Garmin Instinct Solar Run, With A Mask, And A Walk.

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I tracked the run and walk with the Garmin Instinct Solar. It is very easy to use while wearing gloves. You can stop the activity, change sport, start the activity, do the second sport, and then stop the tracking of the second sport, without taking off your gloves. Now that we’re in the cold part of Autumn this is useful. On the flipside anytime the clouds hide the sun this watch is unable to recharge itself. Despite this the battery life is still good. When fully charged it displays 27 days, but it loses around two or three days of charge per day with a tracked activity. This is still excellent. The Apple watch needs to be charged every single day. It is a watch that you can wear in the classic style of wearing a watch, i.e. keep it on for days or weeks at a time.

Today I tried running two kilometres and a walk home. In the process I found that wearing an FFP2 mask did not hinder my breathing in the least. I only ran for two kilometres because I want to keep from pushing my knees too far. I don’t like finishing a run, barely able to walk. I have made that mistake, and I will avoid making it, if I can.

Running with the mask didn’t hinder my breathing at all. I could breath in, and I could breath out, and I never felt that it was getting in the way. This is due to two reasons. The first is that we’re over 20 months into this pandemic and we’re used to how masks feel and behave. The second reason is simply that it is cold. Wearing a mask provides a bubble of heated air, to prevent us from breathing cold air, or feeling cold air on our faces. I was also worried that if I took off the mask my face would feel cold. This means that I wore the mask for at least an hour. Nothing by some standards, but not bad, in the middle of the countryside with few or no people around.

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Replacing a WD Thunderbolt Duo Drive with an ICY BOX

Replacing a WD Thunderbolt Duo Drive with an ICY BOX

Byrichard

While consolidating all of my files and deleting triplicates of files I came across my thunderbolt Duo Drive. The issue is that the drive uses thunderbolt two ports and these are nowhere to be found. To be more specific it’s seen as a DVI display port by everyone but Apple for a brief period of time. The result is that I was stuck with data on a drive that I couldn’t retrieve. The solution was to transport the Duo to an old mac book pro with the right ports, transfer the data, and then think about what to do with the two drives within.

Thunderbolt Adaptor Expensive and Not Guaranteed to Work

For a while I considered buying a Thunderbolt 3 to USB-C adaptor but I didn’t know whether it would work for data transfer and it costs 49 CHF depending on when you look. That’s without counting the thunderblot cable to go with it. I calculated that I would have to spend 80 CHF to have access to the drives within this case.

Cheap RAID System

As I shopped around for hard drive enclosures I came across the ICY BOX IB-RD3621U3 for 69 CHF so I ordered that instead. The advantage I gain by buying this case is that I can use any drive I want to with it. With the Western Digitial Thunderbolt Duo they want WD Red drives to be used. With the Mybook NAS solution they want WD Green drives. With the ICYBOX solution I can have any drives I want.

Quick Setting at the Back

The added feature, which I have not tested yet is that you can have the case in single mode, where each drive is indepdent, big, where both drives count as a single volume, raid 1 where the data is mirrored or RAID 0 where the data is split between both drives. The advantage of raid 0 is that it writes data faster as it writes to both drives at once but it’s scary because if one drive fails all data is lost. I don’t remember if raid 0 or a single disk is considered scary RAID.

Not Hot Swappable

To the best of my knowledge the drives are not hot swappable, especially in RAID 0 and Big drive mode. It also requires a smaller screw driver that I have on a bike tool, rather than the Swiss knife. It took a few seconds for me to get into the drive but once I did everything went well.

Why Not A NAS?

In theory it could have been interesting to get a NAS rather than a simple HD enclosure but there is a 100 CHF difference in price. If I do want to use it as a NAS I can place one of my Raspberry Pi in front, install NextCloud or Samba and setup my own NAS within a few minutes. The other consideration is that NAS drives cost a lot more because they have to cope with being on for thousands of hours at a time.

One of my ideas is to use this box with PhotoPrism and Nextcloud in RAID 1 configuration. The reason for this is that if one drive fails I can swap the one that failed and then it will rebuild from the one that survived. The other reason is that having two or three drives plugged into a PI takes USB ports, power and space. If I have a single box it will be tidier.

