Revisiting old photos
Fifteen years ago we took some photos of Nemo during puppy training. The results weren't good. We were using my E-30, and for Yvonne I set it to the AUTO exposure method, and for some reason (probably inappropriate metering including the sky), all the images came out underexposed. A few years later I did some comparisons between the various processing methods that I was using at that time. But that, too, was 8 years ago. What do things look like now? In particular, how much do my modified DxO PhotoLab settings and ?Perfectly Clear? improve things? Today I tried a five-way comparison: original, processed with UFRaw (a package that hasn't been updated in 10 years), my DxO processing of 7 years ago, the same image optimized with Perfectly Clear, and finally my current processing: ...
The next batch of CTO Fellows are reimagining healthcare
These seven Now Go Build CTO Fellows are reimagining healthcare from the ground up. Proving that the most effective solutions emerge when technology is shaped by the communities that use it.
Is it legal to use copyrighted works to train LLMs?
Two widely-reported court rulings in San Francisco found that employing copyrighted works to train Large Language Models (LLMs) fell within the law?s ?fair use? provisions. The fact that writers brought these lawsuits shows that they felt wronged by the use of their works to train LLMs without their permission. What should we make of those rulings?
Bloody Android!
More fun with Android devices today. I've noticed that the Google Maps speed display on my phone briefly drops out from time to time. Why? Problems with the GPS receiver? With the phone? With the app? Who can tell? When I got home, checked where Yvonne was. Somewhere in town, but ?she? had stopped sharing her location with me. That wasn't her choice, I'm sure. Google Maps had decided it for some reason. When she got home, she had a tale of woe to tell, not just with her phone. She had tried to call me, but the call didn't go through: it was just dead.
M.2 SSD woes
More investigation of my SSD problems today. Jamie Fraser came up with this (PDF) summary of the Lenovo V520S configuration. The important part is M.2 Solid State Drive (SSD)/PCIe NVMe,PCIe 3.0 x 4,32 Gb/s A check with Google Gemini confirms: Protocols/Interfaces: This is the crucial part. The keying only dictates the physical shape.
I hate the Ports Collection
Somehow I've been fighting the FreeBSD Ports Collection for decades. The idea is good: a unified method for installing and maintaining all ports and their dependencies. The reality looks different. I want to update exiftool. Where is it? You'd expect it in /usr/ports/graphics/exiftool. But no, it's a Perl program, so they have obfuscated the name. But how? === root@hydra (/dev/pts/11) ~ 82 -> pkg search exiftool pkg: repository FreeBSD contains packages for wrong OS version: FreeBSD:13:amd64 === root@hydra (/dev/pts/11) ~ 83 -> uname -a FreeBSD hydra.lemis.com 13.4-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 13.4-PRERELEASE #1 stable/13-n258139-35bde8969eb6-dirty: Sun Jul 28 08:42:07 AEST 2024 grog@hydra.lemis.com:/home/obj/home/src/FreeBSD/git/stable/13/amd64.amd64/sys/GENERIC amd64 So what's that about?
New M.2 SSD
My new 1 TB M.2 SSD arrived today. It looks slightly different from the one in ex-disdain (bottom): What's that? Reading the Wikipedia page explained some of it: the gaps are for keys, B and M. M gives 4 PCI Express lanes, B only 2. That's OK with me. But it doesn't work! Why? I can see three possibilities: B and M devices don't work on motherboards designed for M only.
Pilau instructions
The instructions for the pilau were interesting for a number of reasons. Apart from their confusion about the size of cups, I had: Heat 1 cup (175ml) of cooking oil and fry 1 (75g) small, finely liced onion until golden. Use long grain old basmati rice. Beginners must use parboiled/Sayla rice. Do they really want to (deep) fry 75 g of onion in a 175 ml cup of oil? Or is this a mistake?
Travelling the world with Google Maps
Google Maps is quite useful for a number of things, but Google seems to have a ?there can only be one? mentality. What I do in one place (office computers, phone, TV) gets relayed to the others, even to the point of changing vehicle or map view. And it produces nonsense like this: That's in Hamburg (and coincidentally the title of an ancient film). Surely Google Maps, of all apps, should know that I haven't been within 10,000 km of that location.
