Time Spent being Social

Time Spent being Social

Byrichard

Who do you spend the most time with?


Before the pandemic, it would have been the climbing, hiking and diving friends. I would meet them every week, year round. it was a strong group of peopla and I liked to see them. 


Mustard field
Mustard field


Adventure Groups


It is with this group of people that I went for weekend hikes, experimented with rock climbing, via ferrata and took up regular scuba diving. Not a single weekend would pass without the weekend being a holiday. A friend said that the Sunday dive was a break from the routine. His diving became a routine. A decade on he is still diving every week. 


The Pandemic Decline


During the pandemic the number of people I spent time dwindled. No more weekend trips, no more going to conferences. With the pandemic solitude has become the norm. I spend time with online communities but with the commercialisation of FB and IG they’re practically dead. Twitter was good, until Musk bought it, and now it is no longer a social network. 


Enjoying Solitude


Although this is alien to most, I like solitude. I like solitude because it doesn’t remind me of what my life isn’t. It reminds me of what I would like to have, if things were different. I am in a situation where solitude is more pleasant than being with crowds, especially married people with children. 


Although it is an alien concept to many I like solitude. I like to do things, have adventures and more. I am happy with the life I have. I am happy until people fall into relationships and people don’t head home to solitude. 


The Cost of Introversion


Introversion has a cost. The cost is that we’re not necessarily the most open hearted, the most interested in competing to talk. We are not compelled not to be invisible. We are invisible because we do not compete for attention. As an introvert, in the wrong group. whether you go out every week, or not, makes no difference. In a group the introvert might as well not be. 


The Small Group


At some point neighbours, all married, with children, want to meet. I don’t want to. My happiness is based on making progress with my projects, and being happy with my life. When I am around people that remind me of what my life isn’t, through passive realities, I feel discontent, rather than happiness., I don’t want to be reminded of what I am struggling to achieve. 


A Social Introvert


In the right conditions I am an ambivert. I do enjoy conversations. It’s in the wrong conditions that I am invisible. For the first year and a half of the pandemic I was desperate for life to return to normal. When Berset et al decided that vaccines alone were enough I was condemned to never-ending solitude. 


People think the pandemic is over, but not the solitary ones, not the introverts, not the people that socialise via sport. One of the sites I used to use to socialise is almost dead now, due to the pandemic. I could and should use meetup or similar sites. I should return within society, but the pandemic isn’t over. 


And Finally


If I ignore covid, pretend that COVID is over, to be social, but then I fall sick with Long COVID then I will be all the more lonely. I will have gained nothing by compromising on my morals and ethics. We’re in strange times, for introverts. 

Music Festivals, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sleep Deprivation

Music Festivals, Corporate Social Responsibility and Sleep Deprivation

Byrichard

First things First, I have had a lot of fun at festivals, and I have volunteered for a few. What I object to is the noise pollution. In the 21st century we could avoid that noise pollution, so we should.


And now for the rant, now that I have told you I like festivals, when they don’t get in the way of other peoples’ desire for silence, for sleep.


As I write this I am in a sleep deprived state because I was unable to sleep according to my circadian rhythm due to a music festival. The sound engineers that work at music festivals are pretty dumb, so they build powerful stacks of speakers that are so loud that you need hearing protection at the music festival, and the surrounding countryside is filled with noise pollution. 


I Know, I Know, They Don’t Care. 


I know, I shouldn’t insult an entire profession for taking no pride in their work, and not taking any responsibility for the harm they do to the surrounding countryside. They can’t help it. They’re just not very bright. 


I write this for catharsis, because for five hours yesterday the music festival upwind from where I live was noisy from 1900 to 0100. I felt like going to sleep earlier as I knew I had to get up early. In the end I failed to get to sleep until an hour or two after the noise pollution ended. 


Highly Polluting


Blocked cycle lane, for a music festival
Blocked cycle lane, for a music festival


In the 21st century, and given the audience, you would expect music festivals to be environmentally friendly. They boast about “compostable cups” and recycling and more. They then encourage columns of cars to park on crop fields, where, if it rains, or if vehicles are leaking oil, the ground becomes polluted with festival goer hydrocarbons from cars. 


The noise pollution is a serious problem. Near Nyon there are two big festivals. Caribama, which is taking place now, and Paléo, next month. Both festivals are filled with altermondalistes who want a greender planet, corporations to be socially responsible, and yet for a week each, these festivals make noise pollution several nights in a row from 1900 until 2 or 3am. For those weeks it becomes challenging to sleep. 


