The clothes host is about 2 m from the ground. Upright, he must have been at least 1.7 m
high. And the posture clearly shows how dangerous his claws are:
Last week ALDI had some special offers:
a dashcam and a wireless reversing
camera. I've had a reversing camera before, which connected to my GPS receiver, but it
required running wires through the car, and I never got round to installing it. This one
least obviates that problem.
The reality, as so often with ALDI special offers, is different: the camera part can be
mounted either wired to the reversing lights, or unwired with a switch. So when you want to
reverse, you get out and press the “On” button. If it's wired, it only works when it's
powered, either by the reversing lights or the tail lights. Neither is really satisfactory:
what if you want to keep an eye on your trailer load?
The dashcam is pretty bare-bones, as you'd expect from something costing $40. It doesn't
even have a storage card, something that ALDI have always included in the past. It came
with protective film over the camera lens and the display. After removing the lens
protection, I discovered that the protection had been stuck to the lens with a
not-easily-removable adhesive:
More to the point, though: where do I put the devices? They're all supplied with a suction
cup for attachment to the windscreen, but that takes up much of the field of view:
Round about this time I need to ask myself what I need the devices for. For me, the dashcam
is basically just another way to record my route; it would be nice going down Misery Creek
Road, for example. But for that I need GPS logging.
I have GPS logging! It's just in a different box, and never the twain shall meet. And then
there's the reversing camera: all the display on the windscreen does is show the images from
the camera. My last GPS receiver could do that too, module wiring. So basically, there's
no reason to need more than one display on the windscreen.
And that's exactly what a mobile phone or tablet can do, sort of. Mobile phones are too
small, and the quality of the software available subpasses even these cheap dedicated boxes.
One day, maybe? With a GPS receiver that gives fixes at least once a second?
Call from CJ Ellis today: Gmail was preparing to
delete his email account:
From: gmail.com <info@libdb.stromungunmittelbar.com>
Date: 6 September 2017 at 13:04
Subject: Your account will be -deactivated
To: cjhimself@gmail.com
Hello cjhimself,
This is to inform you that your request on: 9/3/2017 1:30:15 p.m. to remove
your account from gmail.com server has been approved and will initiate in
one hour from the exact time you open this message.
Regards.
ignore this message to continue with email removal or
Please confirm if this is genuine as i have not made any such request.
Regards,
Google
NOTE: If You Receive This Message In Your Junk or Spam Its Due to Your
Internet Provider
That's what I see after it has been forwarded, of course. Gmail tastefully avoids
displaying domain names like stromungunmittelbar.com (it could at least contain an
ö), so there was almost no way for him to know that it was spam. Even the out-of-sequence
date is no indication. About the best was that gmail itself had removed it as spam.
What did it want? Scare people? Receive confirmation for spam lists? The last line of the
text suggests that the perpetrator didn't think it through very well.
I've been buying things online now since the end of the past millennium, and it would be my
favourite way to buy things—IF. You'd think that by now people would have got their
act together, but in fact, on reflection, there seem to be problems Every Single Time.
Today I finally came to the conclusion that I needed a new lens, the Olympus M.Zuiko
Digital ED 8mm f/1.8 Fisheye PRO. What do they cost? B&H are my price benchmark: not necessarily the cheapest, but reasonable. They
want US $999, but of course they're in the USA, so the very cheapest shipping is another
$39. USD 1,038 corresponds to about AUD 1,260.
What about eBay? The cheapest I could find
was $870, including shipping. That's a lot better, and it's from my old friends eGlobal, who offer it for $869 outside
eBay—with another $19 shipping!
OK, there's this other company, DWI,
who clearly don't do business in the USA:
DWI is American for "Drink Driving”. I'm
told that they're really another face of eGlobal, but with different prices and conditions.
And how about that, they're offering it for $839 with free postage! Still better, they
offer me a $10 discount for my first purchase. $829 sounds a whole lot better than $1,260.
And I got an empty display, repeatedly. OK, accept the “chat” offer at bottom right (are
they all run by Zendesk)?), where I was
told to do what I had just done. When I explained that it didn't work, I was then given a
code, possibly a generic one: RMN2016. 15 minutes fighting web site breakage, $10
gained—maybe.
