Arid Spain

Five Hundred and One Days Later

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I have written a blog post a day for five hundred and one days. My legs are achy from a twenty minute run yesterday and I am writing this from a 2016 Mac Book Pro running Ubuntu 24.04 on an external SSD. I am running it this way because I wanted to test whether the OS bothers me, encouraging me to return to MacOS or whether it is stable enough for me to use this browser seriously.

Creux Du Van

Tomorrow I am going to the Creux Du Van for the first time in nine years. I went nine years ago alone, and now I’m going with a group of people. It’s my first group activity since the World sXR Forum in 2019, or maybe the last was the Black Movie Film Festival in Geneva in January 2020. In either case this is a big step. The pandemic never ended so I never resumed being normal.

Yesterday I was sent a message asking if I would like to cancel my participation tomorrow. I saw it this morning. The cruel paradox is that I hesitted. I’m an introvert. I feel that someone would enjoy doing the group activity more than me so I would leave them my place.

Four Year

It’s four years since I did something with a goup. If I like it “tant mieux” and if I don’t “tant pis”. I could be like the others and catch trains and buses but that would add an hour to the travel time, and I love that my lungs have been COVID free so far. I don’t want that to change.

If I like the group then I would do more activities with that group, and if I don’t then I can do things with others. I could even organise things, as I used to, for a few events, a few years ago.

Spring and Summer are coming back, and the pandemic will never end.

Pestered by the Trackpad

As I write this with the Mac Book Pro running Ubuntu 24.04 I find that I keep clicking the mouse every so often and moving the cursor to where I do not want it to be. When I was getting used to this laptop I had this problem and now I seem to have the same issue with the new OS.

Nextcloud and Photoprism

I installed Nextcloud and Photoprism on this machine, as part of the experiment. I want to see how different the experience is with a higher spec machine than a Raspberry Pi. Photoprism seems much faster. When I get used to using Ubuntu on this machine I will install it on the local drive.

And Finally

The light is yellow today, due to sahelian sand being in the clouds. I noticed that the wind felt warm yesterday and today we see evidence that the warm wind came from the Sahelian region. Things will be covered in sand by the end of the day.

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Half Way Through To This Year’s Cycling Goal.
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Half Way Through To This Year’s Cycling Goal.

Byrichard

So far this year I have been cycling for 680 km in 33hrs with a height gain of 6800 meters. In this time I have used my narrative clip 2 device to document the ride with a picture every 10-30 seconds as I want to focus on riding rather than other things. I like to have as high a moving time as possible so I usually stop once I get back to my starting point.

By cycling I see the landscape at a slower, more interesting speed. I see the roads, I smell the vegetation, I feel the heat and I feel the cold. I also discover small paths that I would not take in a car or on a scooter. In practicing this sport I get to know the landscape. I also get to see seasonal changes.

This year I have cycled in the rain, in the snow, in the wind and on days like today. Today it was sunny and there was no wind to fight against. It made the ride more pleasant.

The technology I took on today’s ride was my narrative clip 2 to take pictures of the bike ride, my Crosscall Odyssey+ phone, the Cateye Evo+ and finally the Suunto Ambit 3. I also took the Ricoh Theta S but never stopped to take pictures. For future rides I should fix it to the handle bars. I could bring you with me on my next bike ride. Of course I would keep just the interesting bits of the ride. I can throw away the rest.

On Cancelling On-Running Cyclon membership
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On Cancelling On-Running Cyclon membership

Byrichard

On-Running, is ideal, in theory, but sub-optimal in reality. The biggest issue I found with On-Running CloudNeo shoes is that they are seasonal running shoes. If it’s icy or wet you’re going to slip and slide all over the place. If you’re a former snowboarder and cyclist you will recover, but if you’re not used to slipping and sliding you will fall. As a result of this I got shoes a month or two ago but never used them because it was either rainy, or cold.

Imagine having a pair of shoes that you pay 35 CHF per month for, but that can’t be used for 4-6 months per year. That’s a lot of money for shoes that are dormant due to not being well suited to the running environment.

