View of La Dole from the other side

Fondue for Lunch

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

The weather was cold and cloudy this lunchtime so going up to the mountains for lunch was feasible. If the restaurant had been filled with people, and if we had shared a table with others, then I would have skipped and driven home. Luckily the road was closed to go up to the mountains so that stopped some people from going up. There were also the benefits of clouds and cold air temperatures. Combined these things meant that the restaurant was less tempting for large crowds. We ate a fondue.

View of La Dole from the other side
View of La Dole from the other side

I did not plan to go up. It was spontaneous, and I had my own car, so that if I saw that it was too busy I could turn back or walk to the summit. We’re still in a pandemic, so if I feel a risk is too great I bail.

Today is interesting because it seems quieter than it should be. The restaurant was quieter, but the villages and other places are quieter too. It’s as if people are hibernating or hiding. I saw that all the cars are goine from the garage for example.

In other news a Valaisanne, dressed as Lucy Walker climbed the Matterhorn in period costume. In Uri, due to the glaciers melting people are asked to be attentive to archeological remains. If we leap to the space age then we see that SpaceX might be struggling to find enough liquid oxygen due to the pandemic. With hospitals needing more of it SpaceX might be in second place to get it.

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Tired of Garmin and Apple, Playing With Casio
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Tired of Garmin and Apple, Playing With Casio

Byrichard

For a while now I have been wearing a Casio and an apple watch or a Garmin and an Apple watch, or a Casio and a Garmin watch or a xiaomi smart band and a casio or a xiaomi smart band and… it goes on.

A Break of Routine

The reason for which I’m flying between so many devices is two fold. I have too many devices. There was a time when I went climbing, hiking, cycling, diving, swimming, on via ferrata and more and I was happy with just one watch.

Collecting

Now, with the pandemic and other factors I seem to have more devices than arms, and no loyalty to either. I believe that it’s due, in part to walking the same loops over, and over, and over again. Every so often I walk clockwise and then I walk counter clockwise. I take the short route, then the medium route, and then the long route, and then the extra long route, and sometimes I backtrack, especially on weekends.

To break from that monotony I think I fiddle with various watches and tracking devices.

We think nothing of wearing a different pair of socks every day, or trousers, or t-shirts, but if we switch between watches, or wear two at once we’re lunatics.

Compulsion

If I wanted to be nasty about myself I’d say that I’m not a lunatic, I’m an addict. I feel the need to preserve my step count on as many services as possible, as a result of which I feel the urge to wear multiple devices each week.

Personal Fitness Tracking

There are two solutions to this. The first is a learning opportunity. Home Assistant and NextCloud have fitness tracking sort of built in. If I worked on updating HomeAssistant automatically, with data from Garmin, Apple, Casio and Xiaomi then I would have by data in a central place, and I could wear just one device at a time as the data aggregator I care about is my own.

Apple and Garmin

Apple and Garmin have frustrated me with their apps. They have taken fitness tracking and tried to make it an addiction. Apple and Garmin want you to push yourself every day, seven days a week for years. I burned out on Apple several times and yet I can’t stop wearing their device. My steps are counted by my phone anyway. Garmin has been faulty on occasion. It has crashed on some walks.

Stop Hesitating

The second solution is to pick one device and to stick with it, without flitting between one and the other. I feel myself drawn to Casio at the moment. I like that it tracks without nagging, and without judgement. I also like that I can go for months or even years without the need to charge.

The Paradox

Garmin, Apple and Xiaomi don’t care about walking as fitness habits, so you wear them every single day, but they won’t mark your fitness as progressing. You’re quantifying for the sake of quantifying, and wearing a casio would be fine.

Yesterday Garmin asked if I wanted to join the beta so I did, but I need to run or cycle for two weeks for the app to provide me with feedback.

And Finally

For years I wore a Suunto, and then for years I wore an Apple Watch, and then I played with an Apple Watch and a Garmin device, and now I feel like experimenting with Casio, as I did when I was a child.
Casio stand out now, because everyone already has an Apple Watch or a Garmin device, but few wear Casio.

Walking Without Masks During a Pandemic

Walking Without Masks During a Pandemic

Byrichard

For many people walking without masks during a pandemic is normal. This is confusing. We have known for months, or even seasons that the virus is airborne and that masks are a simple way to keep safe. Despite this people walk by the seaside without masks. It’s not just that they walk without wearing masks, but that they do not seem to be visible.


I can’t imagine walking without a mask. Even when I’m walking across fields with little chance of crossing paths with people my mask is at hand, ready to be worn. I actually go out of my way not to walk within two meters of people, especially people without masks. I always have a mask with me, and recently I started to favour an FFP2 mask, over ffp1 masks, because I feel safer. I am still likely to wear masks whenever I am within four meters of people.


It takes one second to put on a mask, and to remove it. Today I wore it while walking about eight kilometres. It doesn’t bother me to walk with a mask. It is progress, for me to be within towns and cities, during this pandemic. I prefer the countryside, empty roads, empty agriculutal roads, empty trails.


View of the Mediterranean Sea
View of the Mediterranean Sea


I went for a bike ride in the evening. 30 kilometres in one and a half hours. Nothing to challenge me, but the bike couldn’t cope. It kept skipping chain links and gears. That is distracting. I reached my goal, and then returned to the start point.


