Richard's blog

Category: Climbing

  • Twitter Account Deactivated

    Twitter Account Deactivated

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    Yesterday I finally took the step of deactivating my account, and then reactivating it, and then this morning deactivating it again. Normally when I lose interest in a social network I just forget about it and I’m done. In this situation I didn’t forget about it though. I went a step further.

    Three factors pushed me towards this decision. The first is that Musk wants to use our tweets to feed AI and I don’t want my tweets to be used that way. Logically they can’t be used, because my account is private.

    That my account has been private on and off, and anonymous since 2020 or so is a comment on how the user experience on Twitter has degraded since the pandemic. When you are trolled and flamed you go private. The paradox is that by being private people no longer see your interactions with them so you’re tweeting for nothing, and that’s a second reason to dump Twitter.

    The third reason for dumping Twitter is that if you use Pihole and ad blockers Twitter/X breaks. You eventually get kicked out of the site and have to log in again, but logging in fails via Google Login and Twitter login. The result is that Twitter is taking liberties to data that no other website requires. If I have to suspend Pihole for one site then that site becomes irrelevant.

    And Finally

    The way I used Twitter changed four years ago, after I was flamed. I was ready to give up on Twitter for a while, before Musk bought it. It had gone from being a social network filled with engagement and the desire to meet people to a complete waste of time. It’s because it was a waste of time that I tried Mastodon and the Fediverse before sliding to BlueSky and Threads. None of them have the community I’m looking for, yet.

    Twitter was a unique site, at a unique time. Now I am ready to revert to using social networks.

  • Sliding from iOS to Android Despite Whatsapp and Signal

    Sliding from iOS to Android Despite Whatsapp and Signal

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    Recently I switched from an Iphone SE from 2020 for a Fairphone 4 and the migration has been easy, except for two apps. Whatsapp and Signal. With Android it’s easy. You backup to Google Drive and you can slide between Android devices with ease. With iOS the backup is in iCloud so sliding between devices should, in theory, be easy to, but I don’t remember finding it that much fun. If it wasn’t for this apps we could slide from Android to iOS and back without a second thought.

    My biggest fear was losing the groups that I am part of but I found that groups on Whatsapp sync with ease. The same is true of Signal. Message history is lost when you move whatsapp and signal from iOS to Android and vice versa. Migrating means losing access to years of messaging history, until you slide back to iOS or Android.

    With almost every other app you can be simultaneoulsy one two or more phones at once. This means that whether you have a sim card or not you’re connected and active. With Signal and Whatsapp you can be across several computers at once, looking at message history without a second thought.

    Linked Devices

    As I wrote this post I decided to experiment with Linked Devices and it works. The concept of Linked Devices is simple. You have your primary phone that is connected to whatsapp. With Linked Devices you can use laptops, and now other phones as secondary devices. This gives us the freedom to slide between devices. When you are between Android and iOS this is a great feature to have because it makes sliding between plattforms simple.

    No need for Two Phones

    Yesterday I went for a five kilometre run. I got to the lake side, took pictures with one phone, but had to use the second phone to send them, so I took photos with the second phone. Signal has a huge advantage over Whatsapp in that if you slide between phones it will keep your message history intact until you log in again,

    Platform Specific Apps

    You might think “But what about platform specific apps, especially paid for apps?” . My biggest frustration is related to Car play and the cars I drive. You can’t swap OS on a car as easily as you can carry two phones. It’s the car that held me back on sliding to Android for months. I would love for cars to use car play when they detect an iPhone, and the Android equivalent when they detect an Android device. For now I need to have the iPhone when using cars.

    And Finally

    In practice things have improved since the last time I migrated from Android to iOS so the process is now simplified. We don’t need to migrate fully from one platform to another. It’s much easier to slide from one to the other and back.

    For those that need it, it is now possible to have two whatsapp accounts at once, on a phone. This could be useful with dual sim devices. It’s also useful to have a backup groups option when sliding between mobile phone operating systems.

