From Mobile to train station display live.
If this isn’t a hoax then this is pretty fun. A guy claims to have hacked into the video display at a train station and is streaming live.
I have spent several days playing with Eleventy and trying to get it to behave as I would like to and over the last day or two I succeeded, to some degree. Eleventy, like Hugo, is a static website generator. Whereas Hugo is built on Go Eleventy is built on Javascript. In so far as I can tell they’re both working at around the same speed.
This blog post is written, first for Hugo, then transferred to my wordpress blog and maybe, in third place it will be added to my eleventy blog experiment. One of the key differences that I see between eleventy and Hugo is how themes work. With Hugo you choose a theme and it is applied to the entire site. With Eleventy you can create a specific layout for each website section along with it’s own css and more, so it is more modular. Yesterday I was experimenting with CSS and eventually I got it to work, but following the instructions for a css file called “bundle” rather than “style” or similar theme name.
If you’re used to Wordpress then you’re used to having plugins that you install and everything is done for you. I tried two key plugins. The first is a plugin that allows you to see the reading time for a post. For this you need to npm instal the plugin and once that is done add a snippet of code in the right place in the layouts, and the change will be propagated to all the relevant pages.
With the YouTube plugin it’s even more interesting. You install the plugin and prepare the eleventy.js page, as with the previous plugin. That plugin will then look for youtube urls and automatically generate a div for the video to play in. The div is given a specific name and that’s where, in the css file, you can tell eleventy how to layout the video player. By default it goes full screen but with a little css you can get it to look good within your blog post or web page.
If you’re comfortable with SASS or SCSS rather than CSS you can setup the site to convert from SASS and SCSS to CSS automatically. It gives you the freedom to use the one that you are more comfortable with.
For part of the learning journey I used Eleventy From Scratch until I got to the gulp section. From then on I looked for manuals for specific features, like converting from SASS to CSS and other tutorials.
With Eleventy plugins you extend the functionality of your site without having to spend hours writing your own code. Read the instructions, follow them, apply them, check that they work, and experiment with the next plugin.
If you want to change the layout of a wordpress blog you need to learn php and understand how everything behaves with everything else. You need to understand themes and child themes, and how to get everything to work without breaking. With Eleventy you find the instructions for what you want, tinker for a little bit and you achieve your goal. Nunjuk makes website layout as simple as adding html where you want it, and markdown makes adding headings and paragraphs simple.
When I tried adding youtube embeds to Hugo I needed a shortcode to make it work. With Eleventy the url is enough, and the rest is done when generating the site.
In summary, although the learning curve for Eleventy, to create pages automatically is steep, once you understand it, you gain in flexibility. You focus on the html, css and appropriate plugins and it does the rest.
When you take photos on an iphone or other such device it’s easy to take photos and never organise them, unless you share specific photos with specific people. Images are automatically organised by time, date, month, location and people by photo apps but this is just an illusion of organisation.
By playing with Photoprism, Nextcloud, OneCloud, MyCloud (the Swisscom one), Immich and others I have often come across the same problem. When you’re synching thousands of images at a time devices time out after a few minutes, and you need to start from scratch over, and over, and over again. I’ve encountered this issue with almost all backup solutions.
If I had created an album for each month, week, or even event I would now save a lot of time. It’s not that it makes synching painless, but rather that it makes it easier to backup individual albums rather than 19,000 images at a time. With an album you select it and 300 images are uploaded from one album, and 12 from another, and 230 from yet another.
To use an analogy, imagine that a photo album is a head of hair, at the barber’s. You could cut an individual’s hair in five to ten minutes, and move on to the next and get through 72 hair cuts, or you could cut 72 people’s hair simultaneously but everyone would need to remain in place for eight hours. This is the nightmare I’m putting iphone photo backup apps through with my experimentation.
This morning I was experimenting with PhotoPrismUpload. I wanted to experiment with this app because it’s directly paired with PhotoPrism and PhotoPrism looks like a good iCloud and Google Photos alternative. The first flaw that I spotted is that it doesn’t detect that all of the photographs are already backed up to PhotoPrism so I need to spend hours getting it to say “This file is uploaded, this file is also uploaded, and that file is now uploaded.”
This, in and of itself is quite time consuming but to add to the experience it downloads the offline images from iCloud to the phone, uploads them, and then leaves them there. The consequence is that my backup phone with a large hard drive is now low on memory and the sync is blocked.
