Oh my – bad news from last December which I saw only now: Tavi, lead and sole developer of DivestOS (see Wikipedia EN, DE) announced in his project news that he ends support of the project immediately:
“I believe the projects were highly successful in their goals, however this month will mark the end. DivestOS and its apps will not receive any further updates.”
Very sad news indeed, as this was the one project which saved us all from throwing away our old devices, keeping up updates and thus, security as long as it could. Which means that from now on we have to rely solely on the time span provided by our hardware vendors like Apple, Google, Samsung, or Xiaomi to name a few. And even GrapheneOS, the most secure system of them all only supports (google only) devices only as long as hardware vendors (of the internals, like Qualcomm and others) do. After that, they’re toxic waste.
Maybe it’s time to go back to dumb phones next time, me thinks – for those of us who really need mobile phones at all (I certainly don’t). Let’s see.
A new year has started, but there isn’t that much to report, or so I think.
This is the year that Microsoft will stop supporting their operating system Windows 10, so everyone including the ARD and the CCC are recommending to upgrade rather sooner than later, and if Microsoft thinks that your machine isn’t fit for Windows 11, try Linux instead. I still remember that old joke where someone wrote: “The box said to install Windows 7 or better – so I installed Linux” 😉
Yesterday one year ago I bought a fitness tracker, and started to investigate in free software for it, using Gadgetbridge since January 10th, 2024. You can search this page for the term “Xiaomi” in case you’re interested. The main thing for me is the step counting, and that my data isn’t saved in some 3rd party cloud, neither in China nor in the USA. Anyway, since last year I have now walked over 4.2 million steps, so that’s a bit more than 10,000 steps a day, and I’m planning to continue this. With a step length of about 75cm, that would sum up to over 3,100km so far, so I’d say that I’d have covered Europe by now… and maybe reach my father-in-law’s after some 3 years or so 😉
What else is new? Oh, I volunteered to assist with the upcoming elections here in Germany. In case you’re not sure whom to vote for, from 6th of February you could consult the “Wahl-O-Mat” again. What would also help to reach informed decisions is to stop living in your “filter bubble“, or “Filterblase” like we say here in Germany. So it could help to stop using search engines which belong to giant companies, and also to avoid (a-) social media sites and services which belong to tech billionaires, like my friend Peter just did – bravo to him!
So – let’s hope that this year will be better than the last one, and that we can continue using more and more renewable energy; Germany is on a good way here even if we broke the 1.5° barrier already. So don’t throw away your old PCs which I mentioned above, and also your old mobile phones – use alternative operating systems instead, and save money and toxic waste. I wish us all a good new year 2025.
On January 9th this year I’ve bought that little step counter, and one day after that, which is now half a year ago, I installed Gadgetbridge on my phone to keep track of everything without sending all my data into anyone’s cloud. The first days I more or less played around with the software to see what it could do, and in the beginning I wasn’t sure how many steps a day would make sense, so I started reading about that. I started with some 6000 steps a day which was the default setting on the device makers’ software, corrected that to 8000 steps a day later which was recommended as the perfect in-between measure for the 60+ year generation. But end of January, I finally settled on a daily minimum of 10000 steps.
And I kept that minimum since 164 days now, so my grand total since I installed the counting software is now a bit more than two million steps, or with my average step length of 75cm, around 1500km:
So in case someone wants to follow that example, expect to have some 4 million steps after the first year – if you can keep up and do this every day of course. And if you look at my last blog post, I think I’ll add some kilometers on a bicycle to that as well.
Here are two more photos of our cat, one from the 6th of April:
… and one portrait in black & white from today, cropped to a 5:4 format:
On some other news, Zuleikha’s FitBit Inspire had a very dim (monochrome) display lately, so after some driving around and looking at available options, she opted for the same Xiaomi Smart Band 8 which I also have. I think she likes it, although she’s using it with the vendors’ Mi Fitness app instead of Gadgetbridge which I am using. Still a good choice in my opinion, especially for the price (hers was even a bit cheaper than mine).
Anyway, like always, thanks for reading and viewing.
