What is your hobby

It must be great to ride a bike in New Zealand

More and more cycle tracks appearing everywhere, it is a nice way to travel if you are not in a hurry and the weather is good.

I read in a newspaper a few years ago that a Chinese man was sending his son to study at Otago University but the flights went to Christchurch. He looked at a map and thought it was not far between Christchurch and Dunedin and instead of buying a ticket to fly from Christchurch to Dunedin he told his son to buy a bicycle and just ride down.

It is about 300km distance and it took him a week... welcome to New Zealand...

Currently i am lining up the requirement of solar panels and wind turbines, storage in home battery's for daily need and other facility's like water reclamation and heating/cooling of the home by running air-conditioning/heat exchange trough the deep ground.

How is that going?

BTW I have heard of some island nations in the Pacific buying used EV cars and using their batteries as a power source for homes for lighting.

They are no good for moving a vehicle around any more but if you buy a couple you can use them for lighting and heating etc and most second hand EV cars are not worth anything and are getting dumped.

You could get four battery arrays from four vehicles and use them as a solar and wind storage bank... of course check on the internet and look for Chinese cars and buy two and put one in your house and use the other as a method of transport.

Having water tanks up high is a good thing too in terms of pressure and capturing water with your roof design can keep it full, but an exercise bike that drags water up to fill the tank would be useful too. An exercise bike powered lift system for delivering things to the top floor would be good exercise and useful.

Just be very careful with those batteries... maybe a fire proof containment around them or maybe have them in an external shed to prevent a short circuit or over heating risk burning your place down.

I personally like the idea of small homes, though many have the core problem of no parking for more than one vehicle... modern people will have a work vehicle and a family vehicle and sometimes even a fun vehicle for holidays or adventures.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VaX1iOyKsB0






Anyone can do this . Make a small brick kiln . Fire with wood or coal . Use small fan ( old hair dryer ) to reach high glazing temperature . Relax your soul ! ASMR .

GarryB wrote:From the Ventoy page, "Ventoy is an open source tool to create bootable USB drive for ISO/WIM/IMG/VHD(x)/EFI files".

Is Ventoy similar to Rufus?

https://rufus.ie/en/

Is Ventoy similar to Rufus?

No, Rufus is a very good tool for working with USB drives, for formatting and installing software etc... I would recommend Rufus as well as Ventoy.

I would say Ventoy is like a replacement for an OS that allows you to boot from a USB drive or SSD drive so you can put as many different OS or software tools and programmes on the extra space of the USB or SSD drive.

Essentially you boot up in Ventoy and it displays a list of all the OS files and other disks in iso format that you can choose to boot up and use.

For instance you can create a Ventoy SSD that is 500GB and you can put every version of Windows you have in the form of iso files, so you have the iso file for Vista and NT and XP and Windows 11,10, etc etc. Just by placing the iso files for each of those operating systems into the SSD with Ventoy installed when you shut down the computer and boot it up and tell it to boot to USB drive makes it boot up to Ventoy and it will give you a list of all your OS and you can select the system you want and it will boot that up. Say you have an old computer and you want to see if XP will run on it you boot it up and select XP from the list.

With Linux files you can save the live CDs as files so rather than having to install anything you can just run Linux versions without overwriting the hard drive.

More importantly if that computer is screwed up and wont boot you can boot up using Ventoy and start a live CD version of linux or Hirens boot CD and use the hard drive tools on the operating system to try to fix your computer to see what is wrong. If you have Windows 11 installed you can put Windows 11 recovery Iso files on the Ventoy disk and boot it and you can use the Windows 11 recovery tools to get it booting properly again and then reboot using the hard drive normally again.

In comparison rufus is a very useful tool for working with USB drives and external drives and would be well worth putting on the Ventoy drive so when you start up using Linux or some other system you can use it to format or work with USB drives and iso images.

There is a new system that is a rival to Ventoy called Medicat.

Can be found here:

https://medicatusb.com/

Note it also includes system recovery tools and even ransomware recovery stuff...

GarryB wrote:I would say Ventoy is like a replacement for an OS that allows you to boot from a USB drive or SSD drive

So the advantage of Ventoy and Medicat is that you don't have to Dual Boot your PC.

The only hiccup I can think of is that you won't be able to save your files. For example if you have word doc, spreadsheet, audio or video files that you can save if you dual boot your PC, you won't be able to do that using Ventoy and Medicat.

So the idea of Ventoy and Medicat is that you can load all sorts of operating systems and tools onto a USB device so say you have an old laptop and you want to try a different operating system... say you want to try Linux... maybe there are three or four very different versions of Linux you are thinking about trying, you can put the liveCD versions of these distributions of linux on your USB drive all at once. Shut down your laptop and boot up into Bios with the ventoy USB connected and choose to boot from USB and restart and it will boot up the ventoy screen. The ventoy screen will list all the operating system ISO files you have on there and you can choose any of them to boot up in on that computer... it could be a desktop or laptop or whatever.