To the question “Does this matter?” the answer is “nope”. Not for me, because my images are backed up. It’s a question of convenience. If I was to suggest a feature, which I should, later, it would be an option to “Show only un-uploaded images” like we have with e-mail clients for unread messages.
If I had this option then I would upload x number of pictures until the app timed out, select the latest un-uploaded images, upload them, and repeat this until everything is synched. Now that the phone is low on memory I will abort the experiment, but I won’t stop using the app because it is simple and convenient to use.
It clearly shows which images are uploaded, and which still need to be uploaded. When you sync images it’s quick and intuitive. You have two or three ads displayed but they’re not annoying like the awful adverts you get with mobile games. I got ads for Google Ads and for Mediamarkt. For 3 CHF you can do away with ads.
Photosync is the recommended app, by the developers of Photoprism but I don’t like that it encourages you to pay once for functionality that should be by default and a second time for added features. Despite this I do really like how Webdav works. I setup two webdav accounts. One that is for when I’m on home wifi and the second for when I’m connecting through the VPN when I’m out.
WebDav is an excellent tool because it knows which photos have been uploaded. With the Photosync app photos that are not uploaded yet are highlighted with a red border. You click the red sync button and you can upload “new”, “selected” or “all”. It then gives you the choice between “computer”, “phone/tablet”, “webdav”, “ftp”, “smb”, “files/usb/icloud”, dropbox, onedrive and google drive. I use webdav 2 and within seconds the files are uploaded. If I was out I would use Webdav 3.
The real advantage of the Photosync app is that you can see “new”, “selected” or “all”. If an upload is interrupted for any reason you don’t need to “select all” and upload. You can select just the “new” images, and within seconds you’re synching again.
Photosync information is not automatically synched between two phones so I don’t know how well Webdav works, via this app, when synching the same library from two phones.
By organising photos into albums by hand you make online synchronisation more granular. Instead of uploading 19,000 files at once you upload one album, and then another, until everything is uploaded. It’s easier for backup solutions to keep track of their progress, and you don’t need to keep scrolling up and down to keep the screen awake and uploading.
PhotoPrismUpload and Photosync are both interesting solutions for synching to PhotoPrism but PhotoPrismUpload has the advantage of costing 3 CHF not to see ads, whereas Photosync costs 25 CHF for premium features, as well as 6 CHF for other features. If I had seen PhotoPrismUpload before Photosync I would have been happy. PhotoPrismUpload is a dedicated tool that works well within its niche.
Many years ago I used an old Beta SP camera with batteries that lasted just ten minutes per charge. I didn’t know if they would last long enough to get the entirety of what I was filming so I needed quite a few batteries. Since then I have used laptops, video cameras with 7hr long batteries, diving flash lights where I swapped new batteries in for each dive and more.
Dealing with batteries is an old habit that I have had for almost my entire life. I don’t worry about the range for electric cars because I always live by the rule of thirds. One third to drive out, one third to drive home, and one third in case of problems.
I know that in warm weather I can use about 15 percent of the battery to drive from where I charge the battery to home, and 15 percent to drive back. I know that in winter it can go as high as 20 percent to drive from A to B, so 40 percent. This means that I want to have at least 30 percent of the battery to drive back to where I charge the car.
My anxiety doesn’t come from driving range but charge time and charge price. I have seen that the price goes from the price of electricity in the home to 25 centimes at some charge points, right up to 65 centimes in the neighbouring village. This means that it makes sense to charge where it’s “free”. It’s not free, it’s within the apartment’s electricity bill, but at a lower rate than it would be from charge points.
The battery is now at 50 percent. If I drive to do something tomorrow I will use about 5-10 percent, and in so doing I will be down to 40 percent charge. At this point I am less likely to have the range to get back to the charge point, and so I will pay a premium for power, and be stuck at the charger for from 2hrs in the best case scenario to 20hrs if I discharge the battery completely.
For two to three years I would dive every week, sometimes two to three times a day. In these situations I had 230 bars of air. We had one third to dive out, one third, to return, and one third spare. Diving is about knowing you have a limited amount of air. If you run out you drown. If you’re comfortable with having a limited amount of air during a dive, then car range isn’t that big a concern. Worst case scenario you have to stop in the middle of the road and call an emergency charging solution. I don’t know if they exist.
If I had my own electric car I would, at the very least get an electric socket installed by my parking space but I would also seriously consider using a jackery battery type solution. I could charge the battery in the cave, and then carry it to the car, to charge it, before using the car.
