Dear twitter friends…
Dear twitter friends I have deleted my main account due to tired I am with twitter and it’s poor performance. I am in other places. I’ll catch you there.
Finding the time to enjoy the Cycling season this spring was complicated. Between the rain and bad weather it was hard to find two days in a row with good weather. As a consequence of this I have not been very active. I set myself the goal of cycling 50 kilometres per week which is conservative and I have been unable to reach that goal.
During this time I am really happy about one thing. I started climbing every Thursday with a Glocals group from Lausanne. We go to Rocspot, an indoor climbing wall where you can practice routes from 4a up to 9a or more. It has indoor and exterior walls. This place is perfect for rainy days and training. Go when the weather is nice. You have the freedom to choose your routes.
I am really happy with one achievement during this day’s ride. I reached 57.2 km/h cycling down from La Rippe to Crassier. For some reason I had the power to reach that speed. That isn’t bad for a mountain bike with slick tires.
A good reason to cycle in the countryside is of course to see nature change from season to season, to see the crops from their infancy to their harvest. Today I saw two combine harvesters. One was collecting crops and the other was travelling between fields. Two days ago when I was cycling I passed by the Paléo festival fields and saw that event tents are going up.
As a last thought it is that time of the year when you cycle hard and when you stop you feel really warm. I love that feeling. I hope to cycle a lot more in coming weeks and months.
Valentine’s day is a day both dreaded and feared by most for two reasons, as a couple because of the pressure you’re under and as a single because you’re single. In the social media though it can be one of the most amusing times. My social media valentine consisted in two parts. The first on twitter and the second a net2meet (From online to offline meeting) with a fellow seesmicer.
The first one was fun thanks to it’s simplictiy. When you write @ username <3 it takes this to mean that you heart the other user. With maggie a fellow seesmicer we filled each other’s timelines as well as that of many others with this electronic sign of affection. It was amusing to see what a good mood it put both Maggie and I in as a result. The pressure Valentine’s day usually puts on people dissipated entirely.
I reached my 17,000th tweet yesterday and I dedicated it to all the girls I have frequently tweeted with. They’re what made valentine’s day so much fun. I love the idea that I have so many conversations on a daily basis. We’re a community based around twitter and our love of new methods of communication. It’s a good community and I’ll spend many more ours there.
I flew back to Switzerland and that’s where I met Pioupiounette a fellow seesmicer and within a few seconds we already felt comfortable with each other. That’s because in the social media we spend so much time chatting with and seeing people that when we meet in real life we’ve already got a collective experience. In french it’s “Un vécu commun”. As a little bonus I got to see the projection room of the cinema and the reels there. It was fun to hear the whirring away of the machine, seeing two arc lights, the cinema from another angle and such. In other words it was an adventure.
The socia media are a fun place to spend some time and this year was one of the most relaxed valentine’s days because technology meant that I had some good friends to have an enjoyable time with. Keep in mind that Valentine’s day is the day I got my driving license so whilst others celebrate love and relationships I celebrate mobility and frienships. Yesterday was a pleasure and I hope next year will be just as good.
Airpods are the most comfortable bluetooth headphones I have tried. Over the winter months I tried earphones by Sony and other brands. After months of experimenting I came back to the airpods.
With the Sony WHR 1000 earpods there are a number of issues. The first is that noise cancelling changes noticeably. Several times I felt as if I had changed altitude because it switched from one sound environment to the next.
With all brands I found that I don’t like earphones that are made from rubber in-ear. They feel uncomfortable almost immediately and I did not get used to this discomfort over time. With the airpods it’s easy to wear them for hours without worrying.
Seasonal considerations should be an important aspect of earphone design. Almost all earphones are designed with warm summer weather in mind. They stick out from the ear. This means that you can’t wear hats, rain hoods or other head covers without the chance of either ripping out the earpieces or having the rubber part pressed against your eardrum.
