Tagima TG-500 has the colors you want for a cheap Strat
A cheap Strat doesn't have to look bad.
Tagima TG-500 guitars sell for very nice prices. Getting one in metallic purple is nice because it is not easy to find a really nice looking cheap purple Strat.
Again, it's a metallic purple, meaning not flat. It's the kind of purple that really pops.
However, you're also going to see some additional seriously nice colors that Tagima uses. Metallic Gold, Seafoam Green, Surf Green, Olympic White, Candy Apple Red (yes, that red you miss so much), and so on.
Yes, Tagima also has the standard sunburst and black too, but why would you bother with that boring stuff when the other ritzy colors look so much better?
If for example you got the metallic gold (it's a darker gold), it totally looks like a $1,000 guitar but is priced nowhere near that.
And remember when both Fender and Squier had Candy Apple Red as regular production option, but then it vanished? You can get it back with a Tagima and it still looks as great as it ever did.
For those not familiar with that color, that red is best described as a "middle hue metallic red". It's darker than Fiesta Red and lighter than Dakota Red. Like I said, it's a middle hue with tasteful metallic flake in it.
I've watched YouTube demos of the Tagima TG-500, and it's a Strat. Looks like a Strat, sounds like a Strat and that's the tone you can expect.
You buy a TG-500 so you can get an awesome color for cheap, then mod the guitar to your liking if you wish (although it's definitely good enough on its own).
Alternative?
Yes. See Grote. Some nice color choices there too. And cheap.
Destroy my DVDs or not?
Old media can be annoying to deal with.
That used laptop I mentioned arrived. I installed Windows on it, and yep, works.
Something I didn't even think about when I bought the thing was the optical drive. The main Linux laptop I have has an optical drive that doesn't work. The other laptop I just received is the same model, meaning the optical drive can swap right in, so I thought, "Oh, nice, I have a working DVD/RW drive again". And yeah, it works.
A few months back I destroyed a pile of DVDs very much on purpose. It was all data I'd accumulated over the years. I loaded in each disc, copied whatever I thought was worth saving, then physically destroyed the optical media.
What I didn't touch however were all the DVD movies I have, which is somewhere between 50 and 100 discs.
Given I just got a working DVD/RW drive, I obviously had to test it. Since I destroyed all my data DVDs, I ripped a movie and let Handbrake get the job done there.
Did it work? Yes. But wow does it take a long time to rip a disc because DVD media is just slow.
Even if I bought a brand new external DVD drive (or external Blu-Ray drive if I wanted to get fancy), it's not any faster than what I have because of the DVD media itself.
Now I'm left with a bit of a situation.
Ripping a DVD so the image quality is retained takes a while and there's no way around that. However, if I slogged through all those conversions, all the movies I have would fit on a single 256GB flash drive (or possibly even a 128GB) easily. It's not the storing of the video files that's the problem, but rather the time it takes to rip the discs.
Alternatively, I can just say screw it and not bother, because how often am I really going to re-watch these movies anyway?
I've honestly not decided what to do yet. I spent good money on those DVDs over the years, but at the same time I just don't like dealing with optical media.
I suppose ripping the discs is going to be one of those things where I'll eventually get to it. Doing all those conversions is not exactly high on my list of priorities, but I'd like it to be done just to be done with it.
Using a computer over 10 years old as a daily driver
These things really do work.
While true new desktop PCs are under $200, new laptops are under $300 and tablets easily bust under $100, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands of old PCs and laptops out there for under $50...
...and I just bought another one because the one I thought I saved had its CPU fan once again decide to fail despite my repair efforts. Given that particular model, the Dell Latitude E6430s, has its fan in a ridiculously hard-to-get spot, I said screw it (the effort to get in there again just isn't worth it), time to get another Dell. This time I bought an E6430, which I know has a fan that is easy to get to and replace if necessary.
This is actually my second E6430. I have another, my daily driver, running Kubuntu and "maxed out" with 16GB of RAM. The main drive is a Samsung 870 SSD of the 500GB flavor.
What's my reason for getting a second E6430? It's going to be the replacement Windows 11 computer since the E6430s doesn't have long for this world with its almost-dead fan. Like the laptop it's replacing, it does meet all the minimum requirements (it has TPM and Secure Boot) so it's an easy installation.
Why do I use old laptops?
Price. That E6430 I just bought? 30 bucks shipped.
I've always hated spending money on computers ever since my 20s. I'm middle aged now and I still feel the same way. Given the price of tech always dives and everything new is obsolete before you even buy it, I made the decision many moons ago to just go with "good enough". Buy what works and get it for as cheap as you possibly can.
How long did the E6430s last for before the fan finally began to give up the ghost? Seven years. I definitely got my money's worth. And again, the only reason I didn't replace the fan is because it's too much of a hassle to get to it. Spending $30 for a complete replacement computer that will get the job done is a pretty darned good deal.
I should note that yes, there are renewed Dell Latitude business class computers for under $300 that are far newer (and therefore have faster CPUs) than the E6430 I just bought. Heck, I've seen some for under $200. I'm a dirt cheap computer user so I didn't do that, but for those willing to get one for 3 figures, yeah, good machine.
Lastly, where did I buy my E6430 from? Goodwill! And it's not the first time I've acquired computer stuff from there. If you don't have a Goodwill near you, eBay still has tons of old Latitudes too.
Lekato Looper and Drum Pedal Review
Transparency notice: Lekato sent me this for free and I do not have to return it. Consider this a sponsored article.
Lekato very kindly sent me this for review.
The Looper and Drum pedal by Lekato is one of their newer offerings, and said honestly, I remember when a pedal like this used to cost more than triple for what Lekato sells theirs for.
