A solitary bee on a Sunflower

Switzerland: From Arid to Flooded

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Switzerland and Europe are currently experiencing flooding. All the major Swiss lakes are close to breaking their banks. A few weeks ago, you could read about how Switzerland had been so dry that it had started to register on the aridity index. Now it’s flooded.

Cloudy and rainy Switzerland
Cloudy and rainy Switzerland

Some people are bored by the rain, and wishes that it would go away, but I don’t feel that way. We had years with very little rain, so to finally get some rain is welcome. At least now we know that all the hydroelectric dams will be full. We hope that all the water tables and reservoirs will have recovered as well.

Although this weather is bad and unpleasant, and it limits what we can do it is seasonal. This is the type of weather that is normal in Switzerland. This is precisely the weather that makes us grateful for nice days. That’s why I personally welcome it. I don’t want Switzerland to become an arid country. I like that we have rain, sunshine etc. I like that we have seasons.

A solitary bee on a Sunflower
A solitary bee on a Sunflower

The Sunflowers are out now, which is good, as it means that bees are able to get plenty of nectar to make honey. It also means that fields should be the usual yellow and green that we would expect at this time of year. Now is the time for people to take their token “this is me with a sunflower” images.

I looked at the landscape as I walked, and I did not see much evidence of flooding. Fields are not flooded. Walking paths are not flooded. Neither are fields. One river I checked was flowing at a relatively low level today. The rain around here has been gentle.

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Connected Watches and Psychological Profiles

Connected Watches and Psychological Profiles

Byrichard

Connected watches know everything about us. In theory they listen to us 24 hours a day for years in a row. My Apple watch has been on my wrist for over four years, every single day. It has been for swims, runs, rock climbing, via ferrata, office work and more. 


The watch knows how much I walk, when I get up, when I go to sleep, how well I wash my hands, how exposed I am to noise and much more. It also knows whether I am moving energetically or lazily. It knows if I am walking faster or slower. It also knows how rested or stressed I am, by looking at heart rate variability. 


Some people will look at the two paragraphs above and think “I don’t want this”. 


The Suunto, Garmin, Casio and other brands I have used measure walking, sleeping, and more but not in the way that Apple does. Apple theoretically knows a lot more for two key reasons. The first is that the Apple universe includes your laptop, your phone, your watch, your tablet and your keys and other possessions. Apple has access to almost every aspect of our lives. 


I bring this up, not because of a sense of paranoia, but simply because there is an article about this on the RTS website after some uni students wanted to know more. They asked people hundreds of questions to get a profile. They then tried to correlate that data with watch data to see if the watch could help establish mental health via a watch. They don’t say anything about brand. 


What makes this report especially interesting is that these are conclusions from fitness trackers, rather than high end smart watches. 


Some things are obvious. People who go out on a friday night are considered extroverted, people who sleep little and move more regularly are considered nervous and more. This is nothing that we wouldn’t expect to hear. 


If we look at the bigger picture, at big data, then this could be interesting. By tracking enough people over time it could be determined whether people are becoming happier, sadder, more nervous, less nervous, about to commit suicide and more. There are reports of how connected devices showed signs that someone was beginning to fall sick, with COVID, or other diseases. 


Steps, sleep and heart rate are just the tip of the iceberg. Most watches collect more than this so they know more. 

JSON, Custom HTML and a Rainy Walk

Byrichard

JSON


Today I spent some time expanding my knowledge of JSON because understanding how JSON works, and how it works, opens doors. Every social network allows you to download your file as a JSON file. If you learn how to use JSON you can then re-use your data on a site of your own design, according to your own moral code.


WordPress and Custom HTML


I was also playing with static pages from the older parts of my website and trying to bring them into wordpress and for now it half, rather than fully works. My goal is to be able to have The Romans section with one look, the Geography section with another and the Environmental Systems with a third, to give just two examples. I found something promising but I haven’t understood it fully yet. It is a work in progress.


A Centralised Web and WEB 3.0


People are arguing that the world wide web needs to be decentralised, to become web 3.0 and yet the services we use are more and more centralised. Google, Amazon and Microsoft all have data centres and are getting a stranglehold on hosting and cloud solutions. Solutions like those by Infomaniak are much harder to learn about because they are still a small player, in contrast to the giants.


Facebook went down due to a misconfiguration error and two topics come to mind. The first is that Facebook shouldn’t have all three services on the same backbone because it becomes a single point of failure, and that was precisely what the Internet was designed to avoid. The second issue is that behemoths like Facebook should not exist, because they monopolise too much. When they went down IM went down for many, image sharing went down for many, and discussion groups went down for many. For a slice in time the world had to think of an alternative to communicate. Even Facebook had to.


This demonstrates that the Web, when it is too centralised, as it is via Facebook, has become fragile. I don’t mention Google, Amazon or Microsoft because they are giants, but they help the little guys be seen. Facebook doesn’t. It likes to capture and keep its traffic. We need to keep working on personal websites, to keep the web from being to vulnerable to outages.


And Finally – A Rainy Walk


As is usually the case, I did not set out on my walk in the rain, expecting to get rained on. I set off because although the weather app said there would be rain, did not say that it would be heavy, so I set off and for most of the walk the weather was nice. Not t-shirt weather nice, but bits of sun, and not too cold.


