I was in the middle of composing this last night when C woke up crying after a bad dream. She’d possibly just overheated – new flanny PJs.

Sunday morning revealed a slightly better night – not only did I get to bed earlier, but A was only awake and unsettled for 1h30 (and only screaming for about an hour of that). I eventually brought him into bed and he fell asleep again. C’s been sleeping in our bed for the last few nights – seems to help provide some stability for her, and we all woke up around 8am.

When we eventually got to J’s room in the afternoon, the ENT surgeon was doing his rounds and showed her the test for BPV. It was pretty easy to tell that she doesn’t have it – for which I think I’m grateful, even though that means her doctors still don’t really know what the heck is going on with her. It appears that the MRI done nearly 2 weeks ago wasn’t quite fine-grained enough to show the detail that the specialists want, so she might need another one. There have also been some questions about whether an MRI can show if the tissue around the tumour is necrotic; she might need a PET scan for that. We don’t know just, we’ll have to wait and see. Ugh.

J’s mum arrived while we were looking at the fishes at the ward entrance; both A and C were really happy to see her and we had to shush them since it was still just before the ward’s visiting hours. Walking back to her room was tiring, again, and reinforced that she really isn’t well enough to come home yet. Then while J was recovering on her bed, YT turned up for a visit with her two kids (about C and A’s ages) – it was a very joyful and thus very, very loud. That tired J out even more.

Last night C had nightmares, A was awake for about an hour and a half; it took him close to that time before he calmed down enough to snuggle up into a ball on my chest/neck. Sigh.

This morning J sounded happier, she was able to shower herself without needing the anti-nausea drug first, and when I rang she was typing a blog post on her laptop. [She doesn't have an internet connection yet - too far from the wireless AP in the hospital, and only 1 bar of signal strength on the vodafail 3g dongle]. However, she still needs to be able to cope with moving her head quickly to track the kids’ movements, needs to be able to cope with their energy levels, and I just don’t see that happening until she’s had a few whole good days (ie, morning + afternoon + evening) strung together.

Since J won’t be home for another few days and she’s feeling disconnected, I popped into our local JB Hifi today and picked up a Telstra ‘Elite’ prepaid mobile broadband usb stick with 3Gb of data included. I would have recharged my vodafail 3g stick, but when I turned that all on in her room yesterday, there was only 1 bar (out of 5) of signal. Not enough to load the recharge login webpage. The hospital’s wifi AP is massively attenuated, too, so there’s no point trying that connection. After our experiences with Optus mobiles we’re not going to use them again, so Telstra was the only option left.

Once I got it home, I tried to install and activate it on my laptop so that when I take it to her it’s all ready to go (modulo installing software on her laptop).

According to the documentation in the box, you should be able to just insert the usb connector and then install the software off the device. [Using the common theme of making it appear as a CD until you install the driver and app, then showing up as a modem].

Bzzzzt.

I’m running Windows 7 Pro in 64bit mode on the laptop (mutter mutter random Cisco software for work mutter mutter), so not only did no “cd” show up, but no devices showed up in the device manager either.

A quick trip off to google brought me to whirlpool, which lead me to the manufacturer’s site. Downloaded and installed ZTE’s version and lo, it didst all work!

Then I activated the stick (note that I had to use the stick’s internet connection, because using my internode ADSL2+ connection resulted in a “Corrupted Content Error”), and promptly got two SMSs saying I had a $0.00 balance.

WTF?

Ten minutes on hold before I got through to a CSR, who told me that the balance shows how much I’ve actually paid in a recharge (which, correctly, is $0.00), and at the moment I’m using “bonus data”. It’d be nice if this was made clearer.

Anyway, now it works and I’ll be taking it to J tomorrow.

UPDATED (see below)

It turns out that Jo was a little hasty (or perhaps overworked and underslept), so the 1.0.1 source wasn’t actually what should have been called 1.0.1.

We now have 1.0.3 in the “really, truly actually released” state, source for which you can find on sourceforge.net.

I’ve got the corresponding IPS package available at my usual location. Pre-requisite packages are still as noted here.

Enjoy (I certainly am!).

A few hours ago I noticed that Jo posted Darktable v1.0.1, so I’ve spun up a package to match.

You’ll recall from this post that you need some pre-requisite packages.

One thing I’ll note as now working (in the very limited test I tried) with Solaris 11 is the tethered shooting mode. I plugged my Canon EOS 400D in, and not only did darktable detect it, I was able to shoot with it directly. No need to futz around with /etc/driver_aliases at all!

NOTE: I’ve called this only a preliminary package because the authoritive Solaris 11 repos which I use are off the air this weekend – power maintenance work or somesuch happening on that campus. Running the bits directly is working fine. I’ll post an update on my Tuesday after everything is back up regarding whether I need to respin that package or not.