  • Charging Electric Cars in Switzerland

    Charging Electric Cars in Switzerland

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    After some trial and error I finally managed to get an electric car to charge at public charging points. The first success was at an evpass charging station where I was able to charge 13.1kW/h in an hour and 14 minutes using the app on my phone and a credit card for 8.48 CHF. The second time was with the TCS eCharge RFID tag that I ordered from the Touring Club Suisse for free. In that case I charged 11.1kW/h for 5.89 CHF.
    With evpass the cost is 0.65 CHF per kW/h and with Swisscharge the price is 0.35 CHF per kW/h but with a 2 CHF connection fee for each charge, Without that connection charge Swisscharge would cost 3.89 CHF for 11.1kW/h and be competitive with evpasss. As things stand Swisscharge make you pay an extra 5.7 kW/h per charge.
    According to perplexity “… the 0.35 CHF per kWh charger with a 2 CHF connection fee becomes more cost-effective after charging approximately 6.67 kWh. In practical terms, this means that if you plan to charge more than 6.67 kWh, the first charger is the better option despite its connection fee.”

    The Charging Curve Effect

    When looking at the stats I see that the charging curve effect is clear to see. When I charged from thirty percent to 80 percent I used 13.1 kW/h and from 80-100 percent I used 11.1 kW/h. This could be because the 2 CHF charge is counted in kW/h or it could demonstrate the charging effect curve.

    Teething Problems

    When I first tried to charge in Signy Centre I failed because I didn’t have the app, and then I had an RFID tag but it failed to register properly so I tried with a second tag, that I knew was paired to the right app. You are also required to have your own charging cable. With the TCS echarge card it took seconds to start charging.
    With the charging point with evpass in Arnex sur Nyon the experience was more positive. Download the app, create a user account, add a card, choose which charger to use, start charging, wait.

    And Finally

    In an ideal situation I would have a charger in the garage. I would plug the car in when I am not using it, and it would charge during the night as everyone sleeps. In reality the building was not setup to have multiple EVs charging at one. If I install a charger I might need to remove or modify it when others choose to have their own. The cheaper alternative is to use public charging points.
    This morning I was surprised because when I parked the car at home, and saw that it was at one hundred percent I smiled. It’s somehow liberating to know that I am no longer trapped for 10 hours on some trips, waiting for the car to charge sufficiently to be used. As I said, I don’t have range anxiety, I have charge anxiety. I had charge anxiety.

  • Running With the Apple Watch SE

    Running With the Apple Watch SE

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    Apple push us to get the Apple Watch Series 10, the Ultra 2 or the Apple Watch SE in third place. If you’re a runner, and you don’t feel like spending on the Ultra or the Ten then it makes sense to get the SE instead.

    Although the SE is the cheaper option it still provides us with plenty of running metrics. It provides heart rate, pace, power, cadence, vertical oscilation, ground contact time, stride length, workout time, distance, elevation gain, average cadence, average pace, average power, active kilocalories, total kilocalories and more.

    That is more information than the Garmin Instinct Solar, Suunto Peak 5, Garmin Forerunner 45s and other devices. It’s also more convenient than using the smart band 9 and smart band 8 in pebble mode. It also has the advantage of connecting to Gentler Streak and other related apps on iOS.

    Gentler Streak is a good app to see whether to push, or take it easy. Training Today offers the same type of information. The point here is that the Apple Watch is not just a device with one app. It can be shared with multiple apps on your phone, as long as you have an iOS device.

    It does have the disadvantage of having a touch screen rather than buttons, so in cold weather, or when in wet conditions, it can be more frustrating to use. It can also get false pauses due to clothing. When the battery gets low it might die mid workout.

    It also requires daily charging. The Garmin Instinct can go for weeks without charging if you’re in Spain and leave the watch in the sun when you’re not running, hiking or other.

