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Downgrading Icloud from 200 GB to 50 GB
If there was the option to downgrade from 200GB to 100 GB I would have taken it as I needed 51.6 gigabytes to backup my phone and other data. Since I couldn’t I went through and removed my photo backup as well as back ups of folders that don’t need to be backed up because they are cloud serice in the first place. Imagine the rational of backing up backups. It makes sense, but without exageration.
I am able to downgrade because I have Immich, Kdrive, Photoprism and Nextcloud backing up my photos as well as two to three hard drives. The beauty of this solution is that I go from spending 36 CHF per year for iCloud down to 10 CHF per year. I go from spending 100 CHF per year down to about 35 CHF per year, and I go from being obliged to be loyal to cloud providers because I had no local backup of everything, to being free to jump from service to service on a whim. By whim I mean that I can dump a service as soon as a cheaper option appears.
There are two reasons for me dumping iCloud. The first is that they’re more expensive than all other solutions so to use them is to throw away money. The second reason, and the more damning one is that if you store photos on iCloud once you reach a certain library size you’re trapped.
You’re trapped because although you can create several libraries on external drives you can only download photos from the cloud on the system drive, not others. This means that with a 500 GB laptop drive that is full with files you’re trapped within iCloud. Your data is locked in until you get a mac mini, add a two terabyte drive, and download all your files.
In the end I used Immich, Photoprism and Kdrive to backup the data that was trapped in the cloud before removing photo sync from the phone with iCloud, relying on Immich, Photoprism, Nextcloud and Kdrive. Why so many services you may ask. Experimentation, and redundancy. Immich is in very active development so they recommend not to rely on it. Photoprism seems stable. Nextcloud is good too, but it’s better for backing up files from computers and more. Kdrive is the offsite backup.
And Finally
Now that Nextcloud takes care of synching files between devices and Immich, Kdrive and other solutions take care of backing up photos and videos there is less pressure for me to use cloud services such as iCloud. I keep the 50GB plan because I can still backup my phone in the cloud as well as various app data. If it was not for these constraints I could dump iCloud entirely. The biggest storage hog on iCloud is the phone’s backup.
The Year-Old Pandemic
Thanks to the incompetence of leadership during this pandemic Switzerland went from a low of 21 cases per day in June 2021 to a high of 3600 or more over Christmas. This is really a shame. For a short period up to the 21st of June Switzerland really looked as if it would end the pandemic.
On the 21st of June the government made a mistake. It reopened society. The rational was that the pandemic would soon end and that slowly we could return to life as normal. Within a week or two the number of new cases started to go up again, but rather than go a step back until the number went back down the government went ahead with the next diminishing of sanctions.
Over time, we could see the number of new cases climb and climb and I really expected to see a peak within two weeks from the 1st of August. It came about three to four weeks later and that’s close to when the second wave was declared. Bad decisions continued to be taken until it was decided that people should have their Christmas and new Year. Two weeks after all the Christmas shenanigans were over tightening came back, and instantly the number of new cases went down.
We’re now a year into the pandemic with little chance of the pandemic ending anytime soon.
As I see it the government has two possible avenues. The first is to vaccinate everyone, but the drawback is that you need vaccines to vaccinate people, so for now this idea is on hold. The second idea, and this was definitely possible in June, and is still being proved by New Zealand, is that you can end the pandemic with proper government directives.
Last week Switzerland finally got down to just 1000 cases per day, which is excellent news, and with a little effort it looks as if the pandemic could end sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately the government decided to reopen society yesterday, so we are now condemned to go through another wave of infections and the end has been blown away by bad policy.
One weakness during this pandemic is that lockdowns and restrictions have been pictures as political rather than scientific. As a result of this people are guided by their emotions rather than their rationality. This irrationality means that people fail to see that the sooner the pandemic ends, the sooner normal life returns.
The more often society reopens, the longer the pandemic will last, and the longer the pandemic lasts, the more businesses will go bankrupt. It makes sense to have a lockdown like we had this time last year, for the pandemic to end, so that life can resume.
There is another cost to the pandemic. Teenagers are unable to have a normal university experience. Add to this that around 36 percent of homes in Switzerland are one person and this is a theoretical 36 percent (I don’t know the actual number of people) who might have gone without a hug, a kiss or a handshake for almost a year by now.
In the 21st century plenty of people live alone, and when you live alone during a pandemic it implies that you do not see many people. In fact the only person you see during the day is the cashier, if you buy food.
Switzerland decided to close petrol stations on Sunday, and my habit of seeing one person in the physical world per day was lost. I sometimes go three to four days at a time without speaking to another human being.
This pandemic is teaching us to live in absolute solitude, for days at a time with no contact, and weeks, months or even seasons without even a handshake or hug.
I don’t watch normal television anymore. If a podcast has someone speaking about relationships I pause or stop listening. I avoid films. I avoid certain topics in podcasts. I listen to very little music.
We’re in a pandemic, and we live in solitude. Normal people think “the pandemic will take two years to resolve, and it isn’t that bad”, but to people in solitude it is that bad. Solitude is fine, as long as it is not made to feel like isolation, and that’s why I changed my media consumption habits. I went to be comfortable in solitude, not distressed in solitude.
With how people behave, and how the government behaves, we are in for a few more months at best. Maybe the summer of 2022 will be less lonely.
