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| Sunday, 11 October 2026 | Dereel | Images for 11 October 2026 |
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Braving RIPE again
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Topic: technology, opinion | Link here |
After I still don't have reverse lookup for lemis.com. Well, I do, but the world doesn't. For that I need to get RIPE to set up data structures, and that has been so painful that I have all but given up.
But it needs to be done, and now Klaus Jäger is pushing me to do something. Today I first checked the previous correspondence. The last state, 3 June 2023, was:
Mark Price agreed. It seems that I managed steps 1 and 2, and maybe 3 (or maybe it went the other way round). And then, it seems, I didn't follow through, though I didn't even mention reverse lookup in that list. But I didn't find any of this until after my basic attempts to just access the database.
And there I made some progress. Log in to RIPE, which worked and presented me with a window:
What's that? Ah, I need to start FreeOTP on my mobile phone and get a 2FA code. And modulo the meaningless appearance of the window, that worked.
And this time, with the help of Google Gemini, I was able to find and query the database:
inetnum: 192.109.197.0 - 192.109.197.255
netname: LEMIS-LAN
org: ORG-GL515-RIPE
country: DE
sponsoring-org: ORG-NI68-RIPE
admin-c: GL3-RIPE
tech-c: GL3-RIPE
status: ASSIGNED PI
mnt-by: HostVirtual
mnt-by: RIPE-NCC-END-MNT
created: 1970-01-01T00:00:00Z
last-modified: 2026-10-01T13:12:19Z
source: RIPE
And with more aimless searching I arrived here, where it almost looked as if I could set up reverse DNS. But:
You cannot modify this object here because your SSO account is not associated with any of the maintainers.
Ha ha, only joking. Try again, and it suggested that LEMIS-MNT (that's one of my identities) could do it. Two name servers, please. Not a problem: ns1.lemis.com and ns3.lemis.com. But it didn't like ns1: “no reverse zones”. It did accept (well, at least not complain about) ns3. And of course both name servers work correctly, at least as far as I can see:
=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20140824 1539 -> host 192.109.197.129 ns1
Using domain server:
Name: ns1
129.197.109.192.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer hydra.lemis.com.
You have new mail in /var/mail/grog=== grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20140824 1540 -> host 192.109.197.129 ns3
Using domain server:
Name: ns3
129.197.109.192.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer hydra.lemis.com.
So what's it complaining about? I don't know. The twins suggested trying Zonemaster, another book with seven seals. No matter what I input, it found multiple issues.
That's enough. The stress was giving me stomach-ache, so I stopped while I was ahead. I established a while back that Mark Price doesn't have much to do with RIPE, while Klaus Jäger does, so I'll get some feedback from him when my stomach has calmed down.
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What's that bird?
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Topic: animals, photography | Link here |
Walking the dogs today, saw this scene:
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Yes, it's somewhat fuzzy. But then, I had the wrong lens on, and more to the point, I had the wrong focus mode. It should have been “birds”, of course, but I had turned subject detection off, with the result that it focused on the grass in front:
Can't find dimensions for 'Sheep-and-birds-3-detail.jpeg'
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I shouldn't make that mistake again. More to the point, though: what are those birds?
| Monday, 12 October 2026 | Dereel | Images for 12 October 2026 |
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Phat si-io, next failure
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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:
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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:
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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.
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More DNS investigations
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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.
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Do I need a smart watch?
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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.
| 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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