Music. Photography. Thoughts.
Today is Bella’s second birthday. We took a few photos, and Zuleikha made a collage of some of them:
I took the first one using my compact flash bounced over the ceiling, two of the collage were made with a studio strobe, and one with Zuleikha’s mobile phone with the normal room light on.
And like always, thanks for viewing.
We’re letting Bella out since 10 days, and she is making good use of it, going up to 5.5 hours exploring her new home, garden, and surroundings. And then she normally comes home to rest. I take pictures when I see something, like this one for instance which I took using my phone:
Or this one with my camera:
It’s a joy having her with us, and I’m always glad when she comes back.
Bobby Borisov wrote a nice article called “Debian Unveiled: The Gold Standard of Linux Stability” on his linuxiac web site, and Ankush Das summarized in his “Focusrite Extends Help to Linux Developer to Enable Driver Support” article on It’s FOSS News how Geoffrey Bennett and Focusrite are getting together since he started writing driver and GUI software for their audio interfaces (and reported about that on LinuxMusicians).
So both articles are good and recommended reading.
Here are some more photos of Bella since last Purrsday:
Like always, thanks for viewing.
Today it has been 35 days or 5 weeks since we’ve brought Bella to our home. And according to the suggestions, if you move a cat, keep her in for 4-6 weeks to get accomodated to the new home, or else she could head out just to search for the old one. So we agreed on 5 weeks, meaning: today.
Here are some photos since last week, and from today:
Zuleikha also made a nice collage with her phone, which she sent me with Signal lately:
Here’s one from this morning, looking out at the dimly lit dining area/window:
Later, Bella slept a bit (or recharged, like babies do?):
And finally, while us humans were hanging the laundry: freedom! Yay!
She hasn’t been out for too long this first time, so let’s see how she’ll do during the next days. So much to explore…
… and like always, thanks for viewing.
Got Gnome 45 on Arch today, and – as expected and even announced – none of the former extensions kept working. Looked like this:
The workspace switcher still worked, but is redundant now because they made another pill-shaped one on the top left (not movable). Freon and Openweather extensions don’t have version 45 yet, and even Vitals – at least the one packaged in Arch’s User Repository (AUR) was too old. And GSConnect, the most important one for integrating your phone(s), is gone as well.
My solution, for the moment? Go to XFCE. I’ve tried Budgie but didn’t like it, and I never became friends with KDE again since leaving it 20+ years ago. So for now my Arch desktop looks like this:
So still no GSConnect (or KDE Connect), but still better than this forced-into-your face behaviour of Gnome. Seems like Linus was right, that is cancerous behaviour, thanks but no thanks.
Edit/Update:
I gave KDE another try. No love yet, but it’s growing on me. And KDE Connect works as well (that small phone icon in the lower right):
So let’s see…
Edit/Update from later the same day:
Back to Gnome by now. Like I said, I tried to love KDE or XFCE or other desktop environments, but just can’t. So for the moment I installed the latest nightly build of GSConnect from Github, and for a bit of weather info, I used another extension from AUR’s git. That relies on the installed weather app from Gnome which isn’t as good as OpenWeather, but it works (showing Frankfurt, not the place we live but close enough). For the moment, I can do without Vitals or Freon, I know that my CPU temp and fans speeds are good no matter what I’ll do. So back to minmalistic Gnome:
Like always, thanks for viewing.
Jennifer Ouellette has two nice articles about cats on Ars, named “We now know how cats purr—why they purr is still up for debate“, and “What cats’ love of boxes and squares can tell us about their visual perception“. Good and recommended reading for friends of felines. Oh, and in case you’d like to catch a cat, here’s how:
Thanks for reading 😉
During the last month or so, quite a number of bugs have been found, some of them prominent, and some severe ones which are actively exploited already, meaning that more or less everyone is affected, no matter what operating system(s) they use. That’s why more or less every operating system and program vendor(s) are offering updates at the moment, and you should install all of them.
For instance: the webp image and vp8 video formats from Google, they are used in every major browser and even in programs you wouldn’t think of, like the Signal desktop and mobile clients which are basically Chrome browsers as well (just with another look). Or in-OS updates like libvpx on Linux and the equivalent ones on Windows, Macs, and so on – even “stable” operating systems like Debian 12 “Bookworm” are offering updates on almost a daily basis at the moment, and you should really care.
On Android phones, look for updates as well – the original Google Pixel devices which are still supported just got Android 14 (which has bug fixes), but ones on A13 or older should still get updates as well – and don’t forget to check the Google Play Store or its alternatives like F-Droid & Co. Play services as well in case you’re on standard Android. And for iPhones and the Apple iOS/MacOS world the same applies.
So do yourselves and us all a favour, and update your engines, ladies & gents. Thanks.
P.S.: older devices are potentially greater risks than newer ones, which is why Apple or Google and also 3rd party vendors like GrapheneOS only support their devices for a certain amount of time. Luckily, for the new Google Pixel 8 phones that supported time frame was now extended to 7 years, for these and older ones see here.
Older ones could still run at home with some risks accepted, and with OSs like DivestOS, like for instance our 11 year old Nexus 10 tablet or the Pixel 3a phone. That Pixel 3a for instance has Android 13 (which Google never gave it), and while the Nexus 10 tablet ist still on Android 7 (which Google also never gave it), it still can have the latest security patches at least for the software side (but not for Qualcomm, ARM, or any other 3rd party hardware vendors of course, blame it upon them):
At least a bit more peace of mind, and even if that’s not a 100% solution, it’s still better than nothing, so we have to thank people like Tad (DivestOS) or Daniel (GrapheneOS) for all of their work. Please support them if you can. And see a comparison table of Android ROMs at eylenburg. Thanks.
… and she’s really sweet.
I started playing around with an older lens from the film camera, meaning I had to manually focus it. And since thinking “film”, I cropped this one into a 3:2 format and used Color Efex Pro (on Windows) to simulate a Fujichrome Provia 400F film:
On this one – also with same same OM Zuiko 50mm/1.8 lens manually focused at f/1.8, she seems to see me as prey:
I also took this one using my phone yesterday evening while we’ve had a visitor:
And finally, one from today – back to my Panasonic Leica DG 25mm/1.4 “normal” lens (and with autofocus):
And like always, thanks for viewing.
Thanks for viewing.