I have a Mac Book Pro that is dormant at the moment. I retired it because it became slow and unreliable. It’s a 2016 Mac Book Pro. This was never a great machine. I bought it cheaply because my good machine was stolen. I replaced the battery a few years ago and I was going to do the same, until I saw that it was retired by Apple. Without updates I didn’t see much point in paying 200 CHF for a battery for a machine that will run Linux when I can get a machine for that price.

It often rains for the entire rain of Caribana and this makes me happy. It makes me happy because when I complained to them about their noise pollution two or three years ago they gave me a boiler plate answer instead of doing something about it. I am currently staying away from my home until Sunday morning because I know that to stay home would drive me nuts. From what I see the Caribana is an event with just 6000 patrons or so, and yet they play the music so loud that it is impossible for me to do anything without hearing it from 18:00 - 03:00 from Wednesday night to Sunday morning.

I see people. I see them say that they have given up on wearing fitness trackers and smartwatches because they hate the tyranny of the device. I have felt an intense dislike for Apple behaves in particular. At the same time I have been playing wit Sportstracker for eighteen years or so. My fitness tracking habit is old enough to drink and old enough to drive. This isn’t a post about drinking, or driving.

My definition of Mobilité Douce and the Swiss definition are quite different. For me Mobilité Douce is walking, hiking, cycling and other sports that require a certain dedication and desire to cover long distances. In contrast Switzerland seems to see Mobilité Douce as going from home to the shops, while leaving the car at home. The journeys seem to be short, and at a slower pace. When I walk and cycle into Nyon, almost every day, I am struck by the sight of people waiting to catch a bus to travel 400 meters or less.

Before Whatsapp was bought by Facebook it was a great platform for people to chat with family and friends. When Facebook bought Whatsapp, many people, including myself, migrated towards Signal to avoid remaining in the Facebook sphere of influence. Social groups, and their luddites remained on Whatsapp, so we had to revert to using Facebook owned Whatsapp. GoSocial takes this a step further. GoSocial is a community that has a facebook page that no one can chat on, and GoSocial town groups that no one can write within.

Yesterday’s moderate recovery ride was hard. It was hard because we were riding at up to thirty kilometres per hour for sustained periods of time. We were riding fast from Geneva, to Nyon, and then again from Nyon to Geneva. With a small group you can afford to push like this. Witha large group there is no way. I knew, when I saw that it was a moderate ride, that it would be slightly more challenging than an easy ride.

This weekend I cycled 160 kilometres with the Bike Club Switzerland Group via Meetup.com. In the process I find that I appreciate the community more and more. I appreciate that the groups are small, but also that people are like-minded. By like-minded I mean that people are sporty. Today we went for a Moderate recovery ride and it took some effort to keep up. I was at the limit of my comfort zone, but not out of it.

I am in the process of forming a new habit and that habit is to cycle on Saturday mornings. In cycling on Saturday mornings I keep Saturday afternoon free for other things. I can take care of washing clothes and more. It also gives me time to rest and recover before Sunday. By accident I signed up for a hike and now I am torn between going for the hike, which requires trains, and potentially meeting two or three people, or sticking to my usual plan of going for a bike ride.

Yesterday I drove to an event in Geneva and I parked at the P&R étoile. I went by car for a simple reason. I wanted the trip home to be fast and efficient. It worked. What wasn’t fast and efficient was the drive into Geneva. I left with at least one and a half hours of time to get to my destination but got to the event with just three minutes to spare.

Yesterday evening I was at a talk about AI. The person had written an AI agent that scrapes news sources for information, and reads reports, and then provides a summary of this information as a report. We often think of AI as a chat where we ask a question, and then get an answer. This does work well, when you do something once, or twice. If you do something a dozen times per day then agents become interesting.