Late trains

Just my observation that trains have been consistantly 5+ minutes late since the start of the school holidays (9th April). 10+ minutes late or cancelled is more usual. Except for the occasional day when everything is almost on time. Thursday is normally the worse day of the week. Today was no exception to this rule.

In fact, today was even more dramatic then usual.

Normally, if everything is running on time, I should be able to catch the 5:00pm Belgrave train from Melbourne Central station and catch my bus easy. However as the train almost always is too late, it misses the connection, and there is a long wait for a next bus. As a result, I have been catching the earlier 4:49pm Belgrave train. Unfortuately, due to the fact that the train is one of a few express services that stops at Surrey Hills, it is frequently overcrowded.

So today I was running to try and catch the 4:43 Lilydale train, as it normally has plenty of seats. I can change trains at Ringwood, where there are more seats available on the Belgrave train. Only I didn't need to run. It was 9 minutes late.

When the train did arrive, it was packed with people. There was also a wheel chair taking up a lot of the space, but it wasn't his fault. One passenger assisted by getting of the train so other people could enter/exit. Despite this, the train was so full, I was lucky to be able to get on.

At Parliament station another wheel chair user wanted to get on. The driver called for us to move down the isle, but the isle was already full. Fortunately the potential passenger told him that there was not enough room, and didn't try to board - their really was not enough room for another person let alone a wheel chair.

At Glenferrie station we overshot the station by 1 or 2 carriages. Maybe the driver didn't allow for the fact there were so many passengers on board? We had to wait several minutes (getting permission to reverse?) during which time nobody was allowed in or out the train. They did at least keep us up-to-date with annoucements which was good. Then the driver told us that due to the trains running late we couldn't reverse back, and had to continue to Camberwell station (I guess this means the next train behind was too close to us).

At Blackburn station things were eventful, as the train was still overflowing with passengers, but the wheel chair use needed to back his wheel chair so he could get off. Fortunately most people cooporated and left the train while he got off, although there were some people who refused, making it just that bit harder for him to navigate.

Eventually I got to Ringwood at 17:39 (scheduled 5:18). At Ringwood station, I caught the 17:52 Belgrave train (scheduled 17:23). It got to Upper Ferntree Gully at 17:55 (scheduled to leave at 17:39), or 2 minutes after the bus left. Next bus 25 minutes away.

Email forwarders

Traditionally, Unix daemons communicate to the sysadmin in one of two ways. Either by logging something to a file, or by emailing the user. This has meant every system requires a MTA to be installed, configured, and working. However, a full scale MTA is often an overkill for many systems, e.g. why should a web server require a MTA that can do everything possible when all that is required is to forward the output of cron jobs to a system admin? There is no need to deliver mail locally, and no need to queue mail either, your mail server can do that. To have a complicated solution for a simple problem means that things are more likely to break and/or create security issues.

There are a number of lightweight solutions in Debian, unfortunately, they all seem to implement a different subset of the requirements, they tend to be buggy and ill-maintained too.

Requirements:

1. Forward all email to remote SMTP host.
2. Ability to work with mail from system daemons, such as daemon, that may not be fully qualified email addresses.
3. Needs to log every transaction.
4. IPv6 support.

Optional extras:

1. May spool email in case remote SMTP host is off-line.
2. Redirect all local email to a given remote user.
3. Rewrite the envelope sender address, so bounces will go somewhere sane.

ssmtp

Looks very good at initial glance. Unfortunately, the code is buggy and currupts messages, e.g. Debian bug #508759, Debian bug #584162 and Debian bug #279737. I seem to recall having other problems random with ssmtp, but never got around to filling bug reports.

esmtp

Not related to the ESMTP protocol standard.