    The difference in price between the SE and the 10 is about 150 CHF at the time of writing. The cheapest SE is about 200 CHF and the cheapest Series 10 is 378 CHF.

    The point of this post is not to say “get the SE” but to say, the budget version Apple Watch SE has a lot of functionality that may make it interesting for people that do not want to spend 378 CHF on a watch that they may replace within two to four years. My Series 4 lasted four years and I expect my SE to last four years. In theory that’s 50 CHF per year if you get the 200 CHF model.
    And Finally
    If I was to spend 600-800 CHF on a watch I would get a Garmin Fenix 8 or similar because I expect Garmin not to make a watch obsolete as quickly as Apple will. According to ChatGPT the life expectation for both is about 5-7 years but the Apple watch battery is expected to be noticeably worse after four years. This is especially easy to spot, due to the Apple watch having a one day battery life, rather than one month, with the right sun conditions, or even 99+ days when in Spain.

  • Electric Vehicles and Charging Time

    Electric Vehicles and Charging Time

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    It’s easy to drive a petrol car. You fill up, and 500-600 kilometres later you fill up. With Electric vehicles it is the same in theory. In practice it isn’t that simple. The EV charging market is fragmented and each company has a different app and possibly RFID tag. The result is that you can either be loyal and use just one app or you can have two or more apps on your phone.

    In theory you can get an electric power socket installed in your garage to make charging possible. In practice, if you live in a shared building you need to get permission. Considerations also need to be thought of. For example does the building have enough power for two or three cars to charge at once or do you need to setup a rolling charge system, where one car charges, and then a second, and then a third.

    The other issue is charge time. I know that with one charging location it will take an hour for five percent. This means that my 30 percent drive will take six hours to recharge to be back to the same status as before.

    On the flipside public charging costs 2 to three times more per kilowatt hour, but it takes a fraction of time time. Yesterday I used a proper car charging point and instead of waiting hours for it to charge from 34 percent to 80 percent I waited about an hour. To be specific it cost 8.48 CHF for a 1hr 14 charge and 13.1kw/h of power. With another hour of patience I would have got to a one hundred percent charge. In effect if I went for a two hour walk I would come back to a charged car if I depleted it down to about thirty percent.

    Why Is This Relevant?

    At the moment car charging is relatively rare. This means that if you have an EV you need to consider where you can charge along the way to your destination or on the way back. For the last year or so I have known that if I use the EV I need to count a day to charge the car, and half a day just to charge what I used.

    With an increase in the number of chargers available in an increasing number of villages it will become easy to charge an EV within a reasonable amount of time. As I said before, my issue is not range anxiety, it’s charge time frustration.

    What to Do While Charging

    Yesterday while waiting for the car to charge I was looking at walking options, bus and train options, and even considering cycling options. If every time you use an EV you have to wait one hour per five percent of charge, then an EV will be used sparingly. This is not helped by the chaos of options with charging.

    I have evpass and Swisscharge on my phone and I finally got evpass to work, after some trial and error and now I need to get Swisscharge to work. I could spend 10 CHF on an RFID tag but that would be a waste of money. I tried to pair Swisscharge to the TCS e-charge card and that failed with a borrowed car so I may soon be able to test with my own card. It’s free.

    And Finally

    With fast charging you regain some of the freedom of using a petrol car. If charging takes as long as a walk, meal, or bike ride, then it becomes almost invisible. It’s at this point that an EV becomes a luxury.

  • Replacing Social Media with Solitaire

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    Recently I have noticed that I like to play Solitaire for many games in a row. It has replaced my social media habit. I know that solitaire is a solitary game but at the moment I enjoy it. I tried several versions on iOS and android but my current favourite is the Netflix version of Solitaire.

    I find that I can spend hours playing Solitaire as I watch TV and films. It seems to give more pleasure than social media. Social media no longer brings as much pleasure as it used to because the communities that I have been part of have migrated to other platforms, or given up on social media. The result is that I can spend hours scrolling, or I can play Solitaire.

