A plowed field in the evening

Playing Wordle

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

I saw the little boxes, and then I saw that the New York Times had an article on the distraction so I read about it. It’s a game some people were playing via whatsapp during the lockdown, spread to friends, and then it spread wider and wider. Boiled down Wordle is hangman for people who no longer feel comfortable with capital punishment even in game form.

I read an article seasons, or even years ago about how schools were having to rethink the game of hangman because it no longer reflected the sensibilities of people of the current age. Wordle is a good solution.

At the same time I think that Wordle is an interesting way of practicing thinking of words by yourself, before playing scrabble with others. The faster you can find the word in Wordle, the better prepared you will be for playing wordle.

I anticipate that Wordle could become addictive for three reasons. The first is that you have one problem to resolve per 24 hours, and you only have five tries before you need to wait for another problem. I find it unpleasant, but in such a small dose, that I could go back daily, until I am addicted, like so many are.

There are more interesting challenges. Crosswords are one. At least with crosswords you are entertained for an hour or two, until you get better. If you learn a new language you could be entertained for 770 days in a row before finally finding the need to try something different. Finally, I think that learning to code, or reading books may be more enjoyable.

On the topic of coding, I would like to write an app, where if I give letters and their positions in a word, that it comes up with suggestions. I don’t want to cheat at scrabble or Wordle. I think it could be a way of designing crosswords, for example. The game is to find which word it is, by the letters that it has, and by their position. My aim would be to use that thought process, for a different context.

And Finally

I can see how Wordle would be a good game for children, writers, and people with five minutes spare. It is a quick and possibly entertaining word to expand one’s vocabulary and think laterally.

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Garmin’s Auto Goal

Garmin’s Auto Goal

Byrichard

Garmin allows you to select the number of steps you want to take in a single day, or let it be set automatically. For a year or two I allowed the goal to set. The result is a step goal that fluctuated from 12,000 steps per day to 15,000 steps or more. This was fine, because I ignored it.


A few days ago I decided to set it to a fixed ten thousand steps a day. Many will say that the 10,000 steps per day doesn’t matter, and I agree. I took 21,000 steps today so I overshot the mark by a little.


I run every two days or so, and I walk for an hour and a half or more each day. Although I do this sometimes I undershoot the goal by a few hundred steps and the streak is lost. The streak, too, doesn’t matter, because it is meaningless. What I find interesting is the number of steps taken in a year. Once it was five and a half million. Now it is currently about 4.3 million.


These numbers too, don’t matter. If you run, or if you cycle you’re either making more effort, or your steps are not counted. In both cases the step count tells one story but other metrics tell another.


Last night I read about how you can increase your Vo2 max up to a certain point, and after that it doesn’t increase. What does change is your resistance to fatigue. You go from being able to run for 2 kilometres to being able to run for 2.3 kilometres, and more.


Today I walked for two hours in drizzle. I passed by two Camino stamp opportunities and collected them in a booklet that is not designed for this use. I collected them as a curiousity, and to give this walk a different purpose.

The Daily Walk – 100 Days of Consecutive Blogging.

The Daily Walk – 100 Days of Consecutive Blogging.

Byrichard

We walk daily to look into the distance, to have fresh air, and to think about things. We take our daily walk because it’s a habit. We take our daily walk because it is a way of travelling from one place to another, without necessarily changing location.


A flower, with a field, and the Alps behind it.


Today is day 100 of writing a blog post every day. Every day I have tried to find inspiration to write and every day I have succeeded. The posts go unread, but the challenge is not to be read. The challenge is to be consistent. I have managed that challenge.


We are in a pandemic so I do not travel to via ferrata, hikes in the mountains or activities. There are no conferences, so I do not go to large events. My ideas and inspiration come from what I read, see, hear or feel. As we meet very few people we also converse less. Ideas are harder to share and discuss.


I question whether, when the pandemic is over, I will have the motivation to try to resume a social life. At the moment, because we’re in a pandemic, I feel that the answer is, “definitely not.” This is a self defense mechanism, and a way of commenting on the one and a half years of pandemic.


We have to be solitary to cope with pandemic solitude, but we also have to be that way inclined to be in that situation.


See you tomorrow.


Switzerland, Fitness centres and the mountains
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Switzerland, Fitness centres and the mountains

Byrichard

For three years I was a fitness club member. I loved going to the gym up to three times a week when possible. I loved training so much that I bought apps and devices to track my progress. Any time that I could not spend three sessions a week at the gym I felt disappointed. That passion, when you are in full time work can be hard to keep active.

I tried going to the gym at 6am and I tried going after work but the habit never picked up. In Switzerland fitness memberships can vary from 700-900 CHF per year to over 1200 CHF per year depending on the membership perks you take. If you go to the gym 52 times a year that’s 23 CHF per session. If you go twice a week it’s reduced to just 11 CHF per week. If you go three times a week it’s 7 CHF per session.

