Greg's diary, recent entries

Wednesday, 3 December 2025	Dereel	Images for 3 December 2025
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Where are all these failure messages coming from? On the face of it it could be a bug in my PHP code. But the only plausible place for a bug would be in responding to a 404 error, and they didn't happen. The best I can do is to just not report errors that have a referrer http://www.lemis.com.

But today I got a whole lot of other errors:

1304 N + 03-12-2025 To groggyhimself@ World Wide Web Owner ( 78) N + Broken link: /grog/Photos/20160213/small/Radioactive.png <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-feb2016.php?dirdate=20160205
1305 N * 03-12-2025 To groggyhimself@ World Wide Web Owner ( 78) N * Broken link: /grog/Photos/20160213/small/Confusion-symbol.png <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-feb2016.php?dirdate=20160205
1306 N * 03-12-2025 To groggyhimself@ World Wide Web Owner ( 78) N * Broken link: /grog/Photos/20160213/small/Mining-symbol.png <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-feb2016.php?dirdate=20160205
1307 N * 03-12-2025 To groggyhimself@ World Wide Web Owner ( 78) N * Broken link: /grog/Photos/20160213/small/Information-symbol.png <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-feb2016.php?dirdate=20160205
1308 N * 03-12-2025 To groggyhimself@ World Wide Web Owner ( 78) N * Broken link: /grog/Photos/20160213/small/Extruder-symbol.png <- http://www.lemis.com/grog/diary-feb2016.php?dirdate=20160205

What's that? Looking at the page source, I see

...
recognize fire symbols. Then there is confusion (represented by the <?php oneimage
("/grog/Photos/20160213/small/Confusion-symbol.png", "confusion symbol", 40, 42, 1); ?>
symbol), radioactive waste (represented by the <?php oneimage
("/grog/Photos/20160213/small/Radioactive.png", "radioactive waste symbol", 50, 48, 1); ?>),
mining (represented by the <?php oneimage ("/grog/Photos/20160213/small/Mining-symbol.png",
"mining symbol", 45, 44, 1); ?>), information (represented by the <?php oneimage
("/grog/Photos/20160213/small/Information-symbol.png", "information symbol", 50, 41, 1); ?>
symbol) and extruders (represented by the <?php oneimage
("/grog/Photos/20160213/small/Extruder-symbol.png", "extruder symbol", 44, 41, 1); ?>
symbol). What do they really mean? Running the cursor over them gives you insight: the web
...

Oh. When I moved my images to DigitalOcean I had to rewrite my already convoluted showphoto () function to point to DigitalOcean when the subdirectories Photos/*/big/, Photos/*/small/ or Photos/*/tiny/ were referenced on the external web sites. But I didn't do it for oneimage (). More pain!

In fact, it was simpler than it should have been. Just prepend https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/ to the URL for local images. Looking back, that shouldn't have worked: it should already have had http://www.lemis.com/ there. But so far it seems to have worked, though I went through a lot of pain relearning PHP in the process.

Thursday, 4 December 2025	Dereel	Images for 4 December 2025
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I've made phat si-io a number of times, but it's still not perfect. This morning, since I still have a cabbage, I tried with that instead of gai lan, and also tried a number of different changes.

The problem: wok hei. That's a flavour nuance that I haven't quite understood, but it's related to cooking over high heat in a wok. Google Translate is completely useless. It translates the term into simplified Chinese as 我开黑 (I play with friends), or into traditional Chinese as 我看黑 (I see black). Wikipedia wrote it "wohkhei", and claims that it is a Cantonese word meaning "the breath of the wok". It also gives the spellings 镬气 (simplified), which Google Translate translates as "gas", and 鑊氣 (traditional), which it doesn't translate. And then MARION has a page on the subject.

But this is Thai. Google Translate tells me that it is กระทะ เฮ้ (kratha ḥê). Is it right? At least it translates it the same way from simplified and traditional Chinese. In English, I get "gas" or "wok hei", neither very useful.

So how do I get my กระทะ เฮ้, when I don't even know what it is? My best bet is that it's something that's slightly charred, thus the continual recommendations to cook the noodles very hot and by themselves. But you can char cabbage too, so that's what I did:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-1.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-1.jpeg]

Looking back, it's possible that I could have done more.

Then there's the egg. Yvonne makes lots of mayonnaise, using only egg yolks, so there's plenty of egg white left over. So that's what I use:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-4.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-4.jpeg] https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-6.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-6.jpeg]

And then there are the noodles. I freeze them and then thaw them when I need them, and they're a little moist. So I left them to dry out for 40 minutes before frying:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-2.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-2.jpeg] https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-10.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-10.jpeg]

But they still stuck. There's something basically wrong in the recipes that I have: fry the noodles with the sauce in a very hot wok. But that doesn't work: "very hot" should mean 200° or more, but the sauce boils at round 110°. So I fried the noodles in oil first and then added the sauce. They still stuck, and left a lot of residue:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-11.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-11.jpeg]

In addition, while the result tasted OK, it was one of the ugliest dishes I have made recently:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Phat-Si-Io-13.jpeg [画像:Phat-Si-Io-13.jpeg]

That's probably because of the lack of green (gai lan) and yellow (egg yolks).

The other issue that is probably more interesting is that the steel pan in which I made them is slightly convex, so any oil drains to the sides. That's the exact opposite of what a wok would do. So next time I'll at least use a wok.

Bratwurst for dinner today. Normally I fry them, but why? Despite the name („Brat" could be taken to mean "fry"), they should be grilled. Just what we want for the hair dryer.

OK, off to YouTube and looked for some clips, coming up with this one. Slit the sausages like Laugenstangen to avoid having them burst, then grill for 10 minutes at 160°. Turn and grill further for another 3 minutes at 180°. And while you're at it, grill some potatoes in a second "air fryer" for 10 minutes at 180°.

OK, we can do that. Slit and grill for 10 minutes. Here before and after:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-2.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-2.jpeg] https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-5.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-5.jpeg]

Not quite like what I saw in the clip. OK, another 3 minutes at 180°:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-11.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-11.jpeg]

The best I can say is that they're slightly browned. OK, enough. Another 4 minutes at 200°:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-12.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-12.jpeg]

And the potatoes? Even worse! Here before and after:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-4.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-4.jpeg] https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-7.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-7.jpeg]

I don't know why I thought that you could do potatoes in an "air fryer". Nothing for it. A bit of fat, and in the pan. The result:

https://lemis.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/grog/Photos/20251204/small/Air-fried-Bratwurst-13.jpeg [画像:Air-fried-Bratwurst-13.jpeg]

What a lot of work! And of course I should have read my diary, which told me 14 minutes at 210°. And apart from that, I now have two dirty "air fryers", so that'll be another dishwasher full.