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A longer while ago a friend sold me his FA-NWT 1, a network tester for high frequency measurements. It's a really nice device, heavy, well built, and capable. Unfortunately, when I recently tried to revive that thing, I found that getting its software to run has become quite a challenge. You can do it, but there are issues: the window elements all seem to mingle in the left upper corner of the dialog, no matter on which operating system you run it.

The software for the original FA-NWT 1 is no longer supported and has been pulled from its author's website. He may gave good reasons for it, but for me and many others it means that our nice FA-NWT 1 devices now are fancy paper weights. This didn't sit well with me, and I looked for a solution. And I found one!

I was looking for a small computer with display (not a laptop, something smaller) for amateur radio applications such as driving the previously mentioned FA-NWT. The condition I had was that it's display is built-in, that it runs on 12 volts nominal, and that it is frugal with power. I found the Higole 2 Pro, which was reasonably priced at about three hundred US dollars for the lowest configuration - it doesn't have to do much. This thing comes with Windows 11, which, given Microsoft's current antics, is absolutely not going to stay on my device. I looked for ways to install a Linux distribution on it and did some tests; my current favorite Fedora 44 KDE Plasma is a good fit.

The installation adventure is described here: 

We live in an Orwellian world. Data brokers sell too much information about ourselves; cars, TVs, and the government surveil on us with ever increasing efforts. It crept on us in small steps, and we didn't really notice until all these steps piled up to the mess we now have to deal with. There seems to be no way back. Thinking about some things individuals can do about it.

I already owned the "hailer.name" domain which is hosted at Google. I've recently started to play with Google Sites. While not very powerful, one can make decent sites with it. Enjoy the result!

I'm a software engineer, working on multiple platforms employing user interfaces and robotic realtime systems. Each has code bases of about 50,000 and 500,000 lines of C++ code. At work, we now have access to Cursor, a "harness" which employs AI agents to solve problems. It automatically selects (or lets you select) the models needed for the task, for example Claude Opus, the latest ChatGPT version, Grok, DeepSeek, or whatever is available on the net. Cursor makes it a breeze to work through a code base and do whatever is needed to maintain it. And it's good! Not only at creating new code, but at maintaining existing large code bases, finding bugs after I describe the symptoms to it, and documenting software functionality for either the engineers working on it or the user. I looked for a similar solution for personal use.

If you scanned through my other articles, then you may have perceived an underlying bias towards Linux. Recently, a good friend asked me why I'm so desperately getting away from Windows, which actually does offer a good environment for being productive, and which "just works". Right?

So here are some arguments which make it very questionable for me to continue with using Microsoft Windows.

First of all: I'm offering observations, not medical advice. Be encouraged to make your own observations, but discuss the findings with your doctor before concluding anything. Don't take advice from me!

I've been diagnosed with hypertension (elevated blood pressure) since my early thirties, and I'm taking medication for decades now to get it under control. Recently, that control seemed to loosen, and I started to monitor myself more regularly. I started a controlled experiment about my medication: how much adjustment would it need?

The first phase was quite frustrating. Not only that I was forced to use multiple monitor devices spread over two continents and after replacements of broken ones, I also seemed to not improve no matter what dose I was taking. There was no real improvement when I doubled the dose for a while; on the contrary, side effects like swollen ankles etc. got worse.

That's when I entered phase 2. I researched what the physics behind blood pressure measurements are, and how to obtain such measurements properly. 

So, what do we actually measure? Apart from the heart rate, which is obtained as a byproduct of each sample, there are two values: the higher "systolic value" which is the pressure while your heart is contracted, and the lower "diastolic value" which is the resting pressure. It's common knowledge that you don't want these numbers too high, and some know that a high diastolic value is pretty bad because your blood vessels must constantly endure that resting pressure. But things are a bit more complex than that: actually, there is a third value which you get when you subtract the diastole value from the systole one: the pulse pressure. That's the pressure spike each heart beat produces on top of the resting pressure. Obviously, you don't want that to be high either, especially in an aging body with less flexible blood vessels.

It turns out it's absolutely crucial to perform your measurements the right way. I used to do my measurements sitting straight at the edge of the bed, after resting for some 30 seconds or so. Here is what I really should have done:

• The cuff needs to be right for your arm circumference (it was for me). 

• Sit comfortably with your back resting against the seat (I selected our sofa), don't sit straight. This is to prevent the muscle tonus in your core from creating added pressure which can significantly affect the result.

• Make sure the arm with the cuff is on an arm rest which positions the cuff at heart level.

• Do not cross legs. This can throw off the results as well.

• And, most important, wait for a full five minutes before you take the measurement, relaxing into your seat, without doing any movements (don't even flip through your phone - listening to a podcast is ok!). Have the monitor at your hand so that it takes minimal movement to press the button once the five minutes have elapsed. I always set a timer.

• Take two measurements and take the average. Enter results into a spreadsheet and make notes about special circumstances (e.g., if you had a coffee before).

• Do this every morning after getting up and every night before going to bed.

Since I follow this, I found that I'm actually doing quite well, and that the results are pretty consistent. I migght even be able to reduce my medication while still getting very desirable results (yeah, I can't go without meds). I'm happy that I found out; I'm just not so happy that I didn't find out earlier.

But once again: do not reach any conclusions from what I reported above. Do your own research, and discuss the findings with your doctor.