This weekend teams of Resistance Ingress agents from Fribourg, Lausanne and Geneva met in Fribourg to neutralise and capture all Enlightened portals. Some teams were on foot to liberate portals from the centre of the city. I was with the bike team and we took care of liberating all of the portals on the outskirts. It involved cycling up and down hills, a thunderstorm and being rained on.
I really enjoyed being part of the cycling team. It’s a fantastic way to get around and it’s a good way of seeing a big portion of unfamiliar cities with a minimum of effort. My team members were on electric bikes and I was on a mountain bike. This was great for me. I had to work hard to keep up with them. This was a good workout. There were moments where I generated up to an estimated 1300 watts of power for very short bursts and got the fifth best time on a segment.
I enjoyed this experience so much that I would love to do this again in other cities around here. Cycling gave me a workout and playing Ingress gave me time to recover. It seems that if you’re creating fields having a bike is ideal. You can get almost anywhere from anywhere within a city within minutes with a minimum of effort. By car this would be dangerous and impractical and on foot it would be slow and impractical.
Yesterday I went for a bike ride and I was head towards Gland via Genolier but changed the route due to a dog walker when I wanted to turn East. I turned West instead and noticed some people and flags by Crassier. I thought “Was there an accident” as I also saw a police car. Eventually, as I saw more and more people standing by the side of the road I understood that it was for the Tour De Romandie. At the 25km from Geneva marker I took a picture of the sign.
The 25km marker for the Tour De Romandie tour for the 2023 Tour De Romandie stage from Vufflens le Village to Geneva
The sensation of cycling along a cycle race route ahead of the race riders is interesting. You have a crowd. The place where I usually see crowds when I am cycling is Zwift, so my frame of reference for yesterday’s experience was Zwift. Silly, isn’t it? That’s where I have the crowds. I even had one or two people cheer me on as I rode. The riders were at least half an hour behind me, maybe more. Their average speed was 42km per hour, compared to my 22.6 kilometres per hour.
In the last year Romain Bardet, a professional cyclist, rode 9,141 kilometres compared to my 228 kilometres per hour. If they ride at twice my speed it’s because they ride an enormous amount. If a car was used that much you’d think people need to take a break from it. Cycling is a sport where professionals cover huge distances on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis.
If I want to compare myself I should compare myself to through hikers. I walk what they walk, but in a different context, and year round, rather than in three to six month bursts.
And Finally
You know when the Tour De Romandie and other events are close by because you see the helicopters. You have one flying higher above the cycling race, and the second flying lower down, to get the aerial shots as the cyclists make their way across the landscape. It’s when I was near Founex that I could see the helicopters flying low and slow, to cover the cycling race.
In August of this year I will be at FIFAD as a volontaire. FIFAD stands for Festival International du Film Alpin Des Diablerets. It’s the international Alpine Film Festival of the Diablerets. I want to participate at this event for three main reasons.
The first of these is that I have a passion for the documentary film genre and adventure films. I really enjoyed going to Montagne en Scène a few weeks ago and I expect to enjoy having the freedom to watch certain of the films at this event.
The second reason I want to go as a helper is that every time I have applied to help at an event I have got something out of it. I have built my confidence. I have met interesting people and I have found new and interesting ideas. In this case I hope to view a number of the films.
The third reason is that I will have an opportunity to spend a week in the mountains once again. I have frequently been to Diablerets for hikes and just once to enjoy a via ferrata. This time I will get to stay for a few extra days and learn to appreciate the town differently. I will have my 360 camera and via ferrata gear with me. Time to ride a tyrolean in 360 right? I hope it won’t rain too heavily. People told me they got wet last time they went under the waterfall.
When I watch an interesting film or hear someone talk about an interesting topic I will try to take notes and write related blog posts. It’s good to share the knowledge and passion with you.
