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The Daily Walk When People are Back
The daily walk, when people are back, is less pleasant because the roads and paths that were quiet when everyone was on holiday catching the virus were quiet. Now that everyone is back it is a challenge to avoid people again and it could be worth finding quieter routes.
I still track my walks with an app or two, but as I walk the same route so frequently something like the Garmin VivoSmart 4 is fine. It counts steps, measures heart rate, and measures oxygen levels, but not very well. It also tracks how tired or full of energy you might be.
The Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro still works fine but I think I’ve been using it for four years and I believe that the battery may be getting tired. It’s a shame that it’s while owning this watch that I have had the least interesting sporting habits. I have walked and cycled in circles for four year. I have hardly been to the mountains, or lakes. Same circles, different days.
I am tired of the pandemic. I am tired of the fatalism that the government shows towards controling this virus. We could have eradicated it from Switzerland twice already. We’re in wave four. Instead of being worried and doing everything possible to stop the virus from spreading the government says “oh but you just need to vaccinate and you’ll be fine.” The issue arises from children below the age of twelve having no chance to vaccinate.
The government has a cavalier attitude towards the health and safety of children, when it should do everything in its power to make sure that they are safe. They prefer to pretend they are unaware of the risks, and just to carry on regardless.
What I’m studying
I started the Becoming a Node JS Developer pathway. I don’t know whether I will concentrate fully on this pathway or if I will look at something afterwards. The knowledge I have gained so far from this course is useful. When I experiment with frameworks I will find the process simpler to understand. I am on day 718 of studying German and I practice speaking more.
iOS and Environmentalism
If you use the weather app on iOS 17 the weather app provides you with information about average temperature and average precipitation. It tells you how different the temperature and rainfall are, compared to average. Today, for example, I see that the temperature is 4°c warmer than the average. It tells me that usually the temperature is 17°c and that the current outside air temperature is 21°c.
For 25 September the normal temperature range is 5° to 21°, and the average high is 17°, today’s high temperature is 21°.
If I look at the average rainfall I can see that it should be 12.9cm rather than 12.6cm.
Historically the average total precipitation from 26 August to 25 September has been 128.5mm. Today, the total for the last 30 days is 125.6mm.
It also gives us the moon phase, the visibility, humidity and more. The current visibility is 27km. Some day they will tell us what the usual visibility is for this time of year, when they collect enough data.
Making Climate Change Visible
With the new weather app Apple is making climate change visible. We have gone from weather apps that tell us what the weather is and will be to what the weather usually is, and how big the difference is, from the norm. We can look at the temperature and rainfall differences. These are two easy to understand metrics. Within a second we can see that the weather is better or worse than it should be.
Comparing Locations
When you look at Chamonix it is 13°c warmer than it should be for this time of year. It is far out of the usual range for this time of year. The difference is 13°c. It’s 22°c and the average temperature should be 9°c. It’s t-shirt weather in Chamonix.
And Finally
With Big Data and AI it is easy for a company like Apple to look at the weather data from several centuries and comment on it, in relation to current conditions. Once per day it can be refreshed to give the current variation between the norm, and the current situation. By giving people this information it allows people to see how serious climate change is, as well as how it affects them personally.
I no longer have to say “it feels like it never rains” and “it feels too warm for this time of year.” The App provides quantitative data, to prove that the opinion, or sentiment, is correct.
This move makes the Apple Weather App more interesting. The Swiss weather app provides similar information but in the form of blog posts written by humans, every few days.
Reverting to a Single Watch
Today I asked Google Bard whether I should wear two watches at a time and it told me not to. Specifically it told me not to wear a Garmin watch, and a Suunto watch at the same time as they may interferer with each other and more. Before the Apple Watch I only wore one watch at time. I wore the Suunto Spartan watch. When I got the Apple Watch I started to wear two watches at a time because they feed two different databases and the data is not shared from one to the other.
