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2023/12/31 NYE Dinner at Villa 9 Trois

π 2023-12-31 01:01 in Dining, Family, France, Ndining

We had been there before in previous years, and I was happy to invite my dad and Patricia for another NYE dinner there. It was a fixed menu. Of course it wasn't cheap, as nothing is on NYE, but it was quite good without being too much food:

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2023/12/30 National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, UK

π 2023-12-30 01:01 in Computers, Sciencemuseums, Uk

While briefly in Sheffield, I had a little bit of time before going back to Manchester, and the most enticing place to visit was the National Videogame Museum.
Once there, I only had about 1H as it closes betweeen 13:00 and 14:00. I didn't have a much time to play, but enough time to look around and enjoy the collection:

The various historical collections were fairly good:

Hopefully I'll be back in Sheffield one day, and will have time to play more next time.

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2023/12/30 Another Xmas in the Park, In Mamchester's Heaton Park

π 2023-12-30 01:01 in Outings, Uk

While Around Manchester for 1.5 days, my last stop was to visit Xmas At Heaton Park, some nice decorations that were nice to checkout just before going back to the airport and flying back to Paris.
They did a good job:

after fasting for 48H, best hot chocolate ever :)

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2023/12/29 Early NYE Party: Rebooted - Trance Made in Sheffield

π 2023-12-29 01:01 in Clubbing

I was in Paris for the holidays, and unfortunately it's a wasteland for Trance. It's even hard to get good EDM there apparently. After asking around, I found out about a nice trance event in Sheffield, which wasn't super close, but Manchester is only a 90mn flight away from Paris and then 1h30 by train to Sheffield, not too bad. That's barely more than what it takes to drive across LA :)

I was greeted by expected rain, but once indoors, I dried out quickly:

I only brought part of my LED outfit, but still enough to add a bit of fun to the party :)

I was there bright and early, things started at 15:00, the club was not huge but just big enough for the crowd and a great atmosphere

Honestly the music was great from the very beginning, but when Scott Bond took the decks and then was joined by Biacan Blezard playing live violin over some of my favorite trance tracks, I literally melted. I cannot describe how good this was and my camera managed to capture a little bit despite the difficulties of recording loud sound:

27:20: Push - Universal Nation

36:30: Can't get no Sleep - Insomniac

46:00: Lost Tribe - Gamemaster

[youtube:kISd29nupw0:1024x576:t=t=1639]

Then Francesca Faye also sang live over a few tracks:

And Craig Connelly took over for a 3H hour set fully of bliss:

Lucky Craig had a long line of people for pictures after his set ;)

The night was not over yet, 1 more hour:

And then 4H after party at Record Junkee down the road:

Definitely worth the trip from Paris, awesome night and great to meet the UK Trance fans.

Full Video:

More pictures: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mp3nHMz1NBZiJke29

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2023/12/29 Another Few Hours in Manchester

π 2023-12-29 01:01 in Ntrips, Uk

I was able to have a quick day in Manchester a few years back, and this time I was back as part of a very quick trip to go see Rebooted Trance Made in Sheffield. Turns out flying to Manchester was of course quicker but also cheaper than taking the train all the way to Sheffield, even with the Eurostar, so that gave me a few hours in Manchester on the day I landed, and just before taking off the next day.

small airbus A310 from Paris to Manchester

Manchester University

The Manchester Museum inside the univeritsy, had a bit of everything but wasn't bad:

Kakapo!

Had a very short time downtown before having to take the train to Sheffield:

some amount of train issues around that time, but thankfully mine ran

On the way back from Sheffield, had a couple of hours before having to head out:

St Mary's RC Church

I had just enough time for the Manchester Art Gallery, which was pretty small and perfectly matched the time I had left:

From there, it was time to go to Xmas at Heaton Park

And then it was just the right time to get back to Manchester Airport for my flight back Paris. It was really nice, definitely liked it:

new security screening that allowed bottled water and could actually see inside my luggage for a change

lounge was open just long enough to enjoy it before my flight back to Paris

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2023/12/29 Small Google Manchester Office

π 2023-12-29 01:01 in Google, Uk

Last time in Manchester, I totally failed to look up the google office there, but this time around I stopped here briefly, which worked out as it was really just a portion of a floor, very quick visit.

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2023/12/29 Very Quick Trip Through Sheffield

π 2023-12-29 01:01 in Ntrips, Uk

Sheffield was not quite on my travel list, but thanks to Rebooted Trance Made in Sheffield, it became on my list :)

Very quick trip, rainy the entire time, it's the uk in december, so what else should I expect? :)

A quick stop at the Sheffield Cathedral:

The highlight of the short visit, however, was Sheffield National Videogame Museum.

