Garmin Etrex32x and Software Updates

Garmin Etrex32x and Software Updates

Byrichard

Updating software is something that we do every single day, often without knowing that it is being updated. WatchOS updated two or three days ago. iOS updated yesterday recently as well. The most notable was Xcode, because it requires several gigabytes of space or it fails to even try, if it detects that there is not enough disk space. I had the same issue with the Garmin ETREX 32x except that in this scenario Garmin Express wipes the device’s memory before it has checked that the computer from which you are running the installation has enough space to proceed.


This is interesting for two reasons. The first is that it demonstrates why applications should check that there is enough free disk space before starting an operation rather than afterwards. In this case the warning came too late.


My first thought was, “oh it doesn’t matter, I can try on the other laptop” as I know it has enough space. That’s when I got the “device cannot be found” error message. When I checked the device display it said “no system found, please wait for update to finish.” At this point you’re trapped.


If the device was not under warranty I would look for the device files that allow me to flash the rom, like I did with iphones and android devices, back in the day, or even PC and mac computers. In this scenario I have the skillset to revive the device but I need to find the software to do it with.


What surprised me in this scenario is that a device with so little onboard memory needs a 16 gigabyte system update, and the second that if the process is interrupted it has no safety features in place, to preserve the usability of the device. I update devices constantly and so far I’ve ended with this laptop being bricked once, and now a GPS device being practically bricked. This is rare.


Now I have to wait a little longer to play with that device. I will take it to be replaced on Tuesday. We have yet another stupid holiday during a pandemic on Monday, so that’s an additional day of waiting.


I would see this as an excellent excuse for a bike ride to the plague pit of Geneva but people in Geneva have normalised bicycle theft so I will go with the scooter. I go by scooter because I can park right next to the shop and avoid walking where people walk, unmasked. If it wasn’t for the pandemic I would be heading there now.


Some of us follow international news, and see that the pandemic is still thriving so we take precautions.

Cycling From Nyon To the Signal De Bougy and Back
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Cycling From Nyon To the Signal De Bougy and Back

Byrichard

Yesterday I looked at the wind, and when I saw that it was coming from the east I decided to cycle into it, for the outward journey, and back, with it, on the journey back. Originally my plan was to cycle to Rolle and to turn around but the plan changed. I was cycling and I overtook a woman. I like to challenge myself to overtake everyone. I especially like to overtake everyone, as a personal challenge, until I am too tired.


View of Swiss vineyards


A little later I checked behind me and I saw a cyclist drafting behind me and I thought, “will he overtake and will we take turns drafting for each other.” but the person never did. I struggled hard, against the wind at moments. I was still comfortable but I could feel fatigue growing after Rolle. I could feel myself slow, but still no overtaking. Eventually I indicated that I was turning left, to head upwards and I turned around.


The person that had drafted behind me for half an hour was the girl/woman I had overtaken. I thought I was being drafted by a lazy man, but in reality I was being a gentlemanly wind plough for another cyclist. I wish I had known, I would have continued the ride.


In a different age I would have decided to continue, and had a conversation. We are in the pandemic age, and we know that men talking to women they do not know, is easily construed as worthy as trouble, so not worth the danger.


On the flipside I found that I love the concept of cycling with a woman, of either us being the remora, whilst the other makes it easier for the other. I am infatuated with the idea of cycling activities with women as company, as I was for climbing, hiking and via ferrata. So in reality I haven’t changed. Just the sport has.


Although it was a strenuous bit of riding with an anonymous person taking advantage to make less effort behind me, this was the most intimate moment of this pandemic. A full half hour with a stranger, with barely a word exchanged. A “good continuation” when I changed course, but that was it. The pandemic has made life like this for celibate people who are careful not to get or spread covid.


We now have years of solitude under our belt. Our idea of intimacy is so simplified that a shared bike ride with no exchanged words, becomes a “shared experience”. My ambitions are so much lower now. A bike ride in silence has become enough,


The pandemic will not end, and I am impatient for the next experience like this. I enjoyed the experience, and the conviviality of a shared bike ride.


Back to the main reason for this blog post. If you cycle along the lake and climb from the lake road to Aubonne, the ride is more gentle and pleasant. The part after the arboretum is more demanding and drivers behave like idiots so it’s worth being wary of them. Once at the top the ride down is nice. Ride past Signal de Bougy, turn left and that’s where the nice downhill section starts.


My loop is around fourty eight kilometres.

A Return to Cycling

A Return to Cycling

Byrichard

For three years I did not cycle. For one year it was because I broke my arm while cycling, The second year it was because we were in the first wave of this never-ending pandemic so I preferred not to stray too far from home. The third year it was because the pandemic was still not over, but it felt as if we had a chance. This year is different. This year we know that the Swiss government doesn’t care either way. For the Swiss the pandemic is over, whether that is true, or false.


