dangermouse.net – David Morgan-Mar

Sydney ISO meeting: Day 1

Today was day 1 of the ISO Photography Standards meeting here in Sydney. I had a chore to do first thing in the morning, dropping Scully off at doggy daycare, since me and my wife would both be out all day. This would have been fine, except it was absolutely pouring rain, and the nearest parking to the daycare place is not very close. So I got pretty wet, and then had to dash back home and walk straight to the railway station in order to make it to the meeting in time. I got there with my trousers wet from the knees down.

I met the overseas delegates and made many apologies for the weather. There was a good turnout, and we got down to business with the opening administrative session. Then later we had technical sessions on vocabulary, for proposing and deliberating definitions of standard dynamic range (SDR) and high dynamic range (HDR) imaging environments. There are no standard definitions of these, so we debated the technical merits of several proposed wordings, and although we reached rough agreement there was still some dissatisfaction. But we will produce a draft document and it will go through rounds of commenting, so it can be further refined.

The other technical session was a new one on machine vision cameras, with a proposal from the European Machine Vision Association to submit one of their standards for characterising image sensor quality for ISO adoption. This is very different from our usual photographic use case, because for machine vision we don’t care about human aesthetics. For example: periodic noise patterns in images are extremely distracting to humans, but quantitatively are not different from random noise in a machine vision application. So the noise calculation formulae are very different.

We finished just a few minutes early and I headed home. I made enchiladas for dinner, and made a new Darths & Droids strip for Thursday, since I won’t have any time tomorrow.

New content today:

Late and busy Monday before ISO meeting

Phew. It’s late. I did my last six ethics classes today. In between I packaged up some more Magic cards to send off to a buyer. I had to go to the post office, but a big thunderstorm broke over Sydney mid-afternoon, the only time I had spare time. So I drove up to the post office with Scully instead of walking through the rain.

I made pizza dough, to be topped with stuff for dinner. And a new Darths & Droids comic for tomorrow night.

And I did some prep work for the ISO Photography Standards meeting which begins here in Sydney tomorrow. We’ll have about 30 delegates from around the world attending and I’m on hosting duties. We’ll be meeting 9-5 for the next few days. So I’ve cancelled ethics classes for the coming seven days to allow me to do this.

And on top of this, I have to start marking the first assessment task for the university image processing course! It’s going to be a super busy week.

New content today:

Lightning fast blog post

It’s late already and time to mention what I did today:

First thing in the morning I made a Darths & Droids strip, because I completely forget to do one yesterday!

5k run: I took it easier than yesterday, considering I’d managed a great time then. And I still ran under 27 minutes today! Maybe I’m getting better at this??

We went out to my mother-in-law’s place for lunch with her and my wife’s brother and sister. Just some chicken bread rolls and catching up with family.

I got home and made sourdough bread, which is now baking in the oven after rising through the evening.

Three ethics classes. Super interesting class tonight. 3 of 4 kids thought it was okay for someone else (not JK Rowling) to write a new Harry Potter book and sell it. One was in China, and she actually said there are lots of these books for sale there. 🙂

In between I made okonomiyaki for dinner.

New content today:

Games night and a fast run

Friday I picked up the weekly grocery shopping in the morning. I order online, a habit I began during COVID, and continue because it saves me time wandering up and down all the aisles of the supermarket. When you order online, you can select a checkbox for each item saying whether it’s okay for them to substitute an alternate brand or product if the one you selected is out of stock. After some early experimentation with this, I simply set it to “no substitutions” for everything. Because sometimes I’d get stuff I really didn’t want.

But when I pick up the order at the supermarket, often they have still substituted something. But at least they let me know about and give me the option to reject the substitution and get a refund for the missing item. Yesterday I ordered a particular brand and type of bread. They had the exact one I ordered, and another different type, and asked me which one I would prefer, as if they were substituting something. But one was the actual correct product I’d ordered, so I pointed to that and said, “That’s the one I ordered.” They questioned again, asking if I’d prefer the other one. I had to say, “No, that’s the one I ordered, I want that one.” 🙄

I had a bunch of ethics classes. One had a returning student – I knew he was returning as I’d made a personal note about him in the private teacher’s notes section, just recording the country he lived in. I said, “Welcome back, you’ve done my classes before, right?” And he looked surprised and said, “No…” I said, “I’m sure you have, maybe a while ago.” He said it must have been a couple of years or so ago, which may well have been true. I think maybe he was impressed at my memory!

