欧州自転車レース追っかけ日記 2024年06月

Ukraine On Fire (2016) and etc.

Ukraine On Fire (2016)
My favorite Mr. Oliver Stone is credited as the "Executive Producer" and in the film as the interviewer. This must be worth watching, so my gut feeling said.

Was I right? Indeed, I was.

Everybody knows the current war between Russia and Ukraine.

Who started the fire? Who did the first blood? I was wondering for some time.

I knew the Russian acquisition of Crimean territory back in 2014. We are all aware of the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I watched the movie with much interest and anticipation.

Have many people watched this movie since its release in 2016? Have many people reacted to the Russian-Ukraine war differently because of this movie?

I deeply sigh when I watch one of these discrepancies between what we watch on the major media sources and what we read, watch or are made aware from other sources like this movie. Lies, lies and more lies.

Freshly installed macOS Monterey12.7.5
I have installed Monterey from the USB drive that I created with the help of OpenCore Legacy Patcher. It went well until the installation ended abruptly and the screen got black. It did not end kindly but in the end, the installation was OK.

The Trash Can is now up and running.

TG Pro. Is it worth the price?
I am testing this "TG Pro" from Tunabelly. What does Tunabelly mean? Is it disected into Tuna (like fish) and Belly (like the most sought after part of fat tuna belly)? Does the company founder came up with the name while eating Sushi at a dinner table?

I am currently placing the Trash Can on an aluminum notebook (laptop) PC cooler. It has two DC fans. They are fed DC current from a USB port. I don't use one of the USB ports on the Trash Can but it is plugged into a separate USB charger adapter on the desk. I think it is helping a bit.

I will be dismantling the Trash Can and replace the thermal compound on all the CPU and GPUs. I will be dusting off the accumulated fluffs on all the parts (fan, heatsink and circuit boards). This won't reduce the temperature of those parts drastically but will help slightly.

After 14 days from the installation, the trial period ends. I will decide if I buy it or delete it.

By the way, this TG Pro is a utility software to monitor the thermal sensors on the Mac and to fiddle with the the fan control settings.

The price they are asking is "€10.82 inc. VAT" for the moment. I thought it was around €9.50 one day ago. Anyway, I will see.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [Ukraine On Fire (2016) and etc.]の続きを読む

テーマ:洋画 - ジャンル:映画

National Championship Luxembourg 2024

National Championship Luxembourg 2024
Sunday, June 23rd 2024 it was sunny and warm. I drove to a town called Harlange (in Luxembourgish Harel) to see the road race.

In Luxembourg the National Championship held in a very different way from the ones held in many other countries simply because the population is so small. I can say so because I used to live in Germany and went to see its version of national championship events were huge. I remember at least two events that I went to.

Many riders, a lot of audience, a lot of team staff with team buses and cars, a lot of media coverage and a lot of Police officers.

In Luxembourg, several categories are held together. For example, today there were three races, earlier in the morning junior, female/male (male junior?, female elite x 2, female masters) around noon and male (pro elite = paid by the team and non-pro elite = amateur) in the afternoon.

So I saw 3 female and 1 male podium sessions early in the afternoon and 2 male podium sessions in the evening.

Not many riders are there (the afternoon race had around 30 riders?) and there are gaps of pace between categories. So there was maximum of ten to fourteen riders in a group in the beginning and there was a small group (5 or 6) in the end. Other riders are scattered in two or three riders groups.

There can be up to two or three riders from a team (professional or amateur) so there could be no team tactics at all. All riders had to be on their own. In other words, no teammates would be your windshield or would be your sprint train.

I took my beloved Hannah and my Brompton with me. I enjoyed the day and the race. I could complete the course (18 km) on my Brompton. The course is a bit hilly one with almost no flat stretches. You either climb up or down all the time.

GeekBench 6 scores
I downloaded this application, Geekbench 6, and ran it on my Mac Pro 6,1 (A1481, Late2013 or Trash Can) and got some results. On the Geekbench 6 chart my scores are not bad at all for this particular model.

I think Mac Pro Late2013 owners are not so keen on learning the potential of their ageing machine lately. They are not actively uploading the benchmark results.

They were uploading some results when older application, Geekbench 5 or earlier?, was in wider use, I suppose.

