|
| Greg's diary |
| recent entries |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Sunday, 28 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 28 April 2024 |
| Top of page | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Finally a chili sauce?
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
You can buy chili sauces on every street corner, many kinds. But I can't find one that I like, especially for the eggs in huevos rancheros. There are things like Sriracha, which are almost only (almost too) hot, with no additional flavour. Then there's Tabasco, which has been round for ever. It's not really a sauce, and if it were, it would also be too hot. Then there are various sambals, potentially also too hot, and frequently with dried prawns and things that limit the usefulness outside South-East Asian food. And then there are things like chili paste, some of which aren't bad, but the one I have (from Lee Kum Kee) is too salty.
And then there's bibimjang, a Korean sauce intended for bibimbap. I made it over a year ago and was pleasantly surprised. But it, too, is limited in its usefulness due to the sesame seeds and sesame oil.
OK, remove them. And how about that, without the sesame, it doesn't taste bad. I used it today, and the recipe is here. It may evolve.
|
Why am I losing weight?
|
Topic: health, opinion | Link here |
I've been following my weight since March 2023, when we got a second set of scales. The initial results were encouraging: round 87 to 88 kg, corresponding to a BMI of a little over 23, and considerably less than the 90 kg that I had expected.
And not surprisingly, it has stayed that way, though the day-to-day fluctuations were greater than I expected, up to 1 kg per day in each direction. Until my first cataract operation, after which it dropped below 87 kg and stayed that way, dropping even further. Today it hit 84.7 kg.
Why? That's a drop of over 3%. Is it indicative of some problem? I don't feel in any way different, and potentially it has happened to me before when I wasn't weighing myself. Off to search the web, with a Google search coming up with comforting information like “Cancer, even when other symptoms are not present”. But that led to this page, which included the information that it could be a cause of loss of appetite, not loss of weight.
I have an appointment with Paul Smith in 3 weeks. I'll discuss it with him then; in the meantime spent some time copying the data into the computer and investigating plot programs once again. gnuplot may no longer be the best choice (if it ever was), but it has the advantage that I sort of know it.
|
Mona's acclimatization
|
Topic: animals | Link here |
Mona continues to come closer to the family:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It's always Bruno approaching Mona, and they're careful about their distances. This evening he jumped up onto Yvonne's lap while in the armchair, only to find Mona already there. Both looked surprised, but made no noise, and Bruno retreated. It was a different matter with Elena: she came up to me while Mona was on my lap. Mona departed, hissing and growling, but didn't go far, and she came back when Lena was gone.
|
Paella again
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
Paella for dinner again tonight. Spent some time reading up various recipes, and discovered a claim that it should be made with “Fumet”. That doesn't sound Spanish to me, but a bit of trawling through Wikipedia brought me to the Spanish entry Fumet, clearly a borrowing from the French fumet de poisson. And the recipes showed that it was based on shellfish, not fish.
Do we have something like that in the pantry? Yes!
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
It proves that we have had it for a while:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
How much do we need?
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Aaargh! These horrible spoons again! What's a « petite cuillerée »? A teaspoon? Saltspoon? Off to look online, where it seems that the fumet de crustacés is no longer made. But clearly the concentrations would be the same as for fumet de poisson (fish), which they do still make. And once again no information as to the quantities.
But then I found this page, from the maker, which offers 750 g professional packs. Still no direct quantities, but the label states that it will make up to 50 l of fumet. In other words, a round 15 g per litre.
Finally! Put 18 g in the water, and it worked well. Yvonne knows this recipe well, of course, but she said that it tasted particularly good this time.
It wasn't until later that I discovered that I have been here before. At the time I guessed 16 g/l, close enough to today's results. That still doesn't tell me the volume of a petite cuillerée, of course. See if I care. The weight corresponds to 2.5 g.
| Monday, 29 April 2024 | Dereel | Images for 29 April 2024 |
| Top of page | ||
| previous day |
|
Extracting photos from Android MMS
|
Topic: technology, photography, animals, opinion | Link here |
I've been searching for a method to extract photos from MMS messages on Android for at least 10 days, when Helen Weir sent us some photos of Pixie (now Mona). All seemed to be non-starters: the instructions didn't match reality, or they just didn't work. Or they required installation of apps that were incomprehensible in their use, or required infrastructure that I didn't want (why do you need Google Drive to copy a file?).
Clearly the files must be on the device somewhere, and though text appears to be stored in a database, I can't imagine that to be the case for images. But all my searching suggests that it's hidden from me, probably in the /Android hierarchy.
What about the file manager? No, it doesn't believe in images in MMS messages, just lots of advertising. A complete loss.
But then I found this page, which is really trying to sell an app, but contains the information:
OK, this looks like:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
After long pressing on an image, a “down the drain” and a slingshot image appear. Pressing on the “down the drain” image produces:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
I've saved it! But where? What are “Messages stored media”? The “file manager” still can't find it. Looking through the visible parts of the hierarchy shows that they were in /Pictures/Images, and I was able to retrieve them with normal FTP (with an add-on app, of course).
So, in summary:
Isn't modern technology wonderful? In the bad old days we had to use cp.
There's also another page which may contain useful information.
In passing, it's amazing how much these images appear to have been modified. They're only 1080×1440. Is that the original? My guess is that Android politely reduced the image size, in the process stripping most metadata. All that's left are the (correct) GPS coordinates.
Why that? Yes, in these uncertain times privacy is a concern for many people. But the date and time don't really fall into this category. But arguably GPS metadata do. And all metadata is stripped with the exception of the GPS coordinates! What kind of sense does that make?
|
Security, 2024 style
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
Message purporting to be from Linkt today, exhorting me to beware of scams, and offering good advice:
Online safety tips for your account:Don’t click on links in an SMS.Replace your password with a passphrase. A passphrase is made up of four or more random words with special characters making them harder to guess.
Ah, and that's not a password? Many of my passwords are multiple words, and many systems refuse them because they contain blanks. And make sure to include special characters! “Braindead security recommendations” is clearly easy to crack. Still, the thought is there.
|
AAMI again!
|
Topic: general, opinion | Link here |
Somehow AAMI don't give up. Another mail message today:
In your email, we noted that you are disputing damages to our insured vehicle.
Please provide a qualified assessor report supporting your dispute, confirming damages are inconsistent with the impact.
Well, the good news is that after less than 1½ years they have finally understood that I dispute the claim. But what's this nonsense about me having to provide an assessor report? How could I even do so at this stage? I should have asked him to send me the old, now replaced bumper, but it didn't occur to me at the time.
|
Latest Academia mail
|
Topic: technology, language, opinion | Link here |
Seen in my inbox today:
47 ND 28-04-2024 To grudgled@gma ( 940) Academia.edu ND Have you coauthored a paper with Po Box?
Somehow that's related to a request to Claim “Treasurer” for your profile. There, too, Po Box appears. I'm sure that they've sucked “PO Box” out of the document and interpreted it as a name. And of course, „Po“ is a polite word for “arse” in German.
| This page contains (roughly) yesterday's and today's entries. I have a horror of reverse chronological documents, so all my diary entries are chronological. This page normally contains the last two days, but if I fall behind it may contain more. You can find older entries in the archive. Note that I often update a diary entry a day or two after I write it. | Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so. |
| Greg's home page | This month | Greg's photos | Greg's links |
| RSS 2.0 |
|
