The DI Barton Series

The DI Barton Series

Byrichard

Recently I have read three out of four DI Barton books and I enjoy them. One of the things that I enjoyed about these books is that I’m interested in both sides of the story, rather than reading about character A but being frustrated when reading about character B. With these books I like both.


The first book is about a seasonal killer, and it moves on from there. I could give more information but I don’t want to spoil the books for you. These books are available via Audible’s Premium plus package, for the first three books, and you need to spend one credit per book for the last three books.


I don’t like writing book reviews. I think that the speed with which I read books tells you whether these books are good or not. I read the first three within two or three weeks and I enjoyed them all, hence the purchase of the fourth. The books are presented from the DI’s perspective and the serial killer’s point of view in turn. As you read you learn more, until the final dénouement.


We should spend more time listening to audiobooks and discussing them. It is easy to find articles and news about films and more, but less so about audible.com among other projects. We could see every book as a series, especially since they last about seven hours. I like reading books with my eyes but I also enjoy listening, whilst walking, driving etc.


Long drives are one of the most enjoyable moments for listening to audiobooks. As you read them you imagine the stories you’re reading, but you also associate one book with a bit of motorway, or a season. I used to enjoy listening to podcasts but I think that with their minutes of adverts per episode they have become too much like the television shows and radio programs we got into the habit of avoiding.


With audiobooks there are no adverts, just stories that help you stay focused on long drives, especially if you’re driving alone. Don’t be tricked. Most of my reading is done either while cooking or while walking. With books a solitary walk becomes an excuse to “read”, uninterrupted, for a period of time.


One Year With The Garmin Instinct Solar
| |

One Year With The Garmin Instinct Solar

Byrichard

I bought the Garmin Instinct Solar because I was interested to see how the Solar option works. As with most watches the solar panels take several hours to recharge the watch, even during summer heatwaves. The Solar part is great, if you’re in Spain and leave your watch to recharge in the sun while you do something else.


This leaving the watch alone for hours, as it charges, is a paradox, since other metrics cannot be tracked, rest, heart rate, steps. They’re all stagnant whilst the watch charges for several hours in the sun. Having said this, if you use the watch as a watch, and you spend the entire day in the sun, then it will fill its role fantastically. I had it tell me that it had 99 days of power, at the current rate of charge and discharge, while in Spain.


Then Comes Winter


In winter we wear long sleeves, days are shorter, and we spend more time indoors. This means the solar aspect of the watch is barely used, unless we strap it to a bag, and make sure that it is facing the sun. This isn’t a likely scenario so it’s better simply to rely on recharging it from a usb port.


It Sulks


Of course it’s a computer, so it just runs programmed but I have found, on plenty of mornings, that it doesn’t want to sync with the phone. I will tell the phone several times “refresh” but nothing. I just have to wait until it decides that it wants to converse with the phone and update the stats. This frustrates me immensely. When I am supposed to wear a watch 24 hours a day, for it to get my HR, body battery status, step count and everything else and it doesn’t bother to connect with the phone I have a problem.


Forced Loyalty


I don’t like the term addiction so I’m going to use the term forced loyalty instead. Until the Garmin Instinct watch I was very happy with Suunto devices. I’d wear them and they’d sync all the data when I got home. Then Suunto offered the option of step tracking and heart rate monitoring and I was happy with that.


Then when I got the Apple watch Apple wanted the same loyalty, and then Garmin wanted the same loyalty and at this point you have to make a decision. “Am I the type of idiot who walks with two or three watches at all times? Do I wear just one and lose interest in the step data?


In the end I dropped the Suunto, retired from active service after several years of good use. It’s because of a weaker battery that I even shopped around for new devices.


Cycling and More


For a while I wanted to get a Garmin cycling computer, and as I cycle this would make sense. The issue is that I like quite a few sports, so having a device dedicated to just one sport would be a shame. It would lie dormant when I am not cycling, for weeks, or even months at a time. I workout every day so the Garmin Instinct made sense. I chose the colour and model I did for a simple reason. It was the cheapest option.


Aside from the watch I also saw that I could get the speed and cadence sensors at an affordable price, and wireless. They were easy to install and use within minutes and have been reliable sense.


Thinks I like


  • The Sunrise and sunset view. It shows both.

  • It also shows lunar phases

  • The body battery concept is interesting but I don’t real use it.

  • The Virb remote, should you own a VIRB that you have mounted for remote use.


The Challenges


Garmin has walking, cycling, running, yoga and body building challenges every month that you can participate in. Some of these challenges are short weekend challenges. Some challenges are month long challenge, for example 300,000 steps in a month of cycling 700 kilometres, or more. Some of them are easy to reach, and some of them are more challenging. Yet more are special day events, for example Halloween or other. You can participate in as many, or as few challenges as you like each month, and it doesn’t really matter whether you succeed or fail, except for collection of badges you end up with.


Insights


One of the encouraging, or discouraging screens is the Insights screen. On this screen you can see how well or how badly you are classed depending on sport, age and gender. I am in the top 1percent for floors climbed, top 22 percent for Sleep, top eight percent for steps per day but am not classed for cycling, swimming or running, due to not doing these sports enough recently.


Battery


After one year of use of this watch I have not had issues with this battery. I think it has always lasted throughout my workouts. After a year of daily use the battery still seems fine and I can still go for several days before having to recharge. I do turn off oxygen stats though because that halves the battery life from over 27 days to just 10. The data is not that accurate, so not that interesting anyway.


As I mentioned earlier if you wear the watch and use it as a step counter, then, with the Spanish sun it will eventually display that it has 99 days of battery left, so if you want a sports tracker that you forget about for three months then this is perfect. I say three months, but in practice that’s the maximum number of hours it can display. If I remember correctly it then displayed infinity.


And Finally


Two or three times I selected the wrong sport. I chose walking when I was cycling, which was frustrating as it meant that I missed some data from the start of a ride or two, and thus an opportunity to see how big an effort I made.


As with plenty of sports watches it takes a few seconds to detect the satellites and if you’re on a phone call or distracted in some other way, then you tell it to spot satellites but you forget to tell it to start tracking and timing. Result, you do an entire walk or bike ride and you are left with a step count.


Summary


If it wasn’t for the decision it takes not to synchronise on some mornings, despite being worn 24hours a day I would love this watch, instead of really like it. If it wasn’t for that I would never have considered replacing it. With 27 days of battery in theory, after over a year of daily tracking use for one and a half hours a day, it has been great for cycling walking, cycling, and hiking. It also plays well with the Garmin speed and cadence sensors. This provides us with a cheap versatile solution for cycling, without the nuisance of a single purpose device.


Compare the old and new watches


This watch was at least 100 francs cheaper than the Apple Watch Series 4 and I never worried about breaking it, or worried about the battery being too low to finish a walk or bike ride. It doesn’t need to be charged every day, and the strap doesn’t start to smell after weeks of being worn. If you’re looking for a lower cost watch then this is a good solution.


One of the reasons I switched from Suunto despite loving their products, and that they are a European company is that they went for Android and Google wear rather than their own watch OS. Their battery life declined and the niche they were in was lost. Suunto also stopped the web interface for Movescount, so that it became mobile only. That’s a shame because I loved Movescount and Sportstracker. Garmin Connect is a nice alternative nonetheless.

Garmin Etrex32x and Software Updates

Garmin Etrex32x and Software Updates

Byrichard

Updating software is something that we do every single day, often without knowing that it is being updated. WatchOS updated two or three days ago. iOS updated yesterday recently as well. The most notable was Xcode, because it requires several gigabytes of space or it fails to even try, if it detects that there is not enough disk space. I had the same issue with the Garmin ETREX 32x except that in this scenario Garmin Express wipes the device’s memory before it has checked that the computer from which you are running the installation has enough space to proceed.


This is interesting for two reasons. The first is that it demonstrates why applications should check that there is enough free disk space before starting an operation rather than afterwards. In this case the warning came too late.


My first thought was, “oh it doesn’t matter, I can try on the other laptop” as I know it has enough space. That’s when I got the “device cannot be found” error message. When I checked the device display it said “no system found, please wait for update to finish.” At this point you’re trapped.


If the device was not under warranty I would look for the device files that allow me to flash the rom, like I did with iphones and android devices, back in the day, or even PC and mac computers. In this scenario I have the skillset to revive the device but I need to find the software to do it with.


What surprised me in this scenario is that a device with so little onboard memory needs a 16 gigabyte system update, and the second that if the process is interrupted it has no safety features in place, to preserve the usability of the device. I update devices constantly and so far I’ve ended with this laptop being bricked once, and now a GPS device being practically bricked. This is rare.


Now I have to wait a little longer to play with that device. I will take it to be replaced on Tuesday. We have yet another stupid holiday during a pandemic on Monday, so that’s an additional day of waiting.


I would see this as an excellent excuse for a bike ride to the plague pit of Geneva but people in Geneva have normalised bicycle theft so I will go with the scooter. I go by scooter because I can park right next to the shop and avoid walking where people walk, unmasked. If it wasn’t for the pandemic I would be heading there now.


Some of us follow international news, and see that the pandemic is still thriving so we take precautions.

|

On the Pleasure of Small Machines/Laptops

Byrichard

For a while I had a mac book air and I used it for everything. I saw the mac book air as the machine to use for everything except for video editing. That’s what the mac book pro was for. Eventually I sold the Mac Book Air and then I took the MBP to an event and it was stolen and I found myself without a machine.


I regretted selling the mac book air then, because if I had kept the mac book air then I would not have taken the MBP and it would not have been stolen.


I have looked for cheap, low cost machines recently because I wanted to get a linux box to play with. As it is just to do some simple things I don’t need a top of the range machine. I came across the Acer Chromebook 311 so I decided to play with this machine.


So far I have tried chrome, gmail, the play store, and I took a few minutes to install atom.io, connect it to github and download a repository. I have not written code with this machine yet, but so far writing a blog post is fine. The machine is fast enough and the keyboard is comfortable.


The machine has twenty gigs of storage and it is connected to Google drive so I have plenty of storage. It has two USB c ports and two standard usb ports. These are one of each type on each side. Although internal storage is small it is easy to expand with external disks and drives.


In theory you can monitor aranet devices via the laptop but as my mobile phone and aranet devices are already paired it was buggy. If you pair them then I expect the interactivity to be flawless.


I chose this device for three reasons. The first is that it is the cheapest device they had. The second is that it was available the soonest. The third reason is that it is always good to have a light, portable machine, from which you can work and do things. This machine is easy to put in most bags, take to an event, use, and then return home. With a 15″ machine that is not possible. It gets heavy, fast. When my laptop was stolen a few years ago I had broken my own rule. Never take what you’re not ready to carry at all times, to a conference or event.


I am now at the end of this blog post and the keyboard was fine to type with. It’s quick and intuitive. No hunting and pecking, and few typos. This is a nice, and yet cheap machine. Better than the EEEpc and other options I played with in the past. This cheap machine is usable. I am happy with this purchase.

| |

Initial Thoughts on the DJI Mini SE

Byrichard

Today I went for my first flight with the DJI Mini SE and it feels very familiar, after flying a spark so frequently, until I crashed that drone. I would have replaced the spark but I didn’t because it would either cost two thirds to replace the old one, or cost a lot to buy a new drone, with batteries and the rest of the gear. I waited. I didn’t wait for four weeks, four months, or four seasons. I waited for two years, until I saw the DJI Mini SE was about to come out.


What I like about this drone is first and foremost its price, but also its form factor. In Europe drones that way more than 250 grams have stricter rules than drones below 250 grams, so with a small light drone, you can fly in more places. The other advantage is that you can go for a two hour walk, without ever been bothered by the weight. I know because that’s what I did today.


Another nice feature is that the DJI Mini SE Flymore pack comes with a three battery charger spare props, and a carrying case. Everything fits neatly into the carrying case, and the carrying case fits nicely into a 10 litre hiking bag.


With the DJI spark it was a pain because the charger was large and needed to be transported in one case. In another case I had the drone and three batteries and because batteries were good for just 20 minutes you had to have a few. In the end it was a pain to keep everything charged and ready. Thinks have improved over the last three or four years.


If you crash this drone, and break one of it’s arms you can unscrew the broken arm and replace it, without replacing the entire body. Repair-ability is important with something that can get stuck and fall from a tree onto a tarmac road, as mine did.


And finally, I have flown just once for about 15 minutes and I feel a little rusty. It feels just the same as the Spark, but maybe a little slower. I notice that between telling it to go full forward to full backwards there is a little control lag. I would consider getting a landing mat, for when landing in grass. With the Spark if you tried to start it near grass it would behave like a lawnmower. This one tells you there is a motor error. I took off from the edge of a farm road. I had good visibility and could see cars if they were approaching.


That’s it for now. I will update you as I learn more

Reading About The Camino De Santiago

Byrichard

Over the last month or so I have been reading Le Camino Seule, ou enfin presque and it is one of my favourite hiking books. It might simply be because it was written in French, by a french woman rather than in English by Brits or Americans but it made me feel more than other books. She often references Sylvain Tesson’s book Forêt de Sibérie, a book I read a few years ago.


I like the book because it’s about leaving life behind for 38 days to do a walk, to find herself, only to find that she doesn’t find herself, and that she has more questions than answers by the end of it. I like that it goes from location to location and day by day. I like the meetings that she speaks about, the people, the situations and more. I also like that she has choices to make, whether to walk the normal route, or to take the Primitivo.


When she spoke about the Camino Norte and Français I didn’t feel a desire to go for a walk but when she spoke of the Primitivo this is the part of the Camino that I would consider. It sounds more like the walking I am used to. Through mountains, clouds, remote villages and more.


I read this book during the solitude of a two year pandemic, where there is no end in sight. The people I have met during walks were pleasant and interesting to spend time with. It would be nice to go on such a trip, and to spend time with a community of people while doing something enjoyable like walking. It’s what I miss most from pre-pandemic life.


If you read this when the pandemic is over you will not understand. Pandemics are a moment where we can socialise, if we want to take a silly risk, or we can self-isolate to stay safe. I choose safety, but safety is solitude. When the pandemic ends I want to go on such walks, to spend time with people once again.


The Old Habit of Walking In The Rain
| |

The Old Habit of Walking In The Rain

Byrichard

A Walk In The Rain


Today it was meant to rain for the entire day but there was a brief window which it stopped raining so I went for a walk. I expected not to be rained on but within minutes I could feel a small spray of water falling on me. I walked anyway. It was nothing to worry about. I did the usual walk and although groups of people were walking they were easy to avoid. The rivers are nice and full today so rain is having an effect. Rain has melted the snow that had covered the landscape and filled the rivers. In some places there are traces that the water is slightly polluted.


Reading and Projets


I am listening to The Age of Wood as I walk. I am struggling to get into it. I did read about the Chemin De La Mature and that does sound like an interesting place to visit. It is a path cut through the rock. They didn’t cut through the rock from top to bottom though. They cut through it horizontaly. It looks like an interesting experience to walk along that path. In some images it looks narrow, but in others it looks comfortable to walk along. I need to find more information about the GR-10 walking route, to see whether it would be interesting to see the larger context.


Tracking, Without Charging


I tracked the walk the usual way, with a gps watch, but I also tracked it with the Core-S4 and so far the results are good. I have tracked two walks over two days, without charging between the two walks and the phone is still fine. I don’t need to charge it every day. I like this. I like that I have a watch that I charge once a week or less, and a phone that I don’t need to charge every evening. This means that I could travel away for a weekend carrying less weight. I could go without chargers for the first time in years.


We will see what I play with tomorrow.

| |

Initial Thoughts on the Crosscall Core-S4

Byrichard

Not for FB or Twitter


Today I started to play with the Crosscall Core-S4 and my impressions of it so far is that the Facebook and Twitter apps are not optimal for this device. They do not consider that with a small screen you should prioritise text over images. For those reasons I think that FB and Twitter are a reason to avoid this phone. This might actually encourage you to buy this phone.


Good for E-mail, FM radio, Whatsapp etc.


The purpose of a phone is not necessarily to provide you with social media. Sometimes the aim of a phone is to check your e-mails, look for quick information, and communicate via whatsapp and other platforms. In this case the phone is fine. It also has an FM radio, which is nice, for when you want to listen to local, rather than international content.


Environmentally Friendly Packaging.


I like the packaging. It is brown cardboard with a simple diagram of phone phone, black print on brown cardboard. It is functional and environmentally sound. It emphasises that the box can and should be recycled. For some reason I can’t fix one box back into the other.


Dual Sim or Microsd and Sim


You can have either one sim and a microSD card (max 64Go) or you can have two sims running in parallel.


Repairable, by Screwing and Unscrewing


One of the unique selling points of this phone is the image that shows the component parts of this phone. It is adertised as repairable, with screws to loosen and tighten again, rather than glue and suction cups, like with iphones and other devices. It is meant to be durable and this is good for climbing, extreme conditions and more. You could fall in a river with this phone, or use it in the rain, without a decrease in usability.


When I read the manual it says that we cannot change the battery ourselves.


Long Standby


In theory the standby time on this phone is 240 hours, ten days. With many other phones the standby time is hours, especially with a user like me. This one is different. 240hrs of standby, 13-14hrs of talk time, and it has the old familiar keyboard that some of us spent our teens using. Typing on the keyboard is fast and easy. I found that the keys actually felt soft, rather than hard. It feels like phones used to feel.


Why This Phone Rather Than Others


In my experience you can buy expensive flagship phones and be dissapointed by a number of things. Either apps don’t run as well as they should, or they crash. Sometimes the phone is so slippery that you drop it once, get it fixed, drop it again, and get it fixed again, and eventually give up. New iphones and new Android phones are big and fragile, which means that they’re fragile. Fragile phones break and you need to replace front and back covers. If you don’t they may feel much farmer.


With cheap Android phones you may have problems with 3G or other antenna issues, you may get constant app crashes and you may get older versions of Android.


I was tempted by feature phones but they don’t have access to whatsapp and other essential communication tools of this day and age, so unless you call actual phones they are of no value. With KaiOS that problem is resolved. With devices starting at 80 CHF it is worth taking the risk.


Two Steps For It To Be A Viable Primary Phone


For this to be a viable primary phone it would need two things. The first of these is access to Signal. This is an app I use regularly, and if it had it then I could think about dropping the iphone. The second would be a better podcast app, and audible. With these three apps the phone would reduce my need for a second phone.


And Finally


If you want to develop for KaiOS you need knowledge of html, CSS and JavaScript. If you don’t find an app you want then you can write it yourself with a little bit of effort. This is great for those who feel like experimenting with a phone without developing for Android or iOS.

Bits, Bytes and Barrels – A Review

Byrichard

Through Booktasters I was able to read Bits, Bytes and Barrels, in exchange for an honest review. The book was available to read via Audible so this time I was able to walk, run and do other things whilst listening to the book. I listened to it from start to finish despite this being the type of book that people may skim, or read part of rather than the full text.


This type of book is written in such a way that you can read the chapters that interest you, or the book in its entirety, but if you read it from cover to cover there will be some repetition. I read it from cover to cover, over a relatively short period of time because I had to provide an honest review.


I do not know much about the oil industry. I know that they have oil rigs, trucks, petrol stations, refineries and more, and that they make billions or even trillions of dollars. What I didn’t know, or at least didn’t think about, is that they had some of the first data centres in the 90s. They collected data from oil wells, from oil exploration and more, and then they got experts to go through that data to decipher where to place operations.


Something that seemed alien to me, as a person reading this in 2021 is of the idea of data as a cost, rather than wealth. It’s interesting that it took some convincing to get oil exploration to take advantage of artificial intelligence in order to speed up and increase oil exploration accuracy.


The book explores interesting ideas, and provides context for an industry that we often see in the news, but mainly when things go wrong, without understanding much of what goes on behind the scenes. This book provides a window into that world.

Empire Of The Deep and Brexit

Empire Of The Deep and Brexit

Byrichard

I am currently reading Empire of the Deep, The Rise and Fall of The British Navy and to read it within the context of Brexit is interesting. We already know that the British gave up on the Catholic Church because Henry the Viii wanted to change wives and the Pope said no. (I am oversimplifying it, for the sake of this blog post.) While reading Empire of the Deep I see that the English have a very long history of being at conflict with Europe.


Two or three years ago I heard about a talk that would be given to the U3A somewhere in Spain about the English and piracy and I didn’t think much of it at the time because my knowledge was limited to what I had seen in films and cartoons. Through reading the book mentioned above I see that piracy was an important part of what English ships did centuries ago. They would attack and loot the Spanish, attack the French, try to undermine the Netherlands and their empire, Portugal and more.


At the same time as the British tried did all these things they changed alliances and allegiances according to their goals. What is interesting, and I’m being very broad, is that whilst the Monarchy wanted close ties with Europe Parliament and the Tories, especially wanted war and distance, rather than collaboration with Europe.


As a person who studied 20th century Europe I looked at Brexit from that perspective, so I thought that it was absurd and old-fashioned for England to want to be separate from Europe. I also look at this topic from the perspective of someone living in Switzerland, who sees the limitations that Switzerland frequently faces. If new content is made available via Netflix, Amazon or others then Switzerland usually has to wait an extra two or three years to get the same content. Another example is roaming. Switzerland took an additional two or three years before roaming between Switzerland and Europe was simplified.


The story of our navy is nothing less than the story of Britain, our culture and our empire. Much more than a parade of admirals and their battles, this is the story of how an insignificant island nation conquered the world’s oceans to become its greatest trading empire. Few other nations have fallen so deeply in love with a branch of the armed forces as the British did with its Navy. Yet, as Ben Wilson shows, there was nothing inevitable about this rise to maritime domination, nor was it ever an easy path. For much of our history Britain was a third-rate maritime power on the periphery of Europe. EMPIRE OF THE DEEP also reveals how our naval history has shaped us in more subtle and surprising ways – our language, culture, politics and national character all owe a great debt to this conquest of the seas. This is a gripping, fresh take on our national story.

Source: Goodreads page for the book.


While the British wanted to turn their backs...
While the British wanted to turn their backs…


There are a few parallels to what is happening now.



The quote above looks familiar, but this is a view that was expressed between 1713-1744. It is in chapter 26 – “Heaven’s Command”.


As a person who studied 20th century history I always saw the European Union as a good thing, in order to keep people united, rather than split them up. I saw it as valuable for the preservation of peace, but also because Europe, through the dismantling of borders, gave us an enormous amount of freedom to travel, work and more. It also provided us with a broader, more inclusive cultural identity.


Back in 2000 or so I was struck by two things. The first was that it was impossible to get international news from English news sources. You needed to read Swiss, French or other news sources to get international news. One of the biggest cultural shocks, when I lived in England the first time is that I was labelled, both as French, and as a foreigner, despite having a British passport. I came from International Geneva, where we’re called Internationals, rather than foreigners. We’re also in the habit of learning someone’s nationality and using that as an identifier. It’s a matter of interest and curiousity, rather than a derogatory term.


When I lived in the South West I learned that you knew where someone was from in England by their accent because of the differences in how words are pronounced. When I lived in London I saw something else. When you hear of Geneva being multicultural you see that all nationalities mix all the time. In London, when I saw that there were communities of one nationality living in one part and those of another in another part I began to call London poly cultural, rather than multicultural. I make the distinction because for me multiculturalism is about everyone mixing all the time. Polyculturalism is where cultures live side by side, but they do not mix once they go back to the area where they live.


Europe is in a unique situation because it is 27 countries, with a variety of languages, cultures and traditions that have amalgamated, and where borders are administrative, rather than hard. We can cycle from Switzerland to France, by accident, and we can ski from Switzerland to France, to Italy without difficulty. We can drive from Portugal to the other side of Europe without showing a passport. In England, you cannot have this experience because you’d have to swim across.


By reading the book above I am seeing England’s attitude to “overseas” from a different perspective. I see that England has a history of wanting to be outside of Europe, of differentiating itself. It also has a history of trying to control trade, either through piracy, convoys and more. Now I understand why England holds on to Gibraltar, and why English people live and holiday around Alicante.


I recommend reading the book, I’m only thirty-five percent in. I am learning from it. My contextual understanding of English attitudes is being complemented by the reading of this book.