Anyway, my machine's result is really low in modern age. The multi-core score of this trash can can be easily surpassed by some single-core scores of most of recent CPUs. Amazing is the pace of technological advancement.

The reason why I used this benchmark application is not what you may think it is.

I opened the "Activity Monitor (macOS's standard utility software)" and watched the CPU and GPU load. I noticed that only one of AMD FirePro D500 graphic chips (I have two of them) was used and the other one stayed inactive all the time.

I knew that one was meant for graphic output purposes and the other was for computing (or crunching numbers). So it is normal for one of them to stay calm while no number crunching is needed.

I wondered if two of them would get active when I ran the benchmark text. This was one of the reasons why I wanted to run it.

The other reason was I am planning to upgrade the CPU in the future just for fun (not for practical purposes).

I wanted to record the current performance before I changed the CPUs so that I may have a solid evidence that the CPU swap helps improve the performance.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [National Championship Luxembourg 2024]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

Trash can has arrived

Brompton's suspension got broken
I bought this inexpensive suspension for my Brompton sometime early this year or the end of last year. I was using this piece since it arrived sometime early this year. It broke. I noticed mysterious squeaking noise coming from the bike while I ride and pedal.

I thought it was from the saddle fixing bolts. I tightened them but the noise kept coming. I thought it was from the BB. I tightened the BB and the cup but the noise kept coming.

I noticed the broken suspension (the spring leaves fell apart and fell off) and replaced it with the genuine Brompton rubber suspension. The noise stopped.

I thought that that genuine Brompton rubber suspension was just a block of rubbery material but I realized it shrinks and expands back. It was really a springy suspension after all.

Kali Linux handles Japanese Input gracefully!
I installed Kali on one of the Compaq Presario CQ56 (AMD) laptops. I brought it to the work place to take advantage of the faster network speed and updated it up to the speed.

Then I installed mozc (actually "sudo apt install -y fcitx-mozc" while "sudo apt install -y mozc" produced some rejections). And voila! I could write in Japanese after setting up the fcitx. Kudo to Mr. Nobuhiro Iwamatsu, who maintains the mozc Kali package for us.

A trash can arrived
On June 11th, it (Mac Pro Late2013 that I purchased) was cleared by the US customs and then it went under the radar for a while. It suddenly re-appeared in the radar and was sighted in the Netherlands on June 17th. It was swiftly processed by the customs and then released to the field on the same day.

It took a day to come to Luxembourg and this morning (19th), it was loaded into the delivery van (supposedly) and is as I write this on the way to me.

On the tracking information page, there was a concerning note telling that the package had been damaged. What? How was it damaged? Badly or just a surface wound?

Is the content of the package OK?

The cardboard box has been crashed and has been patched by some mending tape. I opened the box and took the trash can out. It seems (only on the visual inspection) not broken. It came with the power cord, although it is a US style cord. I have to use an adapter for the EU socket.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [Trash can has arrived]の続きを読む

テーマ:Apple - ジャンル:コンピュータ

It has landed and is now in EU, my Mac Pro Late2013

antiX seems great but
It is a great Linux distribution as far as I know by now. It is light and agile. I love it.

The only problem (I will solve it soon I hope) is that the fcitx and mozc don't work well so far. I can not use (write in) Japanese. I can read and display Japanese, of course but I can not type in Japanese.

I need to solve this problem. I want to switch to antiX from Lubuntu.

Kali Linux to the rescue?
I was wondering if Kali Linux support mozc Japanese Input. I looked into this on its official site (https://www.kali.org).

I was not careful and might have misunderstood the current support status.
I think mozc is available on Kali Linux. I will try installing it on the same Compaq presario CQ56, which currently has antiX on its HDD.

If it runs on it, I will look around to see if it can be useful on this kind of old machine. If I can write in Japanese on it, I will use Kali on other machines, too.

Now in the Netherlands (it has landed)
My Mac Pro Late2013 (MacPro 6,1 or A1481, or simply the trash can) has suddenly appeared in the Netherlands Today (June 17, 2024).

I have been tracking it since it was purchased. For a long time it was still in the United States of America (Texas then to Illinois). The tracking status had not moved at all since June 11th.

