Monday, 15 June 2026	Dereel	Images for 15 June 2026
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More photo software comparisons

Topic: photography, technology, opinion

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One of my background projects is to reprocess old scanned-in photos of the 1960s and 1970s. Currently I have free trial offers and greatly reduced prices from ON1 software and ACDSee Gemstone 16. I've tried both at the end of last year and decided against.

But now there's a new version of each. I re-gave up on ON1 relatively quickly, but I've been trying to make sense of ACDSee Gemstone 16. Once again it's hindered by inappropriate documetation. The ACDSee For Beginners (their capitalization) starts with a comparison with previous versions and with non-essential details. It doesn't show how to take a photo and process “develop” it. And what it did show was so different from what I had that I gave up, sending appropriate feedback.

But I don't like giving up. Today I went searching the entire menu tree for what they showed. I drew almost a blank. Only “Help/About” showed me something interesting: I was running Gemstone 12, which I got for free 2 years ago. Now wouldn't it be nice if they had made that clearer?

OK, try the correct version. “Your trial period has expired”. I wonder if they would reinstate it under the circumstances. But for now, there's always PhotoGlory, which I bought a year ago. There's a free upgrade waiting! But it wants my license key, and when I entered it, I got an error 734. With far too much searching I found this page, which told me that I was trying to activat the demo version of the current release, which couldn't be activated. So why did it prompt me to do so? I had not only to remove it, but to remove entire directoriesfolders before reinstalling what I already had. And the next download apparently installed the same version again! No Glory.

More VicRoads fun

Topic: general, opinion

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I've been dreading calling VicRoads about the registration concession for the Commodore, but it had to be done.

But how? There's lots of stuff on the home page, but no “contact us”. Somewhere I found one, but it led to a page with no contacts. Google Gemini to the rescue: the number is 13 11 71. Called that, fought my way through their voice non-recognition system, and was connected to Sharon, who was in fact quite helpful, but had to speak to Yvonne, since the car is registered in her name. What happened then I don't know, and Yvonne didn't understand, but she was transferred and put in a hold for over 30 minutes.

Just as I was beginning to wonder whether it wouldn't be easier just to transfer the vehicle into my name, Tony answered and said that, with my permission, I could transfer my concession to Yvonne's (second) car. Only the computers were problematic, and they weren't answering. There! Yes, he could do it, and he did. No reference number, just his name and the time (15:10). He will send email.

And my feedback? For that, I first had to log in on the web site. And it had forgotten my password! OK, reset password. Wait for PIN to come by mail. None came. Oh:

Jun 15 05:21:36 lax postfix/smtpd[93544]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from unknown[54.240.27.61]: 450 4.7.25 Client host rejected: cannot find your hostname, [54.240.27.61]; from=<0101019ec9ba0a8c-1a1ef6aa-1b05-4119-ab11-4766ce32b342-000000@us-west-2.amazonses.com> to=<drivers@lemis.com> proto=ESMTP helo=<a27-61.smtp-out.us-west-2.amazonses.com>

In other words, just for this function VicRoads have outsourced their password management to Amazon SES, and Amazon SES crowned themselves in glory by not having reverse lookup.

Or maybe it was a transient lookup failure. Quite some time later I received not one, but two PINs: I had tried retransmit, enabling me to try first with the wrong PIN. Finally left my feedback, which they had turned into a message.

Some time later I received mail from them:

We’ve received your enquiry, and your reference number is RLS00270736.

What enquiry? The request with Tony, or the feedback, now transformed into an enquiry? How can I find out? Do I want to?

Tuesday, 16 June 2026	Dereel	Images for 16 June 2026
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Huevos a la tigre again

Topic: food and drink

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Lately I've been cooking leftover ingredients for breakfast. One that happens every week, and which Yvonne used to give to the dogs, is egg white. And then there was some left-over cooked potatoes and some red capsicum. Time to fake huevos a la tigre?

This time I modified it slightly: no tomatoes, and 55 g capsicum instead of 30 g. And for the fun of it, some chile guajillo powder, amusingly written as “juajillo”. That proved to be slightly hotter than I wanted, but the real surprise was how soft the potatoes, including added fresh ones, became.

Our house has burnt down!

Topic: general, opinion

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When we moved to Dereel, we had the first-ever weatherboard house. We were very concerned about the house catching fire, and of course we took what precautions we had, including buying fire extinguishers that were probably far too small.

