Every sunday I try not to use the car at all. As a result I went for a walk through the local countryside and experimented with the new camera. I was looking at the streams but they were quite low, not such a great opportunity to test the underwater part.
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Sometimes we walk in the rain and the snow and we get soaked by the weather. Today I drank a litre in an hour and a half of walking. The air temperature is around 31c.
I decided to walk from clump of trees to clump of trees. It’s possible. If I had walked in the direct sun I would have needed to drink more than I did.
31 might seem warm but we had 37 for days in a row during previous years. This year has been gentle.
Wifi is something that should be ubiquitous so that our digital lifestyle may not be limited to being online at home or at work. It should include, bars, restaurants and city squares. In some cities wifi is easy to find but in others that’s not the case.
The lazy way to do wifi mapping could be with the geo loc software on the n95, a flickr account and free wifi. Everytime you find free wifi, get the GPS co-ordinates, include them in the exif and upload them to twitter. Once that’s done get the rss feed of the geo tagged images and feed them to google earth.
A Climbing two year old is ordinary. They try to climb on to chairs, they climb to stand up. They climb up the stairs and the swings. What is less ordinary is for a two year old to rock climb like a grown up. As I watch the video below what inspires me the most is to see such a young human climb like a grown up. She learned by watching others and by being given the opportunity to practice at home and in climbing gyms.
This video makes me happy because it is nice to see such a young person learn to climb. If I had been given the support and opportunity, and if the sport had been more evolved, then I too would have started climbing at a young age. I used to climb trees, climb on to garage roofs and occasionally climb rocks from which I could eventually get down. I had to wait until I was more than 20 years old before I could climb my first “dalle”. This child was given access to that world from a very young age. Her first memory will surely be of climbing.
To make this story news worthy they had to add conflict of course. They had to speak about how some people who watch this think that it is dangerous to allow a child to climb. As the mother said “When she climbs in the gym we are watching her and she has 19 inch thick matts to fall on. The playground and the street are more dangerous”. They go on to say that she face planted on a street. Every single child does that. That’s the beauty of being a child. You’re bound to fall, cry, be picked up by your parents, and then a few minutes later start playing again. Climbing when you’re with the right people is no different. When and if I have children I will teach them about snowboarding and rock climbing and snorkelling. I want to pass on my passions. I want them to be the next generation of sports enthusiasts.
I have been writing blog posts every single day for one hundred and fourty five days and rather than feel more inspired, and get a big audience, I am writing for an audience of one. Some days I am filled with inspiration and I write the blog post in twenty minutes or less. Other days it takes me an hour or two. It’s hard to write every day because some days are interesting, so there is something to talk about, and other days are dull.
I spend more time blogging because it’s a chance to look inwards, and outwards. it is an opportunity to spend time thinking and formulating ideas. It does count as mindfulness but only if we use the Day One app on the iPhone. On the laptop it doesn’t count. This should be fixed.
Twitter and Substack are in the news at the moment because they’re arguing. Substack is bringing out a “Notes” product, to fill the microblogging niche, and Musk is not happy, but Musk had Revue, before he terminated the project, so he’s arguing for nothing. Rather than excel at what it does Twitter is sliding backwards. Substack has 34 million users, and Twitter has 130 million if you look at who follows Musk, and 240 million if you look at other figures. Twitter could easily be overtaken. Twitter probably will be overtaken, as it has gone from being a source for collaboration and inspiration, to a place for bickering.
Yesterday I posted a few tweets. Not a single reply. Twitter is now a ghost network. Those that would converse with me have left, so Twitter is losing its “stickiness”. It is losing users.
I put the bike in the car yesterday. It fits easily and this is great. It opens up the regions around which I can cycle, without having to cycle along some of the busier roads. I could drive to Palais and try to do some riding there, as I have been wanting to do for years. I can go to the top of the Jura and range around there. It provides me with more flexibility for more adventures.
When you’re creating web content that’s fed please think about those that are reading your feed from a device that is disconnected. here I am on a train and I’m captive to the content that you make available on your feed. Some feeds have the full article but others don’t.
The result of this has a simple consequence. There is no use for your feed on my mobile device since there is no content. I would thus urge anyone with a feed to make sure to make all content available so that people may access it on the move, especially since Wifi is not yet ubiquitous.
The weather was good today and spring is here. As a result I headed back to the Valais for the first Via Ferrata of the season. I felt a little nervous at first as I had not done any via ferrata for a few months but that fear soon left.
The walk up to this via ferrata takes up 30-45 minutes depending on your level of fitness. Once you get to the bottom of the ferrata you ascend with the river to your right. There are two bridges that must be crossed and the waterfalls are impressive. Today the amount of water was low due to the lack of rain. At this time of year it is better to go up a little later in the day to take advantage of the sunlight. I didn’t. The sun was on the other side of the valley.
It is a nice easy via ferrata without too much height, hardly demanding physically and divided in to three parts. The first part to the waterfalls is easy going, walking along a path. Once you get to the waterfalls you have your first via ferrata climb to the first of two bridges. You cross the first bridge and walk to the second bridge. From the second bridge you walk along for a bit, to the cave with teddy bears people have left there.
From this point the via ferrata starts properly. You have a traverse to the left, then up a bit, then to the right. Looking down you get a feeling of height but you are not that far off the ground. Chains are there for you to grab on to. After the chains you start going straight up again for a bit, traverse to the right again before the final ascent to the top of the via ferrata.
There is a walk back to the car from the peak through arcades carved in to the rock. You have two buvettes to chose from and a tree adventure park. I think that after via ferrata the tree adventure would not provide enough adrenaline to be fun.
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