The Moléson Via Ferrata by night event is organised for the 13th of August 2016. This is an event that I have been tempted to do for several years. The principal is simple. You wear the usual via ferrata equipment with the exception of a torch. You have to contact the Moléson tourism board either by phone or e-mail and provide them with your information. You will then get a free ride to the start of the via ferrata. They insist on experienced climbers so I assume that they climb the red via ferrata.
The event is not only entertaining for those who are climbing. It should be entertaining for those who watch from the ground. Usually when you watch people climb a route you need to look carefully to differentiate them from the surrounding rock. At this event climbers will be lit up, against a dark mountain so the route will be clearly visible. It will highlight the main route as well as the segment or two that are a little more challenging.
If I was to be free to do this via ferrata by night I would expect the experience to be similar to scuba diving in the lake and caving. I would expect that when I look out at the landscape I would see the cities and towns from the region. Remember that the Moléson slogan is currently “On y voit ma maison”. “We can see my house”. One of the great advantages of trying a via ferrata by night is that you have no notion of how high up you are. You could as easily be 1km up as twenty metres off the ground.
There are three reasons for which I have been unable to do it so far. The first time I couldn’t participate in this event is that I was working on that day and it would involve four hours of driving. The second time I signed up but the event was cancelled due to the weather being unkind. The third time I could not do this VFÂ was due to Leukerbad. I had already committed to the climb and booked a hotel. In theory this year I am free to climb.
If you are thinking of trying it leave a comment.
If you use the weather app on iOS 17 the weather app provides you with information about average temperature and average precipitation. It tells you how different the temperature and rainfall are, compared to average. Today, for example, I see that the temperature is 4°c warmer than the average. It tells me that usually the temperature is 17°c and that the current outside air temperature is 21°c.
For 25 September the normal temperature range is 5° to 21°, and the average high is 17°, today’s high temperature is 21°.
If I look at the average rainfall I can see that it should be 12.9cm rather than 12.6cm.
Historically the average total precipitation from 26 August to 25 September has been 128.5mm. Today, the total for the last 30 days is 125.6mm.
It also gives us the moon phase, the visibility, humidity and more. The current visibility is 27km. Some day they will tell us what the usual visibility is for this time of year, when they collect enough data.
With the new weather app Apple is making climate change visible. We have gone from weather apps that tell us what the weather is and will be to what the weather usually is, and how big the difference is, from the norm. We can look at the temperature and rainfall differences. These are two easy to understand metrics. Within a second we can see that the weather is better or worse than it should be.
When you look at Chamonix it is 13°c warmer than it should be for this time of year. It is far out of the usual range for this time of year. The difference is 13°c. It’s 22°c and the average temperature should be 9°c. It’s t-shirt weather in Chamonix.
With Big Data and AI it is easy for a company like Apple to look at the weather data from several centuries and comment on it, in relation to current conditions. Once per day it can be refreshed to give the current variation between the norm, and the current situation. By giving people this information it allows people to see how serious climate change is, as well as how it affects them personally.
I no longer have to say “it feels like it never rains” and “it feels too warm for this time of year.” The App provides quantitative data, to prove that the opinion, or sentiment, is correct.
This move makes the Apple Weather App more interesting. The Swiss weather app provides similar information but in the form of blog posts written by humans, every few days.
The walk from Paquis to Decathlon can be almost straight if you take the most direct route. You walk from anywhere in Paquis to the train station and from there you head up towards Balexert and from there you head along the cycle and walking paths that veer slightly to the right, take you over the motorway and then to the airport, by the private aviation terminal. From there the rest of the walk takes a few minutes.
This is similar to the walk I used to do from the old town to Meyrin. The walk is not that interesting. It takes you along the same route as the tram takes you, for almost the entire journey. For a brief moment, you see some smaller, more personal buildings along one road.
If I had known that the more interesting bit of the walk would be on the way back I would have tracked that and taken pictures. There are apartment blocks like in other parts of Geneva but they’re separate, with green space. I also saw a row of older houses along the Avenue de Riant Parc.
When you go by car you go along two or three routes. When you’re on foot or on a bike you explore more. You’re going at a speed where you can look around. You’re also going at a rate where traffic lights are less of a concern.
I notice that there are a lot of electric bikes and electric scooters. People are using these two forms of transport. The sun is shining and the temperatures are good. This makes alternative forms of transport more attractive.
