Winter is coming and snow has fallen on the local peaks and then melted again. The temptation to go snowboarding in real life is back. While waiting to go and do sports in the real world Ubisoft give us the opportunity to simulate the experiences of snowboarding, skiing, base jumping and paragldiding.
I know three of these sports. I ski, I snowboard and I recently tasted my first paragliding flight.As I watched the trailer above and Jack Septiceye’s video of the game it reminded me of so many of the extreme sports videos I have watched. It also reminded me of the FIFAD event as well as the Montagne En Scène events. It pays a nice tribute to the culture of snowboarding and extreme sports that many of us have grown up with. It also harkens back to the days when I would edit the events that are mentioned in the trailer to this game.
This would be a good game to have in the chalet while waiting for the snow to fall or the conditions to improve.
I understand why the game filled me with passion. I liked seeing places that we know. It’s because the game developers are in Annecy so they’re playing in the same landscape as us. They’re snowboarders and skiers so they understand the sensations and they’re trying to emulate them in the game. When watching the paragliding sequences I like that we hear the flight computer’s beep as you ascend at different rates. It’s one aspect that you really notice the first time you try paragliding. That’s a nice touch for the game.
From the videos I have watched so far it looks as though they have managed to capture all of these sensations in the game. This looks like a really enjoyable game to play. The game should provide people with a nice amount of escapism. As they get used to the controls and as the community for this game grows so the ties that bind this community will grow. It looks excellent.
Facebook disengagement by those I know has become so serious that I have decided to take a break from the social network myself. For many years this was a network of people I knew and spent time with in person. It has school friends, uni friends, activity friends and social media friends. For many years it was a place to socialise, share events and images. From the moment Zynga polluted Facebook with Farmville the conversational aspect of the social network degraded. As the conversation declined the sentiment that Facebook was a waste of time became a reality.
Facebook users no longer use the network to share their lives and converse. They use it to share sensationalist rubbish. Aside from Social media marketers Facebook has become a ghost town. As normal people no longer use the social network you are saturated with sensationalist rubbish. Facebook has become the preserve of the lowest common denominator. It has become a tabloid news distribution network and those who enjoy intellectual stimulation have moved on to other networks.
The content has declined in value to such a degree that I felt myself turning in to a troll. Every second or third article that people share is sensationalist rubbish and I feel the urge to call it rubbish. I don’t want to offend individuals so rather than do this I will take a break.
Social networks are about people connecting and conversing. It is about sharing what inspires us both through the adventures we have and through the links we share. Every article and headline should inspire us. For as long as social media practitioners focus on telling us how to feel rather than provide a description of the content of articles I will stay away.
Conversations are personal and current affairs articles should be factual. When a network like Facebook no longer has conversations and when articles are emotional the world is upside down and the model is broken. It is time for social networks and social media to become personal once again.
It amuses me that I write this about facebook. I wrote the same about twitter a few months and years ago. Social networks and their strategists keep making the same mistakes.
I am currently reading Empire of the Deep, The Rise and Fall of The British Navy and to read it within the context of Brexit is interesting. We already know that the British gave up on the Catholic Church because Henry the Viii wanted to change wives and the Pope said no. (I am oversimplifying it, for the sake of this blog post.) While reading Empire of the Deep I see that the English have a very long history of being at conflict with Europe.
Two or three years ago I heard about a talk that would be given to the U3A somewhere in Spain about the English and piracy and I didn’t think much of it at the time because my knowledge was limited to what I had seen in films and cartoons. Through reading the book mentioned above I see that piracy was an important part of what English ships did centuries ago. They would attack and loot the Spanish, attack the French, try to undermine the Netherlands and their empire, Portugal and more.
At the same time as the British tried did all these things they changed alliances and allegiances according to their goals. What is interesting, and I’m being very broad, is that whilst the Monarchy wanted close ties with Europe Parliament and the Tories, especially wanted war and distance, rather than collaboration with Europe.
As a person who studied 20th century Europe I looked at Brexit from that perspective, so I thought that it was absurd and old-fashioned for England to want to be separate from Europe. I also look at this topic from the perspective of someone living in Switzerland, who sees the limitations that Switzerland frequently faces. If new content is made available via Netflix, Amazon or others then Switzerland usually has to wait an extra two or three years to get the same content. Another example is roaming. Switzerland took an additional two or three years before roaming between Switzerland and Europe was simplified.
The story of our navy is nothing less than the story of Britain, our culture and our empire. Much more than a parade of admirals and their battles, this is the story of how an insignificant island nation conquered the world’s oceans to become its greatest trading empire. Few other nations have fallen so deeply in love with a branch of the armed forces as the British did with its Navy. Yet, as Ben Wilson shows, there was nothing inevitable about this rise to maritime domination, nor was it ever an easy path. For much of our history Britain was a third-rate maritime power on the periphery of Europe. EMPIRE OF THE DEEP also reveals how our naval history has shaped us in more subtle and surprising ways – our language, culture, politics and national character all owe a great debt to this conquest of the seas. This is a gripping, fresh take on our national story.