Okay, only one picture of the cat this time, a black & white one again, with her sitting outside on our veranda:
Bella, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023
This month I got into a cat fight again, for the second time, and also for the second time I’ve got some marks to show. The first time was in the beginning of this year when the neighbours’ cat bit me in the foot, this time it was Bella who was scared enough to really bite my hand. “Only a scratch” I thought after the bleeding stopped, but then the hand got swollen, and I had to see the doctor to get another tetanus shot (after 20+ years), and had to take antibiotics until yesterday. This is what my hand looked like after my second visit to the doc, taken with my mobile phone:
It’s much better already, but like my wife said, that should probably teach me a lesson… 😉
Other than that, I still walk and have my little step counter on while doing so. And Gadgetbridge gets better and better and with each version it supports the device a little more. I started playing around with the software in January, but since end of January I also set my goal to 10,000 steps a day, which I’ve kept since then. This is from two days ago:
Not a miss since 60 days, and a total of some 800,000 steps since I use this software, which with a step length of pretty much exactly 75cm translates to 600km until now.
Not as much as Andersen’s Knud (from his “Under the willow tree” or in German “Unter dem Weidenbaum”) who went from Kjöge (near Køge in Denmark) all the way to Nürnberg and Milano and half way back) but seeing a radius of 600km from our place still makes me kind of proud:
If there would be a straight way to walk, I would have reached Vienna by now (Aaahh, Vienna, that reminds me of Billy Joel’s famous song about it – read the story here or listen to the original here).
Or I would be short before Genova by now, or – if you’d grant me a ferry ride since I can’t yet walk on the water – London. Pretty cool thought. So I’ll keep walking (Billy Joel has more songs about cool places, how about “Zanzibar” for instance? And yes, I know that he probably didn’t mean the island in this song, but still) 😉
Anyway, in case you’re a Christian I wish you Happy Easter, and in case you’re Muslims then Happy Ramadan instead. For all others, like always, have fun, and thanks for dropping by and reading.
I have my fitness band since a bit over a week now (it’s day 8 to be more precise), and yes, it’s fun, and also a motivator to get moving a bit more again after the pandemic and my retirement. I look at its results using Gadgetbridge, a free and open source software which doesn’t share any of your data with the internet – that’s my job and decision, right? So here’s how it looks after a day with reached goals:
Or like this:
As you can see, I raised my level over this first week, and I find Gadgetbridge’s goal of 8000 steps a day to be a good target for a 60+ year old like me. On Friday, I was lazy, didn’t get out at all, but those 624 steps can be misleading… let me explain.
Normaly, I tread lightly. I walk the flat with socks on wood, and partly on more or less thick and soft carpets, and that Xiaomi Smart Band 8 doesn’t register all these “light” steps (like the ones when you’re carrying a cup full of coffee or so). Instead, you have to “walk with intent”, as I like to call it. A brisk outdoor walk is best, and that’s what I mostly did.
I have another program on my phone, also open source, and that’s called “Paseo”. That one *does* register all these lights steps inside, so in case I (or you) want my real step count of today, it thought about 10k+ rather than 8k+. See here:
Or like so:
Paseo has the usual target of 10000 steps which I reduced to 8000 to make it more comparable to Gadgetbridge. Xiaomi’s own Mi Fitness app has a target of 6000 by the way, which is also fine. Main thing is to get moving, right?
I was considering to bring my tracker back to the store and change it to another one, like the Amazfit Band 7, or the Xiaomi Smart Band 7 (or even one of Huawei’s which are now also supported by Gadgetbridge). But I’m not sure about that, I can live with the fact that a “fitness” band only tracks when fitness also counts, and for that it doesn’t have to register every step between computer chair and couch… and who knows if the other devices would be better in that regard? The New York Times tested the Fitbit Inspire 3 as the one which came closest to a real pedometer, but that one would “phone home” to Google all day long, so pick your poison as they say… (or take a real unconnected pedometer if you’re serious about that – they link to the one they compared the devices with) 😉
Oh, and before I forget it: yesterday – so more or less exactly after a week of charging the device to 100%, it still showed 57% battery life left – which means you can easily reach two weeks with that small fitness tracker. Another reason to probably just keep and to be happy with it.
