Posts

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Sometimes, when I get a little nostalgic…

… then I set my digital camera to black & white, and sometimes also to the 3:2 format of the typical 24x36mm “Kleinbildfilm” which we used when we were young. And if I’m really in some kind of yesterday’s mood, I also use Silver Efex to simulate using Ilford HP5 Plus film which we used to use most of the time, self-developed and prints enlarged with my brother Willi’s Durst machine in our parents’ bathroom… except that we used Canon A-1 cameras at the time, not Olympus like now:

7e7_4205313_sfx_hp5-om2n
Olympus OM-2n, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Within Silver Efex (Pro 2, in Windows 11) I used +20 percent brightness here. And I like that like with real film, the “grain” is more visible in the brighter areas, not like digital “noise” which would turn up in the darker ones. Very reminiscent of film and its behaviour indeed.

I could get a roll of Ilford film from time to time, but our darkroom equipment is gone since long.

Like always, thanks for viewing.

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Rest in peace, brother, on this last of Ramadan 2023

Today would be my brother Willi’s 65th birthday, hadn’t he passed away some three months or 13 weeks ago – so from now on this April 20th will be some sad day to remember. Rest in peace my brother, we all miss you.

Today is also the last day of Ramadan for this year 2023, so in our area it will be over in less than 10 hours from now, at least according to the islamic calendar. This is different elsewhere where people go strictly for sightings of the new moon, so we don’t know whether it’s over already in the East, or when it will be in the West. But anyway, we wish Eid Mubarak, or Id al-Fitr, or Hary Raya Idulfitri, or whatever it may be called in your part of the world.

And like always, thanks for reading.

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Cookie from today, ooc b&w image

As the headline says, I took this black & white photo of Cookie, one of the neighbours’ cats today. The camera was simply set to black and white, no editing whatsoever:

And like always, thanks for viewing.

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Microsoft = Suicide Squad?

Read this. Or that. Or some users’ reactions here.

I’m not really using Windows since 20+ years now, and can do well without. But I swear, the moment *I* see these ads, it’ll get kicked off of my SSD for good.

Loved the design of Win11, so keep those guys – but fire your decision makers is my advice.

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In German / auf Deutsch: Langfristig / Gründe / Kehrseite(n)

Meine Schwester plant den Kauf eines neuen Autos. Die Gründe wie auch bei uns: die Kosten für Instandhaltung des Alten übersteigen irgendwann den Restwert des Fahrzeugs, sprich weiterhin Geld für den Alten auszugeben ist ab einem gewissen Punkt einfach nicht mehr wirtschaftlich.

Mein Rat, langfristig (also in Bezug auf rein elektrisch bewegte Fahrzeuge): schaut nach China, aus Gründen die in einem Artikel in Heise Autos sehr schön dargelegt werden. Und für alle die es noch nicht wußten: ja, der Volvo ist ein chinesisches Fahrzeug.

Die Chinesen sind längst Marktführer vor allem bei Batterien, siehe hier. Und die genannte Natriumzelle wird mit Sicherheit ein nicht nur finanzieller Erfolg.

Ohne China geht es nicht; wir haben uns jahrzehntelang selbst in diese Situation hinein maneuvriert. Leider hat das Geschäftemachen mit China aber auch deutliche Schattenseiten wie zum Beispiel Zwangsarbeit. Und das nehmen nicht nur chinesische Firmen in Kauf sondern auch wir, und nicht nur in Bezug auf Autos. Im letzten meiner Links werden zum Beispiel folgende Firmen genannt:

Abercrombie & Fitch, Acer, Adidas, Alstom, Amazon, Apple, ASUS, BAIC Motor, Bestway, BMW, Bombardier, Bosch, BYD, Calvin Klein, Candy, Carter’s, Cerruti 1881, Changan Automobile, Cisco, CRRC, Dell, Electrolux, Fila, Founder Group, GAC Group (automobiles), Gap, Geely Auto, General Motors, Google, Goertek, H&M, Haier, Hart Schaffner Marx, Hisense, Hitachi, HP, HTC, Huawei, iFlyTek, Jack & Jones, Jaguar, Japan Display Inc., L.L.Bean, Lacoste, Land Rover, Lenovo, LG, Li-Ning, Mayor, Meizu, Mercedes-Benz, MG, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mitsumi, Nike, Nintendo, Nokia, Oculus, Oppo, Panasonic, Polo Ralph Lauren, Puma, SAIC Motor, Samsung, SGMW, Sharp, Siemens, Skechers, Sony, TDK, Tommy Hilfiger, Toshiba, Tsinghua Tongfang, Uniqlo, Victoria’s Secret, Vivo, Volkswagen, Xiaomi, Zara, Zegna, ZTE

Heißt also: wer wie wir Mainboards oder ein Notebook von Asus oder Lenovo, ein Mobiltelefon von Google, Apple oder Samsung, aber auch einen Mercedes oder VW oder Wäsche von Victoria’s Secret oder Schuhe von Adidas oder Puma kauft nimmt dies alles in Kauf. Und wer meint sein (oder unser) Toyota wäre besser: Toyota hat ein Joint Venture mit BYD, dem Batteriehersteller. Und Teile von Bosch sind in so gut wie *jedem* Fahrzeug. Tja…

Fahrräder “Made in Germany” (mit hier hergestelltem Stahl) wären vielleicht ein Ausweg, vor allem für Städter?

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This is fun…

Some two days ago, I installed the new and upcoming (not yet ready) version 12 of Debian GNU/Linux, codenamed “Bookworm”, and wrote about it here already.

The interesting thing for me as a hobby musician is that Debian now changed its default audio setup to pipewire, so while I’m still reading about its configuration – I did have some experience with it from a former Arch installation already – for now I simply started Ardour (Debian now has version 7.3) using this command line:

PIPEWIRE_LATENCY=128/48000 pw-jack ardour

And it runs nicely and without any hiccups (like xruns), with next to no CPU usage in an empty Ardour template (only 3 channel plugins plus Sonarworks in the monitoring section). With the Gnome environment (now version 43) set to dark mode, it looks like that:

Cool. Can’t wait to make some music with this new setup.

Like always, thanks for reading.

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About phone (and desktop) security

I know at least one former colleague who really cared about privacy and security concerning his mobile phone. And this morning, I’ve heard an interesting interview with Gabe, one of the developers of GrapheneOS, using NewPipe on GrapheneOS on my late brother’s Pixel 3a device – that looked like this:

That’s one and a half hours of a really interesting interview, so it’s really worth it. And I can confirm how secure those mentioned Titan M chips are, not even Google could hack or circumvent those, so if I wouldn’t have been able to guess my brother’s passcode, that device of his would have been an expensive paperweight.

I also liked how Gabe gave lots of credits to Apple because of their long-term support of their iPhones and devices, but yes, with the Pixel 6 and newer, things are improving on the Android side as well.

About desktop security: it’s actually worse than this, the same interviewer has some other interesting videos about that, or tips how to use Tor on your phone.

Recommended listening. And like always, thanks for reading.

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Back to a triple boot, added Debian 12, and a lighter theme again…

The headline basically says it all. I had to slightly shrink one of the partitions, then I installed “Bookworm”, and switched both my environment and also my web page back to a lighter theme for now. So my desktop looks like this now:

Like always, thanks for reading.

P.S.: added a dark/light mode switcher which floats in the bottom right of the page. Enjoy.