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2023/12/22 Another Xmas At My Dad's

π 2023-12-22 01:01 in Family

My dad was able to prepare another Xmas eve family dinner and Xmas brunch the next day. I was there to help as needed, but in the end he was still able to do everything he wanted, and he was quite happy about that:

I helped with a few minor things :)

New Year's Eve was able to start:

Happy Xmas Eve, I had one shirt per glass of champagne :)

The next day, Xmas, we had a nice buffet:

After too much food, we had time for games:

To survive the other days, I did basic shopping for bare essentials :)

Before long, it was new year's eve, we had a very nice NYE dinner at Villa 9 Trois

We then had a chill celebration at home to watch this year's really good show without dealing with terrible transport, traffic jams, and crowds:

And the day before leaving, my dad had more friends over, for another nice farewell dinner:

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2023/12/20 Another Few Pictures over Xmas in Paris

π 2023-12-20 01:01 in France, Ntrips, Paris, Trips

Nice flight with AF, too much good food and too many mimosas :)

Once in Paris, I went to meet several friends, David and I met in a nice bakery:

Then it was a perfect time to have a walk around and enjoy the sights and lights:

WtF? Kispy Kreme in Paris? Oh no :(

A later day, another lunch with more school friends:

frog legs, of course :)

And before long, it was already time to head back home:

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2023/12/17 Quick Neighborhood Walk To See Xmas Lights

π 2023-12-17 01:01 in Public

I was actually quite impressed by the decorations my neighbors installed, as well as the night picture quality of the Pixel 8 Pro:

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2023/12/14 Enchanted Xmas SJ

π 2023-12-14 01:01 in Outings

Very nice decorations at Enchanted Xmas in San Jose. There was a fee to get in, but the decorations were worth it:

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2023/12/09 Another FC Drivers Skyline to the Sea Loop

π 2023-12-09 01:01 in Ncars

OMG, I can't believe it's literally been 1.5 years since last time I was able to get to a drive. Beautiful weather for december.

Definitely a lot of fun as always, hopefully it won't be a full 1.5 years until next time!

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2023/12/08 Thinkpad P73 vs P17 gen2 vs Dell XPS 9730 With Linux

π 2023-12-08 01:01 in Computers, Linux

Thinkpad History: P70, P73, to P17gen2 With Linux

Let's start with historical/related page:

originally I had a Thinkpad P70 (see review here)

this explains Upgrading from Sata SSD, to M2 Sata, to M2 NVME on P70

How to get the P70 to charge from slimtip adapters it doesn't like

After many years, I eventually upgraded to P73, which has 2x as many cores as P70, so it was a worthwhile speed upgrade, although it dropped room for the optical drive (which I used for a 2nd 2.5" SATA drive, which was then gone).

By then Lenovo messed up P73 power further and it refused to even use an 20V power unless I built special trickery

So I wrote this Lenovo P17gen2 with linux page

And this Linux on Dell XPS 9730 page

P17gen2 is not much an upgrade to P73, if at all :-/

So, I was pretty used to the P73 and hadn't heard that the new lenovos were really that much better, and I stayed with it. That is until it suddenly died with a critical motherboard error that had to be decoded by an android app that listened to the complex beep code.
Thankfully I had full extended onsite warranty, which was a very good buy, but then found out that Lenovo was struggling to find a replacement motherboard for me 3 years later, especially as CPUs were soldered on the motherboard, making it harder for them to have the right parts. After much back and forth and delays in getting a fixed board, they mentioned it might be smarter for me to take a check from them for the full price I paid, and buy a newer thinkpad from them.
However, this is when I found out that Lenovo had entirely stopped making 17" 4K laptops. Because Apple decided that 16" was good enough according to them, other vendors stupidly decided to follow suit. At that point, I realized that the P17gen2 was the last 17" laptop they made, so I eventually found one on their outlet store, and was able to buy one with the money they refunded me for the P73 (and even had money left over to buy a Dell 9730, see below).
Both laptops mostly look the same, but p17gen2

wasn't really much faster in my tests despite being much newer

drops the 2nd set of buttons under the touchpad (not a huge deal for me)

completely removes space for the SATA 2.5" drive (seriously? there is so much space in that huge laptop, what happened?)

more annoyingly even, despite 3 M2 slots, none of them support SATA/AHCI anymore, so my existing 2TB M2 Sata would not work at all anymore. Come on lenovo? how much did you save doing this?

has no better battery life than the P73, maybe even slightly worse. Given the newer CPU, that's quite disappointing (in both cases, I turned off the nvidia chip I really wish weren't there to start with)

both laptops mostly look the same,

so in the short term, this is how I had to get the P17 to work, with 2 USB adapters, sigh...

