Yesterday i drove through the rain for two hours at night and it was so demanding that i stopped the audiobook to focus on driving. It was harder to see the lines, and the rain was heavy enough to impact visibility.
I made it but i would think twice about driving through such rain at night on a 12hr drive for the last two hours.
One of the weaknesses of Electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. One of the advantages of electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. For some people this is a deal breaker. They don’t want to be forced to wait from two to 12 hours for their car to charge. I think that this could be a strength of electric cars.
When you drive a conventional car you go to see people for an hour or two, and then you get in the car and you drive home. With an electric car you don’t behave like this. You drive somewhere that has a plug. You plug in the car and then you sit down, write a blog post, and then you go and see people. You even go for a walk with this people, have lunch, and more.
With a petrol car you go to see people and you can leave whenever you want. With the electric car you need to slow down. You need to give the car time to recharge from an ordinary wall socket. Plenty of buildings do not have the capacity to fast charge cars, so that’s where learning to slow down comes in to play.
Yesterday I drove home at rush hour and I welcomed that traffic was slow. In a petrol car I would be frustrated and impatient to get from A to B but in an electric car I am not. The reason is simple. If you accelerate fast you waste energy. If you drive fast you burn more energy. If you drive at traffic jam speeds you use less energy for your trip. Instead of using 10 or more percent for a set journey you use seven to eight percent. When 10 percent equates to two hours of waiting for the car to charge, it pays to drive more conservatively.
If you drive at rush hour you can drive more conservatively, without annoying other road users.
When you take Jubilee line trains, or electric buses you hear the sound of the motors as they accelerate, or regenerate power as they slow down. It is a fun sound. You get a tamer version of this with electric cars. I find it fun.
If I was driving to the shops and back I would be using one percent or less per trip. To recharge the battery after such trips would take a few minutes, rather than a few hours. Electric cars encourage short trips as charge times are lower but they also encourage longer drives to be for longer periods of time. In so doing electric cars encourage us to take the time to experience the places we drive to.
Sometimes you go for a daily walk and all the roses are starting to emerge, and these are not tiny ones. These are saucer sized roses. They are mainly growing at the side of orchards. These are Red and pink, but there are other colours, so if I walk in the right places I should find them too.
I could have posted these images to Instagram or Facebook, but I’d rather post them on my own website, for the world to see, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, three to six years from now. 😉
We can’t all head to the mountains and the slopes that lack snow. Some of us head south to the coast. The weather is good and the air is warm enough. It is warm enough for me, not just to consider swimming but to actually do it.
The sea is blue and green as usual with waves breaking. I saw a few orange buoys but I am unsure about whether they are for diving boats or swimmers. Usually for divers they are not so visible.
Dive sites are more stealthy.
The path is clear and easy to follow. It is green and white.
I went for a swim today. I went in an unheated pool, rather than the sea. I could go to the sea but that requires driving and organisation. Swimming in a pool doesn’t.
I don’t like getting into cold water. It tingles. I managed to swim for about ten minutes but if I put my head and brought it back up then it felt cold. I like to be warm. Swimming in cold water when I am not hot to start with, goes against my natural instincts.
I try to alternate between walking, cycling and swimming, to work different parts of the body.
In Switzerland the number of Covid sick is going up and the government is doing nothing to slow it down or stop it. It is allowing people to fall sick despite one fifth of people who fall sick developing long Covid. I am tired of the pandemic, but not enough to give up on maintaining safe habits like wearing a mask, social distancing and more. For as long as I do not fall sick with long Covid there is hope. It is worth staying Covid free, despite the social isolation it results in.
If you want a bag that isn’t a bag until you need it to be a bag then the Trevolution Ultralight Daypack is a great option. I like that it folds into its bag and that it’s easy to have with you at all times. What I don’t like about the version I have is that it’s too flimsy for daily use and the top opening is not practical. It requires both hands to open and close the main compartment.
I don’t like its feel on my back during daily walks. All the wait shifts to the wrong place and the straps feel flimsy when used for one and a half to two hour daily walks. It is not for that niche.
The niches that it does fill:
For at least two or three years I used a stoke Bike 10 litre bag. I used it so often, for daily walks to the shops, my daily one and a half hour walks, and more, that the zip eventually gave in. Small bags are great because you can use them for a rain coat, water and external battery to charge the phone.
This is a backup or secondary bag. It is good to keep in the car, in the pocket of a traveling bag or a coat pocket. It is good for occasional use. If you want a bag that you can use for two hours a day on a daily basis then a proper bag is better. If I could I would swap it for the version with a zip, rather than the cord to store helmets or other bulkier items. The one with a zip is 9 CHF more. There is a Sea To Summit variant.
The right side of the Transmission Chain is at the event itself. Â Transmission chain is a term used to describe the route that a signal takes from an event venue to the device on which you are watching an event. As a camera operator the right side of the transmission chain for me is at the event itself.
For the IFSC World Cup in Villars this year I was both a camera operator and a belayer. Belaying at a world cup event is an interesting experience because it’s rare to clip and unclip from so many climbers in such a short amount of time. Climbers have a limited time to get up the route. They have six minutes. This means that every 12 minutes or so you’re belaying a new climber as they progress up the wall. It’s a great task for introverts. You observe what the person is doing. When they need rope you’re ready to give it. If they’re struggling you make sure to amortise their fall. When they make it to the top or come back down you help them untie the rope and then you start again.
Aside from this task I was camera operator during the semi-final and final of the climbing competition. Â This means that whilst most people were standing in the crowd watching the competition I was on a podium in the middle of the crowd filming the climbers as they progress up the wall.
From here you see the crowd and you see the climbers from a privileged point of view. You can see the climbers and what they are doing comfortably. You’re also more attentive. You’re following their every move, watching as they clip and progress. You see them progress and you hear the commentator and hear the crowd cheering.
When you’re on the “wrong” side of the transmission you’re hearing the international sound and you’re seeing what the vision mixer is seeing but you’re not seeing the event in context. The image below illustrates this.
In television broadcasting you usually have the cameras, an OB van and an SNG truck or fibre connections. These go from the venue to the Network Operating centre. The signal is encoded either for web streaming and sent to the content distribution network or it is sent on to national broadcasters. On that side of the transmission chain you are in an air conditioned office as a passive observer ready to react if there is an issue and waiting for the event to end.
