Never listen to somebody telling you to never do something!
Schrottwichteln, Persönliche Adventskalender
Entry created on 2024-12-01
Authors: steeph (337)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41)
Christmas (1)
Ideas (5)
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Languages used: de (79)
Schrottwichteln, Persönliche Adventskalender
Entry created on 2024-12-01
Authors: steeph (337)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41)
Christmas (1)
Ideas (5)
Presents (1)
Languages used: de (79)
Vielleicht wäre es ein netter Brauch - oder ein wohltuendes Spiel - im November einen Adventskalender für jemand anderes zu basteln/zusammen zu stellen. Bestimmt gibt es Adventskalender zu kaufen, die weitaus interessantere Dinge enthalten, als ein Stück Schokolade. Aber das klingt teuer, unpersönlich und nach einer Menge vermeidbarem Abfall. (Wie Überraschungspakete/Wunderboxen/Restsortimente von Amazon oder so.)
Ich mag die Idee des Schrottwichtelns, bei dem eins zuhause unbenutzte Gegenstände beim Wichteln verschenkt anstatt etwas neues zu kaufen. So ist wenigstens kein zusätzlicher Abfall erzeugt worden, wenn das Geschenk nicht zusagt oder nur wenig Verwendung findet, was ohnehin der übliche Ausgang eines verlosten Wichtel-Geschenkes sein dürfte.
Das gleiche Prinzip ließe sich auch auf Adventskalender übertragen. Der streckt den Überraschungseffekt und die Vorfreude über eine längere Zeit. Viele Menschen freuen sich immer, wenn sie Päckchen öffnen können. Über geschenkte um so mehr, auch wenn sie klein sind. Ein persönlich zusammengestellte Adventskalender wäre einer, der mich tatsächlich den Dezember fast täglich versüßen würde, im Gegensatz zu einem, der einfach nur Süßigkeiten enthält.
Ein solcher Kalender kann die Form eines großen Brettes haben, der Schachten oder Türen enthält; er kann aus einzelnen Päckchen bestehen; er kann über mehrere Wochen in Stücken übergeben werden, wenn große Gegenstände dabei sind; er kann hinter jeder Tür einen Zettel enthalten, der den Ort oder die Beschaffungsmethode beschreibt (vllt. sogar als Rätsel); er kann materielle, schriftliche, Verbrauchs- oder virtuelle Dinge enthalten oder als zusammengehörige Teile beinhalten, die zusammen einen größeren Wert ergeben (Bausatz, Geschichte).
In den meisten Haushalten liegen so viele Gegenstände herum, die nur darauf warten endlich weggeworfen zu werden, obwohl sie anderswo vielleicht mehr Verwendung oder Wertschätzung erfahren würden. Beim Schrottwichteln/einer Schrott-Tombola ist oft in den Regeln explizit festgehalten, dass es kein Gegenstand mit materiellem Wert sein muss, der in den Pool geworfen oder verschenkt wird. Oft wird ein Gegenstand schon mehr wertgeschätzt, wenn er ein Geschenk war.
Beispiele für geeignete Gegenstände sind aber auch Anschaffungen, die einfach nicht die verdiente Aufmerksamkeit bekommen, wie Ausrüstung für ein aufgegebenes oder vernachlässigtes Hobby, Retro-Hardware, Kunst, die aus Platzgründen die meiste Zeit verstaut verbringt.
Wenn bekannt ist, wer die Perschenkte Person ist können natürlich viel vesser geeignete Gegenstände ausgewählt werden. In dem Fall können eben auch einzelne Kleinigkeiten, wie ein 50-Pin-SCSI-Flachbandkabel für einen Retro-PC-Fan oder Reststücke Edelstahlblech für einen Heimwerker schon geeignete Geschenke für einen Adventskalender sein.
Genau weiß ich nicht, wieso mir die Idee von individuell erstellten verwichtelten Adventskalendern so gefällt. Mit den obigen Absätzen habe ich mögliche Gründe untersucht. Die Antwort war nicht dabei, Trotzdem bleibe ich dabei, dass sie mal praktisch erprobt werden sollte. (Als ob viele die Zeit dafür hätten.)
Was meint ihr: Ist das was für Vereine, Freundeskreise, Familien?