Trying To Read Nested Data From a JSON File

Byrichard

Over the last two evenings I have been attempting to read nested data. I have tried to parse the data and other methods but without success. I have browsed the web to try to find solutions but for now I am getting stuck. Learning is also about trial and error, and knowing where to find the right information. For now I am lost. At the end of this process I will be more self-sufficient.


Learning by watching courses is good, and we do make progress, but it doesn’t require us to think about problems in the same way. We learn to follow instructions but not problem solve, and that’s what I want to learn. So far I have spent two hours on this specific problem, and I could easily remove a few lines and it would no longer be nested. I will persevere.


Playing with Comments


Since I am trying and failing to accomplish what I am trying to accomplish I am now using comments to mark what I still need to achieve, whilst looking for solutions and ideas.


Prototypes and CSS


I have also continued studying prototypes, factories and more. I see some overlap between this topic and CSS. For those with experience and time both allow for more depth and complexity than is comfortable when you are starting out. The short version is that with prototypes and factories you can cut down on the lines of code in a project, making it easier to read, and lighter.


The Pandemic Continues


It is now the weekend but the pandemic is still alive and well. Governments are deciding not to do anything to stop the spread, preferring to tell people that for vaccinated people it’s no worse than the flu, whilst ignoring the fact that children from 0-18 have not been vaccinated. There is a certain degree of indifference by governments that is hard to observe. They expect the next few weeks to be difficult, and that’s as far as their sense of responsibility goes. It is a challenge not to be disappointed by this attitude.


Luxurious Indifference – Watching Twitter Fail, as a Passerby

Luxurious Indifference – Watching Twitter Fail, as a Passerby

Byrichard

Since 2006 I have been using Twitter every single day for several hours a day, reading up to ten thousand posts per day. Every time it failed I would know about it. Weeks ago I decided to stop using Twitter, so when it fails I read about it in articles.


I am happy that I took a break from Twitter because if I was still thinking of it as a serious tool, I would feel heart break every time it failed. I would feel sad about the limit to 1000 tweet views per day, I would feel sad about the disabling of Tweetdeck. I would feel sad every time something new breaks.


There is nothing worse than being on a site that is declining, where you see functionality degrade and then disappear. The death of hope is painful. I follow the decline of Twitter, but I am not emotionally invested anymore


Worry When a Customer Stops Complaining


There is an old saying that when a customer complains, they want to keep doing business with you. The moment someone stops complaining, is the moment you are in trouble, because they have moved on. It’s when people don’t give you a hard time, that you have pushed them to breaking their relationship with your product.


People Leave Twitter for Bluesky


The Reddit AMA breakup


I saw a headline today that said that Reddit moderators are thinking of no longer hosting and facilitating AMAs. Reddit too, has pushed its most loyal users to far, so they have decided to take a break from helping the company gain value, at their expense.


The Reddit AMA Moderator Walk Out


The Absurd Limit


Imagine that you’re a social network, and imagine that people love to use your network for hours a day. Now imagine that you decide to tell them that they can only see a thousand posts before they’re cut off. In theory that could be 1 to fifteen minutes of browsing, depending on how much time they spead on each post.


For a comparison Facebook and Facebook Instagram encourage people to binge, seeing hundreds of posts that are irrelevant, to keep them around, so that they see ads. Remember a social network benefits from getting you to waste time, and failing to achieve your goal. That’s why I stopped using FB (Facebook) and IG (Instagram). My ROI, as a user, had gone down the tube.


This reminds me of the joke, “That’s not a bug, that’s a feature”.


Identi.ca


In 2008 we had identica and it was a great, open source alternative to Twitter, with no users and little engagement. It has survived to this day but it failed to gain enough traction to be a viable alternative to Twitter. Things are different today. There is a critical masss of users. This means that when social media giants misbehave people have somewhere to flee to. Users are finally empowered. We are no longer stuck under the thumb of Venture Capital Social Media. That ship has sailed and now we are empowered, once again.


Musk bought Twitter just as the social media bubble burst. Now that we have so many alternative tools to choose from social networks owned by Social media giants have no value. I hope that as Venture Capital Social Media implodes, so the world’s attitude to social media as an addiction declines. Social media is not an addiction. Social media is about people chatting with each other, nothing more. It’s the Social Media giants that pushed the Social Media addiction narrative, to behave immoraly. I’m glad to see them losing traction.


And Finally


As I stated, at the start of this post, Twitter is a sinking ship, and it would be sad, if we didn’t have the Fediverse and all of its instances to replace it. We also have BlueSky and BlueSky will thrive. It has to limit new user signups. This is a fantastic situation for them to be in, because it means that people are looking for alternatives, in several directions at once.

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Images from the Via Ferrata de Lavanchy

Byrichard

Despite the warning that rain would fall after 1700 today we went up to explore the Via Ferrata De Lavanchy. it is a via ferrata that requires a 45 minute walk up hill. You walk up towards a cirque and then turn left and continue upwards through some trees. When you get close to the base of the cliff walk straight up to get to the base of the via ferrata. The via ferrata is simple and short.

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