This one is for the gear heads, or for those who want to see some photos from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Matti Sulanto is a photographer from Finland and as it seems he’s currently on a trip to Malaysia where he lent a camera and lens from Robin Wong, another photographer who lives in KL. So he’s talking about the gear mostly, but you can see some photos of the area – I think in one traffic directions sign I saw “Jalan Bukit Bintang” or so? Enjoy, if that is of any interest for you:
Oh, and about that lens – it’s really a lovely one, I have it as well. Like always, thanks for reading and/or viewing. Found these videos via 43rumors.
Haven’t done a “selfie” since a while. But today I reinstalled one of the studio strobes into a corner of our dining area, attached a gridded beauty dish to it, set the camera to share its display and settings via WiFi, and used my phone as a remote controller. Then, with a black background attached to the kitchen door, I took a photo of myself. Looks like this:
I set the white balance to 4800k and cropped the photo into a 4×5 format, otherwise it’s unaltered and like “out of the camera”.
Getting grey, am I not? Well I guess for an almost retiree that’s quite normal perhaps? Anyway, took the same photo into Silver Efex, and used the ‘Dark Sepia’ preset to get this out of it:
Olivia (OKO) posted this on Soundcloud a while ago, just found it there. We have so many good bass players on Wikiloops, so I feel quite honoured that she chose the version with me on my upright bass:
Pieces by OKO and frineds, lyrics by Eyeless, also on Wikiloops where it originated
Thanks Olivia and friends, what a pleasure to jam with you all 🙂 <3
When both my wife and daughter got newer devices one day, one of the first mobile phones I kind of “inherited” from them was the Google Nexus 5 – a truly wonderful device in my opinion, with a just right 4.95 inch screen size. When it came out it had Android 4.4 codenamed “KitKat”, and Google officially supported it until their version 6.0.1 “Marshmallow”.
Today I changed it to the newer and of course also unofficial version 20 of LineageOS which equals Android 13, so its operating system is now newer and more recent than even that of the Google Pixel 3a which we gave to my brother (tho an image of LOS20 for that exists as well, it’s also still not an official one). Here’s how mine looked after the first reboot, with a check on the version number:
Android 13 on the Google Nexus 5
The standard and unaltered start screen of the “Trebuchet” launcher of LineageOS20 looks like this:
LineageOS 20 (Android 13) on the Google Nexus 5
This time I haven’t installed any of the more or less free Google services, so no push notifications, no location or “Play Store” services, and so on – I can do without. This device hasn’t even a SIM card, and I use it over WLAN and for development/testing purposes only.
Anyhow, this is also a proof of concept that you don’t really have to throw or give away older hardware even if you want to or have to stay current because of security considerations. All you need is a computer and a bit of time to restore your devices to newer and still updated versions of a truly free (as in freedom) operating system. Only works with Android or Linux tho, Apple users sadly can’t do this.
My Pixel 4a will officially be supported until August of this year, after that I can decide about the right time to upgrade it to a free version of Android 14 or whatever is to come.
Like always, thanks for reading.
Update: like always, first things first – I installed F-Droid and after that (and from it) also the Aurora “store” (which is only a proxy to the Google Play Store, you need it for apps like Firefox et al), and then the Zapp app (also in F-Droid) which lets you view German live and “Mediathek” (streamed) TV from our public (“Öffentlich-rechtlich“) TV stations. Plus I copied over some music from my computer to which the device is still connected. So the list of apps now looks like this:
installed apps on the Nexus 5
while the screen in the integrated Music app looks like this now:
Music app in LineageOS 20 showing my albums which are on the device now
That’s hardly different from what my Pixel 4a has – which shows that this is truly a usable device still. I can listen to music both on- and offline, watch TV, I could also send email if I wanted to, so that was my point…
Finally, an AMD 7000 series CPU which I’d recommend over its 5000 series predecessor (which I have and with which I’m pretty happy). So if you’re looking for a new CPU for your next build, this could be the one. Or its 6 core version which should still easily beat my 8 core 5000 series one.
P.S.: just saw that Phoronix has some benchmarks of these processors under Linux. And like I thought, even the smaller one runs circles around mine, although they still took a bit more power than my 5700G.
One of my favourites from Roy Hargrove (RIP) is his famous “Strasbourg / St. Denis”:
Roy Hargrove Quintet: Strasbourg / St. Denis
He also has the opening track of this great album – one for bass players and others alike:
Disney Jazz Volume I: Everybody Wants To Be A Cat
This one? I was recently asked what makes a good bass line, and/or how to compose one. After giving it some thought, my answer would be that if I’d get this album as a birthday present myself and started studying the bass lines and where all the players come from, then I’d had enough to do for the next few years…
Enjoy, and thanks for reading & listening.
Edit: prefer a live version of that famous stop in the Parisian Métro? Here you go:
Since the beginning of this year, our internet connection was “shaky” at best, as both daughter & wife called it. And indeed, a short search confirmed that we weren’t the only ones having problems with our provider.
So I have been looking up FTTH offers again, but there aren’t any – yet. Once they will offer it here, I’ll be one of the first ones who want it. And as soon as I had finished that thought, two cable guys rang and came looking, seems that even in the same building we weren’t the only ones…
So until this is sorted out I guess I will take the very good advice from Wikiloops whenever an elephant steps on that landline:
“… we recommend making some music in the meantime …”
Thanks to Richard for the good advice, and thanks to you for reading.