Obviously a live cd runs in ram and will be slower than if you installed it on your hard drive but you can fully test operating systems without writing anything at all to your hard drive. Shut down the computer and remove the ventoy USB and it should work normally.

If you get the blue screen of death and your computer wont boot up at all you can use ventoy to boot from the USB drive and use something like Hirens boot CD iso file to boot into a fully working operating system that allows you to use hard drive tools and other software to find out what is wrong with your hard drive. If you are running windows you can load a windows recovery tool instead in the form of an ISO file.

If you are at someones house you can actually create persistent versions of live CDs so you don't have to put in your language and keyboard type etcetc every time you boot up.

The only hiccup I can think of is that you won't be able to save your files. For example if you have word doc, spreadsheet, audio or video files that you can save if you dual boot your PC, you won't be able to do that using Ventoy and Medicat.

When you install Ventoy on your USB or SSD device it creates two partitions... one is for the Ventoy software, but the other is where you put your operating systems and ISO files and is fully writable so if you create or edit images you can save them to the free partition and it will be there when you reboot.

Some live CD versions can be made persistant, which means changes are saved to the ISO file, so you can set the wallpaper and use the email etc etc.

So the advantage of Ventoy and Medicat is that you don't have to Dual Boot your PC.

That is correct, and it also makes it much easier to recover from a serious hard drive error or OS problem. A failed update has broken your operating system, then boot up in this and use tools to find any hard drive errors or missing files... you are connected to the internet so you can download files if they are damaged.

You can have the ISO file of your current operating system so you can reinstall it if you need to...

I haven't played with Medicat much but I believe it is able to operate live cds persistently.

There is a Linux programmed called Caspar (as in the ghost) that can also run iso files persistently... allowing them to be changed.

You can go silly and put hundreds of files on your ventoy or medicat USB or SSD... meaning you will want very large drives.... you could use an external hard drive if you want to.

The problem of course is that after a few years you go to use it and all the OS you have are now out of date and new ones are available.

It is a great way of carrying around a lot of software. Some linux distributions like Knoppix comes with several gigabytes of software for all sorts of uses, and it is only getting better all the time.

Personally I enjoy looking at different operating systems... the first GUI interfaced computer I ever used was an Amiga 500. Then I think it was a 486 with Windows 3.1. Before that Sinclair ZX-81 was the toy of choice and Comodore 800XL and Atari ST.

The idea is to get healthier . Outdoor activity that one can do alone , without needing many resources are ideal for those that are physically unfit or suffer injuries both physical and mental  , or are not wealthy . Such affordable hobbies for the common folk , play an important role in physical and mental rehabilitation .

https://www.happierhuman.com/outdoor-hobbies-wa1/














Or amateur geology ?

Actually I have had a good look at Medicat and think that might be a good choice because it incorporates Ventoy and also a simplified version of Windows 10, plus portable apps with an enormous number of ready to use applications.




Actually if you are using Windows 10 and you don't want to make the move to Windows 11 perhaps using this might be a solution...

It is funny that these days all this can go in a 32 GB stick... my first PC had an 8GB hard drive... My first computer didn't have any sort of storage device at all... the Sinclair ZX-81 Spectrum... to play a game you typed it all out first...

Interesting, but I would probably go for something with 8 wheels... and replace the armour with volume and internal space and buoyancy. Not too big mind you, but a useful base for hunting expeditions and back country exploration.

Armour is pointless extra weight... I would say some sort of plastic vehicle with internal air pockets for extra buoyancy and light weight but also strength.

Would use it for hunting expeditions and exploring/travel expeditions, and also travelling up central Otago... perhaps a turret with a reasonable but not enormous telescope for a bit of star gazing and photographing the night sky.

Room for a crew of perhaps up to four, but most of the time just room for one.

My main hobby is traditional Chinese Kung Fu. I've done martial arts for nearly 30 yrs, since I was little.

My second hobby (more of a second career) is writing my first novel.

Writing is a very good hobby . Even if one is poor , still one can write a book . Are you writing a work of fiction ? Children's book with illustrations sell very well . The illustrations , can also form part of the hobby ! Another hobby I tried for a short time , was basket making . I made a few baskets for personal use , that I still use today . If one lives near a rural area , different plants can be used . Even people who are blind , can make baskets ! I saw a small antique basket used for fly fishing , selling for a few thousand pounds ! The trick is to find the plant fibres .

Those computer nerds who are sick of Windows and are looking for an alternative to Windows 11 I have tried a new OS called Commodore OS.

You can find it here.

It is a free download of a Linux based OS that was created for new releases of Commodore products and emulators.

Back in the 1980s there were games machined like the ZX81 Spectrum and Commodore 64 and Amiga 500 and Atari ST and the like and for these systems there were various operating systems. The really early ones appeared when floppy disks were not available so most software was audio tape recorded or simply typed out when you wanted to run a programme. When the Amiga arrived there was a 3.5 inch floppy disk but it wasn't till the Amiga 1200 arrived with a built in hard drive that having an operating system and software really made any sense. You could load the OS onto an Amiga 500 but as it came with 512K RAM, or in my case with the 512 RAM expansion pack to make it a 1MB computer the idea that you could have an OS and run games didn't make sense, so when you turned on the computer you loaded the OS by putting in the floppy disk or you put a game disk in and played the game without an OS loaded.