I use my airpods to listen to podcasts via the phone and watch video content on my laptop from Youtube and Netflix. I recently edited a 30 second video using airpods rather normal headphones and it was acceptable.
I need to the noise cancelling features of the Sony earphones on a longer train journey, a car journey where I am not driving or a flight if and when I fly next.
from Christian Mülhauser on Vimeo.
Gear used:
Sony a7S @ ISO 40’000-51’200 Slog2
Canon 5D Mark III with Magic Lantern for timelapse onlyLenses: Canon 24mm f2.8, Canon 16-35mm f2.8, Tokina 24-70mm f2.8, Canon 70-200mm f4
UAV: DJI S900 with DJI A2 Flight Controller
UAV Gimbal: FTBO G10 (no post stabilization)Handheld Gimbal:DYS HHG5D (no post stabilization)
Gimbal Controller: 2 Basecam SimpleBGC 32bit V2.44b9
This video is interesting because of it’s demonstration of how well the Sony A7S copes with low light conditions. This was filmed with moonlight rather than daylight. We see the details in the snow tracks and we see the snow.
We need to see some more night riding but in a city or in the countryside where existing light is sparse. I look at the detail of the snow which is crisp but I also notice the lack of detail in the clothes worn by the riders. I would like to see this camera tested in a cave where the only light source is a helmet light.
It expands the shooting day. It means that when night comes you take an opportunity to get more footage. Imagine using this technology in the arctic circle where the sun does not rise for more than a few minutes a day or when night lasts for a few days or weeks at a time. It means  that you can film arctic wildlife during an extended period of time.
We tested usable dynamic range of the given cameras. With 12Â stops the usable dynamic range of the A7S comes surprisingly close to the Arri Amira (13.1 stops) with its legendary Alexa sensor (see our full review here).
It would be interesting to see the camera tested in high contrast conditions, for example in valleys or gorges where part of the scene is in the shade and part of it is in the sun. Towns are also an interesting place to see how good the camera is at dealing with high dynamic ranges.
On the 6th day of FIFAD two films stood out. One looked at a wheelchair bound woman who still had the urge to go climbing and the second film looked at a woman who went from riding snowboarding lines in winter to base jumping in summer. By having these two documentaries the FIFAD event promoted women who appreciate and enjoy extreme sports.
A few weeks ago I wrote about superhuman climbers, it explored how differently abled people were empowered through the efforts by climbing centres to allow wheelchair bound people, people with mental issues and others to climb despite the challenge. Rêver sous les étoiles was a documentary exploring this topic from another angle. Vanessa François moved to the mountains with the goal of becoming an Alpinist but was paralysed from the waist down after a block of ice damaged her spinal column. Thanks to the people she surrounded herself with she was able to continue climbing, cycling and doing other sports despite this disability.
In the film we see how friends set up a route on El Capitan for her to climb and how the CRS in France prepared the equipment for her to spend a night at over 4000 metres near the Aiguille du Midi. We see how a woman, surrounded by the right people could, despite her injuries, keep living adventures.
There is a moment in this film where we see that she is given the opportunity to act in a play where actors in wheel chairs and conventional actors could interact to provide people with a show. As I watched this documentary I thought about how technology could be adapted to be invisible in the performance. At the moment wheelchair bound actors need to rely on conventional systems to move the chair around. Imagine if engineers from EPFL and other tech universities designed a wheelchair control system that would allow wheelchair bound actors and performers to control the wheel chair with arm and head movements. Imagine if the movement of the chair did not rely on a joystick but rather a harness or sweater which controlled the chair’s movement. In future I expect that technology will become invisible, to provide these people with wheel chairs.
The documentary is great because it shows that injuries are an opportunity to adapt new techniques to conventional sports rather than to give up and live a life that is more limited. This empowering documentary should encourage people not to give up on their passions and to continue striving for more.