The following day, while writing this article, it worked:
At least that suggests that the problem wasn't at my end.
Next, create an account, sign in, create profile. Like eGlobal, they have differentiated
shipping charges. In their case, it's free to big towns, and some unspecified cost,
probably also in the order of $20 more, to ship to places
like Dereel. But we've seen that before,
and Chris Bahlo works in Ballarat
(really Mount_Helen), so I can enter her address as the shipping address.
But that doesn't work! Yes, they maintain both billing and shipping addresses, but when I
update one, the other gets updated! After 10 minutes of frustration, more chat.
Checkout did accept the promotion code I was given, and showed a total of $829.
Over a period of 10 minutes, I was able to enter Chris' work address and have it stick,
only for the shipping address, after only 6 attempts. But then the price had gone back
to $839!
Going back to correct the price showed nothing wrong—until I discovered that it had
forgotten the shipping address! Jane on Chat said “don't do that”, and that I should
ignore the information until checkout.
One more entry of Chris' (long and complicated) address, and then to “payments”. 1.8%
surcharge for anything except bank transfer! It would have been better if they had said
that up front.
Finally I got to checkout (still without paying, since I needed an invoice number). All
went well, and finally my order was placed. Time so far: 60 minutes.
Next I needed to perform the bank transfer. Where do I enter the invoice number? The only
place I could do that was the “Description” field. The minimal help suggested that I would
get that description in my bank statement, and that the recipient may get it from his
bank. Thought about this for a while: probably it will work, but just to be on the safe
side, I included the invoice number in my name field as well. Done? Almost.
Press “Submit”. “This session has timed out”. The whole bloody thing all over again. This
time it went through. Finished, at 16:30.
Total time: about 60 to 70 minutes. Yes, this one was particularly painful, and I still
don't have the warm, fuzzy feeling that the incoming money will be paired correctly with my
order, but we can hope. But why must things be so difficult 20 years into the Age of the
Web?
Apart from the pain involved in my order from DWI, it's worth considering what the
alternatives are for online camera purchases. Here's my view:
Suppplier
michaels
B&H
eglobal
DWI
Price, with shipping
$1,320
$1,260
$888
$829
%age of michaels
100%
95.5%
67%
63%
Warranty
1 year Australian
1 year international
2 year seller
1 year seller
Web site quality
bearable
acceptable
painful
unbearable
michaels is a leading traditional camera
shop. I have bought from them in the past, but not recently. I've downgraded their
otherwise useful web site because I can't find shipping prices until I create an account.
I'd guess that this is negligence on the part of the web programmers rather than any malice
on their part. My price includes a guess of $21 for shipping.
B&H's price of this lens is over
$1,000, so it's quite possible that I would have to
pay GST on it.
I also cooked (baked?) them in the oven, mainly to ensure even heating. I set the oven to
140°, but that was too warm, and later dropped it to 130°. Maybe that is also too warm.
Next time I'll try 120°.
Off to Ballarat again this afternoon to
have my neck kneaded. Gradually I'm getting the feeling that things are improving, but it's
been a slow and gradual process. The sessions—still $0.80 each—are getting less frequent,
and next time will be 10 October 2017.
We're planning
raclette for dinner tomorrow, and I had
to buy the cheese. The cheese shop that I once found so good has gone downhill, and when I
went there yesterday, they only had Heidi raclette. Their “Swiss” cheese tastes good—a fair imitation
of Gruyère—but I've had bad experiences with it for fondue, so I have certain reservations. Asked the saleswoman, but she didn't
understand “raclette”; she pronounced it sufficiently differently that the real
pronunciation didn't ring a bell.
That appears to be what foxes leave of a lamb, though I'm told they usually leave more, just
eating eyes and liver. I'm surprised it was left in the middle of the road.
At some point I should transplant them. Peter Jeremy, who gave me this tree as a sucker,
tells me that they should be frost hardy, but possibly that's his observation
in Sydney.
Apart from the obvious suckers, there's another plant there:
That's clearly not a curry tree. It looks for all the world like
a Hibiscus rosa-sinensis,
and I think it must be. We'll see when it gets a bit bigger. I hadn't expected a hibiscus
to self-seed.
