Roman remains may be found and excavated but sometimes nature reclaims them. These ruins were discovered in 1882 but nature returned and hid them safely away again. Such tweets should inspire archeological departments, and film and TV or BA Media Studies to document the process of re-excavating these ruins, with photogrammetry and other modern tech used.
For many people walking without masks during a pandemic is normal. This is confusing. We have known for months, or even seasons that the virus is airborne and that masks are a simple way to keep safe. Despite this people walk by the seaside without masks. It’s not just that they walk without wearing masks, but that they do not seem to be visible.
I can’t imagine walking without a mask. Even when I’m walking across fields with little chance of crossing paths with people my mask is at hand, ready to be worn. I actually go out of my way not to walk within two meters of people, especially people without masks. I always have a mask with me, and recently I started to favour an FFP2 mask, over ffp1 masks, because I feel safer. I am still likely to wear masks whenever I am within four meters of people.
It takes one second to put on a mask, and to remove it. Today I wore it while walking about eight kilometres. It doesn’t bother me to walk with a mask. It is progress, for me to be within towns and cities, during this pandemic. I prefer the countryside, empty roads, empty agriculutal roads, empty trails.
I went for a bike ride in the evening. 30 kilometres in one and a half hours. Nothing to challenge me, but the bike couldn’t cope. It kept skipping chain links and gears. That is distracting. I reached my goal, and then returned to the start point.
For a while I have wanted to learn Angular, Laravel and other frameworks but I felt overwhelmed so I decided to learn JavaScript but then I found that I had gaps in my knowledge too, so I went over to Node.js. Now I feel that I am starting to understand more. I understand the context better. I understand the underlying code better. I have spent enough time studying around the subject that I have gained the contextual understanding not to be completely lost.
With HTML and other technologies you can build and fail, and build again and fail, and eventually you will get what you want. With Javasscript, and to some degree with CSS too, you need to understand what you’re doing to see a result. You need to find code, tinker with it, and get it to do what you want. It takes trial and error, and hours of experimenting in some cases.
That’s why you watch courses. With courses you have it explained to you. You then try to copy the code without inserting errors, and then you debug until you have found all the typos. Plenty of people will say that you’re not meant to just copy code. My aim, in having examples explained to me, is to gain a contextual understanding of how to do things, and how they work. The aim is to become self-sufficient enough to write my own functions and applications.
Bullet Journaling
I have known about Bullet Journalling for years but I have had no or little interest in it because it seemed like an archaic way of keeping track of tasks, projects and more. Yesterday my curiousity was woken again so I have decided to play with the concept. I am using an old notebook that I have had for years. I have until January to see if I like the idea or not. I want to see whether it has a positive effect on how I get on with projects.
I walk from three to fie million steps per year. In doing so I wear through shoes and through socks every six months or less. It makes sense that I would experiment with barefoot shoes since I spend so much time walking.
The Experience
Initially I tried the Vapor Glove 6 and I was able to walk my usual routes without trouble. I did find one surface where it felt as though the shoes were not adapted to the weathered road conditions and that’s part of the reason I decided to try others. I also found that with the Vapor Glove 6 I could feel my heel stomp onto the hard road surface and I really had to be attentive to changing my walking style overnight.
Of course, changing from one walking style to another is a challenge. That’s where the Trail Glove 7 come into play. Their sole is 14mm or so, rather than six. This makes a huge difference with my walking style. With the Trail Glove 7 I have already walked 51 kilometres with ease. Contrast this to 19 in the Vapor Glove 6. The Trail Glove 7 are well suited to my walking style. I’m a strider, and as a strider I use my heel a lot.
Driving
As a little aside I have tried driving to the shops and back with both pairs of shoes but find that the Vapor Gloves are slightly too soft for driving. It’s better to wear Trail Gloves. I know that flip flops are not recommended for driving. I’m not sure about sandals.
Walking Style and Pace
If I was walking with people walking at a normal pace, and for smaller distances then the Vapor Glove would be fine. The issue with the Vapor Glove is simply that it has no heel amortisation. The rubber, even with socks is too thin. I need to consciously think of every step. When you walk 12,000 steps it becomes a challenge. With Trail Glove shoes adaptation is gradual, especially with 10km daily walks. I really like wearing Trail Glove shoes.
Conclusion
Although I like the idea of wearing shoes that are as minimal as the Vapor Gloves I prefer the Trail Gloves, for now. They allow me to get used to the act of walking “barefoot” without destroying my heels. The biggest hurdle for me is to adapt my gait to be barefoot shoe friendly. I hope that the wear pattern on my normal shoes will change.
I just noticed that I’d love living in Singapore because that’s the city where people walk the fastest. Copenhaguen is a city I’ve walked in but I didn’t notice it being particularly fast. Berliners walk faster than New Yorkers and Londoners walk slower than all of the above.
I wonder how I’d compare to all these people and how I’d affect the averages. It’ just the type of news story I enjoy. Out of all these cities Malawi is the slowest. It’s 20 seconds slower than the rest.
One treat of being in Spain is that some people do wear masks when walking outdoors. You are normal for wearing a mask.
In Switzerland you are looked at as if you are eccentric or absurd. It is nice not to be looked at as a curiousity. It is nice to have the security of a mask without feeling like a freak.
A paradox of mask wearing in Spain is that it’s hot. In theory this would make it less appealing to wear a mask but it has no effect. People still want to be safe.
As I looked straight down from a bridge today I noticed that the river is so low that the river bed has become bone dry in places. In other places you see that the gress is turning yellow. When tractors tend to the fields you see that they are stirring up clouds of dust. It is so dry, so often, that it is only a matter of time before forest fires burn down local forests.
Plenty of people are miserable for the rain, but when these consistent droughts lead to forest fires that remove the landscape and vegetation that we are used to they will not be so happy. They do not understand that these droughts are not normal. The fact that I didn’t use weather apps for years tells you how stable the weather system we’re in is.
I often walk by a door in a wall that frames this view. It’s a nice view. A nice garden with nice trees, the lake, a boat from the Belle époque and behind it the French side of the Lake, Haute Savoie and the Alps. A churchyard has a similar view, but with the train line as a bonus. If I was patient I could get the boat, a train and the rest of the landscape.
I am currently studying node.js, to see what I may eventually understand. So far most of the ideas and concepts are self-explanatory. The challenge will be in finding a project idea and getting it to work. Slowly I am getting to understand this topic. Node.JS looks intuitive to use.
Part of my motivation came from listening to the Javascript Jabber podcasts while I walk. It’s easy to hear about React, Angular, Laravel and other frameworks but it’s more interesting to hear about all the other smaller projets, like history.js, apline.js and many others. I like the idea of having specialist frameworks for specific tasks.
I felt overwhelmed by Angular, and then by Javascript. By changing context I am trying to get a different perspective, in an attempt to get a broader understanding of what various parts do. I am already better equipped for when I return to Laravel or Angular. I am also better equipped to understand typescript and Coffeescript etc.
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