Today was a different to recent days because we spent it within the clouds, rather than beneath, or above them. It is hard to be above the clouds when you are near lake level. SRF has two nice time lapses of clouds flowing over a mountain as if it was water, or dry ice. Choose the one you prefer.
It is estimated that a tenth of the Swiss population could be sick with covid-19 at the moment. If a tenth of those people had long covid then Switzerland is faced with 87,000 people with long Covid.
“Environ une personne sur dix a contracté le Covid ces dernières semaines en Suisse, a dit Urs Karrer, vice-président de la task force scientifique de la Confédération devant la presse à Berne. Les nouvelles infections se concentrent actuellement surtout chez les enfants de moins de 10 ans.
One million one hundred thousand cases of Covid have been detected in Switzerland, out of a population of around eight point seven million. In theory that’s an eighth of Switzerland that has fallen sick, if we ignore second and third infections of the virus.
There are two challenges to face. The first of these is to see whether we can get through the current wave without being infected, and that’s unlikely for parents of children and people who are exposed to others. The second challenge, it to see how much longer this pandemic will last. At the moment, with the speed at which new variants arrive. Three, within a matter of weeks, it looks as though new variants will emerge faster than vaccines and as if we will have many more waves.
Some countries stand out by the way in which they are not trying to make things better.
And Finally
I am still studying and learning. I will continue to study for as long as the pandemic lasts, because it is the one thing that is guaranteed not to be taken away from me. It also provides me with a sense of accomplishment every day.
When the Pandemic was just starting I thought that this would be perfect for a daily bike ride and I was tempted to go to the mountains and to do other things. I didn’t though, because emergency services said “Don’t monopolise our resources getting injured because we may be required to help with the COVID-19 situation. Within three or four weeks they changed their statement to “if you need help we’re still here, our emergency services are still working as normal.
Last year I broke my arm on a day of Canicule and I spent at least four hours waiting to be seen. The wait was so long that I started to lose patience. When finally I was seen, and the break was confirmed the doctor was smiling, almost laughing. “Normally when people break their arm they can’t rotate their wrist”. It shows that despite my interior monologue being impatient during the wait my exterior monologue was polite and courteous to the point where a doctor was relaxed and good-humoured.
I didn’t want to repeat this experience during a pandemic. My other concern, and reason for not cycling was that if the chain broke I would have to walk home, get the car, and then return and get the bike. To call for help would be to break self-isolation for myself and someone else and I was unwilling to do this. That’s why I walked everywhere within range of home.
During the bike ride I saw a lot of cyclists but what was really interesting is that there were more bikes than cars on the roads, at least on the roads I rode along. It was also interesting to see how I was cycling past some people so quickly. It seems that walking every day for so many months has a beneficial effect. It’s also because I am not fatigued.
If you view “Flybys” you will see that plenty of people are active.
As people can’t go to the shops, can’t go to the mountains, have walked enough, and more we find that plenty of people are actively cycling. Usually when I look at flyby information I see four or five bikes at a time. Today the map lit up in a way I have never seen before. Twenty people cycling simultaneously in twos or threes.
I overheard someone ask “so do we go down or do we go straight across”. They were new to cycling in the region. As I was doing the cycling equivalent of HYOH (Hike your own Hike), Bike your own bike ride, BYOB, not to be confused with the beer/beverage version, I just continued exploring.
Today’s route was different than usual because I had three variables. The first variable was that I wasn’t allowed to leave the Canton De Vaud. The second variable was that I couldn’t go into France so my usual ride segments were out of the question. The third variable was to ensure that the ride was not too short. I accomplished all three of these goals.
I got five personal records during this ride, which isn’t bad and for one segment I was in the top 5.4 percent. it won’t change my life. I got that time on a segment I love to race cars down. It’s a straight road and the bike lane is downhill so it’s easy to go fast. What was unusual is that I was giving so much power, but without burning out. When I stopped pushing it was to coast, rather than because I flamed out.
Blocksite is a Chrome plugin to block specific websites.
I downloaded a Chrome extension to block Twitter and Facebook. Neither of these sites provides me with what I need during this pandemic so rather than delete my accounts, as I almost did this morning, I blocked them. If websites don’t bring joy block them. Good mental health, during a pandemic, especially when self-isolating alone is essential.
As I write this blog post we’re getting the first rain in over a month. Finally the rivers will be able to get their fill. Imagine if I had been caught in the rain during my bike ride. I love the sound of rain on the veluxes.
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.
They often announce rain and storms and we often get very little of either. The weather here is dry. The little rain that did fall was sandy. Farmers have harvested their crops but so far the rain is not worrying.
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.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