The Amiga 1200 with its HDD allowed the OS and games to be used together.

At the time I had an Amiga 500 many friends had IBM 286 and 386 computers and they were jealous of the performance of the Amiga in terms of games and colours on screen, but they eventually got HDD which improved them in terms of using them for a range of different serious uses.

I remember a copy of a flight simulator I got for the Amiga that allowed you to connect a radio controller to the RS232 serial port on the computer and you could create aircraft designs and fly them in the simulator to test different shapes and designs. The graphics were basic but the flight model is what made it useful.

Anyway if you go to the link above it is about 5GB all up so quite a file, but in terms of usability it seems like a modern Linux OS with emulators built in for old games from an enormous range of electronic entertainment systems including the NEC and other systems that are mostly freeware now.

The OS is free and you can put it on a hard drive or USB key with Ventoy loaded on so you can test it on your machine without having to actually install anything.

You can see how it runs and try out its features. With 5GB the range of tools and utilities is quite extensive.

I am buying a few mini computers at the moment that come with Windows 11 which I intend to install this OS on instead and use them as media centres.

With a DVD drive attached they can play DVDs and CDs on the TV and also allow internet access and use for torrent downloads etc etc.

With a 5TB HDD it can store all my music and DVDs in a form they are all ready to play without digging out the disks and putting them in.

The OS appears to have decoding software for various DVD purposes and includes VLC so any region dependent video disks that wont play on your DVD player any more can be played with this system.

Note Commodore is also releasing versions of its older machined like mini Amiga 500s and also Commodore 64s but with modern hardware inside and USB connections and other modern bits and pieces so you can use new monitors and new Hard drives and USB equipment.

If this sort of retro stuff tickles your fancy then buying this stuff will make it more successful so they will be inclined to keep doing it.

nomadski wrote:Writing is a very good hobby . Even if one is poor , still one can write a book . Are you writing a work of fiction ? Children's book with illustrations sell very well . The illustrations , can also form part of the hobby ! Another hobby I tried for a short time , was basket making . I made a few baskets for personal use , that I still use today . If one lives near a rural area , different plants can be used . Even people who are blind , can make baskets ! I saw a small antique basket used for fly fishing , selling for a few thousand pounds ! The trick is to find the plant fibres .

With me, I wouldn't say its completely a "hobby".
More I am writing it without applying for an advance from publishers.
A job, but one that I enjoy and would do even if I had 10 zillion spare.
Concentrating on the art rather than banging out multiple cheap commercial novels.

Yes it is a fiction, but v much focussing on real world issues.

I have also drawn and painted in the past. Altho generally when a teen and younger.

Well with AI , digital images can be generated ! You could allow AI to read your book and generate the images ! Most books I purchased recently were all digital format anyway . The below image is example of AI image . There seems to be no limit !

Whoops, have a correction... that Commodore OS I was talking about in my post above is closer to 6GB than 5GB.

Free download from the link above and seems to be complete with all the software most people would normally use like open Office etc.

I copied the download directly to my Medicat drive and when I booted via the Medicat drive selected the Commodore OS ISO and it booted up just fine.

I did not install it and I also did not update it, but was able to test it to see that it ran OK with my computer hardware setup. (Which is an ancient system BTW... certainly no hard core gaming machine).

Regarding the AI have you seen the AI videos on Youtube for the remastered movies... they are hilarious... there are an enormous number of them..

GarryB wrote:Actually I have had a good look at Medicat and think that might be a good choice because it incorporates Ventoy

The size of the Medicat file is around 27-28GB. But it seems to be useful. Will have to find a broadband connection to download it as wireless connections have a data limit of around 2GB per day.

Firebird wrote:My main hobby is traditional Chinese Kung Fu. I've done martial arts for nearly 30 yrs, since I was little.

Interesting! How do you practice? Do you always have access to a sparring partner?

I understand that continuous practice is the key to Kung Fu/ Martial Arts else your reflexes will be adversely affected.

GarryB wrote:It is a free download of a Linux based OS that was created for new releases of Commodore products and emulators.

Can we download and run Medicat/Ventoy and Commodore from the same USB Drive?

well Medicat and Ventoy are installed on the drive you are using and you can just put a copy of Commodore OS in the folder for operating systems on te Medicat or Ventoy disk so you are running Medicat or Ventoy when you boot your system and on the Medicat or Ventoy drive find the Commodore OS and boot up in that to test it on your hardware to see how it runs.

If you like it you could install it on your harddrive of the computer you are running it on and then update the installation and you have it installed.

The Medicat/Ventoy drive can hold as many OS as you can fit, so RISC OS and Commodore OS and any others you like can be saved onto the drive to test on any hardware you please.