Finally my new lens is there! I've been agonizing over buying a telephoto lens for over 9 months, and the near-impossibility of buying lenses on eBay from US added to the problems. Last week I finally bought an Olympus ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 70-300 mm f/4.0-f/5.6 from a seller calling himself ace of bicycle, along with a second-hand camcorder. The lens was located in Tokyo, the camcorder in Melbourne, so when I got a note from the post office on Monday that a package was waiting for me, I assumed it was the one from Melbourne. Not so: I'm still waiting for the camcorder, but the lens arrived on Monday, and Chris picked it up from Sebastopol Post Office yesterday afternoon:

The lens is interesting because it can focus as close as 0.96 m; this makes it interesting for taking macro photos. Here my mystery tree with the yellow flowers; the individual flowers are about 5 mm across:

Into town for multiple purposes today: bought a new electric drill, the first in over 20 years, and also bought some new shoes. For as long as Yvonne has known me, I have been wearing sandals made by Mike Marquez in Los Gatos, but he moved on years ago, and my final pair has given up, so I'm reduced to wearing normal sandals. Also bought a single rose bush (“Lili Marleen”), which we planted outside the entry to the kitchen.

Quiet day. Autumn is well upon us, and we didn't feel like doing much outside. Spent some time upgrading my PHP scripts for making web pages out of lists; it's amazing how many things can be handled that way, for example my garden index is made from a relatively simple list of URLs.

Mystery flower: weed or wonder?

One thing of interest was the mystery flower I mentioned yesterday. Callum Gibson identified it as a Lantana, and indeed it looks likely. The following links show photos all quite like ours: ausgarden.com.au, labouichere.com, Wikimedia commons, sunvalleylandscape.com and integritylandscaping.com. This one, from Wikimedia, is closest to ours:

The trouble is that Lantana is a weed of (Australian) national significance. The Queensland Department of Primary Industries has a fact sheet. On this page they also state:

Description

• Stems are square with small, recurved prickles.
• Leaves are bright green, about 6 cm long, with roundtoothed edges and grow opposite one another along the stem.
• Flowers vary in colour from pale cream to yellow, white, pink, orange, red, lilac and purple, about 2.5 cm in diameter.
• Fruits are glossy, rounded, fleshy, purplish-black when ripe.

I've tidied up the punctuation somewhat, but there are a couple of differences here: the stems of my plant have no prickles, and the plant has no fruit. But prickles in themselves don't seem to be a very good indication of the genus, and elsewhere I read of “sterile” Lantanas. That might sound like we're out of the woods, but then I found an ASGAP article which states:

The Newsletter of the Environmental Weeds Management Group (EWMG) (Oct. 2001) notes evidence of even so-called 'sterile' garden varieties of lantana producing pollen which may cross-pollinate wild lantana and produce new varieties in the wild.

Did a bit of thinking about that. We don't seem to have any wild Lantana in the area, and even if there were, wouldn't the chance of cross-pollination tend to produce more sterile varieties? Thought about that for a while, without coming to much of a conclusion. Then read Allan Seale's “Australian Gardening”, a book which dates back to 1985, and which states:

Lantana. Long-flowering and drought and heat-resisting shrubs for all but the coldest regions—easily managed and should not be confused with the noxious wild L. Camara.

So what to do? While I was thinking of this, Callum came back with another suggestion: now it's a Buddleia (or is that Buddleja?), and indeed that looks likely. Here's a photo from Banwy Valley Nursery, which describes it as a Buddleia 'Sungold', followed by one of the photos I took yesterday:

We're not done yet; it seems that Buddleja also has potential to be invasive. More reading to do.

