Not a chance
Nihilism
Sometimes you go for a daily walk and all the roses are starting to emerge, and these are not tiny ones. These are saucer sized roses. They are mainly growing at the side of orchards. These are Red and pink, but there are other colours, so if I walk in the right places I should find them too.
I could have posted these images to Instagram or Facebook, but I’d rather post them on my own website, for the world to see, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, three to six years from now. 😉
A single coke will cost 4.50 in a bar. Water could even cost four francs per glass. When you go to the shops do you buy a few litres of Rivella or coke. Do you buy wine, vodka or other alcohols? If you do then you can easily spend thirty or more francs per week, on glasses that will leave you thirsty, drinks that will leave you hungover, and containers that will require you to consider a trip to the recycling centre.
Now imagine habituating yourself to drinking water. “But we already do, you’re the only one that doesn’t.” ;-).
I do drink water, but when I’m out hiking, cycling or doing other sports. I don’t usually drink water at home. I didn’t like the taste of the tap water. That has changed. Now I can drink several litres a day. With the Camelbak Eddy+ and Chute adapters I found that I was still curious about experimenting with the Nalgene bottle. I want it for water purification rather than daily use.
For two days I used the Shield One. I like it. I thought that the mouth piece would be uncomfortable to drink from and I thought that the bottle felt heavy for the first two or three drinks. Now I find that the weight is fine and I like drinking from it. It is well designed and easy to drink from with a single hand. This is especially useful for when you’re doing something with your other hand, like hanging off a cliff, or driving a car.
The Sigg original looks rough on the outside, until you touch it. The surface is smooth. I drank three litres from it today. My impression of it is good. The lid takes a little more time to open than other water bottles. It feels compact compared to the half litre traveller I have but it takes up more space.
Switching to drinking water wasn’t difficult. I haven’t cut out the other drinks. I reduced my intake. It feels luxurious to drink water because it is unlimited. Simply open the tap. With Coke, Rivella and any other drinks you need to get them at the shops, carry them up, etc. With water the process is simple. It’s on tap.
Le Sentier des Toblerones
from Mainvision on Vimeo.
Hidden among the trees in the Canton de Vaud you can find concrete blocks put there as a defensive line to slow down invading armies. The concrete blocks have a similar shape to chocolate Toblerones. There is a hiking trail that you can follow from Bassin down to the lake side. Along the way you can find concrete bunkers camouflaged as houses.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is twice as powerful as previous Pis according to various sources. For the last 24 hours I have been using a Pi 5 running Ubuntu and the experience has been good. Despite being a small computer it feels as comfortable as some of the computers I have been using.
I have loaded several webpages at once, in various tabs, tried importing images via photoprism, whilst writing this blog post and running VS Code. So far I feel that a Pi running Ubuntu can run Nextcloud, PhotoPrism and be used to write a blog post simultaneously.
I struggled with installing VS Code but that was due to not being used to dealing with Debian packages. That was quickly resolved and that’s how I am able to experiment with blogging from a Pi 5.
After the first boot the Raspberry pi 5 was noisy, with the fan running at full power until I rebooted it. On the second boot the fan started to vary in strength according to what I was doing. If you’re doing something intensive, like indexing and importing photos to photoprism then it will be noisy, but if you’re writing a blog post it will be quiet.
What I especially like is that Front Matter, on a 2016 mac book pro is slow to load. On the Pi it loads all the posts within a few seconds. It helps that I moved all 2023 posts to the archive.
The point remains that if you want to write blog posts in Markdown for Hugo to generate static web pages then the Pi 5 8GB is fine.
In 2008 or so I bought an EEEpc for about 300 CHF and it was relatively crap. In 2020 or so I bought a Chrome Book and it was fine for web surfing but costs about 270 CHF or so. With the EEEpc you could feel that the machine was underpowered, cheap, and huge, mainly for the battery to fit on the back. The keyboard was tiny so you had to re-learn to touch type on this device.
With the Chrome Book you have a simple laptop but not much freedom so it’s good for web browsing, but not much more, in my experience. I didn’t experiment with running it with the Linux features enabled.
With the Pi 5 you have a computer that could fit into the small pouch of a Domke satchel. With an aluminium apple keyboard teathered by a power cable, and a mouse, you can use the Pi 5 and forget that you’re using such a small and relatively small computer.
It isn’t portable. It doesn’t have batteries, or a keyboard, or anything else, but when it’s plugged in it works well for web browsing, and hosting docker containers, and running VS Code, for blogging at least. If you’re a writer then the Pi 5 could be enough.
