A Day With Little Walking
Some days I walk from one village to five others before going home. Other times I walk five hundred meters. Walking 500 meters is extremely rare for me. I usually always walk for one and a half to two hours.
A Man Ridding a Donkey in Spain
A man ridding a donkey in spain.
A Spanish View
A view of Calpe and the Peñon De Ifach from Portixol
Audiobookshelf and Driving
In an ideal world I would use Audiobookshelf when I’m driving tomorrow. In the real world I can’t, or at least shouldn’t. The reason for this is simple. There is no iOS app which, in turn, means that there is no car play app. Combined this means that if I want to use the app during a road trip I need to fiddle with the app’s website when one podcast ends and the next begins.
Focusing on the Road
At 120 kilometres per hour you do not do such things. At 120 kilometres per hour you want the app you’re using to switch from podcast A to B to C automatically. You want this when you’re walking too. This is especially of walks on rainy days.
Long Audio Books
In my experience it’s better to find books that are seven or eight hours long, if you listen to books. Longer books will eventually give me headaches as I focus on the road and the book at the same time. It’s good to vary what you’re listening too, for focus, and for endurance.
No Pause during Driving Directions
Usually I use the GPS in silent mode. During most drives you have plenty of time to see the display change, understand what you have to do, and do it, without audio guidance. In the cases where you get audio guidance you want it to pause the podcast or audiobook. It’s frustrating to miss ten to fifteen seconds just because of a driving instruction
Setting Up a Playlist
I tried setting up a playlist but that is very slow. You need to add each podcast manually to the list, without the option to bulk add, and it doesn’t seem to auto-play the next podcast anyway.
Podcast or Book
When I walk and drive I like to listen to podcasts and books, so today I’m considering whether I will listen to books, or podcasts. In the past I have listened to two books during that drive. Tomorrow I think that I will start with podcasts.
And Finally
The web interface works very well and I am very happy with the app. When I get onto the testflight version of the app I will gain access to that functionality and then I will be able to use that app for road trips. For now I have to use the Apple Podcast app.
If it wasn’t for traffic I would set off now but it’s better to drive when the roads are quiet. That’s why I drive on Sunday mornings.
The Desire for a Road Trip
Almost every time I get into the car I wish I was going on a road trip. I wish I was driving from point A to point B and that the drive would take hours, rather than minutes. As much as I hate “commuting” between point A and point B on a daily basis I love travelling from A to B as a journey. I love sitting for many hours in a car, thinking, looking at the landscape, remembering things, thinking of the future and more.
Not the Usual
It’s interesting, because I use the car twice a week, on normal weeks. To go shopping, and no other reason. I used to drive an hour or two to go for walks. Now I never do. I should, because the roads into and out of my village are very dangerous for pedestrians. The paradox is that if I get into the car to drive ten minutes to go for a walk, I become part of the problem, rather than the solution.
The Absurd commute
Most people drive to and from work, every single day, rather than taking the train, cycling, or other. I used to drive to work too, when I had a parking space. As soon as parking cost 30-40 CHF per day I got a half fare and took the train. The train journey saw me walking twenty minutes at full speed, rather than catching the bus, and then walking from the train station on the other end to the office. I hate waiting for buses, and being in crowded spaces. The walk is more pleasant.
If we made parkings cost 30-40 CHF per day for everyone, most people would leave their cars at homes and motorway traffic would be a fifth or less of what it is now. They want to expand the motorway from 2030 onwards, but that’s absurd. Reduce commuting by car and you don’t need bigger motorways.
The Road Trip
The drive is thirteen hours long. I set off at 0300 and hope to be at my destination by about 1600. For the first three or four hours I drive in the dark. I head towards Grenoble, and eventually I go towards Porte De Valence. That’s when the sun starts to ride. I then drive west towards the Franco-Spanish border. I cross it and refuel. My first stop in over 800 kilometres. I then drive towards Barcelona, hit that traffic, and then towards Valencia, and beyond, before arriving at my destination.
During the last three or four hours I find myself needing the toilet more often. I think it’s fatigue.
