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Looking good…

In two days from now, Debian 12 “Bookworm” (like always, code-named after a character from Toy Story) will be released. The Bits from the Release Team are promising, and like Liam Proven from The Register, I also want a “boring”, or as he put it, “excitement-free” operating system on my computer 😉

What I could *not* reproduce here were his problems with pipewire, maybe because I had used that on Arch before, but on my installation (a fresh one on a new partition), everything worked out of the proverbial box. What I did install additionally were things like pw-jack or qpwgraph, because I wanted to use it together with Ardour to record music – also works fine.

So in case you haven’t tried Debian yet, from Saturday on I’d say give it another chance. This is the system I would recommend to friends and to family. Unlike Red Hat (and soon, its derivatives), it still provides things like LibreOffice in case you choose the “desktop” variant during installation, and unlike Ubuntu, it still provides Firefox (ESR) from its own repositories instead of only as a snap package. Clean & lean is the way to go, I’d much prefer that instead of endless redundancies with snaps, flatpacks, or docker or other “images”. So thanks to the sisters & brothers over at Debian for still doing all that work.

Like always, thanks for reading.

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Congrats Michael!

Congratulations go out to Michael Dunlop who scored his 24th TT win in the Supertwin class yesterday, which makes him the second-best rider on this track after his uncle Joey (with 26 wins).

After Michael first won this year’s Supersport (600cc) class on a Yamaha, and the Superbike (1000cc) class on his Honda, he won this one on a Paton S1-R, a brand which I hadn’t heard of before. But they seem to be popular and fast, and as you can see you can win races with them. So here’s the makers’ site about the Italian bike, and here’s a bit of an onboard video on one, from about 4 years ago:

Riding the Paton S1-R on the Isle of Man TT mountain course + walk around

And here is how a real legend does it, on the same motorcycle. They say you’ll need 3 years to learn the track, and just watching and listening to this one with John McGuiness makes you believe that:

Milky Quayle’s TT Lap Guide with John Mcguiness

Much better to learn on a 2-cylinder “classic” than on a warp-speed superbike, isn’t it?

Like always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.

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First fatality at this year’s TT

Sad news from the Isle of Man: yesterday Spanish rider Raul Torras Martinez, 46, died after an accident in the Supertwin race. Spoken obituary and other coverage here:

Daily Round Up – Day 9 | 2023 Isle of Man TT Races

One of the written ones with a bit more info is here. RIP Raul, and condolences to your family.

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Want to get scared? I mean, really really scared? Here you go…

It’s TT time again, so forget everything you thought you knew about racing. Forget Nürburgring, forget Monaco and any car races like F1 anyway – this once in a year event on the Isle of Man is the one to watch, and it’s the only type of race I am still watching. The official trailer in two parts is named “No Room For Error”, and that’s absolutely true. Have a look:

No Room For Error | Official Trailer | Isle of Man TT Races
No Room For Error | Official Trailer 2 | Isle of Man TT Races

But if you want to get scared, and I mean really really scared, take a lap with one of them – in this case, with Davey Todd on his Honda Fireblade:

Onboard with Davey Todd | 2023 Isle of Man TT Races

These guys are going an average of more than 130mph on their first day and laps, across the whole island, and through all the small villages, and that’s really bonkers. Love it.

Or watch the highlights of the first real race on the Supersports (600cc) which still go over 120mph on average over 4 laps (the winner had 124mph which is almost 200km/h, and the top speed of these 600cc motorcycles is about 170mph or over 270km/h):

Monster Energy Supersport TT Race 1 – Highlights | 2023 Isle of Man TT Races

Any car racing is Kindergarten against this… see more on their Youtube channel.

Like always, thanks for reading, and for watching.

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An (almost) good recommendation from Michael

Mike Johnston aka “The Online Photographer” has found his perfect lens for the APS-C sized sensor cameras, and wrote about it on his blog. Together with the new Nikkor DX 24/1.7 he recommends a Z-50 as the perfect camera to do about everything, or, as he wrote:

“You can do 85% of anything you’d ever want to do photographically with a Z50, and you can do 85% of anything you’d ever want to do with a Z50 with the 24mm Æ’/1.7 lens.“

Well yes he’s right. Kind of.

What brought me into the µ4/3rds camp was the Panasonic 20mm/1.7 lens which I had bought for my wife. She still has the first version of it which isn’t available anymore, but here’s the second one:

That would be *my* perfect angle of view in a lens if I could have only one; the one Michael recommends and favours is a bit wider, like this one which I also have:

This little Olympus lens focuses much faster (on Olympus cameras at least) than the Panny does, but the Panny is a bit sharper. Just one of them would be fine.

