A supermarket in “Vista” b&w

Taken with my Pixel 4a phone this morning, and edited it with the “Vista” b&w preset which is very contrasty:

PXL_20220930_085212037.MP~2
Lidl supermarket in “Vista” b&w, Mörfelden 2022

Taken from the (our) small car which you see reflected there. And like always, thanks for viewing.

A Cookie on my chair

Today I took two very different photos of the same “model” (really, these are my favourite models, with not even the slightest trace of vanity). First was with my Olympus camera and Mitchie’s 20mm lens:

7e6_9164810-cookie-chair-1-2
A Cookie on my chair 1/2, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

And the second one with a “free” camera, the one from LineageOS 18.1 (which is based upon Android 11, see my last article) on a Google Nexus 5 phone from late 2013:

7e6_916185708-cookie-chair-2-2
A Cookie on my chair 2/2, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

And there he stayed until short after 8pm when I started watching the news (Tagesschau) on this very Nexus 5 phone. Tho I had the sound *very* silent, it still disturbed him enough to sit up, stretch, and then leave, which means that I saw only the first few minutes of the news… 😉

Now he’s gone, and although I’m looking out from time to time, he doesn’t seem to come back – and no other neighbours’ cats either. So that’s it for today as it seems…

As always, thanks for viewing.

OTA update for a 9 year old device…

… how cool! Just got an over-the-air update of LineageOS on the Nexus 5, a mobile phone from 2013:

LineageOS OTA update

It’s still based upon Android 11 – but considering that Google stopped supporting this device with Android 6 or 7, this is still worlds apart. Gotta *love* open source! Thanks to everyone involved, you guys & girls help saving the planet!

And like always, thanks to you for reading.

P.S.: A few days ago I’ve read that Android 13 – the version we currently have on our Pixel devices – needs at least 2GB of RAM to be installed, even the open source AOSP version. So I guess that would be borderline compatible for this older Nexus 5 device, but let’s see – Android 12 could still be coming in open source form for it. Love this…

GAS, FOMO, or an embarrassment of riches?

Beginning of next year, I’ll officially retire. Which means that from then on, I’ll have much less income compared to what I’ve had during the last years, or even now. And when a friend from Paris recently mentioned that he was thinking about building a new computer for himself “which will have to last a few years” as he said, I started thinking about my own one.

I have a self-built computer (all of ours are, except the notebooks) based upon a “Haswell” processor, which was Intel’s internal code name for their 4th generation Core series. To be more precise, it’s the Intel Core i5-4460. That CPU together with 16GB of RAM sits on an Asus Z97M-Plus Micro-ATX mainboard, is cooled by some top-blowing Scythe Shuriken, and inside a very nice (with a thick aluminium! front plate) Antec 2480 case.

I’m running mostly Debian Linux, and for looking at newer stuff, I also often dual-boot into Arch Linux. On Debian I have set the CPU ‘governor’ profile to ‘performance’, which means that it’s always running at 3.2GHz (on Arch it’s mostly at 800MHz) – that’s because Ardour, my main program or ‘application’ as they are called nowadays complains if you don’t use a real-time kernel, and the CPU at ‘performance’ mode.

And while running Ardour together with some Sonarworks headphone correction software does make use of that older processor a bit, I’m far from really demanding anything of it – the CPU Usage in these cases stays around 25-30% as long as I don’t use lots of plugins in each channel/track of the DAW (digital audio workstation). While reading internet pages in a browser, or while writing, the CPU is kind of bored as you could say, and I’m also far from using much of the RAM as you can see on my partly screenshot from conky:

(Part of) conky on my computer

So I’m kind of very happy with that machine, and I doubt if I need more than that. Okay, when making videos I sometimes wait for it a bit, but as you can see, in the vast majority of times, my computer waits for me rather than vice versa.

So why am I thinking about a new one? Is that because of GAS, or FOMO? Funny side note about that term of ‘GAS’: it doesn’t have an English Wikipedia page, only German, Spanish, French, and Portuguese ones – although the term is cited to come from the late Walter Becker of Steely Dan fame…

No, it’s the thought my Parisian friend had, about “having to last for a while”. As you can see from the link to my CPU, it was discontinued in 2017, and also the mainboard, RAM, and everything else including that wonderful case aren’t available any more (which is sad, because some things like nice *and* small computer cases are vanishing at frightening and accelerating paces, with a downward spiral of ‘cheaper’ ruining most of the quality we were used to in my opinion).

