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.

First Wilma, then myself…

Today I took two photos, with the same camera and lens, but with slightly different settings, and also cropped differently.

The first one was of Wilma, in 3:2. She was very alert because of the always love-sick Cookie who was also around, so there was a lot of hissing and warning to keep him at a safe enough distance. Understandably, she had no eyes for me:

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Wilma, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Later – long after the two cats were gone – I took a self portrait, with having my camera on a (microphone) table stand, remote-controlled by a mobile phone. I cropped this one into a 5:4 format and used a Kodak Tri-X film simulation in Silver Efex to achieve this:

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Selfie at the computer desk, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

The camera was my Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk2, and the lens was the 17mm/1.8 from Olympus, with f/4 for the cat, and with f/1.8 for myself (it was getting dark already). And like always, thanks for watching.

This is really secure…

I can’t reuse my deceased brother’s mobile phone. He set up a secure code and/or fingerprint, and that cannot be removed except by himself – which is of course a problem.

I have written to Google about it, because although I’m really not a beginner in putting other operating systems on a phone, to do so you still have to unlock the bootloader first, which cannot be done if you can’t log in into the device. No way, and I’ve tried several times to factory reset it – still the security wants Willi’s secret number and/or credentials after rebooting it. And Google wrote back that they are sorry for our loss, but cannot help – they don’t store copies of your device passwords and/or fingerprints.

And that seems to be pretty secure indeed. In fact, in 2018 they were proud to announce their new ‘Titan M’ chip, and the media was full of praise, since while not perfect, that is a better and more secure setup than even Apple’s, as some wrote. Google even went so far to offer a reward of up to 1.5 million dollars to anyone who could hack the chip, and although that was done by three capable gentlemen, it took them a year and a half to fully understand what’s going on. Google thanked them and removed that possibility, giving the team some 75,000$ as they wrote.

So for me/us, my brother Willi’s device – a Google Pixel 3a which he got from us (I bought it for my wife originally) – is what you call a ‘landfill’, which is too bad considering the hardware being not even 4 years old. Maybe we could trade it in with our next purchase, let’s see. But hats off to Google as it really seems to be practically impossible (read: 4.5 man years worth only 75k$) to hack these devices.

What does that mean for me and for you? Well our data – at least the one on our phones – is pretty secure indeed (assumed you’re not too sloppy with security yourself). But if you want to have your relatives backed up in case of your own demise, you should probably consider to set up Google’s ‘Inactive Account Manager’, and probably send your secret code to your family if you don’t want your phone buried together with you… (this is a joke of course, these devices should at least be recycled).

Like always, thanks for reading.

Edit/update, from 3 days later:

[x] done. Guessed the right number, installed LineageOS 20 which is Android 13. Cool – this is a much better device than my old Nexus 5 which I still had in reserve and/or for development.

It’s astonishing by the way how close the look and feel can be to Google’s interpretation of Android on their Pixel phones – even the Easter eggs work in LineageOS as well, like the one simply called “13”. And once you have that, you can hold one of these bubbles to change that look. Funny:

13. Or, better said, LOS20’s view of it.

Edit/update, from 5 days later:

That Pixel 3a is still a wonderful device, especially with that inofficial LineageOS 20 image I have on it right now. That even came with the Pixel Launcher, so it almost looks like my 4a with Google’s version of Android on it. The only difference is that I didn’t set up an account on that 3a, so I also don’t have Google’s weather applet but a free one from OpenWeather instead. Look at them side by side:

Pixel 3a with LineageOS 20 left, Pixel 4a with stock ROM right

Like always, thanks for reading.

Happy New Year 2023

To all our family, friends, and readers of this: have a happy new year 2023 everyone. Be well and safe.

Scene from “Dinner for one” starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden, © NDR, Foto: Annemarie Aldag

Like always, thanks for reading.

Some phone shots from today – and some screenshots

At the moment, all three neighbours’ cats are here, and all are sleeping. Two (Wilma and Crunchy) on my bed, and one (Cookie) on the sofa. Earlier, I caught Wilma on my lap with the phone in my hands:

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Wilma on my lap, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

I had been trying different versions of LineageOS on an older Google Nexus 10 tablet device which we had laying around unused, and after trying some unofficial ones I decided to try the latest official build which you can get from Lineageosroms.com, which is LineageOS 13.0 – [ Android 6.0.1 (Marshmallow) ] as you can see here:

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That is some years old already as well (the tablet is about 10, this image more than 4 years old), but it is still a nice compromise between speed, stability, and features. Being the equivalent of Android 6 under its hood, I could even install the Zapp app from the F-Droid store, and so now we can watch Live and/or streamed TV on it, like so:

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News (via Zapp app, see F-Droid.org) on a 10 year old Nexus 10 device running LineageOS ‘Marshmallow’, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

I had to interrupt my activities to send Mitchie to work with the car, and when we came down to the garage I saw that some neighbour had parked a nice new Honda motorcycle right in front of their partly covered Fiat 500 and beside our car. After coming back, I took a quick pic of that as well:

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A brand new motorcycle, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2022

Oh, and when looking into my blog software today I saw that I’ve got a new version of that as well:

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So I’ll have to see what’s new, and whether any of the also new templates (2022 and 2023) are looking good…

So all photos in this article came from my Pixel 4a phone, and the screenshots from my computer. As always, thanks for reading and for viewing.

Visiting Tuna

After having so much fun lately with the three different neighbours’ cats which are visiting us, it was time to go and see Tuna’s grave again. So after a bit of driving redirections due to construction areas on our way, we’ve made it to Frankfurt. I took a few photos, here’s one of them:

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Visiting Tuna, Frankfurt 2022

We’ll always miss her. And like always, thanks for viewing.