Klettersteige Schweiz – Swiss Via Ferrata
A trailer for a collection of videos on Via ferrata to be included with a book.
Yesterday I went for a walk around the foot of the Jura and there is an enclosure where deer are kept waiting to be slaughtered for meat. As the Chasse season is coming up this park might not be as busy.
This video was shot using the Sony Xperia Z3 compact. The image is a little blue for my liking.
I look forward to testing the Xperia Z5 compact with it’s improved sensor and new image stabilisation technology.
I have no 4K monitors on which to assess image quality at the moment.
For two years I have been doing research to find as much information as possible on the topic of via ferrata. Visiting the via ferratas which date back to the 1914-18 war would be interesting. In this short video recording we see some of the tunnels dug in to the mountain as well as where soldiers would have slept.
Via ferrata is not just a sport to see nice landscapes. Historic exploration is also possible.
Today is yet another pandemic Friday evening, with no plans for the weekend. It would be easy to throw caution to the wind and to try to socialise, but to do so, when the number of new cases is going up would be silly. The paradox of pandemics is that it is a marathon of solitude, rather than a sprint. I calculated recently that we could have another 410 days of pandemic left. That’s around eight years.
What frustrates me about this pandemic situation is that Switzerland has demonstrated that with soft lockdowns, nothing more drastic, they were able to reduce the number of new cases down to tiny amounts within three to four months. If Switzerland has self-confident, and self-assured politicians, rather than easily manipulated politicians, we could be out of the pandemic and we could be back to a normal life. It frustrates me that there is no end in sight, due to government incompetence, in a number of countries. Switzerland is not alone in not knowing how to handle a pandemic appropriately. I am not using language stronger than this, don’t worry. And now for something lighter.
I tried to read Digital Minimalism but it angered me within minutes. My issue with the book is that it treats social media as an addiction, rather than as a way by which people, who do not live together, connect, without sharing the same physical space. I also tried to read How To Break Up With Your Phone and this book is much better because it says “And this is based on my experience” rather than empty words. I am also reading OutBreak In The Woods, but contrary to what you may believe from the title it is a book about hiking during the current pandemic. I am also reading How Google Works. Do you think I am reading enough or should I try to find some more books.
I am currently studying this course. I bought it because it was on promotion and because it is yet another means by which to study the same things, from a different angle. Some of it will be consolidation and some of it will fill in gaps in my knowledge. In theory it’s a 100day challenge course but I aim to finish it sooner, as I have been through many of these topics before. I also don’t like to give myself such an extended period of time.
I am no longer studying German daily, preferring to be more focused on the web development course. I find that splitting the day into German in the morning, and other learning before lunch, or in the afternoon, doesn’t work. I want to be focused now.
It is hard to keep going from pandemic day to pandemic day, and from pandemic week to pandemic week with the hope of socialising and having a personal life being no closer. Part of my reason for self-isolation, as severe as it is, is because I am between groups of friends, so to meet new people I need society to re-open. With the way governments around Europe are behaving the pandemic looks like it is in a stable pattern for years to come.
That’s why I am studying every single day. The goal is that, through studying, I can be more comfortable with work, and as a result, be more comfortable with the rest of my life.
If the pandemic had happened five or six years ago I would have been fine. If it had happened when I was diving, climbing, hiking and doing other things then I would not have self-isolated as I am doing. It’s because I was between social groups that I had nothing to lose. All I had to lose was several seasons of life at my current age.
It could be worse. I could have long covid. I believe solitude is a price worth paying, to avoid long covid.
A few years ago I bought a 256 gigabyte iphone because I wanted more space and for a long time it was great because it meant that I had plenty of room to grow into. The issue comes when you get to over 200 gigabytes of data stored in iCloud because you go from 3 CHF per month to 10 CHF per month. You go from 36 CHF per year to 120 CHF per year. That is a big increase.
I wouldn’t mind paying this much, if it was easier to retrieve this data. Once data is on iCloud and plenty of services it is a nuissance to retrieve. If you think “I can expand it for a few weeks then you’re right, you can. It’s when you want to recover the data that you will get blocked. iCloud doesn’t allow a photo library to be spread across multiple drives, so either you have everything on a single volume, or you’re trapped paying for decades to come.