I snack along the way, especially when I feel that I am losing focus. It usually brings my focus back. I also found that when I’m in France I find it comfortable to drive at 120 kilometres per hour, rather than 130. I’m used to this speed. It is the speed limit in Switzerland and Spain, so it makes sense to drive at a speed that causes less fatigue.
That’s also why I set off at 3am. It’s early, but I find that it’s easier to drive towards Spain during daylight. I find that as soon as the sun sets I begin to feel more tired.
Paradoxically on the way back I often drive through the night, from Grenoble towards Geneva. When I’m heading home it matters less.
A Mental Break
In a normal year I might do this drive two to three times. I flee southwards to avoid Christmas fuss, but I might also drive again in April or so, to get “spring” or summer sooner.
Podcasts and Books
During the drive I listen to hours of podcasts and books. To some extent the drive is an opportunity to listen to books and podcasts while watching the landscape change. I listened to Harry Potter books, Louis L’amour books and more. It’s nice to have an opportunity to listen to books for hours in a row, without worrying about doing something more productive with one’s time.
It’s like my daily walks, but for longer, and sitting down. I managed to finish entire books in a single sitting.
And Finally
The most I’ve driven in Four days is 3600 kilometres. I drove to Tarbes and then Barcelona, and from Barcelona back to Tarbes and then to Geneva. By the end of the trip I was exhausted. This is much smaller, it’s 2600 kilometres with a few weeks in the middle to recover.
I could fly but a big part of the experience is the drive. There was a time when I was flying between England and Switzerland and it became boring. It felt like commuting, rather than fun. It’s more tiring to drive but the experience is more pleasant.
Almost every time I get into the car I wish I was going for a road trip. I finally have the opportunity to go for that road trip next week. It will give me new things to write about, and it will recharge me before coming back.
According to TomTom Go if I set off now the trip should take just 11 hours. In practice, because I drive at 120 in France it will take about twelve to thirteen hours. Part of me is impatient to set off but another part of me wants to finish what I’m working on. Within the next day or two I will have PhotoPrism and Audiobookshelf running off of a 4 TB hard drive, rather than an SD card and a 2TB drive and that setup will be a serious iteration, rather than experimental.
Pi Hole Morality
After several days of playing with a Pi-Hole I both enjoy using it and feel guilty. I feel guilty about blocking adverts from certain websites and sources because I don’t want to impact their revenue streams. At the same time I really want to block ads from two specific sources. Pre-roll videos for Plex, YoUTube and other sites, and video adverts from iOS games.
Blocking Pre-Roll
I want to block pre-roll adverts, especially from Plex now, because it’s Christmas themed. As a single person I don’t want to be reminded of the family life that is not mine directly. I don’t want to suffer from ROMO (Reminder of Mission Out) as I’m about to watch a program about people flying DC-3 and DC-4 aircrafts in the North West Territories.
With YouTube I want to block pre-roll ads, more than other ads, because sometimes you decide that content is not worth watching after ten seconds. When you’re browsing like this you give up when you have to watch 30 seconds to two minutes of pre-roll. It’s too much, especially when you always see the same advert, or the same three adverts.
Stop Seeing the Same Ads All The Time
A decade or two ago I said that the problem with satellite broadcasting is that we see the same four or five adverts at every break. If you watch three programs you might see the same adverts five times. That’s several minutes wasted, for the consumer, and a waste of money for the advertiser. I remember seeing an ad after seeing it once. Forcing me to see it five times just gets me to tune out and stop watching tv, and youtube, and podcasts.
Awful Ads for Crap Games
With iOS games I want to block adverts because it’s always the same crappy games. It’s adverts for pay to win games. If the game maker stopped making crappy games he wouldn’t need to make crappy adverts, and then make people pay for crappy games. He would just make crappy games, and people would play them. How much of the cost we pay for some app games is to pay to be overloaded with bad adverts?