Yesterday I had two fans going, at full power and I couldn’t block out the thudding from the bass that the music festival was pumping out. If I had wanted to, I could have listened to the festival for free. 


FOMO


Although governments, the Far Right and the media they control have said that the pandemic is over it isn’t. Music festivals were a source of psychological torture because they reminded us that whilst we were self-isolating and trying to avoid long COVID the alcoholics, and less intellectually bright, were getting drunk and enjoying themselves, with no thought or consideration for the impact the substances, sleep deprivation, and long COVID could have on their health. 


I Have Volunteered at These Events


I am not against these events, as such. I used to enjoy them as a young adult. It’s as a middle aged “grumpy” man that I hate them. I don’t hate them for what they are, but for their disregard for people’s intimate sphere. I dislike them for their invasion of the private sphere, through noise pollution. 


In the 21st century, in the age where we can’t mow lawns between 1230 and 1330, where we can’t vacuum on Sundays and more, why is it socially acceptable to allow such noise pollution until two or three am for a week at a time? 


I thought that festival goers wanted  a fairer, greener, more responsible world, and yet they pollute fields with parked cars, make it impossible to sleep and more. 


Do festival goers not realise the paradox of wanting a fairer world, despite their own selfish behaviour? 


Let us sleep. Lower the volume. Be kind and considerate of those that are not participating in your event. Show empathy. 

One Hundred and thirty Two Kilometres in Trail Gloves

One Hundred and thirty Two Kilometres in Trail Gloves

Byrichard

In theory shoes are meant to last for eight hundred kilometres before they need to be replaced. I am now one eighth of the way towards needing to replace my Trail Gloves. In theory. 


In practice the left shoe is worn and the tread is gone, in two spots. The toes, where most of my force is transmitted to the ground, and the heel, where I tend, or least tended to strike. That’s why the vapor gloves hurt if they’re used too much. 


The Five kilometre Run


Yesterday I went for a walk, but as I walked I decided that I felt like running, so I did. I had not intended to run but I managed to run five kilometres without suffering. My feet felt fine, my legs felt fine. I felt fine. I was able to run five kilometres in minimalistic shoes. No real heel protection. Just the tone of my leg muscles to ensure that I did not injure myself. I consider that switching to “barefoot shoes” on a whim was a success. 


What I enjoy is that they’re half the price of running shoes, and paradoxically, you work on your own body, rather than rely on the shoes. It was a smart move. Instead of spending 180CHF or more on running shoes, I spent around half of that amount. 


The Feel


There are moments when I’m walking in these shoes and the ground feels really smooth and gentle. It’s really nice when the road surface and temperature are just right. For some reason it feels like walking on a soft matt, rather than the road. I prefer running on dry soil and short grass than tarmac. 


With the vapor gloves I feel like I am walking slightly tip toe, to avoid smashing my heel into the ground and feeling pain. In the trail gloves I walk normally but try not to land with a thud, on my heels. The trail gloves forgive my mistakes. That’s why I wear them as my normal shoes now. 


The Push Away from Normal Shoes


I was pushed away from normal shoes for two reasons. The first reason is that for some reason the vertical part at the back of the shoe gets worn through, and when my foot rubbed against the plastic back I had to wear blister protection. I also didn’t like to feel the top of the shoes rubbing against my toes. For some reason shoes that had been comfortable, have been changed, and are now uncomfortable. 


And Finally


I never expected that one day I would feel the desire to wear barefoot shoes. I thought “What a stupid idea” but now, several week in, I like the sensation of such shoes. 

Of Blogging and Substacking

Of Blogging and Substacking

Byrichard

A month or two ago we had the chance to jump on the Substack wagon while it was hot and to ride the wave of new followers and experience a growing community. I could have joined in. I could have become one of those “I’m one of you people” but I didn’t. 


Substack Life


Substack went from being a newsletter to almost becoming a community of writers. I say “almost”, because for me to consider a community a community it has to behave like a community. It has to be a network of friends of friends, and it has to be about individuals connecting with other individuals, through their community. 