That Was Before
Recently, I noticed that Sports Tracker plays very nicely with the Apple Watch so it tempted me to play with Suunto again, but Suunto does not play nicely with the Apple Fitness App. Neither the Apple Watch nor the Garmin watch play nicely with each other. The result is that if you want data from Suunto, and Garmin, and Apple, you need to wear three watches, for the three apps. Since I have two wrists I can feed two services at once. We are forced either to wear two or three watches, or give up on collecting data for one service.
What Bard Thinks
When asked whether I should wear a Suunto and a Garmin Google Bard feels that I should pick just one and stick with it. If I ask it how many people wear two watches it tells me:
“There is no definitive answer to this question, as it is difficult to track how many people wear two watches. However, anecdotally, it seems that the number of people who wear two watches is increasing.”
If you are considering wearing two watches, I recommend trying it out and seeing how you feel. There is no harm in experimenting, and you may find that you like it more than you thought you would.
Why Limit Myself
I am not wearing two watches because I like wearing two watches. I am wearing two watches because Garmin and Apple want to force me to wear their devices in order to get data so that I can use their apps. With Sports Tracker, and the Apple watch I can track what I do via the Suunto App and via the Suunto App, I can update Sports tracker and Apple, but not the fitness App.
Data Clashes
The other reason for which I want to reduce the number of watches I wear, down to one, is that Suunto and Apple Fitness data clash, so after a one and a half hour walk the Apple Fitness app says that I have burned one to two hundred calories rather than the 500+ that both fitness trackers agree with. I look eccentric for nothing if I wear the Suunto watch and the Apple watch together.
Bard’s Opinion
As I wrote this blog post I asked Google Bard a number of questions. In so doing I learned that it discourages you from wearing two different brand watches at the same time due to possible interference and more. If you want advice about which to pick though, it will provide you with what makes them different from each other. Google Bard will provide you with a side by side comparison of the key feature differences between two or more watches.
And Finally
The Suunto 5 Peak will become my primary watch. The Garmin Etrex SE can track my walks and hikes, and the Garmin Explore device can track my bike rides. It’s amusing that in all of this thought and consideration I don’t think of Strava, where all of this data is collected anyway. I lost interest in Strava years ago, when I read about venture capitalists investing millions, because at that point the site stopped being on a human level.
Wearing one watch at a time is fine.
The Lost Art of Silent Material Cutting
For years now the noise in this village has been frustrating me. It is the noise of industrial cutting. The noise of an angle grinder on metal, of a circular saw on bricks, stone and wood. It is the constant wail of a circular saw cutting into something, every few seconds, or minutes, for hours at a time, for months at a time.
It is the reason for which, instead of opening windows I turn on a fan and swelter in summer. It is the reason for which I don’t open the window and close it at night. It is the reason for which I have gone from having windows open the entire time there is daylight, to keeping them closed.
Industrial Noise In Rural Settings
People idealise and romanticise the idea of repairing one’s own tractors, cars and more. People idealise doing one’s own carpentry, rather than calling professionals. I don’t.
I don’t idealise people who redo the decking for their swimming pool and other things because they’re using industrial machines in a village settings. This is not the noise of centuries gone by. This is not the sound of a manual saw cutting through wood. This is not the physical fitness training of cutting wood, and repairing a deck. This is industrial noise, in a private garden. Modern tools have made the process of home repair industrial, acoustically. This is a shame because the old fashioned way of doing things was quiet, considerate of neighbours.
When I Made Noise
A few years ago I was told off for making noise for using a machine to sand wood on the partition between two properties, before putting fresh varnish on the wood. I had made noise for two days. When I made noise I was told off after two days. In the village where I live now noise pollution is constant.
Part of the noise came from the building of one or two new buildings, for two years or so. More noise pollution came from a farmer doing maintenance work on farm equipment. The third was a repair shop making noise. The last source of noise was the rebuilding of a roof.