    Solitaire is a game that allows you to think, and listen, as you play. It doesn’t take that much concentration to win. It’s a good means of spending time being mindful.

    The paradox is that sometimes I lose quite a few games in a row so I should be discouraged and give up, like I would if I was playing other iOS or Android games.

    A key difference is that there are no ads. It’s adverts that encourage us to give up and move on. Too many iOS apps feel like they’re designed to make us lose so that we either give in and watch apps, or give in and pay not to see ads anymore.

    With Solitaire I lose regularly with the Netflix app but I am not punished with ads and that is appreciated. Other versions give us a higher win to play ratio but I don’t mind losing. I think it might be a relaxing pass time.

    This is a game that has been on most of our computers for decades, so we have all played at some point. I expect that I will grow bored of it again, and then play some other game.

  • Bluesky Thinking

    Bluesky Thinking

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    I have spent the last day or two playing with Bluesky and I believe that it has potential, At it’s base it’s like Mastodon, but with less anarchic user base, and fewer trolls. This could be because I haven’t spent weeks using it yet.

    Threads has a good community and good community tools but it’s part of the Facebook empire and within a few weeks adverts will appear and that will drastically feel the look and feel of the social network.

    With the arrival of ads, we will have more noise and it will require more scrolling to get anything engaging. I don’t want to be on a social network that exists for ads. I want a social network that is self-sustaning, based on rational decisions.

    I expected Flickr to implode a decade ago but it’s still around. I believe that the key to its success is that it’s a small social network by and for photographers, where people can share their photos, without noise, cult of personality and more. It has reasonable follower numbers so it’s cheaper, and lighter to run than social media giants.

    As I write this I see that Bsky already has series A funding in progress, which to me is a warning sign not to depend on the site too deeply. “We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Amir Shevat of Darkmode, co-creator of Kubernetes Joe Beda, and others.”. That’s 15 million with 13 million users at the time, and now 20+ million users.
    Source

    I agree with the idealism of Bluesky. I don’t trust that it will be able to keep to its ideals due to who its investors are and what they stand for, I believe Bluesky will compromise on its ideals.

  • Which Social Media To Invest Time Into?

    Which Social Media To Invest Time Into?

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    Not a single day goes by that I don’t think that now is the right time to give up on social media networks like Twitter, Threads, Jaiku, Google, BlueSky and Mastodon.

    Too Many People

    When social networks were small they were on a human scale. You could be on a forum with 20-40 people and with time you developed deep friendships with people. Now we’re speaking to a crowd speaking to a crowd. I see people with a thousand likes and a hundred replies. The chance that I will get seen, in a crowd of a hundred is small.
    This leads on to the second issue.

    Huge Investment of Time

    Social media requires a huge investment of time and energy to be worthwhile. I don’t mean for brands but for normal human beings. To be seen you need to be active, but to be active you need to find conversations that are worth having.
    This means hours and hours of what I would call gloom scrolling. Gloom scrolling is like doom scrolling but it feels like a chore, rather than a pleasure. How far do I need to scroll before I find a post worth interacting with, and when I do interact is that person, kind, mean, indifferent or other. Will I get trolled?

    Different Values

    The final point is that my social network are values to those of social media. For me Twitter, Facebook, Threads, BlueSky and Mastodon should be chat rooms and forums where discussions take place with like minded people, but more and more it feels like we’re fighting to be heard above the noise of hashtags, attention seekers, and influencers. We are no longer having personal conversations. We’re fighting for attention.

    Easy to Waste Time

    There is a fine line between social networks being social, and a waste of time. I worry that at the moment I am wasting my time. When there is a tight knit community you feel like you’re being social, you feel like you’re connecting with people. For now it feels like a waste of time.
    When Threads brings in ads there will be a mass migration from Threads to BlueSky but the question is how long BlueSky will be able to stay free, and live by the current ideals it has.
    BlueSky is still too quiet to be a thriving social network

    And Finally

    It’s an important question to ask at the moment. Social networks are currently in a state of flux so knowing whether to devote time to Threads, Bluesky or other is relevant. Creating an account takes seconds, but finding a good community takes weeks, months, or even years, and can vanish within hours or days.

