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| Tuesday, 9 March 2010 | Dereel | Images for 9 March 2010 |
Planning to go to town today, so started copying MP3s to my SD card. I do that with the Apple for reasons that I forget. The player in the car is pretty simplistic: it plays the files in the order it finds them in the directory, which in general is not what I want. So I use special scripts to copy them, and I need an empty file system to start with.
Just started copying when I realised I had done something wrong, so hit ^C to restart. The system hung, and I had to reboot. After rebooting, tried to “erase” the card (rebuild the file system), but all the options on “Disk Utility” were greyed out. No explanation why. I don't know the command to build an MS-DOS file system on Apple, so tried just copying again, this time with a shell script, which told me: “Read-only file system”. Why doesn't “Disk Utility” tell me that? Once it was UNIX with the reputation of ambiguous error messages, as one of the fortunes in the FreeBSD fortune program recalls:
Ken Thompson has an automobile which he helped design. Unlike most automobiles, it has neither speedometer, nor gas gauge, nor any of the numerous idiot lights which plague the modern driver. Rather, if the driver makes any mistake, a giant “?” lights up in the center of the dashboard. “The experienced driver”, he says, “will usually know what's wrong.”
Now, it seems, modern software gets error indications, but it doesn't want to scare the poor end user, so it suppresses even the “?”. You'd think that it's better to frustrate the end user than potentially scare him.
But the card wasn't set to read-only. Did a bit more playing around, and in the end the Apple refused to see the card at all. I got the feeling that the card might be defective, but put it in swamp, my FreeBSD test box, and it worked fine—and the MP3 player in the car played the tracks in random order. No idea what's wrong with the Apple, but it's not telling either.
Into town this morning with the pump to get a replacement from the Ballarat Pump Shop. They're the other end of town, and they have a remarkably run-down appearance, but I've been happy with their expertise in the past. Spoke to Amy, described the problem, and she said that they could repair the pump in a couple of hours. Explained that we were from out of town, and she put it on a test bench, were it worked perfectly: there was a non-return valve in the supply line. So bought a non-return valve, which she fitted for me, and away after paying a total of $30 in repairs—much less than I expected.
While we were there, spoke to another mechanic about surge limiters for the bore pump. They won't work: without that surge, the pump just won't start. He recommended me to get an inverter to start it off—it'll need to deliver a surge of about 35A, as he discovered from his documentation. That's enormous! Our whole house power supply is only rated at 63A. Down to an electronic shop, where they had inverters from Jaycar, but the biggest one only delivered a surge power of 3.5 kW, or about 15A, and it cost $529. It's clear that I can't get the current I'm looking for at a price I can pay. We'll have to investigate the diesel generator again.
Then down to Big W looking for coffee machines and millipede repellent. The only coffee machine we found at a price we were prepared to pay cost about $16, but it had a mesh filter, and the shape didn't really accept filter bags, so gave up on that and looked at what Warehouse Sales had. They only had a single coffee machine, a big espresso maker that cost roughly 50 times the price of the one we saw at Big W. So we'll wait for a special somewhere.
Didn't find anything for killing millipedes either. The person managing the garden department told me to go to Bunnings and look for a specific product: she had ordered it before Christmas and was still waiting for it to trickle down the Woolworths' hierarchy. She was clearly very angry about the matter.
The batteries in my cordless drill are gradually giving up the ghost. It must be years since I bought it, and I've been looking for a replacement for some time. Replacement batteries aren't the answer: firstly, they're not available, and if they were, they'd probably cost more than the $30 I paid for it. I even bought another really cheap model without speed regulation for $10, but it seems that the days are gone when the market was flooded with them. The cheapest I've seen so far cost round $100, and I've seen high-end models costing as much as $800. Not the money I want to spend replacing batteries.
At Big W, found a drill that looked pretty much like what I was looking for. Only $50 with “82 accessories”. How many batteries? Does it even have a charger? No mention—just a few buzzwords. Here's the entire description:
Clearly you'd expect one battery and a charger, but is there a second? No mention, just that there are 32 screwdriver bits and 22 drills. You have to look at the photo of the kit to guess what the other 28 accessories are: but it did show two batteries, so bought it in the hope that this was part of the description.
Then to Formosa Gardens looking for millipede killer. Again, nothing much—just something for lawns, and another with the warning “not to be used for edible plants”. I was trying to keep them out of the tomatoes, so that was no good. Why is there almost nothing to combat millipedes? The assistant at Formosa confirmed that she, too, had had a lot of problems with millipedes lately. Is it just a matter of documentation? There are lots of sprays for caterpillars and grubs. Is their metabolism so different from that of millipedes? In the end bought a spray against caterpillars and things. We'll see how that works.
Back home and connected up the pump. Another case of good news, bad news. Yes, the pump cut out and didn't cut back in, so we have final confirmation that we don't have any significant leak on the high pressure side. But the (brass) non-return valve leaked! There's a seam where it appears to be screwed together, and water was spurting out there for about 50 cm in each direction. Tried to unscrew it to tape it up, but it seems that wasn't intended: instead I broke off the thread, which appears to have been (badly) cemented.
Nothing for it: after some cursing and swearing, back to the Ballarat Pump Shop with the remains. At least Amy didn't accuse me of breaking the thing, but I asked her to pressure test the replacement, and that leaked too, though not as badly. She didn't try another; they're going to send the whole lot back. Instead she found a plastic unit and tested that; no problem, but it cost me $10 more.
