Bouquetins grazing at the Creux Du Van
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Creux Du Van Xero Xcursion Test

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

During the 30,000 step walk at the Creux Du Van on Sunday I was wearing the Xero Xcursion shoes. For almost the entire walk they felt comfortalbe. These are light, thin soled shoes that are minimal. This means that you feel more of the ground, and the soles will take the shape of the floor beneath your feet. Step on a root and you will have your toes putting pressure and the rest of the foot adapting around the route.

Fine for Uphill Walking

With most barefoot shoes I feel the heel smash into the ground so I don’t like wearing them because I don’t like harming myself incidentally. With the Trail Glove Seven and the Xero Xcursion shoes I can walk normally and not feel my heel smashing into the floor with every step. These shoes were fine for the walk up. I didn’t feel any regret in wearing them. On the flat part I didn’t feel any regret either.

Not Wet in Mud

I walked through several muddy parts without caring because I knew that by the time I got back to the care the mud would have dried up and fallen off. It fell off during the walk down so when I did check for mud there was none. The other thing that surprised me is that when I walked in muddy patches water did not make its way into the shoes so my feet remained dry. Mud is not the same as heavy rain. These shoes are fine in mud.

Slight Disomfort Going Downhill

It’s on the way down the hill that I noticed slight discomfort. It wasn’t serious discomfort. I could just feel my feet sliding and putting pressure on the inside of the shoe. I have no blisters after the fact so it was just a sentiment. I might wear proper hiking socks just to be safe.

Of Note

I have been wearing “barefoot shoes for months by now so my walking style has adapted to “being barefoot” with the Trail Gloves. Vapor Gloves, Trail Glove six and the Merrel barefoot shoes I have are not comfortable for long walks. I only find the Trail Glove 7 and Xero Xcursion shoes comfortable. Experiment with shorter walks and normal walks, before doing a 16km hike.

And Finally

The advantage of minimal/barefoot shoes is that they’re very light. They are not rigid so your foot can adapt to the ground beneath with ease, rather than balancing. For the most part they were so comfortable that I forgot that I wore them. The fact that I could descend with such ease is good. This was a proper test. 30,000 steps and with 900 meters of climbing and 860 meters of descent. I didn’t push through snow because I wasn’t worried about mud. If I had walked in snow I probably would have wet my socks. That’s why I had a spare pair in the car, in case. I would hike again in the Xero shoes.

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Amersports and Sports tracker

Byrichard

Today Amer Sports announced that it has bought Sports tracker. Sports Tracker is an application that I have been using since I had the Nokia N95 8GB. I used it on symbian, iOS and Android devices over the years. What I love about this app is the way it displays information about the work out. It gives you several screens while you are exercising with the option to select which information you want to see most.

Once you arrive home and synchronise the workout with the web interface you can see the information displayed above. You can choose whether there is a topographic map, a normal map or satellite imagery. It is simple and intuitive to read.

Suunto make devices that I like using. I have used the Suunto D9 diving computer, the Suunto D4i diving computer, the Suunto Ambit 2 and the Suunto Ambit3. Suunto dive computers are small diving computers that you can wear in day to day life. When you are passionate about diving this is nice.

The Suunto Ambit family are more interesting for people who do land based sports. I used the Suunto Ambit 2 and 3 when doing via ferrata, hiking, cycling and other sports. The advantage of these fitness watches is that they have long battery life. This means that you can be active for two or three days before worrying about the battery dying. In this respect they are far better than mobile phones for fitness activity tracking.

Suunto products and Sports tracker do not communicate natively. Suunto products synchronise with movescount. From movescount you need to export the GPX workout files and import them to Sports tracker. I would like to see Suunto devices communicate directly with Sports tracker. In my eyes the best option would have been for Sports tracker to buy movescount and for them to take over the web interface for Suunto. They both provide interesting web interfaces and combining the two would have been mutually beneficial.

Time will show whether Amer Sports with links to sports tracker, precor and Suunto will come out with an interesting amalgamation of the three products/services. I look forward to finding out.

 

Learning by Trial And Error

Learning by Trial And Error

Byrichard

Every day or two I see people post about how the Fediverse should be simplified to welcome new people. It’s a shame. Signing up for a fediverse server is easy. It’s the same process as for every site. The biggest difference is that you’re signing up for a privately owned, crowd sourced community instance. The instances vary slightly from mastodon to firefish to ClassicPress to WordPress but at their core they are the same. It’s just the community that changes, but even that can be the same if you migrate from one instance to another.

