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Day Twenty-Two of ORCA in Switzerland – The Company of Cats
Today during my walk this afternoon I surprised a cat on some stairs and I moved patiently. It brushed up against me so I started to stroke it. During this pandemic the only living things I have had physical contact with are cats. During a pandemic, if you’re not living with people, you are very limited.
Yesterday I did go out for a bike ride with a group of people, virtually. Before the ride I was feeling really down, and negative. After the ride I was feeling refreshed and relaxed. For the first time in three weeks I was able to do something physical without having to avoid people, worry about routing or anything else. All I had to do was pedal to the limit of my motivation and endurance.
If we went into full lock down then I would treat it as if we were in winter. I’d train hard, on the indoor trainer, so that when we are finally allowed more freedom in the outdoors I’d be fit enough to explore new routes.
The Shopping situation
When I went to the shops they were the emptiest I’ve seen them in a long time. I didn’t even need to queue to get in, although I did have a brief moment of over-exaggerating my steps as I was behind people walking slower than me. Everyone, or almost, walks slower than me, so that’s not a criticism of the people ahead of me. It’s good for you. You can use entirely different muscle groups as you behave in an eccentric manner. Even the self-checkout was empty, just one other person.
Of course in the process I forgot to buy plain rice so now I’m going to have to cook with wild rice today. I think playing the COVID-19 lottery, by going to the shops once a day, is risky enough. Wild rice is meant to be healthier anyway.
A Slow Down In New Cases
According to the figures I see, and articles in the press, it seems that the Pandemic has reached a plateau and we may be able to feel optimistic about the end coming in two or three weeks. Of course we have to be wary. With good weather more people are going out to enjoy the conditions, and the likelihood of another flareup is high if people are not careful.
Having said this I saw a tweet that the Canton De Vaud judiciary is going to start work again today, I saw that a shop selling coffee was open again and that a pet shop was open again too. These could be seen as signs, that more people are optimistic that things are improving.
Societal Change
I see that people are discussing whether society will have changed when this is all over and I believe that it will not have because of two key reasons. The first is that the wealthy, those with the power to effect change, will not have suffered like those that do not have the power to effect change. As a result many things will remain the same.
The second factor is rate of infection. When China was infected every other nation on earth had the opportunity to react, but as we see, after Italy was infected, no societies changed. Switzerland, France, Spain, The United Kingdom and the United States did not change.
It took governments saying “stay home, and self-isolate” for people to take action. To me this is a clear sign that the societal change people idealise is just that, an ideal.
Update: Victorian England was afraid of germs and diseases, which is why they wore white gloves and tried to keep their homes clean. The problem is that the paint they used to cover their walls was poisoning them, as was makeup and other elements of everyday life.
Side Effect
I have seen the headline in French and English that according to some people, the earth is less seismically active than usual. As none of the reputable news services have written about this story I am seeing it as just a curiousity, rather than something serious. It’s more likely that with less traffic, whether cars, trucks or planes, that seismometers, may detect less background noise.
In theory now would be the perfect time to have the LHC running, as there is less background noise.
Turn by turn navigation with the Nokia N97
Last night I recovered my N97 after lending it to a friend for a few days and he told me it was too complicated to use, which I do agree with, after seeing how easy the 3gs is, but that’s not the point of this post. Turn by turn navigation is.
For those of you who know me you’ll have heard that I’ve used the N95, N97 and Iphone for navigation and each has it’s strengths and weaknesses. Mainly the biggest weakness is having to wait until you’re stopped at a traffic light before checking whether you were going the right way or not. That has now changed.
Nokia have recently come out with an excellent, yes, that’s my opinion, add on to the maps software that provides turn by turn navigation with a choice of hundreds of voices. That’s what makes the Nokia N97 such a great, although expensive GPS. You select the voice, in my case female Canadian french, and she will tell you which way to go. She will tell you when you’re at a roundabout, whether to go right or left and more. Best of all her voice will allow you to keep your eyes on the road.