I know that it landed in the Netherlands (most likely in Amsterdam). It has been cleared by the customs (so now it is officially admitted in EU).

It won't be long before it comes to me.

I have not yet decided if I should buy an Intel Xeon E5-2673v2 (8-core TDP 110 watts, 3.3 GHz/4.0 GHz-Turbo) to replace its E5-1650v2 (6-core TDP 130 watts, 3.5 GHz/3.9 GHz-Turbo).

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [It has landed and is now in EU, my Mac Pro Late2013]の続きを読む

テーマ:Apple - ジャンル:コンピュータ

fcitx and anthy?

How do I make it work?
I am now at a loss a bit. I was trying to make the Japanese input method work on this newly installed antiX Linux system. So far my attempt has failed miserably.

How come? Why does it not work? I think I have installed everything needed.

fcitx (fcitx 5) and mozc are the key components. There is no mistake about it. I have to add small software related to these to make them work together and configure them. I know that. I have some experience with them. Somehow I can not make them work.

I have them working well on my Lubuntu. One think I can do is to see which software components are installed on it and try to make the same installation on this antiX system. For this, I need something like Synaptic or Muon on the Lubuntu system to see the detailed individual components.

Now I can type in Japanese on antiX
After a short while writing the above entry, I could successfully type in Japanese. It was not exactly what I thought I would be doing.

The "Software Intaller" is the name on the antiX system for the application which is responsible installing and removing applications.

It has three tabs (or some kind of repository levels).

The First one "Popular Applications" tab includes categorized and pre-packaged applications. You can check the application check boxes and install them. You don't have to know how many small components of software programs will get installed or which components depend on which ones and so on.

The Second tab "Enabled Repos" (=repositories, I guess) includes (or shows) the small individual components behind those "Popular" or not-so-popular applications. You can pick them up individually. I am not sure if the dependency and conflicts are handled automatically but it seems that they are handled. It is very useful if you know the ropes. The downside is that you may fail to pick up small components to make your wished application work as they are not "packaged".

The third tab "Debian Backports" seems to be the components for Debian but not necessarily for antiX. I don't know for sure as it does not provide any explanations at all.

I was using the second tab "Enabled Repos" and got frustrated as "fcitx and mozc" combination did not work well. I thought there was not pre-packaged fcitx/mozc package. I just assumed so and did not try the first tab so far.

I used the first tab to search for "fcitx" and found four pre-packaged packages. One of them was "Japanese_Input_fcitx Japanese fcitx" to my surprise.

I installed "it" and several or many components were installed as a result.

Then I could use Japanese courtesy of fcitx and anthy.

Anthy? I did not see that coming.

Am I happy? Well, not completely as I have been using "mozc" and used to it. I will keep digging until I can use mozc.

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [fcitx and anthy?]の続きを読む

テーマ:Linux - ジャンル:コンピュータ

antiX, here I come

テーマ:Linux - ジャンル:コンピュータ

Summer vacation 2024

Tour de France 2025, my summer vacation?
I am thinking of taking a whopping (actually not too whopping but ...) 3-week paid vacation this summer. I want to watch this stage race as much as possible.

This year I have two disadvantages to begin with. The Grand Depart (the start, Firenze, or Florence Italy) venue is too far away from Luxembourg. The finish venue is Nice, France, which is also too far away from Luxembourg.

If I decide to get to the Stage 4 (Tuesday, July 2nd), I have to drive over 700 kilometers, around 730 km to get to Col du Galibier. If I get there too late, I will be stopped somewhere at Col du Lautaret. Then If I want to watch the race on the ascent, I have to ride my bike over several kilometers. With my Hannah in the basket and other stuff. Is it possible after driving over 730 km without sleeping enough?

In Japanese: 続きをどうぞ [Summer vacation 2024]の続きを読む

テーマ:自転車ロードレース - ジャンル:スポーツ

欧州自転車レース追っかけ日記

欧州在住者が自転車レースを追い掛けてる日記とか

Ukraine On Fire (2016) and etc.

National Championship Luxembourg 2024

Trash can has arrived

It has landed and is now in EU, my Mac Pro Late2013

fcitx and anthy?

antiX, here I come

Summer vacation 2024

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