Travel with an i pod touch is great because of what it can do. I was able to test the usability of the device on two flights between Geneva and London and found the experience to be good. Whilst I was travelling on the tube I prefered to keep it hidden so I listened to podcasts but once I got to the airport I changed tact. It’s at this point that I started to watch video programs. I watched NBC’s Meet the Press and it’s a nice clear easy to view image. I also watched Futurama and it’s good as well.
I had no problems with glare or reflections whilst watching it in the terminal and once onboard the aircraft it was good to use as well. One thing I did notice was how fast the device notices wifi networks. Within just a few seconds I had nine wifi networks but the only free access one was for printers so I preffered using the laptop.
In Switzerland I connected to the home WIFI and took advantage to surf to a number of websites of which Facebook was one. The user interface is really nice, optimised for the device’s screen with tabs context sensitive to the type of activity. On the way back from Switzerland I listened to podcasts, rather than watched and one of those was Macbreak Weekly. One of the special features of that podcast are the chapters that are added. The i pod touch is great at displaying a menu for each chapter as well as the running time for each therefore if you zone out for a few minutes you can return to the bit of conversation you want to follow. In other situations you have the ability to jump straight to the chapter heading of interest to you. It could save you time if you’re in a rush.
On board the plane I noticed that there were some contact details I wanted to save from a magazine so I tested the user interface for the contact book and am quite happy. Inputing all the details was quick and easy, with a slightly different layout when inputing phone numbers, e-mail addresses or normal text, for example notes.
So far I’m happy with the device and have used it in a number of different situations without finding any major problems. I’ve working at learning to touch type on the device but there is improvement still to be made. It’s still a great toy to have for video content and web surfing whilst on the move.
Google has an excellent reputation for server uptime and reliability. They pride themselves on making processes so efficient that hundredths of seconds after a request is sent the answer. As a result of their very high work ethic and desire to excel logic would indicate that Niantic labs would follow the same work ethic and strive for the same quality of service.
Over the last few months of game play I have found they resemble an early twitter. Loading the game for the first time of the day can take several attempts, loading the inventory can be unreliable, charging portals can be unreliable and sometimes trying to do any action can fail 70 to 80 percent of the time for several hours in a row.
Unreliability is perfectly normal for web services. They are pushing the envelope and they need to find ways to do new things and prevent bottle necks. Twitter had severe issues for months and so did many other services.
A few people say that Ingress is a free game, that because it is free we shouldn’t worry about unreliable actions.
Ingress is not a free game. At the very least it takes a lot of time to play such a game. Levelling up can take progressively longer going from hours from the first levels to months or even years for the higher levels.
There are a number of costs associated with Ingress:
A smartphone:
A local data plan
International roaming plan
A battery pack
A car or other form of transport
petrol
parking space
Hotel rooms
You also have to consider whether you live in a village or a town or city. If you live in a village you may have to travel to another village several kilometres before you can play the game. I created the account but did not play until several months later due to a lack of local portals. Towns and cities have a lot of portals so this is a city slicker game.
If you drive half an hour, from the country side to a city to play the game and when you arrive at your destination and the game is laggy then you have wasted money on petrol, you have wasted time on driving and you have to wait until the next weekend to play.
As I have said lag and server issues are part of online life. From 1996 to 2015 I have grown accustomed to these problems and have no issues. I am less forgiving of companies whose policies make servers issues worse. Niantic labs is making mistakes. They created a new badge to encourage people to sign up more accounts which resulted in more server stress and a degraded quality of service. They then encouraged people to make mega fields which the servers can’t deal with. We have seen that every single time a megafield is created the game suffers for periods of time ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. Yesterday agents created a 6880km link which resulted in a degraded quality of service for hours afterwards.
If Niantic labs and the story line continue encouraging actions that Ingress servers cannot cope with then I will see my passion for the game degrade further. My willingness to drive 40 minutes to participate in activities will vanish.
I am not picking on Niantic labs and ingress. I have seen twitter have problems, I have seen facebook have problems. I have seen Seesmic have issues. I have seen suunto movescount have issues. I have let each of these companies know that I expect more.
