Category: observation
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The Demise of Shortened Google Links
Reading Time: 2 minutesNext year [all goo.gl shortened links will be dead due to the planned obscolence of hyperlinks](https://9to5google.com/2024/07/18/googl-links/). Any website, blog, or social media site that used Goo.gl shortened links will find that their links are worthless from that point on. ## The SMS Era on Twitter URL shorteners thrived for a while because…
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Shopping With an E-Scooter
Reading Time: 3 minutesOver the years I have enjoyed driving to the shops with a petrol driven scooter for daily shops. I liked that it was small, light and convenient. I only got rid of it, after sixteen years of use because of the cost for a service. Usually it was about 500 but I…
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Twice the Driving Range
Reading Time: < 1 minuteToday I refuelled the car after 380 kilometres for about 30 CHF. A few years ago, when I refuelled another car it cost me 70 CHF to refuel a car, to travel 400 kilometres. This means that the car I drive now costs half as much, in petrol, despite the price…
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The Decision Not to Drive For Sports On a Sunday
Reading Time: 3 minutesThis weekend I could have gone to Bellevaux for the VF, Thones for the VF, Kandersteg for the VF, and gone to Charmey, Rocher de Naye and one other places for hikes and climbing. I chose to do none of these things. My reason for this is to save money on petrol,…
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The Hypothetical Attention Pyramid Scheme
Reading Time: 2 minutesI loved the idea of Substack as a replacement for a few minutes, or maybe a few hours. I loved the notion of a writing community for people to share ideas, and written words. I lost passion when I saw that it was an attention pyramid scheme. ## What is the Attention…
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The Pleasure of Looking for New Routes
Reading Time: 3 minutesFor several years I explored every route that was walkable from my village. In the process I found loops that took up to four hours to complete. When there was no traffic they were all pleasant, whether it was wet, dry, hot, cold or windy. As cars and driving re-emerged plenty of…
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The Five and Six AM Club
Reading Time: 3 minutesOne winter I woke seven or eight days in a row at 2am to be at work and ready to work for 0400. It was very hard to do, and since then I prefer not to have to wake up too early. Yesterday I woke at 0600, naturally, but also because I…
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Google News, News Sites and Paywalls
Reading Time: 2 minutesIn the mid to lake 90s and the early two thousands we could browse from news site to news site. I would visit the Guardian, the Independent, Le Temps, Tribune de Genève, New York Times and more. I would also look at the RTS, BBC News and other sites to check a…
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The Swiss end of FM Broadcasting
Reading Time: 2 minutesWithin the next year FM broadcasting [will come to an end in Switzerland in 2024](https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2024/article/la-ssr-arretera-completement-la-diffusion-radio-fm-a-la-fin-de-l-annee-28552045.html) and people with old cars are sad. So are people who want to hold on to FM for nostalgic reasons. For hobbyists it’s a shame too, because then all FM radio equipment will become obsolete as we…
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The Americanisation of Swiss Weather Forecasting
Reading Time: 3 minutesA few days ago they announced a [“cocktail météorologique explosif”](https://www.rts.ch/info/suisse/2024/article/un-cocktail-meteorologique-explosif-attendu-samedi-en-suisse-romande-alerte-meteosuisse-28553427.html) but the result I saw from my vantage point was some medium rain, and plenty of rain and thunder. The thunder was constant for quite a while. When I saw the weather warnings my fear was that we would end up with…