With Substack it went from “Wow, notes look great” to “My follower numbers have exploded”, “oh so have mine”, and that’s when I disengaged. People behaved the same way on Twitter and the community was degraded into a network of strangers following each other and fighting for attention. Within the space of hours the network that it could have become was degraded to a popularity contest. I have no interest in these. If I wanted to join one I could socialise in the physical world of bars and other places. 


What I don’t like about Substack, and social media in general, is that it’s about users creating content for the owners of the social network, and then making money off of our backs, without giving us anything in exchange. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and other networks have all made this move. 


On Blogging


With tools like WordPress, among many others we have the freedom to generate content, and choose whether to pay for our own hosting, and manage our own websites and attempt to monetise them, or jump onto Wordpress.com and other solutions. and just create content for the pleasure of it. 


I mention pleasure, because with blogs we write because we have inspiration. Either we have done something that we want to share, or we have an opinion on something, that we want to get out of our minds, by putting it on screen, and then forgetting about it. 


I prefer to blog because although it could be e-mailed to someone it is usually just one post, in a timeline, among many others. People can look at it, think “this is dull and boring” and move on. With blogs there is no obligation to read any post. It’s all about whims. 


With Substack the opposite is true. You write a post, you e-mail it, and people have to swipe to it, keep it on screen until it’s marked as read, before moving on. 


I like e-mail for private conversations, but feel that newsletters et al would be better served by being blog posts that we can opt in to reading. or skip and ignore. 


And Finally


I prefer blogging to Substack Newsletter writing for two reasons. The first is that I want to write about anything, rather than on a specific theme. The second reason is that I don’t want to generate content that someone else will benefit from, more than I will. I don’t want to be used and exploited. With blogs I do not feel that way. With Substack I do., I went from being a person to a statistic within hours of Substack Notes being created. 

Application Programming Interfaces, Really Simple Syndication and the Open Protocols

Application Programming Interfaces, Really Simple Syndication and the Open Protocols

Byrichard

Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to use their API despite already wanting people to pay them directly. Twitter decided to drive users away and make itself more expensive. As a result of this the website is imploding, rather than thriving. 


Yesterday I read that Reddit, too, wanted to charge users to access its API and whilst this may make sense to some, it’s absurd. It’s absurd because Twitter and Reddit can already charge their users directly for use. By increasing the cost of API use they are trying to get money from their users twice. Once for use of the website, and again for use of the website via APIs and third party apps. The result is that people could spend over a hundred francs per year to exchange messages. For that price we might as well return to SMS. 


Running alongside APIs we have really Simple Syndication and ActivityPub. Both are means of syndicating content but one is centralised whilst the other is not. 


Years ago people complained that Facebook sucked data into its ecosystem but then behaved like a silo, unwilling to share it. Twitter is making the same mistake. 


The ChatGPT explanation


Really Simple Syndication (RSS):

    Functionality: RSS is a standardized format for publishing frequently updated content, such as blog posts, news articles, podcasts, and more. It allows users to subscribe to content feeds and receive updates whenever new content is published.

    Use Case: RSS is commonly used by content publishers to provide their audience with a way to stay updated on new content without having to visit the website regularly. Users can use RSS feed readers or aggregators to subscribe to their preferred feeds and receive updates in one place.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):

    Functionality: APIs are sets of rules and protocols that allow different software applications to communicate and interact with each other. APIs define how different components of software systems can interact, exchange data, and access functionality provided by another application or service.

    Use Case: APIs are used for various purposes, such as retrieving data from external sources, integrating different systems, enabling interactions with third-party services, and building software applications that rely on the functionality and data provided by APIs.

ActivityPub:

    Functionality: ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol that enables users to create, share, and interact with social activities across different platforms or instances. It facilitates the exchange of social data and interactions between federated platforms, allowing users on one platform to communicate and engage with users on other platforms.

    Use Case: ActivityPub is used in federated social networks, where users can create profiles, post updates, follow other users, comment, like, and perform other social interactions. It allows users to have control over their data while being part of a larger interconnected social network.

chatGPT, as generated on the 3rd of June 2023 with the prompt: “What is the difference between Really Simple Syndication, Application Programming interfaces and Activitypub”


Twitter and Reddit want to charge for the use of their API but in the new age of social networks the shift is towards a decentralised model where everyone can talk to everyone else. 


On the FediDB website you see that Mastodon, Misskey, Peertube, pixelfed, Writefreely and Wordpress are included within the fediverse. People already have the freedom to join the instance and community that they want, whilst being connected to other instances. In so doing instances are individually controlled, but the reach is global. 


