A Different Challenge
I like the long project but I decided to try a shorter one first.
Today a tractor was ploughing a dry field. A cloud of dust was not that visible but you can see that rain would now be welcome. I walked by the usual river and looked down and the rocks in the riverbed are uncovered. There is no water running over them anymore. I notied that in another field pumpkins seem to be ready.
MétéoSuisse note encore qu’après les deux mois d’été très humides de juin et juillet, des précipitations inférieures à la moyenne ont été enregistrées dans la plupart des régions de Suisse en août
Météo – Un mois d’août plus frais mais avec moins de pluie – 20 minutes
Years ago I used to use weather apps to see when it would rain and I would even do things extra early to avoid being caught by the rain. Now I use weather apps for the opposite. Now I even consider driving to somewhere where I could be caught by the rain. I am bored of never seeing rain. I like rain. I like the sound. I like the smell, I like that it cleans everything. I also like that being indoors when it’s raining feels cosy.
Rain would also break the monotony of being able to go for a walk every single day without questioning whether the weather the weather is good enough. The weather is always good enough. The weather is so good that rivers are running dry. The climate has changed.
For several weeks I did not touch YouTube and as I have time to spend time there again I found that I am repulsed and don’t want to use the service anymore. Between the sensationalist content that is pushed on us, the non stop adverts and a general feeling of malaise the site is one I think I should now avoid. Its golden age is over, and now it’s time for it to become Yahoo or flickr.
Garmin have had challenges for years. Most of them have been about distance, or vertical climbing. Now they have new Expedition challenges. Each expedition is named after an expedition or adventure by the same name.
The Camino De Santiago challenge is a challenge to walk 784 kilometres. The Denali challenge is to climb 6190m. There are two Mont Blanc Challenges. The Mont Blanc challenge is to climb 4808 metres whilst the Mont Blanc Circular (Tour Du Mont Blanc is to walk 160 kilometres.
Due to my character I have chosen to take on the Appalachian Trail challenge. It’s 3500 kilometres of walking, approximately 4.9 million steps. So far I have completed just 17.5 kilometres of that challenge. I have walked four million four hundred and twenty three thousand steps in the last year with an average of twelve thousand six hundred per day.
In theory the challenge will take me more than a year to complete, if it wants me to walk and run the distance. If I can cycle part of it then I will complete this goal within the year.
At the time of writing this blog post it is possible to take on one climbing challenge at the same time as taking on one stepping challenge. Both progress bars are shown together. With climbing the progress is shown in metres, and for distance it is shown in kilometres.
If you want to try these challenges without paying for a Garmin device Pacer has offered such challenges for years now. You pay 29 CHF per year, and you can try the Camino De Santiago and other challenges. These are based on walking distance rather than height gain.
With Garmin you get a progress bar but with pacer you get your progress shown on a map, alongside everyone else trying the same challenge at the same time. You see how you overtake or keep up with them.
I would complete most of the walking challenges within a month, except for the AT and the Camino. The climbing challenges would take me a few weeks at the moment, but if I hike in the mountains in summer then I can reach those goals within three or four hikes, depending on goals.
These challenges count floors climbed and steps taken, rather than distance. This means that you need to walk or run for your efforts to count. Cycling will not count. In a few weeks or months we could find that they add cycling and other challenges, as people work their way through what is already around.
Another frustration is that you can’t save the progress in one challenge, to complete another challenge, before resuming the last. The Camino and AT will take two months to over a year to complete. This means that other challenges will not be possible for that extended amount of time.
Due to these challenges being step based, or floor climbing based, you can preserve your privacy. There is no need to track with a GPS because steps are enough. Whether you have a 96 CHF Forerunner 45S (because it’s white and less popular) or a 1200 CHF Fenix or other you’re equal.
Yesterday I went out for my daily walk but within minutes I noticed that my legs felt cold and that I really did need the scarf that I wore. It’s exceptional for me to wear a scarf. My fleece and my inner coat both have neck protection built in so I usually feel fine. Yesterday was unusually cold so I was happy to add the scarf to really keep my neck warmer. I removed it for a few minutes because it felt itchy but I soon put it back on.
In the meantime PhotoPrism has been chugging away, indexing tens of thousands of files and adding location information as well as other metadata. It has indexed 60,000 files of which 20,000 are videos. Most of the video files are junk though, stuff I saved that has no personal value. I’m marking the video files as private and I will probably delete them as they take teraybtes of space without having much value.
