Slalom Swimming isn’t talked about enough. Slalom swimming is the type of swimming you do when you’re one of the stronger swimmers but not the strongest. You’re going fast enough to overtake certain swimmers but too slow to keep up with others. As you overtake some swimmers you’re forced to swim to the side to overtake them. Linear swimmer As well as having the slow swimmers to content with as you overtake them you also have the linear swimmers. These…
Facebook and Instagram both have “Stories”. Stories are temporary vertical pictures and video that are only available for a limited amount of time before they are backed up and saved for retrieval once you request your data. In theory, they are a fantastic way of sharing life as it happens without worrying about something embarrassing being available for an extended period of time. In practise, they are a way for Facebook and Instagram to force users to be active every…
This morning I uninstalled Facebook and Twitter because most of the tweets I saw were people complaining about things or posts that would fit perfectly as blog posts on a website. We have moved towards the Social Media reflex, rather than towards an open sharing habit. Before social media, we would have conversations on web forums and within comments on websites. As social media centralised all of those conversations so the engagement between people declined. With that decline of conversations…
For 134 days I have been studying German as well as other languages every single day. In so doing my reading comprehension has gone up and I no longer become a “deer in the headlights” when someone asks me a question in Spanish. I was even able to understand the questions people asked, and able to answer. As I have been focusing on German and Spanish I find it increasingly easy to understand words so I can go through exercises…
If you’re looking for a reason to walk from one village to another the practise of using old phone boxes as free libraries are common in Switzerland. This means that if you’re shopping around for books in Switzerland you can either go to the shops and buy them with the car or you can go for a walk and see if any of the nearby villages have the books you’re looking for. In Gingins, Grens, Eysins, Nyon and other towns,…
A few weeks ago I broke my arm while cycling. I was indicating that I was turning right while breaking with my left hand and the brake blocked and the next thing I knew the bike was on top of me. I extricated myself from beneath the bike and dragged it to the side of the road and reached into my bag to get a bottle of coke to help with the shock. I drank it and tried to recover…