Reviewing EcmaScript 6

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Recently I have spent time focusing on JavaScript and EcmaScript to make sure that I understand it. By now it is over a year ago since I felt that I wanted to study Angular but felt that I didn’t have enough knowledge to resolve the challenges so I decided to return to basics. My return to basics involved a number of courses and books but it also led me to study this Linkedin Learning Pathway. It is easy to study, get a certiciate and move on, especially for extroverts or outgoing people who find interacting with people easy.

If I know people then I do find it easy. In other scenarios I struggle. I am working to ensure that if and when I say that I have certain skills, that I have those skills. I want to understand what I am doing and why.

A while ago I managed to get my instagram feed from Instagram JSON files to WordPress via a number of steps and this felt good but I felt that I did not fully understand what I had done. Since then I have studied JSON, JS and other related technologies so I should be able to accomplish the same task more easily, and with fewer tools. I have to decide whether I want to import this data into wordpress or whether I want to run it outside of the CMS.

Such a project will encourage me to conceptualise and then realise my goal, without the skeleton of a course behind it to provide me with guidance. I want this to be a self driven project. It will indicate my progress. When I decide to take the plunge I should find the task easy.

I always find new things to learn, during this pandemic, and these new things keep me occupied and distracted from the eternal return that are these days.

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Images from the Via Ferrata de Lavanchy

Byrichard

Despite the warning that rain would fall after 1700 today we went up to explore the Via Ferrata De Lavanchy. it is a via ferrata that requires a 45 minute walk up hill. You walk up towards a cirque and then turn left and continue upwards through some trees. When you get close to the base of the cliff walk straight up to get to the base of the via ferrata. The via ferrata is simple and short.

A Walk In The Snow

A Walk In The Snow

Byrichard

Today I went for a walk in the snow. It wasn’t snowing and I wasn’t in a blizzard but there was snow on the ground. I like when it snows because the landscape looks different. It reminds us of a different age, of old post cards, and a time when the planet was cooler.


A snow covered path with footprints


The season has changed. Visually tomorrow or the next day the snow will be gone and the landscape will look ordinary. The biggest change will be the temperature. I have started walking with insulated mugs of hot tea again. It’s not that I’m drinking them, but rather that I have the drink in case I get thirsty during the walk.


As I write this blog post I can hear snow sliding off of the roof. When it snows the world is quieter in the morning, and then as soon as the sun shines, or the snow turns to rain, then the snow that accumulated on the roof starts to slide, and you hear as it makes its way down.


Yesterday, during my daily walk, I came across a pile of salt. I stepped in it, to see whether it would dry the mud on my shoes and make it fall off. Unfortunately it didn’t so I need to clean that salt off as fast as possible, before it eats away at my shoes. They were preparing everything for the snow that fell overnight. They were out with snowploughs today, to push a few snowflakes off of paths, before the rain.


During this walk I didn’t cross many people, if any. It’s cold, it’s dark, it was rainy, and the roads were soggy. What you don’t see is that I was wearing my hiking boots today. Such shoes make sense in this weather, to keep the feet dry. It also serves to clean the mud.


That’s it for today.

Bookcrossing and A November Walk

Bookcrossing and A November Walk

Byrichard

Today I went for a slight variant and came across a book dating back to 1930 so of course I picked it up. I like the look and feel of old books. I also like that they carry history. The book is 91, almost 92 years old and it has been passed on from generation to generation for almost six generations. I looked in the book and at first I just ignored the scribbles at the front of the book, not thinking much of it. Now that I looked closer I noticed the BCID so I looked up bookcrossing.com and logged that I found the book.


Now that I know about this project I feel that I should add books that I own to that database, for people to find and share them. One book has 601 hops, and the next only 198. That is how many times books have been passed on from person to person.


I see that the project is still new but it will soon reach two million members (bookcrossers) and approaching 14 million books. It is present in 132 countries, and what is impressive is that this is only since April 2021, so the site is still new. Registering a book is quick and easy. Note the ISBN, Double check the info, write a comment, create the book, and then add the BCID to the inner cover and a new book is logged. It takes seconds.


I believe that this is a great project because if you think that the use case for cars, is bad, due to how much time they spend sitting around, then imagine how bad it is for books. They spend years, even decades on shelves collecting dust, without being read more than once. With a website like Bookcrossing those dormant books are given the opportunity to travel, to be read, to be discussed and to be shared, over and over again. A book is no longer read by one person but dozens, or even hundreds. It works like a library, but the library is the world, and everyone can be a curator.


I could now create an entry for The Unbearable Lightness of Being and other favourite books of mine, and over time I could follow as they are shared, commented on, and as their locations move either west or east, south, or north. It would show how interconnected the world is.


I will participate in this project. I like the opportunities that I think it opens up.

Water bottles and Oxydation

Water bottles and Oxydation

Byrichard

I often hiked with a Sigg one litre water bottle and it has served me well. It has been with me for rock climbing, via ferrata, hiking and more. I like it because it is light, easy to use and maintain. I liked the one litre version enough to get a smaller 600ml version for conferences and work.