My second grudge with on-running is that they encourage you to think “Oh, you should, but you don’t have to return the shoes that are warn out”. The cost if you don’t return shoes is 100 CHF. If you have warn out shoes with the sole peeling off with the first pair then that is appalling customer service. If a shoe is degrading 100 CHF is very expensive for an unusable pair of shoes.

Comfort

The shoes were comfortable when running, at first but eventually they began to feel like crap. The shoes lasted three months with my use before starting to fall apart. The sole fell off. I felt that the toe box was uncomfortable when wearing them after several weeks of use, especially with walking. I find that on-running shoes in general are not comfortable walking shoes.

Cancellation process

I cancelled my subscription today. I haven’t used the replacement shoes at all, due to the unfriendly weather and badly suited grip for winter Switzerland. As a result I am stuck with a connundrum. Do I return shoes that are perfectly fine, to be recycled, to avoid paying 100 CHF on top of the 35 CHF per month I paid for several months, or do I pay 100 CHF? I think the answer is obvious. Return the shoes.

Idealisticly

Idealisticly, once you cancel the membership you should be given the option of running the shoes until they need to be recycled, and return them then. The first pair I had were worth the 105 CHF I paid. The second pair were worthless due to snow, ice and wet roads making the second pair unusuable for months. They’re still new. I haven’t removed any of the packaging from the shoes yet. I could use them for three months, and then send them to be recycled out of contract. I have paid for them. I just never got to use them due to them not being designed for a Swiss winter, despite being Swiss shoes.

And Finally

I really like the idea of a shoe subscription where shoes are recycled after their useful life is over. I liked running in them and during the summer months they were a pleasure to use, for running. For walking they’re sub-optimal, especially for longer walks.

What I would like with the Cyclon program is an option to suspend the plan while the conditions are not good for the shoes. When it’s raining, snowing, and the ground is frozen these shoes are dangerous. When it’s warm and sunny the shoes are great. Sending them back is easy, and the process is convenient.

In my opinion on-running need to make Cloudneo shoes that are usable in winter, and comfortable for walking, and I will renew my subscription.

Suunto and Sports tracker collaborate.
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Suunto and Sports tracker collaborate.

Byrichard

I have been using sports tracker for years. I first used it on the Nokia N95 8GB several years ago. This was an excellent app that allowed you to track your moves using the mobile phone as a GPS. The limitation of such an app was battery life on mobile phones. The battery usually did not last more than an hour at first and eventually progressed to two hours or more.

The first Suunto Device I used was for diving. I used the Suunto D9 dive computer for many months before upgrading. As I satisfied with this device I bought the Suunto Ambit 2 and eventually the Suunto Ambit 3. The reason for buying these watches is battery life. As normal watches they can last for 100 days, losing about one percent a day. If you use them as fitness watches then they easily last for a day or more.

When you’re doing via Ferrata, hiking, cycling or doing other sports you want the device you use to track your fitness efforts for as long as you’re going. That’s where Sports trackers and other mobile phones had their weakness. Mobile phone apps sometimes crash. If you’re pushing yourself hard during a workout you do not want to reach the end of a workout with no data.

Another frustration I often encountered was with Movescount, Suunto’s social sports app. At the end of quite a few workouts, I was unable to sync my workout data and analyse my progress. At the time,

I wanted to see Suunto and Sports tracker combined. They’re both Finnish companies and they both excel at specific tasks. Suunto for the hardware and Sports tracker for the analytics. By combining the two we have the best of both worlds.

Communications between Movescount and Sports tracker has been available for several weeks at this point and it works flawlessly. I have hiked, cycled, walked, sailed and climbed and each activity has synced without problems.

Apple Health Step Data Sources
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Apple Health Step Data Sources

Byrichard

Yesterday I spent some time looking through Apple Health Data Sources. I see that there are plenty of data sources. These are the Apple watch, the iphone, Alltrails, move, connect, stepsapp, pacer, Suunto, Ingress and three more that are marked as inactive.


Move is the app that gets data from some Casio watches. Connect is Garmin connect and gets step data from Garmin devices. If I take steps and they are logged with a casio or a garmin device they do not count in iOS apps but if I take steps with Garmin and Casio devices without also wearing the Apple watch the same steps are not counted.


