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| Tuesday, 8 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 8 July 2025 |
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Still more system installation
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
Where did I put those notes that I made a while back the last time that I tried to formalize system installation? Spent some time searching my file systems and my diary, but I drew a blank. Gradually I had a recollection of a series of configuration files and Makefiles, but I couldn't find anything to match. Mañana.
I did, however, build a new world, and after that tried more speed tests on the SSD:
=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/0) /usr/src 28 -> dd if=/dev/nda0 of=/dev/null count=10000 bs=128k
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
1310720000 bytes transferred in 1.487479 secs (881168964 bytes/sec)=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/0) /usr/src 29 -> dd if=/dev/nda0 of=/dev/null count=10000 bs=128k iseek=10000
10000+0 records in
10000+0 records out
1310720000 bytes transferred in 1.143293 secs (1146443065 bytes/sec)
The speed difference was repeatable. Why should it matter where you read from?
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Buying wine on the web
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Topic: food and drink, technology, opinion | Link here |
Mclaren Vale Cellars have a special Sauvignon Blanc at the moment, with a whopping 43% discount for regular customers.
OK, check it out. How do I log in? There's a wobbling button saying LOGIN TO SAVE, but clicking on it does nothing interesting. But checking “My account” shows my previous orders, so clearly I'm already logged in. But the price stubbornly refuses to change.
Tried all sorts of things, to no avail. Finally clicked on “Chat”. And how about that, I got a response from a Real Person, whose name turns out to be Tom (Curtis? He didn't say). And he was interested enough to call me up and discuss the matter in some detail. We came across a whole lot of issues in the course of 25 minutes trying things out, and I nearly managed to get the correct price in my “cart”. But the price ($96) was under the magic $100 for free freight, so I added a bottle of another wine, and bang! the price for the first went back to $168 again!
What went wrong? I tried on firefox on hydra.lemis.com, Chromium on hydra.lemis.com and firefox on distress.lemis.com (Microsoft). The behaviour was different on Microsoft. I think I managed to log in, but that was the only difference.
In the end we gave up. Tom sent me an invoice for the correct price and all was well. But clearly they have a number of things to discuss with their web programmers.
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Spot that cat
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Topic: animals, photography, opinion | Link here |
Seen this evening:
There's Bruno hiding again. Where? Hard to see, but with some photo processing he's there:
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Hopefully he won't get hurt.
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Health care by script writers
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Topic: health, multimedia, opinion | Link here |
One of the more improbable German TV series is Bettys Diagnose, about the nurses in a clinic in Aachen.
This evening we watched episode 11/2, „Außer Kontrolle“. A person arrived with methanol poisoning. How could they tell? She was very drunk and saw double. Only those are not the symptoms: yes, methanol is very dangerous for the eyesight, but Google Gemini tells me the symptoms are blurred vision, Photophobia (sensitivity to light), "snowstorm vision" or "halo vision", decreased visual acuity, complete or partial blindness (often permanent), dilated pupils, optic disc hyperemia (redness of the optic nerve head) and retinal oedema. Seeing double is something completely different. And she had only drunk one glass of contaminated spirits, which wouldn't have left her seriously drunk the following day.
But then the script writer found something useful:
Methanol wird von der Leber anders verwertet als gewöhnlicher Alkohol: Es entsteht Ameisensäure und Formaldehyd.
“Methanol is metabolized to formic acid and formaldehyde”. Well, yes, though in the opposite sequence. But then the script writer seems to have lost interest in his sources:
Wir beschäftigen jetzt Ihre Leber mit Alkohol, damit diese das Methanol nicht umwandelt in Ethanol.
“We will occupy your liver with alcohol, so that it (the liver) doesn't change the methanol into ethanol”. Clearly he doesn't have the foggiest idea what ethanol is. One can only hope that people watching the programme don't believe the nonsense presented there.
| Wednesday, 9 July 2025 | Dereel | Images for 9 July 2025 |
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Finding the configuration information
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So where did I put the information needed to update my local systems? I had some recollection that I had a set of Makefiles to do the work. Off searching, and after only half an hour I found them: in /src/Sysconfig/Install.
/src/Sysconfig is a remnant of an attempt I made decades ago to automate my updates, so it's not completely inappropriate, but I was trying to get rid of the system. Still, I can't see any alternative. Off to try out the things that I had in there, in the process finding additional symlinks that I needed to make, and also some missing in the list. And more ports to install. s3cmd was a surprise. pkg spells it py311-s3cmd:
py311-s3cmd-2.4.0_3 Unix-like tools to manipulate stored files from the command line
And after installation, I couldn't start it. Further investigation showed that it didn't install anything like an executable:
=== root@lagune (/dev/pts/2) /home/grog/Install 24 -> find /usr/local/ -mmin -60 | grep s3c
/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/s3cmd-2.4.0-py3.11.egg-info
/usr/local/share/licenses/py311-s3cmd-2.4.0_3
/usr/local/share/doc/s3cmd
It installed fine from the port (which calls it net/pys3cmd). What am I missing?
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OM-1 warranty repair
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Topic: photography, opinion | Link here |
I've been dragging my heels on getting the sensor problem with my OM System OM-1 Mark II repaired, but it has to be done. How do I go about it? CCCWarehouse has a contact page that seems a
good start. “Send A Help Desk Ticket” (clearly their capitalization), with the promise “We
will reply promptly by email (typically 0.5-1hr during business hours)”. Sent the message
off at 13:54 and heard nothing for the rest of the afternoon. But at 02:26:24
-0700 19:26 I got a response: please send images.
OK, I can do that. I'm still worried that this could be an uphill battle, though arguably OM System support might have reacted similarly.
| 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. |
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