Arcade and Premium
I hear you say “but just use Apple arcade. It’s 6 CHF per month and you have a choice of games and no adverts. This goes back to the topic I mentioned in other posts. If you pay 25 CHF per month for Switch online, 6 CHF per month for Switch, and x amount for another service then it quickly becomes hundreds of francs per year. In this context it’s cheaper to get a console and buy games when they’re reduced in price due to Christmas or other promotions.
With YouTube you can pay for premium and stop seeing ads too, but do you want to pay to see user generated content via a company that demonetised your content because their celebrities poisoned homeless people, for views?
An Ad Guard Interlude
I experimented with Ad guard locally, and I also looked at the app on iOS. 5 CHF per year for the iOS version. The price of installing it on a Pi locally. I stopped using Ad Guard locally because it seemed to be blocking 192.168.1.1 and I want access to that IP. I also found that the UI was less fun. No interesting graphs and less active oversight of what the app is doing.
Political Blocking
Right Wing Media like to spread hate and disinformation. These sites are usually inundated in ads. By using ad blockers we make sure that if, by accident, we visit their sites we do not help them generate revenue from adverts.
It would be nice to whitelist websites, from which adverts are accepted, and blacklist websites from which I refuse to see ads. At the moment the closest you get to incremental blocking is to disable blocking for five, ten, 15 or more time. This is a workaround but not a solid solution.
White List Specific Sites
I would like to white list quite a few magazines, news sites and personal websites, without getting ads from sites that I have blacklisted. I want ads from my blog, and the Guardian to show up, for example, but not from The Times of England, or The Sun, or the Daily Mail and other such sites.
Ad sources
When you block Google Ads you block ads on large websites and small websites. Small legitimate websites suffer when we don’t see ads, so that’s why we need the option to whitelist Google ads on this site and that site, but not those other sites.
Web Browsing on Low Ram Machines
Anyone who has tried web browsing on a feature phone or low ram Raspberry Pi has experienced how slow websites can be. Part of the reason for the sites being so slow is the volume of ads that need to be downloaded, but also displayed. A website that is a few lines of text and one or two images loads fine. Commercial websites inundated with ads do not.
In low bandwidth areas, or places with machines that have limited RAM it makes a lot of sense to use a Pi Hole, to make the web more accessible.
And Finally
Ad blocking can be about quality of experience, for example in trying to block pre-roll on video streaming services or video ads on iOS games. In other cases it can be about seeing what certain news sources are writing, without contributing to their business model. News organisations that spread disinformation can be visited without helping fund yet more disinformation.
We need Pi-Hole to be like web browser plugins. “White List this site, and that site”. We could support the newspapers, blogs and magazines we like, without supporting those we do not. When ads are not obnoxious I don’t mind seeing them.
Ads make the web functional. By blocking them we are affecting content creators. We should use ad blockers sparingly. My site has too little traffic for ad blockers to make a difference but other sites do, and it’s a shame to see sites that we appreciate fail, because we used ad blockers when visiting them.
Walking in Heavy Rain
I knew that it would rain heavy yesterday (at the time when you read this) so I considered running so that I would spend less time in the weather. The issue, at this time of year, is that if you run you need to do so before the sun sets but you also want to wear lighter clothes, for running to be easier.
Ready for Rain
For these reasons I went for a walk instead. I rolled up the trousers to avoid contact between the socks and trousers. I wore waterproof trousers, and a good rain coat. I walked for an hour and a half in the rain and crossed almost no one. In this weather even the dog walkers stay home. That is what I want. I like when the paths are empty of people, when I can enjoy my solitary walks in solitude, without being reminded of my isolation.
I wore barefoot shoes for this walk. They get wet almost immediately as they are not waterproof. Within 200 meters my feet were drenched. That’s what I expected. That’s what I planned for. That’s why my trousers were rolled up. I didn’t want the humidity to creep up my socks, and then my trousers, and into my t-shirt and fleece.
It worked. I stayed dry.
The Inconvenience of Touch Screen Phones When Wet
There is one challenge in such rain. When you get to the end of one podcast you need to find an underpass, or a lending library, or some other shelter. You need to dry the phone screen and your hands enough to use the phone to select the next podcast. After that you can keep walking.
