Music. Photography. Thoughts.
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:
I found Ksnip in an article on LinuxLinks via LXer. Very useful as you can see… problem solved.
And like always, thanks for reading.
From a few minutes ago:
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.
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:
There aren’t only apples, but also chestnuts, pairs, berries, all kinds of fruits:
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:
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.
We’re having a new visitor. I’ve seen him outside already, and both Mitchie and Zuleikha assume that he’s the son of Wilma – same size, same eyes, same behaviour. Unlike Wilma tho he’s only white and grey, so I would have perhaps called him something like “Baby Gandalf” or so; my “girls” decided to call him “Crunchy” instead.
Like every other young cat, he likes to play and to hunt. I’ve made two photos of him already, both from a distance so I had to crop them a bit. Here’s how the young guy looks:
We haven’t seen Wilma since a few days, so I hope that she’s okay… anyway, and like always, thanks for viewing.
P.S.: Wilma came later, very hungry and with lots of sand in her fur. Didn’t want to stay for too long…
He just went out:
As always, thanks for viewing.
Yep – John Goerzen’s story made me smile, as it has a lot of parallels to my own one. Ok for me it was a 300 baud acoustic coupler, a C64, and the first network to speak about was probably Datex-P, but still… these were the not so good old times if you think about it, and “Gen-Z” as they are called have so much power in their hands now (but also so many possible distractions). A very interesting read, but who knows – maybe only for me?
And yes, sure I remember DEC computers, or Novell’s Netware – a company like Microsoft didn’t even know how to spell TCP/IP at that time 😉
Found via Planet Debian. Thanks for reading.
If you’d like to see your tax money used for good, you can support the FSFE (Free Software Foundation Europe) with a pic, using their sharepic generator, like this:
If you don’t want to show your own pic, ask a friend if s/he will support it:
See their page. And thanks in case you’re supporting this as well.
Made me smile:
“This section describes how to set up your local work environment to build the Android source files. You must use Linux; building under either MacOS or Windows isn’t supported. Keep in mind the important change to the
https://source.android.com/docs/setup/build/initializing/usr/bin/pythonbinary as well.”
And yes, that’s Google, on how to build your own version of Android for phones or tablets…
I wrote about testing /e/OS on the older Google Nexus 5 device which we still have, and I like it a lot. The privacy aspect alone, using microG instead of the Google services, is wonderful. However, the latest official Android from Google is version 6 (codename ‘Marshmallow’), and the latest /e/OS is still based upon Android 7 (codename ‘Nougat’), so they’re both quite old even when the build on /e/OS is from October 2021.
But on the XDA developers’ forum, I found a much newer ‘unofficial’ version of LineageOS for the same device, based on Android 11. To install that, you need a bootloader which can repartition the device a bit, and then you can find links for the image and also for the ‘pico’ sized version of OpenGApps here. And together with the usual tools from Google and the howto from LineageOS, this is quite doable…
So by now my old phone looks a bit different again, in fact, *much* different from /e/OS:
And, checking the OS version, it indeed shows Android 11 (the build is only a few days old):
So *that* is interesting, isn’t it? Ok this is an unofficial build – thanks z3DD3r from XDA devs – but I’m very curios to check out this one…
This would have been a bit easier with the Pixel 3a which we just gave to my brother, because for that one you’ll still get official builds, even LineageOS for microG (that would be the ‘sargo’ image of LineageOS 19.1 (based on Android 12.1) from the LineageOS for microG pages…)
How cool… I’ll play around with the one a bit now, and keep an eye on the folks over at LineageOS – will they offer Android 13 for ‘sargo’? And next year, Android 14 for both ‘sargo’ and ‘sunfish’ (codename for my Pixel 4a)? I’ll keep you informed.
Edit, from 19:18 same day:
I rearranged the home screen a bit, and now that almost looks like my Pixel 4a phone with its original Android 13 from Google. Have a look:
As always, thanks for reading.
Zuleikha – or “Aki” as she prefers to have her called instead – has some original Google earbuds from the Pixel 3a phone. Yes, the ones with cables, and from a time when manufacturers still added those goodies (like power adaptors and headphones) to their expensive products.
Sadly, one of them is dead, so she can hear only one side when she’s out and about, time to get her new ones (or so we thought, more to that later).
First I wanted to get her the new Truthear Crinacle Zero for around 50 bucks (Euros/Dollars), but these were sold out immediately after being on the market for a few days. Out of further options, two stood out, the Moondrop Aria (~80€) and the Moondrop Chu (20€). So after a short brainstorming with Mitchie, I ordered the latter, and yesterday they arrived:
I’ve read and seen some tests about them, so I was very curious how these would sound. Turns out, very good – but these aren’t for Aki.
Further explanation: these are maybe *too* good for her – she immediately heard some “hissing” sounds from her phone (Pixel 4a 5G), and also from mine (Pixel 4a). Not so much from the older Nexus 5 or from a Huawei 8″ tablet we also have, but for her own phone she found them unbearable. Neither Mitchie nor me heard that, but then again, Aki’s ears are almost half a century younger than mine…
And why do these stay? Well, for me. I’m no big fan of in-ear monitors or headphones, my own Sennheiser CX 1.00 which I still have are terrible, *for me*. That must have to do with my ear canals, I’ve never had or heard anything which would have the most remote hint of bass, even not with the biggest rubber or silicon “plugs” mounted. Until the Chu, with their biggest “spring tips” (which cost 13€ alone). These still aren’t comparable to good over-ear headphones like the Sennheiser HD569 or HD560S, but at least they don’t sound “shrill”, or produce only treble. There’s a hint of bass even for me, and that’s why I decided to keep these for myself. Maybe those “Crinacle Zero” – with lots more bass under 200Hz – would be even better? I don’t know, but honestly, these kind of IEMs aren’t that important, I don’t use them often enough to justify further expenses for myself. Plus the Chu we ordered came with a microphone in their cables, so I could even take phone calls with these, with the phone in my jacket pocket – so I’m sold.
And Aki? Well she’s still not sure, she absolutely loves the sound of her old cable Pixel buds, so we don’t know, can’t replace these because they’re not made anymore… hints & tips anyone?
As always, thanks for reading.
Update from Saturday, 18:35:
I have to revise my first judgement about these Moondrop Chu IEMs: they are awesome! Get them if you need 20€ in-ears. Writing this from the old Nexus 5 phone on which I’m listening…