Playing With Harmonicas

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

During a walk a few weeks ago I came across L’Harmonica pour les nuls, Harmonica for Dummies, so I picked up the book and within a day or two I had ordered a harmonica to learn the instrument. The harmonica is a small versatile instrument. that can be used to play a range of music.

The greatest advantage with harmonicas is that it fits within a pocket. It takes very little space and can theoretically be taken anywhere. Despite what I thought about harmonicas the book is quite big. It’s over 300 pages.

I play a few minutes a day and I found some online lessons in the form of videos and more. I have spent a lot of time while cooking just playing with the harmonica, rather than playing the harmonica. I got used to the feel. I got used to the sound. I eventually learned to play individual notes. It takes time to learn.

I had a good studying routine before this summer but it has been destroyed by the summer months. When winter comes back I will be back to my healthy routine and I will progress with all of my projects, instead of stalling like I have. I went from studying three to four hours a day, between programming and harmonica to one or two hours, sometimes even less.

I don’t like the pandemic. I don’t like not being able to socialise with single people. I don’t like that the risk of COVID is always hanging over us. I want the pandemic to be over, so that I can socialise doing the things I enjoy, rather than doing things with people that remind me of what I don’t have.

I hate pandemic summers, and weekends. I long for the pandemic to end and to go back to doing group activities.

Too many people live in denial. Too many people behave as if the pandemic was over. It isn’t. The statistics show this very clearly. For over a year I didn’t worry about catching COVID because I was self-isolating and wearing a mask around people. This week I started worrying again. If I was going to get COVID it is during summer

I prefer self-isolation and solitude to being with couples who don’t understand what living through a pandemic as a single person is like.

I am fatigued by the pandemic but playing the Harmonica, rollerblading, cycling, studying and more help me regain my mental health. People drain it.

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Twenty Seven Thousand Steps in BareFoot Shoes

Byrichard

A few days ago I took twenty seven thousand steps in barefoot shoes. My feet did not suffer at all from walking that far in such shoes. I did some of that walking in the vapor gloves and the rest in the Trail Gloves. The beauty of barefoot walking is that you acclimate to such shoes quite fast. Within a matter of a week or two they become comfortable and feel normal. 


The problem with normal shoes is that they are made of solid parts. They might pinch around the top of the foot near the toes, and the material that protects the back of the heel wears away and begins to cause blisters sometimes. 


For a while I found that most conventional shoes became uncomfortable for one reason or another. I also found that they were uncomfortable twice. The first time is when you just bought them, because your feet needs to get used to the new shoe shape. The second time is when the rear of the shoe gets worn through and the heel rubs against the unprotected plastic. Both of these situations require either blister protection, or just accepting the slight discomfort. 


That I can walk 27,000 steps in a single day, with barefoot shoes says a lot about these shoes. Although they offer very little padding they feel natural within days, rather than weeks. 


They even felt comfortable with running today. I ran a few minutes at a time. I felt no pain or warnings. 


Ideally I would be walking in vapor glove shoes, rather than trail gloves. I don’t. Most of my walking is on tarmac or concrete. Both of these are hard surfaces and an unprotected heel will hit the ground with a lot of force. This causes pain, especially over thousands of steps. With the trail gloves I can walk as if I had not transitioned from one shoe type to the other. I don’t want to change my daily walk, to accommodate shoes. I want to do the opposite. So far I have succeeded. 

A Walk In The Shade

A Walk In The Shade

Byrichard

A walk from one forest to another from Founex to Arnex.


Sometimes we walk in the rain and the snow and we get soaked by the weather. Today I drank a litre in an hour and a half of walking. The air temperature is around 31c.


I decided to walk from clump of trees to clump of trees. It’s possible. If I had walked in the direct sun I would have needed to drink more than I did.


31 might seem warm but we had 37 for days in a row during previous years. This year has been gentle.


With A view of the Mont Blanc
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With A view of the Mont Blanc

Byrichard

I’m afraid to open the veluxes because of the threat of finding yet another large spider. I don’t mind having to dispose of it, but I hate the idea of having one walking around without me knowing. A great alternative to open windows is to go for your daily walk. You’re far from neighbours, from smokers, from metalworking and more. You are free to daydream. Today the Mont Blanc was clearly visible. The image is at max zoom with an iphone 8+.


