Shadows
Lindsey Stirling playing with her shadow.
Two nights ago we did an Ingress Mission Despite Lockdown. This was a Franco-Swiss Mission to create a field over Geneva. Normally with Ingress missions people would drive tens, or even hundreds of kilometres to capture and link portals but this time was different.
We all stayed in our little corners and we did whatever we could, however, small the task. We stayed on our respective sides of the borders. In my case I just had to Jarvis a portal one village away. It took minutes to get to and then I had to wait for the right time to carry out the action. Once my action was taken I went home to have dinner. It’s the smallest contribution I’ve made to an Ingress mission in a while.
It really annoyed players from the opposite team, the next day.
During this lockdown I saw people do much worse than drive a certain distance to hack portals or play Ingress. I saw them go to the Creux De Van, to the French Mountains or to Valais right in the peak of the pandemic. Compared to a few geeks driving a car, hacking and linking portals, hiking along narrow trails during a pandemic is acceptable.
It’s the most sociable thing I’ve done in two months. For two months I haven’t had any opportunities. At least with Ingress that changed for an hour or two.
I’m working on understanding CSS at the moment. I expected that it would be hard to understand and to grasp but so far I have found that the opposite is true. I have found that it is intuitive and that although I spend hours fiddling to understand its intricacies I eventually understand the topic I want to learn.
The result is that I’m taking content from a 24 year old website and making it look modern. I’m bringing new life into old content. I also consider expanding certain sections. I have quite a few pictures from a villa in Spain for the section about the Romans. I also have a lot of images of various types of rock from rock climbing, via ferrata and hiking, whether by the sea or in the mountains.
Yesterday we had rain for most of the day but I still managed my daily walk. It was less than ten kilometres long for a change. I went for a bike ride today and got stung by a wasp I think. I hope it doesn’t become a habit again.
At the beginning of the
Abandon : A book about a mining town whose inhabitants disappeared from one day to the next.
Snowbound: About a father and daughter who end up travelling a big distance
Dark Matter: A book about all the alternative infinite number of realities we could experience as a result of every decision we make
Gray Mountain: A book about the American coal mining industry and its disregard for human rights
The Written World: The Power of Stories to Shape People, History, Civilization: This is an interesting booking tracing the history of the written
Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare: The Mavericks Who Plotted Hitler’s Defeat: The audible version of this book is entertaining. It is read in such a manner that I had to remind myself that this book is meant to be factual. It’s a fun read.
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By replacing Social media with book reading I feel that I am going back to a habit that many of us lost with the emergence of social media. We went from reading chapters a day to reading tweets and Facebook entries. We went from the long form to the short form.
The short form of Tweets and Facebook posts was rewarding when it was about conversations and keeping up with friends. As the focus on friends has dwindled and as the quality of content has decreased so the pull factor of long-form content such as books came back.
I have a kindle Paperwhite and a Kobo Aura H20. I prefer reading on e-readers, especially when I spend several hours a day on rainy weekends reading. The batteries last for a long time and there are no distractions. Mobile phone screens slow down my reading speed and tablets don’t feel as comfortable for reading.
I use my mobile phone and an ipod classic when I read audiobooks.
On Day Three of ORCA in Switzerland, I have decided to deactivate my account. In the last three days, I have been bullied by two people, a third tried to discredit me and a fourth reported a link for spam. As a result of these unpleasant experiences, I have deactivated my Facebook account.
Facebook used to be a network for connecting us to university friends as students, and professional colleagues in the world of work. Ever since Zynga games were allowed Facebook has been decreasingly about connecting with people, and more about compulsively checking for updates from friends that never come.
In theory, now is the time to be more active on Facebook, and I was until a few minutes ago. When I got that notification I finally had the motivation to deactivate, not delete my Facebook account.
During COVID19 the most important thing for us is to keep our mental health. As Facebook is not contributing to me feeling happier it is worth taking a step back.
“Oh, but your friends won’t be able to keep up to date with what you’re doing without facebook.”
I am still on Twitter, Linkedin, Telegram, Whatsapp and other platforms. Facebook is only a drop in the ocean. If people miss my presence on Facebook they can find me on other platforms.
We will see how long I stay away from Facebook. It might be half a day.
[Update 6:30pm PT: Facebook also warned that due to it sending its moderators home and relying more on artificial intelligence to screen for abuse, it could make “more mistakes”. At roughly 4pm today, a bug in Facebook’s spam filter caused a wide array of innocent links, including some about coronavirus, to be blocked from the News Feed. That led some to wrongly assume Facebook was purposefully censoring their posts. Facebook tells TechCrunch it’s investigating the problem.”]
Finally I have received the Over the Air (OTA) update from 2.1 to 2.2 for my nexus one. As a result of this my mobile phone can now be used tethered to a computer for internet access or as a wifi hotspot. The WIFI sharing option allows you to use wpa2 PSK encryption.
The reason I was so interested in this update is for use with the iPad. I already have two mobile contracts, one through work and the second private. Both of them allow for at least a gigabyte of data per month. With these contracts and tethering I have the ability to download 2 gigabytes of data from anywhere without paying an additional 19CHF per month to swisscom.
the next step will be to see by how much my data consumption will go up as a result of this option. At least one side effect is a lot more freedom.
Disclaimer, I would add an image if it was easy to get screengrabs with the nexus one but it’s not. Google, can we get that built into the system?
There is a known issue with the Nvidia 8600 video card. That issue is that the card fails faster than average. There are two common problems with this video card. The first is that the screen is just messed up. That’s not the issue I have. The issue I am having with the macbook pro is that the screen just goes dead.
The failure rate is around once per year. It failed a year ago. It’s failed again just 6 days ago and it’s going to fail again in a year’s time around this time. At that point it will no longer be under guarantee.
I know that hardware fails I’ve had twenty or more electronic devices fail over the years. I don’t mind because most of the time the devices are cheap and replacing is not an issue.
With the macbook pro it’s different. This is a professional machine. It costs 2000CHF and more per machine. When this machine fails you have a serious investment to think about. Are you going to spend another 2-4000 CHF on another machine?
Yes, if the after sale service is good. No if it’s not. When the first video card failed it took over a month to get the machine fixed. No replacement machine was provided. As a result for over a month I relied on other technology. Now imagine if I had needed my machine for video projects during that period.
Now we get to this year. My machine failed six days ago and I have still not had an opportunity to get it fixed. I went to the apple store this morning to see whether they could take it in and get it repaired and I was told that I have to go to the website. I know this but the website showed that option as grayed out. I was told that there was no possibility to see them until Monday. I don’t have time to go there on Monday because their bureaucracy does not adapt to my needs. The question is how many more weeks will I be without that laptop.
The result of this experience is a simple one. Whilst I love spending money on hardware nothing that I have seen encourages me to buy another piece of Apple hardware. Why should I spend 4000CHF for a professional machine that could take up to a month to replace. If my primary activity was as a freelance editor then I would have no choice. As things stand I am working full time for a good company and having an Apple computer is a luxury rather than a necessity. This means I will never again buy an apple laptop again. They need to learn something about customer care before I come back.