Qobuz and Mac
Back in March I offered Latest Music (feat. Qobuz), describing all the ways I listen to music (Tl;dr: YouTube Music, Plex, Qobuz, record player). I stand by my opinions there but wanted to write more on two subjects: First Qobuz, because it suddenly got a lot better. And a recommendation, for people with fancy A/V setups, that you include a cheap Mac Mini. Qobuz That other piece from had a list of the reasons to use Qobuz, but times have changed, so let?s revise it: It pays artists more per stream than any other service, by a wide margin.
Preparing new lagoon
Somehow I have a horror of doing work on computers lately. I'm continually running into unexpected issues. But it has to be done. I've ordered a new M.2 SSD for what is currently disdain.lemis.com. After discovering that it was barely faster than distress.lemis.com, I decided to turn it into a new machine for Yvonne. OK, but how do I get the old SSD out? I had had issues with the SSD when I got the box: the retaining screw for the SSD couldn't be tightened or loosened. How do I change it? More investigation showed that the SSD is mounted on a removable plastic frame: And as I suspected, there's a loose nut on ...
Long Links
?Wow, Tim, didn?t you do a Long Links just last month? Been spending too much time doomscrolling, have we?? Maybe. There sure are a lot of tabs jostling each other along the top of that browser. Many are hosting works that are both long and good. So here they are; you probably don?t have time for all of ?em but my hope is that one or two might reward your visit. Let?s start with a really important subject: Population growth oh actually these days it?s population shrinkage. For a short-sharp-shock-flavored introduction I recommend South Korea Is Over which explains the brick wall societies with fertility rates way below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per woman per lifetime are hurtling toward.
Trip report: June 2025 ISO C++ standards meeting (Sofia, Bulgaria)
A unique milestone: “Whole new language” Today marks a turning point in C++: A few minutes ago, the C++ committee voted the first seven (7) papers for compile-time reflection into draft C++26 to several sustained rounds of applause in the room. I think Hana “Ms. Constexpr” Dusíková summarized the impact of this feature best a … Continue reading Trip report: June 2025 ISO C++ standards meeting (Sofia, Bulgaria) →
Anatomy of a parcel delivery
I was expecting a parcel delivery today, so round 11:50 checked Australia Post tracking. It told me that it spent the night in Delacombe, a new location for their tracking reports. And at 8:32 it was ?Unable to deliver - Item carded and transferred to post office for collection?. I know that. Though it told me that ?It's on its way?, it's really ready for collection. OK, what does eBay say? So it might arrive yesterday? And now they say that it's at Lucas. Why? Round 14:00 off to pick up the item without any problems. Back home and checked the tracking information.
Checking photo integrity: first results
Mail from Michael Hughes this morning. He does something similar to check the integrity of his photos, but he stores the results in a database. Is that worth it? Shortly after my sha1 run completed. Compare the results: === root@eureka (/dev/pts/0) /Photos/grog 199 -> diff -wu sha1 sha1-9|less --- sha1 2025-06-20 01:59:10.503960000 +1000 +++ sha1-9 2025-06-20 09:50:41.603228000 +1000 @@ -1,22 +1,22 @@ -SHA1 (19100101) = 4fe15d494fda7d9d31ada156b9dc7c9fd9a9fb45 -SHA1 (19100101/orig) = 0144154c165dc86f5c13fe432672afee680e9eb3 +SHA1 (19100101) = 842f2fac8d4907930e8ee206929c367cce6469d2 +SHA1 (19100101/orig) = 7bd17748fe639f257dad3a26aac111faa8211040 -SHA1 (19100101/_Ashampoo_Photo_Optimizer_Backup) = 68b6ef4090869108ebecda125669a4a4f6681022 +SHA1 (19100101/_Ashampoo_Photo_Optimizer_Backup) = 384eec54619f4115ba1d29ced9ce6b6953aca985 Oh.
Bloody Android!
Looked at albo, my Android phone for some reason today. Two missed calls from Yvonne. Dammit, it has been in my pocket all day. And calls aren't muted. And when I tried to call her, I got no response from the phone, not even a ring tone. What's wrong with this bloody thing? Rebooted it, after which it worked normally. But why are these things so horribly unreliable?