My wife and I went out to our local pizzeria for dinner. And then when we got home I joined online games night with my friends. It was just three of us this week, as one was away and another was busy moving into his brand new house (where we played last week, but he finally had his furniture moved on Friday). I won two games of Jump Drive quite dramatically – I was very lucky with drawing into strong synergies in each game. Then we played Luxor, which I came second in. One guy went to bed early, and the two of us remaining played Root on Steam. He played cats and I played the Alliance, with AI Eyrie and Vagabond, and I managed to win.

Scully slept better overnight. On Friday I wrote a note and put copies under the doors of all our neighbours in the building, asking if anyone had any new electrical devices running overnight that could be causing some high-pitched noise or other humming or whatever that might be disturbing Scully. Our neighbour directly below us responded and said they’d started using an automatic cat feeder on the weekend, and offered to turn it off to see if Scully would sleep any better. She did, but still wanted to leave the bedroom once soon after we went to bed. After wandering around the house for a bit she came back and then slept through the night, which was a lot better than the past several nights.

I think the experiment is inconclusive. I’m sceptical that a cat feeder would make a constant sound that would disturb Scully, and her behaviour seems more consistent with whatever is bothering her still being present, but maybe she’s getting used to it. Anyway, I reported back to the neighbour and they agreed to keep the cat feeder off for another couple of days to see what happens, and then maybe we can test it by trying it switched on again. If that makes Scully more agitated again then we’ll have some strong evidence.

After breakfast I went for a 5k run. I pushed a bit and recorded 26:38, my best time since back in March. So that was pretty good. It didn’t feel too hard either, like I still could have gone a bit faster.

This afternoon when out walking Scully past the small group of local shops, where the fish & chip shop is, we were lamenting that nothing there was open for dinner on a Saturday evening. But we noticed a new sign at the cafe, saying that it was now open for dinner from Thursday to Saturday! They only started this this week. So maybe in a week or two we might try going up there for dinner.

New content today:

Another full day of teaching

So, two ethics classes this morning, on the Copying topic. Followed by dropping Scully with my wife for the afternoon and heading into the university to teach at the Image Processing tutorial, while students are working on their final project assessment tasks. The professor is away this week at a JPEG meeting in Berlin, so it was just us tutors handling the students today.

And then back home for two more online ethics classes. In this topic I got an interesting take on copyright questions from one of the kids. She said that whether it’s okay or not to copy someone’s work and make money from it depends on how famous the work/author is. In the sense that it’s more okay if the work is more famous, and less okay if the original is less well known. When I asked her why, she explained that if you copy something well-known, then everyone will know it’s not your own work, and any amount you make off it will be tiny compared to the original creator. Whereas if you copy something relatively unknown, people will be deceived that you made it, and you could make more money than the original creator.

It’s not the direction I thought anyone would go when answering that question, but her logic was sensible and she’d clearly thought about it to try to come up with some reasoning. So I consider this a success!

Scully had another somewhat restless night, but not as bad as the past few. She went in and out a bit, but eventually settled down to sleep for the remainder of the night in our room as usual. So… maybe she’s getting used to whatever the disturbance is? I guess we’ll see tonight. I had a talk to the nearest neighbour who I suspected might be the most likely cause of ay new noise, but they said they haven’t started using any new equipment of any sort recently. Depending how tonight goes, I might have to write and copy a note to stick under the doors of several other apartments to try to locate the source.

New content today:

A mysterious restless night

Last night was very restless. In fact, it’s the third night in a row I’ve had little sleep. Something is keeping Scully awake and alert all night. Normally she sleeps like a log from bed time to after we get up. But these past nights she’s been sitting up alert, and wanting to constantly get off the bed and go out to the lounge room, and then she comes back in again, and repeats the cycle, all through the night.

I know she hates the high-pitched buzz of mosquitoes, but we’ve sprayed and sprayed and I’m sure there are none of those because normally they bite me and I really notice it. I suspect that someone in our apartment building might have a new appliance or something that is running through the night and making a high-pitched sound that Scully can hear.

