Category: Uncategorized

This cover of the old and wonderful Talking Heads song is brilliant. And rest in peace Terry Hall (male singer, here on a chair):

Hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I did. And like always, thanks for listening.

Short before Christmas this year, I’ve got a present of the very special kind – an old friend emailed me because he had found this site and blog. Thomas was the lead singer in our band “Maraya” when I was 18, and now I’m listening to what he did these last years. Until now, I’ve listened to his albums “Der Rest ist Geschichte”

and “Sechzig”

So I still have “Widderlich”

and his latest, “Doktor Exitus”

ahead of me, and I’m very much looking forward to listening to these as well. Until now, everything sounds very professional, and according to Thomas the albums get rockier over time.

He also sent me some old recordings of our band, and that was a nice surprise as well – listening to myself playing 47 years ago is kind of cool – thanks so much my friend! Merry Christmas to you and to yours Thomas, and thanks for contacting me 🙂

So if you’d like to hear some cool pop and rock music with German lyrics, listen to Levon Thomas – I’m having so much fun doing this 🙂 More infos about my friend on his German Wikipedia site.

There’s a family who calls their Youtube channel “Hold my lens cap!“, and they were out comparing their usual Sony A7 camera system with a used Olympus which they had on loan from MPB. They tried what they liked to do best, namely landscapes and portraits, and the result was like expected, at least for me. But look at their nice landscape shots from Northern Wales, their cute son, and some pretty model shots if you’re into that:

Without spoiling the fun, one of the commenters said something like: “of course that was unfair for the poor Sony” 😉 In fact, it’s not that easy, like in so many cases there can’t be a clear “winner”. But anyway, have fun while watching it 🙂

Thanks to Alyssa and her family for the fun, and thanks to you for watching (and leave them a ‘like’ as well).

Found on the Flickr stream of Eva S. – please click on the photo to visit her Flickr collection:

Thanks Eva! Made my day… 🙂

Read about a machine running Debian from 1993 (version Debian Linux 0.93R5) until today, running Bullseye (Debian 11, that’s what I’m typing on). It’s chiark, a webserver with some other tasks like mail, IRC, Usenet groups, and so on. Found on The Register.

So yes, you can upgrade Debian, no need to reinstall. I’ve done it myself several times. But still, congrats and thumbs-ups to former DPL (Debian project leader) Ian Jackson.

I like The Independent amongst other magazines like The Guardian. And the Independent also has some cool lists and tests on what they call ‘IndyBest’. Here are a few examples:

• 7 best Lenovo laptops, notebooks and Chromebooks for every budget and need
• 11 best wireless headphones 2022: Lose yourself in the music with a top-rated pair of noise-cancelling cans
• 15 best wireless earbuds for quality sound and noise cancellation at every budget
• Pixel 6a review: A sub-£400 phone brimming with Google’s best features

There are more lists, not all of them tech-related like my examples here. Oh, and I don’t get anything from recommending these, it’s just that *I* like them, and when I see some interesting headlines, I’ll have a look even if I’m not interested in buying anything wireless, or a new laptop or phone and so on. But like most people, I’m not immune, that I’ll have to admit. 🙂

So in case you’re shopping for something, and want The Independent’s view on some products, go and have a look. You can still read more reviews later.

As always, thanks for reading.

Sold, a few minutes ago: our trusty old Corolla which served us really well for about 13 years. It was 7 years old when we bought it, so the real age is almost 20. Still runs like a charm, and purrs like a kitten:

So farewell “Castle” – I’ll miss you…

Oh, and meet “Castle”‘s younger cousin “Yuki”, which is about 15 years younger than its slightly bigger predecessor. This photo is from last Friday in Groß-Gerau:

As always, thanks for viewing.

“J’ai beaucoup étudié les philosophes et les chats. La sagesse des chats est infiniment supérieure.”

“I have studied many philosophers and many cats.
The wisdom of cats is infinitely superior.”

Hippolyte Taine

found via this fine album on Wikiloops – verfified via Wikiquote

Yesterday I went to Cologne to visit my brother, and this was a premiere using the new used car with its hybrid gasoline / electric engine drivetrain.

First thing I noticed when trying to use the cruise control (and yes, ours has one) was that the car tried to keep to the set speed ‘at all costs’, so its energy-efficiency meter went almost all the way up into ‘power mode’ when going uphill, just to keep the car at whatever you had set it to.

If you don’t use cruise control and try to keep it in the green ‘eco’ friendly part, you’re definitely more oriented at lorry / truck speeds than at those on the left lane overtaking each other. So you’re going slow – this car somehow manages to teach you how to do that.

On the way back from my brother I didn’t care, and went those roundabout 200 kilometers more or less at lorry and truck speeds, only overtaking them uphill when they got really slow. So on flat roads I kept the speed at around 110km/h, trying to also spend most of the time in that green area, only entering mid of ‘power’ mode on some uphill places. This was the result after arriving back home:

On the way to Cologne I had an average of about 90km/h until arriving at the big city where you had to go slow, on the way back I didn’t look at that, but here it shows 74km/h overall, so including city traffic (mostly 50 or even 30km/h). As I said, lorry and truck speeds, they mostly go around 90km/h.

Real fuel consumption on average (at the gas station) was slightly under 5l/100km last time, but that included many short-distance drives in winter, so instead of going electric the car often used the petrol engine just to fill up its battery, and to keep us warm.

Have to get used to this. It’s definitely a different way of driving, but it’s good that a car like this makes you at least think about these things.

As always, thanks for reading.

P.S.: this time when fuelling up the car I had an average fuel consumption of about 4.7l/100km which is about 50 US or 60 British mpg. Cool.

Wonderful track from my Wikiloops friends jussef63 and Joe “LittleWing”:

Enjoy 🙂