DxO: the last configuration option
What was missing from yesterday's copying of DxO PhotoLab configuration information? Was it really the subdirectory Workspaces? Braved stomachache and tried copying the files in that directory: Myspace.xml, __$$Customize.xml and __$$PhotoLibrary.xml. Restart DxO. Yes! My guess is that it's Myspace.xml. The other two were there on installation, though their content differed. So I have the (hopefully) final piece in my HOWTO, at least until I install a new version.
Checking photo integrity
How do I check whether the photos I have on my backup disks are not corrupted? There are various check programs for JPEG images, but do they check for everything? I'm sure they recognize structural problems, but would they recognize a zeroed-out data block in the middle of the image? And of course they only check JPEG, arguably the least interesting of my photo files. Take a step back. If I have corruption somewhere, there are two possibilities: either all copies are corrupt, or there's a version that isn't corrupt. So before I potentially delete the last correct version of a file from my myriad backup disks, I should compare them.
DxO for disdain
Mail from DxO support today: I'm already running DxO on three machines. Please tell us which they are and what operating systems they are running. Well, sorry, can't do that. I'm running on distress and I had been running it on despise, but currently it's not functional. Both running Microsoft. More responses, showing that their license database goes by system name and exact operating system: "Windows? isn't enough. 10? 11? ?Home?? ?Pro?? Gave them that information (?Windows? 10 Pro in each case) and they were happy, allowing me to activate on disdain. Next, copy my configuration. DxO offer no help whatsoever here, and though I have written down how to do it in various places, there was no document to help.
June 2025 C2PA News
Things are happening in the C2PA world; here are a couple of useful steps forward, plus cheers and boos for Adobe. Plus a live working C2PA demo you can try out. Refresher: The C2PA technology is driven by the Content Authenticity Initiative and usually marketed as ?Content Credentials?. I?ve written before about it, an introduction in 2023 and a progress report last October. Let?s start with a picture. I was standing with the camera by the ocean at dusk and accidentally left it in the ?B? long-exposure setting, so this isn?t really a picture of anything but I thought it was kinda pretty.
disdain again
It has been several months since I bought disdain.lemis.com, my first Microsoft ?Windows? machine. I did some basic configuration, and then left it. Why? I hate Microsoft at the best of times, and they have gone and changed the appearance Yet Again. And I was terrified of the pain I would have to go through to set up ?file sharing?. But it has to happen, and today I finally got round to it, in the process updating my living with Microsoft page. On the whole things weren't that bad. I've found that it's easier to search for specific terms than try to guess where in the menu tree Microsoft might have hidden specific configuration functions.
25 years SMPng
Twenty-five years ago today a number of us gathered at Yahoo!' s main facility in Sunnyvale to discuss the future of the FreeBSD kernel. The background was a benchmark from Mindcraft that showed that Microsoft ?Windows? NT greatly outperformed Linux. The reason was the multiprocessor support in each system. And far from getting up on our hind legs and saying ?couldn't happen to FreeBSD?, we acknowledged that it could, in fact, happen. In fact, over 3 years later, on the only occasion when Linus Torvalds visited us, I demonstrated a FreeBSD system which had such problems where Linux didn't. So on today's anniversary we came together to discuss how to improve the situation.
Ports Collection overreach
Time to roll over the log files on fra.lemis.com, which involves restarting the web server. FreeBSD offers this functionality?I think?with the service program, but it's straightforward enough with the apachectl program: === root@fra (/dev/pts/0) /var/log/www 86 -> apachectl graceful Cannot 'graceful' apache24. Set apache24_enable to YES in /etc/rc.conf or use 'onegraceful' instead of 'graceful'. === root@fra (/dev/pts/0) /var/log/www 87 -> apachectl onegraceful Usage: /usr/local/sbin/httpd [-D name] [-d directory] [-f file] ... Oh. Something has half changed apachectl to require intervention in the FreeBSD configuration system. But onerestart (a command that doesn't exist in apachectl) hasn't been catered for.