Raclette for dinner this evening, and I
discovered that the cheese I bought yesterday had not been cut into slices. It hadn't even
been cut reasonably straight:
We've been looking for German TV series on the web for some time. It's not easy. There
seem to be three main sources:
Old series: on YouTube, generally in a
quality that varies from bad to execrable. I've found some that had compressed 16:9
down to a mobile phone format, something like 6:9. That can't look good even on a
phone. And the resolution typically starts at 360p—the resolution of low-resolution
British TV 50 years ago—and goes down to an unrecognizable 144p.
Then there are torrents of dubious legal status. They're uninteresting for another
reason: there's almost no German-language content.
Then there are the „Mediatheken“ of various German TV channels. They're thoroughly
confusing: first, the structure of the public stations confuses the matter, then the
interface is confusing, and access is haphazard. Sometimes it works, sometimes it
doesn't, and sometimes they refuse to play for copyright reasons. And here, too,
resolution is not what you'd want. About the best thing about them is that you can be
sure that they're legal, if you can watch them.
Spent some time today looking further, and I'm still not sure I understand everything. But
there's a web site fernsehserien.de that
at least gives an overview of what's on on TV at the moment, and may help find it online.
It's at least another piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is online TV.
Our old raclette grill is showing its age (probably about 20 years), and if we could find a
replacement, we would. It must have heard us talking: the power switch failed when I tried
to turn it on. How to fix that?
Where can I find a corresponding bit? I used to have lots of bits with things much stranger
than Torx, but that was in another life. As it happened, though, I found one pretty
quickly, and was able to bypass the screw relatively quickly. I was back at the dining
table and testing for live chassis in 13 minutes:
Apart from that, it seems that the Heidi cheese really isn't the best choice. Like many
other kinds, it melts so completely that there's hardly anything left:
What's the best way to take the dinner photos? I asked myself this question two weeks ago, but the method I used
there only really works when there are two or three people. The week after next we're
having another Arne Koets clinic, and
apart from Chris Bahlo, we'll also have Margaret Swan and Chris' sister Melanie.
The table's round, so the answer's clear—or is it? A circular panorama. Tried that this
evening, with the Vanguard
ALTA PRO 263AT tripod contorted differently:
That's a cylindrical panorama, so I can extend it as far as I want round the table, and it
will look as if people are sitting in a straight line. Once again the question arises as to
what we should be doing. I certainly shouldn't be displaying the remote control.
That's a particularly difficult scene to expose; this was done with 2.3 EV overexposure. Arguably it should
be done with no composition and spot measurement:
While making a regular backup to my external backup drive, I had a strange experience: at
the very end, it didn't complete. Checking, I found that the backup drive was no longer
mounted. But umount was the very last thing that happens in the script. Further
investigation showed:
Yes. The disk was /dev/da2, and I was seeing round 140 32 kB reads per second! This
went over a long period of time, and umount used considerable CPU time in the
process:
What caused that? ps showed that the process was started at 9:32, and it didn't
complete until 9:35. I suppose I'll have to climb into the code and see why it's reading at
all after umounting.
More investigation of online German TV today. There's lots of stuff to read, and the
signal-to-noise ratio is
low. But I came across onlinetvrecorder.com, which, despite the name, is German. If I understand things
correctly, I can download anything recorded in the last few days—for free. Well, only
during the “Happy Hour”, the third of the day between 0:00 and 8:00 German time,
corresponding nicely to 8:00 to 16:00 here in the winter, or 10:00 to 18:00 in the summer—in
other words, the time I would choose anyway. By the time I found this (the help is well hidden), it was
past 16:00, so put the rest off until tomorrow.
Not a good idea: it has been raining a lot, and the middle paddock is sodden. But it turned
out that there was a lot to see, starting with a mob of kangaroos:
It wasn't until I processed the images that I saw the flower stalks, out of focus in this
image. Clearly I need to go back with more appropriate equipment.
Yvonne has bought another saddle
in Austria. How do we transfer the
money? Last time I only
mentioned the arrival, not the hoops we had to jump through to pay for it.
The main issue seems to be
that Australia hasn't quite made it to
the 17th century when it comes to money transfers: cheques are still the preferred method of bank payment.