More investigation of the Buddleia issues today. Yes, there's a Buddleia Davidii that is considered a noxious weed, but that appears to be quite different from the one I have, for which I still haven't found a name. Mine is not on sale in Australia; I wonder if that is an indication that all Buddleias are considered dangerous. I don't see any reason to believe that mine is. The June 2007 newsletter of the Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust states:

There's a lot of confusion about Buddleia. Ask for it at your local garden centre, and they'll probably tell you “no, it's a weed”. But it is only the B. davidii that is listed as a plant pest — and even there, only the mauve flowering version that causes the damage as it multiplies in bright profusion.

B. davidii has been declared a danger to our primary industry, as it breeds prolifically, creating problems in pine forests. But there are still several Buddleias that are permissible and don't create problems (they don't seed, they are sterile). They are great nectar plants.

In fact, the MBNZT has been entrusted to trial a new cultivar, B. Silver Anniversary, to be released later this year; we have been asked to measure how successful it is providing nectar for our butterflies — and bees too. “Silver Anniversary” has clusters of white flowers with mustard coloured eyes and a sweet honey scent.

Of course, the Monarch Butterfly NZ Trust has vested interests, but they can't be that far off the mark.

Didn't do much else during the day. I've established that the irrigation system in the garden does need two separate sections for the eastern part, as I had originally planned. Annoyingly, the pressure drop in the system means that I can't use up the supply capacity of the pump and still have adequate pressure, so it cycles anyway. I can't see a good solution for that one. Maybe I should turn both solenoids on at the same time.

UNIX lives!

Over the last couple of weeks, a group of people in the UNIX Heritage Society, led by Warren Toomey and Tim Newsham, have scanned in an old paper copy of the First Edition UNIX kernel and got it to run. The kernel is dated June 1972, and it's written in PDP-11 assembler. It's really strange to see code like this:

:login: root
root
# ls -l
total    6
 43 sdrwr-  2 bin     620 Jan  1 00:00:00 bin
 42 sdrwr-  2 sys     250 Jan  1 00:00:00 dev
 44 sdrwr-  2 bin     110 Jan  1 00:00:00 etc
 46 sdrwrw  2 sys      30 Jan  1 00:00:00 tmp
 45 sdrwr-  2 sys      20 Jan  1 00:00:00 usr
# chdir bin
# date
Fri Jan  1 00:00:24

It's also amazing how quickly it has happened; Warren started things rolling on 23 April when he mentioned the document on the TUHS mailing list. There's now a new mailing list which deals with exactly this reconstruction. I found the most interesting part the issue with executable binaries: in the First Edition, the a.out header was 12 bytes long, and from the 2nd Edition it was 16 bytes long (which it still is today). This caused some problems because the earliest available version of many binaries was from the Second Edition. But the really interesting thing is the meaning of the magic number: in the First Edition version it's 0405, and in the Second Edition it's 0407. Each is in the first word of the object file, and it doubles as a PDP-11 instruction to branch over the header (5 or 7 words, meaning 10 or 14 bytes, added to the two of the instruction itself).

More work in the garden, in particular the slow and boring digging up of all the garden soil. I can't make up my mind whether to spray the weeds and let them die first, or just dig them up. One way or another, it looks as if we're going to be busy with the project for months.

Finally got round to replacing the power supply in the old teevee. That's just the start of what threatens to be a significant rearrangement of my hardware. In particular, my backup disk is overflowing, so I'll have to replace it with a larger one.

Finally the video camera that I bought on eBay two weeks has arrived. The seller had waited for PayPal to pay the money to him before sending it, which he did in a barely adequate padded envelope. The battery seems to be dead. Do I complain, or just capitulate?

I'm still looking for long telephoto lenses on eBay. In the process, managed to lose a lens that I was “watching”: it didn't show up in the listing to which it belonged. After some examination, discovered that there are two completely different eBay sites which purport to show the current auctions, but they only barely overlap in their content. The following two images show the same search done at the same time on http://search.ebay.com.au and http://cameras.listings.ebay.com.au:

I'm amazed. I'll keep an eye on it and see if the discrepancy continues.

More work in the garden. I suppose I should only mention that when I do something I want to recall.