    I don’t know where to invest my time.

  • The Growing Desire to Dump Social Media

    The Growing Desire to Dump Social Media

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    I really miss the age of social networks. In the age of social networks our sphere of influence was limited to our friends, and our friends of friends. The result is that social media was a friendly conversation rather than a popularity contest.

    Over the last two days I have been looking at Threads and BlueSky and to a lesser extent Facebook and I am struck by how many thousands of posts and likes threads and posts get. In such an ecosystem we are in a popularity contest where some people get more attention than they can handle and deserve, whilst most normal people are ignored and solitary.

    Adam Mosseri wrote

    “We are rebalancing ranking to prioritise content from people you follow, which will mean less recommended content from accounts you don’t follow and more posts from the accounts you do starting today. For you creators out there, you should see unconnected reach go down and connected reach go up. This is definitely a work in progress – balancing the ability to reach followers and overall engagement is tricky – thanks for your patience and keep the feedback coming.”

    In the golden age of social media, at the end of social networks the algorithm was conversation. The more we engaged with others, the more we were visible, The more people engaged with us, the more visible we were. It was an environment where those that invested their time and attention in others was rewarded by increased visibility but also closer friendships and deeper bonds.

    They are trying to reinvent something that is simple. Communities are built around relationships and familiarity. The more algorithms break those bonds, the more likely trolling is, and with that, disengagement.

    And Finally

    What really gets to me is that social media is no longer social, Influencers are throwing stuff out and desperate to be seen and get hundreds or thousands of likes and comments, but as soon as I see that a post has a hundred likes and 20 comments I ignore it.

    Social networks used to be about conversations, but I barely see any conversations. I see monologues. The more I scroll, withoutt engagement, or a sense of community, the more I feel that “social media” is a waste of time. Finding a community takes time. I think that era has passed.

  • Fitness Centres and the Corona Virus

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    I have been thinking of climbing gyms, in other words of fitness centres and the Corona Virus. A few years ago I went to a gym where we wiped down every machine after use. We would get a paper towel, spray it with liquid and clean all the surfaces we touched. This includes exercise bikes, weight lifting equipment, elliptical machines and rowing machines. We also placed a towel so that our body was never in contact with surfaces directly.

    When we go to climbing gyms we always end up with hands smelling of the objects we have touched. After a session at a climbing gym, I enjoy washing my hands because the water turns dark with the dirt that my hands collected.

    Climbing.com wrote an article about whether climbing gyms pose a threat. There is not enough data to provide a reliable answer yet. From a logical standpoint, the answer is clear. If we should avoid shaking hands, or having any physical contact if we should stay at least one meter from other people, then climbing is an activity to avoid. We touch the same handholds, we share ropes and we share belay devices.

    During the health crisis, I believe that climbing outdoors would make more sense because UV light kills bacteria and viruses. At outdoor climbing locations, there are fewer people so exposure to virus carriers is smaller.

    Health Magazine and The New York Times both explore the topic of fitness centres and the risk of transmission. “In addition to avoiding frequently handled machines and equipment, it’s recommended, as always, that you wash your hands often and don’t touch your face.” This is from the New York times article. Health wrote “Any place where large numbers of people congregate at any one time over a period of time, allows them to shed their microorganisms or germs on various places,”

    I currently have neither a normal gym, nor climbing gym membership. I would favour normal gyms over climbing gyms. I can clean the machines before and after I use them minimising the risk of exposure. This is already a normal part of my gym routine so there would be no change. According to the Irish Times swimming pools are also safe due to Chlorine in the water.

    Disclaimer: For further information refer to the articles I have linked to. I am not a health professional.