A blog of interest and walking

Byrichard

When I started reading Made in England by Gentlemen the blog was about technology but over the past few months the subject of the blog has changed. It’s now a blog about walking, and it’s not just any walk. They had decided to spend several months walking the Continental Divide trail and blogging the entire trip.

What I’ve enjoyed are the images and some of the comments. It’s a picture adventure of beautiful lanscapes. It’s just two friends who walk, occasionaly teamed up by a GF or a brother and father before continuing on the journey.

It’s something I’d like to do. Every day I walk for an hour or two, covering about 12 kilometers. It’s nothing in contrast but it’s an important part of my daily routine. It’s been part of my daily routine for years now, since the IB. I love the solitude of the walk. It’s a moment where you’re in your thoughts and the only distraction is the music or podcast you’re listening to. It’s a moment when day dreams and dreams form and where other ideas come to an end.

It’s a point of refreshing the mind.

It’s also about pleasure and endurance. When you start walking every day walking jsut two or three kilometers could seem tiring, then 5-6. Eventually as you get more and more used to the walk you’re taking so the loop gets bigger and the more you need that walk. It’s one of those enjoyable things.

In London I missed not having kilometers of paths to walk down. In London I would walk through central London from one part to another and I’d get to know the whole city. I’d get to see places and how they were linked. I often joked with friends that when you’re in London you should get to a tube station and walk away from it for as long as you’re not tired. Once you’re tired find the next tube station, get back to somewhere you know and travel in another direction.

After living for years in a place you get to know every street and every corner. Every place has a memory and you might even burst out laughing… well not quite. It would look strange. It’s familiarity. It’s that thing that the main character in L’auberge Espagnole talks about when he’s fresh into the city. “at first all the streets are unknown and resemble each other but at the end ever one of them has memories”. that’s when you’ve lived in a place long enough.

Do many of you walk far? Do you walk fast? Is the walk part of something you do everyday?

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Bataille D’eau, la revanche

Byrichard

Today I went to Lausanne for a flashmob waterfight and I enjoyed it. I also got a little wet as you can tell from the second or third video. It was great fun.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I love it, whilst all the photographers were standing on the sidelines I was right in the middle of the crowd watching as everyone got splashed. I got soaked quite a few times but it’s really fun. Everyone should be in a flashmob water fight at least three or four times in their life, if not more.

It’s the third of a series of waterfights. The first two events took place earlier in summer by the lakeside both in Lausanne and Geneva.

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Why having a web server on the n95 is a lot of fun

Byrichard

Yestereday night when I should have been sleeping I downloaded a web server for the Nokia N95 8GB and so far it’s been a lot of fun (albeit a little slow). It has blogging, messaging, photo galleries and more and here’s a little run down of what the interesting features are.

if you’re logged in then you see a number of features:

Blogging:
This feature allows you to write blog posts and post them. Commenting is possible.

Camera:
There are two options, the first one allows you to take pictures remotely. I can take pictures from my laptop when I want to.

The second is photo requesting. this feature allows for those visiting your website to ask for a picture of something, for example “I want a picture of the restaurant”. Take the phone, take a picture of the restaurant and send it to the person that may be coming soon.

The Gallery:
The gallery has three options. The first of these options is that you select which pictures you want to share. The second option is to share all phone memory pictures whilst the third is to share all memory card pictures.

Guestbook
I haven’t played with this feature yet but it’s pretty self explanatory.

Contact me.
There are two ways by which for someone to contact you from the mobile site. the first is by short IM and the second is by SMS. Both of these work quite well even with slow connection speeds.

Presence
The presence Availability information consists of “Active profile – Silent”, in other words that the phone is silent. That would mean there’s little chance I’ll hear the phone if you call. “Calendar availability – Available lets you know that I’m available. “Call state – Call inactive” means that you can call me since I am not currently using the phone.

Webchat
allows those on the site to chat with the web server user.

Calendar
The calendar is a quick way to see what events are planned and for when

Messaging:
It’s a nice way of seeing the messages people have sent you and when, in other words you can see all the sms you’ve received on your phone remotely. It’s not something you’d share with the world. Unread messages appear in bold.