Last time Yvonne had to go to a physical bank to perform a transfer which cost an arm and a
leg. For this reason, amongst others, I've been trying to open a bank account
in Euros, so far without success.
I looked again today, and how about that, there's progress. Both our banks now allow
international (”overseas”) transfers from web banking! I had to apply for the privilege in
each case (why?), and in the case of ANZ I was
told to wait until tomorrow.
OK, Bank of Melbourne. Somehow I
found a way to calculate the exchange rates and costs before actually making a transfer,
though I can no longer find it:
Their modern rendering make it difficult to see that I had entered the sum of 800 € for this
comparison. OK, how does that compare to real exchange rates? According to OANDA,
the Interbank rate is 0.67085 €.
Factoring in the fee (why a fee?), the exchange rate is effectively 0.6213 €, a whopping
7.3% more! Even a credit card only costs 3%.
I've been here before, and I've been frustrated. Try again. The Currency Shop gives me “5 Cheaper Ways To Transfer Money Overseas”, none of which
seem very cheap; they even mention the banks. To get any idea, you need to select “Compare
Exchange Rates”, which came up with this top savings:
It's not until you read the small print that you discover that “it's not for you”. Still,
it was worthwhile following up on, and in the end I was able to get an exchange rate of
0.66638 €, only 0.67% below the Interbank rate. Amusingly, the rates changed while I
watched them, reflecting changes in the the Interbank rate. In addition, the first two
transactions are fee-free, so that's all I paid. The actual sum I transferred was 852 €, so
the costs were: 5.71 €, compared to (coincidentally) $99.99 from the Bank of Melbourne:
Company
Rate
Fees
Total
Total cost
(Interbank)
0.67085
1,270.03
0
Bank of Melbourne
0.62130
20
1,370.02
99.99
HiFX
0.66632
0
1,278.66
8.63
For once, that looks good, though the extra $15 from the third transaction make it less
attractive.
This was taken with my macro ring flash. Apart from the inherent difficulty in keeping a
dog still for the photo and the unexpected difficulty in focusing the M.Zuiko
Digital ED 30 mm f/3.5 Macro, how do you set the exposure? If he moves only a few
centimetres forwards or backwards, the light intensity will change enough to require a
different aperture. This image was in fact underexposed, and I had to compensate to get a
useful photo.
The technical solution has been with us for decades. Starting in the 1970s, flashes
acquired the capability of terminating the flash when enough light had been reflected from
the subject. And then TTL flash was
introduced (it seems by Olympus), involving the camera too. But most after-market flashes seem to target
Canon and Nikon, and there's now precious little available for Olympus.
My current ring flash, a Viltrox JY-670 (URL likely to rot) doesn't have significantly more intelligence than the flashes of the
1960s. Yes, I can set the light output, but that's all. What automatic ring flashes are
available? Metz (mecablitz) make one, the
mecablitz 15 MS-1. I've discussed this topic in January 2010 and September 2014.
Reading the instructions (PDF) is always instructive, if not in the manner that the manufacturer
intended. The good news seems to be that there's only one model, and it can handle all
kinds of camera. But nearly all of the instructions relate to remote operation,
where the flash is not mounted on the camera. What kind of confusion could have caused
that? Who uses a ring flash anywhere except on the lens? Of 46 pages, only about 2
describe specifics of using it as a ring flash: the reflectors can be set at 0°, 10° or 20°
to adapt to the distance from the subject, and there's a bounce diffuser for distances under
10 cm. That's good to know.
But the price! The cheapest I have seen is about $430. By contrast, my current ring flash
cost about $100. Apart from the swiveling reflectors, the only thing missing is the
automatic exposure function. And the mecablitz comes with only 3 adapter rings. I can pay
up to $60—close to the cost of my current ring flash—for each additional piece of metal!
Then Andrew Richards on the M43 Tech Talk Facebook group came up with the Dörr
Macro TTL Blitz DMF-15 für Olympus und Panasonic. It looks pretty close in specs to
the mecablitz, and it's slightly cheaper. But where do you get one? eBay doesn't seem to know them, though I can find a
couple of suppliers in Germany. But do I want a unit from an almost unknown manufacturer?