Experimenting

A core aspect of the World Wide Web is that it is a platform where people can experiment with ideas, community tools and more. If you need a manual then you are stuck on websites like Twitter and Facebook, rather than exploring what the World Wide Web has to offer. You’re stuck in a silo.

It worries me that people want to simplify the Fediverse, to write guide books and tutorials. If you spend an hour or two experimenting you’ll understand how things work with ease. I don’t think we need manuals for everything in life, especially not social networks on the fediverse.

The Case for Manuals and Tutorials

There are moments when manuals and tutorials are important. That’s when you’re trying to use something that is not as intuitive as you had hoped. WordPress is plug and play and requires no manual. It works like every other CMS works, so it’s easy to pick up. Hugo is easy to pick up, but you might need to RTFM for one or two functionalities.

The moment you really need a manual or instructions is when you’re experimenting with Angular, Laravel, 11ty, Jekyll and other platforms. It’s when you don’t know what the options are that you need a manual. With the Fediverse all the answers are easy to find. You just need to spend a few minutes looking for them. I suspect that chatGPT, Bard and Bing AI can help you when you have questions.

With Hugo I was able to create pages and get a table of contents with relative ease. With 11ty I got a little stuck so I felt the need for a tutorial. I know what I want to do, and I know how I expect it to work, but it’s not like other solutions. that’s why I decided that for 11ty I would use a learning resource, or more, to experiment with, and learn how to use the tool. I am not against manuals and instructions. I like to read the fantastic manuals, when I get stuck. I even like to ask AI for help in some cases, because I can ask a tailored question and get a tailored answer.

The Case Against Manuals

The more time I spend on Mastodon and the Fediverse, the more it feels like a waste of time. I love the concept, and the freedom we have on the website. What I don’t like is that people want to write manuals and instructions to make the same mistakes as people made, on mastodon, and if that is the case, then I have no reason to stick around. Every day people discuss how to use hashtags, bully people into writing alt text for imagess and encourage thousands or tens of thousands of people to follow individual accounts. If that is what people want then there is little reason for using Mastodon, rather than Twitter. Twitter has the community of friends amassed from 2006 to 2023. The Fediverse is a network of strangers.

I Want the Community to Teach Itself

I want communities to learn by participating, rather than reading. I don’t want people to read a manual about how to use the fediverse, I want them to learn by trial and error, and by what feels good, rather than by doing what is expected. The more time I spend on the fediverse, seeing people speak about better onboarding, the more it feels kitsch, and the more I want to close the tabs.

Experimenting with Eleventy

Since I was getting stuck with eleventy I decided to follow Learn Eleventy From Scratch. As I said, it’s not that I am opposed to learning from guides, manuals, or documentation. I like to learn from these sources, when trial and error doesn’t yield the results that I am looking for, or where trial and error takes more time than is reasonable to figure out.

What I want to do is simple. I want to have one directory for posts, and so far that works quite easily, but I also want another folder that acts as an archive. That is where I am getting stuck, and that is where a manual can streamline my learning process. It’s when I see that I have gaps in understanding that I use manuals to fill them.

And Finally

In my experience the people who write manuals on how to use social media websites are utilitarian, rather than humanists. They encourage people to develop a utilitarian approach to social media and that’s what I fear, and object to.

When you look for books about blogging none of them are about the philosophical or intellectual process. They are all about monetisation, which is fantastic, if you want to be a spammer, but awful if you want to be a humanist. I blog to explore ideas, concepts, and speak of cycling, walking and climbing experiences. If I followed the guide books my blog would be aimed at making a fortune, rather than developing and elaborating ideas.

I will always try something new, without RTFMing (Reading the fantastic Manual), before getting stuck and following a tutorial. What has changed is that now I am learning through manuals, instructions and more, rather than online tutorials. I am learning independently. I am a step further along now.

Nyon In Spring

Nyon In Spring

Byrichard

Due to the pandemic I almost never go to Nyon. If I do I often wear a mask and avoid walking around too much. Most people think the pandemic is over. I see, from the data, that it is not, and I want to stay true to previous ethics and morality.