Blank Keyboard
Entry created on 2024-11-23 (edited 2024-11-24)
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Computer (75)
Hardware (12)
Keyboards (5)
Typing (1)
incomplete (33)
Languages used: en (189)
Blank Keyboard
Entry created on 2024-11-23 (edited 2024-11-24)
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Computer (75)
Hardware (12)
Keyboards (5)
Typing (1)
incomplete (33)
Languages used: en (189)
Some 10 years ago, I picked up a simple USB keyboard from the scrap box of a hackerspace before to see whether it really was broken. It was missing one key, which made me think maybe that's all that's wrong with it. Turns out I can do without the Numlock key and all other keys work perfectly. When I have to press the Numlock key I use a pen. I never had to move another keycap onto it.
My idea when I took this keyboard was to same working tech from being dumped and destroyed and to have a random spare in case I needed a USB keyboard because I only had spare PS/2 and one very cheap and bad 2.4 GHz USB keyboard (if not 800 MHz). But there's something special about it. It's a BLANK keyboard, which seems to be a brand solely marketing keyboards without any markings or labeling on any key. I had heard of them before and thought it's an interesting idea. But I wouldn't have chosen to buy one. At some point I needed a USB keyboard and tried the blank one for a while. Since then I use this keyboard for my desktop PC intentionally, not because I don't have another one. I thought I'd write down my experience in getting used to it and what it did to my typing.
It appears a bit surprising to me now but at my first experience with the Blank keyboard was what I expected at the time. I was using it on a opened laptop with a broken keyboard. And I was very glad to have a labeled reference in front of me. typing a word or two took ten or twenty times as long because I didn't know what any of the keys were. Well, some are obvious (Return, Escape, Space, etc.). I must have cought a particularly patient time in my life. Because I kept trying to hit the right keys when typing. I also didn't really type texts on that machine at that time. So it wasn't too much of a dive into label-less typing. There must have been enough moments where I hit the right key first try to motivate me to keep trying and maybe learn to type blindly. When the laptop keyboard had dried sufficiently I was very glad about being able to switch back again. Such a relief. But I chose to go back to the blank one for a while every now and then. There were so many times where I started to type one or half a key to the left or to the right, so I started to produce gibberish, deleted the last few characters, adjusted my hand's alignment a few millimeters and try again. Sometimes (actually still pretty often) it took five or more attempts to hit the right keys. That was how I typed for a long time. When I wanted to type "Foo Bar Baz" I typed something like "Gpp<< I'll leave it at that one example. But it was a long
HelenOS
Entry created on 2024-11-23
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Computer (75)
Operating Systems (21)
Software (50)
Languages used: en (189)
HelenOS
Entry created on 2024-11-23
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Computer (75)
Operating Systems (21)
Software (50)
Languages used: en (189)
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.
HelenOS
One of those operating systems that is used for operating system research here and there. I think that's also what it was made for. The last releast was earlier this year, which makes it seem one of the more actively developed research OSs. With the release there are also prebuilt ISO for a variety of platforms including the usual, Raspberry Pi, other ARM platforms and older PCs.
There are similarities to UNIX-like systems but it is clearly not a POSIX system. Basic utilities are included as well as some basic console and graphical applications and demos. I didn't look for any additional software, yet. I'm not sure if I will use this os much more. But by booting flawlessly without any changes and effort, this is one of the more usable OSs I've tried. So I might. It has network capabilities, a basic GUI and TUI, window manager and its own shell.
The GUI is optional. Most applications run in the console mode as well, which is a TUI that mimics the GUI with its start menu. Which is good to have because the GUI is really slow to the point that the mouse pointer is lagging behind.
On my desktop PC neither a PS/2 nor a USB mouse worked. But the touchpad in my old latitude worked fine, including the second set of mouse buttons that work in almost no OS. Graphics mode worked with the appropriate resolutions automatically. Above that I haven't tested any hardware.
There are screenshots in the official wiki.
Trains
Entry created on 2024-11-16
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Memes (3)
Trains (1)
Trains
Entry created on 2024-11-16
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Memes (3)
Trains (1)
I have two things to say about trains.
