The Rolle Ingress mission starts at the castle and has you walk towards the centre. You then walk along the main street and through an arch back towards the lake side. From here you walk along the lake for a short distance before heading back in to town and the last portal. As this mission requires hacks and nothing more it is a perfect farming mission. The distance is relatively short.
In theory the entire reason for getting a Roomba is to let it do the vacuuming and forget about it. In reality I always feel the desire to watch roombas as they do their work. It doesn’t make any sense, because the entire goal of a roomba is that it automates what many people find to be a chore. Vacuuming can be quite boring and quite frustrating, especially during the muddy seasons.
During the season I often need to vacuum every day, sometimes even several times a day. Mud likes to get on shoes but brushing doesn’t get it off. Walking does. The g-forces that we generate when our feet hit the ground loosen the mud, especially the next day, as we’re running down the stairs to exit the building.
Wet mud is well behaved. It sticks in place, and it’s hard to remove. Dry mud tends to fall off in clumps. With the roomba that dried mud is easy to clean up. The robot will take care of picking up every last bit of mud.
The paradox of watching a Roomba is that you see bits of dirt and you think “go and get that bit of mud, stop ignoring it. Stop going back over the same spot six times. Of course, by going over the same spot six times a roomba picks up all the dander and fluff from our clothing, as well as human dust, hair and more. It really is methodical.
What looks clean to us, as humans who vacuum is still dirty, and a roomba will pass over and over until everything is gone. What may seem clean, when you look at it by eye is still dirty. It’s just that it is so sparse that we don’t detect it by eye. It’s when we check the roomba filter that we see how dirty the floor was. It’s when we see a big quantity of fluff in the bin.
Yesterday as I watched a brand new roomba clean the floor I expected that I would see dried mud but I saw as much dander as if I had run a clothes drier through three or four loads without cleaning the filters. Don’t forget to clean filters after every run. That dander is a fire risk.
I think that Roomba are expensive but when you compare their price to normal vacuum cleaners they are reasonably priced. You could pay the same for a human guided vacuum cleaner but by doing this you would not be as methodical about vacuuming. As a human we are guided by what we see. If it looks dusty we will clean. If it looks clean we won’t devote much time.
Do you have a room where the light shines in at a low angle, in the morning, or in the evening? I have noticed that if I hoovered at sunrise I can see the dirt because of its shadow. I saw this and thought at least two or three times that I should grab the opportunity to vacuum when the dust is contrasted with the surroundings. The roomba is so fastidious that time of day doesn’t matter. You can clearly see that a Roomba has been at work because the floor looks clean.
Roomba als have another advantage. they’re low to the ground so they can go under furniture that is high enough. They can go under couches and sittees but they can also go under over furniture. They can vacuum and mop places that may never be mopped or vacuumed due to these places being otherwise inaccessible.
Sometimes with a Roomba it really cleans the floor well but in vacuuming well it also highlights where you need to pass with a mop and bucket to get the floor to be perfect.With some roomba they are equipped with a small reservoir of water in which you put water and optionally soap. The roomba will then hoover with the front, and mop with the back. It isn’t over-exuberant like a human. It leaves just enough to clean, but not so much that your socks are soaked if you walk around as it mops.
If we watch Roomba work it can be frustrating to watch as they throw dirt away from their path, or kick it to a place they cannot reach. It can also be amusing to get a roomba to vacuum in a room where tiles that were being cut generated an enormous amount of dust. In such situations Roomba become artists. Roomba are expensive and slow but they’re good at making a place look clean. With newer roombas they are quieter so you can run them while you’re around without the noise being as disruptive.
Today is an unusual day. Originally I had planed to walk over one thousand meters up the Jura, before realising that I had too little sleep, so I decided to sleep a little more, do laundry, write a blog post and then eat lunch.
After lunch I didn’t feel like going for a walk, still. That’s highly unusual for me. I don’t know whether it’s because I am tired from a mediocre night of sleep or whether it’s because of the heat that hasn’t left yet. It’s the 9th of September and it’s still 29 to 30°c. I feel slightly under the weather so I’m skipping the walk.
Signicative air pollution according to the Geneva Air Quality App[/caption]
Part of my reason for skipping the daily walk is that I noticed that the air has been polluted for several days in a row. According to the air2G2 app the air is highly polluted at the moment. It’s especially Ozone. This is due to the heat, the lack of wind, and people’s overreliance on polluting cars.
To have 30°c at this time of year is rare. If it was cooler I wouldn’t hesitate so much to go for a walk, but there is the nuisance of dog walkers that is back. Every time I go for a walk I need to adjust my route to avoid the dog walkers. Dog walkers like to walk with their dogs off leash, and dogs like to approach and theaten. Overnight I counted that I have had at least 4-6 dog attacks in the last few years, so if my fear of dogs is getting worse, it’s because I am being harrassed by dogs more regularly.
Another reason for saving my energy today could be for an entirely different reason. Tomorrow I will probably be riding with electric bikes, and although I can comfortably keep up, I do burn a lot of energy. If I save my energy today I should have some, spare, for tomorrow.
If I was walking by myself, and then cycling by myself, and then walking by myself, and living according to my own rythmn then I’d be fine, but since I can knacker myself, and then be pushed beyond my limits the next day, it makes sense to take rest days. The Swiss Weather forecast wrote a blog post about the current anticyclone and air pollution. I seem to be thinking like the weather people at the moment.
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+.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.