When the sun came up (I’d been awake since about 2am), I emailed someone on the building strata committee to ask if any equipment had been installed or updated in the building that might be responsible. I thought maybe perhaps an ultrasonic pest repellent device or something. But the response came back negative – no electrical work of any kind in the past week.

While lying awake in the night, in the quietest moments I thought I could maybe hear some rhythmic beeping, just at the edge of my hearing. I’m not sure if it was real, or if I was imagining it. But I think I’ve heard it the past couple of nights, and had never heard it before. But I can’t be sure. I’m aware that dogs have much more sensitive ears and can hear higher pitched sounds than humans can, so even if I’m wrong it could still be something like this.

We may have to write a letter and copy it to all our neighbours in the building to try to find out if anyone has recently acquired a new electrical device that could be causing a noise that Scully can hear.

The other alternative is that it might be something wrong with Scully. But otherwise her behaviour seems normal. During the day and when out on walks she seems fine. I took her on a very long walk today to try and tire her out so she’ll sleep through tonight. Hopefully, otherwise tomorrow I’m going to be a right wreck if I don’t get a decent sleep again.

Despite being tired all day, I did a new Darths & Droids strip. I had some time in the afternoon to do other things, but didn’t get much done because of the tiredness.

New content today:

South Head and Hornby Lighthouse

This morning I had another free morning, like last week, because my wife too Scully to work and I’d done my ethics lesson plan. The weather was glum and cold, and I decided to take a drive out to South Head and do a bit of walking around there.

It wasn’t rainy when I departed, but by the time I got there there was squally light rain. I drove around some back streets for a bit, hoping the rain would pass. It got a bit lighter and I found a car park near the National Park to set out on the short walking track to Hornby Lighthouse.

I started at Camp Cove:

Canons were placed here to defend Sydney Harbour from attacking ships. Some of them are still here.

The rain sputtered out and I got a half decent view across the harbour towards the city:

I saw this magnificent red gum tree, the colours of the bark enhanced by the rain:

Before the lighthouse was the old lighthouse keeper’s cottage:

And then the lighthouse itself:

After returning to the car I found a cafe not far away to have an early lunch. And then I looked for a bakery to find something sweet to have after that, and found a place called Lil’ Mix in Rose Bay. They had amazing looking cookies and I bought three of the different flavours, plus a Jerusalem bagel which I took back to my wife’s work to give her for a surprise lunch treat when I picked up Scully.

I’ve just had the chocolate and salted caramel cookie and it was amazing…

This afternoon I rested up a bit before tonight’s ethics class. I made okonomiyaki for dinner.

New content today:

Hot and busy time passing

Today was very warm, close to 30°C. But I spent most of it inside doing my Monday classes online, ending the topic of “Time Passing”. I started work on planning for the next topic, which is “Copying Things”, covering aspects of copyright, intellectual property, and so on.

The weather tomorrow is set to be much cooler, with a forecast maximum of only 19°C. It may be another day like we had a week or two ago, where the maximum temperature was set at midnight.

In the afternoon I went for a walk with my wife (who was home from work for the Labour Day public holiday) and Scully. And then I made listings on eBay for some more of my 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons books that I don’t want any more. If you’re interested and in Australia, these may be a bargain for you to pick up (if you’re overseas the postage will probably be prohibitive):

My last class tonight started at 9pm, but because of daylight saving starting here it’s an hour earlier for all the students, including one in the USA who had it move from 7am to 6am. He was dedicated enough to get up early for it, but was yawning a bit. All my other classes I made an hour later (for me), to keep them at the same time for the students, but this one I really didn’t want to move to a 10pm start – I’d be turning into a pumpkin before it ended at 11pm. Unfortunately it’s going to get even worse for this kid in November when the US goes off daylight saving, and the class becomes a 5am start for him. I suspect he won’t keep doing it after that.

Finally, a weird thing I noticed taking photos of my D&D books for eBay. I’m using my brand new iPhone 16 and taking photos saved in HEIF format. Some of the photos when I open them in Photoshop, I hit save and it allows me to save them as a JPEG. But some of the photos I hit save and it has a restricted set of save formats available, excluding JPEG. I have to use “Save a copy” to create a copy of the image before I can save it as JPEG. I suspected it might be because the iPhone camera was automatically using HDR mode for some photos and saving them in a higher bit-depth or a different colour space or something, but examining the HEIC files shows no such differences – they’re all 8-bit colour in Display P3 colour space. I examined the EXIF tags of the images and I don’t see any salient differences at all.