Monday Night Picadilly Line People
Last night’s fourty minute trip meant I got to see a lot of faces as I headed from one side to another. Some of these people would be forgotten within a few seconds whilst others would be remembered slightly longer. One girl had a disarming stare, as I headed to my first destination of the night. She got off within a few stops and my journey continued.
On the way back I was in good spirits after filming a few people perform their songs. I left so that I would have plenty of time to make my way home. It’s on this tube that I noticed all the people on the tube. Two guys, each with a drum stick were tapping to a beat no one else could hear. Another person was leaning to the right, onto the glass that prevents you from falling in front of the door should you sleep whilst commuting. A food guide was being read by another person, either after a good dinner or because he was still hungry. Two or three more people were half asleep.
One individual had bloodshot eyes, possibly from excessive drinking. He had to stand since no seats were available. The London light was entertaining another. Hair could be seen playing with the draught you get from the open window at the back of the carriage as she traveled along the tunnel to her destination listening to her iPod. To my left was a woman reading the media guardian.
In the back pocket of one individual was a booklet for The Phantom of the Opera as he waited to get off as his tube stop was coming up. To his right, a woman gesture to her companion indicating the booklet. They looked happy with the thought of going to the event.
In front of me were two women around my age. One had a breadcrumb on her lip but didn’t realise it. To her right the opposite, an attractive girl with sandals, a golden coat and a silver iPod nano to keep her entertained on the journey home. Hearing was taken care of by the headphones but the eyes were darting around the carriage. One way, then another, without settling anywhere specific.
Everyone must have done this, sat in a tube train, and looked at everyone around them, noticing little details, noticing where people had been and where they were going. It was the Monday night tube taking many of these people home.
Spy-cam wildlife filmmaking
Spy-cam wildlife filmmaking is an interesting discipline. It builds upon the decades of innovation that the documentary film genre has built upon. From the earliest images by the Lumière brothers of the workers at a factory to the development of film editing by Eisenstein and Dziva Vertov demonstrated by “The Man With the Movie Camera to sync sound with the Crystal sound system used by Jean Rouch for Chronique d’un été.
The BBC is seen as the leading example of high quality television programming and this has been the case for decades. The Natural History Unit is responsible for some of the best wildlife documentary films and series and with good reason. They adopt the latest technology, hire crews for months or even years at a time, to capture nature’s spectacle and beauty, and bring it to living rooms around the world.
Sensory: BBC Wildlife Director John Downer & the technology of ‘spy-cam’ filmmaking from Getty Images on Vimeo.
This attention to detail and this dedication to getting the best images has resulted in some of the best looking documentaries around. the Blue Planet Series, the Planet Earth series, Life and others have provided people with what I like to call a video encyclopaedia of the natural world.
The technological innovation that we see in the video above demonstrates how animals and behaviour that we had seen through a tele-lens can now be seen up close and with as natural a behaviour as possible. Almost every book I have read about the documentary genre speaks about capturing life with as little alteration of natural behaviour as possible. This technology is making that wish a more realistic goal.
Facebook, a personal rather than social network
Ten years ago if you met someone and they gave you their visit card you’d put it away somewhere and eventually you might have come back to it but the information would need updating. Over the years social networking tools on the web have evolved from simple mail clients to web forums and finally to Myspace and Facebook. With Facebook we find what I think of as an enhanced phonebook.
When you meet someone at a party today there’s a good chance that this individual has a facebook presence. As a result when you go home they may add you as a friend and in so doing you are brought into their lives. You can see where they’ve worked, for how long and what they were doing. you can see whom they associate with and how they tend to meet people. Facebook has become a daily feature of contemporary life.
Facebook does not limit your interactions to the people you’ve met during your time at parties, events and more. It also allows you to join groups, some are based on occupation, others on passions and yet some more on soemthing that may be relevant to only ten to twenty people. As these groups multiply so you decide to associate through these people through forums and the likes.
For a time I was part of the Lecture napping appreciation society whilst others were part of the “curse of the N18” amongst other groups. Today a friend joined a group which I would never join for the simple and good reason (simple et bonne raison) that reflects the views for which I avoid the place. I’m living between London, a city of up to twelve million (depending on the demographics you chose) and a village of no more than 2000. I love the contrast between the two and as a result feel no need to visit the place that the group boasts about.
The point is that as a medium becomes more commonplace and as more people feel comfortable with the technology so their personalities are reflected in a variety of ways which give a great wealth and diversity of character to the medium they are using. It is precisely because of those differences in interests that we gain as a social group. We, the international internet users, have a great wealth of opinions and views available within a few keystrokes and we should constantly aim to promote those interests that most effectively reflect our character, things that friends may take years to notice but that can be made obvious online. Facebook, in my opinion, is a personal, rather than social network where you promote the interaction between friends you’ve had for years and friends you’ve only just met. There are other networks that are great for making new online friends but Facebook should be kept for those people whom you have met face to face.
Lebara Spain
If you visit Spain and get a lebara Spain sim you need to set up two access point names. One is for internet access and the other is for MMS. I only point this out because dozens of sites tell you what the configuration requirements are but non indicate that you are setting up two access points.
APN 1:
Name: lebara internet
APN: gprsmov.lebaramobile.es
username: wap
apn type: default, supl
APN 2:
name: lebara MMS
APN: mms.lebaramobile.es
mms proxy: 212.73.32.10
MMS port: 80
MMSC
http://mms.lebaramobile.es/servlets/mms