Flowers in spring on the slope behind the Musée du Léman
Flowers in spring on the slope behind the Musée du Léman


Flowers in spring on the slope behind the Musée du Léman
Flowers in spring on the slope behind the Musée du Léman


Magnolia buds in Nyon, by the lake
Magnolia buds in Nyon, by the lake


I am happier walking in the countryside where there are fewer people, and where it is easy to avoid them. I have no problem wearing a mask, but others do not approve of mask wearing, so I prefer to be a lunatic in the countryside, than in town. I also feel better, emotionally, when I am not reminded that others are living normally despite the pandemic.


On a related note I reached 24,000 steps today. I walked six kilometres in Nyon, this morning, before going for a lunch time run, and finally an afternoon walk. During the afternoon walk I counted 24 people walking along a small stretch of rural road. That’s a lot of people. That’s why I avoid that stretch of road. I prefer empty roads. I prefer solitary walks.


The lake too is exceptionally clear but I don’t dive at the moment, so I won’t take advantage of the excellent visibility. Maybe in the near future I will resume diving. I may start again, when I find job security, and a good group of people to dive with, given the fragility of safety when diving.

Smart Watches – Dumb Habits

Smart Watches – Dumb Habits

Byrichard

When I wore Casio digital watches, Suunto Dive computers, Suunto GPS watches and other wrist wathces I was happy. You wore it and it tracked what you wanted it to track, from walks, to dives, to altitude changes, weather and more. With the Apple watch a new age emerged. The age of the Digital Watch as object of addiction. I don’t like the term addiction, but I use it for simplicity.


The Suunto Spartan Wrist HR I have tracks all day activity and I didn’t mind. It tracked it in the background but didn’t nag you to do more, or to get up every hour. You just got along with your life until you ended your workout and wanted to see a GPS track.


With Fitbit and with Apple watches you have the same invasive habit. Walk 250 steps an hour, stand for one minute every hour. They nag you. As if that wasn’t enough they also nag you to wash your hands for 20 seconds, and more. The Apple watch is too invasive to be pleasant.


One of my biggest frustrations is that although we have one phone each device now has an app, and the apps don’t speak to each other so you have to choose whether to wear watch A for App A, Watch B for app B or Watch C for app c. All of that data is centralised on Apple or Android devices but it doesn’t jump between them so you are forced to make a choice.


If you skip wearing one instead of the other you have a gap in daily data and this bugs me. I went from wearing a GPS watch to track workouts on weekends and evenings to wearing watches 24 hours a day, that all want you to be loyal 24 hours a day to have complete data.


For me to be happy every watch should be able to send the data from the watch to the app, and from the app to the phone, and from that phone to every other app. By putting the data in silos they force loyalty, but by forcing loyalty they tempt me to stop tracking steps, heart rate sleep and other things. They tempt me to wear a simple watch except for my daily walks.

Day 51 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Only Two People At A Time

Day 51 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Only Two People At A Time

Byrichard

Today I went in to a shop without knowing that the limit was two people at a time. Paradoxically there were not two but five people in the shop because if you’re a parent with a child you’re allowed to be two, so there were four people. I saw no sign on the door because the door was open so I didn’t know. The shop in my village doesn’t have that rule.


It seems stupid to ignore the rule for two parents and their kids from separate families. I thought that I would walk my traditional summer route today but of course that was a mistake. A trio of three people from one family were walking lined up making it impossible for me to pass them without them entering my two metre exlusion zone so I waited by a petanque field for them to pass.


A girl and her mother were distracted doing something and the bike began to roll down a slope and I questioned, “How do I help without touching the bike. I thought of running and stopping it with my foot but as it gained momentum I ran out of time. It rolled into the road.


I was thinking “How can I help the mother walking with her children and I came to the conclusion that the safest part of the bike to grab and place it back on the pavement was the down tube. Saddles and handlebars are always touched but it’s unlikely that people, in normal circumstances would touch the down tube.


These are the things we need to think about during a pandemic. Helping someone as a spur of the moment thing is temporarily out of the question as a moment’s kindness could lead to tragedy, not that I expect either of us to be at high risk of catching the virus from each other. According to a recent article there were just 40 new contaminations yesterday. Now we’re even further into the long tail of the pandemic.


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Cat nap.

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