For now, please enjoy!

Then you’ll find it here.

I was browsing my referrer links and came across the one in this post’s topic. It took me a while to work out what it might be, especially since I haven’t migrated all my links from roller across to wordpress. After checking out what that post might be via google I went oldskule and had a poke around in my old roller entries db. Now you know – the link was about opening up a PRM. Good times.

J had a less good day today; dizziness was more evident, needed the anti-nausea drug to get out of bed, and just felt generally flat. It was really really good to see her this arvo, and it reinforced for me that she will have to get significantly better before we can expect the neurologist to release her. I think it might be another week before she’s home.

On the positive side, however, she did feel good enough with her eyesight to ask me to bring in her laptop. Club Wes does have wifi in the rooms, but of course her room is too far from the AP to get an signal, and our vodafail 3g dongle couldn’t get any signal either. She might compose some blog posts for later.

I, on the hand, had a horrendous day. After getting some flow timehacking on a proof of concept with Darktable, I slept until 1am when A decided that he should be awake and screaming. I tried pretty much everything I could think of, including panadol, but he didn’t stop screaming until about 0420 and was asleep enough for me to put him back in his cot 5 minutes later. Then we all woke up at about 0720. After getting the kids some breakfast I rang E+T; T came over shortly thereafter so I could crash. The next thing I knew it was 10am, T had given the kids morning tea, played with them, got them dressed and told me he was taking them back to their place for cousin H’s birthday party so I could have some more recovery time. I crashed out again, waking just before 12 and still feeling like I’d been thumped in the head a few times.

T and E: thankyou so very, very much. I’m not sure I could have lasted through this morning without your help.

After voting in the council elections, I went around to E+T’s place to collect the kids and have some chillout time. T had managed to get A to sleep, but only after driving him around in their car for about 30 minutes first. C had a grand time, playing really well with her cousins and the other kids at the party, then just enjoying herself playing with her cousins and some different toys for a while. A, having woken up, was back to his grizzly self and wasn’t happy until he was able to munch on an arrowroot bikkie and my bowl of 2minute noodles. He reached for my coffee, too, and was a bit disappointed to be told no.

A note about yesterday: C again had a great time at daycare; she’s got the same carer as the last time she was there, and while the center has had serious staff turnover in the last 12 months the staff who she interacted with are the same. A… well, he was bitterly disappointed at the rain and having to stay inside all day. They did manage to get him to sleep a bit longer (45-50 minutes) than Thursday, though when I came to collect them (3ish) they’d popped in an emergency dummy and I could hear him screaming from the door to the toddler room. I know he’s got to get used to going to daycare, but it’d be a darned sight easier if he knew mum was at home at the end of the day.

E mentioned to me that A really hadn’t wanted to play inside at all, but wanted to be outside on their deck. I noticed a week or so ago that if I go to the front or back doors to unlock and go outside (plant watering, or coffee cherry picking mostly), he has this shiver of delight – his face lights up and he races over to the door. I see a pattern forming!

After leaving E+T’s we went to KMart at Mt Ommaney to get some winter clothes since we discovered almost all the winter kit we had from last year (or handmedowns from friends) didn’t fit. Then it was off to Club Wes to see J. When we walked into her room, A squealed with delight (and probably a bit of relief) and immediately started struggling to get out of the stroller. Pretty clear what’s happening in his mind right now.

I’m still knackered from this morning’s screaminess, and I’m hoping that he’ll sleep through. Heck, we both need him to do that. I’ve rugged him up, he’s got a full tummy, had a nice warm bath with C and I’ve got my fingers crossed.

I tried adding this response as a comment on linux.com’s review of Darktable, but it seems to be lost in a moderation queue.

The Darktable RAW photo editor and workflow manager for Linux (and experimental support for Mac OS X and Windows) is for non-destructive editing of RAW photo images.

The support for MS Windows isn’t there. As houz points out in his post on the topic:

The hard part is the question “Shall I commit it to git?”. Code wise it’s only a really small change, but the implications might be huge..... Maintaining a code base which none of the developers can run, test or debug is a nightmare.

From what I’ve seen in the bug tracker and threads on the mailing lists, I’d suggest that the Mac OSX support is better than experimental even though it does need work. Support for FreeBSD is coming along fast. The other OS which darktable runs on is Solaris. As the maintainer of that part of the codebase (which, frankly, is mostly just the packaging metadata), I was really chuffed to see Pascal’s comments about it in the #darktable irc channel.

The review then makes comments on the default styling of the application, which, frankly I agree with. For me, the defaults are too dark and too small. I created a darktable.gtkrc which everybody is welcome to try out. You’ll notice a difference between this screenshot with my gtkrc

and this one, with the default:

Lastly (on this topic), the review talks about editing the system-wide darktable.gtkrc. DON’T DO THIS! Sure, most linux systems are effectively single-user systems, but if you hack on files which are delivered by your packaging system to system locations, you’ll screw things up when you come to upgrade. And if you are on a multiuser system, your choices might not be liked by your fellow users. Please create a **$HOME/.config/darktable/darktable.gtkc** if you want to hack on the gtkrc.

My penultimate comment relates to this paragraph:

Saving images is a bit awkward because you have to switch to the light table and use the export module. But you’ll never accidentally overwrite your original because Darktable won’t let you; nothing is changed until you export your image.

Firstly, a niggle – what we’re talking about here is exporting images, not saving changes to RAW files. As that second sentence notes, as the first quote at the top mentions, and as darktable notes in bullet 2 at the features list, darktable is a non-destructive editing tool. If you make changes to how an image looks on your screen, those changes are saved to the history table in the application library, and saved in your associated sidecar (.xmp) file.

Finally, in the comment I submitted to the article, I included some detail on why I like darktable enough to make sure that it runs on my favourite operating system:

• It’s Open Source, so I can contribute ideas, bugfixes and other changes easily

• It’s written in portable C (90%, the rest is imported libs in C++)

• It took very little effort to make it build and run on Solaris 11

• If it runs on Solaris, I don’t have to run Adobe Lightroom (which means one less VBox running Windows)

• The plugin system – very extensible, and there are some pretty neat plugins to use (velvia and colour zones for starters)

• Did I mention the community?

Janet’s neurologist popped in yesterday evening, he disagrees slightly with her neurosurgeon in that he doesn’t think she’s got BPV (Benign Positional Vertigo). Too many acronyms and “it could be this, it could be that” for my liking. She’s a sufficiently unusual case that she’ll be the topic of a combined neurology/radiology case conference today. We’re hopeful that between them they’ll be able to figure out something which helps us move forward and accelerates her recovery. Speaking of recovery, she’s started dropping down her dose of the dexamethasone (the anti-migraine drug), and she’ll be dropping off the epilem as soon as possible too.

This morning she was able to get out of bed after breakfast and shower unassisted – and didn’t require an anti-nausea tablet first. Her eyesight is getting better focus-wise and the nystagmus is easing off too. All of this is combining to lift her general mood and make her realise just how terrible a state she was in last week. The neurologist is expecting to see her in her room on Monday, but he’s amenable to having “home by Wednesday” as a goal.

Overall, I think we can class this as a morning so good that it might keep going to the afternoon.

On the family front, C really enjoyed being back at daycare yesterday. Not only does she have the same carer as she did for her last stint, but a lot of her friends were there too. She slotted right back in and enjoyed being a big sister too. A, on the other hand, after having a great walk around the playground and jumping in the sandpit, refused to be taken inside without screaming the house down. His carer told me that he didn’t have a nap either (eeeek!) and that she was planning “a more outdoor-focused program for him”.

Of course, with today being rainy, that probably won’t work. This morning both the kids slept until 0630, but that meant I was able to get them to daycare by 0730. C was right into everything, but A screamed. For the whole 10 minutes while I was there dropping them off. After handing him to C’s carer (the staff combine before 8am so that they have sufficient numbers per legislation; they’re on overlapping shifts to cover the opening hours), you just have to walk away. I hope he’ll have a nap today, I really really do.

As foreshadowed yesterday, today is indeed a big day for A. He started it by stirring around 5am though quickly went back to sleep after I re-wrapped him. Then wonder of wonders, both C and A slept in until 0730! Eeeek!

So yes, it was a mad rush this morning, but not because I was disorganised.

They seemed fine when I dropped them off, I’ll find out for sure when I pick them up this afternoon.

J had another good night’s sleep – nearly 9 hours this time. She’s a little queasy this morning, but that might actually be due more to not having had enough breakfast than anything else. Only one piece of bacon? Darn those hospital dieticians for limiting caloric intake, it’s Un-A-Strayan! Seriously, I’m ecstatic that she’s not only been able to keep her breakfast down, but that she’s ravenous and wanting more of it.

Another really good data point – she frequently plays a sudoku in the evening before turning out the light and going to sleep. For the last 10 days or so she hasn’t been able to focus or concentrate on them. However, this morning she was able to get through almost all of a game and only stopped because the effort tired her out. She didn’t feel nauseous and her eyesight didn’t play up on her either.

I’m marking today as probably-good. Still not quite at the “I’m having a genuinely good day” point that the neurologist wants her to be at before she’s released, but she is definitely getting closer to it.