Chris Yeardley left for the Gold Coast this morning, and we had been intending to go to Melbourne for some time, so took her to the airport, then on to Palm Place Nursery, not far from the airport, to buy a Bottle Tree:

The one we bought wasn't the one in the middle, nor even one of the little ones in front of it, but an even smaller one on the other side of the display. In about 10 years it might be interesting. Also bought a Cycad for Yvonne and a Bird of Paradise flower for myself.

Then down Sydney Road to the same Italian supermarket we first visited last winter. On that occasion we didn't know what to expect at the Victoria Market, and we didn't look too carefully. This time we did. I suppose if you're Italian it's great—I heard the staff talking to the customers in Italian—but for somebody with just a casual interest in Italian food, it didn't seem to be quite what we were looking for.

On to the Victoria Market, where Yvonne bought lots of meat and sausages, and I found an “Asian” supermarket which had most of the stuff we would otherwise have bought at the Footscray Market. Off towards Grain and Grape, when we felt hungry, so down to Footscray anyway for a Vietnamese soup and noodles. Then to Grain and Grape, where I bought 60 kg of malt—that should keep me going for a while.

Back home through pouring rain—8 mm since we left, more than we've had in a single day in over a month. Somehow we were rather tired in the evening. Must be the age.

Another day with little to show. Baked some bread, planned a shed for the horses, and did some inevitable work in the garden, including planting two of yesterday's plants (the Bottle Tree and the Bird of Paradise flower). We're still trying to work out where to put the Cycad. Somehow, despite its size, our garden is filling up.

Things that go jump in the night

In the garden we found some tell-tale tracks:

The kangaroos are back, and they've been chewing on our plants. For some reason they like Heartsease (the remains of which are shown above). They also like acacias, and they've had several attempts at a couple that are still barely surviving. Decided to put some old plastic drink bottles to good purpose:

Fresh sardines for dinner, which we did on the barbecue. That required a new cylinder of gas: our old one had run out a couple of days ago, and the spare I thought we had was nowhere to be seen. It's probably a sign of the culture that there's no petrol station between Napoleons and Rokewood, but the Dereel General Store (phone 5346 1391, a number we had difficulty finding) has barbecue gas.

Sardines taste good, but the preparation is rather intensive:

Another day with little to report. My email inbox is getting larger all the time, and this morning I had nearly 5000 messages in it. I had intended to get rid of 2000, but in the end didn't quite make it. It leaves me wondering, though, how long it would take somebody with a monstrosity like Microsoft “Outlook” to process 2000 messages, even just to delete them.

Finally chopped down the fruit tree to the north-east of the house, the one that was too cramped. It's a pity; the fruit must have tasted wonderful, and it's sad to have to chop down something of that size, but it really didn't fit. Now we have to decide what to do with the area.

Telstra has finally paid up in full! Or at least they tell me they have: it'll be credited to my phone bill. I had to write three letters to them, none of which were answered (this one just said “Custumor feedback such as this, whilst [sic] unfavourable, is appreciated”). The fact that it was the writer's own incompetence is, of course, not mentioned.

Getting the horses under cover for the winter is becoming a priority. Last winter (after moving to Dereel) we had no shelter, and Yvonne had to rug them all through the winter. We still don't have the money to build a real shed for them, but we have one of the old dog sheds standing empty. It's high enough, so we're planning to fold out one wall by 90° as a wind break, providing an entrance for the horses in the process, and remove the innards of the shed. The biggest issue is that the rafters are propped up by small posts across the width of the wall, so we're going to have to replace them by a beam. Into town with the Yeardley's big trailer to buy wood for that, and also used the opportunity to buy some shelving for the cupboards in the house, many of which, 10 months after we moved in, are still full of packing boxes.