Phone Log.
Allows you to see all phone traffic on your phone with the usual three distinctions

Contacts, allows you to see all your contacts.

Conclusion

With more ubiquitous wifi and more forgiving data plans we can expect more and more people to carry the webserver with them. If I take pictures of an event you can connect to my phone and look at the pictures I’ve taken. It’s also an easy way of sharing those embarrasing photos with friends. There’s no video support yet but that’s sure to come and there are other options ready already.

Editing from the phone is fast so blogging from the phone makes more sense than via a laptop, in relation that part of your site. There is also an RSS feed which means that those following you can automatically download any content you generate for viewing when your phone is out of range of free wifi or you select not to use the data plan.

The downside is that it uses battery and the connection drops fairly frequently. Data plans that are only a few megabytes large would soon end up costing you more than it’s worth. The connection speeds are slow so doing anything is laborious.

For more information

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Seesmic from the mountains (via QIK)

Byrichard

Whilst the connection is unstable and slow I decided to take the phone and Qik some landscapes from La Dole in Switzerland. Here are a few streams. As more people enjoy streaming live video from interesting locations so this will become a more common site.




What I hope to do next is go to some of the higher peaks and stream from there too. Overtime we could have a nice collection of footage.

Jaiku is back up and running and I have unlimited invites

Byrichard

Jaiku is up and running once more, from the google servers and it’s faster. It’s also lost no features. In fact it’s gained one thing which will make some you happy. All those who already have unlimited invites so if you’re interested in trying Jaiku from it’s servers, send me a message by e-mail or a DM with your e-mail address and I’ll send you the invite.

In fact just leave a comment and I’ll see your e-mail address that way. Don’t leave it in the comment box itself though.

It only took six days, that’s like a leap year in normal people days.

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10 Iphone and Ipod touch apps of interest

Byrichard

There are a lot of applications that are available both for the Ipod touch and Iphone and here is a quick run down of applications that you may enjoy using.

MiGhtyDocs

MiGhtyDocs is an application that makes looking at your google documents easy. It allows you to view offline any document that you have consulted on either the touch or the Iphone. It’s limited in that you can’t do any editing from the device itself.

Twittervision

For those that enjoy using twitter and the international aspect this application allows you to see tweets from around the world as they’re sent out. It’s limited in that you can’t yet to select just your friend’s tweets.

Tumble

Tumble is the companion app to your use of tumblr. If you’re taking pictures, finding links you want to share or more it allows you access to the functionality of Tumblr whilst mobile.

LinkedIn

The Linkedin app has four main parts. The first of these is to show your contacts latest’ actions on the social networking website. The second option labelled connections shows you everyone that is in your contact book. Click on any contact and you get a few extra details. The third option is search if you’re looking for something specific. The final icon, the megaphone shows your contact’s status, whether they’re looking to hire people or any message they may feel like sending.

Newton’s cradle

Newton’s cradle is a little bit of fun. As a child we’ve all played with the cradle. It’s the one that has the four balls hanging and the one on one end taps into the three others and only the third bounces away. It detects the attitude of the device and can be a nice method of procrastination

Audi A4

The audi a4 game is a blatant bit of advertising. It’s a driving game and the controls are very simple. Right pedal for acceleration, left pedal to break. You control the car by tilting the phone either to the right or left.
It’s not that hard to play and it won’t be such a challenge to get the hang of the controls.

Labyrinth LE

Labyrinth LE is that platform you played with as a child. It’s a plank of wood with holes and walls. As you tilt the plank of wood (iphone or ipod touch) so the ball rolls with gravity. The tilt sensors work well on this game and it’s another way of making those moments of inactivity less boring.

Pyramid Lite
Pyramid lite is a card game where the aim is to add two cards together to get to a total of 13.

Gottago

Gottago makes it easy for you to plan your trips both within Switzerland and to outside. Select the city you’re leaving from and the city you want to get to. Do a quick search and it will provide you with a number of routes you can take.

SBBTimetable

It’s the same as gottago but by the CFF/SBB.

Speedtest

This is an application that allows you to test the connection speed of whatever you’re using to surf the web from on the ipod touch or iphone.