Five weeks – and freedom, finally ;)

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:

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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:

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Later, Bella slept a bit (or recharged, like babies do?):

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And finally, while us humans were hanging the laundry: freedom! Yay!

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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.

Four weeks of Bella…

… 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:

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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:

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I also took this one using my phone yesterday evening while we’ve had a visitor:

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And finally, one from today – back to my Panasonic Leica DG 25mm/1.4 “normal” lens (and with autofocus):

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And like always, thanks for viewing.

Bella, second week

Wow, how time is flying – it’s Tuesday evening, and tomorrow at 13:00 (1pm) Bella will be with us since 2 weeks already. She continues to be a constant joy, is interested in the neighbours’ cats (but they are not so amused to find a cat who lives here), and she loves to play and purrs like a kitten…

Took this photo on Sunday short before sunset:

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Bella, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

And like always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Bella, first week

One week and some 5 hours ago, Wilma moved in with us. And it has been a constant joy to have her around. By now she trusts us enough to let me get close with my noisy macro lens while she is having a nap, like this:

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Bella, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Okay, she got some chicken today, I guess it can’t get much better 😉 So let’s hush, and let her zzzzzzz…

Wispering: Like always, thanks for viewing

A few more photos of Bella

Bella isn’t allowed to roam around outside just yet, so at the moment it’s often eat, sleep, and I also try to play around with her a lot.

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We’d ordered a cat tree for her, which is now also her viewing platform sometimes:

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And today I took a photo of her while I was outside on the veranda, and Bella was in Zuleikha’s room:

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As seen from our veranda, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Like always, thanks for viewing.

Still experimenting with GrapheneOS

Still trying to figure out GrapheneOS on my late brother Willi’s old Pixel 3a phone. Turns out that with the sandboxed Google services activated, you can have the best of both worlds – one profile with free and open source apps, one with all the usual Google Android Apps in case you want these. With the same background picture of our late cat Tuna from 2020, that looks like this:

GrapheneOS with different profiles, open source and Google Apps

As you can see, you can even have the famous Google camera. What I have not found yet is the original Pixel launcher, guess you’d have to use a lookalike like Lawnchair2 or so to get the same look and functionality like on a Pixel with only the Google Android on it.

But this here is way more secure, as all of these apps are sandboxed and don’t have system-wide privileges, unlike with Google’s version of Android. I’m tempted to use it on my main cellphone as well…

Oh, and although installing GrapheneOS is easy especially with the web based installer, there are still some nice video howtos from people like Side Of Burritos, Cozy Living Machine, or Naomi Brockwell. Just in case you want more than just *my* opinions…

As always, thanks for reading.

Taken at dusk

When Cookie (or Samson) left us at around half past nine pm today, it was dusk already – and I had a zoom lens on my camera which couldn’t open up further than 1:4, so I had to crank up the ISO to 6400 to take his photo with 1/10th of a second at a focal length of 35mm (like 70mm on film):

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“One last drink before I’ll go…”, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

I converted the raw photo to a .tif using the OM System raw converter, and then chose the preset 019 “Fine Art” in Silver Efex Pro2 which brought back a lot of detail. Final editing of the Exif data in RawTherapee in Linux.

Like always, thanks for viewing. And good night Cookie.

Cookie = Samson

Went to the neighbours today and found out who the real family of “Cookie” is – the poor guy has problems with his left eye and should probably see a vet. So I took this photo of him and asked around:

Cookie aka Samson on our couch…

Turns out that his real given name is “Samson”, and that the family is the same where Wilma and the small grey/white guy (we call him “Crunchy” so far) also live. Plus at least one dog.

Nice to meet them.

My favourite cameras and lenses…

Today I took Mitchie’s camera – an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark 2 which had her Panasonic Lumix 20mm f/1.7 lens mounted – to photograph my own E-M10 Mark 2 which has the Zuiko Digital 50mm 1:2 macro lens (from the Olympus 4/3rds system) mounted. Converted it to black & white, and cropped it into a 3:2 format:

My favourite cameras and lenses, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

The above image is stored on cupoftea.social which is a smaller server connected to Mastodon. And like always, thanks for viewing.