du reporting incorrectly
Yesterday I answered a question by Dewayne Geraghty on the FreeBSD-questions mailing list: why does du produce incorrect output?. Why, does du produce incorrect output? No, it doesn't, as I explained in my answer. But I missed one point: there's a new option, --si. Why two --? That looks so Linux-like. But no, it's been there for 7 years (so eureka doesn't know about it), and as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't need to be there at all. From the man page: --si "Human-readable" output. Use unit suffixes: Byte, Kilobyte, Megabyte, Gigabyte, Terabyte and Petabyte based on powers of 1000.
OM Capture
Investigating my coming OM System OM-1 Mark II today. There's a lot of documentation. Eleven years ago the Olympus OM-D E-M1 came with a 165 page manual. The OM-1 Mark II has 566 pages, more than 3 times as much. Hopefully I'll find what I'm looking for. One thing that I did find was a reference to (but no URL for) a software product called OM Capture, which connects a camera to a Real Computer (well, one running Microsoft, anyway). Why hadn't I heard of it, especially as it seems to work with at least my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II?
Bloody Multi_key again!
For reasons I don't understand, the Multi_key on my Emacs stopped working again. Why? I spent a lot of pain, starting last December, to get it to work again, which involved installing the development version of Emacs and fixing it to play nice with X. But ?I didn't change anything?, and now it no longer works. Off again to look on the web, and found this bug report: the original Multi_Key problem has been resolved. OK, update my development version. It wasn't a big step, 31.0.50.20240718,3 -> 31.0.50.20241017,3. Multi_key works, but I was back with other problems with Wayland, and for reasons I don't understand, it claimed init file errors, though it was too polite to say which.
More NBN outages
In mid-morning we went off the net-again! This time was different, though: the display on the NTD was normal. But nothing was going down the ?wire?. And of course the terminally broken Aussie Broadband phone app showed that the connection was up. OK, for the fun of it, power cycle the NTD and restart dhclient. It worked! Oh. For nearly a minute. Then it went offline again. This time the ODU LED was red. Nothing much to do there. Aussie still claimed that I was up. OK, maybe if I run the diagnostics they'll see the error of their ways. ?Check Connection?.
RIP Darl McBride
On 16 September of this year, Darl McBride died. Who? He was the man who turned SCO around. In early 2002, then called Caldera International, they released the source code to older Unix free of charge under a liberal license. Were they ever the good guys! But a little over a year later, after changing name, management and direction, they sued IBM for (to quote the current version of SCO_Group,_Inc._v._International_Business_Machines_Corp.) : SCO claimed that IBM had, without authorization, contributed SCO's intellectual property to the codebase of the open source, Unix-like Linux operating system.
More KardiaMobile pain
It seems that yesterday's guess about how to pair the KardiaMobile 6L was not completely accurate. It will display an ?empty battery? symbol even if it thinks it is paired. I didn't get a photo (and it's too secure to allow screen shots), but basically it shows it as being normally connected, only the empty battery symbol is displayed. Sometimes it will come to its senses (or is that sensors?) if you put your fingers on it. Other times, like this evening, it won't. Lots of messing around and eventually it worked, but I still don't understand what the issue is.
More Android pain
A few days ago Yvonne's phone started producing random backgrounds when turned on. They're really irritating, and today I investigated what was causing them. Ah, that's not a bug: it's a misfeature, called ?Wallpaper Carousel?. I suppose that it's modern that that page describes only security implications, and not how to turn the bloody thing off. When I did find out how (Settings ? Lock Screen), it seemed surprised that I would want to stop it. But thankfully it's gone now.
Friday's tracking revisited
Why did Google Maps give me such a ridiculous timeline on Friday? It could be Google Maps, or it could be my phone. Today I checked the track log collected by Mendhak GPS logger, as processed by Wikiloc: So it's at least Google Maps. But looking at that Wikiloc trail in more detail shows, at the east end of my journey: That position in the extreme south-east is fully 400 m from where I was, at the Malaysian Laksa House.
Academia surpasses itself
On a daily basis I get emails from Academia.edu with subject lines like ?$1, 30 day trial. Are you the ?G. Lehey? cited in Operating Systems papers?? or even ?Are you the Greg Lehey who wrote "Treasurer"??. Based on that information, there's no way to know; I have to pay to correct their records. But now they've come out with another tack: 69 ND 03-11-2024 To grogac@lem ( 903) Mentioned by Greg Le ND $1, 30 day trial. ?G. Lehey? mentioned by ?Greg Lehey? They want me to pay for mentioning myself!
INTU: remote temperature sensor
Seen on the home page of INTU, a phone health service: It's amazing all the things they can do by telephone.
I hate KardiaMobile!
There's no doubt that the KardiaMobile 6L toy ECG device is useful. But it annoys me on every possible occasion, starting with this silly deliberate confusion between the letters A and ?. That's not as trivial as it seems: the first time I tried it, I recognized the letter V and used it upside down. And how do they market the thing in Greece? Then there's this refusal to let me take screen shots. Why? Much more important, though, is that I get the feeling that they're out to grab money. On every occasion they ask for me to sign up for a really expensive service of dubious utility.
Google Maps: blessing or curse?
As always, I used Google Maps for the trip. Annoyingly, as so often, it had forgotten the detailed itinerary that I had sent yesterday, but it was really helpful getting off the freeway, showing the exact lane I needed to fight my way through the tangle that is the road system. But then it avenged itself. It got upset that it couldn't take me to the entrance of the Melbourne Private Hospital, so it switched to pedestrian mode to help me. And I couldn't get it to switch back to car! Maybe there's something about the user interface of mobile phones that I just don't understand, but I tried everything I could think of without success.
Preparing for hospitalization
Yvonne is off to the Melbourne Private Hospital tomorrow for a catheter ablation, which will involve her being in overnight. Boredom? Time to set up the Facebook app on her phone. And to make things bearable, she should use voice input. That works fine on my phone, but not on hers: ?No permission to enable Voice typing?. Huh? Off to look at the keyboard settings, but without any success. And for once Google Gemini had nothing useful to say. Finally I found it: That's only approximate, of course, like all Android documentation.
More Bank Australia fun
Paper mail today, one each for Yvonne and me. Not our Bank Australia debit cards?they arrived on Tuesday?but the corresponding PINs. I had already set mine, so I gave the other to Yvonne: Yvonne didn't like the PIN that Bank Australia gave her. Not a problem: she can change it. Just log in and follow the undocumented menu tree. But she couldn't log in! Wrong password! But we only set it yesterday. OK, ask for a new password. Sorry, can't identify your account. Huh? Off to my computer, where I was able to make the request with no trouble.