Ninety Five Days of Blogging In A Row

Ninety Five Days of Blogging In A Row

Byrichard

I have managed to neutralise the inner censors. I have accomplished ninety five days of blogging in a row, once again. During the first 100+ days of the pandemic I did the same. At the time I thought that this would provide a document of how life was for the pandemic. The pandemic has lasted over 540 days and I eventually lost inspiration, and inspiration for new things to write.


This is a longer challenge than NaNoWriMo because it lasts for 95 days so far, and it has no end day. I don’t need to write three thousand words a day. I don’t even need to write three hundred words a day. I write this arbitrary number of words each day because I read that it’s better for SEO. The truth is that I don’t get any visits for most posts.


Consistent Writing


The point of blogging every day is to train oneself to sit in front of a blank text box and write. Some days the words will flow, and other days they will fall over each other and dam up the river of inspiration. This doesn’t matter. Writing doesn’t need to be good. It needs to be consistant.


My goal, and my hope, is to get myself into the habit of sitting down at a notes app, text document or other, and be able to write something interesting, without worrying. I want ideas to flow. I can edit later.


Amazon’s Mediocre Internationalisation Efforts


By changing from Amazon.de to Amazon.fr I have a new selection of books. I grew tired of using amazon.de because it is so hard to search through for English books. By using Amazon.fr I have found that there are numerous books about hiking in France, and Europe. This is great, because I spend a lot of time reading about hiking, for hikes that I would not do. Those that are in Europe are just a train journey away, and that’s good. It means it is realistic to try them. Especially the short ones.


We are going into the cold, dark months. The days of long nights, and short days, of fog and clouds. Now is a good time to retreat indoors and read and find inspiration for next summer. The probability that the pandemic is over by then is low, but we can always pretend to be optimistic. I will blog about the books, either individually, or as a group, when I get through one or more.


And finally


It finally feels like Autumn, at least for today. The rivers are still empty so we still need a lot of rain. At least for one day Switzerland felt like it had seasons.

A Walk While Downloading Files by FTP

A Walk While Downloading Files by FTP

Byrichard

At the moment I study seven days a week without fail. Today I was learning about “Coding Your Own Wordpress Custom Post Types”. I think this will be interesting because you can create a new section to a website, or if not a section then at least a collection of assets. In the course they speak about businesses, events or other things. If this is what I think it is, then I will be happy to learn it.


This website has a Roman, Geography, Environmental Studies and other sections. If I could create custom post types for each then the entire website would be contained within WordPress and modifiable centrally. I did not want to do such a thing for a long time, but I think that the learning experience is worth the time investment.


I am happy it rained. I went for a walk and there was some rain but so light that it didn’t soak me.

Broken Stones, Good Weather and Autumn

Broken Stones, Good Weather and Autumn

Byrichard

Today as I looked at the ground I saw broken stones. The one in the image below is especially beautiful. I don’t know why there were more broken stones than usual. It seems that the conditions were right to bring the stones to the surface and for the farmers’ machinery to break them all to pieces. It’s impressive to see the size of some of the broken stones.


Plenty of broken stones
Plenty of broken stones


The leaves have started to turn, as various plants give up on feeding their leaves. They are turning from green to orange, yellow and red. The temperature is comfortable for us, humans, but nature knows. I also looked out of a window earlier and I saw plenty of birds and insects flying around. I don’t know why there were so many insects. Birds were happy to have so much food.


Leaves on a wall starting to change colour.


In a shopping centre I saw that you could buy Raclette sets that use tea candles to melt cheeese and I found the idea interesting. Today I googled these things and I finally bought one. For 20 CHF there is little risk. The advantage is that once you have one of these you can have an instant and easy meal. Buy the right cheese, a little pepper and you’re ready.


View of the Lake
View of the Lake


And Finally


I still have not used YouTube. I used to spend two to three hours a day watching content on YouTube because I liked what I saw but recently I have felt that the sensationalism and ability to put up with rubbish is to a high a price to pay for using the network.


I did consider using Vimeo because this is a network by people with a passion for the art of video, film and cinema, rather than just a suplemental income. The one drawback is that this content requires focus, attention, and a certain amount of concentration. It feels more like studying than relaxation. I also haven’t found the content I want to watch yet.


What Do The Logs Show

What Do The Logs Show

Byrichard

Joke: I was on the phone with tech support when I walked by these and I was asked “What do the logs show?” I had a double take before I understood he meant the web logs and other server logs. I then continued walking


A pile of logs waiting to be transported by train
A pile of logs waiting to be transported by train


I am getting somewhere with my studies. I feel that I am now starting to understand ideas and contexts and that as a result I can start working towards reaching and getting stuck on the next plateau, and the next one after that. In short, I am making progress.