Looking Forward

At the moment I have two terabyte drives acting as a four terabyte drive in Raid 0. Once I have backed up the data from this drive confidently I can either have them as a mirrored raid so that if one drive fails I do not lose all my data or eventually I can upgrade the hard drives to increase storage capacity.

And Finally

There are two advantages to getting such an ICYBOX. The first is that now if I have a DUO drive with ports that are no longer common I can simply swap them from one enclosure to another and use the drive with ease. I am no longer concerned with hardware ports. The second advantage is that it’s easy for me to swap drive pairs so I can upgrade when required but I can also quickly access data from another drive pair with ease.

In conclusion, although the automatic reflex is to an adaptor to get data off of a duo drive it makes more sense to open the Duo drive, remove the drives, put them in a new enclosure, backup the data and put the old case in storage. Within a year or two you can buy two new higher capacity drives and use them instead.

An Ingress Photo Walk Before The Rain
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An Ingress Photo Walk Before The Rain

Byrichard

Today I went for an Ingress Photo Walk before the rain and I eventually did have to go home because the phone was starting to get wet and there was no urgency to continue playing the game and walking.


I did spot a few things that were slightly out of the ordinary. The first thing was the mushroom beneath. I have spotted a few of these but this one did not have a bite taken out of it. They’re large and flat and you can see the corrugation, or whatever the correct term is, beneath. They have had enough moisture to grow over the last few days.


Mushroom with the Alps in the background
Mushroom with the Alps in the background


The next unusual site was this burned-out house. It appears to be fresh. I could see a ladder going to the first-floor window.


Burnt out house
Burnt out house


The next unusual sighting was fountains with the sign “fountain stopped due to lack of water. You don’t often see this type of sign but due to the lack of rain of this summer, this might not be surprising. It might also be due to a lot of water being used to extinguish the fire, but I have not checked.


Fountain without water due to lack of water
Fountain without water due to lack of water


The final and most interesting sight is this one. It takes us back in time to when rural meant agricultural. We see nice wooden doors, aged with time and reflecting a different age. We also see plenty of fresh firewood above as well as the small boxes below. I don’t know whether these were for charcoal or tools.


Without Ingress, I have cycled, walked and driven through this village plenty of times without exploring the small side streets. This time I did and I spotted some unusual sights. What is also of interest is that despite this village being quite small it has a lot of portals.



Initially, I thought of posting these pictures to Instagram but chose not too because I’d rather provide you with the images and their context. We need to go back to writing blog posts and sharing content from our own websites.

Walking Heatwave Strategy

Walking Heatwave Strategy

Byrichard

Two days in a row I have poured water on my head. The reason for this is that yesterday we were in 35°c heat and today we were in 33°c heat. When you’re walking for two or three hours at the solar Maximum the best cooling strategy is to pour water on your head, as I did. It’s a quick way of cooling. It’s not that the water was cool. The water is warm, heated by direct sunlight for the last half hour, or even hour.

I Feel Okay

I set off with 1.6 litres of water and drank every few minutes. I have a 600ml camelbak eddy+ in my hand and a 1l Sigg water bottle in my bag. I drink from the camelbak because I can walk at full speed, and sip. With the Sigg bottle I need to stop.

Refill from the Sigg Bottle

When I get low on water in the Camelbak I refill it from the Sigg Water bottle. It takes a few seconds and then I can continue walking. As I refilled the water bottle the first time I had a tractor heading straight for me so I went into the corn crop. The driver was looking at his phone. At least by being in mature corn he would sub-consciously know to avoid the corn. I was fine.

Replenishing on Electrolytes

For a long time I haven’t had electrolyte drinks because I felt no need. Now that we’re in a heat wave I am taking the time to remineralise, after the walks. I get so warm during the walk that I’m constantly “glowing” or “glistening”. My body is constantly covered in evaporating water and I am cooling down.