Back home to replace it, this time with replaced high-pressure connections too. The additional length of the non-return valve meant that I had to change the hose on that side as well. Amy tells me that the Philmac connectors I had been using were no good, and that the O-ring would leak after being taken apart. I said that I had been using them for years, and they had always worked for me, to which she said “You should report it to them. It must be the only one that does”. So to be on the safe side I bought their favourite kind. Also asked her about her experience of Davey pumps: they're the worst she knows, apparently. Most of the pumps they repair are Daveys. At least this time it confirms my own opinion.
The connectors have four parts: the body of the connector itself (here an elbow), a plug which fits into it (here the Philmac version with an O ring), a compression sleeve and the cover. The plug fits into the hose on the right, with ribs that stop it coming loose, and into the body on the other side. The cover presses the sleeve onto the end of the hose, ensuring a tight fit.
Fairly straightforward stuff, and it works well. The main difference in the new connectors was a tube about 4 cm long instead of the O-ring, which fitted closely inside the body. So I put two connectors on each end of a short piece of pipe and took the fitting to the pump. Pulled back the cover, and the sleeve came with it: the sleeves on these new fittings have something like barbs on them, and they catch inside the cover.
How do you get the thing back out again? The hose was only about 20 cm long, and I had cleverly pulled the cover back so that it was touching the other cover. No way to get at the sleeve any more. I couldn't pull the cover down with the sleeve inside: that's what they're designed to stop. In the end, I had to cut the hose and remove the covers and sleeves, then cut the hose off from the ribbed part of the inside connector, and start again. 20 minutes' time wasted because of this bloody sleeve.
Carefully back to the pump and tried again—and despite my caution, it happened again! GROWL! Back to the garage, cut the thing apart again, and managed to jab the knife into my thumb:
Bloody indeed! Spent some time tending to the thumb, and came across the idea of not putting the sleeves on until I was ready to tighten up: they have a gap at one point (very bottom on the photo above), and they're flexible enough to fit around the hose. After about an hour, finally finished what should have been 10 minutes' work and got the thing running again. 4 days without water! I never want to see a pump again.
| Wednesday, 10 March 2010 | Dereel | Images for 10 March 2010 |
My light meter arrived today, and with it some of the worst documentation I have ever seen. They thoughtfully included a 9V battery, so clearly the first thing was to put it in. But where? There doesn't seem to be anywhere to insert it. Even the flap on the back only reveals an (undocumented) adjusting screw:
As they say, if all else fails, read the instructions. So I did. They're 7 pages long, and don't even include the obligatory safety warnings, though they do include specifications. Only 4 pages are relevant:
The parts and positions diagram doesn't show where the battery compartment is, and the instructions for changing the battery don't say where it is. There's nothing obvious on the body of the unit. Gave up and decided to contact the vendor, but first looked at the description on the auction:
A removable cover! Not mentioned anywhere in the “documentation”. Nor, of course, how to remove it. It proved to be flexible enough to just bend and pull off, after which I finally found the battery compartment:
But what an effort! Why can't they write documentation any more? Played around with the unit and tried to measure flash intensities with it. Complete failure; it doesn't recognize the flash at all. Looking at the description (about which I complained last week), it seems that it only offers a maximum reading, which does work. I had thought it also included the term “flash”, but those were the others. All of them seem to make about 2 measurements a second, and it seems that they measure the instantaneous light, so it would be a complete coincidence if the flash went off just then.
Taking the photos of the pipe fittings for yesterday's diary proved more of a problem than I had expected. The first photo came out fine, but then I wanted one with the elbow as well, and that was greatly underexposed. Changed the aperture from f/8 to f/4 and saw absolutely no difference:
Discovered that I had the studio flash units turned down to a fraction of their (not very high) maximum intensity, so turned the up, and still saw absolutely no difference (first photo). For these photos I was triggering the studio flash units as slaves via the camera internal flash—and they did, indeed flash. Closed the flash unit and connected them via the cable, as I had done for the very first, correctly exposed photo (not shown here), and got a completely overexposed image:
Looking at the photos afterwards show that it's clear the studio units didn't contribute at all to the first three images: the shadows are missing. So one conclusion is that they must not have fired quickly enough. When I triggered with the cable, they fired correctly.
But that's not all. The camera's flash has a guide number of about 11. The photos were taken at a distance of about 1 metre, so the minimum aperture would have been f/11. The first three photos were taken in manual mode at f/4 and f/8, so the flash was powerful enough to expose the image correctly, but it was greatly underexposed. They were also exposed almost identically, so it seems that the camera thinks that this was a correct exposure. There's something very wrong with this situation (including the automatic exposure, which would have given me an aperture of about f/2.2, far too wide for this kind of photo).
Harvested some more potatoes today, not too early: some of them are sprouting again. Like the tomatoes, some of them have also been eaten by millipedes. Sprayed the tomatoes with the new spray (with the particularly specific name “Success”), but a direct hit with the spray didn't do much to them. Hopefully they'll crawl away and die, but possibly we'll have to accept that “Success” is a failure as far as millipedes are concerned.
So now I have tree almost identical cordless drills:
The yellow one is the oldest; it's been effectively useless for years, since its batteries died. I bought the red one in the hope that the batteries would be compatible, which they are from the point of view of electrical characteristics and shape. But the position and shape of the clips are different. The blue one (which I bought yesterday) is really almost identical to the red one; I'd guess it comes from the same factory. It certainly uses the same moulds for the casing. It would be handy to have two drills, but once again they have changed the clips. The battery from the new drill doesn't fit either of the other two drills. Three different connectors, all for the same battery type. Why do people do this?
It's also a clear reason why it's as good as impossible to get replacement batteries.
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. I try to leave the pages here for two days; you'll find them all in the archive, so if I fall behind a day or two, you may find more here. 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. 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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