Parapente race
Something out of the ordinary.
Yesterday I went for a 360 timelapse walk through the woods above Trelex. I set the camera to take an image every 8 seconds. As the woods were dark and dense it took some effort not to walk in too much mud and not to slip too many times. The result of the timelapse is not as good as I had hoped. Ideally I want to find a way to fix the camera so that it looks at my direction of travel.
From this footage you see that the camera suffered with the lack of light and that because the camera occasionally rotated to the right it is easy to become disorientated. It is for this reason that it is useful to find wide open spaces when possible and to find places with a lot of ambient light.
What I like about this video is that we can see the various exercise locations. We can see the horizontal bars, the rings and other activities. When I design something to hold the camera steady while I walk with it I can have a little more fun. I could hang on the rings or play with the bars.
With a little luck the month and a half of bad weather is coming to an end and I will be able to go out and get to some interesting locations to film some time lapses.
There are a number of panoramic locations that I think would lend themselves well to 360° views. Imagine a walk by the lake side or a walk near the summit with a view of the landscape below.
What locations or sites would you like to see as 360° timelapse videos?
One nuissance of most modern smart watches is that you must charge then once a day, once a week, or once a month. When you’re in Spain though, with a solar watch things change. At first you go from “26 days of battery remaining” to “36 days of battery remaining”, to “39 days remaining”. Before long the watch displays “infinity time remaining”. When you’re in watch the sun charges the batteries faster than normal use depletes the batteries.
If you’re counting steps with the Garmin instinct then you will not need to recharge the battery before you return north, to where the sun shines less regularly. It also helps that the weather is warm enough to keep the watch exposed to sunlight, rather than sleeve light. Sleeve light is not good for solar watches.
On the flipside today I killed the Apple Watch battery going for an 18 minute swim in 14°c water. By the time I finished the swim the battery was low and died within a minute of getting out of the water. If you’re going cold water swimming do not rely on the Apple Watch, especially not a four year old series four. You need a wet suit for the watch, to keep it from cooling too much.
With Suunto diving watches you can log plenty of dives between battery changes. Apple watch batteries are just bad. This is one very good reason not to use the Apple Watch Ultra as a dive computer. You want to trust that a battery will last for the entire dive, many dives in a row. If a dive computer has any tendency to be unreliable then I would not trust it. In cold water diving you want technology that is flawless and faultless. Suunto Dive watches are not expensive and their batteries last for years, depending on diving habits.
I enjoy cycling, running, climbing and via Ferrata so this type of device is well suited to my needs. The price is not. At 300 USD it is an iPod shuffle replacement at its core. From what I understand The Dash can track steps, heart rate and duration of sports so in theory you can go without a sports watch, sports tracker or mobile phone. In practice, I never leave the house without my phone.
I do see it filling a swimming niche. Most mobile phones are not IP68 certified. If this device is IP 68 certified (I could not find information on the website) then I see it being especially interesting for swimmers.
According to their website they can be used for four hours in between charges but charge time is two hours. They will last through most workouts.
The limitations I see to this device are first and foremost the price. I don’t want to pay 300 USD for something that I am likely to lose. I listen to podcasts and audio books and like to have several on my devices at all times. Both my mobile phone and iPod classic fill these roles with ease.
When the price for these devices descends to 200 USD I will be willing to buy a set. I would also like to have either two sets of earphones or a charge time of just an hour rather than two. They say that the app is coming soon.
As an audiobook and podcast listener, I want to save my progress and bookmark interesting passages. I would like to see this incorporated to the gestures that control the device.
The weather was clear so I was admiring the Tour D’Aï from the Via Ferrata de La Cascade. I was in Les Diablerets as I am one of the volunteers at the FIFAD film festival. I turned up three hours before I was needed and as I had all my climbing gear, except the pulley for the tyrollean in the car I drive I was able to put on my climbing gear and go for an individual climb of the Via Ferrata. The weather was nice, the temperature was comfortable and the via ferrata was quiet. Aside from two guys climbing one of the climbing routes I was alone. I prefer to climb with others.
Via ferrata alone are fun because you go at your speed. There is no need to wait for anyone or rush to keep up. I enjoyed how clear the landscape was. I looked across the valley and I could clearly see the Tour D’Aï and the peak next to it. It is the first time that I notice so clearly the other Via Ferrata.
When you climb the Tour D’aï via ferrata you climb from the other side and go to the summit of the peak on the left. When you walk down you walk on that green part. The trail is an alpine one, for experienced hikers. You see that there is quite a drop if you make a mistake. You normally see this mountain from the Leysin side.
This image shows the Tour D’Aï in relation to other mountains. When you go to Les Diablerets this image will help you locate the peaks. The shape of that mountain is easy to recognise.
We will see when I try the Rocher Jaune. That via ferrata is higher up starting at 2400 metres and ending at 2450 meters according to one source.
For weeks, or even months, by now I have been playing/experimenting with Hugo, 11ty and other solutions. I really like that with Hugo I can use FrontMatter as a CMS to create new posts, add the appropriate meta data, and keep track of what is published and what is in draft form. It allows me to create posts with the right metadata in seconds, rather than having to write the date, time, draft status and more by hand. It also generates the right file title for good archival practices.
As I was looking for a CMS tool to make managing 11ty content easier I came across Decap CMS and it seemed interesting. I installed a version locally, and then I started to look at the code manually, rather than using the CMS tool. It felt complicated so I did some more research. Eventually I learned that in order to play with Decap CMS you need to setup a netlify account, a github account and then expose yourself to accidental charges when playing with a static website generator. I was struck by the paradox. Why would you use a CMS tool that requires you to commit to an external hosting tool? Why not use ClassicPress or WordPress and cut out the middle man. Of course the short answer is “because you still generate a static tool, but the interface is intuitive for non coders.
By requiring us to set things up via Netlify we’re forced to use yet another service, which is fine, when you’re using the service in the first place. I am not.
Within a few minutes frontmatter.codes could be setup locally do do what I want, to manage documents and frontmatter for an 11ty site. In so doing I keep development on the local machine, only connecting to the external server when I’m uploading site changes. I can use the same workflow as I have for Hugo, once I set it up.
It’s easier, for me to setup a ClassicPress or WordPress CMS and use that. ClassicPress feels very fast and I can use markdown or html for pages that I am creating, or that already exist. Within a short amount of time I can do what Decap CMS does, anywhere I want.
For WordPress you can use this method/tutorial or with the free playground option. Within seconds you can have a wordpress instance running on azure, up and ready for a new site and content.
In particular, while App Service F1 will not generate any cost, database usage is chargeable for “pay as you go” plans or when the usage limit of 750 hours per month for 12 months is exceeded. So, in order to ensure they will not pay for the WordPress playground, developers should monitor and track their database usage.
With this tool a wordpress instance is prepared for you, and for a month you can see what the cost would be, before jumping into a financial commitment.
If I am experimenting with a Static website generator like Hugo or 11ty I want to have local versions to play with, rather than remote ones that may cost something if I am not careful. If I’m reading it correctly the basic plan I’m experimenting with is 3 CHF per month for a server in Northern Switzerland. With this “playground” I have the opportunity to experiment, and see whether that is the case.
The testing options are cheap, but for production Azure and other cloud solutions are expensive, which is why we use other cloud solutions, especially for personal sites. I will spend time experimenting with Frontmatter, set up for 11ty, following this learning experience.