So I have no idea why some of these images Photoshop will allow me to save as JPEGs and some it won’t. I tried searching briefly for an answer online, but my search terms couldn’t locate anything relevant.

New content today:

A so-so bakery

Today daylight saving started here. I was hoping to sleep in to catch up on sleep as during the week I’d had several interrupted sleeps. But Scully decided to defy her usual habit of sleeping until we get up and wanted to get up before 7am (which felt like 6am because of losing the hour to the DST change). So I had to get up and after a while take her outside for a walk. So I was pretty tired today.

I did my 5k run though, nice and early, which was actually a good thing as it was warm and heating up quickly to a maximum around 30°C.

We went out for some afternoon tea, driving to a bakery a couple of suburbs away. I’d been there once before to try their pies, and thought they were pretty average. But now we were trying sweets: I had a slice of almond orange cake, and my wife had a date scone. After we’d finished them, I asked her how it was, and she replied that the scone wasn’t very good. My almond orange cake was also pretty mediocre. Not bad, but just not good either. So… I guess we consign this bakery to the ranks of uninspiring and avoid going there again.

Also while we were there another couple arrived and sat at the cafe table next to us, eating char-grilled chicken and Vietnamese rice paper rolls that they’d bought from some other shops nearby. They didn’t buy anything from this cafe at all. And then the guy went inside and grabbed some serviettes! Now I don’t know about other countries necessarily, but here if you sit at a cafe table you’re expected to be buying something from that cafe, not just eating whatever other food you’ve brought from somewhere else. The cafe staff didn’t shoo them away though, which really surprised me.

New content today:

First play of Arcs

Firstly one thing I forgot to mention on Thursday: While waiting for my iPhone appointment at Apple, after having some lunch I went to the new Lego store. This one in the heart of the city is supposed to be the biggest Lego store in the world. Although honestly I’ve been in the Lego store in Cologne, and the one here isn’t really that much bigger; maybe 20 or 30% bigger in floor space. They had some cool giant models. I would have taken some photos to show, but I only had my old phone and it was about to be wiped when trading it in for the new one. (I suppose I could have uploaded them somewhere or emailed them to myself, but I couldn’t be bothered.)

Friday was board games night at a friend’s place. This particular occasion was special because one of my friends just got given the keys to his brand new house by the builders. He had his old house demolished and a new one built on the land. We got to christen it with a games night, even though he hasn’t moved in yet. He brought over a table and some chairs and some ice to throw in a sink to keep drinks cold (no refrigerator).

We played Arcs for the first time. We decided to make it a learning game and not try to play too seriously, and just see how far we got before we decided we’d learnt how to play, then stop ready to restart a proper game next time.

It’s a space battle game over a set of planets in different systems. There are several different strategies for scoring points, some more aggressive and others more passive. We ended up playing 3 “chapters” of the possible 5 that makes a complete game. We were enjoying it, but felt it was getting a bit late and we’d learnt the game well enough by that point. Several players had made what later turned out to be strategically awful moves, so rather than play to completion we called the game done. In particular I tried attacking very early and aggressively, and ended up losing enough ships that I had to spend a long time simply recovering my position. Next time we’ll be prepared and ready for serious competition.

Today (Saturday) I got up a bit early. The sun is rising before 05:30, and the birds make noise way earlier. This changes tomorrow when daylight saving starts, so sunrise will be at a more sane 06:30. I went for a 5k run. It was already warm when I started at 8 o’clock. The day was a warm one. I made a new Darths & Droids comic.

In the afternoon my wife and I went for a long walk with Scully over to Cammeray. There’s a Mexican place there that does good margaritas and we had some during their happy hour, with some chips and guacamole. After relaxing for a bit we ordered some dinner. I got a plate of pork with corn various spicy bits and pieces, my wife got halloumi with broccolini and patatas bravas. Each plate came with tortillas to make little taco-like handfuls. The food was good and very filling.

Then we walked all the way home again as the sun went down. Venus and a super thin crescent moon were setting in the western sky, which was glowing orange. A nice way to end the evening.

New content yesterday:

New content today: