From Mobile to train station display live.
If this isn’t a hoax then this is pretty fun. A guy claims to have hacked into the video display at a train station and is streaming live.
On at least three occasions toots that were written as a cry for empathy, or at least venting, were interacted with by apathetic people. For this simple reason I deleted two Fediverse accounts. I deleted my Mastodon.social account, and my FireFish.social accounts. I have a precise desire, when using social media. That desire is to find a community of likeminded individuals that I have such enjoyable conversations with, that I want to meet them in person.
Noise pollution is caused by apathetic people, people that don’t consider that people want to sleep, study, think or other things. If noise pollution was not a problem libraries and other places of learning would not require quiet. They would be as noisy as everywhere else.
For daring to complain about noise pollution I was insulted, and then mocked on mastodon.social. When I look to vent, or, ideally, find empathy, and I find apathy my instant desire is to tell the person to duck off. I didn’t. I decided to write one more toot. The second response encouraged me to block the apathetic individual.
I don’t remember what a second person wrote but it encouraged me to speak about normal people as sheeple, and to speak about the benefits of tight knit communities. One individual denounced the term sheeple and then wrote some rubbish about how not all accounts with a million followers are bad. I considered responding but didn’t. Why fight an uphill battle.
The trigger that got me to delete my mastodon.social and firefish.social posts was an ironic “I’m happy for you”. I am almost certain that it was ironic, although due to a lack of emoticons I do not know this for certain. What I do know is that I dumped Facebook early in the pandemic because of such interactions.
Sometimes I feel like giving up on asocial media. I feel like giving up on asocial media because the space is shared between generations, and use cases. Some people are utilitarian broadcasts, whose only desire is to find a mass audience. The second group are trolls looking for a misunderstanding, rather than a conversation, and the third group The third group are people, like me, who want to converse, but have to spend weeks or months finding pleasant conversations.
That’s why it’s tempting to give up on social media. It takes so much time and yet it’s so fragile. I’m thinking of returning to Facebook and Twitter because of how bad Mastodon is at the moment.
I wrote Mastodon above, because although I feel that Mastodon is a waste of time, due to how easy it is to be trolled, but very difficult to find empathy, it feels like working with WordPress and other Fediverse compatible instances is an interesting playground to play in. I love that my blog is somewhere so visible now. It is no longer stuck in a desert, it is at the front of my Fediverse streams, when i like and share my blog posts. I feel that this is the Fediverse’s unique selling point.
The reason for leaving Twitter and Facebook is/was to leave a toxic environment and look for a healthier community where it is fun to invest time and attention. With my experience of Mastodon, in particular, I feel that staying away makes sense, especially from big instances. The experiences we left Twitter and Facebook to avoid, are present on Mastodon.social.
The other, more rational option is to stay on smaller instances, and just wait until communities form. It might take months or years, but eventually they might arrive. This will take time.
Another option would be to use the web anonymously, using a nickname, like so many people do, to avoid trolls having an effect on your official persona. It’s the rational choice, but a social network where you have to hide behind an avatar is less interesting than one where people use their actual names.
Although Mastodon and the Fediverse are growing both places are still filled with solitude. We can devote hours a day, to try to find engagement, or we can take a break, write a blog post that is shared to the Fediverse, and let it do the talking.
On-Running, is ideal, in theory, but sub-optimal in reality. The biggest issue I found with On-Running CloudNeo shoes is that they are seasonal running shoes. If it’s icy or wet you’re going to slip and slide all over the place. If you’re a former snowboarder and cyclist you will recover, but if you’re not used to slipping and sliding you will fall. As a result of this I got shoes a month or two ago but never used them because it was either rainy, or cold.
Imagine having a pair of shoes that you pay 35 CHF per month for, but that can’t be used for 4-6 months per year. That’s a lot of money for shoes that are dormant due to not being well suited to the running environment.
My second grudge with on-running is that they encourage you to think “Oh, you should, but you don’t have to return the shoes that are warn out”. The cost if you don’t return shoes is 100 CHF. If you have warn out shoes with the sole peeling off with the first pair then that is appalling customer service. If a shoe is degrading 100 CHF is very expensive for an unusable pair of shoes.