128GB of RAM in that used model, that was nice. The Xeon 11855 didn't feel faster and definitely didn't last longer on batteries :-/

So basically the P17gen2 didn't really have any clear advanage compared to the P73 and dropped a few things I used. It does allow for more RAM, and I'm hoping the new CPU is better somehow, but I didn't see anything super obvious.

P73: 9th Gen Intel® Core i9-9880H with vPro (2.30GHz, up to 4.80GHz with Turbo Boost, 8 Cores, 16MB Cache)

P17gen2: 11th Gen Intel Xeon® W-11855M Processor with vProâ�� (3.20 GHz, up to 4.90 GHz with Turbo Boost, 6 Cores, 12 Threads, 18 MB Cache)

So the newer CPU had to be more efficient, but 6 cores vs 8 cores, it didn't win in the end. I guess Lenovo didn't want to put more cores maybe due to cooling issues, or who knows?

Dell XPS 9730, faster, smaller, lighter and 2x the battery life of P17gen2, and charges from regular USB-PD when Lenovo still refuses almost all other power supplies

Because I was really hoping for much better battery life and transportability, I looked at other options tht had 17" screen and 4K resolution. Turns out all I found were 2 Dells and that's it. All the big 17-18" gamer laptops didn't have 4K on their LCD, and of course their battery life would have been dubious.
So I got a Dell XPS 9730, and it's definitely smaller, thinner and lighter than the Lenovo:

P17gen2 vs Dell XPS 9730, and the Dell has more pixels even (3840x2400 instead of 3840x2160), but it's sadly missing the trackpoint

P70, P73, P17gen, Dell XPS 9730, you can see how big and fat the Lenovos, are

another shot of how much smaller and thinner Dell XPS 9730, sittting on top of P17gen2

I had no plans on using windows, but I wanted to get a fair test of battery life, so I did it under windows

Not even 5H, I feel P73 was better than P17gen2

With Dell XPS 9730, I easily got 8H on windows and linux, and up to 10H by tuning a lot

up to 15h of battery life on the dell?

only 3H for lenovo on windows in battery saver mode?

So basically as much as I very much, and I mean very very much miss the trackpoint on Lenovo, Lenovo really got lazy in design. The P17gen2 is huge compared to the Dell XPS 9730, it's much heavier, bigger, has a smaller resolution and only about half the battery life. So much wasted space inside that laptop, I'm not sure what else to say.
Oh, right, and Lenovo made power worse on their laptops, they still require special and heavy power supplies, and still refuse to use any other power source. and completely refuse to use any USB power (20V, 100W PD). Come on, lenovo, really! I don't want to hear any BS excuses, Dell does it fine (it uses whatever power can come from USB and if it's not enough will slowly discharge the battery to make up for the difference).

Dell XPS 9730 Linux Tip: AHCI vs VMD and no M2 SATA support either

The 9730 came with windows of course, and now ships with VMD by default, which is another incompatible block layer. You can switch it back to AHCI since some older linux installs do not support VMD, but if you do, the built in windows install will stop booting entirely (yeah for windows for still being that stupid and unable to adapt to the blocker layer changing, even when secure boot is disabled).

Tbe laptop documentation says nothing on whether SATA M2 is supported or not, and sadly just like Lenovo, it only supports NVME, no M2 SATA:

one downside of the Dell is that it's hard to open to change the M2 drives (only 2 slots), lots of clips to unclip carefully

Other 17"+ 4K laptops (intel gen13 or better)

I started this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/DellXPS/comments/1do72fl/which_other_17_lcd_4k_lcd_laptops_with_3h_of/ and as part of this got at least one other option:

HP Envy Laptop 17-cw0097nr (14th gen intel, 17.3" 4K, but only 53Wh battery, which is sad: https://www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/hp-envy-laptop-17-cw0097nr

Windows, trying hard to prevent people from installing google chrome, what a joke

I used windows briefly enough to get spec, update firmware, and test battery use. During that time, I found how pathetic windows and microsoft have gotten. They gave me literally newer fewer than 4 warnings to try and stop me from switching from edge to google chrome, OMG...

'added trust of microsoft' the company that got infiltrated by crackers that stole all their source code?

another forced banner to tell me not to use chrome

and one more pathetic attempt to stop me from switching, 4 in a row!

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