Optimize your mobile phone camera
Saw an article today on DPreview: Six essential camera settings to improve your phone photos. Never mind that ?improve? and ?essential? are not compatible, nor that I don't really use my phone for photos if I can possibly avoid it: it might be interesting reading. And of course Android made it impossible. There was almost nothing on albo, my Xiaomi Redmi Note 13, that matched anything in the article. About the only thing that I found was the suggestion to set the image format to the match the sensor format. But while searching through the maze of twisty little menus, found this: What is it?
Another bind
Mail from Stephen Rothwell today. Error messages from his name server (ns1.ozlabs.org, one of my name servers): 2025-06-13T10:54:04.461783+10:00 gandalf named[32356]: zone lemis.com/IN: refresh: retry limit for primary 45.63.116.55#53 exceeded (source 150.107.74.76#0) 2025-06-13T10:54:34.471975+10:00 gandalf named[32356]: transfer of 'lemis.com/IN' from 45.63.116.55#53: failed to connect: timed out 2025-06-13T10:54:34.472173+10:00 gandalf named[32356]: transfer of 'lemis.com/IN' from 45.63.116.55#53: Transfer status: timed out Oh. Yes, of course, it's not enough to update the zone. I also have to update my named.conf, which was still pointing to the old address for ffm.lemis.com. Now I have: // ns1 ns3 ns6.gandi.net ns0.krpservers.com ns.ozlabs.org allow-transfer {45.32.70.18; 192.248.184.42; 217.70.177.42; 62.13.128.200; 150.107.74.76; }; ...
Cropping with ImageMagick
Part of today's investigations was to generate cropped images, as above. Not an issue: ImageMagick does that. But somehow I keep forgetting how, and the man pages don't help (I can't find a description of ?geometry? anywhere). OK, dig in my scripts: /Photos/Tools/jpegcompare-detail: ensureconvert $COMPPHOTO $TMPDIR/after-$i-bottom-right.jpeg -crop 300x225+0+0 -gravity south-east OK, I can do that. But it doesn't work! After some searching I discovered that convert is (now) sensitive to the order of arguments, and it seems that an obvious geometry like 300x225-0-0 doesn't work. In the end I ended up writing a new script with the payload for i in $*; do IMAGE=`basename $i .jpeg` convert $i -gravity north-west -crop 600x450+0+0 $IMAGE-topleft.jpeg convert $i -gravity center -crop 600x450-0-0 $IMAGE-centre.jpeg convert $i -gravity south-east -crop 600x450-0-0 ...
named for fra
ffm.lemis.com in its old incarnation is gone. fra.lemis.com has taken over the net proxy, but it only occurred to me today that ffm was also a name server. OK, migrate the name servers, in the process changing IP addresses so that ffm is now a name for fra, 192.248.184.42. Simple: take the configuration from lax.lemis.com (in its incarnation as ns1.lemis.com), frob slightly and start on fra: === root@fra (/dev/pts/2) /usr/local/etc 17 -> service named start /usr/local/etc/namedb/named.conf:7: unix control '/var/run/ndc': not supported /usr/local/etc/rc.d/named: ERROR: named-checkconf for /usr/local/etc/namedb/named.conf failed Huh?
Dead bird
Somebody left a present in our driveway: What is it? Yvonne thought that it was a Star, or starling, and that seems likely. But the German name ?Star? is somehow appropriate: it's a homonym of ?starr?, meaning stiff, and so it was. How did it die? Yvonne thought that it might have flown against a windscreen and broken its neck, but the neck seemed unaffected.
Photo backups: the other shoe
Backups to my first new disk went well. Today's the day for the weekly swap, so put in the second disk. First, connect to distress to save the disk contents (one Microsoft Start_Here_Win.exe and a whole slew of programs in Start_Here_Mac.app). That was a pain: to be on the safe side, I was running the CMD.EXE as administrator, with the unexpected result that it didn't see any of my ?network shares?, and it took me a while to work out what was wrong this time. Preparing the disk for FreeBSD was easier, but not as easy as it should have been: I wrote down the steps last week, but I got them wrong (now corrected).
Google Maps and Android: what a pair!