The shoes were comfortable when running, at first but eventually they began to feel like crap. The shoes lasted three months with my use before starting to fall apart. The sole fell off. I felt that the toe box was uncomfortable when wearing them after several weeks of use, especially with walking. I find that on-running shoes in general are not comfortable walking shoes.
I cancelled my subscription today. I haven’t used the replacement shoes at all, due to the unfriendly weather and badly suited grip for winter Switzerland. As a result I am stuck with a connundrum. Do I return shoes that are perfectly fine, to be recycled, to avoid paying 100 CHF on top of the 35 CHF per month I paid for several months, or do I pay 100 CHF? I think the answer is obvious. Return the shoes.
Idealisticly, once you cancel the membership you should be given the option of running the shoes until they need to be recycled, and return them then. The first pair I had were worth the 105 CHF I paid. The second pair were worthless due to snow, ice and wet roads making the second pair unusuable for months. They’re still new. I haven’t removed any of the packaging from the shoes yet. I could use them for three months, and then send them to be recycled out of contract. I have paid for them. I just never got to use them due to them not being designed for a Swiss winter, despite being Swiss shoes.
I really like the idea of a shoe subscription where shoes are recycled after their useful life is over. I liked running in them and during the summer months they were a pleasure to use, for running. For walking they’re sub-optimal, especially for longer walks.
What I would like with the Cyclon program is an option to suspend the plan while the conditions are not good for the shoes. When it’s raining, snowing, and the ground is frozen these shoes are dangerous. When it’s warm and sunny the shoes are great. Sending them back is easy, and the process is convenient.
In my opinion on-running need to make Cloudneo shoes that are usable in winter, and comfortable for walking, and I will renew my subscription.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For years I have been complaining that social media has shifted away from conversations towards marketing. It has shifted away from peer to peer conversations towards a broadcast model where crowds listen to and share individual sources rather than interact within a social network. As a result of this communication shift people re-share content rather than create their own.
Until the election of Trump and Brexit it was unpleasant but had to be seen as part of modern life. We had to accept that sensationalism and dumbed down content were popular. We had to accept that most people saw social media as RSS rather than conversation.
Within the last year we have seen that the shift from social media being conversational has shifted towards trolling, disinformation and misinformation. We see that people speak about living in a “post truth” age and more. In such an environment we see that people hear what they want to hear and vote for what they idealise rather than what makes logical sense. Brexit and Trump are consequences of people following idealism rather than realism. In such an intellectual environment social media, rather than encouraging the flow of information and context has had the opposite effect. When Obama was running for President the blogosphere was seen as a gate keeper, as part of the fourth estate, as part of the checks and balances.
With Trump and Brexit we see that the Tabloid press in England and Troll armies in other countries have deliberately misguided people, deliberately made them vote against their own self-interests.
For years I saw the web as a place to socialise and make new friends but within the last year, with troll armies, marketing and more I see that conversations are declining. The Return on Investment that I used to enjoy as a human rather than a marketer justified the time I spent socialising via social media. In 2016 the Return on Investment of using Social Media became negative. I watched youtube series, I read books, I read mainstream media, I listened to podcasts. In 2017 I want to replace the time that I spent on social media on reading books. In this day and age the cost of social media exceeds the potential return on investment. I finally find that social media is a waste of time. It took a decade for me to fall out of love with social media.
I have been studying and discussing media tech and society. I have also been listening to the podcasts from the SXSW event on interactivity and my view of technology and daily life has changed. That’s reflected by what I was going to post as an answer to a comment on flickr.
The iphone will sell because it’s what people want. People have accounts on flickr, they’re part of myspace and they’re on facebook. There friends are as well.
Recently I’ve been going out with a camera and taking up to 180 pictures in one night. I upload them to facebook, controlling who can see them and they’re popular. People get round to requesting more pictures so I need to take more.
With my mobile phone comes a one gig mini sd card therefore I can store thousands of pictures. I show people the pictures and if they want to see them online then at least I’ve got a practical way of getting people to approve them.
What was SXSW about? Interactivity. Why? because social networking websites encourage the free sharing of all the media you’re creating.