A very good alternative to ssmtp. Unfortunately, esmtp falls down because it doesn't have any support for logging what is happening Debian bug #623293. So if somebody complains that you are sending SPAM, even if this is unlikely, you can't prove otherwise. Especially if you don't have access to the logs on the smtp host for any number of reasons.

msmtp

msmtp also looks very good. Unfortunately it doesn't expand the recipient address when there is no domain Debian bug #578017 and Debian bug #623294 making it unusable for forwarding admin emails. Unless you use the hackish wrapper shell script for supporting aliases

nullmailer

This one has a queue, so if the mail can't be sent immediately (e.g. the mail server is offline), it will retry. It also has an adminuser so all email to the local system can get redirected to this remote email account. Very nice. The first criticism is that it isn't useful for systems which end users might have access to, because all the email will come to you instead.

Unfortunately, nullmailer has some bugs too, some of which look nasty e.g.

• errors parsing data recipients and headers headers: Debian bug #589899, Debian bug #540758, Debian bug #188251;
• problems sending outgoing emails Debian bug #583564, Debian bug #329192, Debian bug #359994, Debian bug #375380;
• breaks conventional unix standards Debian bug #329970.

Nullmailer is the only program I noticed that has broken IPv6 support Debian bug #605899.

Conclusion

None of these packages does what I want. I have tried submitting bug reports, but unfortunately, there is little interest in fixing the problems either. So the best solution might be to install a full blown MTA such as postfix, and turn off functions I don't need (e.g. incoming SMTP support).

Kindle DX

2010-04-04

Several weeks ago I purchased an Amazon Kindle DX. As expected it has some significant benefits, some limitations, and some anti-features. I decided to document these here.

As a spend almost 3 hours each day travelling to/from the city by train I would like to be able to read books on the trip. Unfortunately books tend to be heavy, and are prone to get damaged in my bag because of their size.

My idea is that the Kindle DX would allow me to read books during this time without having to carry them around.

This is purely my experiences so far. I make no claim that everything I have said is accurate, but will try to fix any mistakes as I find them.

Delivery

I was expecting to receive the Kindle on Friday. When it didn't arrive I contacted DHL Friday afternoon and was told that VicFast accepted the delivery but not assigned it to a driver. On Monday morning there the tracking information still had not been delivered and I complained to both Amazon and DHL. It turned out it had been delivered to our letter box on Friday. As we hadn't realized this, and had no reason to check our letter box after the Australia post delivery, it had been in my letter box all weekend, where it could have been stolen at any point. Not only that but it had been raining the entire weekend. Fortunately (by some miracle) the water didn't penetrate the cardboard box, and my Kindle was still intact.

After the complaint with DHL they responded with:

We offer our most sincere apology for the inconvenience caused by the delivery of this shipment of electronics left in the rain.

While our contract with Amazon does stipulate that shipments can be left without a signature, this should only be done after confirming that noone is home to sign for the shipment. The shipments are also not to be left in clear view of the road, and in a safe area if noone is home to sign for the shipment. I have forwarded your Airway bill details to the management team of our Third Party associates to look into this matter with the driver concerned.

Please be assured that this incident is not indicative of the high level of service normally provided by DHL. We trust our future business dealings pursue a trouble free course.

Screen

This is an E-Paper display. Unlike a conventional monitor, you are not staring directly at a light that is pointed into your eyes all the time. Unfortunately, the surface does seem to be reflective so depending on the angle it is positioned at, glare could be an issue.

DRM

Digital Rights Management. This is a very contentious issue. I would argue though that DRM doesn't do anything to protect the rights of the publishers.

• There are claims that people have broken the DRM and can remove the DRM from DRM encoded books.
• I can still copy the content of the book, e.g by photographing the Kindle screen.

Furthermore it prevents me from doing things I could do with a standard paper books:

• I can buy a book, read it, and give the away to friends, at no cost. The number of people who can read one book is not restricted. There are no time limits or other restrictions. The only practical restriction is that only one person can read the book at the time.
• I can go into a major bookshop, and I can read the entire book before I decide if I want to buy it or not.
• I can get my company to pay for a book that is related to my work, and the company owns the book so anybody else at work who wants to read the book can do so.

None of these are possible with e-books purchased from Amazon's store.

Unlike other DRM schemes however, the Kindle allows you to copy content from other websites (via USB), provided it is a compatable format. There are some websites that allow retrieving books (especially public domain books) free of charge. Unfortunately there are many books, especially non-fiction, that are only available from Amazon's store.