Into town today. Apart from a haircut and a visit to the Fruit Shack, Yvonne wanted to look at a carpet for sale in Mount Clear. We were to meet there. OK, get the directions from Google Maps and send them to my phone. See that the notification arrived, head off. Enable the route. It's gone! For no obvious reason, the notification had disappeared. And the only way to get the information, including the all-important address, would have been to go back inside to a Real Computer and send it again. No time for that. But Yvonne had told me: down to the roundabout, first left, first left.
eBay lies, or, where's my lens?
Exchanged email with Yana this morning. How's the new lens that I bought for her nearly 2 weeks ago? Send me some sample images. I hadn't told her about the purchase, but she picked it up from the post office last Wednesday, and for some reason didn't comment. She sent me some sample images?from the Leica DG Summilux 15 mm f/1.7 ASPH. that I bought for her over a month ago. And the new lens? What new lens? This one: Ha ha, only joking.
Favourite Unix artefacts
?segaloco?, one of the more active participants on the Unix Heritage Society mailing list, came up with a question: ?Your Most Prized UNIX Artifacts??. Interesting question. Unix is software. What can you keep? Source trees? The freely available ones are on the TUHS site. People won't admit to keeping clandestine copies of copyrighted material. And of course none of the replies referred to source trees. The single most mentioned artefact was the UNIX ?Live free or die? registration plate. And for me? From my reply, with additions: UNIX registration plate.
Testing JPEG integrity
So I have migrated one of my backup disks to the new 16 TB drive. The old 8 TB is free for other purposes, and I have it earmarked for videos. But what if some of the images on the new disk are corrupt, and they're good on the old disk. That could happen, since many of the files on the old disk have been there for years, and it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they could have been damaged on the main disk. How do I check them? Google Gemini to my aid. It came up with some interesting stuff: jpeginfo, of which I had never heard, and also information that ImageMagick's identify command will provide information with the -verbose flag, and exiftool has a -validate option.
OM-1 firmware bug
While planning the photos of the weather stations, tried taking a photo with the OM System OM-1 Mark II and the Leica DG Summilux 15 mm f/1.7 ASPH.. I couldn't autofocus! Much examination showed that there's some compatibility issue between camera and lens. The lens works fine on the Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark III, the Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mark II and the Olympus E-PM2, and it works with the OM-1 Mark III as long as it's not set on C-AF autofocus. Why? The Summilux is unique amongst my Micro Four Thirds system lenses because it has an aperture ring.
Photo backup finished
My 8 TB photo backup ran smoothly and completed in almost exactly 24 hours: sent 7,824,233,002,625 bytes received 39,695,113 bytes 91,034,429.89 bytes/sec total size is 8,657,590,230,554 speedup is 1.11 Filesystem 1048576-blocks Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/da2p1 15,257,008 7,498,588 7,605,849 50% 1,814,798 4,671,344 28% /pb1 Fri 6 Jun 2025 16:29:59 AEST Photo backup started Sat 7 Jun 2025 16:29:19 AEST Photo backup ended And once again the size of the disks isn't the same: === root@eureka (/dev/pts/1) /videobackup 96 -> df -i /Photos /pb1/ Filesystem 1048576-blocks Used Avail Capacity iused ifree %iused Mounted on /dev/ada1p1 15,257,008 7,507,545 7,596,893 50% 1,791,574 4,694,568 ...
More weather station woes
Why do both weather stations fail to communicate at particular times? I had assumed that the old one was gradually dying, but the new one does it too, roughly at the same time as the old one. Surely it can't be the location. Here's an example: The weather station is clearly visible about 12 m away. And the unit is supposed to have a range of 100 m. What's wrong? One clue is that it seems to happen to both stations at the same time.
tiwi disk problems?
While looking at tiwi's log files, saw this: Jun 6 12:15:16 tiwi kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 358465, size: 65536 Jun 6 12:15:16 tiwi kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 290150, size: 4096 Jun 6 12:18:32 tiwi kernel: swap_pager: indefinite wait buffer: bufobj: 0, blkno: 279446, size: 4096 That doesn't look good. That's normally an indication of a dying disk, but normally that would be indicated by other error messages as well. That's all I need.