Years of Noise Pollution
The result is years of noise pollution, on a daily basis for years. The result is that the windows stay closed during sweltering summers. The result is that I am cooking in a 26°c appartment when the Outside Air Temperature is just 16°c.
The Privacy of Silence
People worry about web privacy. They worry about other privacies. They never consider the privacy of silence, the privacy of keeping windows open without being harassed with noise pollution. I miss the intimacy of silence. I miss being able to open windows in the morning, and closing them before sunset.
Adaptation
Noise pollution has forced me to adapt to living in a sweltering apartment without open windows. If I open the windows I am constantly distracted by the noise of industrial cutting. I have had to grow used to being too warm for months at a time.
Sweltering
I used to love the heat. When you’re in the top floor of an apartment, unable to open windows due to noise pollution you’re stuck with adapting to heat. Walking in the noon day sun on a 37°c day is refreshing, after spending time in an apartment where the windows are closed, due to noise pollution.
I don’t use the fan for cooling, because it’s worthless for that. I use it as white noise machine, so that I can focus on tasks, and achieve my goals. Until I lived in this apartment I never understood the value of white noise machines. Now I do.
And Finally
One of the easiest solutions is to go for my daily walk when people start to be too noisy. That’s why I go for a walk at the time I do go for a walk. I found that this was the time at which the noise pollution annoyed me most. Switzerland might have been quiet back in the day, but no longer.
Tap Water, Hollow Fibres disagree with Calcar and a Barrel According to WaterMinder
Today the Service Industriel de Nyon, SI Nyon, sent an e-mail saying that tap water is one thousand times more environmentally friendly than bottled water. Bottled water is sold at between 20 to 90 centimes per litre and tap water is sold at about 0.1 centimes per litre. It is 200 to 900 times cheaper.
Depuis maintenant cinq ans, ce déficit hydrique se répète et influence notablement le niveau de la nappe phréatique et le régime des sources. Les étiages enregistrés se sont avérés une fois de plus très bas durant l’été et l’automne. Ainsi, en 2020, les sources n’ont participé qu’à hauteur de 48% de la consommation. Les apports de la SAPAN se sont révélés très élevés (34%). La nappe phréatique a également été très sollicitée (18%).
SI Nyon: À propos de l’eau potable dans la région de Nyon | SI Nyon
In 2020 4 million metres cubed of drinking water were distributed via the network. thirty four percent of that water came from the lake, fourty eight from springs, and eighteen percent was taken from the water table. SI Nyon says the same thing as I do. They wrote “les étiages se sont avérés une fois de plus très bas durant l’été…”. Etiage is water level in French. I had to look it up. I don’t remember this word. In English it is baseflow, or drought flow: Baseflow – Wikipedia.
Calcar, the Sawyer Squeeze and BeFree
I have now played with three nanotube filters and each one of them has the same problem. If you run Swiss tap water through them, and then do not use them for a few weeks they get blocked. Hollow fibre might be good in soft water, but in hard water, as in Switzerland, you’re better off with the Katadyn Hiker Pro or similar technology. That’s why I have upgraded my water bottles to wide mouth options. I can use them to either carry dirty water, or fill them, without needing three hands.
Although the Katadyn Befree is 20 to 30 CHF less, if you need to replace them every year, then it makes sense to get the Hiker Pro, or higher end water filtration system. I tried backflushing the Sawyer squeeze but the flow is still bad. Filters that last for as long as you use them daily are great, if you’re hiking for months in a row, but filters that work consistently, despite occasional use, are better.
A WaterMinder Barrel
According to the WaterMinder app I drank over a barrel of fluids. I believe that to be around 159 litres. My current streak is 23 days of drinking an average of 2.62 litres per day. I am hydrated.
And Finally
We are on day 573 of this pandemic and apparently people have not heard about the vaccination according to at least one individual. How? We’re in a pandemic. The entire world has stopped. How can you not have heard about the vaccine? How isolated are you? How disconnected?
I hope to be more inspired tomorrow. I might be in the pre-trip duldrums for the next two or three days.