1) The meme of the asdf guy liking trains died too young. It kind of died instantly when no new asdf videos containing the joke got published. So, in a way it never was a living meme. I don't yet accept the fact that people don't know what I'm referring to when I make a reference to the asdf video series whenever somebody publicly announces that they like trains. I will continue to make such references and will probably never again meet somebody who remembers and likes the series.
2) Trains work very reliably in Germany. It's often said that people in Germany like to claim that trains are never punctual and really unreliable in general. It's true that that is a very common thing to hear in Germany. And there are good reasons for that. Many things have gotten worse and look like they're continuing to get worse. In my area it has become a common problem that there is not enough staff to run the system. Regional trains are sometimes substituted for days or weeks with buses driven by people from other countries, usually located in the east to Germany. Sometimes train people get sick and no bus substitution is available at short notice. I had planned a one-day vacation for today. But when I got to the train station a display and clear voice told me that the train will not come. I checked online and learned that no trains will come until the evening. That way disappointing and it would have been very unusual 30 years ago. But if it had happened 30 years ago, I would have waited at least a bit over an hour for the next train, likeky two hours, before going back home. I wouldn't have known that trains will also not come tomorrow until the afternoon. It would have been more frustrating. It is a sign of a change in sentiment that an occurance like this has become an accpeted possibility. (Well, what could you do if you wouldn't accept it?) But I believe the right perspective to take here is that things really are very reliable and more than okay. Given the history of Deutsche Bahn to not invest in necessary infrastructure and saving personell more and more in many places since its privatisation, we should expect things to get worse and worse. (And I do think it is a valid question to ask why the state spends so much money on roads and car subsidies but almost none on rails and trains.) Even if my experience from today would be an everyday one, if every other week there would be a day or two with no trains and you wouldn't know which days, it's still fine. I still get to ride the train either direction almost any day and for a few Euros I get to any of dozens of towns and cities. You could also argue that it is embarrassing that such a rich country as Germany can't make its public transport run reliably every day. But I think we're past that. I already have to walk 45 minutes to the next train station becasue there is no regular bus anymore. In the town I was going to visit I would have walked over an hour to one of my destinations because there are only two buses a day. I would have had to wait over an hour in one transfer because some trains are only scheduled every other hour. All the other connections only run one per hour during most of the day, not at all in the morning and after 8 pm. We've accepted this. We'll accept so much worse. It's great that I get to travel by train so flexibly at all.
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.
Haiku OS
Haiku OS is a BeOS clone. I didn't use BeOS back in the day (although I wish somebody would have showed it to me). So I'm not sure, but Haiku seems to be pretty much the same experience. But Haiku is open source, still actively developed and compatible with newer hardware. It ran relatively well on the Core2Duo PC I've tested it on. Except for the included web browser. That thing crashed. For a lot of people whether a desktop OS is usable is decided on how good of a web browser is available for it. Haiku OS Beta 3 looked promising with its WebPositive using WebKit 612.1.21. But at least on the old PC I've tested it on it wasn't usable. It was slower than imaginable and kept crashing after one or two page loads. (The simple included help pages at that. I didn't even feed it something complex, like YouTube or Google Docs.) But I've heard others hat a pretty good web experience with it. At least as long as nobody asks about security. The rest of the system is snappy enough. It's no KolibriOS, but on any x86 or x86_64 from the last ten years it should be as fast as anyone wishes their OS to be and much older computers run it just fine. There seems to be a not so small community of users and developers. Every new Beta that is released comes closer to a desktop OS that has everything that people ask about/for. (Let's not talk about big games people are familiar with.) And because of the growing community and the fact that the 32 bit version can still run many applications compiled for the original BeOS this is not just a small OS with theoretical goals bigger than its community. It's really usable already and it looks to me that it has good chances of becoming more important in the future. I'm not sure if I'd have said that five years ago. It's moving slowly (compared to Windows and Linux), but consistently towards its goals.
Edit 2024: The have been two new alpha releases since I wrote about Haiku here. It is definitely capable of being an everyday desktop OS even though the release candidate's version labels are modest. The biggest change recently has been that GTK has been ported to Haiku, meaning that a large number of graphical applications becomes available or portable. Applications that have been written with other operating systems in mind. This has been demonstrated with Inkskape and GIMP. But many more applications will follow, I'm sure. I suspect that this also means that Firefox or some fork of it will be the web browser most people will use on Haiku. It certainly makes it more usable as ther main OS for many people.