Still more weather station pain
In mid-evening discovered that the weather station hadn't been logging since shortly before midday. Dammit, what's wrong with this system? I found an endless sequence of Jun 6 19:49:28 tiwi wh1080[23992]: Can't read device: Input/output error or Unknown error (5) Jun 6 19:49:28 tiwi wh1080[23993]: Can't read device: Device busy or Unknown error (16) Jun 6 19:49:31 tiwi wh1080[23997]: Can't read device: Device busy or Unknown error (16) Damn this unreliable system! Tried things that have helped in the past, like disconnecting and reconnecting the USB cable and power cycling the indoor station.
Transcode fail
I download my videos with yt-dlp. During the night not one, but all concurrent downloads failed due to lack of disk space. OK, yt-dlp is good at restarting partial transfers. Try that and get: [Merger] Merging formats into "Result.mp4" ERROR: Postprocessing: Conversion failed! What's that? Yet Another bug or incompatibility to chase!
More storage issues
Videos aren't the only thing where storage is running out. I had replace the 8 TB disk for my photos with a 16 TB disk 9 months ago, but the backup disks are still only 8 TB, so on Tuesday I ordered 2 16 TB backup disks. Today they arrived, so to Napoleons to pick them up, also looking in to Sebastopol to pick up some fruit and vegetables that Yvonne forgot on Wednesday. 32 TB in a small box! That's the equivalent of 20,000 IBM 3330 disk drive systems, the benchmark of my youth, each of which required an estimated 10 to 20 m² of floor space, not including power and cooling.
Storage woes
I'm running out of storage space on tiwi:/spool, one of the disks on which I store videos. And I'm downloading more. In the middle of the night I ran out of space, terminating a number of video loads. Most of the storage space is for series: I keep the episodes after looking at them, and some individual series take up over 500 GB of storage. What should I do? I have a choice: delete something or add more storage. A combination would also work. I don't want to delete them, so more storage is the answer, and I have it, currently: === grog@tiwi (/dev/pts/1) ~ 352 -> df -c /spool/ /VB2/ /Video/ Filesystem 1048576-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ada0p4 7.567.870 7.422.409 69.782 99% /spool /dev/da0p1 ...
AI Angst
My input stream is full of it: Fear and loathing and cheerleading and prognosticating on what generative AI means and whether it?s Good or Bad and what we should be doing. All the channels: Blogs and peer-reviewed papers and social-media posts and business-news stories. So there?s lots of AI angst out there, but this is mine. I think the following is a bit unique because it focuses on cost, working backward from there. As for the genAI tech itself, I guess I?m a moderate; there is a there there, it?s not all slop. But first?
Speicherstadt transformation
The German TV series ?Notruf Hafenkante? is set in the Speicherstadt in Hamburg. It's a fascinating place. Here a photo from the German Wikipedia: While watching an episode of ?Notruf Hafenkante? tonight, I suspected?correctly?a transposition of a view out of the window. OK, Google Maps, show me some ?street views?. This one certainly stood out: That's not Hamburg! It's München! Well, it's about as plausible as this image, courtesy of National Geographic, which I discovered 10 years ago: That view (of the centre of München) is a real condemnation of National Geographic.
Can't contact fra
While trying to sync to my web servers today, received a connection error message from fra.lemis.com. Trying again with ssh gave me: === grog@hydra (/dev/pts/18) ~/Photos/20250603 289 -> ssh fra ssh: connect to host fra.lemis.com port 22: Connection refused Disconnected at Thu 5 Jun 2025 12:08:26 AEST What's that? It proved that sshd wasn't running, at least not the one I wanted to connect to. Fortunately I had a couple of connections open, so I was able to restart it with little trouble. But what if I hadn't?
The devil you know
So what new weather station do I buy? Do I buy a new weather station? Yes, the current WS1091 is really unreliable, but it's not clear that others are any better. It is clear that I would have to do considerable work to interface a new one to my system. So: I can live with changing the batteries occasionally. Will the thing talk to the base station when it's mounted in the correct place? Put it up there provisionally: Yes, there are no wind measurements (the vanes haven't been fitted, and they wouldn't turn anyway), but that's no worse than what I've had for the last year or two.
More storage!