Build quality is solid. The pedal has a metal case, all knobs and buttons have great tactile feel to them. Just from that alone, this pedal feels very expensive even though it isn't.
As I note in my video on this pedal below, something I immediately appreciated is that the pedal is not "busy" in its design. Everything is clearly marked. In addition, the LED lights the top left, top right and surrounding the foot switches also indicate exactly where you are at any moment. Many other drum/loop pedals miss this, but Lekato designed theirs correctly.
Another thing that is very easy to miss when comparing to other drum/loop pedals at a similar price point is that this pedal has a backlit color screen. It's small, but it tells you everything you need to know. There are racetrack-like segments showing you exactly where you are in any given loop, and furthermore you can get precise with your settings. An example of this is that you can set the volume of any loop right down to the decibel level.
Speaking of which, a very nice touch is that the loop and drum machine volumes are separate. This is excellent for getting exactly the right volume you want.
When I was recording loops with this pedal, there were no bad noises heard. No clicks, no pops, no digital distortion. In fact, the pedal even tells you if the signal is too hot with an on-screen "clipping" warning - which is something a lot of other pedals don't do at all. Audio was clear and clean throughout.
Do the drums sound any good? Yes. There are a lot of drum patterns available, and they can all have their beat-per-minute adjusted to whatever you like. I do appreciate there is a decent selection of acoustic and electronic drum loops available.
Lastly - and this is the biggest compliment I can give the pedal - it's not difficult to use. Looper/drum pedals are typically notoriously complicated, but not this one. It does not take days to figure out how this pedal works but rather just minutes.
I would honestly recommend this if you need a looper + drum kit all in one pedal. Yes, others are out there, but none offer what the Lekato has at its price point. Remember, it has a color screen.
The Lekato Drum and Looper pedal is available at their Amazon store.
Check out my video below to see it in action.
Some of my favorite Linux Terminal commands
As I continue to use Linux, I'm learning stuff. And now you get to learn stuff too.
I'm an old fool from the old school. Before internet, the way to do stuff online was with a thing called the BBS. The vast majority of BBS operators and users did everything in MS-DOS.
In Windows - even now when I use Windows 11 - I still use the command line either at Command Prompt or PowerShell. But this is about Linux, so let's get into that.
These are some Terminal commands I've learned that have come in very useful.
file
Use: file name-of-file-here.ext
This identifies files for what they are, and this comes in handy more than just a little bit.
One of the better examples of this is identifying image types. Sometimes web sites will show images with a JPG extension when it's actually a PNG or vice versa.
For example, I took a screenshot of my desktop, saved as JPG, purposely renamed it to have a PNG extension, ran file on it, and it correctly identified it as a JPG.
Whenever I come across a file I think might have been some other extension before, I run file to check it out. This is mainly to ensure double-clicking on it from the GUI actually launches the right program for it.
Converting any audio or video format to another with ffmpeg
Use: ffmpeg -i name-of-file.ext new-file.ext
FFmpeg is not installed by default in Linux, at least not usually. In Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, this is how to install it:
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg
I will sometimes run across old file formats and use ffmpeg to convert them over.
Converting a PNG to JPG:
ffmpeg -i file.png file.jpg
Note: This doesn't delete the original file, so both file.png and file.jpg will be present; this is for any conversion.
Converting MOV to MP4:
ffmpeg -i file.mov file.mp4
Converting WMV to MKV:
ffmpeg -i file.wmv file.mkv
You get the idea.
I find this even works for absolutely ancient formats like RM, which is a RealMedia video format (remember RealPlayer?):
ffmpeg -i file.rm file.mp4
zip
Use: zip archive-name.zip file.ext
Creating a ZIP archive is stupidly easy in Linux. Just use the command above.
The only thing I can add is that if you're in a directory and you want every file zipped and all subdirectories, do this:
zip -r archive-name.zip *
The above command literally means "Create ZIP archive-name-zip that includes all files in current directory, all subdirectories, and all files within subdirectories."
How to unzip?
unzip archive-name.zip
Again, stupidly easy. And will it extract properly if subdirectories with files exists in the ZIP? Yes.
Splitting a file
As easy as it is to store giant files these days, I follow what I call The 4GB Rule for archiving stuff. If the archive exceeds 4GB, I'll split it up.
Why do I do this? File corruption can happen when transferring very large files, whether it's over the wire, wireless or directly to a memory card.
The two examples I'll show below purposely use a 4,092 megabyte split point because that's the biggest file that can be read on a FAT32 file system.
Using split:
split -b 4092M file.ext "file.ext.part" --verbose
This will split file.ext into file.ext.partaa, file.ext.partab and so on.
Combining the split parts back together is done with cat like this:
cat file.ext.parta* >file.ext
Using 7z:
If I were creating an archive of many files, 7z is the best way to go about it.
I navigate to the directory where I want everything in it (subdirectories and all) into an archive, and use this:
7z a archive-name.7z -v4092m *
This will create archive-name.7z.001, archive-name.7z.002 and so on until finished.
Extracting the archive would be handled by placing the files in an empty directory and using this:
7z x archive-name.7z.001
7-Zip needs somewhere to start, so the .001 file is used. The software is smart enough to know to look for .002, .003 and so on and go through them all until extraction is finished.
I'll note that yes, zip can technically do the split archive thing, but you'll have a much easier time working with 7z split archives.
NETSTAT equivalent
The ss command is what to use, like this:
sudo ss -ltpn
That literally means "display listening sockets, display only TCP sockets, show process using socket, don't resolve service names".
It's a quick way to get a NETSTAT-like report.
Want Tetris in the terminal?
Get vitetris, a Tetris-like game you can play directly within in the terminal. Search for it in your Linux distro repository and you'll find it.
Sometimes you need fun stuff in Terminal, because why not.