I tried pairing a bluetooth rapoo keyboard and that worked as well. Just open the bluetooth tab, tell the keyboard you want to tether by pressing the pairing button, find it on the Pi, type in the pin, and you’re tethered. This means that you can keep the ports free for hard drives or other items.
I tried using a Pi 4 power adaptor and it worked but said that it would restrict the amount of power third party devices could draw from it. The Pi 4 has a 15W power adaptor whereas the Pi5 has a 27W adaptor.
My Mac Book Air is old and needs replacing. By Autumn of this year it will no longer be supported by Apple. That’s why I didn’t bother to replace the battery a few weeks ago when I was considering giving it another two years of life.
I was playing with an HÂ Elite Book recently. I have cooled to this machine because it has killed two USB devices. It killed a hard drive and a USB stick. Due to this realisation I think I will use it for experimentation, and nothing more. I don’t mind that it killed the old USB stick because I expected that it was already dead when I found it after it had been dormant in a drawer for years. When it killed the SSD I didn’t know whether the drive had died because it was cheap so I was worried for it’s twin which I am using photoprism with at the moment.
I’m happy that it’s the USB port that killed the drive, rather than a faulty drive, but I would prefer not to kill any more devices. I don’t trust the right USB port not to kill it’s own USB devices, if given the chance.
I will install NixOS on that machine and experiment with it.
Although I bought the Pi 5 to work as a server I have realised that it can be used as a desktop for web browsing, playing video and more. I like that the Pi 5 has a fan that speeds up, or slows down, depending on how intense the work load is. This means that it can be quieter when you do simple tasks. I feel that it could replace my 1600 CHF eight year old mac book pro, with relative ease.
I should try to run kdenlive.
I’m happpy with the Pi 5, so far, after a day of experimenting.
When I was younger I switched from skiing to snowboarding and I loved the sensations. I loved how quickly I adapted my skiing knowledge to snowboarding. Within hours I felt okay. I often feel that I could have progressed faster if I had been in a group with people who were just experiencing winter sports for the first time.
When I was a child I sometimes played with a skateboard but I just went up and down a street. We played as children do.
For a while I thought that I would take off rollerblading instead of walking or cycling. Within a short amount of time I came up against the fact that I live in a hilly place with cars that do not respect pedestrians, cyclists or other slow moving people. As a result of this I lost interest in skating, but was attracted by the notion of skateboarding.
The beauty of the skateboard is that you have four wheels, that allow you to go faster, when the surface is right, but when it isn’t you just step, or stumble, off of the board, and you walk until it is friendly for the skateboard again. It allows you to go faster than a walker, when the conditions are right, and walk when they’re not. It gives you the best of both worlds.
For the first two or three hundred meters I really struggled with giving the board direction, but also with balancing. It would veer to the right when I wanted to go to the left. Eventually I found a slight decline and that’s when I practiced riding the board, and reacquainting myself with the feel of skateboarding. Eventually balancing switched back from the front of my focus, to instinct, and that’s when I could begin to control the board, and get it to do what I wanted again. I was a little surprised by how quickly I remembered the right habits.
Taking snowboarding knowledge and applying it to skating is easy. I was surprised that within an eleven kilometre loop I felt more comfortable. I carried the board more than I rode it but that’s because the slopes are steep and I’m not used to the sensations yet, but also because the steep slopes are roads, with cars. By pushing my ability too fast I could endanger myself, especially near roads. I practiced on agricultural roads where traffic is at a minimum. If bikes or pedestrians were walking I reverted to walking. It’s about being safe, and in control.
I was going to say that I want to learn to skateboard again because it’s faster than walking. It is faster than walking but that’s not the only benefit. Skateboarding is exertional. It requires the use of different leg muscles and it’s a proper workout, rather than just walking. For up hill bits, downhills, and rough terrain I will continue to walk, but where the terrain is flat enough, and traffic is low enough, I can skate. By mixing the two I will be practicing interval training, without it being called interval training. With experience going to the train station and back, and going to the shops and back, will be faster.
Skateboards are easy to transport, whether by car, by train, or even by foot. Theoretically you can always have it with you, for when opportunities present themselves. I’m happy that I felt comfortable within an hour or two of riding, even if most of that time was walking to a comfortable location.
They say that things are like riding a bike. I think that skateboarding is like snowboarding. It doesn’t take long to remember how to do it.