I also experimented with migrating my blog writing from this mac to a Linux machine. I managed to gh clone the blog files from github to my local linux machine but struggled a little with uploading the test file from the linux machine to the web server. While writing this blog post I was reminded of the solution that should work.
My mac is old and I suspect that at some point the battery will fail and I will lose access to it. I already had to swap the battery once and soon it will die again, and that’s when I will stop using it.
I considered swapping the battery a second time but I saw that Apple is about to stop support for it. If I can use a Linux machine instead, then I save money.
Walking in challenging weather is good. It requires us to equip ourselves better, to remain comfortable, whether it’s cold, rainy, windy, or a heatwave. By migrating from Google Photos to PhotoPrism I can keep photos and videos locally rather than in the cloud, and access them with ease, as well as slide from the cheapest service to the cheapest service without investing days or weeks in the effort.
Sliding from Mac to Linux is about learning, and cutting costs, but mainly about experimentation and learing about a different OS. It’s good to be comfortable on Windows, Linux and Mac. At least now if, and when, the mac fails I will be ready to slide from one device to the other.
While some of us have gone fifty-two days without being within two meters of another person due to the pandemic others walk side by side down country lanes, forcing those walking alone to make the decision of whether to risk infecting the vulnerable couple or stepping off the road and waiting under an electricity pylon while the selfish people clear the way.
In the image above we can clearly see two couples walking side by side. If these couples could walk single file then single people would be able to move around more freely. That’s why I went for walks in the rain, why I walked through muddy fields and paths that became streams. It’s the only way to avoid these people. Solitary confinement may be the reason this behaviour bothers me so much. It’s hard to see people that are not alone, when we are.
If I was walking in open fields at the moment I would have been charged at least two or three times by cows protecting their young. The reason for this is that they’re with calves that are just a week or three old. You can see them stand defensively and that they’re ready to charge you if you get too close.
Now would be a very bad time to walk into an enclosure. Now is a good time to be careful when hiking.
@richardazia
Yesterday it snowed for several hours and that snow was covering the path to my house. When I saw the ground turn from asphalt black to grey, to white I decided to go and start clearing the snow. It’s easy to clear snow when you have three or four centimetres, rather than more. At first it was light and easy to move so I cleared the path once, and then a second time, and then a third, and by the third I decided to stop. It had become a sisyphean task. It was falling as fast as I was clearing it.
Eventually I got around to spreading salt but because it had got wet it was clumpy and very hard to spread as efficiently as when it’s dry so in the end I didn’t spend too much time on it. I could have got away with not using any salt because within a few hours the snow turned to rain. I could have ignored the falling snow and the problem would have solved itself.
It was never about clearing the snow. It was about having a different workout than usual. It was about seeing an opportunity to have an upper body workout for free. It’s easy to walk, run or cycle. Sometimes it’s just as good to shovel snow, even if it was going to be melted by nightfall.
Eventually I was going to go for a walk, but because the snow was still falling I shovelled more snow. By this point it was wet and heavy so I eventually felt that I had reached the limit of my endurance and stopped. I was frustrated by the clumpy salt that was hard to spread because I was worried that the snow would freeze overnight and the ramp would become a rink.
Recently I have been listening to various Linux podcasts and I kept hearing about Plex, a video streaming service, and self-hosting solution. Plex is both a self-hosted media server as well as a film and television streaming service. Yesterday I watched Breaker Breaker as well as Ice Pilots NWT. When I watched Ice Pilots NWT on the laptop I had no ads but when I watched Breaker Breaker on an iOS device and Apple TV I did. I’m not sure whether it’s because of content type of viewing platform.
Plex looks like a great alternative to YouTube. It allows you to watch film classics like Nanook of the North, films from the 30s as well as plenty of films from the seventies, as well as more recent content. It’s divided in two. On one side you have video on demand, where you choose what and when to watch. You also have the Live TV option. Here you can watch Guardian TV, Euronews and other channels. You also have the Washington Post, Reuters and more.
The TV cateogires you can choose from are featured, news, hit tv, crime, sports, Game shows, Movies, action and more.
Plex feels like Satellite Broadcasting used to feel. You have a choice of many genres and hundreds of channels for niche interests. Rather than sorting through clickbait headlines like you do with YouTube you get real content, produced by Television and Film Professionals.
When it snows you have a great opportunity to get an upper body workout. At this altitude it’s quite rare, so that’s why its fun. Plex is an interesting alternative to Netflix and YouTube because you have a wide variety of programs to watch when it’s convenient for you.