If you’re travelling with a fellow geek who can play with the phone whilst you’re driving then they will notice the counting down, telling you how far you are from the next change in direction, show a map of the route as a forerunner to the actual journey or even a map of the complete journey.
From what I’ve described above you see that the N97 behaves just like a dedicated navigation GPS that’s constantly online. As a result you get traffic information telling you what to look out for. It’s a beautiful piece of software and I’d love to go on a road trip to test it.
I’m in favour of this in car navigation. If you buy a GPS you’d pay 300-400CHF in some cases, several hundred CHF for the Iphone tom-tom app, or you could get it for free with your N97. The choice is yours. I’m very happy with how well it performed.
Seesmic video and HTML 5
Remember the video version of seesmic, the one that spawned.the francofous?
Things changed for two reasons. Bandwidth issues and ressources. Flash would suck down the laptop battery within a few minutes. It meant that you could.only Seesmic from a fixed position.
With html5 that problem will dissapear. What I look forward to is an HTML 5 optimized version. It could result in a greater number of users on less powerful machines.
I hope we see a growth in users and a more international set of users. I hope they also add more features at the same time.
Let us see whether Seesmic take advantage of this opportunity.
Apple phone show 22 is interesting and twitter tracking
Apple Phone Show no. 22 is a particularly good episode. Andy Ihnatko and Scott Bourne discuss how to use the iPhone in real-life situations. It’s a precursor of things to come in the near future.
I’ve decided to try Twitter tracking which works by you selecting which words you want to follow. The messages are then sent straight to your phone and you follow any conversations on the topic.
Improved Belaying – perfecting our technique
Belaying is a core climbing skill. With good belaying a climber can climb as fast as he is comfortable to climb, as if without a rope and yet have his fall cushioned at be safe at all times. The belayer needs to be active. He needs to observe and be attentive. I first learned to rock climb with a rope about ten years ago on the Italian side of the Alps and at the time I enjoyed climbing more than I enjoyed belaying. I then spent several years climbing via ferrata instead. The advantage with via ferrata is that it’s a simplified form of climbing.
Over a year ago I started climbing indoors daily as I finally found a group with which to climb. My interests and skill in belaying improved. Yesterday I assisted a short belaying perfection course in anticipation of the Villars IFSC climbing event. During this session we were reminded of a few key points.
Pre-climb check
As part of the pre-climb check we check that the rope is threaded through both loops on the climbing harness. We then check that every knot on the figure of eight knot is double. Once this is done we run through the rope and put it in a theoretical basket to check that there are no knots.
Initial part of the climb
Before the first clip as a belayer we are there to assist and direct the climber should they fall. We guide them towards a good landing until they get to the first clip. Once they are clipped in we make sure that they have enough rope to progress without feeling a pull downwards. We keep one hand to feed the rope and the second is always below holding the brake end of the rope. If they fall we are ready to stop and block the fall for the first four clips. From the fourth to the sixth clip we have a choice of either absorbing the fall or absorbing the fall and letting them descend to the ground. Once above the sixth clip we are feeding rope and ready to slow the fall and then lower the climber to the ground.
A dynamic movement
When you’re belaying you keep your legs so that one is forward and the other is behind. You’re ready to step forward to quickly provide more rope and ready to step back to tension it. If they fall we are in a good position to react to slow down the fall and lower the person back to the ground.
Lowering
When lowering the climber both hands are on the brake side of the rope. One can feed the rope a little faster and the second one is providing resistance as the rope slides through the system. Gloves that protect palms are recommended that are cut off so that fingers still have a tactile feel for the rope.
Learning to fall
During the training we took it in turns to belay and then to climb. When we were climbing we learned to be confident enough to fall and trust the belayer to slow down and then lower us. As a result of this part of the climbing training I was able to push my climbing to a higher grade and be confident enough to fall a number of times. This was a pleasant part of the climbing training because it allowed me to open up more challenging climbs.
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Thank you a lot Richard for the work you did on this interview !!! :)) I'm so not used to see me talking on video 😉
Is there a way to embed the video on the minsh blog ?