Sunflowers Looking Towards A House
Do you feel like you are being watched. Imagine loving south of a field of sunflowers.
According to a Le Matin article the Iphone will come to switzerland. It’s the 3g version of course so for those that have been patient this should be a fun time. I see no mention of cheaper dataplans as of yet but it’s an interesting time for those creating mobile video content. It’s also a new version of mobile web browsing.
Switzerland is living under the illusion that the pandemic is over. If you look at the data on the RTS website and other sources of information such as Cotrack – Grafana then the pandemic is over. The number of new cases has gone done so if you look at the metrics then it is over.
There is a good chance that this is an illusion, demonstrated in three ways. The first of these is the number and saturation of hospitals now, with many of them overloaded and in a situation of crisis. The second indicator that things are not fine is the increased mortality for years, at this point. The third indicator is that people with COVID compromised immune systems might have stopped testing positive for COVID but there is a lag between when someone stops testing positive for COVID and when their immune system has fully recovered from the disease, able to combat other illnesses that would otherwise have little or no effect.
They charge for COVID tests. They no longer test sewage for traces of the disease. They tell people that the pandemic is over, and then they provide data that gives this illusion.
Two things bother me about this situation. The first is that I don’t trust that the pandemic is over. If we had frequent tests, and everyone was testing positive then I would trust that the pandemic is over. The second is that by not having data that proves that the pandemic is over I will keep wearing a mask when I am indoors and keeping my distance outside of people in my family, or that I am staying with.
At the start of the pandemic there was a thing that said “the pandemic will be over when we have zero transmission for two weeks”. We are not at that stage yet. We are also at a nine percent positivity rate. That’s four percentage points higher than the five percent required for a situation to be considered under control. In reality I don’t need to be confused. When I see 0 new cases for two weeks, and the test percentage is down to 0 then I can consider removing the mask.
For years, or even decades, I have gone for daily walks. For years I have enjoyed them and for years it felt like freedom. Since a dog charged at me, and nearly bit me in Autumn last year, and since cars are in the habit of driving too fast and too close, on a regular basis, my desire to walk has evaporated.
I find myself impatient for the heatwave to come back. In a heatwave dog walkers and normal people stay home. In a heat wave you don’t live in fear of a dog sensing that you’re afraid, and attacking. In a heat wave you have the freedom to walk off of roads without getting muddy. The ground is dry.
I used to walk on agricultural roads but I stopped. Either you had dog walkers with large dogs, or you had people in cars driving fast. The car drivers thanking me for stepping off the road. I step off of the road, into the muddy field because I’m tired of them driving too fast and too close on roads where they have no reason to be. It’s a farming road, not a main road. During the pandemic farm roads were nice because few people walked, and few people drove. Now that traffic is back to normal the dangers of dog attacks and being hit by a car are back in force.
Of course I haven’t been hit by a car, or bitten by a dog in years, or even decades. It’s the risk that became toxic. It’s the nead to be cautious that tires me. Even with a pram people do not slow down, as I was reminded of yesterday. Even yesterday a dog was threatening. I crossed the road. The dog barked.
The owner said “that’s strange, he doesn’t usually bark at people”. One person had tried to get its attention, but then didn’t consider that others are afraid of dogs. Since last Autumn’s incident I never get near big dogs. I’d rather walk across a rain soaked field, and mud, than have to overcome my fear of dogs.
There could be a positive reason for my desire not to walk the same routes every single day as I have done for four years or more. My routine isn’t as routine as it was. I went to Spain for three weeks, and I often drive to walk in another village more regularly. That my routine varies, may be why the sysiphean walk has grown less appealing with time. Before I walked five or six routes, both clockwise and anti-clockwise and now I walk just two or three variants.
I’m tired of facing my fear of dogs, and tired of bad driving because I’m ready for a change. Thst’s a good thing.
Two days ago I went for a longer walk than usual. I walked along roads rather than along the narrow agricultural roads I normally use. I wanted to avoid crowds and dog walkers. The thing about solitude is that it’s enjoyable when you are not reminded that you are alone.
Today I will also have to try to avoid people. Some might be really happy for good weather, but not me. Good weather means that the reminder that others are not lonely is brought home. I go on walks to listen to podcasts and get some exercise. That little walk I went up was so good for my health that I had 18 PAI as a result of that single walk.
On a walk like I did two days ago I combine two, three or even four walks together. These are the walks that I started to walk years ago, after my scooter was hit by a careless driver. She hit the back of my scooter so hard that we slid for several meters. I stayed upright but the scooter needed to be fixed. It was. It took time.
Several times I walked to the scooter place to ask “Is it ready yet?” and several times I got a “nope” answer. In the end that walk that I did to check on the scooter became my ordinary walk. It became one of the circuit walks that I would walk daily for several years. I still like the walks. If people walked with smaller dogs, and kept them on leashes, I’d be happier. I would also be happier if people didn’t drive on farm roads as if they were normal roads, because on foot this is dreadful, especially when people drive too fast, too close, several times a day.
This morning I experimented with Nextcloud. I experimented with uploading photos from google takeout zips to Nextcloud using both an Ubuntu machine and a mac. The experiment was a partial success. I found that uploading individual pictures from individual folders is clumsy via Linux. I then tried via MacOS and that was also clumsy. Nextcloud can be used for photo management but that is not what it is really designed for.
There are a few features missing. One of these is the ability to select more than one image at a time. I’d like to select a range of images with ease, rather than have to select sixty video files one by one, before moving them.
I also experimented with moving images from one folder to another and that’s chaotic as well, via the command line. The issue is that Nextcloud detects the images, and indexes them, but if you remove those images it then keeps them in the database. I’d like to be able to refresh the database after making such a move.
Imagine that you have a photo archive that is already well organised. Imagine that everything is organised by year, month, date, and subject. With this tutorial you can learn how to mount your external drive. Nextcloud then sees the images and their folder structure and populates either Memories, or Photos, depending on which interface you prefer.
After some trial and error I got Nextcloud to work as I expected it to so I can use it to backup photos from my phone automatically. In this regard it’s a great iPhoto and Google Photos replacement. I think I would have Photoprism and Nextcloud running in tandem. I would have Nextcloud taking care of backing images up, from the phone, and photoprism to work as a DAM/MSM solution.
I will experiment and comment, when I have an opinion.