A view of the Mont Blanc, as seen from Vaud


Yesterday and today the harvesters are out collecting corn and sunflowers. I captured a harvester as it dumped sunflower seeds into a trailer before moving on to finish the field. It is a shame to miss it at work.


A combine harvester unloading Sunflower seeds
A combine harvester unloading Sunflower seeds


What I Am In The Process Of Learning


Today I got a step closer to being able to control WordPress more proficiently than I can at the moment. With hierarchies related to taxonomies via specialist post creation. Coding your own post types and your own taxonomies gives you enormous control over what you can do with WordPress. I have projects. I know how I want to use this newly acquired knowledge.


This website will be overhauled. The static part will be moved into the CMS, and the CMS will behave, as the old website did, but with ease of new post creation and more. The challenge is in updating to new technologies, and using this process as a learning and consolidation phase, as I did with CSS and other technologies over the years and decades.



I don’t feel comfortable writing about my trials and tribulations on Linkedin because it feels as though you need to be at your peak, rather than as a between achievements point. With the blog, I can document the learning curve, and the progress I make as I work towards acquiring new skills, in my efforts to build a different career path than the things I have done so far. I also have a project to work on in my free time, aside from the website. The second project is ambitious, and useful. You will learn more, as I get ready to reveal more.


Walking in Rain – Not Singing

Walking in Rain – Not Singing

Byrichard

When some people see that it’s grey or rainy they don’t want to go for a walk. They don’t want to get rained on and they don’t want to experience the discomfort of being in a wet environment. I don’t mind the rain. I don’t mind wearing a rain coat and rain trousers, and waterproof shoes, and ensuring that I don’t need to fiddle with the phone when my hands are wet with rain.

I think tbat one reason for which I’m fine with walking in full rain gear on a rainy day is that I used to drive in a dry suit, and that at the end of the day walking in the rain is not much different from dry suit diving. In both situations you’re wearing cloths to keep warm, with a layer of protective gear over the dry clothes.

One of the problems with walking on a sunny day, after a day of rain is that shoes get extremely muddy, as do trousers, but that mud is just viscous enough to stick to my shoes. It’s the day after heavy rain that it’s awful, because shoes get muddy and when shoes get muddy I sit on the stones and scrape away the mud from my shoes. This takes several minutes. ¨

My shoes get muddy because whether I am on agricultural roads, on main roads car drivers will drive so fast and so close that I am forced to walk in the mud. During a drought this doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t matter when it’s raining. That’s because when it rains water soaks shoes. Mud doesn’t stick. My shoes look good as new, and that’s a great advantage of walking in heavy rain.

Rain also changes the landscape. What is a road, in dry weather, becomes a stream. What is usually an orchard with grass growing between the trees becomes a pond with trees, a mangrove. I might be pushing our imagination a little with this image.

There is one massive disadvantage to rainy days. My coat drains onto the tile floor and I need to keep mopping it up, to avoid stains from forming. I often have to mop the floor where the coat was hanging on the back of a chair. It’s hanging from a chair because if I let it drain on the coat rack it will soak the ISP device.

As I write this blog post I am struck by something. It’s the 30th of december and I’m speaking about rain, with barely a thought for snow. Facebook reminded me that 12 years ago we had snow on this day. According to the Apple Weather app the normal temperature range for where I am is from -6°c to 4°c. It’s 9°c today. At lease precipitation is 7.3cm above average, so that’s one plus. If it was cold we would have a nice snowy landscape.

And Finally

When it’s almost always sunny people like me get fatigued with the sun, and rain becomes a rare treat. In the same way that we used to think that it’s a shame to stay indoors when it’s sunny, I now find it a shame not to go out when it’s raining. At least when it’s raining the landscape changes, the walking paths are quiet, and my shoes are spotless when I get home. Usually the morning frost makes the ground muddy and I need to clean my shoes before entering the building.

Maybe I’m ready for the Camino Primitivo. If it rained for the entire time I might still be comfortable, especially if I sleep in a building every night.

Roman and Greek Mythology

Roman and Greek Mythology

Byrichard

I was looking for this type of information online and I found a few websites that provided such information. This one is useful because it is full of Greek and Roman mythological people so it serves as a good resource.



I found it at one of the phone boxes turned into a book library locations.


My intention is to skim through this book and slowly to get a good overview of the complex topic. I didn’t know that Musée was a name, not just a place.


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