Today the Steripen adventure opti arrived and I tested it in a container. Testing such a device on clean water is useless. I did learn that it is not dead on arrival.


I heard about ClassicPress while listening to a podcast so I downloaded the files, copied them to the htdocs folder, entered a few bits of information and it was up and running on my local machine. ClassicPress is a fork of WordPress.org. It aims to provide those who do not like Gutenburg with an alternative solution where they keep control of how posts are formated and displayed.


For now you can download wordpress plugins and use them on ClassicPress but I don’t know for how long this interoperability will last. There is an explanation about how to use shims to use incompatible apps.

I Don’t Need to Go For A One And a Half Hour Walk

I Don’t Need to Go For A One And a Half Hour Walk

Byrichard

“I don’t need to go for a one and a half hour walk. I said that to a neighbour before my walk. I could have cut it short, if it started to rain too heavily. Paradoxically for most of the walk it was grey and drizzling. Nothing to worry about. I was almost dry for almost the entire walk.


It’s as I walked the last one and a half kilometres that it started to rain heavily. Within a few minutes my trousers were soaked, and within a few more minutes my shoes and socks were soaked. Luckily the walk ended before it started to whick up through my t-shirt. The rain was so strong that when I took off my trousers my legs were soaked, as if I had just come out of the shower. I had. It was a rain shower.


I am fully equipped to walk in the rain for hours if it is required, but according to the doppler radar I did not expect rain. I was wrong. I got wet. I don’t mind. Humans are waterproof.


Yesterday I mentioned that I was studying WPRig. I finished the course. It looks like a very powerful tool to design wordpress themese but I think there is a learning curve and the course, pushed me beyond what I was comfortable with. The next course I’m studying is WordPress: Custom Post Types and Taxonomies and this looks like it will teach me just what I want to know to convert this website to a fully wordpress experience. When the site is ready I will play with permanent redirections before deleting the old pages forever. One more step into modernising this website.



Playing With Flickr
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Playing With Flickr

Byrichard

It’s interesting, isn’t it? Flick is a website that I have been part of since 1996 and I have been so distracted by Facebook, Instagram and other social networks that I have forgotten about it. Several times I expected the website to wither and disappear but it hasn’t. It is still around and it still has an active community. What’s more, this is so many magnitudes better than Instagram. for a start it has tagging, groups, albums and everything else. Secondly you have galleries and more. You can control who sees what and when. You also have access to the API with a minimum of effort. I mention this last fact because I am tempted to play with it soon. I feel ready.


A yellow flower in Grens


The flickr API is available with an API via an SDK for a number of languages. It is available via PHP, Node.js and other platforms. Ideally I’d create either an app that would show “Today’s pics” or “Weekly pics” or similar. The API has breadth and diversity so you can do a number of interesting things. I need to look at the diversity of options and choose one that I suspect I could get to work.


I have been studying for over a year now, and I have played with a number of platforms via courses but I have not taken the time to build something without having instructions. I need to get myself to a level where I am self sufficient. I managed with an instagram json file, so now the challenge would be to do the same accessing data via an API or similar.


Of course it could go pear shaped.


At this moment in time the idea is just to read, rather than to publish. When I write my daily blog post I could get the website to retrieve one of the most recent images from Flickr and use it as a featured image, rather than leave it blank. If I create or read then I can make mistakes, if I update or delete then I would have to spend time fixing my mistake. For those who are attentive I described CRUD.


It is a shame that the world forgot about Flickr. Flickr was and is still a good community website. If you follow people they follow back, and we don’t see many adverts. We also come away from time spent on the website feeling refreshed.

A River Runs Dry, Wood builds a Natural Dam and Corn Grows Eratically.

A River Runs Dry, Wood builds a Natural Dam and Corn Grows Eratically.

Byrichard

When rain becomes a treat you get used to looking at rivers that are running drier and drier with every passing day. The river pictured below is so low that you see the river bed in many parts. It’s a meter or more below it’s usual level. Imagine being a weather forecaster during a drought. Today it will be dry and sunny, as it has been for a few seasons.



In periods of heavy rain the water reaches to the tree roots currently covered in moss. At the moment they are high and dry. In another part of Switzerland some people decided to empty a pool into a local river. It didn’t explain why or how. The water was chlorinated and it caused fish in the river to die and they will now be fined.


One of the consequences of the lack of rain is that branches and logs that fall into a river bed have a tendency to accumulate for months at a time. When the rains finally come they serve as a means of transporting all that wood down the river until it gets blocked. As in the example below we see that two or more logs that got jammed across the river blocked smaller branches and detritus from getting by. They piled up and now we have the natural wood dam/mess.


River built dam
River built dam


Over my walks I have looked at corn, out of curiousity and for a long time everything looks normal, until one day you come across the condition we see below. This is called Corn Smut apparantly. scroll down that page. There are plenty of interesting names for corn ailments.