This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.
Essence
This is one I'm continuasly disappointed to not have been able yet to get running on real hardware. I like what I've seen. But I can't get it to boot, as do others. I don't know too much about the internals of Essence. But it seems to be relatively far in develpment. There is a sleek GUI with tabbing windows in the look of early Chromoium browsers, which looks very inviting, if only I could get it to even try to boot on any computer. The focus has not been on making the OS actually boot on real hardware so far. And unfortunately there has been no release since 2022 and no update to the code for over a year. So I stopped hoping that it might be working soon. I was looking forward to getting to know a knew OS that doesn't take a Unix-like approach and has nice tabbing windows.
Film: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Entry created on 2024-11-14
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Fighting (1)
Films (16)
Matrix (1)
Multiverse (1)
Rocks (1)
Science Fiction (2)
Taxes (1)
incomplete (33)
Languages used: en (189)
Topics: Films (12)
Film: Everything Everywhere All at Once
Entry created on 2024-11-14
Authors: steeph (336)
Categories: #100DaysToOffload (40)
Fighting (1)
Films (16)
Matrix (1)
Multiverse (1)
Rocks (1)
Science Fiction (2)
Taxes (1)
incomplete (33)
Languages used: en (189)
Topics: Films (12)
When I first saw that movie I felt like I had just watched a work in movie history that marks a bifurcation: Before and after the existance of this film. Similarly to Matrix. There's before and after. Before being a world in which such a film does not exist and after a world in which anything produced will be compared to it. On the top of the list of reasons for why I felt that way is probably how unique and unseen many of the ideas of this film have been (to me).
Because of my inability to describe stories of films accurately in few or single sentences, I'll just quote Letterboxd here: "An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes."
I still like to see the film as this unique piece of movie history. And I will always praise it for some uncommon and daring choices, well-chosen portrayals of chaos, carelessly genius storytelling and its ability to surprise and entertain me more than any move in years, which now, after decades of watching all movies that sound interesting, itself is an achievement. I don't know what additional impression it has on Asian-Americans. (Apparently some details are easy to relate to for sombody who has grown up as an American with Chinese parents.) I also can't view it from the angle of an immigrant parent. I recognise that there are things to say about this part of the story. I can't with my experience though. But as a science fiction action film alone it has made my day, week and more when I saw it. The contrast between everyday life and science fiction action life probably plays a big role in making the impression of something that I haven't seen before. It is an overall good film. Even the fighting scenes are creative and worth watching. I often either skip parts of fighting scenes or with I has skipped them because it's enough to see who one/how many are down/whether somebody is injured or dead at the end of the scene. Most movie fighting coreography is the same moves in a new order with marginally creative new elements. This is an exception, as Matrix was, and contains some really creative stuff. (Maybe the first fighting scene is still the best in this regard though.) So many things especially the main character experiences and does are unexpected; can't be expected because this multiverse family story has never been told before.
I'm sure for most people the film will go down in history as just another science fiction film. The fact that I got the DVD a few weeks after it's cinema release for 6 €, which is as low as new DVD prices go, I think, suggests that it's not seen as an especially successful movie. I intentionally didn't look up how well it did and what most people think of it. For me it's a genius film for many reasons. And I'm not even a person looking back at my life and thinking about what could have been if I had made different choices. How good must the film be if you can relate to any of it's topics? I feel confirmed in my impression that this film is unlike any other before by the titles listed under "Similar Films" on Letterboxd: Free Guy, Guardians of the Galaxy, Barbie, Matrix
Some may think the crazy travelling-between-worlds stull was too much, because it goes on and on. But I like that. It has enough crazy ideas to not make it boring. One scene that ends in switching between worlds each frame for seconds, made a special impression with me, because it went on for longer than it has to, and then still went on for longer than I thought it might. A few seconds for which you nee 30 new ideas/images/worlds for each second, it was quite long. When looking at the individual frames I noticed that many are repeated multiple times and others are almost identical (from the same world, so to speak). I'll attach here all the different images from that scene that were shown too short to appreciate them.
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