The Iphone 7 has RAW support. This will allow people to take mediocre quality images and re-work them in post production. This is an interesting development because in theory you no longer need to get dedicated hardware capable of shooting raw. This is good for covering events when you do not want to carry a DSLR or compact camera. This could include via ferrata, a night out or a trail journey where weight reduction is key.
if you’re going to shoot RAW then I would strongly recommend getting the highest capacity iphone possible. It has 256 gigabytes of storage and will allow you to take at least a hundred pictures before offloading them to an external hard drive or storage solution. Ideally you would want the iphone to be like most android phones. SDHC card support is useful because you can easily buy these cards and increase your phone’s memory capacity. With the latest devices you can use SDHC cards with a capacity up to 200 gigabytes. The cost of these cards is decreasing. I like being able to take images with a mobile phone, ejecting the card and downloading to the computer in an instant. If you’re travelling you can walk around with terabytes of storage, if you’re that way inclined.
Samsung, Sony and other brands have recently started to make mobile phones that are waterproof. When playing Ingress we would play in the rain thanks to this feature. Crosscall has been designing weatherproof phones for a while now with an IP certification of 68. The new iphone only has an ingress protection of IP 67. It’s waterproof enough to survive caving but don’t take it canyoning. For that you should still rely on Crosscall devices.
In essence Apple have come out with a waterproof camera that has internet connectivity and can make phone calls. They are moving towards a more adventurous market at least two or three years after I said they should. I might soon consider using them again.
Podcrastinating, when you put off doing something because you prefer listening to a podcast instead.
It’s when you know that you should be doing a number of things but because you want to listen to conversations you listen to podcasts instead. Those guilty for taking a lot of my time would be From our own Foreign correspondent, quite a few of the TWIT podcasts and many more. It’s not that you’re not learning because you are. The problem is when you spend ten-twelve hours listening to podcasts rather than getting on with the tasks at hand.
Cycling over short distances can be a challenge especially when that short distance takes you from the foot of the Jura to the top over 12 kilometres at a 6-10% grade. Cycling up to La Barillette is an endurance test. Perseverance is key.
You can start the climb either from Cheserex or Gingins. The climb starts sharply and takes you up in to the forest. As you climb you follow the winding road by a stone block where old road rules are written. The stone dates from the 19th century and speaks of the regulations which were in effect.
The path takes you up some one way and two way roads. At every kilometre as you climb some plaques tell you the gradient for the next kilometre as well as the gradient. As you progress these are welcome. They let you know how much further you have to go.
The first 9 kilometres are the hardest. For 9 kilometres you will be struggling to keep your forward momentum and there is a chance that on the first two or three attempts you will give up, especially if you use as heavy a bike as I use. Once you have reached the 9 kilometre mark the path flattens out at around 1000 metres and it is just a matter of cycling for a further 3.7km.
When you get to the top you have a beautiful vista of the Lac Leman. You can see from Villeneuve all the way to Geneva. You can see the Alps in their full glory and you can see the Canton de Vaud. You can see Lausanne, Morges, Nyon, Cheserex and many of the villages below. It’s a great opportunity to spot peaks and get to know them. There is a map showing you the name of the peak and it’s shape.
If you train over the coming month and see that you have a good time on Strava then you could join the VTT race and see how you compare with others.
In summer months from Wednesday to Sunday the restaurant de la Barillette is open. It has a great view of the landscape which you can enjoy while eating an entrecôte or fondue.
I just got back from a two and a half-hour walk at dusk. I had no plan to go for such a long walk. It was elongated because I ended up taking a detour to see calves just as they were being fed. They’re quite excited about getting some food. They were very happy to get their daily milk, as you can see from the image below.
Switzerland is currently toying with the idea of forcing people to wear masks outdoors but it’s not clear whether this would be for cities or whether it would be for villages and even rural walks. If the obligation to wear a mask at all times is enacted then I have two reactions.
The first is that I never leave the house without a mask and that I wear it when I am forced to walk within a few meters of people. Since the end of March I have been staying as far away from people as possible, which is how I discovered all my new walks.
The second reaction is that wearing a mask outdoors in a city makes sense. It doesn’t make sense when you’re out for a two to three hour walk along main roads where you rarely cross paths with anyone. To be forced to wear a mask even when we are kilometres from any other human would really suck. I know it’s not a scientific term, but that’s a step too far.
No one had to say “Don’t socialise, don’t meet friends, don’t go to restaurants, don’t go to pubs, bars or nightclubs.” No one had to say “Walk along rural paths where no one else walks to avoid any and all human contact”. These are things I did of my own free will. It’s not easy, but the documentaries I have watched and the books and articles I have read make this logical.
If I have to wear a mask for the entirety of my three hour walks where my exposure to others may last half a minute or less then I will be quite disappointed. The reason for that disappointment is that we would never breath fresh air if this rule was enacted. We would always breath mask air. We will suffer from Vitamin D as a result of not getting any exposure to sunlight and we will fall sick, for a new reason.
From what I understand in the Le Temps article this will not include my cherished quiet walking routes, luckily. I will have to keep hoping for rain as the only valid reason for indoor training. 😉 (I know an ascii wink is not good form, but I want you to know this is meant to be taken as a joke.)
For Context Switzerland, yesterday, became world leader in highest percentage increase in the number of new cases. “C’est en tout cas le pays qui compte la plus forte augmentation de nouveaux cas de Covid-19 ces 7 jours: +106%,” Within this context Switzerland must take rapid and immediate action to get the number of new cases per day back in control.
For those who understand French this article presents the situation.
The three points of the article are:
The situation is similar to how it was on the 16th of March.
only semi-confinement helped to reduce the number of new cases.
If the measures were taken today it would take three to four weeks for things to get back under control.
For months I have been saying that people need to take responsibility and that everyone has to do everything possible to reduce the risk of propagation of this virus, and as we see from the current crop of articles the scientific and medical communities say the same thing.
It’s a shame that ordinary people need to be confined for a pandemic to be controlled and then contained. It’s a shame that people can’t take a one or two month break from socialising during a pandemic to get life to return to normal as soon as possible.
The Guardian Article: Inside the Airline Industry Meltdown is an interesting article that looks at the growing number of planes that are being mothballed until better times come, about the removal from service of 30 aircrafts from a single airline etc.
Switzerland got down to 11 new cases per day in June. Yesterday there were 6600 new cases.
The amplitude of the second wave is much greater than the first as we can see from the graph above.
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