Free Software rules.

Some updates : in March 2018, I turned the laptop into a multiboot box with two Linux distributions added to the Microsoft OEM one. These grafting needs some “BIOS geekery”, essentially allowing boot partitions either UEFI  or Legacy ones to be writable, by disabling the security “Write Protection” option of the “BIOS setup”. Then, choosing the “Legacy Mode” option everywhere in the BIOS boot menu seems a good bet : “UEFI Mode” can mess-up UUID tags of partitions, preventing some Linux distributions from booting correctly after an install.

If you are still hesitating, you can taste Linux and Free Software with friendly distributions such as Mint or Ubuntu, available in Live DVD or USB sticks that do not require a physical install on your box.

About the Laptop : after tinkering quite a lot of computers of different brands, including smartphones; the chinese Lenovo brand ones outperform all that I have met so far in terms of built quality and reliability : quite awesome stuff . 谢谢/Xie Xie over there  😉

I definitively recommend Free Software OS, despite all the market arguments that can be found out there : Free Software OS surely give you more transparency in maintaining your boxes, making you more involved and active on them.  Whatever happens, you will find a clear way to get through any problem by just using a common search engine of the web : the Free Software community is  a responsive, selfless, helping and … active one.

Review.

Update on march 2015. After tweaking a little the system of the notebook (see oddity), removing some “bloatware”, I found out a big progress in Microsoft (generic) OS stability. I left those systems in the early 2000, because of quite awfull instability issues : I remember that I tested Windows 95 and Windows 98 at that time, by just letting them run without touching the keyboard of the box, and surprisingly found a “blue death screen” after a few hours. Fooling nonsense : you payed for OS that crash themselves alone while free “ultra-stable” ones were available. Later on, I made the same experience with a Linux based system on the same machine : after a few days (I stopped the test after a week I guess) the box was still running very smoothly proving the superiority of those free software operating systems.

Aknowledging the progress made must not prevent from pointing the major remaining drawback of Microsoft systems which is  “obscurity” : even with “reverse engineering” efforts, you still don’t know exactly what really makes your system run; so getting back to a more transparent free OS is a good perspective for tackling that “ethical” issue.

Winter beverage.

Happy boosting tea.

Recipe :
1) green chinese tea.
2) “romarin” & “thym” from the garden.
3) a few eucalyptus leaves.
3) a gulp of mountain honey.

Maybe the sign of the smiling face  found in
the bottom of the glass will glitter some of your days, “in sha Allah”.

Un oeil éveillé.

Tout l’univers ploie sous la crainte révérentielle d’Allah; mais seul un oeil autorisé, baignant dans une humeur saturée de piété peut le percevoir.

Wisdom.

If you can afford it; double your means and don’t rely in only one source.

Truth.

Beaucoup de scientifiques, philosophes et autres intellectuels mettent sur un piédestal leurs disciplines et regardent de haut, d’un oeil amusé, si ce n’est condescendant, voir moqueur, les religieux qui vont prier. S’ils connaissaient les assises réelles de leurs promontoires; ils descendraient fébrilement, poussés par la Vérité, rejoindre ceux qu’ils toisaient négligemment du haut de leur “savoir”.

Thoughts.

La nature porte la signature de la perfection du Créateur; l’homme dans sa course boiteuse, sur le chemin du “progrès” , tente maladroitement d’atteindre ce sommet; le plus grand aveuglement dans sa progression, consiste à oublier qu’il n’est pas maître de ce qu’il parvient à mettre difficilement en oeuvre, et que le résultat de ses efforts laborieux est bancale, faillible et instable.

Prints.

Vintage cellphone.

Tweaking an old cellphone (Motorola V2288) to work
with standard LR03-AAA batteries instead of the original uncommon AAAA ones.

I have just firmly bent with a knife the phone power contacts : actually, they can be forced to split at their tops,  and then, easily adjusted to fit AAA batteries. This globally solves charger/batteries issues.

When enabling the gsm, batteries are discharging fastly, conforting the fact that spreading waves is energy consuming.

Dry Cleaning.

After trying “standard” cleaning with two buckets and water; I have tried dry cleaning ; i.e without water.

Tip : Keep some empty household sprayers to fill with whatever needed.

1) With diesel (right on the pic above) : not concluding, dirt tends to stick to the gazoline residues left by the rags.

2) With “non smelly” petroleum (“pétrole désaromatisé” in french, left on the pic above) : seems better than the previous one.

Tools over tools.

When buying or after using tools with internal mecanisms, it’s worthy cleaning, lubricating them.

Maintaining tools with … tools.

It was done for this “clicking” wrench; and an old battery drill :

Cleaning and lubing an old battery drill.