In theory I could even get some jackery solar panels and charge the jackery batteries from sunrise until about 1300. After that the sun disappears. I could then have home generated solar power for the car. Electric car charge points cost from 700-900 CHF in Switzerland, and solar panels and jackery power packs come to the same price, or cheaper. Jackery officially say that you can’t do that. I still think you could, if you have the entire night to charge. Most people do.
Remember, this is a thought experiment. I have not spent hours studying the feasibility of the idea. Jackery have watt hours of power and cars have kilowatt hours of power so at best you could top up the battery after a trip to the shops and back, if it uses one or two percent of power, but no more.
Usually I use fourty percent of the charge and then I charge the car for eight hours. A week or two ago I had to change from summer to winter tyres. This trip took thirty percent of the battery charge. I returned home and the next time I did the same trip I was down to fourty percent of the battery. I stuck around for over eight hours to recharge the car on another day but got it to eighty percent. I now had a twenty percent deficit, which is four hours of charging. This means that going from where I charge to where I live takes another thirty percent.
Although I am now at fifty percent taking it to recharge will deplete it to 20-30 percent, and that means sixteen hours of charging. My issue is with the time that I would have to hang around before the car is fully charged. In this scenario it makes sense to leave the car to charge overnight, and use the petrol car in the mean time.
That’s why I experience charge anxiety, rather than range anxiety.
The charge situation is currently chaotic. You need an app for each provider, and a card for each provider. The prices are chaotic, ranging from 25 centimes, to 89 Centimes per watt. Some charge parking time, as well as charge time, and some charge 19 CHF for the card. For some reason the app on the phone isn’t enough. They want you to use a card as well. If you had a card and app for each option you would have half a dozen cards, and apps. Charging needs to be regulated.
Every five percent of battery I use means an extra hour of charging. Going to the shops takes two percent, so 24 minutes of charging. This means that if I could plug in after shopping I’d be at one hundred percent within 24 minutes. If I go to the book lending place in Founex and back I might use 10 percent. I need to charge for two hours. The trip to the charger takes 30 percent, which usually means a six hour wait.
With a power socket in my garage I wouldn’t notice charge time. It wouldn’t dictate how long I hang around.
All cars should be electric and all garages should, as a minimum, have slow charging. That they do not limits how enjoyable electric car use is.
Clean water is important to have when you’re cycling, hiking or climbing in summer but the issue is that it is heavy. When I go cycling I go with just one flask and I fill up the water bottle when I get to fountains that are marked as safe to drink from. When I go hiking or climbing I usually do not go with more than one and a half litres of water although I have gone with up to three litres for a hot summer day’s activities when the temperature is above 32°c.
In Switzerland, France and Italy you theoretically do not need to walk with that much water because you cross streams, fountains, rivers and lakes. If you had a water filtration system you could theoretically purify the water from these sources and continue hiking. Yesterday I came across Katadyn and two solutions for water filtration.
The Katadyn BeFree is a collapsible water bottle system that you fill from unfiltered water and then filter as you drink. This system also allows you to refill clean water containers within a very short lapse of time. It takes very little space in your bag and it’s light. It’s easy to have this with you at all time. It would be practical for cycling and climbing. You leave home with clean tap water and when you run out of clean water you fill this system and squeeze clean water in to your clean water bottle and continue the day’s activities. I have seen this system for 45 CHF in Switzerland.
The Katadyn Hiker Pro is a slightly more expensive but portable solution. It allows you to filter water straight from a river, stream or lake to a clean water recipient. It has a first filter on the hose that goes from the water source to the pump. The pump has a pre-filter to get rid of any sediment still suspended in water and the third filter filters out almost all bacteria. Clean water then flows from the pump to the clean water container. If you’re climbing near a river or exploring a via ferrata near a waterfall then the need to carry water is reduced.
According to this article you can go a step further to stay safe. Almost every article and review mentions that the two systems above are not designed to kill viruses. If you want to go that extra step then you have the Steripen Aqua UV Water purifier. It is meant to kill almost all bacteria and viruses. The link is to the cheapest model. The second option is to boil water.
“Boiling can be used as a pathogen reduction method that should kill all pathogens. Water should be brought to a rolling boil for 1 minute. At altitudes greater than 6,562 feet (greater than 2000 meters), you should boil water for 3 minutes.Apr 10, 2009” source:
If you’re going to drink river or lake water in Switzerland this document from March, 2017 provides maps with water quality information. In some areas waters may be contaminated with chemicals or pesticides and it is good to check that cattle are not upstream of your water source.
For a more recent article: How To choose A Water Purifier or Filter for Backpacking.