Whilst Twitter, Meta et al try to trap users into their ecosystems and charge them to use their website, their API and more, alternatives are being created where voluntary contributions are possible, to keep servers running. 


Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to access their databases and use their APIs, at the same time as the ActivityPub and Authenticated Transfer protocols are being developed.  At a time when Reddit and Twitter should be fighting to keep third party developers interested they are doing the opposite, by pricing them out of the development cycle. 


And Finally


For the first time since 2006 the Social Web is broadening again as new projects and ideas are developed and implemented that help connect people, without making them vulnerable to single points of failures. When Instagram and WhatsApp were bought by Facebook the web lost a lot of its resiliency. With the buying of Twitter by an individual the need to prevent this from ever happening again became clear and interesting solutions are coming up. I like that the Fediverse exists and is coming of age, and that BlueSky may run in parallel. Twitter and Reddit are trying to charge for their data, but their data is no longer niche. 

The Solitaire Puzzle

The Solitaire Puzzle

Byrichard

Recently I rediscovered my love of the game solitaire. It is the game we played on windows 3.1 and other windows operating systems, up to iOS and more. Solitaire is a simple game to play on a mobile phone, ipad or computer, whether laptop or desktop. 


I have found that a game of solitaire can last from two to four minutes between deal and win. It’s the type of game that takes a lot of focus when you’re learning to play it as a child. As an adult though I find that within milliseconds I make the decisions and move on to the next one. 


The paradox of solitaire is that it’s an old and simple game. Is the card red or black. Is there somewhere I can place the card. If not then I just deal, and deal, until I can. The more you play the quicker you recognise whether an opportunity exists or not. That’s why it becomes a relaxing thing to do, whilst watching television, or listening to something. 


The paradox of Soliaire is that such an old and simple game, is, in many ways more compelling than the games that require you to watch adverts every 30 seconds or so, depending on how quickly you fail, or succeed at a task. It’s the type of game you can play, fully focused, or as a distraction, and succeed. 


I have played plenty of modern mobile phone games and it’s the one that I gravitate towards now, because it’s the one that costs the least, and forces me to see the least adverts. It’s also the one that doesn’t require me to wait for three hours for A to b ready, before being able to do c, before completing task D. 


I think Solitaire is a great little game to play during our free time. 

Playing with the Hugo With An Old Site

Playing with the Hugo With An Old Site

Byrichard

For a few days I have been playing with Hugo with Markdown and HTML pages. It says that it is “the world’s fastest framework for building websites” and so far I do notice that it has a key strength that I like. 


Front Matter


That strength is that with small modifications you can take an existing static website and make it dynamic.  Hugo requires that each page has Front Matter.  


Front matter is:


• title


• date


• tags


• description


• author


• slug


• draft


• and more. It’s a quick and easy way of organising a website, one page at a time. 


Front Matter according to chatGPT is “a metadata configuration section that is commonly used in static site generators like Hugo, Jekyll, and others.” It is placed at the top of a document to provide useful information like post title, publish date, tags and more. The beauty of tags, author and other tags is that they are used to organise data without the need for a CMS back end. 


The Niche it Fills


The advantage of Hugo, over a CMS like Wordpress, is that it doesn’t lock you into itself. It allows you to create pages, and to organise those pages by tags, category or other. It allows you, via the layout metadata to specify which css layout a page should use. You can have one website section with one theme, and another section with another theme. 


If your website has a section that is about geography, and another about environmental systems. You use the relevant tags for each page. If you click on the geography tag you get a page with a list of all the pages tagged with geography. If you click on “Environmental Studies” you get the content on that topic. 


Aside from creating tags you can create a hierarchy. If you write “film/french” it will recognise that you have the tag “film” and within that tag you have the sub tag of french. If you write about french films you can add the tag “french/film” rather than “french, film” and it will create sub-tags. This is an effective means of organising tags. 


The Weaknesses


When you create pages their default is draft, which means that you need to change draft to false if you want it to generate pages with the hugo command. When a page is generated it does not switch the draft status from true to false, so you need to tell it to export drafts each time. 


When you generate the static website it creates a directory for each page, with an index.html page in each. 


The same is true of the tags page generation. If you have 20 pages you will have 20 directories with index.html pages. If you have  100 tags you will have one hundred folders with an index.html file and an index.xml page.  If you want to fix this Hugo calls them ugly URLs. 