The Soaked Hat

During the last two walks I have felt that the sun was getting a little too strong so I soaked my hat twice today, once yesterday, and I soaked my entire self two days ago. Although I feel in control I know that these walking conditions are dangerous. That’s why I have 1.6 litres of water, and why I routed myself so that the fountain was near the end of the walk rather than the beginning. I can also catch buses home on two different bus lines if I suddenly feel overwhelmed and unable to continue

Why I Walk At The Hottest Time Of The Day

One of the reasons I love walking after 1300 is that no one else does. Most people lock themselves indoors and sleep, nap or do other things. I like to walk when it’s too hot for normal people to walk. It’s nice to have the landscape to myself.

During my walk I saw clouds of dust two or three times. They are created by tractors preparing the soil to plant the next crops. In one case I saw the dust rise high into the air and considered how strong the thermals must be at the moment, for the column to be so well pronounced.

And Finally

I have been for two walks and a bike ride. I came home feeling fine. I didn’t feel too thirsty, or too faint, or coughing. I am pushing myself by being in the sun at the hottest time of day but this year has been more gentle than others. I also carry more than enough water, and know where fountains that work are. If I saw a negative effect then I would stop exposing myself to these weather conditions.

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Amersports and Sports tracker

Byrichard

Today Amer Sports announced that it has bought Sports tracker. Sports Tracker is an application that I have been using since I had the Nokia N95 8GB. I used it on symbian, iOS and Android devices over the years. What I love about this app is the way it displays information about the work out. It gives you several screens while you are exercising with the option to select which information you want to see most.

Once you arrive home and synchronise the workout with the web interface you can see the information displayed above. You can choose whether there is a topographic map, a normal map or satellite imagery. It is simple and intuitive to read.

Suunto make devices that I like using. I have used the Suunto D9 diving computer, the Suunto D4i diving computer, the Suunto Ambit 2 and the Suunto Ambit3. Suunto dive computers are small diving computers that you can wear in day to day life. When you are passionate about diving this is nice.

The Suunto Ambit family are more interesting for people who do land based sports. I used the Suunto Ambit 2 and 3 when doing via ferrata, hiking, cycling and other sports. The advantage of these fitness watches is that they have long battery life. This means that you can be active for two or three days before worrying about the battery dying. In this respect they are far better than mobile phones for fitness activity tracking.

Suunto products and Sports tracker do not communicate natively. Suunto products synchronise with movescount. From movescount you need to export the GPX workout files and import them to Sports tracker. I would like to see Suunto devices communicate directly with Sports tracker. In my eyes the best option would have been for Sports tracker to buy movescount and for them to take over the web interface for Suunto. They both provide interesting web interfaces and combining the two would have been mutually beneficial.

Time will show whether Amer Sports with links to sports tracker, precor and Suunto will come out with an interesting amalgamation of the three products/services. I look forward to finding out.

 

Walking in Linear Circles
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Walking in Linear Circles

Byrichard

My walks are more often than not circular. I walk in a clearly defined loop across several villages before heading home. On weekends, and days such as yesterday my habit of walking in loops is scuppered by the habit of normal people to walk with dogs. I wouldn’t mind so much, if they kept their dogs under control, and if I was not walking alone. When I walk alone I’m the only distraction so dogs will investigate me, which I hate.

During the walk up to the Creux Du Van I saw two large dogs that I had to walk by. I waited until other people walked by those dogs before walking by them at the same time. In so doing the dogs didn’t have any interest in me so I felt safe. If I had been alone I would not have enjoyed passing those dogs. I might have turned back, or found another route.

I am so used to walking the same loops, that the idea of backtracking vanished until recently. Until recently I would always walk my loops. Walking those loops fatigued me. I think that’s why traffic, and encounters with dogs felt more negative than they had, beforehand.

There is value in changing walking patterns. By changing the pattern I walk along routes that I had not walked for a while. I also noticed that the “long loops” I walked are not longer than the “short” loops I walk. It’s just that the GPS track is different.

The other difference is that I am running again. By running I am making a bigger effort over a shorter time so I can devote less time to my “daily walk”.

And Finally

Although during the week I will walk the usual routes in solitude, on weekends I will resume group activities. The pandemic will not end, so I can be social by doing outdoor things. I have no desire to be indoors.

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