Corn smut
corn smut


When you go on your daily walks look around you. See what unusual things you spot, and document or take note of them when you do. Nature is interesting. Keep attentive.

JavaScript Patterns, A Skipped Walk And A New Purchase.

JavaScript Patterns, A Skipped Walk And A New Purchase.

Byrichard

Today I found a course about JavaScript patterns on Linkedin. I have been following course after course about Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Angular, React, EcmaScript, CSS and more, but most of them tell you how to do things. I watched plenty of their explanations and I managed to copy the code and get it to work but when they said “challenge time” I was usually lost.


I listened to the JavaScript Jabber podcast and in several episodes they described design patterns. In all of my learning I have learned how to read and copy code. By learning about programme patterns I will learn to structure code correctly. With these notes I will have a blueprint from which to work.


The Skipped Walk


The drawback to recycling being open at certain times of days, on certain days, is that you don’t get an opportunity to go when you want to go. You have to go when the system wants. For this reason I have not been on my daily walk today. I feel tired and lazy anyway. I skip my daily walk once every few months, so missing one day is not the end of the world.


SteriPEN Adventurer Opti


Years ago I walked up a mountain. We reached over 3000m. For that hike, as it was expeted to be a long hike I took three litres oI found walking with three litres of water so tiring because I am not used to being at that altitude. By the end of the walk I decided to find a way to filter water while hiking.


For weeks and months I studied options and I finally settled on one option, then a second, and then a third, etc. I then enjoyed using the Katadyn BeFree the most. On day hikes anything more is overkill.


The drawback: in Switzerland most water sources are below animals and humans. This means that water sources can contain viruses. For this reason it is a risk to drink the water. The solution is to get rid of those viruses. Water filtration systems do not do this. They remove bacteria, protozoa etc. You could boil the water but that takes time and that adds weight. You can use water filtration tablettes but that takes time to act, and adds taste to the water.


The lightweight solution is a device like the SteriPen Adventure Opti. They are light to carry, can filter about 50 litres of water in between battery changes, and last for 8000 litres, in theory. In practice you might lose, break or otherwise find its life shortened.


I found the steripen for 30CHF and they usually cost 90-110CHF. 100 tablettes cost 23 CHF to filter water.


Playing with WP Rig

Playing with WP Rig

Byrichard

Today I started following the “Building Progressive Themes with WP Rig.” course on Linkedin Learning.


Before you start playing with WP Rig make sure that you have installed Composer. Composer is required to use WP Rig during the build process. Composer itself requires that you have PHP on your machine. After that it should be easier to use. I also ran npm-install-peers because I kept getting error messages.


During the daily walk today I saw that the grass along the side of the road is dry and dead. It crunshes as you walk on it. As you look at other fields they are dry and probably crunchy too. We had some rain a few days ago, but within minutes of the rain stopping the landscape was dry again. We never get rain. I am impatient for a day of rain. I am impatient to look forward to good weather, rather than bad. It seems to be absurd to want rain in Switzerland. In winter skiers and snowboarders want snow.


I managed a 179 day reading streak with the kindle before I broke it. It wasn’t that I didn’t read, but that I didn’t read using the kindle. It’s frustrating to lose such a streak because it will take 179 days to get back to the same point. It makes no sense to reach for such a goal in the first place. These apps that get you to do things for an unlimited days in a row detract from the pleasure of doing certain things habitually. I have read a book every day for many months, probably years, but I use Audible, Kobo, physical books and the Kindle. I need to find an app to track reading streaks without it being locked in to one book store.

Good Cycling Weather

Good Cycling Weather

Byrichard

View of the Alps
View of the Alps


Despite people doing what they can to keep the pandemic going, by not vaccinating, by not wearing masks, by not minimising social interactions, by avoiding busy shops we are in a 3000 new people infected per day routine in Switzerland. For some reason, fatalists and others have taken the decision that the pandemic can’t be ended, and that we might as well live with it.


For my entire life, I thought that people wanted to cut a pandemic short. Rieux was rational in my eyes. During this pandemic, we see that Rieux is a rare person. Most people find a hole in the wall, and they just leave, without a sense of responsibility or morality. The pandemic is a crisis of morality and responsibility. Everyone speaks about rights, but they forget that rights entail responsibility.


Cycling


I didn’t know that digestion and cycling could have such an effect on each other. I was cycling straight after eating, and I felt weak in terms of power, and I was struggling to go faster. By the end of the ride, I seemed to have more power than at the start. It’s interesting to see such a change. I didn’t look at the difference in heart rate.


Studying


I finally finished a JavaScript course, after taking a break to read around the subject. I feel that I am in a better situation now. I do get some of the concepts. Now it is a matter of consolidating that knowledge by practising.