Switching from Pelican to Hugo


Initially I thought Pelican looked like a powerful tool until I encountered the issue with categories being “one per page” by default. The plugin to allow for more was simple to implement but I like to experiment with tools and I found that Hugo is an interesting alternative. 


The Strength


I want the flexibility of a CMS driven website without being stuck within Wordpress or another CMS. This tool gives me the features of a CMS without the limitations. As i add Front Matter information to each page, so it becomes easy to index every page and update navigation one final time, rather than every single time small changes are made. 


Partial Templates


With Hugo you can create partial templates, as you can with Laravel and other framework tools, except that with this framework html and markdown are used. The learning curve is more gradual. 


The Sitemap


A nice feature of Hugo is that it generates a sitemap with information about the location of each file, when it was last changed, the change frequency and priority. In this way Google and other search engines may quickly see what has changed and when. 


And Finally


If your website is already written in HTML it makes sense to find a tool that will connect all the pages together, for navigation. The CSS, JS, and html stay the same. It’s just the framework behind the scenes, connecting everything efficiently. 

Twenty Seven Thousand Steps in BareFoot Shoes

Byrichard

A few days ago I took twenty seven thousand steps in barefoot shoes. My feet did not suffer at all from walking that far in such shoes. I did some of that walking in the vapor gloves and the rest in the Trail Gloves. The beauty of barefoot walking is that you acclimate to such shoes quite fast. Within a matter of a week or two they become comfortable and feel normal. 


The problem with normal shoes is that they are made of solid parts. They might pinch around the top of the foot near the toes, and the material that protects the back of the heel wears away and begins to cause blisters sometimes. 


For a while I found that most conventional shoes became uncomfortable for one reason or another. I also found that they were uncomfortable twice. The first time is when you just bought them, because your feet needs to get used to the new shoe shape. The second time is when the rear of the shoe gets worn through and the heel rubs against the unprotected plastic. Both of these situations require either blister protection, or just accepting the slight discomfort. 


That I can walk 27,000 steps in a single day, with barefoot shoes says a lot about these shoes. Although they offer very little padding they feel natural within days, rather than weeks. 


They even felt comfortable with running today. I ran a few minutes at a time. I felt no pain or warnings. 


Ideally I would be walking in vapor glove shoes, rather than trail gloves. I don’t. Most of my walking is on tarmac or concrete. Both of these are hard surfaces and an unprotected heel will hit the ground with a lot of force. This causes pain, especially over thousands of steps. With the trail gloves I can walk as if I had not transitioned from one shoe type to the other. I don’t want to change my daily walk, to accommodate shoes. I want to do the opposite. So far I have succeeded. 

Hiking in the Jura in Minimal Shoes

Hiking in the Jura in Minimal Shoes

Byrichard

Today I went for a short walk in the Jura with minimal shoes and I felt fine. The shoes, despite being thin soled, felt fine on the dry dirt paths. They do get wet when walking in dew covered grass but that’s what you would expect so that’s acceptable. 


When you’re wearing minimal shoes you can be barefoot or with socks but both the shoes, and socks dry quickly when there is so little fabric. That’s the bonus of minimal shoes. The other benefit is that they’re light and responsive, so I felt comfortable for the entire walk. They feel natural. 


I walked with these shoes because I know the path well so I don’t worry about wondering into the unknown with shoes that are not adapted to the situation. The route is one that I know very well, thus the lack of concern about shoes. 


View of Cuvaloup with dandelions
View of Cuvaloup with dandelions


Now is a good time to go to the mountains as there are thousands of flowers that have bloomed.


The Two Cultures


It was interesting to see the two shoe cultures today. On one side there was me, wearing thin, minimal shoes. On the other you had conventional shoes that offer a lot of cushioning. What’s interesting is that I noticed. Before wearing barefoot shoe wearing I saw a shoe as a shoe. Now I notice the difference and look and feel. 


The trail gloves felt great on the walk today. So thin and light and yet perfectly comfortable. I don’t know whether wearing vapor gloves, and then trail gloves has much effect on comfort levels. I really do feel happy with the trail gloves. They’re simple, comfortable shoes. The only question to answer, now, is whether they will last 800 km of walking or not. If they do then they are a good future option. 

The Lost Art of Silent Material Cutting

The Lost Art of Silent Material Cutting

Byrichard

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.