Start judo as young as you can.
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Learning judo is important. Some people choose to learn this martial art as soon as they can stand on two legs.
Twice yesterday I was surprised at how fast the new ipod detects networks. The first time was in one of wagamama’s restaurants. It found ten within two seconds of opening up the application. The second time was in a block of flats. Both times it detected the networks within a matter of seconds.
It’s a shame youtube isn’t working on the Touch Ipod at the moment.
From the 6th to the 13th of August 2016 The International Alpine Film Festival, FIFAD, is taking place in the Alpine town of Les Diablerets. This is a week long festival of Alpine films covering the environment, extreme sports, adventure and more.
Alpland is a photo exhibit outside of images of Alpine life in black and white. The images were taken by Romano Riedo
The image gallery below shows the Flying Frenchies arrive at the film festival. The drummer flew with his drum kit, the guitarist flew with a guitar and amp and the saxophonist arrived with his instrument. They played their instruments while up in the air. Watching this in person is interesting.
Baraka Films and the Flying Frenchies worked together for this fun and entertaining film. This film looks at the Flying Frenchies coming together to combine slack-lining, parapentes and other extreme sports with musicians. The Flying Frenchies arrived at the event on parapentes.The film metronomic shows cliff based stunts. It combines acrobatics on a cliff face with slack-lining and rope based stunts. At one point the guitarist, the drummer and the Saxophonist are swinging in space and playing at the same time.
The evening was dedicated to freeride sports, mainly extreme skiing and a discussion with the Falquet brothers and Jérémie Heitz. One of the images that really marked me was the climb up to a pyramidal peak so that they could ski back down. The reason they climb rather than use a helicopter is to assess how good the snow is and whether it is safe to sky down. Some of these films had some impressive images, including at least one unsuccessful descent.
The films on this day showed the beauty of extreme sports both with skiing slopes that are over 50° as well as with flying musicians. As people get habituated to certain sports so the scope for diversity and creativity expands.
One of the pleasures we would enjoy many years ago was to browse YouTube, and eventually find something worth watching. This was possible for one key reason. There were no ads being loaded that would block us for thirty seconds or more. Today I read that YouTube test threatens to block viewers if they continue using ad blockers.
YouTube video surfing and channel surfing are the same thing. You hop from channel to channel, or from video to video, until you find something to watch. You watch a few seconds at a time before deciding that you prefer some other form of content. The issue with ads is that they slow you down. If you watch 3 or four videos and see 30 seconds of ads before watching five seconds of video then you spend all of your browsing time watching adverts, rather than content.
That’s fantastic in theory, and in practice this is a good alternative to ad blockers. The issue that I have with this solution is that we’re paying to have clickbait pushed on us, rathre than actually browse YouTube. We’re facing the same problem as with ads. We’re still struggling to find worthwhile content.
When I grew tired of seeing ads I left YouTube for days or even weeks at a time. It’s only because I used ad blockers that I came back, and I still felt that I was being conned. The first con is that the content is UGC, User Generated Content, or as I prefer to call it, User Generated Crap. A lot of the content that YouTube pushes on us is crap. You would never watch it on television.
The second problem is that the ads themselves are crap. For all of the data that Google has on me, their ads are completely off the mark. They market products that I have no interest in using. The ads are also of low quality. In some cases the ad is a music video, that is being played before you watch the content you wanted to watch.
YouTube makes the mistake of playing video ads when there is no need to. Other types of ads would be just as effective, and would not detract people from watching the videos that they’re watching. Plently of videos on YouTube are product reviews. Given that this is the case those videos, can, in and of themselves be seen as adverts. If we watch a video about barefoot shoes then that content should be seen as an advert. That’s what it does. Imagine if advertisers paid content creators, when their videos are played, after someone searches for a specific product. The idea that you need to play an ad, for ad revenue, is obsolete at this moment in time.
To elaborate on the idea, if I watch three videos about types of shoe then the brand that is being covered in the video should contribute financially to that video. I’m watching a promotional video, about a product. I don’t need a pre-roll add before watching a video about a specific product, or a specific lines of product.
YouTube said that they want people to either get premium, or see ads, to pay for content creators to create content. I think they’re missing the purpose of an entire segment of YouTube videos. Tutorials, hiking videos, cycling videos and more are already marketing products, without ever needing to show ads. In some cases the ads are paid for by being mentioned directly in the videos themselves. I tend to skip those ads, though.