The name Dörr rings a bell, but now they describe themselves as „Foto Marketing“, and their
“about us” page suggests
they have only 50 employees. Do they make their own equipment, or is it a rebadged (and
unknown) Chinese product? The appearance suggests that it could be: like my Viltrox, it's
clearly a modified on-camera flash.
More to the point, though: is a ring flash the answer? Kev Russell, moderator of the
Facebook group.
sang the praises of his Olympus STF-8 flash unit (clearly a model name thought out by a non-native English speaker). He says
it gives better lighting. It's certainly much dimmer: guide number of 8.5 instead of
15 for the mecablitz, my Viltrox, or even the current crop of cheap LED “flashes”. That's
only 32% as bright. Once again it comes with few adapters, suited only to the M.Zuiko 12-40 mm
f/2.8 “Pro” (which I have now sold) and the M.Zuiko Digital ED 60 mm
f/2.8 Macro and the M.Zuiko
Digital ED 30 mm f/3.5 Macro lens. And, of course, it's even more expensive than the mecablitz.
But how do you expose it? I really need HDR images. Can I be
bothered to get a tripod? No. So I took it hand-held (with my standard +3 EV/-3 EV bracketing, offset by +1.3
EV. And how about that, it wasn't bad. I should do more of this.
For reasons I forget, I accessed Gmail from the
browser on my :0.1 display instead of the normal :0.2. Same browser
(outdated firefox), same
computer. But I still get a message:
I suppose things are getting better: now at least it gives a (correct) IP address. But how
does it recognize the “device”? It's the same one I use all the time, and so is the
browser. I wonder if I will get new messages when I upgrade the browser.
Discussing yesterday's money
transfer article on IRC today. Peter Jeremy came up with a couple of alternatives:
payeer.com and paysera.com. At first glance, both look
usable, but of course the first glance is often misleading. Certainly I'll take another
look at them before my next transfer.
Now wouldn't it be nice if I could transfer my pension into it and convert at their rates?
I've been experimenting with various Asian food for breakfast. One thing I have wanted was
something Korean, mainly so that I can have something to eat kimchi with. Today I tried faking something with fish,
dofu and spring onions, along with rice, fried egg and the
oh-so-Korean ikan bilis. Yvonne was eating poached eggs, so I tried using our fried egg rings to
fry an egg that would fit nicely on top of the rice. Not a success: the yolk broke, and the
egg stuck to the ring. What a mess:
What's wrong with this questionnaire? There are so many things I can think of:
How can I know whether the law needs changing? They haven't stated what the current law
is.
What do they mean by “marry”? My understanding of marriage is a religious and cultural
one. I got married because I didn't want my daughter to be a bastard. That reason
(presumably) doesn't apply to same-sex marriage. And the religious aspect has nothing
to do with the law.
Why is there any legislation at all about marriage? Should we not be looking at the
definition of marriage itself? I can't see any merit in legislating who may and may not
marry.
What's a “dark pen”? Does it need a nib? What colour should the ink be? If this is a
requirement, why don't they supply one (“Australian Bureau of Statistics Same Sex
Marriage Memorial Pen”)?
On the whole, I don't feel qualified to decide on a matter that is obviously of extreme
importance to the people affected, but which has absolutely nothing to do with me. My
feeling is that they should be allowed to do what they want. But enshrine that in law, and
there will be loopholes and unforeseen side-effects. I'll be interested to see if the new
law (and I'm sure it will be passed) will allow people to marry themselves.
So what do I do? Abstinence is one option, but I'd rather abstain explicitly than just not
return the form. Maybe I'll deface it, thus at least making some kind of point.
Where is Chris' office? It has one of the longest addresses I know outside
the United Kingdom: Greenhill
Enterprise Centre, Ballarat Technology Park, University Drive, Mount Helen, Victoria 3550.
And still it's missing a street number!
Maps can't find Greenhill Enterprise Centre, Ballarat Technology Park, University Drive,
Mount Helen, Victoria 3550.
Make sure your search is spelled correctly. Try adding a city, state, or zip code.
OK, how about just Ballarat Technology Park? Yes, it finds that:
