Friday was online games night with my friends. After a busy day of ethics classes, and going for a 5k run in between.
In one of my classes, since we were talking about the topic of Science Fiction, the idea of AI came up, and what sort of things it might do in the future. One kid said:
Whenever I talk to ChatGPT, I use “please” and “thank you”, to make sure it doesn’t turn against me in the future.
My 5k run was very fast. The day was cold, only 14°C when I did my run around 11am. It meant I didn’t get hot and sweaty, and I managed my second best time ever for the distance, with 26:18. I was very pleased with that.
After lunch I went to pick up my new prescription glasses for use when working at the computer. I mentioned on Tuesday that they’d put the wrong prescription in, making them for close reading instead, and had to change them. I tested them out at the optometrist and they felt better, being good for reading something held with my arm fully outstretched. But when I got home I discovered that they were still focused too close. I had to lean forward uncomfortably in my chair from my regular posture to see the screen clearly. I used a tape measure to measure the distance from the screen to my eyes. The optometrist had said that screen-reading glasses are set for focus at 60cm. Which I discovered to be roughly true, in fact it was closer to 55cm where I felt my vision was clearest. But then I sat in my normal computer posture and measured the distance from the screen to my eyes, and it was 70cm. By the time I figured this out, it was after 5pm and the optometrist had closed for the day.
We stayed in for dinner and I made frittata with mushroom and tomato. After that I played online games. We played Knarr, Welcome to the Moon, Jump Drive, FLip 7, CodeChains (a game one friend invented and implemented on a Discord bot; it involves linking pairs of words into chains and then everyone trying to guess the same word that is being clued by both words on either side of every link), Just One, and Word Traveller. A lot of short games for variety.
First thing this morning I phoned the optometrist about my glasses and explained the problem. I said I didn’t want the second pair that I’d left there yesterday made with the same prescription – I needed it balanced to focus an extra 10-15cm away. They asked me to come in so they could check my eyes with the proposed correction to ensure right distance.
So after my wife returned from the gym with the car, I drove over to the optometrist. They remeasured my eyes to make sure and got the same refractive error, then wrote a prescription for new lenses to set a focal distance at 70cm as I requested. They said they’d get my second pair made with the new prescription and when they are ready I can swap the first pair back for new lenses. Fortunately this is under warranty so it won’t cost me any extra!
On the way home I stopped off at the Italian cake shop to pick up a cake to take to my mother’s place this afternoon. I got a chocolate and hazelnut torte. And then after my wife got home with Scully from her dog grooming appointment, we bundled into the car for the long drive to my mother’s place.
We arrived just before 3pm. My mission was to configure their broadband Internet and VOIP phone, which had stopped working when we deactivated their previous ISP account, as I mentioned on Thursday. I prepared by printing out a bunch of configuration info from the new ISP.
When we got there, I checked the ports of the modem/router. The phone was plugged into the only VOIP socket. The broadband was plugged into the second of 4 LAN ports. I moved it to the first LAN port, and bingo, the Internet came on! I could browse websites and access my mother’s email. That was easy.
But the VOIP phone still wasn’t working. I had some configuration information to enter into the modem, changing the old ISP server and proxy settings and entering a new VOIP password. I tried this, but it didn’t seem to work. I fiddled around a bit with it, but after a few minutes decided to contact the ISP phone tech support. I chose the new ISP for my mother because I’ve been very happy with their support on my own account, and they were brilliant again.
I got a very helpful guy who did some remote diagnosis stuff and then asked what router I was using. I said it was one supplied by the previous ISP. He said it’s possible that the VOIP was locked to that ISP and I’d need to get a new router, but he’d try a few things first. After changing some settings fruitlessly, he put me on hold while he contacted a co-worker with more experience, and together they did more diagnostic stuff and we explored the modem/router’s advanced settings. Eventually he tried turning off the firewall and lo! The phone started working! Aha! The other guy said the router’s default firewall settings were extremely restrictive, and it wasn’t letting the VOIP port through. They asked if I was okay leaving the firewall off, and I sort of hemmed and hawed and said I’d feel better if it was on. So they went back into the configurations and set up a firewall pass-through for the VOIP port, turned the firewall back on, rebooted the modem, and voilà!
We tested the phone, dialling out (to my wife’s mobile), and in (from my wife’s mobile) and it worked with no further problem. Phew! The tech support was really good. They had two of them on my call for over an hour, and they were determined to find a way to get it working without me having to go buy a new router. So kudos to Aussie Broadband – highly recommended if you’re after an Australian ISP.
We left my mother’s place later than we’d expected, and got hungry on the way home. We decided to stop at a place soon after we got off the freeway and back into Sydney’s outer suburbs (still half an hour drive from home). We went to Kipling’s Garage Bar at Turramurra, a place we’ve been to a couple of times before. We had a few tapas-style dishes to share, including arancini balls, and pulled duck with sesame chips:
And roasted cauliflower tacos:
Also some backed haloumi and for dessert a sticky date pudding. All really good. Then it was a drive back home for the evening.