One of the questions that YouTube and others should ask is “why do people skip ads?” Why do I force quit iOS games to avoid seeing ads. Why do I avoid seeing ads on YouTube. The short answer is “because I have seen manscaped adverts hundreds of times, because I have seen the iOS game adverts once per game play. If the adverts were updated, and if we had more ads to watch, then we wouldn’t skip them. The reality of the situation is that we’re skipping ads that we have already seen. In some cases I will see the same ad when playing iOS games, ten times, in ten puzzles solved or failed.
People in the US have an extremely high tolerance for being bombarded with ads. American football has adds every few minutes. European Football has ads after fourty five minutes of game time. You’re watching the sport, and ads are put at reasonable intervals in Europe. If people use ad blockers, reduce the frequency of ads, and increase the rotation of ads, so that they see five to ten adverts, rather than one advert ten times.
One of the things I hate most about YouTube and other video sharing websites is that they play 30 seconds of video before you watch the content. Sometimes it starts to play without you deciding to watch the content in the first place. More often than not, if I get a pre-roll ad, before I have watched the video I will not watch the video at all. Sometimes you’re about to watch a 45 second, or a 1 minute 30 second video, and you have 30 seconds, to a minute of advert.
The question that YouTube, Google, Daily Motion and others should be asking is not “How can we force people to watch ads or pay for premium access to our content?” but “Why are people so aggressive about blocking ads?”. The reason is simple. Ads are invasive, ads are too frequent, ads are always the same. Facebook should be working to make ads appealing, rather than threatening to block users.
For several weeks now it has rained almost every day and almost every weekend. As a result of this rain acitivities have been cancelled. On Sunday we were meant to go outdoor climbing and when we got to the wall we found a rock climbing snail where, in dry weather we could have enjoyed some good climbs. The climbing site in St Triphon has about 150 climbing routes of differing climbing difficulties.
When the conditions are so wet outdoor climbing is not possible. It rained as we drove to the climbing site, it started to get brighter and then it started to rain hard again. As we drove away from the climbing wall where snails were climbing instead of humans we saw that the weather improved as we got to Lausanne.
Rocspot in Echandens was in the sun yesterday. It was quiet enough to make choosing which route to climb possible. The core of our group climbs every thursday night, as a result of which we are developing the right muscles to make climbing easier. Other group members climbed less frequently so we could prepare the top rope for them to attempt routes. The practice is good as we share skills and experiences with more people.
During this climbing day I was able to challenge myself to 5c, 5c+ and 6a routes. I found that there were moments when I struggled to make progress but overall I felt good. It was interesting to watch the less experienced climbers try routes and manage them. As they climb less frequently they allowed us to see where we would have struggled in the past.
A noticeable difference
Aside from rock climbing and bouldering there is a wall with various hand holds. A few weeks ago when I tried to pull myself up using finger strength I was barely able to hang on for more than a few seconds before letting go. Now I can climb up almost to the top. This is the clearest demonstration that I have made progress. It also shows why certain muscle groups ached so much after every session. The fatigue was worth it for this result.
Now that the weekend is over the sun is shining again and I do look forward to climbing and practicing more skills.
Winter is coming and snow has fallen on the local peaks and then melted again. The temptation to go snowboarding in real life is back. While waiting to go and do sports in the real world Ubisoft give us the opportunity to simulate the experiences of snowboarding, skiing, base jumping and paragldiding.
I know three of these sports. I ski, I snowboard and I recently tasted my first paragliding flight.As I watched the trailer above and Jack Septiceye’s video of the game it reminded me of so many of the extreme sports videos I have watched. It also reminded me of the FIFAD event as well as the Montagne En Scène events. It pays a nice tribute to the culture of snowboarding and extreme sports that many of us have grown up with. It also harkens back to the days when I would edit the events that are mentioned in the trailer to this game.
This would be a good game to have in the chalet while waiting for the snow to fall or the conditions to improve.
I understand why the game filled me with passion. I liked seeing places that we know. It’s because the game developers are in Annecy so they’re playing in the same landscape as us. They’re snowboarders and skiers so they understand the sensations and they’re trying to emulate them in the game. When watching the paragliding sequences I like that we hear the flight computer’s beep as you ascend at different rates. It’s one aspect that you really notice the first time you try paragliding. That’s a nice touch for the game.
From the videos I have watched so far it looks as though they have managed to capture all of these sensations in the game. This looks like a really enjoyable game to play. The game should provide people with a nice amount of escapism. As they get used to the controls and as the community for this game grows so the ties that bind this community will grow. It looks excellent.