Also Amazon has received bad publicity over its ability to remove content remotely. While they settled the case out of court, the wording of the guarantee to wider rights, as on Wikipedia, only applies to Kindle's being purchased from and used in USA, so it doesn't appear to apply to me.

Amazon claim they need to be able to remotely delete content in case on non-payment or the user asks for a refund. However they are not able to do this for dead tree books, so why should E-Books be considered any different?

Formats

The Kindle supports different formats for files:

• Unprotected Mobipocket.
• AZW format. The DRM format Amazon provides books in you purchase from there store. Not that some files with the .azw extension appear to be unprotected Mobipocket files, as such I wonder if all AZW files are just Mobipocket format with DRM encryption.
• Text format. Text format is good, although obviously you don't get the pictures. Text format comes out better if the Kindle is allowed to do the word wrapping itself. Unfortunately some text books come with the lines prewrapped, and this looks awful if the text size is too large and the Kindle wraps lines that are too long. Later on I might try and create a script that joins long lines together.
• PDF format. People I talk to seem surprised that this isn't the ideal format for the Kindle. PDF files are intended for printing, not viewing on a computer. If you have a document formated for large paper (e.g. A4) with multiple columns the type ends up being very small even on the large Kindle DX. Due to the slow refresh rate of the screen it becomes inconvenient to try and scroll around the page. If the PDF file was formatted for a smaller page size then it is ok. It is also worth noting it is not possible to annotate PDF content.

As far as I can tell, HTML format is not supported except with the built in web browser. So you can not use html format ebooks.

According to the documentation, Amazon also offer a feature where I can turn other formats (e.g. word and HTML) into AZW format, free of charge, by emailing it to username@free.kindle.com, and then downloading the result and copying it via USB. As of yet I haven't tested this service.

Quality of books

Generally the quality is good. However there are some problems:

• Tables appear awful. No separation between table cells, text can scroll of edge of screen where it can't be read.
• Some diagrams are too small and low resolution to see what the diagram is displaying.
• Online books are never provided with any add on digital files that the publisher may provide with the book in tape or CD format. This makes it worthless to purchase some books, e.g. books on learning another language.

This would be OK if the e-book was cheaper, however many e-books (especially non-fiction) have similar inflated prices to the paper books.

I don't know if some of these problems are due to the format used or the process of coverting the book to this format.

Local restrictions

As I use this in Australia there are some restrictions I face:

• The Kindle comes with a built in 3G Sim for Amazon. I can't change this. On the good side this means I can connect to Amazon or Wikipedia out of the box without needing to setup a 3G account. On the other hand, this means Amazon pay International data roaming fees, and as a result they have some restrictions. These restrictions are not clearly mentioned on the Amazon website under the Australia Specific country page. One restriction is that I cannot download from any website other then Wikipedia or Amazon. Blog content is not available. Also magazines/news papers do not come with images, which makes them next to useless IMHO.
• Availability of books. Many books I like to read are simply not available in this country. e.g. any Tom Clancy book. I have just started reading the Jack Ryan series of Tom Clancy books. This means I will continue to have to carry heavy books with me on the train.

Aviaton use

As a pilot, I wanted to see if the Kindle would assist me in anyway. In particular I wanted to be able to put the ERSA on my Kindle, so I can get a list of airports when flying without having to take the big bulky book. Airservices Australia provide the PDF files free of charge, so it should be easy, right?

Wrong. First problem is the Airservices Australia provide the document in separate PDF files for each and every airport. The Kindle doesn't cope very well with having hundreds of closely related PDF files, as everything is displayed on a single level.

I tried to join the files to create one PDF file. On my first attempt I used pdfjoin, part of the pdfjam package in Ubuntu. however found in doing so I lost the images. Not only that, but searching through PDF files seems to take ages, making it very difficult to find details for the desired airport quickly and easily.

I tried again with pdftk, however it prompts for a password because it thinks the source files are encrypted.

