The official Wikiloops “Member meeting 2024 report” is out

Richard, founder of Wikiloops and host of the 2024 members’ meeting just wrote his official report about the meeting which took place last month, and to which I also attended. Read, see, and hear all about it on Wikiloops. You can also watch the videos on Youtube, and/or see the photos in Diana’s gallery. Here are two of these photos:

Some of the attendees who were either late or had left the day before already had to be “‘shopped”, as they say, into the picture – you probably see it because of the very different lighting on some of the faces.

The videos have very different maximum resolutions sadly, from 480p to 1080p, and for my taste I’m a bit over-represented in the first one, the second one shows me playing a tune from a lead sheet which I hadn’t seen ever before, so excuse my uncertainty at some times (for instance on when the outro was about to start, couldn’t exactly read this). Oh, and before you ask: no; playing from lead sheet or from notation isn’t what’s representative of the “normal” jamming – but I’m always glad if people put up the chords to their songs anyway. And I love playing OliVBee‘s songs. And the ones from Moonchild of course 🙂

Anyway, enjoy, and like always, thanks for viewing and for reading.

The Barnadise, from up the hill

Took this short before sunset on Saturday. It’s the village where the 2024 Wikiloops members’ meeting took place, and Richard’s “Barnadise” is pretty much in the middle of the photo:

Taken with my Pixel 6a phone on my way back from the last walk over the hill with the “Hubertuskapelle”.

As always, thanks for viewing.

It ended, somehow…

This is what I wrote in the song description on Wikiloops:

“I’ve been at the Wikiloops meeting 2024, woohoo! But like all good things in life, it had to end, somehow – and that reminded me that I wanted to play on this awesome track of Isa and Devin. And since both my upright and myself aren’t really up to the task right now, I had to take the fretless instead to noodle around on this a bit. Thanks to Isa & Devin, and I hope you’ll like it…”

So here is it:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

And like always, thanks for listening, and for reading. If you’re a musician, consider to join us and to play with us.

Perhaps the best choice for Linux newbies?

I have a sister who still owns an older notebook which runs Windows 7, and a friend from England who just moved from a Windows 8 to a Windows 10 machine. Both machines wouldn’t run Win11 I guess, tho I didn’t ask. You don’t recommend that to friends anyway.

So what to recommend? Linux of course, yes, but which one? Liam Proven (and many others) think it’s Mint. From his article in The Register, let me just cite these two sentences:

“Linux Mint remains the most sensible, pragmatic desktop Linux out there.” and, a bit further down, “If you have an aging PC that can’t run Windows 11, this is the one to try.”

One remark tho: Mint’s website, documentation, and all are really cool as well – as long as you speak English fluently enough. Maybe the user base could be much bigger if these pages were localized, like Debian’s for instance? Just saying…

For my late brother, using Debian – with a little help of myself – wasn’t a problem, but for any beginner who doesn’t have more “expert” friends or relatives, Mint might really be the sensible choice for now. Try it in a VM if you have the resources to do so, and if not, have a look at the Live image which you can start from a USB stick. One thing it *does* have as an advantage over its grandma Debian is the possibility of an OEM install (like “Mama” Ubuntu offers as well), so I could offer an installation to my sis or to close friends…

Anyway, have a look. It’s better than Win11, as are all other Linux distros.

Muchas gracias, Xavi!

Wikiloops member ivax just created a new album on which he included a remix of a track which also involved me. Listen:

This track is embedded with the friendly permission by the creatives on wikiloops.com.

So gracias Xavi, and thanks to you for listening.

Now running…

  • GrapheneOS on the Google Pixel 6a mobile phone
  • DivestOS Mobile on the Google Pixel 3a mobile phone
  • Debian on my self-built desktop computer (for “work”)
  • Arch Linux on my self-built desktop computer (for “fun”, or to see the newest stuff)

Looks like this:

GrapheneOS
DivestOS Mobile
Debian
Arch Linux

Oh, and of course I’m also running the latest jams on the Wikiloops radio. You can participate in these if you like, why not give it a try?

Like always, thanks for viewing, reading, listening, and all that 🙂 Happy holidays 🙂

Update, from Wed Dec 20th, 2023:

According to the German security expert Mike Kuketz, GrapheneOS is the gold standard of all Android operating systems. His article is in German, only the parts where he cites Daniel Micay, founder and lead developer of GrapheneOS are in English.

Privacy Guides has the same opinion and recommendation. See also at Eylenburg’s comparison. And at AndroidAuthority. And maybe the best one at PrivSec.

Be aware tho that in case you reject all Google services and apps, you’ll also lose some of their “AI” and capabilities. Your choice. In that case, user profiles might help – one owner profile without, and a user profile with Google services (still sandboxed in GrapheneOS). And thanks again for reading.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

Recently a friend an I were talking about Haruki Murakami‘s books, and when we asked each other’s favourites, my friend’s answer was “Killing Commendatore”, while my first reaction and answer to this was “1Q84”.

And while both are brilliant, by re-reading first “Kafka On The Shore”, and after that, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, my mind has changed (at least for now; I began re-reading “Killing Commendatore” but after a few pages interrupted that to read the ones mentioned above first).

Like probably every author, Murakami has recurring themes, topics, and sometimes even characters – the “hollow man” being a figure in “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, and “hollow men” being a concept in “Kafka On the Shore”, or Ushikawa being both present in “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle”, but having a much more prominent role in the third book of “1Q84”.

I think now that “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” was probably the best I’ve read so far of Murakami’s, it’s also a very sad one at times, and the described cruelty (and the nonsense of war) is frightening. The most frightening figure of all is “Boris the manskinner”, a Russian who was elsewhere compared to Vladimir Putin, and let me cite from the English translation why I had the same thoughts:

My own country is hopeless. It was almost better under the czars. At least the czar didn’t have to strain his empty head over a lot of theory. Lenin took whatever he could understand of Marx’s theory and used it to his own advantage, and Stalin took whatever he could understand of Lenin’s theory (which wasn’t much) and used it to his own advantage. The narrower a man’s intellectual grasp, the more power he is able to grab in this country.

Brilliant, isn’t it? And to have “Boris the manskinner” aka Vlad being the ones who took whatever they could understand of Stalin (less than Lenin, much less than Marx), but both equally brutal, yes that seemed to fit. If you can stand it, read it.

More about Haruki Murakami here. And as always, thanks for reading.

Ladies & gents, please start your engines (update your browsers)…

Due to several newly discovered and closed bugs in recent times, it’s advisable to update your browsers, both Firefox and everything based upon Google’s Chrome and Chromium engines.

See here and here for Firefox, here and this and that for Chrome.

The fastest of my systems to update these (or their hardened derivates) were DivestOS with updates for their Mull and Mulch browsers, and Arch Linux with the new Firefox and Chromium browsers – thanks for all of your work, it’s really appreciated!

Thanks to you for reading, and for considering to staying safe.