This documentary is about Géraldine Fasnacht, a snowboarder from Verbier who won snowboarding competitions in winter and then moved on to base jumping after friends invited her to jump. In this documentary she introduces a doctor to skydiving and explains the parallels between snowboarding and base jumping. She talks about some of the principals of base jumping and how technology has allowed the sport to improve and become more interesting. As with many extreme sports documentaries and films she speaks about the importance of safety norms to make sure that dangers are avoided.
In diving, mountaineering, base jumping and other sports there is a common philosophy to minimise risk. She speaks about the importance of knowing when to call a jump, to cancel it if there is doubt. This is an important aspect of many conversations in extreme sports films. Goals and ambitions are important but it is just as important to know when to say “Let’s try again next time”.
Sommets de Vie by Sebastien Montaz Rosset illustrates this effectively. The film maker, along with Jordi Tosas, who had been on 37 trips to the Himalayas arrived just two days before the earthquake. When the earthquake struck they abandoned their original projects to help with search and rescue efforts. They went in to more remote valleys to scout what areas were affected by landslides, where bodies could be found and to find whether people who had survived needed help. In this film they walk along footpaths. Occasionally they had to cross multiple places where landslides had occurred. When they found corpses or possessions they took pictures along with GPS coordinates in order to provide search and rescue teams with information to help with the repatriation of remains to help provide families with closure. This documentary is nice because it shows Westerners working along with Asians, UN organisations such as the World Food Program and others to help people cope with and adapt to the new situation.
At some moments we see that landslides are taking place as food and aid are provided. We see how although the Himalayas are beautiful they are also a dangerous place. I like that the film concludes by saying that Jordi still wants to set up a ski school, so that people in the relevant countries can enjoy the mountains differently. It is nice to see that people who travel to these areas give back and integrate with locals.
Yesterday I met a friend in geneva. The one that uses Google Latitude. I used my mobile phone to see where he was and just using cell towers I got a pretty good fix on where he was, within just a few hundred meters.
When I called him to get a more accurate fix, i.e. for him to input the address as his latitude position using the power of Google maps, latitude and 3g it took just a minute to find the actual address.
For this reason I love google latitude. When you’ve got technologically savvy users it makes being geo-loced twenty four hours a day extremely useful.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Thought it was a joke but you really did it!
Impressive somehow…
I was on twitter for two years with an average tweet rate of 72.6 per day. And from one day to the next it no longer exists. Too many superficial people on the site. It was time for me to move on. I am using a secondary account but twitter is going to be a far smaller part of my life. So small that I will only go to check on twitter when I have replies or a new follow.
It's like that relationship you see going nowhere. It was time to break up. I made sure there was no going back and I'm happy for that.
I thought it was a joke at first as well, but I did see this coming.
Sounds like you've been pretty frustrated with Twitter lately. I followed your secondary account, but won't be offended if you don't follow back 😉
Best wishes,
Mark
It's no joke, I did delete that account. I have a backup of my last 3800 tweets on that account and thousands more are backed up on various portions of the web, either through tweetbackup, greader or others.
One of the reasons for my frustration has been how people speak and profess their knowledge of social networks yet are to conventional to actually use them to their full potential.
As a result I am still on twitter, but with a far reduced presence.
🙁 My nights aren't the same without your tweets. I understand your thoughts completely though. How many of your followers ever bothered to subscribe to this feed? [raises hand]
I thought I was better at using the social nets to their full potential, but Twitter and other places have exposed me to so many of them, that I use a lot, but none to full potential, something I will try to address in the coming weeks and months.
I'll be trying to keep up with you elsewhere now, keep us updated on the Twitterless life. 🙂
~Shawn K (@thattalldude)
I still tweet but just warza, rather than warzabidul as a twitter name and I am still following you from that account. Those who were following me, in large part were friends. Too many of them took too long to aknowledge my tweets so they were devalued.
Now it's a new twitter account and friendfeed. On friendfeed I'm one of the two hundred most active users of the site at the moment.
Follow my new twitter account.