Before 2006 we talked about social networks. it’s only with Twitter, Facebook and Instagram that the idea of social media emerged. With it came a golden age of online communities where Facebook was for Uni students to keep in contact with each other, Twitter was to microblog about project progress and more, and instagram was a place to share images taken during the daily commute to work, sporting ativities and more.
At the time social networks were small, tightly knit communities that eventually wanted to meet in person, whether at tweetups, barcamps, and unconferences. The pandemic, and mass adoption changed these. The social networks unravelled and they became networks of strangers and friends of friends.
Threads Is Not About Community
Although Threads os over-hyped as a Twitter killer the real Twitter killer is Twitter. Until November people who wanted to flee couldn’t, because it had critical mass. It’s because of cascading mistakes that Mastodon even stood a chance of being noticed, that BlueSky and other apps were spun off, and that Threads was marketed. Threads is not a twitter replacement for the simple reason that it has no chronological timeline to see posts by the people you choose to follow. Threads, like Instagram and Facebook is just a glossy mag, where an algorithm chooses what you see, or don’t see.
Live Radio and WinAmp Analogy
Imagine that you decide to listen to music. You have two choices. You can listen to live radio, with adverts, paid promotions, a little dj chatter and music that was chosen either by the DJ or a musical algorithm. The choice isn’t yours.
In contrast with Winamp you have no adverts, you have no dj. You have complete control on whether you want to play songs, choosing each one, playing a playlist, or allowing an algorithm tho choose depending on your mood or most played songs.
Both fall within the scope of listening to music, but one is entirely controlled by the listener, and the other is controlled from above, by the radio station
How it ties in to Social Media
Threads is seen as a Twitter killer and the media love it but threads is an algorithm driven social media option where the user is not controlling their own experience. The higher ups are. If you use Facebook you see posts by strangers, not friends. If you use instagram every fourth post is influencer rubbish or an advert. The community has been weakened. I don’t expect Threads to be any different.
The Fediverse Alternative
By fleeing from Twitter to Threads you’re fleeing from the frying pan into the fire, rather than a bucket of ice. Twitter, Facebook et al are controlled by the same people, so by fleeing from one to the other you’re staying within the same sphere of influence.
In contrast, if you flee to the Fediverse, then you’re fleeing to the Winamp experience, where you are in control. You can choose which instance you want to be on, and yet you can chat with the global community if you like, or the local one. When I say local, I mean local to that server, not local to where you live, although if you had that desire then you could setup a local server instance for your physical world community.
The beauty of the Fediverse is that if you’re a blogger then you can add your blog to the fediverse natively, and have your own fediverse instance. You can microblog with it, if you like, or you can write full form blog posts. People can comment, like and more, and those will be mirrored on the blog, and the blog will mirror to the fediverse. It’s so dynamic that if you make a typo in a blog post that you have already published, you can correct it and it will propagate to your followers.
The Community
With the Fediverse, the more time you put into it, the more you will expand your network, and the more visible you become. You become visible, by chatting, commenting, liking and re-tooting and more. Algorithms are not used. Chronological timelines are. The more engaged you are, the more visible you are.
With Mastodon you don’t need to enrage people, offend them and more. Being a conversationalist is the only requirement. It really does feel like Golden Age twitter, rather than what we have had since 2008 and beyond. It feels like a worthwhile network once more.
European Intuition
I can’t play with threads for two reasons. The first reason is that Threads requires an absurd amount of permissions, from health, to spending habits, to browsing history. In summary it requires every permission that an iphone app could ever ask for. Europe said no, so in Europe, for now, we can’t use the app.
I browsed YouTube to see if I could find examples to see if I could find how different Threads is from Instagram and Facebook but couldn’t. What I did find were vlogs by people over-hyping the social network as revolutionary, and ground breaking.It isn’t. It’s the same pig, with different lipstick. To be clear, by pig I mean Facebook app, built to waste our time and sell adverts.
The Fediverse and BlueSky are more fateful Twitter competitors but they don’t have a userbase of two billion people. To join the Fediverse or BlueSky either requires joining an instance or getting an invite.
Mainstream Media and Social Media Control
Threads is being pushed as the Twitter clone and killer for two reasons. The first is that it’s brand new so it attracts curiousity so it makes sense to over-hype the thing that people are curious about. The second reason is that the people who control and own social media also control and own mainstream media, so they’re promoting the product that they want to win.