So what would I do if my computer fails, and I won’t have much of an income any more? Well, yes, using an older notebook with a dual core Celeron and only 2GB of RAM, or even my mobile phone. Both of these would be more than good enough to read internet news (who does still know that term?), or for ‘surfing on the internet’ (and who does still know that book?) – but to work a bit on Wikiloops, or to make music with Ardour? I could forget about this…

And that is why I’m thinking about building a new computer for myself, although I have a wonderful and perfectly fine working one right now. So it’s hopefully not an ‘embarrassment of riches‘ in this case, and also no gear acquisition syndrome.

So what *am I* thinking about?

Well during the beginning of this year, it was my wife who had the oldest machine in the house, and a close relative had no working computer at all. So we gave her old Core Duo away for free, and I built her what at that point in time I would also have built for myself – a machine based upon an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G processor on an Asus (full ATX-sized) mainboard, with 32GB or RAM (both double the size and speed of mine), and a 2TB M.2 SSD. So, this one:

AMD Ryzen 7 5700G processor

This one is already kind of ‘old’ as well now, since later this month, AMD will start selling the next generation which they call the Ryzen 7000 series. These will *all* have graphics cores, so the 8-core equivalent processor to the one above will be the Ryzen 7 7700X I guess. And my friend from Paris even talked about getting a Ryzen 9 one (so with 12 or 16 cores). Perfectly fine, except that they will cost quite a bit more then the outgoing 5000 series, and also demand newer and also more costly mainboards (with at least a B650 chipset, these will be introduced on October 4th), and also with DDR5 RAM instead of DDR4 (or my DDR3).

So which one to get, that is the said question? Keep it cheap and cheerful with “Zen3”, or wait and pay quite a bit more for the newer “Zen4” one? Both options would be better than to go with Intel and their ill-named “Intel 7” architecture which in fact is still based on a 10nm process (and I hate liars and marketing people who just “pretty up” (non-)facts). Zen3 is 7 *real* nanometers, Zen4 will be 5nm, an architecture as small as the one on iPhones. Take that, Intel – and of course this will again help in saving energy as well (while our machines are waiting for us).

Keep that last bracket in mind – most of the time, the *vast* majority of time, computers are waiting for us, and not vice versa. Which means that a *faster* computer will be waiting *faster* for you and me, idling at higher clock speeds, consuming more power – for nothing. So yes, energy efficiency is a big point for me (us) – we never bought or built machines with dedicated graphics cards for instance, since first we’re no gamers (and for any 3D games Zuleikha also has a Nintendo Switch), secondly because these graphics cards would also be idling most of the time, and *when* being used, these consume up to 300 Watts – for comparison, my machine while waiting for me in the picture above takes slightly over 30 Watts (the processor has a TDP of 88W), and Mitchie’s machine is around 20 Watts doing the same (her processor has a TDP of 65W). That’s still more than a good notebook would take, but well…

So while Intel’s processors caught up a bit, mostly due to improvements in the Linux kernel as a recent article on Phoronix shows, they are still drawing up to 240 Watts out of your wall socket even without any graphics cards – so they’re out of the question. The Zen4 processors start at 105W TDP, mostly – I guess – because they want to catch up with Intel’s brute power single core results, don’t know if I’d really need that. But of course, 5nm against 7nm for Zen3, so in theory while doing the same, the newer ones should take less power. Guess I’ll have to wait for the first benchmarks and comparison tests, so until October. Earlier ones will be made on X670 mainboards which are simply overkill for most of us (except maybe some gamers, or whom are they going to impress with that kind of overbuilding things?).

Time to steer back a bit in my humble opinion, and to think about what we really need. Normal ‘web surfing’ is best done on mobile phones since quite a while, notebooks are way more efficient than desktop computers, and the latter ones could be made to other standards than pure and max power performance I think…

Plus, the maximum efficiency is of course only achieved when using your computer(s) as long as you can. Which means that for me – inflation also considered – I should perhaps lay some money on the side for later; not for now. And if ‘later’ means that I wouldn’t be able to buy a Zen3 (or Ryzen 5000) machine anymore – well that’s the way things are going; can’t change much of that. Plus, who knows, maybe there still *are* improvements which are good for us all?

Like always, thanks for reading.