During the walk I took the Sigg original bottle. I put it in my coat pocket and forgot about it. By this I mean that it’s so small and light that it doesn’t get in the way of walking at full speed for an hour or two. It’s a good, small bottle, for when you want a drink, but you’re not in the middle of a heatwave.


And now for something else to read: Understanding How Facebook Disappeared from the Internet


Day Eleven of Orca in Switzerland – Clothes Have Been Barricaded Away

Day Eleven of Orca in Switzerland – Clothes Have Been Barricaded Away

Byrichard

Today’s joke is that clothes have been barricaded away as you can see in the featured photo. I find the idea of hiding clothing behind a wall of beers amusing. How often would you see this. I hope that your underwear and socks are new because if they’re not you may spend weeks or even months feeling uncomfortable.


The queues to get into the shops are not bad and I did see at least two couples walking together in shops so the rules are not as strict as people thought. Shops are quiet.


We keep hearing the refrain – People should stay home, but people are at home


We keep hearing the refrain that people should stay home but if you walk around villages and other places you see that people are staying home. Parkings are closed. Traffic is practically nonexistent and even pedestrians are rare. You might see one or two people here and there but not more, especially when you walk around lunchtime.


I get the impression that people who are still working feel martyred because they’d like to be off like many others but in my experience you’re better off working than being off. If you’re off then you’re at home with the challenge of finding things to keep you positive.


At work you still have specific tasks to do, you still meet people, and for you life is relatively normal. I see that shop keepers seem normal. They don’t behave as if they’re traumatised. You see them talking together. life has remained normal. I would guess that working in airports at the moment is quiet, with so few flights. If all the planes are parked then you’re an Acte De prèsence. You just need to find how to make time go faster, to get to the end of the current shift.


I didn’t reach ten thousand steps today. I didn’t bother to go for a walk this afternoon. Walks aren’t fun when you need to avoid people who are indifferent. In the shops you have no choice, but outdoors it’s easy for people to avoid you and they should.


As a case in point I could have walked on a side road but because I saw a woman whom I assumed would walk too close to me I took a gravel path. Right after passing her, from several meters away, I heard a severe cough and I’m happy I observed the safety distance. It might have been an ordinary cold. My point is that we should keep our distances at all times.


Another incident involved someone stinking of body odour in the shops. During a pandemic the last thing you want is dirty unwashed people walking around shops. The cleaner you are, the fewer places the virus has to rest and relax whilst waiting for its next connection.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzJclM_KmRg
What I thought of after writing the last sentence.


Now that I’ve lost your attention I can have dinner.

Swiss mountain cleaners

Byrichard

It’s April fool’s day and the swiss have taken advantage of their reputation to start a funny promotional campaign. It’s about the birds soiling the mountains and having crews of people specifically to resolve this problem. Of course it’s an April fool’s joke.

A Queue of Tractors Without Drivers

A Queue of Tractors Without Drivers

Byrichard

Today I saw a queue of tractors without drivers. Tractors with trailers full of beat were parked by the on loading dock at the railway siding. There is a machine. The tractors come up to the machine, back, and then start to pour the sugar beet into it. The machine then transports the beets from the receptacle along conveyor belts before they are dumped into a train wagon, ready for transport by rail to where they are needed. I filmed it a few days ago but did not get around to editing the sequence.


Tractors and the train wagons
Tractors and the train wagons


Autumnal colours are here. Some trees are further along than others with their reds, oranges and others. Wind or rain is needed to remove the leaves from the trees, as a last step.


Autumn red leaves on a tree
Autumn red leaves on a tree


I am leaving Autumnal Switzerland behind, and going back to summer, by going to Spain. People say that they miss the sun, but for me the sun is not absent at the moment. We have the sun every day. I am taking a break because a, it’s the right time to and because a change of context will be refreshing. I have spent two years walking around in circles. I need to go a little further, and find some other circuit walks. It will also give me something to document in blog posts.

Holidays Break Streaks

Holidays Break Streaks

Byrichard

Today is a rainy day so I have less of interest to write about. The rain fell this morning. It continued until this afternoon. Rain is an excuse not to go for a daily walk. It is an opportunity for a rest day.


Yesterday my 770 plus day streak on Duolingo was broken because I was too distracted to take a lesson. I wanted to break that streak. I didn’t want to break it intentionally. I wanted it to be by accident. I accomplished that goal. Now I am free to reset and work on creating a new routine that is better suited to the new goals. The focus will be web development, whether JSON-LD, JS, WordPress, or more.


I am currently reading Cow Pie Water. The book was written either as a series of blog posts or journal entries and transports you along their PCT hike. Many of the posts are short and to the point. If you have a blog and want to turn it into a book then use this as inspiration. Use a proofreader . It feels as if they simply cut their journal/blog from online, to e-book or book.


The advantage of writing, rather than vlogs or podcasts, is that you can read it in your own time, and with less engagement, You can read five minutes a day, but a podcast or video five minutes a day would be time consuming and ineffectice People lose focus. My reading backlog is growing.


Every so often I see that I am not the only one calling for a shift from social media back to blogging. This is positive. Blogging is chronological, and the community is smaller. Adverts, marketing and algorithms do not try brainwash you to become a tool. We reconnect as individuals. We are no longer a follower, we are individuals, especially if we are active within the groups.


Blue sky is re-emerging now.


I sat that I broke my Duolingo habit. I didn’t. I replaced it, over time, with the habit of writing a blog post every single day for months now. this is an acceptable switch.

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