A Different Challenge
I like the long project but I decided to try a shorter one first.
Long-Horned cows are a rare treat. We usually see short-horned or even de-horned cows in Switzerland. To see longhorn cow is a treat. I took a tiny detour from my walk to get some pictures. I have walked by the field a few times before seeing them close enough to the fence to consider taking pictures again.
One of them started to approach the fence so I moved back. I later noticed that some calves are in this field too.
We are now two days away from the 11th of May when shops will re-open and life gets one step closer to being “normal” again. We are going to be in a dangerous phase of the pandemic for two reasons. The first reason is that people aren’t going to be as careful about who they come in contact with so the virus will have a new opportunity to spread within small communities.
The second reason is that I see people driving two or more hours to do activities in the mountains rather than staying locally. By combining the two the virus may grab the opportunity to start spreading again.
I am not critical of the government. I am critical of the people who are taking liberties that don’t yet make sense. In theory I could be climbing Monday afternoon but I won’t, because I think it would be wise to wait to to three weeks before enjoying such luxuries.
The best sport that we can do for the environment, and for each other’s safety is cycling, whether on mountain bikes like these two people. or on road bikes like others. By cycling we are staying within a three hour radius of home, where our range is limited by our physical health.
It makes sense to continue enjoying what the local area has to offer. By now we should have seen that there are plenty of things to do locally. This is especially true for people who have experienced the pandemic in Switzerland.
Did you find some interesting walks by staying local?
People wear masks as they walk and do waiters. This is nice. It’s nice to see people wearing masks during a pandemic. It’s nice not to feel like an outlier. It’s nice not to feel eccentric for mask wearing.
I went for my first swim in at least two years. I didn’t go in the sea but in a pool. I haven’t forgotten how to swim despite not swimming for years.
I feel tired from yesterday’s drive but by tomorrow or the next day I should have recovered and then I can try something different.
It is possible to walk from Nyon to Gland and back in a single day, and to play Ingress in Gland, before meeting a meetup group to walk back to Nyon from Gland, via the Toblerone. The distance I walked was twenty eight kilometres but this is partially due to spending an hour in Gland, after arriving much sooner than planned.
The route I walked was around Emil Frey towards Porte De Nyon shopping centre, onto the roundabout where you can go East towards Prangins. I walked along the road that is below Duiller towards Prangins, down under the tunnel, up by the train station of Prangins, and then along the road that takes you by the Aérodrome de Prangins where the Junkers 52 aircraft, or an aircraft that looks similar was being started up. It took off sooner than I thought. If I had known I would have stuck around to watch.
After this I walked by some Toblerone and a bunker where junk was being stored, for some reason. I expected that I would walk by this point with the group but we didn’t.
When I arrived in Gland I had over an hour to kill so I walked around, playing Ingress before deciding that I should stop and conserve energy before the next bit of the walk. Nyon to Gland was just eight kilometres so it’s an easy back and forth, if you follow the rational route.
The Toblerone route is the long way round. One interesting aspect of the Toblerone walk, from Gland, is that you walk by the HS2 data centre in Gland. It’s a large building with very few windows. It has 14,000 m2 of server racks and more with 40mw of power usage. It is the biggest data centre in Switzerland.
For at least two or three years I have been using Timelogger and I really liked the app. That’s why I kept using it for so long. There is one fatal flaw to Timelogger. It wants you to pay 2 CHF per month, or 9 CHF per year, or 25 CHF for a lifetime of use. It makes sense to pay for more features. It doesn’t make sense that you need to pay to backup to your own icloud account or export the data.
I have been using the app since 2020. I tracked 60 hours in 2020, 601 hours in 2021, 780 hrs in 2022 and 681 hours so far this year. The issue is that this data is now trapped on the phone I am currently using. I can release it for 24 CHF if I pay per month, 9 CHF if I pay for year, or 25 CHF if I pay for a lifetime.
In the early days of the Apple store you could download an app and use it for free but over time every app you download has asked for 25 CHF to 50 CHF per year. When you use 4 apps that’s 100CHF to 200 CHF per year. If you use 8 apps it’s 200-400 CHF per year. The apps that you use end up costing more than an iPhone SE, every year. It becomes absurd. I have used the Timelogger plus app for over 2,122 hours so I should pay but I’m not going to pay just to back up my data to my own cloud.
That’s especially true when you have to pay to backup your own data to your own iCloud account or to your iphone’s storage. That’s where an app like Timetagger becomes interesting, especially for people ready to setup a Pi on their home network to use as a time tracker.
One technique I use when dealing with iOS subscriptions is to take the minimum option, go to settings, subscriptions and then cancel the subscription within minutes of paying for a service. This has two advantages. The first is that you don’t get conned into paying for more than you want to use. If you do decide to extend you are asked, and have to take action to spend more money.
The second reason is that in my experience I would pay for a year, use the app for a week or less, and not be able to be reimbursed. It’s cheaper to pay for a year after you decide that you have a use for the app.
As a case in point, the Timelogger Plus allows you to “backup” your data but as a proprietary file, rather than a useful CSV or other file. The result is that you’re paying for a backup that condemns you to keep using the app. I find it dishonest to provide apps that give no way of sliding from one to the other.
You have the option to pay 3 Euros per month, for someone else to take care of the hosting, and you just use it, or you can follow the Pi My Life Up instructions to setup your own instance. The one thing to note with this install is that you need to run it with a docker command each time you reboot the Pi. You could set the Pi to do this automatically but I haven’t read the fabulous manual to see how to set that up yet.