P.S.: I just read on ZDNet (one of the better online magazines) about Linus Torvalds and his M2 MacBook Air and self-built home computers… very interesting, very much my thoughts – except that I definitely wouldn’t need an AMD Threadripper 😉

P.P.S.: above thought about laying some money aside and to wait and see how long mine will keep working is exactly what Mitchie proposed – sounds clever to me 😉

A resting Crunchy – in 3:2 and in b&w

Today Crunchy came by for a visit. And after playing with me for a bit, he rested against my leg, and I made a joke and said: “Babies don’t sleep – they recharge”. And yes, up and away he went again, out and back in, then ate a bit, and later made himself comfortable on Zuleikha who was under a blanket on a small sofa. I set my camera to ISO 6400 and opened the shutter to f/2 and took a few photos:

7e6_9124798-crunchy-resting-1-2
Crunchy resting 1/2, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022
7e6_9124801-crunchy-resting-2-2
Crunchy resting 2/2, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

Added a third of a stop of a vignette to the second, and double of that to the first of these photos – so I could brighten them up a bit without having the corners too bright.

And like always, thanks for viewing. Gute Nacht 🙂

Top-down coolers seem to be pretty effective

I’m following a vlog of a Youtuber since years – he calls his channel “Machines & More”, and I know no one else who tested that many different coolers in just one little case, the Cooler Master NR200(P).

Seems that even after two years, and with nice and affordable tower coolers like the Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. C or the Scythe Fuma 2 available, another category of CPU cooler still seemingly has an advantage – a so-called top-down cooler.

Why is that so? Simple: if the cooler doesn’t simply blow across but rather on to the board, it doesn’t only cool the CPU but also the chipset, now the M.2 SSD hard drives you might have installed directly on your boards, all that stuff. His first video from two years ago had one clear winner, and that was a Noctua C14S top-down cooler, and now he’s revisited it. Have a look in case you’re searching for a good cooler for your system.

In my own computer (which is an older but also self-built 4th generation Intel Core i5 system) I’m also using a top blower called the Scythe Big Shuriken (version 2 I believe, can’t remember) And while I’m writing this, my fans are at about 680 and 740 RPM, and the system temperature is at 30°C (while writing, your CPU is most of the time waiting for you rather than vice versa, that explains it).

The machine I’ve built for Mitchie this spring has a Scythe Mugen 5 Rev. B – but then this is a full-sized ATX system blowing out to the back of the case, so one can’t directly compare these.

With a bit of luck and careful planning, computers can last a long time… 🙂 Anyways, like always, thanks for reading.

Screenshot annotations in Linux

I’m helping out Richard with the Wikiloops project a bit, and sometimes like in every other bug report system, you need screenshots. No problem, in Linux (I use the Gnome desktop, mostly), it’s just a keystroke or two away. But how to annotate?

Like this:

Ksnip

I found Ksnip in an article on LinuxLinks via LXer. Very useful as you can see… problem solved.

And like always, thanks for reading.

A resting Cookie – in 5:4 and in b&w

From a few minutes ago:

7e6_9094789-resting-cookie
Resting Cookie, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

This is in-camera black & white with a simulated yellow filter. Other than cropping it into a 5:4 format, I just raised the mids in a film-like contrast curve in RawTherapee5.8, that’s all. ISO1600 on the Olympus OM-D E-M10 together with Mitchie’s Panasonic Lumix 20mm/1.7 lens at f/4.

As always, thanks for viewing.

Tie a yellow ribbon… for Mundraub

So no, I’m not reporting about that famous old pop song here, but of some very nice idea about allowing people to just pluck & eat fruits of all kinds, see the mundraub.org page.

On the Streuobstwiesen between the villages of Mörfelden and Walldorf, we have that new “Aktion Gelbes Band” which basically says that the owners of trees who don’t harvest themselves can allow people to go and pluck and eat, just to avoid waste. See their flyer about it here. I asked Mitchie who told me that she has an app on her phone for that, and that she and her colleague sometimes go and eat directly from those trees, and I wanted to see it – so here you go:

7e6_9044741-yellow-ribbon
Tie a yellow ribbon… for Mundraub, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022
7e6_9044745-free-to-eat-apples
Free to eat apples, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

There aren’t only apples, but also chestnuts, pairs, berries, all kinds of fruits:

7e6_9044753-free-to-eat-chestnuts
Free to eat chestnuts, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

What a nice idea. Oh, and yes, like on the cities’ web pages, there are sheep there as well – who, just like us, seek the shadows now:

7e6_9044764-family-of-sheep-shadows
A family of sheep seeking shadows, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022
7e6_9044780-sheep
Sheep, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

This last one sniffed my hand just like cats do – and accepted some green grass from Mitchie.

Speaking about cats: Wilma was also here when we came back, and she also needed to eat & drink, just like the others did earlier.

As always, thanks for reading and for viewing.