My computer storage requirements continue to increase, mainly because of multimedia. I now have 18 TB of videos: Filesystem 1048576-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on /dev/ada0p4 7,567,870 7,380,176 112,015 99% /spool /dev/da0p1 5,722,572 4,592,114 1,073,232 81% /VB2 hydra:/Video 3,815,019 3,340,961 435,907 88% /Video total 17,105,462 15,313,427 1,620,980 90% And though my photo storage is just below the 8 TB limit of my backup disks, it won't stay that way for long.
Web site activity over the years
My web server loads seem to be subsiding again, though there's evidence of load averages above 10: last pid: 63326; load averages: 0.51, 0.39, 0.348 That third place after the decimal at the end of the line is the result of one of the three being above 10, shifting the text one line to the right. When it goes down again, the last digit doesn't get erased. But by chance I found this: On 30 January 2004 you had a total of 2875 HTML hits.
More weather station investigations
Can my new WS1081 weather station run on and charge Nickel-Cadmium batteries? The first is easy to check: put in some charged batteries and see what happens. It works! So at least part of the instructions are wrong. And charging them? That will take a while to confirm. What does Google Gemini say? The WS1081 weather station itself does not recharge batteries directly. Outdoor Sensor (Multi-sensor): Often uses 2 x AA rechargeable batteries, and in some versions, it's solar-powered, which can help prolong the life of the rechargeable batteries. Oh.
Reddit confusion
I signed up for Reddit years ago, and I almost never used it. But there are some interesting links on weather stations (r/myweatherstation), so I tried to sign in. ?User name or password invalid?, their way of saying ?we have forgotten about you?. OK, sign up again with a different name. Sorry, Groogle taken. Groogled taken. Groogledddd taken. Sorry, Reddittttt, you're lying. Finally found a way around its broken user name recognition and signed up. Wait for confirmation message. Message doesn't show. Try again. Same thing. Try again. Same thing. ?We're having problems?. But then I found a way to register without an email address (why?)
Weather stations reconsidered
So what new weather station do I buy? All are more expensive than the one I have (I think), and all will require me to adapt my software. And then I saw the title of the instruction manual for my current WS1081: TOUCH SCREEN WEATHER STATION WITH SOLAR POWERED Yes, that's what they wrote. But inside it states (top of page 7): Rechargeable batteries have lower voltages and should never be used.
Destroying Frankfurt
My server ffm.lemis.com has been up for nearly 20 months: === grog@ffm (/dev/pts/0) ~ 14 -> date; uptime Sun Jun 1 03:17:01 UTC 2025 3:17AM up 605 days, 16:20, 1 user, load averages: 0.25, 0.29, 0.33 That's not its longest uptime. 1½ years ago it reached an uptime of 2067 days (5 years, 8 months) before it went down due to some failure with DigitalOcean. But now I have two servers in Frankfurt am Main, and all ffm is doing is running squid. fra.lemis.com can do that too.
Web server load
The load on my web servers has been quite tolerable over the last week or so, with load averages mainly below 1. That doesn't correspond directly to the number of hits. Today lax had: On 30 May 2025 you had a total of 702441 hits. ... 193130 /grog/photos/Photos.php?dirdate=19980703 That's much less than the 14 million or so that I had a while back, but it's still 5%, while the server load has dropped by over 99%. And why is this URL top of the list? It's of my musical instruments, 27 years ago.
fra: connectivity problems?
My external web servers have had no overload for a while, but I have an instance of top running on the external servers to keep up. Over the course of the day, fra.lemis.com showed other problems: client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe Disconnected at Fri 30 May 2025 08:47:22 AEST ssh: connect to host fra.lemis.com port 22: Operation timed out Disconnected at Fri 30 May 2025 08:48:42 AEST Fssh_kex_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer Connection reset by 192.248.184. Disconnected at Fri 30 May 2025 08:53:44 AEST client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe Disconnected at Sat 31 May 2025 03:57:33 AEST Connection closed by 192.248.184.42 port 22 rsync: connection unexpectedly closed (0 bytes received so far) [sender] rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at io.c(231) [sender=3.3.0] Fri 30 May 2025 12:38:16 AEST Connection closed by 192.248.184.42 port 22 rsync: connection ...