In theory this is a reasonable price. It’s less than a week’s pay for most professionals. In practice you want to justify the expense. You want to go to the gym when you have time. This means weekends, evenings and on public holidays. I was often frustrated to have free time but for the gym to be closed.

I would love to see gyms that take your outdoor sporting passions in to account. Running and cycling are already somewhat covered in the lac Léman region of Switzerland. What I would like to see next are ski days, via ferrata excursions and canyoning within the club.

During week days and when the weather is bad you would train in the fitness centre. As soon as summer weekends and holidays would allow then as a fitness centre you would enjoy the great outdoors. I see through Glocals and facebook groups that the interest to do activities in groups is there. Fitness centres could attract a younger demographic to join.

I love physical fitness and I love exercise. If I lived in a city like London or Paris I’d be happy to sit in a gym and train. I’d have filtered air and less traffic to contend with. As I live in the Swiss countryside though I want to take full advantage of what nature has to offer. When I find a fitness club that offers discounted canyoning, waterskiing and other activities, and subsidised via ferrata and ski days then I will rejoin.

Twenty One Thousand Five Hundred Steps and A Wind That Plays The Harmonica
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Twenty One Thousand Five Hundred Steps and A Wind That Plays The Harmonica

Byrichard

Today I could have taken the scooter to some shops but I went for a walk. The result of that walk is that I reached twenty one thousand five hundred steps. I often take a lot of steps per day. I wish I was walking somewhere more interesting than in circles.


According to Sports tracker my daily workouts saved 4.74 kilograms of CO2 this month.


I was amused during this walk. The wind is so strong at the moment that as I tried to play the Harmonica as I walked into the wind I found that the wind itself was playing my harmonica. If I blew then I won, but if I drew then I was competing against the wind. Boring people get wind chimes. I think that people should get harmonicas instead of wind chimes. Wind chimes are audio kitsch. Harmonicas are not, because they’re rarer.


https://youtu.be/7E9ZljSImGY


This recording is from yesterday’s walk in the wind rather than today’s. The audio was recorded from the airpods, I think. I wasn’t sure you would hear the harmonica over the sound of the wind but it worked.


The wind has to be going at, at least, 25km/h if I remember correctly for the reeds to resonate enough to make noise.


In other news I have read more than once that trawlers are now trawling for krill within superods of whales. I read a few days ago about how fishermen are hoovering the sea of krill to feed farmed salmon. Humans are destroying the sea to such a degree that they are now hoovering up krill, leading to whales and other mammals to starve. We should not be wasting money and fuel to farm something in a juvenile state. It’s bad enough that humans destroy other parts of the marine food chain but this is a step too far.


As a diver people always asked “But what is there to see when you dive” and the truth is “nothing, because of overfishing, in Swiss lakes and the mediterranean. The paradox is that with a marine reserve aquatic life comes back and thrives quite easily. People fly to Fiji and other locations to see plenty of fish but if Europeans, and others, worked to preserve their marine diversity, through marine parks then we would have more fish to see underwater. The marine eco-system needs us to leave it alone, to recover, so that fish reach maturity, so that we see large whales, fish and more.

A Walk Under Storm Clouds
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A Walk Under Storm Clouds

Byrichard

A Walk Under Clouds
A Walk Under Clouds


Sometimes you look at the sky above you and you think that walking underneath it is not wise because a storm could break but you remember that you saw that rain should not come before 1800 so you take the risk and you go for a walk. You look towards Geneva and you see that it is dark and that it looks as if it may be raining. You feel the wind coming from that direction and you worry that the weather forecast was wrong so you change the course of your walk.


The wind blows against you as you walk and you hear one or two sounds of thunder. You are not far from home and you know that if you had to you could run to shelter, whether it’s underneath a bridge, at a petrol station, fountain or other.


At the same time you don’t worry that much. Usually it rains for a few minutes at a time and then it stops, so whether you’re caught in it doesn’t matter. That’s why I didn’t have rain equipment with me. If and when I am worried about the rain I dress for the weather. Today I had a dry bag if I needed it but nothing more. It would have been more interesting to film for a few minutes, than to worry about. Weather in Switzerland is boring for the most part, expect for that flood and mud in one town, and hail in two different cantons.


That’s why you don’t run, and that’s why you don’t rush if the weather changes. Even hailstorms are over within minutes so you could easily shelter under some trees for five minutes and stay dry. I miss the rain that could last for hours or days in a row. The Swiss weather has rain like we have showers, quick two to five minutes and then that’s good until the next day.


A few days ago it rained every day for months and I got used to walking in the rain. I thought nothing of it.


They did advise for people not to walk in wooded areas because of the risk of trees either falling or destabiliing. They said to keep to the normal paths. Hail has already caused millions in damages in Switzerland, just weeks after the Swiss voted against laws to mitigate global warming and weather weirding.


Usually I would be prepared for any weather, if I had planned to walk, but I had planned to run so I was lighter than usual. No water, no rain coat etc. Without a phone call I would have avoided the rain easily.

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