Recently I noticed that the mouth of both bottles seems slightly discouloured. I don’t know whether they’re chipped or whether it’s oxydation from sitting around for so many months during the pandemic. I will probably still use them, once the world decides that Zero-Covid is the right strategy.


My other solution was a 750ml camelbak waterbottle and I find that this is a good solution too. I found that it was too large for home use, and everyday use so I’m now playing with a 600 ml water bottle and I prefer this form factor. It’s better for carrying on daily walks.


When I was studying about water filtering solutions I often came across the mention of nalgene bottles and after over a year of hearing about them, but having no curiousity in them I bought one a few days ago. I like that it has a graduated system on the side although I don’t usually need to ration water.


The wide mouth and it’s cap are suboptimal for drinking, especially if you’re walking. The advantage of nalgene wide mouths is that they helped to set the standard, at least according to one or two articles I read. This means that you can take most camelbak tops and put it on a nalgene bottle and vice versa. This increases drinking comfort.


There is no need to buy specialist tools or brushes, or cleaning tablettes etc.



Kdrive and PhotoPrism

Kdrive and PhotoPrism

Byrichard

Yesterday I configured PhotoPrism to work with my iPhone photo album that was being synced to Infomaniak’s Kdrive, before then being synced to a drive that I could access via the Photoprism docker-compose config file. I then used No-ip to make that PhotoPrism instance available to the world wide web.

For several years I have had an Infomaniak Kdrive account but did not use it much, until I noticed that what costs 100 CHF with Google Drive costs 67 CHF with Kdrive. That’s a 34 CHF franc saving.

Migrating Data from Google to Infomaniak

This is interesting because of two things. The first one is that you can easily migrate your Google Photos Albums to Kdrive, and from Kdrive to your local machine without having to spend hours doing so manually. I am in the process of migrating from Kdrive to my local drive, for my Google Takeout album but this is slow.

What worked well was telling Kdrive to download the iPhone photo album from the Kdrive cloud to my local machine. I then edited the docker-compose config file but it took some trial and error before I understood how it works. It’s simple.

Telling PhotoPrism Where to Look

In my mind it should be “label: destination” but this is wrong. With Photoprism config files it is destination: label. To explain this more clearly: 

volumes:
 - "/mnt/photos:/photoprism/originals"
 - "/mnt/videos:/photoprism/originals/videos"

“mnt/photos” is the folder location and “photoprism/originals” is the label that docker and photoprism recognise. This is important because when you understand this you can set an external drive to be the photo gallery main drive, run index, and catalogue everything.

Ingesting Photos and Videos

If you export your Google Photos albums via Google Takeout, you can unzip the 2 gigabyte files, and as they unzip the files and their related JSON files are all brought together. Tell PhotoPrism that the Google Takeout folder is the import folder. After this mark “move files once ingested” and press import. PhotoPrism will then ingest all those files, delete what has already been ingested, catalogue everything, and leave you with an organised folder of photos and videos.

The indexing stage is very fast but can still take time, depending on album size.

The Next Step

There are two possible next steps. The first is to access this gallery from anywhere using tailscale, or using No-IP to access your photo album remotely. I recommend tailscale for this stage, because I haven’t seen much information about how secure PhotoPrism is so I’d rather not risk it.

I setup no-ip before telling my router about it and within a few minutes I had access to PhotoPrism and Nextcloud via No-Ip. I will write about that experiment tomorrow.

And Finally

When you’re playing with linux, and experimentating with projects like PhotoPrism you need to take time to understand how they work, to adapt them to your use case. I did this. Now I can get PhotoPrism to behave as I want it to. Now I can use external hard drives, and index photos, without having to import them. Within minutes I can plug in a drive, tell PhotoPrism where to find it, index it, and then use it.

If it had two factor authentication and more security measures then I would consider having it on the cloud, but for now I’m happy to use it via Tailscale’s VPN, as this is more secure.

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Village Photography

Byrichard

On Google Plus, one of my muses, I saw that instead of Street photography someone suggested Village photography. I like the idea because villages are such an integral part of my life.

Life in villages is a privileged one. Every time we go for a walk we cross people we do not know and say hello. We walk from field to field and along paths. We see which crops have been planted and which ones are being harvested. We see frequent horses and dog walkers. We also see families. We hear the sound of rifle practices at the local gun range. The practice is for military service most of the time.

We also have fountains and old buildings. We hear the church bell every half hour and hour. We see the fountains with wooden chalet to protect from the cold in winter.

Villages are seasonal. In summer the sounds of children playing, of fireworks and of barbecues can be heard. In Autumn the sound of wind blowers can be heard. In Winter we see lights on as the neighbours prepare their evening meal.

In the mornings we see parents bring their children to school before the bell rings and they head in to their classes to sit and wait impatiently for the school day to be over so that they may go out on adventures.

That’s why village photography captivates my imagination. I know villages well. I appreciate them. I look forward to looking at images from the past, and preserving today for future generations.

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