For many it would seem to walk in the rain, but that’s because they don’t walk the same path every single day, for weeks or months, or even years in a row. Changes in weather are like changes in crops, changes in seasons and more. When it rains I see a different landscape. I see where the land is low, and where it is higher. I see where the water flows heavily, and where your feet remain dry.
Golden Hour
The greatest paradox is that despite the heavy rain, and the uncomfortable conditions you can still notice golden hour. As I walked today I saw that the light became more yellow, despite being under the rain. Despite the bad weather there was a discernable golden hour.
As I walked through one village I saw people burning wood in a barbecue. I don’t know whether it was to actually have a barbecue, or just to burn wood. If they were going to cook with it then it shows that the English are not the only people to barbecue in the rain.
As if that wasn’t surreal enough I also saw two children walking with someone dressed in a Santa costume. They all carried umbrellas to protect themselves from the rain. It’s not every day you see Santa walking in the rain with an umbrella.
In the end I wasn’t the only strange person out this afternoon, walking in the rain, as the heavy rain fell. If I was that type of person I would say that this walk was magical. Today was surreal, like Godard’s 1967 film, Weekend, where we see strange things as a car drives through a traffic jam.
And Finally
For many rain is an excuse to stay in. I don’t see it that way. The familiar landscape becomes unfamiliar. The rivers that were barely a trickle are now full. The water that is transparent when the rain has just started has become brown. We can see rivers of muddy water flowing from the Gravière into the river. We can see where the road is low, and water flooded onto a road, and left mud and other detritus. In another location I saw apples strewn about. The rain had made the apples float, and transported them into nearby fields where other crops were growing.
Walking during the rain is unique, and worth doing, when equipped for the weather.
Sticking with the Old or Trying New Things
Yesterday I went for a half hour drive to do a favour, but in arriving where I had to do the favour I found that people were deeply focused and did not want to be interrupted so I went for a walk. I didn’t swap to the hiking shoes that were waiting patiently in the car. I wore my “recycled” shoes instead. I eventually regretted this because the ground that was frosty, also had deep puddles of water and I had to walk through them. Two or three times my feet got wet. While getting my feet wet I was also listening to a Linux Podcast, episode 56 of Linux After Dark and they were discussing whether people like to adopt a system and stick with it, or whether they like to experiment and try new things constantly.
I feel that way about watches at the moment. For plenty of people watches are like televisions. “I haven’t owned either for decades, my laptop and ipad are enough.” For years I was without a watch, and without a TV. As a student I never felt the need. It’s only because people had spare televisions that I ended up with one. I never bought one for myself.
Since I bought myself one or more raspberry pies I have been experimenting with various instances, to see how to set them up quickly, and experiment with implementation and more. In the process I am learning skills that I had not experimented with in years. One of these is to flash a USB key with a version of Linux and rebooting a PC from the USB key to run linux. It worked so well that now I am fighting the desire to install Linux over Windows and have the windows machine become a Linux machine.
Watches
Suunto, Casio, Apple and Garmin make watches, and each one tries to quantify the wearer, so it feels as though the wearer must wear all three or four brands to get complete data for all four platforms. but to do this makes us eccentric. The simplest workaround is to track with one device, and manually update all the others.
Whether you wear a Casio, Garmin, Apple Watch or Suunto is also about something else. User Interface. The Garmin Instinct and Casio g-shock watches look tough/solid, while the Apple Watch and Suunto Peak 5 look more fragile, more elegant. The other difference is that the Garmin watch is solar powered and can last for weeks in summer, whereas the Apple Watch and Suunto Peak five can last for a day, or several. The Garmin watches can last for years, by default, because they use mobile phones to do the hard work. They just count steps and time.
Personal Technical Debt
I like the idea of Personal Technical Debt. The concept exists for IT and programming. Writing code is one thing, but updating it later on is a challenge. To give a simple example, if you write a static website by hand then every page that navigates to other pages, needs to updated every time a new page is added. If you use Hugo or another static website generator you see this with every build. My blog is both on wordpress, and as a static site. As a wordpress blog it’s slow and clunky to update because of all the bloat wordpress has added over the two and a half decades that it has been around.