But now our worst fears have been realized: the house caught fire, and though the structure still stands, it's not worth salvaging:

Despite the thousands of photos I took of the house over the years, I don't have anything that quite matches. Here's the best I can find, from 30 May 2007 and 30 May 2012:

Image title: kleins road 3          Dimensions:          2816 x 2112, 1641 kB Make a single page with this image Hide this image Make this image a thumbnail Make thumbnails of all images on this page Make this image small again Display small version of all images on this page All images taken on Wednesday, 30 May 2007, thumbnails          All images taken on Wednesday, 30 May 2007, small Diary entry for Wednesday, 30 May 2007 Complete exposure details

 

Image title: kleins road 17          Dimensions:          4032 x 3026, 4321 kB Make a single page with this image Hide this image Make this image a thumbnail Make thumbnails of all images on this page Make this image small again Display small version of all images on this page All images taken on Wednesday, 30 May 2012, thumbnails          All images taken on Wednesday, 30 May 2012, small Diary entry for Wednesday, 30 May 2012 Complete exposure details

 

What a good thing we moved out of the house 11 years ago! But I feel sorry for the owners. This wasn't one fire, but two, apparently two days apart. From the online version of the Ballarat Courier, for some reason a truncated version of the print edition:

Firefighters have tackled two separate house fires at the same house at Dereel, with fire investigators now probing the cause of the twin blazes.

CFA firefighters were first called to the Kleins Road home, about 35 kilometres south of Ballarat, just before 2.40pm on Saturday, June 13. They arrived to find a weatherboard home on the 20 acre property about 50 per cent engulfed in flames. CFA crews tackled a house fire at the same home in Kleins Road, Dereel, twice over the weekend. It took firefighters about 50 minutes to bring the blaze under control, and it was not declared safe until 6.18pm. CFA had crews from five brigades at Dereel and surrounding areas at the scene, supported by Fire Rescue Victoria. A little more than 24 hours later, the CFA was called back to the four bedroom home and found parts of the remaining structure on fire. Six CFA crews attended the scene on Sunday and took more than an hour and a half to control the fire. A CFA spokesperson said the fire was declared under control at 8.25pm and safe at 11.44pm. Fire investigators were scheduled to attend the scene on Monday to determine the cause of the fires, but they have not been deemed suspicious.

Not suspicious? I see that differently. Apart from the two fires in the house, there was also a fire in the shed, and it was also on this property that the devastating bushfire two years ago started. The newspaper states that the fires are not being treated as suspicious, but I have my doubts.

VicRoads again

Topic: technology, general, opinion

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Email from VicRoads today: pay your rego. The full, undiscounted sum.

Somehow this seems familiar, the old left hand, right hand issue. Will I get a third one in a couple of days asking for the concession rate?

150-600: enough!

Topic: photography, opinion

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So do I buy the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm or not? I've certainly spent more time investigating than ever before. So: yes! After much searching, the Camera House price, $3,499, seemed the best.

But wait, there's more! Sign up for our newsletter and we'll give you a $10 discount voucher. And OM are offering a $500 “mail in” rebate. Yes, I knew about that, but what I didn't realize was that it was on top of the $500 lower price that Camera House offer. So in the end I will pay only $2,989. That's a no-brainer: the cheapest second-hand, unwarrantied lens from Japan or similar would cost me more.

But where's my $10 discount? I got a confirmation email, but no discount code. Asked their emetic bot, which told me:

Me: I was promised a $10 signup discount.  How do I apply it?
Bot: You should receive the code via email, and when you check out, there is a section to add the code in.
Me: I have received an email, but no mention of the code.  How long does it take?
Bot: This email can take a few hours after the first email.

OK, let's hope. It's too late for this time, but hopefully it will still apply for my next purchase.

And then, only now, Google came up with other prices. E-infinity offers it for $3,299. Not a big issue: it's warrantied, but not from OM System, so I won't get the $500 mail-in rebate. But then there's Woolworths, of all people. $3,479, also delivered from Camera House. That's another explicit $20 rebate. And most annoying of all, Ted's Cameras offer it for $3,399.96, $100 cheaper. That wasn't like that on Saturday, where they were asking $3,639. Clearly I ordered too early: the financial year has another 2 weeks to go, and the sales are just starting. Still, the $500 rebate softens the blow.

Dangerous batteries

Topic: technology, general, opinion

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Today I received the CR2016 batteries about which I had been warned last week. No, not sold between 1 June 2022 and 21 April 2023. They were made in January 2025.

Still, check the official warning. They weren't dangerous at all! The only issue was that they were missing a “do not swallow” warning:

Why the product is recalled:

The product was sold without a warning label that is required for products containing button/coin batteries. This warning label may be missing from the battery.

Hazard: There is a risk of choking, severe internal burn injuries or death to young children if they gain access to the button batteries and ingest them.

Now isn't that clever? If young children gain access, are they going to read the warning label first?

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.

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