There are a few parallels to what is happening now.
The quote above looks familiar, but this is a view that was expressed between 1713-1744. It is in chapter 26 – “Heaven’s Command”.
As a person who studied 20th century history I always saw the European Union as a good thing, in order to keep people united, rather than split them up. I saw it as valuable for the preservation of peace, but also because Europe, through the dismantling of borders, gave us an enormous amount of freedom to travel, work and more. It also provided us with a broader, more inclusive cultural identity.
Back in 2000 or so I was struck by two things. The first was that it was impossible to get international news from English news sources. You needed to read Swiss, French or other news sources to get international news. One of the biggest cultural shocks, when I lived in England the first time is that I was labelled, both as French, and as a foreigner, despite having a British passport. I came from International Geneva, where we’re called Internationals, rather than foreigners. We’re also in the habit of learning someone’s nationality and using that as an identifier. It’s a matter of interest and curiousity, rather than a derogatory term.
When I lived in the South West I learned that you knew where someone was from in England by their accent because of the differences in how words are pronounced. When I lived in London I saw something else. When you hear of Geneva being multicultural you see that all nationalities mix all the time. In London, when I saw that there were communities of one nationality living in one part and those of another in another part I began to call London poly cultural, rather than multicultural. I make the distinction because for me multiculturalism is about everyone mixing all the time. Polyculturalism is where cultures live side by side, but they do not mix once they go back to the area where they live.
Europe is in a unique situation because it is 27 countries, with a variety of languages, cultures and traditions that have amalgamated, and where borders are administrative, rather than hard. We can cycle from Switzerland to France, by accident, and we can ski from Switzerland to France, to Italy without difficulty. We can drive from Portugal to the other side of Europe without showing a passport. In England, you cannot have this experience because you’d have to swim across.
By reading the book above I am seeing England’s attitude to “overseas” from a different perspective. I see that England has a history of wanting to be outside of Europe, of differentiating itself. It also has a history of trying to control trade, either through piracy, convoys and more. Now I understand why England holds on to Gibraltar, and why English people live and holiday around Alicante.
I recommend reading the book, I’m only thirty-five percent in. I am learning from it. My contextual understanding of English attitudes is being complemented by the reading of this book.
Yesterday I went to Magnetic’s Geneva Premiere and I really enjoyed some segments of the film and found that others were less interesting. Keep in mind though, that this film is two hours long and that this increase and decrease in interest is normal.
What made this screening special is that many of the people that we saw in the film were present at the event. Before the film started they were presented to us individually, said a few words and then one person won some skis and another won for tickets to a ski resort.
The sports covered in this Nuit De La Glisse event were skiing, snowboarding mountain biking, e-mountain biking, speed flying, kite surfing, wind surfing and surfing. These sequences were shot in Hawaii, Tahiti, Spain, Portugal, Pakistan, France, Switzerland and one or two other countries. I don’t remember seeing that Portugal had some of the most consistently big waves. It would be impressive to see those waves in person. They can be up to 27 metres and more. Tahiti is a good place for riding barrel waves.
It’s interesting to see a sequence with an e-mountain bike because the sport is still so new. It does make biking in the mountains seem more interesting, if it about more than riding on hiking trails or going down dedicated tracks. The biking sequences were fun. They might have changed how I feel about the growing popularity of mountain bikes in the mountains. The film has achieved something.
Speed flying was filmed with a 360 camera and the image was stabilised so that the image was level but the flyer was moving from side to side as well as up and down. It was interesting to see how good this image quality was. I also like the use of the drone to film a variety of shots. Drones, when used correctly, provide the camera operator with the opportunity to get close to the subject without the use of a telephoto lens. This means that you preserve depth of field. This was used effectively in some of the mountain sequences, the surfing sequences and others. It made me want to get out and film with a selection of cameras.
Two nights ago whilst having a conversation about technology with Fooz on twitter I got a message from Jamie about the Likemind coffee morning in Central London that she thought might be of interest to me. I decided that I would go and it was worth the effort. From what I gather it’s held once a month.
It’s a meeting that started around 0830 and continued till 1030 where a few people from various backgrounds in the media came to talk about a variety of topics. It ranged from Facebook and those that influence discussions to Qik, twitter and seesmic. Of course other topics were also discussed.
I talked to Mark of Wishful Thinking who wrote the e-book Time Management for Creative People. He has some interesting ideas and his blog can be found here. Whilst talking to him he touched on a number of interestin topics of which i would like to find out more. One was copyright and music for example, recommending a blog or two I should read and from the conversation I am interested in seeing what he’s been writing about.
If I’m not mistaken (and I did meet quite a few people) I also talked with Lauralynne about the challenges of finding work but also about twitter, a subject I know well. Arriving at almost 400 tweets she has a very different to the whole twitter thing. When talking to people many of them are not sure what it’s about yet and that’s why talking to her about it was good.