My Perspective
From my perspeective Threads is not a Twitter clone, or a Twitter killer because it doesn’t see any value in allowing people to follow their friends. It sees no value in giving people a sleek user experience without adverts, and injecting influencer ‘content’. I want to use a stronger word but will remain polite.
Blue Sky has taken itself out of the running recently, because it has seed funding from venture capitalists, and we know that all websites that get VC funding eventually get destroyed.
The true contender, in my view, as a twitter replacement is Mastodon because it shows the values and morality of early Twitter. It’s a network of friends of friends having conversations across servers, timezones and more. With time communities willm strengthen and expand and eventually true communities will exist.
The Fediverse is already broad. It has Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, WordPress and more already playing nicely with it.
And Finally
If and when Threads connects to the fediverse we will suddenly have an enormous amount of noise, and the cult of personality, that helped destroy Twitter and Instagram will destroy the fediverse if people are not careful. Threads is already 70 million people.
Final Thought
At the time of writing this post the fediverse had 13 million accounts. Threads already has 70 million. When Threads connects into the fediverse, the fediverse will be diluted and destroyed by Threads users. People say “but we can’t build a wall to keep people off of the fediverse. If we don’t block Threads, we will have no refuge from big tech. Remember, we left big tech websites for a reason.
James May is interesting. People like me know him from Top Gear and Grand Tour with Clarkson and Hammond but his side projects are interesting. Instead of farming like Clarkson, or driving cars with his daughter Clarkson plays with grown up toys. When I say toys I don’t mean adult cars, planes and more. I mean actual toys. In the video below James May sets himself the project of building a model plane that can fly 22 miles.
The video shows footage of him as a child playing with a model plane, and then as an adult playing with a slightly bigger model plane, then a prototype and then the finished project. In the episode I watched he built and played with a model plane but in others he tries to build other things and succeeds.
What I like about Naked Science, produced by Pioneer TV, is that they produce proper documentaries, rather than breathless crap like so many others do. This is television production quality content, rather than youtube content. I recently noticed that youtube content creactors use the same sound effects, the same music, the same editing, the same chaotic jumble, that makes their content tiring to watch.
In contrast when you watch James May play with model airplanes you get a well produced, well edited, well paced documentary that is interesting to watch. This is a fifty three minute video where you don’t stare at your phone, or get distracted. You watch it from the start to the end without being distracted, or fatigued.
There was a time when I would watch every documentary in the morning, and then do something else on satellite TV. I don’t do this anymore. Too many programs are designed to distract people from adverts so they’re constantly repeating themselves.
I loved watching Mythbusters but that was the decline of Discovery Channel Documentary making.
What makes James May’s Naked Science shows stand out is that they are watchable by a “dinosaur” like me. When a documentary is well paced, and edited to be watched without commercial breaks it becomes engaging. YouTubers should strive to make content that is equal to television rather than scrape the barrel of throwaway culture.
The premise of my post is simple. We live under the illusion that content has to be sensationalist to be worth watching, and we live under the illusion that youtube content needs to be sensationalist to stand out but that notion is wrong. Television quality content should be edited and produced to be shared on YouTube. In this day and age the notion that something has to be two minutes is wrong. The notion that something has to be in “YouTube style” to be noticed on YouTube is wrong. In my eyes we should produce long form content that is well produuced, for YouTube and social media.
YouTube is big enough for content that appeals to my generation and others to be produced and thrived. Algorithms should take this onboard. I want YouTube’s algorithms to provide me with content that is relevant to my age group and interests. I want more content recommendations such as the video above.
The Crosscall Odyssey Plus fills two niches. It is a rugged weather proof phone rated to the IP 68 standard and is equipped with dual sim capability. This makes it ideal for the sports I enjoy, mainly via ferrata as pictured below and hiking. It comes with a smaller carabiner than the one pictured below. I swapped it for one of my own.
IP 68Â is a code to determine how resistant a device is to both particulate matter and liquids. 6 denotes that the device is dust tight so particulate matter will not make it’s way in. 8 as defined by the manufacturer denotes that this device can be submerged for half an hour at 1m before damage occurs. If you get caught in the rain or have to cross a river the phone should survive.
Another interesting feature is the dual sim capability. This phone allows for two microsims to be used at once. In my case I have a Swiss sim card and a french one. Both sims are constantly active so you can select whether to make phone calls from Sim 1 or Sim 2. You can also select which sim card is using the data plan.
It runs android 4.3 and works fine with the TomTom app, the ingress and others. I found that battery life is also comfortable. With me as a user the battery lasts for a day.