Now for the simple solution I hadn’t considered until last night. A lower capacity iPhone. With a 256 gigabyte phone you need ten terabytes of storage to backup the entire phone, but with a 126 gigabyte phone you sneak under the 200 gigabyte limit with ease. The cost of a new phone is relatively high, but consider that you’re saving 81 CHF per year, and several hundred francs on a mobile phone.
Next time you consider an iPhone consider the size of the phone compared to your laptop hard drive, as well as the cost of cloud storage and backup. The bigger the phone, the larger the yearly tax. Keep it to 200 gigabytes and the tax is 39 CHF per year, expand it to two terabytes and it’s 120 CHF per year. Retrieving the data is not straight forward. I will stick to smaller capacity phones, to avoid hitting the 200 gigabyte limit in future.
Some of us are confined by freedom. By this I mean that as society is opened up, as people are told that they don’t need to wear masks, that they don’t need to self-isolate and that they don’t need to show covid passes, so the freedom of others is taken away. During a pandemic there are two types of people. Those that hear the word pandemic and think “I need to self-isolate, wear a mask, and vaccinate.” and the others who think “Why should I do what the state tells me to do? I am my own person.”
Quarantines have already been shortened so people who could be contagious are allowed to move through society freely. At the same time there is discussion about not requiring people to wear masks, returning to work and not requiring covid passes.
If this was in a vacuum we could say “well, let’s see what happens.” except that we are not. We see that Denmark has gone from the BA-1 wave to the BA-2 wave. We see that in England, France, Switzerland and the US the number of sick children is going up. We also see that hospitalisations are increasing. If we look at a map of Europe now with levels of spread of the virus then the whole of Europe is dark red with serious Covid outbreaks.
This is the worst possible time to reopen society, because the virus is already virulent, and governments are not trying to contain it. All of the indicators above show that we have a choice to make for this spring and summer. Do we self-isolate and spend a third summer in solitude, or do we play pandemic roulette, hope for the best, and see whether we fall sick? I would prefer not to play pandemic roulette personally, so, for now, the summer will be solitary.
Before the pandemic, when life was normal, I would go to three or four events per week organised via websites. These days, on meetup.com things are organised every two weeks, and for just 15 people at a time. This means that if you’re not first to sign up you’re on a waiting list and you could be social once every few weeks, rather than three times per week. This frustrates me.
There is a simple solution. There is a demand for events to be organised. I recently bought fresh Via Ferrata stuff and may start doing them regularly once again. I want to accertain that I am comfortable with the sport after such a long break, and once this is done I can create my own via ferrata and walking group. I would organise things at least once per week, maybe more.
The biggest nuissance with Meetup.com is that it requires a monthly fee for having a group. The result is that groups are created, run for a bit, and then destroyed to avoid paying for longer. The alternative is to use Facebook but I absolutely hate what Facebook is and what it represents. Every time it abuses of peoples’ trust it and gets caught it never apologises.
I have car and I have three seats. Like I used to do before the pandemic I can pick people up in Nyon, drive them to and from the activity, and when it comes time to say goodbye they can contribute towards petrol and the cost of having a group.
I would never charge people a fee to participate in an activity because that goes against my ethos, but having people pay a fair share towards petrol is the right thing to do. If you don’t charge people for the petrol used, they abuse of our kindness as drivers.
There is an added benefit. The problem with group activities is that when they end people rush to the train, without saying goodbye and I find this really strange. Before the pandemic there would be a stop at a bar to have a drink, and then drive home. In the Pandemic age that stop no longer occurs. I find this to be a shame. At least by driving from Nyon to the via ferrata or hiking location there is a moment for conversation before and after the journey.
I could be like others, and take the same trains as they take but that would increase my costs for participating in events. It also doubles or triples the journey time.
Last week I walked an extra eight kilometres rather than take a train, so it isn’t that I want to use the car. I have spent five or six years doing almost all of my bike rides and walks from home. The point of the car is to expand my range, once again.
As I got to the end of this post I noticed that I am included in the hike that I thought was overbooked, and I see that other people are doing a VF at the same time on the same day and now I am torn about which one to do. The beautiful irony.
The old paradox is back. Nothing to do for the entire week, and then two activities to do at the same time.