In contrast with Hugo you write you page in markdown, add the categories and tags, run “hugo” and fifteen seconds later the site is ready to publish via GIT FTP. I spent months updating my static site to PHP before being sidetracked by Hugo and blogging.
The New Machine Routine
A while ago if you started to use a new machine you would need to log into all your sites, across several browsers. When I did this once or twice a year it felt slow and uncomfortable. Now that I slide between web browsers fluidly the time it takes to be up and running in Chrome, Firefox or other, is a few minutes. This is because my personal technical debt is low, and because it has become routine to slide between browsers, whether different versions of Chrome, Firefox or other.
With the Raspberry Pi Imager app you can instantiate a new server on an SD card within minutes, and it will be ready for you to log in via SSH whilst connecting to wifi with no user intervention. This is great because you can setup a headless system in a location with no monitor or keyboard.
Devops
When I started following courses on JavaScript, Ruby, Ruby On Rails and more I would get instructions on how to setup an environment and I wasn’t familiar with the process so I had to follow the instructions attentively. By trial and error, as well as repetition the process became relaxed.
I find that, as I become more comfortable with doing things from the command line, I find docker walk throughs more frustrating than helpful. This is because I want to get instructions on how to setup the environment fully, without the overhead of docker running in the background. On a 2016 mac book pro docker slows down the computer.
And Finally
When we do something two or three times we need to follow the instructions when we get stuck. If we set the time on a casio watch several times then it becomes habit. If we implement Linux instances on SD cards and experiment until we break things, then we know how to do things, without breaking them, in a production environment. If we change web browser once every few months or years it can take a while. If we do it several times a month it becomes second nature. That’s what experimenting is about.
When Galaxus Sends You the Wrong Things
Many weeks ago I ordered something from Galaxus and it didn’t arrive when it was scheduled to. A few weeks ago I ordered one thing but instead got half a dozen things. I thought “Why do I have so many extras, before realising that the order was wrong. They sent me the order that someone else had made.
For a while I thought “What do I do, do I let them know about the mistake or do I tell them. In the end I let them know about the mistake. By eventually I mean within half an hour, not five weeks. They told me to send them a list of all the items I had received in mistake, and to send it back to them.
When you see that Galaxus has made a mistake they will want the European Product number of each item, as well as for the package to be sent back. The Swiss post makes it quite easy to send an item back to the sender. You go to the Swiss post site, and within a few minutes you can register the return, and the next day a post man will pick it up as he delivers other packets. For fifty centimes more they will print the label for you. It’s cheaper than buying printer ink to print one page, and then have it dry up before the next time you print.
A few days after the incident I checked my orders list and noticed that the mistake I had declared was catalogued in their system under my name. The charge was zero francs but their system had catalogued the value of the items. If, for any reason, I had taken too long to send back the package, or an item had been missing I suspect I would have been charged for it, which would have been fair.
I was tempted to tell them that I was a blogger, and that if they let me keep the items I would write blog posts about each item. In the end I simply sent back the order within a day of realising.
Such an event tests your morality. It would be easy to say nothing, and see whether they ever notice. I didn’t want to take that chance. I like using Galaxus for ordering things online and if there was a mistake then I would want people to announce it, in the hope that I would not have to wait too long for a mistake to be fixed.
On their blog they speak about return rates in the French and German speaking parts of Switzerland but not about their error rates, and how often people are honest enough to report them. After ordering things on Galaxus over several years I have had one occurrence of something not arriving when anticipated, and another of getting the wrong thing. They are quick, and reliable so I will keep using them.
In Switzerland we have the luxury of not having to rely on Amazon. I see this as a luxury because Galaxus collaborates with plenty of online shops but provides a single point of entry. If you order things you can see a list of providers, and the difference in price.
I also appreciate that they use the Swiss Post rather than DHL, Fedex and other carriers. I like that they use the local post, and local couriers like Planzer on occasion.