USB issues through the years
Why can't I connect my new OM System OM-1 Mark II to hydra via USB? Apart from the camera itself, it was the only invariable in yesterday's failure. But it's not the first time I've had problems with USB. One of the few commits I've made to the FreeBSD source tree in recent years was a set of ?quirks? to make life easier with other Olympus cameras. Since then the stack has learnt to recognize what it needs?it says: Nov 13 11:55:47 hydra kernel: usb_msc_auto_quirk: UQ_MSC_NO_TEST_UNIT_READY set for USB mass storage device OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII (0x33a2:0x013a) Nov 13 11:55:47 hydra kernel: usb_msc_auto_quirk: UQ_MSC_NO_PREVENT_ALLOW set for USB mass storage device OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII (0x33a2:0x013a) Nov 13 11:55:47 hydra kernel: usb_msc_auto_quirk: UQ_MSC_NO_SYNC_CACHE set for USB mass storage device OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII (0x33a2:0x013a) Nov 13 11:55:48 hydra kernel: ugen0.3: <OMSYSTEM OM-1MarkII> at usbus0 Nov 13 11:55:48 hydra kernel: ...
A new camera!
To my mild surprise, received email this morning: my camera is waiting for me in ?NAPOLEON?. I had an appointment for a haircut anyway, so I was able to pick it up on the way home. First impression: part of a kit that also included a M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-40mm F2.8 PRO II. It came with the instructions for the lens (94 pages, 28 languages) and a ?Basic manual? with only 300 pages, compared to the 566 pages of the full manual. But that's misleading: the manual is also in 28 languages, so there were fewer than 10 pages in English.
SD cards: decision
Spent far too much time trying to find an optimal SD card today, not helped by the poor choice of search criteria and apparent bugs in eBay's web site: change the order from ?Best Match? (which I think means ?fastest query?) to ?Price + Postage: lowest first?, and many items disappear. The sort order is also not correct. I must have spent 4 hours investigating this stuff. At the rates I charged as a consultant, I could have bought dozens of cards for less. But in the end I bought the 64 GB Lexar Professional 1800X SDXC UHS-II card that I was looking at yesterday.
Where's my camera?
Now it's Monday. I bought my new OM System OM-1 Mark II last Wednesday, and since Thursday, 4 days ago, Australia Post claims that it has been ripening in Malaga. Checked again round midday. No change! Ah, but we were just testing you. Later in the day it had miraculously made its way to Bayswater, Victoria, a distance of 3,450 km, without passing through any airports: Where's Bayswater? Out in the extreme east of Melbourne, nowhere near the airport. What's it doing there?
A new chapter, and thoughts on a pivotal year for C++
Starting today I’m excited to be working on a new team, with my C++ standards and community roles unchanged. I also wanted to write a few words about why I’m excited about continuing to invest my time heavily in C++’s standardization and evolution especially now, because I think 2024 has been a pivotal year for … Continue reading A new chapter, and thoughts on a pivotal year for C++ →
SD cards: the pain
I'm still looking for answers for yesterday's choice of an SD card. eBay is a catastrophe. How about digiDirect? Not much easier. Surely these people must understand what criteria people are looking for. Back to eBay and somehow managed to find a card that would do the job?32 GB, 270 MB/s, round $49 (as opposed to about $13 for slower cards). That's the read speed, of course. What speed was the all-important write speed? I can't find it any more: the last one must have been sold or fallen through their broken sort system. But while I was at it, found a 64 GB card which was honest enough to give its speeds: V60 II, 10 in an open circle, 3 in a bathtub, 4K, 270 MB/s read, 180 MB/s write.
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.