Australia goes metric

Australia officially adopted the “metric system” in the early 1970s, more than 30 years ago. This means that all our boards are measured in metric units: 3.6 m, 4.5 m, 5.4 m. Always a factor of 0.9, the difference between a yard and a metre (4, 5 and 6 yards in this case). And I saw some electric saws on sale today with a 254 mm blade (10 feet). When will we really go “metric”?

Not much garden work today, for a change. Instead spent some time trying to install shelving, progressing at a snail's pace. At this rate, I calculate it'll take me two months. But of course it won't: most of the time was just spent looking for tools and working out how to do the job. On the positive side, found a circular saw that my father must have brought from Bendigo years ago. It still works and is a great help.

Greasy heel forever

Darah's Greasy Heel (or whatever it really is) is still not healing up. We had thought that it was sensitivity to light, so we bandaged up the legs; but it's now getting worse again, not better, despite treatment. Looks like yet another visit to the vet—it's cost us over $1000 already.

Broken web pages, instalment 4711

It's only been a few weeks since I last complained about the SBS web site. Now they've managed to has mess it up again. If this link doesn't show a PHP stack back trace, there's a copy here.

It seems that the hp3 referred to in the message is the end of the URL. Now you can get to it via the link without the file name part, but that doesn't seem to be the correct one. With a bit of searching I found my programme at http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/2008-05-10/SBS%20Regional. They've also frobbed it so that a downloaded copy of the original no longer displays correctly. On the positive side, they have reinstated the hidden details—but only for the evening programme. Clearly somebody in their programming team thinks that the rest of the programme isn't important enough to describe by default. Sheesh.

Advertising is bad!

In that connection, it's interesting to note that NineMSN (yes, “MSN” stands for “Microsoft Notwork”; enough said) sued IceTV for publishing details about their programme. IceTV won in the first instance, but they lost the appeal.

But why sue them in the first place? You'd think that a TV station would want people to watch their programmes, and they're clearly incapable of describing their programme themselves: they go one step further than SBS and require you to select a separate page for every programme. On my admittedly slow connection, it takes 10 seconds per programme, only to frequently discover there is no description. And of course the pages are not standards compliant and render incorrectly on my screen:

Presumably they're intended for Microsoft users only.

The article above states:

Most industry observers speculate that Nine has vigorously fought this action to diminish the power of viewers effectively building their own programming, recording and skipping shows via EPGs -a significant threat to advertising revenue.

That's quite possible, of course, but in my opinion it shows a basic misunderstanding: Nine isn't the only channel broadcasting in Australia, and the programme isn't good enough that people would normally visit on chance—arguably, in fact, it's the worst of the lot. So by not advertising their programme, they're losing, not gaining.

More work on the shelving today. I finally finished the framework for the first shelf! That sounds like nothing, and it is, of course. As usual, it wasn't the work, it was finding out how to do it with the tools at my disposal and coordinating it with other things I need to do.

One of these days I'm going to write a rant about plasterboard. On the right side of the cupboard there's only one stud, so the frame needs to be attached to the plasterboard. And this stuff is so soft! Spent quite some time before I found a combination of screws and plugs that would hold in the bloody stuff.

Finally got things finished, but then it occurred to me that this is the cupboard where I need to bring in cables from under the house, so I can't go any further. Now I need to pluck up my courage and crawl under the house. Maņana, at the earliest.

The final draft for “Beautiful Architecture” is due in on 15 May, US time (in other words, 16 May), and I spent most of the day working on that, mainly to consider the feedback that I received a month ago. The main question is: when describing a system architecture, do you just describe the things that make it special, or all things that differ from the norm? The Tandem/16 had an interesting instruction set and memory model. It didn't make it any more reliable, but I feel that it's an interesting thing to include in the chapter, while the editors thought it might be off-topic.

CJ along today to help us convert the dog shed into a horse shed:

It kept us going all day, and we didn't quite get finished, but considering the quality of the material, some of which was completely rotten, I was quite happy with the result. The shed was obviously once a cowshed: CJ recognized some of the equipment that was still there.