The point where he actually recommends the camera is a bit controversial. The Nikon Z-50 doesn’t have IBIS (in-body image stabilisation) which is why I would still prefer my own Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mk2 or its newest version, the Mk4. Controversial because Olympus sold its camera/lens business, which is now called “OM System” – and my E-M10 doesn’t have a successor yet. The E-M5 is a lot more expensive, like the E-M1 as well, so…

… yes, in a way and if you can live without in-body image stabilisation (I couldn’t, drink too much coffee for that), then the Nikon Z-50 would be a good recommendation. If not, you could go for an OM-D E-M10 Mk4 as long as they’re available. The Nikon APS-C sensor is slightly larger than the µ4/3rds one (crop factor 1:1.5 instead of 1:2), but both have 20 Megapixels, which is more than enough – and the Olympus one is even stabilised. My 2 (Euro-) Cents…

Like always, thanks for reading.

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Some links

That’s why I like The Guardian – they’re not afraid to clearly state a good opinion. Plus they name things as they are:

The Guardian view on Vladimir Putin’s war: terror without purpose
As the toxic legacy of opencast mining in Wales shows, operators get the profits, and the public get the costs

Another commentary well worth reading – this time from a different publication – is this one:

Commentary: Cory Doctorow: The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point

Found that latter one through Russell Coker’s Links for May 2023 – thanks man! And yes, some post things like these to their personal chirp or toot sites – but in my case, that’s a blog… thanks for reading, like always.

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June already…

Wow, time is flying, isn’t it?

It’s June already, and in 9 days from now, the Debian developers will release their latest and greatest version 12, which I have running here since April already. So they are planning and preparing release parties everywhere in the world. One of them will take place in Leuwen, Belgium, which we kind of know already – we had to stop there with a defect dynamo in our ageing car in 2019 when we went to London, so from Leuwen on, the travel went on by train instead (which was cool but kind of expensive if you need tickets right away).

Anyway, I can attest that Debian 12 aka “Bookworm” is/will be great; at least on my machine (with an AMD Ryzen 7 5700G CPU) and on a much older notebook with a Core 2 Duo mobile it runs very nicely. The latter one has only 2GB of RAM, so there I’m using it with the XFCE instead of a Gnome desktop environment. This is the system I would recommend to friends and family without hesitation and/or second thoughts, and I’m writing this article using it. Why would I recommend it? Read about the reasons here. My personal reasons are that I run it as my main operating system on anything I had since over 20 years – desktops, servers, everything. It’s my safe space and my trusted work horse. Here’s a pic of me from Linuxtag in Karlsruhe, 20 years ago:

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Like always, thanks for reading.

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The only one left alive…

After Ricoh/Pentax announced a new monochrome-only DSLR camera a few weeks ago, and after the first reports, photos, and tests about it, I’ve been thinking about a camera which only has a black & white sensor – the only other readily available model being a Leica for almost 10,000$/€ without a lens.

That Pentax camera with a sensor of APS-C size seems to be very popular at least in Japan where it sold out immediately, twice in a row. Meaning that Ricoh/Pentax just can’t seem to make enough of them, and that people seem to like black & white – who would have thought?

Anyway – when I was shopping lately, I went into a local drugstore to look for film – and all they had left was a single brand and version of a black & white film. Looking online later at home, I saw the same. The only other film in their online store, a color negative one was marked as “not available”. So out of nostalgia, I bought one:

7e7_5255420_sfx_agfa_apx100-only-one-left-alive
The only one left alive…, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Of course, looking at price comparison sites, I’ve found some more, but way less than in the past, and at the same time more expensive than ever. Well, that answers one question as it seems:

And maybe that also saves me from this one:

That’s a joke of course. Like Michael Johnston wrote lately, I also won’t be “shooting” film anymore, so this roll is for “special occasions”, and I’ll treat it like the last one. The photo of the film in front of my camera above has been treated with Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2, using an Agfa APX 100 film simulation just as a demo for what you can do with a normal mirrorless camera.

Would I buy that Pentax? No. Would I buy an Olympus Pen-F with a black & white only sensor? Probably, if it were under 1k€. Otherwise, I’m perfectly happy with what I have.

Like always, thanks for reading, and for viewing.

Edit, from two days later (Saturday, 27th of March 2023):

Found another one in a second drugstore chain, same brand but different ISO/ASA of 400 instead of 100. I’ve looked on their webpage but haven’t found it there, but in the store it was the only one available. So here’s a pic of both of them together:

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A second film, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2023

Both films are made in UK, so I wonder who makes them – probably Ilford?

Oh, and the photo this time is straight out of camera, cropped in-camera to a 3:2 format, and with the contrast set to +2 (on a scale from -2…0…+2). No filters set, uploaded to Flickr as is.

Like always, thanks for reading/viewing.