As a test I copied several PDF files for several airports individually straight from the website. The text is nice, large, and readable. Unfortunately the airport diagrams have a lot of corruption in the rendering which makes it unusable.

I am not sure what the solution is here, but unfortunately, using the ERSA on the Kindle is not feasible at present time.

Using other Australian aviation documents might still be possible, e.g.

• Flightsafety. Text appears small once scaled to fit screen size. While it is better in landscape view, looking at multi column text in landscape is tedious.

• AIP. This is also split up in many PDF files. Unfortunately, Airservices Australia assumes you will be browsing this online, and only provides links to other PDF files within the first PDF files you download.

• CASR. Not tried yet.

• CAR. Not tried yet.
• CAOs. Not tried yet.

Links to these CASA documents, and more are found on CASA's website.

Feedback to Amazon

This is on my to do list. They have provided me an email address where I can provide feedback.

Conclusion

Overall I am really happy with my purchase. It is a shame though that there are anti-features, such as DRM and country restrictions, that very much restrict what I can do with the Kindle, and as a result, may limit the number of books I purchase from Amazon's store.

The Great Ocean Road

In May this year, we went to see stay at Cobden Crest Cottage, near The Great Ocean Road.

It was a great place to stay, but unfortunately, the locals didn't understand any english. They kept repeating the same word over and over, I think it sounded like "MOOOoooooo."

The Cobden Creat Cottage came complete with Kitchen, Bedrooms and Games rooms.

We saw the road to nowhere. This road use to be the main road, and was to close to the cliff, and as such the road was relocated.

We saw history behind General Motors Holden.

... as well as some incredible views of the coast.

Some of the tourist attractions had lots of steps to climb up and down.

Some of the waves were very big, and had a dramatic effect as they came in. It is hard to capture on camera.

We also visited the nearby chocolate factory and the cheese factory. We saw the Lochness Cow outside the cheese factory. Unfortunately Dad was too slow, and didn't see it. The photo is not a fake.

More photos

Paynesville

Earlier May this year, we went to Paynesville to fix up Grandma's old house.

We made a complete mess of the house. This is because we had to remove everything, in order to allow us to rent the property.

We took a lot of things to the tip, as we didn't have anywhere else to put them. One car trip was very loaded, as we had two chairs, one sofa, and two beds. As well as some other bits and pieces, like an old low quality record player.

This was kind of sad, because the chairs and sofa have been in the family for a long time, however we don't have the time to restore them to good health or any where to but them if we did restore them.

On the last day, we took Tyla, our dog to the beach.

Initially, Tyla was very jealous when another dog was allowed to fetch a stick in the water, but then when Tyla had a turn, the other dog became very jealous, and jumped off the jetty and into the water.

Tyla was happy because we throw the stick into the water lots of times so she could fetch it.

After Tyla went swimming she was a very messy with lots of sand.

More photos

Storms

2009-04-15

There were no trains from Belgrave to Bayswater (all day), so my trip into the city was slower then usual:

Service times

Time	Scheduled	Stop	A/D?	Service
07:32	07:25	Clarkmont Road	Depart	638 Bus
07:41		UFTG	Arrive	698 Bus
07:45	07:51	UFTG	Depart	732 Bus
08:08	08:13	Knox City	Arrive	732 Bus
08:15	08:15	Knox City	Depart	664 Bus
08:27	08:30	Bayswater	Arrive	664 Bus
08:56	08:47	Bayswater	Depart	Train
09:02:35	08:54	Ringwood	Depart	Train
09:16:55	09:09	Box Hill	Depart	Train
09:23:30	09:15	Camberwell	Depart	Train
09:32:30	09:24	Richmond	Depart	Train
09:37:30		Melbourne Central	Arrive	Train
09:38:00	09:29	Melbourne Central	Depart	Train

At Knox City I just missed the 901 bus to Ringwood, and decided to catch the 664 to Bayswater. In hindsight I would have been better if if I caught the next 901 to Ringwood, because of the long wait for the first train at Bayswater. There would have been more trains at Ringwood.