I will only continue using an unreliable service as long as I don’t find a better alternative.
Have you considered brushing shoes and mindfulness? I ask because as I have played with the brush, to clear dirty mud off my shoes I have noticed that this is a time consuming task that always takes several minutes, if not half an hour to complete. People stigmatise leaving a muddy trail behind you indoors, but as the last few shoe cleanings have shown, cleaning shoes is more time consuming than cleaning up after muddy shoes, especially when the mud is dry.
People show scorn and derision when they see mud, and yet mud is not bad for health. It makes thing look messy, but we grow food in it. Animals eat straight from the ground, and we use it for huts, and more. Mud is even used in spas to improve skin health and more.
A snow and leaf covered bridge in Autumn
Cleaning mud off of shoes made me think of mindfulness and meditation because clearing mud is a time consuming process. You brush, and bits of mud fly off the shoe, and if its dry then you wear a mask, because a cloud of dust flies off the shoes, onto your clothes, into your eyes, and if you don’t have a mask, into your lungs. It’s important to take precautions.
Brushing works very well with wet mud, as long as you use enough force. When the mud is dry, that’s when the wooden skewer comes into play. That’s when you chisel at the dirt and mud, and loosen it, to fall on the ground, wheter outdoors or in the apartment. When that mud is loose, then you brush, and then with what’s left, you chisel again. You repeat the process until the shoes are clean.
That’s why I think that it should be used as a form of meditation. That’s why I think that, rather than cleaning shoes, to avoid the less intellectual members of society from complaining, you see it as an intellectual relaxation and mindfulness exercise.
I think cleaning muddy shoes is absurd. I think it’s absurd because within seconds of going for another walk they will be filled with mud again. It takes half an hour or more to clean shoes, but the mess that results from cleaning shoes, takes seconds. The notion that cleaners shouldn’t have to clean mud is absurd, because the entire raison d’êtres of cleaners, is to make things look clean.
In the past I used to clean the house before the cleaner came, so that her job would be easier. I have a base level of mess, and every week I had to reset it to zero for the cleaner, so it has nothing to do with not respecting cleaners and their work. It has to do with wasting, or investing time. Cleaning shoes is pointless because shoes are dirty for months at a time during the wetter months.
Old buildings used to have shoe cleaners. they used to have matts so that you could wipe your feet, metal bars so that you could scrape the mud off your shoes, cubbies so that outdoor shoes could be swapped for flip flops and more. If the building has a problem with mud, then a proper mud clearing mattress would make sense.
In the 21st century everyone drives so no one gets dirty shoes. People prefer noise pollution and air pollution to walking. If road paths were clean of mud, if car drivers didn’t drive homicidally close to pedestrians and cyclists, then there would be no exposure to mud.
Ever since childhood I have had muddy shoes because of my walking and adventures, so it was normal for me to drop mud where I sat, whether at school or sometimes at work. Mud is a sign that people are fit and do exercise. Mud is a sign that people were outdoors, rather than eating Al Desko. Mud is a sign that the weather is slightly wet, and that people do not always walk on the cleanest of paths. Mud is part of life, when you walk in all weather, in all seasons, except for summer droughts. Finding mud then is a challenge.
This problem of mud says something positive about me. The rest of the building live sedentary lives. They use the cars to go to do sports, that are clean, and they come home by car. This means that they never have mud on them because that mud has fallen off either in their cars, or it was never on them.
My mud is fresh, from walking rurally and locally two minutes ago. If everyone was like me they would either see the need for better shoe cleaning options or they wouldn’t mind mud in the corridors. It’s because I am alone in my habits that I can’t play ignorant.
My current solution to this problem is a brush and a skewer in the post box. When I get home I unlock the post box, brush my shoes, skewer the more stubborn mud, and step into the building. I have to be like football players, before they return to their changing rooms. That’s where I got my idea for that type of brush.
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