With an app like Timetagger you give a name to what you’re doing but you also tag it with what you’re specifically focusing on. For what I am doing now I tagged it with blogging, writing and one or two more tags. I can then look at what I have spent time on for the last day, week month, quarter or year. You can select which tag you want to export as a spreadsheet, CSV or PDF document.
One of the key features that seems of interest with Time Tagger is that you use tags. With tags you can start tracking time spent for a specific client within seconds, without the need to create a folder with the name of the type of activity, and a specific sub activity within. With this you press play when you start, add the right tags, and when you stop the activity you press stop and everything is logged in simplicity.
The cheapest option would be to setup a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, and if it works you’d have paid 30 CHF and be happy. The options you have for the hosted solutions are 4 Euros per month, 36 Euros per year, or 144 Euros for life. They’re more expensive than the Timelogger app but exporting data is easy. You’re not locked in. You can also setup your own server and potentially add billing and other functionality.
If you only want to log your activities when you’re at the office or home then you can simply use the local network but if you want to access time tracking remotely you can add your instance to tailscale and use your VPN to connect when you’re away from the network with the instance.
Although I use the example of the raspberry Pi Zero 2 W you could just as easily set it up on your windows, mac os or other machine using Docker. Your work machine can serve as the host.If you want to work on adding features you can visit the github page and scroll to the bottom.
I have only tracked two hours so far but I like what I see.
I initially really liked Timelogger and Timelogger Plus but as the project advanced, so it became more and more of a trap. I would have left sooner, if I had found an alternative before now.
During the Via Ferrata I did on Sunday I was asked why I wear two watches and I answered with a joke before giving the serious answer that I wear two watches at once because I want the data from both watches. I was asked why I need the data from both watches and that’s where there is a change that is happening at the moment.
By wearing the F-91 for a few days and wearing the Garmin watch less and less I find that my desire for heart rate, steps, recovery and other things to be recoreded is declining over time. I wore the Garmin for the Via Ferrata because I wanted the data. In the end I just looked at the temperature data and not much else.
Over a period of weeks I think I have weaned myself off of the desire to quantify everything I do, to several different services. I’m wearing a casio on my left wrist, as the primary watch, and the Apple watch as a secondary watch on the right wrist. For weeks, or even months, I have been keeping data from walks but I don’t feel the need to check that data at the end of walks, runs or other sports. I’m happy just to do things.
Both Garmin, and Apple, made such a huge effort to get us to wear them twenty four hours a day, and work towards challenges, that they have turned me off of wearing them. They “punish” us for not walking, they “punish” us for not keeping a never-ending streak. According to the Apple watch I walked three hours out of five so far. It feels like we’re filling an addiction rather than getting interesting data.
Funnilly I was not the only one wearing two fitness trackers. Someone else had a fitbit and a Garmin watch but because one was a band and the other was a watch it was less obvious. I suspect that it may become more common for geeks to wear two watches in the near future.
If we want to we can use hand held gps devices and we can use our phones as GPS trackers. In my experience relying on phones as GPS trackers is likely to result in incomplete data. If you put a phone into battery saver mode while tracking you may lose the GPS track, including with Sports tracker, among other apps.
During the pandemic I could wear two watches without it being a problem. Now that I am slowly going back into normal society I have to choose whether to wear two watches or not, whether to be normal, or not.
Before the pandemic, it would have been the climbing, hiking and diving friends. I would meet them every week, year round. it was a strong group of peopla and I liked to see them.
Adventure Groups
It is with this group of people that I went for weekend hikes, experimented with rock climbing, via ferrata and took up regular scuba diving. Not a single weekend would pass without the weekend being a holiday. A friend said that the Sunday dive was a break from the routine. His diving became a routine. A decade on he is still diving every week.
The Pandemic Decline
During the pandemic the number of people I spent time dwindled. No more weekend trips, no more going to conferences. With the pandemic solitude has become the norm. I spend time with online communities but with the commercialisation of FB and IG they’re practically dead. Twitter was good, until Musk bought it, and now it is no longer a social network.
Enjoying Solitude
Although this is alien to most, I like solitude. I like solitude because it doesn’t remind me of what my life isn’t. It reminds me of what I would like to have, if things were different. I am in a situation where solitude is more pleasant than being with crowds, especially married people with children.
Although it is an alien concept to many I like solitude. I like to do things, have adventures and more. I am happy with the life I have. I am happy until people fall into relationships and people don’t head home to solitude.
The Cost of Introversion
Introversion has a cost. The cost is that we’re not necessarily the most open hearted, the most interested in competing to talk. We are not compelled not to be invisible. We are invisible because we do not compete for attention. As an introvert, in the wrong group. whether you go out every week, or not, makes no difference. In a group the introvert might as well not be.
The Small Group
At some point neighbours, all married, with children, want to meet. I don’t want to. My happiness is based on making progress with my projects, and being happy with my life. When I am around people that remind me of what my life isn’t, through passive realities, I feel discontent, rather than happiness., I don’t want to be reminded of what I am struggling to achieve.
A Social Introvert
In the right conditions I am an ambivert. I do enjoy conversations. It’s in the wrong conditions that I am invisible. For the first year and a half of the pandemic I was desperate for life to return to normal. When Berset et al decided that vaccines alone were enough I was condemned to never-ending solitude.
People think the pandemic is over, but not the solitary ones, not the introverts, not the people that socialise via sport. One of the sites I used to use to socialise is almost dead now, due to the pandemic. I could and should use meetup or similar sites. I should return within society, but the pandemic isn’t over.
And Finally
If I ignore covid, pretend that COVID is over, to be social, but then I fall sick with Long COVID then I will be all the more lonely. I will have gained nothing by compromising on my morals and ethics. We’re in strange times, for introverts.