The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in jail, the country’s prison service has said, in what is likely to be seen as a political assassination attributable to Vladimir Putin.Source: Russian activist and Putin critic Alexei Navalny dies in prison | Alexei Navalny | The Guardian

I’m not saying it wasn’t expected but it was unexpected.

Remember when I said I’m gonna buy this PC in a week? It’s gonna be here next Wednesday. 😅

I will be able to play games! This is going to be crazy. Also with 64GB of ram I might be able to have SEVEN tabs in Chrome!

Next two weeks might be crazy so I’m gonna order a PC in about a week so it will come after all that craziness. I’m actually really interested in how it is gonna go. I’m ordering a proper PC (without getting rid of my MacBook Air) because to get a Mac that allows me to play games I’d have to spend two times more than I’m gonna pay for this PC. And honestly - there’s literally no way in hell I’m gonna pay for a computer $2-3k. It’s just not right to pay this amount of money for it.

And this PC I’m gonna get will have like 2TB of SSD, 64GB of RAM and some top-of-the-line CPU and GPU. In an Apple ecosystem that would be insane amount of money.

It is also interesting that 10-15 years ago when I was using Windows there were apps for everything and nowadays it looks more like a desert. On other hand though - everything is a website these days, so I’m not sure if that’s even an issue?

High chance of me actually buying a proper PC (that I can always use to VNC into my mac if needed). I think it’s going to be interesting considering I’m thinking about getting an absolute beast of a PC (you know, these CPU numbers are big and there’s like lots of RAM so it has to be good).

And to think that I’m doing that to play Magic: The Gathering Arena without issues… (that’s only half true, I’d like to be able to do other stuff too).

Persona 5 Royal is a great game. It is also an awesome Switch port. Highly recommended. 👌

Thomas 🔭✨::

Mastodon stans: “Federation and open protocols are awesome so everyone can run servers and services!”

[someone makes Mastodon to Bluesky bridge with the federation and open protocols]

Mastodon stans: “No, not like that!”

Sometimes I don’t get people. You wanted an open network, right? Right? Eh.

February 2024.

Also, I’m on a photo too! Unfortunately I got a bit chubby during my stay (food was too good to pass on) but I’ve fortunately already lost whatever I’ve gained there. But here is my face! Also - from now on - I’m Mr Snack.

Also I’m pretty sure a little bit of that chubbyness comes from that wide-angle lens I’ve used most of the time. This was shot without auto-focus. I told you I’m good!

Just to add to my last post with pictures from Tenerife. These are all fully digital shots taken with:

• Sony A6000 + 50mm/1.8 + 24mm/1.8
• Canon G5 X Mark II
• iPhone 14 Plus

All of them were instantly transferred to my iPhone, and post-production was done in Lightroom on the iPhone. I used some analog-like presets that I have collected over the past couple of years.

There will be some analog pictures as well, but I haven’t had the chance to send them to the lab yet, so it will take me a moment.

If I were to go on that trip again, I would definitely stick with the same setup. The Sony A6000, especially with the 24mm lens, was great to shoot with. It has a large sensor that allowed me to capture photos even in harsh conditions. The 24mm lens also produces very film-like photos. Even though my 24mm lens from 7Artisans is fully manual, I have to admit that I am faster than autofocus (on Canon, for example), so that wasn’t an issue. I’m happy to say that most of my shots are in focus, or at least partially!

The Canon was a great camera to have in my bag whenever we traveled somewhere. It is small, and the battery lasts long enough that I didn’t need to carry a spare with me. With its lens, I was able to do pretty much everything I wanted. Need to get close? Sure, it can go as wide as 8.8mm (FF: 24mm). Need to zoom in? No problem, 44mm (FF: 120mm) is usually sufficient. The only issue with this camera is that it struggles in low-light conditions. Fortunately, the lens is fast (f/1.8 - f/2.8), but that isn’t always enough. However, post-production can fix that, so it’s all good.

And my phone is always with me, so whenever I couldn’t take a proper picture, I would use my iPhone. I do miss the tele-lens from the pro models, but I don’t mind as much as I thought I would.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk!

The time has finally come. It is time to share my photos from my last holiday. In January, I visited the (not so close) island of Tenerife and stayed there for a while. So let’s dive in into my warmer-than-usual January.

Our visitor - I wouldn’t call him our best friend because he wasn’t that friendly but he DID let me cuddle with him for a moment.

First part of the stay was mostly this - a stay. We did enjoy a bit of pool time. It was a great time to just sit down, put on some music and relax. But then, second week comes and we find ourselves driving car more and more, so we had a chance to take a look around the island.

Of course we had to snag some sweet pics of sunset but I just couldn’t resist doing it.

Then, for a brief moment - sky turned pink. And in this pink lightning - there’s my wife.

Then it was time to go further we ever went - quite literally! We went to see the nearby mountain (that’s actually a volcano) - El Teide.

To change a scenery a bit we moved down, to the top-right area of a map. I’m pretty good with geography as you can see. Top right, Tenerife, top right area on the map. There we went.

Of course - nothing good in life lasts forever so we found ourselves with Kalima. That unfortunately made our life a little bit worse for a moment. There was no more pretty sunsets and everything turned a bit orange. So we got not-the-best goodbye from Tenerife but that’s fine. We are gonna get a better one next time?

Interesting to see so many people being unhappy with current state of 1Password meanwhile me - on Chromium-based browsers and Firefox - I haven’t been happier with 1Password. I would like to pay less but there is NO WAY I’m gonna ditch it for iCloud passwords.

I might try to use Bitwarden because they’re cheaper but it’s going to be hard for Bitwarden to stand in for 1Password that I love so much and my whole family is using. Their integration with Fastmail to create masked emails is unbeatable.

I would like to like WhatsApp more (I know, Meta, etc. but you can’t really go off of it unfortunately) but it’s working slow most of the time. It just feels soooo slooooow. Why? What makes it feel so slow?

I hate every single article about “would Steve Jobs hate Vision Pro”. Because he’s dead for more than 10 years, lots of things has happened since then. And - as always - people obviously never change their mind and definitely it’s worth to judge something by random words of a person from ~20 years ago.

Skiff is basically winding down it’s business after being acquired by Notion. I even wanted to use Skiff at some point but I stayed with Fastmail because I wanted to use email and not put all my eggs into something that isn’t battle tested yet. In retrospect it was a great decision. Sucks to be Skiff user today.

There are multiple different blogging engines but micro.blog is the only one that does everything I want. It’s a really unfamiliar feeling to feel satisfied with software I’m using and having literally no feature requests.

Spotify is more Apple than Apple Music is. Apple Music feels like an Android app.

“I used to listen to your podcast” | daverupert.com

It’s fine. I take no offense. In fact, that’s part of the magic of podcasts! There’s an ebb and flow to them. Here’s ten reasons I give up on podcasts

This sums up 10 years of my podcasting experience. It’s all good!

Deleted a bunch of indie games from Switch to download Witcher again. Maybe this time I’ll be able to finish the DLCs.

All that hype about Persona game left me with Persona 5 order for Nintendo Switch. It’s coming on Tuesday and I can’t wait till I get my hands on another 100h+ game that I struggle with.

I like holding my iPhone without a case but I’m also worried when I’m holding it without a case.

Chess.com moved out from Apple Arcade and I’m mad. Is there any good chess app with one time payment or even free? Because I loved their Apple Arcade version and there’s no way in hell I’m gonna pay $50 per year to play chess.

Dear diary, today was a good day.

Here’s for another year of Fastmail!