|
| Greg's diary |
| recent entries |
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Monday, 12 October 2026 | Dereel | Images for 12 October 2026 |
| Top of page | ||
| next day | ||
| last day |
|
Phat si-io, next failure
|
Topic: food and drink, opinion | Link here |
According to the recipes I have, phat si-io needs the noodles to be slightly charred. That's not easy in a wok that is already full of other stuff. It also requires lots of oil, and the noodles tend to disintegrate.
But why do them last? Fry them first very hot in enough oil, which should stop them from sticking or disintegrating. Then reserve until the end. The remaining oil can be used to fry the cabbage.
Tried that today. To my surprise, it took 40 g of oil! Yes, they didn't stick to the wok. They stuck to each other:
And there wasn't much oil over for the cabbage. I had to add another 12 g. But what do I do with the noodles? They were irretrievably stuck together, and in the end I cut them:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
Yes, they were browned much more than I expected, but I wonder if it's worth browning them at all. To be left for next time.
Apart from that, I thickened the sauce with cornflour, which might be an advantage. Here the modified ingredients:
| quantity | ingredient | step | ||
| 180 g | Fresh wide rice noodles (Kway teow) | 1 | ||
| 40 g | oil | 1 | ||
| 150 g | cabbage | 2 | ||
| 12 g | oil for cooking | 2 | ||
| 9 g | chili oil | 2 | ||
| garlic | 3 | |||
| 3 | ||||
| 60 g | beef flank or pork | 4 | ||
| 4 | ||||
| 8 g | sugar | 5 | ||
| 5 g | cornflour | 5 | ||
| 10 g | light soya sauce | 5 | ||
| 15 g | dark soya sauce | 5 | ||
| 25 g | fish sauce | 5 | ||
| 1 | egg white | 6 | ||
| 15 g | oyster sauce | 7 | ||
| 20 g | vinegar | 7 | ||
Why no garlic? I forgot. It didn't improve the dish, which otherwise tasted good enough.
|
More DNS investigations
|
Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
So why did Zonemaster complain about my reverse DNS yesterday? Off to run it as it had intended, to check for normal DNS function. It came up with an amazing number of errors, some of which I don't understand.
Name servers are recursors. This, it seems, is a no-no, though I don't understand why.
Nameserver ns3.lemis.com/192.248.184.42 returns an upward referral.
This seems to be a way of saying “can't answer the query”, though they don't say which, and I don't understand why it just affects ns3, since the configuration is identical.
It also complains about lack of IPv6 resolution. That's a feature, not a bug: I don't do IPv6. But I don't think that's what's stopping RIPE from accepting them. It's also interesting that it complains about ns3 and not ns1, while RIPE complains only about ns1.
|
Do I need a smart watch?
|
Topic: technology, general, opinion | Link here |
It's been over 13 years since I bought my current watch, a Casio DB360. They promised a battery life of 10 years, so they have clearly delivered. But there are signs that the battery may be fading: in particular, the beep sound that the timer produces is no longer as loud.
Of course, this could be my hearing and nothing to do with the watch, but it's time to consider a replacement. In principle there's nothing wrong with this watch, so a new battery could do just as well, but it's worth considering what's important to me.
What's available? Smart watches of course. What can they offer? Off looking for AI overviews and came up with what I had half expected: the smart watch is dependent on a smartphone. If I have an Apple phone, I need an Apple watch. If I have an Android phone, I need an Android watch.
What do I want to use it for? I was asked the following questions:
Do you plan to record your exercise sessions on it?Are you interested in investigating your sleep data?Are you aiming to reach a certain number of steps per day?Would you like to monitor exercise intensity by tracking your heart rate?Are you keen to use it for fatigue management by using a daily recovery index or heart rate variability feature?Would you like to minimise your inactive (sitting) time with movement reminders?Would you like to connect it to your Spotify or Apple Music account to listen to music while you’re out and about?Do you want to be able to take calls and receive notifications from your watch?
That's easy to answer: no. None of the above. It's interesting that none of the questions related to telling the time. And by default, none of the phones I looked at displayed seconds. Some couldn't do it at all, others required hacks to get them to do what I have had for nearly 60 years. Sixty years ago I got my first real watch (souvenir of Switzerland, I suppose), and the big advantage was the sweep second hand, a full-size hand showing seconds. At the age of 8 I was very proud of that.
Smart watches seem to be like smart phones. Making make phone calls with a smart phone seems to be a complicated afterthought. Telling the time with a smart watch seems to be almost the same thing.
Still, what use could a smart watch be, assuming I had something sane to tell the time? Health-related things seem to be the only thing. Yvonne would never agree to use such a device, so I'll keep the idea in the background until such time as I need it.
| Tuesday, 13 October 2026 | Dereel | Images for 13 October 2026 |
| Top of page |
|
Ducks? Herons?
|
Topic: animals, photography | Link here |
Walking the dogs towards Bliss Road, there's a dam on the left where I had problems a couple of days ago. Today I came more prepared: I put the Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100-400 mm f/4.0-6.3 on my camera. Why not the OM System M.Zuiko Digital 150-600 mm? It's too heavy, and on Sunday I had found a focal length in the order of 200 mm to be sufficient.
But today was different. The only birds were on the other side of the dam:
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
And for that I could have used a focal length in the order of 600 mm.
But what are the birds? They were there on Sunday as well. I had thought something cormorant-like, but Yvonne thinks that they're ducks.
|
eBay: always up to date
|
Topic: general, technology, opinion | Link here |
Message from eBay today:
20 N 13-10-2026 To groggyhimself@lemis eBay (1538) N Your package is now with its carrier!
Helpful, right? Well, no. I continually complain about how bad these messages are, since they don't give any details. This one seems better: it has now been posted.
But that's behind the times. It was “delivered” (waiting for pickup in “NAPOLEON” since yesterday morning). Bravo, eBay!
| 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 |
|
