Greg's diary, recent entries

Wednesday, 9 September 2026	Dereel
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More TUHS fun

Topic: general, technology

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Spent more time today with TUHSI activities, without achieving very much. We really need to get this description up, but it's much more painful than I thought. And how do we report the minutes of the committee meetings? Currently it looks like establishing people present, apologies and missing people, and accepting our email correspondence. So that would involve at least analysing the email. I need to get my head around how to do this.

VicToads answers

Topic: general, opinion

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An answer from VicRoads to Monday's resolution request. It appears to have been pieced together from related boilerplate, including multiple cases:

We trust that our reply provides you with the information on how to proceed. Thank you again for contacting VicRoads, we trust this information has addressed your enquiry. Thank you again for contacting VicRoads, we trust this information has addressed your enquiry.

The most important part is:

NOTE: Please do not reply to this email as the mailbox is unattended.

In other words, every time I need a written response, I need to go through this rigmarole.

The content itself looks dubious. It starts by repeating what I had stated

Thank you for your email about applying for a registration concession on your vehicle. We trust that our reply provides you with the information on how to proceed.   If you have a valid concession, you (or your spouse or domestic partner) may be able to get a discount on your vehicle registration. A concession card can only be used for one private use vehicle per registered operator only. If your spouse has a concession card, you can apply to your vehicle as the spouse as long as the spouse has no concession on a car in their name.  

Each time it is due to renewal with 2 cards assigned you will need to attend a call centre to adjust which card is noted in the system and assigned to the car. As when the other is paid it will be removed from being eligible to pay online with the discount. It may be easier to transfer the vehicle your spouse has their concession card attached to into their name/ Vicroads record. Payment would not need to be adjusted each registration period with alternative concession cards. If you have a myVicRoads account you can now submit your Registration Concession to VicRoads online. Alternatively you can attend a Customer Service Centre in person to have your concession details sighted and applied to the registration. For more information on how to have your concession card applied please use the following link https://go.vic.gov.au/r2hHgv

Somehow this doesn't make sense. Why does it need to be changed every time? My guess is that this is the understanding of the person who answered. Yes, maybe it would be easier to “attend a call centre”, but they first suggest that it is necessary (why?), and then say that I can do it online. And in the past we have been able to do it by long and painful phone call. And is there a difference between call centre and Customer Service Centre?

And if that wasn't contradictory enough, it continues:

After confirming the details provided in your enquiry, we have successfully been able to upgrade your myVicRoads account. You will now be able to see your licence under the 'Licences and Learner Permits' section of your account. This will display your current licence status, demerit points and more. You will also be able to access your myLearners App and begin logging your hours.

What do driver licenses, and especially ”myLearners”, have to do with this matter?

So what do I do now? First, calm down a bit. Then I suppose I can try to access the web site, if it's feeling cooperative today. They didn't even address the login issue.

What a pain!

Thursday, 10 September 2026	Dereel	Images for 10 September 2026
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Another renaming

Topic: general, multimedia

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Donald Trump has this obsession of changing names to “America”, apparently in the misguided assumption that this automatically means “USA”. Thus the Gulf of Mexico (clearly in America) became the “Gulf of America”, and Lake Ontario became “Lake America”, at least in the USA.

But some people have seen the writing on the wall and reacted pre-emptively. The TV programme South Park has seen the writing on the wall, and is now called South America.

The truth about 9/11

Topic: politics, history, fiction

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It's coming up to the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the USA, and the whole world is talking about it. There seems to be less emphasis in why they chose to do this, killing themselves in the process. We will see how they choose to observe the anniversary in Iran.

But this anniversary is different. The greatest US president of all time has got up on his hind feet and claimed involvement. Does anybody believe him? Of course not.

But he was involved. Matin Tatari, my old friend from my student days in Hamburg, was involved in the attack, and he has told me in private about the background of the attacks. Trump, then active in real estate, was annoyed that there was a bigger building in New York City than his own Trump Tower. It must go! It's not clear whether he knew that there were other buildings in New York that were also bigger than Trump Tower, or whether he had intended to remove them too.

And who better to do it than a group of Islamic terrorists who would kill themselves in the process, thus avoiding any possibility of them testifying against him? And of course the date was symbolic: 911 is the US American emergency phone number. I wonder how long it will be before the truth comes out. Just recently Trump mistakenly referred to “7/11”. Most people thought that he was confusing it with the US department store, but that was really the date that he had decided on the plan. And for once he was not primarily trying to extol himself: he was trying to divert attention away from his real role in the event.

Bread again

Topic: food and drink, opinion

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I've been baking my own bread for 18 years, 17 of which used sourdough. But our eating habits are changing. In those days we would get through a 30 slice loaf in a week or two. Now we eat various kinds of bread. Yvonne eats almost no home-baked bread, and I only eat a couple of slices a week. I baked my last loaf on 20 April 2026, nearly 5 months ago, and the sourdough starter was already looking weak. Replace it? It no longer seems worthwhile. How about using yeast? The twins came up with a surprisingly detailed recipe which looked similar enough to mine to be plausible. So today I tried that.

quantity	ingredient	step
15 g	dry yeast	1
5 g	sugar	1

990 g	rye flour	2
180 g	wheat flour	2
60 g	caraway seed	2
20 g	salt	2

1000 g	water	3

Most of the quantities are the same as previously, but there was less water. The twins had wanted 910 to 960 g of water, but my last loaves have used 1085 g. Today I started with 1000 g and found it sufficient; I later noted that years ago my water quantity was round 955 g, so the Gemini quantities look appropriate.

The other difference were the baking times and temperatures. In the past I baked at 220° for 20 minutes, then 170° for 80 minutes. Gemini wanted 240° for 15 minutes and then 200° for 35-45 minutes, and to use a temperature probe to determine the end (98-100°).

How did it go? I didn't think to take photos at the beginning, but towards the end it looked like this:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20260910/big/Bread-3.jpeg

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And how about that, the temperature hit 98° just as the hour was up.

That's just barely light enough; I had worried that it might burn. But it disproved my concerns that it might not rise enough (claimed by Gemini) and that the yeast would no longer be active enough. It was 2 years out of date; I found 2 other packets that expired in November 2004 and April July, but I threw them away.