The Apple Fitness and Health apps have access to all the same data. Everything goes to a central database on the iPhone. It’s from the iphone that the data is not shared transparently between all other apps.


In practice whether you have a suunto, Garmin, Apple Watch or other fitness tracker each device should feed, or retrieve data from Apple health, and each should display that data, regardless of which device you wear.


Whether I wear my Garmin, Suunto or Apple watch I would like all three to access health data transparently so that I can choose which individual watch I want to wear on a specific day. I don’t want to have to wear all three of them. Not that I do. I only have two wrists. 😉 I can only wear two at once.


The privacy argument is moot, because each app can be granted access to Apple Health, and Apple Health can be granted access to each app. This means that all the data is already transiting both ways for all apps.


And Finally


When you buy a Casio or other watch the battery is expected to last from three years to ten years, and you are expected to replace the battery when it dies. With the Apple watch, now that it is four years old, the next step would be to swap the battery. The Apple watch is now at 70 percent. The battery costs 79 CHF to replace.


When the Suunto battery got low on the Ambit 3 I got a Spartan, but when I replaced the Spartan I went for a Garmin, so I lost the ability to keep my old log going, and had to migrate to the Garmin app. With the Apple Watch we’re on yet another silo. Every brand has a silo. With the Apple watch it’s worse, because you have the fitness app, but then you have all the third party apps. Everything would break at once if you stop using the Apple Watch.


I would love for Garmin, Suunto and Apple wath to allow the free flow of tracking data in both directions, so that I could choose the best device to wear, and the best app to fiddle around with. Strava is the giant in the room, but I don’t want to use an app where I have to pay a premium for added functionality.



Converting This Blog To Hugo
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Converting This Blog To Hugo

Byrichard

On Saturday I converted my blog from WordPress to Hugo as an experiment and it went quite well. I downloaded the xml file and then I converted that xml with blog2md to go from xml to md pages. A page was created for every single blog post. This took a while. I now have my blog both as static pages, and as a wordpress blog.


Two challenges


There are two challenges. The first is that Hugo has to generate over 5000 pages each time I generate the site, or at least it has to check 5000 pages per change. That’s several minutes of work, every time I tell Hugo to build the site. The next concern is that if I make a change I don’t know whether I need to re-generate the entire site to reflect that change or whether it will just generate one page. I can run tests using Git Version control to see what’s happening.


Is Hugo or WordPress Lighter


I don’t know whether Hugo is heavier, because of every individual file, or whether WordPress is heavier, due to all the functionality that I barely ever use. WordPress often feels bloated and slow, especially in the admin console. It would be nice to play either with markdown, as I’m doing for this post, or html, as I could do, if I want more flexibility


Images Still Load


One of the surprises I came acrosss is that images still load, whether I am in the blog directory I created for testing purposes on the website, or within the wordpress blog folder, as I did by mistake. It’s pretty easy to make the change, as long as you keep the assets where they’re expected. I might consider deleting most of the wordpress install except for the media assets. That will be decided lateri.


What I Like About Hugo


What I like about Hugo is that the blog is generated and links between pages are taken care of automatically. As long as the tags and categories are set ahead of time, the generator will take care of the rest. As I browsed through the blog generated by Hugo I liked the look and feel. That’s before I spend time tweaking the theme and trying to add more.


An Alternative Approach


The blog I use now has been around for 20 years or so. This means that if I make a big change, like migrate from WordPress to Hugo I will kill all the hyperlinks and hierarchy and it will take time for search engines and links to be written to make the new version visible. Having said this the traffic to the site is low and there is a chance that the change will not be noticed. It’s by updating and linking to pages that I will make the entire site more visible.


And Finally


I have written the last two blog posts using VIM and I like the interface. It’s limited in functionality, because I haven’t spent enough time playing with VIM but it feels fast, and effective as a blogging tool. If I use Day One it takes time to load, I theoretically need to pay a subscription and then I need to cut and paste the content from there, to the blog. With this I could press esc, :wq, save, and write hugo and it will upload automatically. My reason for not doing that, for now, is that I don’t want to risk sharing the configuration for connecting to the server. Time will decide.

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