Train terminated without notice

Today my train arrived at Box Hill station, as usual. The only warning sign something was wrong was we stopped at platform 4, not platform 3, and there wasn't a Blackburn train terminating on platform 3. We waited.

When the Ringwood train passed us on Platform 3, I started getting worried.

The next train, a Blackburn train passed us on Platform 3, and we were given an automatic message the train might be delayed by 10 minutes, so I got off and caught the next Lilydale train from Platform 3 (fortunately my gamble paid off and it left first...).

At Ringwood I changed to the Belgrave train, which still wasn't the train stranded at Box Hill, but the next one. I didn't notice any people from my Belgrave train on this one, and it looked relatively quiet, so I guess they were still waiting on the train at Box Hill.

I have no idea what the problem was, because they didn't say.

(it goes without saying I missed my bus connection).

Communications

Date: 2008-12-04 16:00:00

At around 7:47am, when the train was arriving at Upper Ferntree Gully station, we assumed it was the 7:47 train. Express Box Hill to Richmond, stops all stations on the city loop.

The station announced that it was stopping all stations to Flinders Street station. Had the station staff made a mistake[1]? The signs in the train had indicated it was a City Loop train, but now said Connex.

After a number of stops, the signs in the train changed to "stopping all stations direct to Flinders Street station." Ok, not a good sign.

The driver made an announcement before Ringwood saying that the train was now a stopping all stations Flinders Street direct train. He didn't say why or what city loop passengers should be doing. My first thought was maybe the city loop was closed for some reason. So I stayed on the train.

Before Box Hill station the driver finally told us what I would have liked to have known much earlier:

• point failure at Belgrave
• this train was an additional service

If I known this earlier I could have waited for the next train at Upper Ferntree Gully station and got a seat for the full duration of the trip.

At Box Hill I caught the real 7:47 service (the one I thought I had caught). Predictably it was running late. It train ended up arriving at Melbourne Central at 8:46, 10 minutes late.

Connex needs to provide better information to passengers when things don't go to plan. This would enable passengers to use Connex services more efficiently.

I submitted feedback to Connex via their website (case number 2008/011568).

Notes:

[1] recently a train stopped at Blackburn, and station staff announced it was a changing to become a stopping all stations train. Apparently nobody told the driver. The train used the track normally used for express trains too.

City link road works

Date: 2008-10-29 19:00:00

My bus to Fishermen's bend arrived at 9:28am instead of 9:06am, because of delays, due to road works.

First problems occured on Queensberry Bridge Road, as it was closed off past Whiteman st. Cars were expected to turn left or right, and the right hand turn traffic light cycle at this intersection is very small. Trams could get through, and busses could also get through to (via the left hand turn lane). It didn't affect traffic travelling north down the road.

Second, there were extensive delays on Montague Street, possibly because the left hand lane was closed. I could not see any reason for this lane to be closed, except for the fact there were vehicles parked in it to warn motorists that the lane was closed.

Unruly Passenger

Date: 2008-10-01 07:40:00

He didn't seem that bad. At least compared with some passengers I have seen...

When I arrived at Upper Ferntree Gully station I hadn't been able to hear the station announcements. The first one was happened when I was in the underpass, the next one while a other train at the adjacent platform departed. So I didn't know what the problem was (assuming the said). As it happened, I boarded the train on the closest door to the problem teenager. Oops. As I got on he asked me if I know what the delay was, and I said no. He then asked me if the train was delayed, and I said yes, while still walking to a vacant seat.

He was ranting and raving, and threatened to repeatedly push the emergency button, claiming it was an emergency. Apparently he also made threats to the driver, although I can't have been on the train at the time.

After the police arrived, removed the passenger, the train departed when the train driver made an announcement and said he couldn't say anything earlier. He also complained that the police took 35 minutes to respond. At this time I realized the teenager was the primary cause of the delay, and maybe entering from that particular door wasn't the best of strategies. Previously I had assumed there was signal failure or something, and that the problem passenger couldn't cope with the delay.

The 7:39am train left at 8:01am.