I talked to her about how society is changing. Previously when you met people you would meet them in person, be friends with them for a few weeks or months and one of the two would move to another country or another city and so the link would be lost, hence the utility for something like facebook. It then progressed onto a conversation about twitter. I explained my view that twitter is not just about saying what you’re doing. Another person who was listening in asked us to define twitter. I defined it as a multiplatform chatroom that you can take with you. I talked about the key difference between IM and twitter.
With instant messaging you chat with someone and you’re telling them about things as if you’re talking and you expect an answer. With twitter it’s about the day to day life. Through following your stream they’re going to come through a lot of noise depending on how often you tweet. That noise is what makes conversations easy when you meet twitter friends. You’ve got three topics ready because you know about the good and bad things currently going on in their life. It means you’re friends offline. Live in a city like London and you meet these people and a physical world friendship can occur.
The motivation behind this point was the notion that technologies are helping to seperate people and I wanted to refute that argument with the points made above. If you go through some of my previous posts you can follow the progression of these ideas further.
I heard Mark Iddon talk about his blog about multiplatform content and it sounds interesting although I have not yet had the opportunity to visit the site. Another person I came across was Damiano whose blog Nitmesh sounds interesting. It is described as : “A comment on the imploding chaos of the convergence that hopefully entertains, enlightens, educate, reminds and shares ideas that might stand out and make a remarkable difference”.
Overall the meeting was good, productive. I arrived feeling both inspired and shattered. Normal, I got to sleep at 4am and got up at 630 because I enjoyed the thought of being able to have more conversations in person rather than via twitter or seesmic.
Two days ago I was agonising about whether to go for a via ferrata(VF) or a hike. Eventually I decided that I would go for the hike, because hiking was an 18 minute drive away. I went for a walk/run and then I found that I had a burning desire to do the via ferrata. I went down to the cave and rummaged through to find various bits and pieces. I found my Grigri, climbing rope, harnesses and more. I also found that I had a tandem speed which I considered using.
It’s amusing. I had a real, deep, burning passion to do the Via Ferrata. I had forgotten how it feels to prepare for something that is potentially dangerous, but in reality very safe, if you follow the rules and regulations of the sport. It’s fun to consider whether to use the brand new VF set or to use the slightly older set. My slightly older set might have been used on one or two VF before I broke my arm and stopped climbing from 2019-2024 or so.
When I was walking along the port’s high wall in Javea in 2001 or so I felt scared at being three or four meters in height, compared to the road beneath. I questioned how I would cope with the heights that we encounter on a VF. I hoped that I would not be scared of heights again.
Luckily Via Ferrata is something you don’t forget. I found that all of my old Via Ferrata habits were still there. The habit of keeping arms straight, of resting when required, of taking pictures, of day dreaming and of patiently waiting for the rest of the group. At one or two points I was asked “why are you waiting” and the answer is simple. If I went at my speed the one and a half hour VF would take fourty five minutes. I have done VFs every weekend every summer for years so I am perfectly at home on VFs.
I was so “at home” that I took 72 photos during the VF.
The one challenge I faced was keeping the phone safe. I would have taken more photos but my key concern was dropping the phone if I slipped or lost my balance. I didn’t have as much flexibility to take photos as I would have liked. I need to find a system that gives me that flexibility. When I was doing VF all the time I had a strap so that if I dropped a camera it would drop less than a meter. Yesterday I was taking a risk every time I took photos.
In the past, when doing Via ferrata regularly, I have smashed one or two cameras to bits as they hit the rocks, over and over again. The best solution might be to use the Garmin virb.
About the Via Ferata Itself
The Roche au Dade Via Ferrata is about 45 minutes from Nyon. It is located in the valley that you pass by as you drive from Switzerland to England and vice versa. You get off the main road, drive through the village and head to a small simple parking. There are three or four routes that you can take. You have an introductory VF that takes you across several bridges. You also have the option of just going to do the zipline. There are two of them but for the second one you need to be more experienced to get to it.
For the most part I would class the VFs as easy but that’s with years of VF experience. There is one bit on the classic route that I think people should be wary of. It’s the vertical climb after the last monkey bridge because it is more vertical and physical than the other parts. This is where people might struggle if they are not prepared.
I like that there are three or four routes to enjoy because you can spend more than fourty five minutes here. You also have a picnick table. You can climb one part, get back down, have a snack or drink and do the other parts.
As you can see from the featured photo the via ferrata is right on the road, as is the parking so access time is quick.
And Finally
In the end I’m happy that I chose to climb with the Via Ferrata group rather than hike with the hiking group. One of the advantages of doing something with a smaller group is that you get to know the people better. I definitely want to do more activities with this group and I’m happy that we ended the day with a drink before driving home. I think that “end of activity” drinks, even if it’s orangina, are important.
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