A dry landscape view during a bike ride between France and Switzerland


In light of this we could continue to self-isolate and to avoid doing anything away from home but cycling is one of the rare things that we can do that doesn’t A) Require a car and B) Doesn’t require being indoors with others. For both of these reasons cycling is a good sport to practice when Covid denialism is government policy.


For this bike ride I intentionally went into France, to explore a little. Usually I forget the passport or other documents but not this time. It feels good to explore the old places, once more. Despite the never-ending pandemic, at least solitary cycling can range further afield.


My mental health would do a lot better if I knew that various European countries were working towards Covid-Zero, but as has become the tradition now, European countries are pretending the pandemic is over, so that there is another Autumn and Winter wave. This has become the new normal. The new normal is not moral. There is little we can do about this as private individuals except self-isolate.


Over the last day or two I have taken a break from JavaScript to look at Ruby. It feels like a very different type of language so it’s good to see how things work in another programming language. So far I am struggling with transposing the knowledge with some things, but others are clear. I decided to write the JS equivalent name in my notes, to help with comparing the two. I might continue in this line for the weekend, and resume my regular studying on Monday.

A Weekend Walk During a Pandemic

A Weekend Walk During a Pandemic

Byrichard


Today I went for my daily walk and I saw a shape. I thought, “That looks like a fox” and as I approached i had a doubt about it being a dog and I felt fear but I continued forward anyway. Eventually the fox noticed me, looked at me and then fled the other way. This is good news. This means that the fox was healthy, rather than rabied. It also means that I can keep being relaxed about seeing foxes.


Plenty of flowers in a field


At this time of year fields are filled with flowers by the thousands and if you walk around the right fields you hear the buzzing of bees. I didn’t hear them today. Summer heat seems to be back now. The thermometer is going up to 26 to 27 degrees. Warm enough to cycle in shorts and not feel cold. This is a nice time of year for such sports. I have cycled 100 kilometres so far and tomorrow I expect to add another 20 to 30 kilometres so I will have reached my pre-pandemic goal for the first time in two or three years. I haven’t cycled seriously since I broke my arm.


I have now completed 50 percent of The Complete JavaScript Course so I am finally closer to the end than the beginning of this course. I feel that I am learning new and interesting things, as well as consolidating knowledge about other topics. What I am learning about JavaScript can be found here. This is sorted by learning, rather than projects. I keep this as a notebook rather than a repository for others to use. When I am confident about the projects I am working on I will share them in an organised manner.


Coquelicots, and the Alps

A New Yorker Cartoon, Existentialism and The Absurd

A New Yorker Cartoon, Existentialism and The Absurd

Byrichard

Today I saw a picture of a frog sitting in a sauce pan on a cooker speaking to another, saying “I Know the water is heating up but that’s the next generation’s problem” and this can be a comment on a few things. The first, linear comment is of course about global warming and its consequences for current and future generations. Every generation, we, as children, want to make a better place when we grow up. The realities of adulthood make this more of a challenge than we had anticipated.



The second comment, and the one I leapt to is about the habit of saying “We’re safe, everyone can remove their masks and meet in big groups this summer, before, when winter comes, seeing that there is a huge new wave of Covid cases. In my eyes summer is the best time to work towards Covid Zero and be like most of Asia, New Zealand, and before recent changes, Australia.


The existential part of today’s blog post title comes, from knowing that the pandemic will get much worse again, and that we are windmilling towards another wave. Data I saw today suggests that the next wave is already on its way back. If this is true then self-isolation is not absurd.


In Summer it does feel absurd to self-isolate but at the same time there is evidence that it is not absurd, that it is rational, and normal. Another existential question is whether I want or need friendships anymore. It has been at least five years since I have had any. Any need, or deep desire has been muted years ago. Years ago I cried with pain, due to solitude. Now I think I’m blazé about solitude. I feel that if I wasn’t growing older I would be completely fine with the pandemic solitude I am currently living with, as well as the solitude I felt before the pandemic.


We couldn’t live in self-isolation for two years, going into the third if we were convinced that we needed to have a social life and all that other crap. People will think this is posturing but I’ve been solitary since some of my earliest memories. The pandemic doesn’t help. Neither does job insecurity, and neither does having to drive to see people who will never return the favour.


One of my reasons for not wanting to do things, either alone or with people, is that if you do things with people you need to walk close to other people who are not wearing masks. If you go to walk a mountain path it will be narrow and people will not be masked. If you wear a mask you will looked at as if you were swearing at them whilst playing a bagpipe. You do get strange, disapproving looks when you wear masks.


I don’t mind in the shops when I buy food, but in stairwells and other places it is uncomfortable. This discomfort is the government’s fault, for spreading disinformation about the pandemic being over, when it clearly isn’t.


Trevor Noah was at the correspondent’s dinner two nights ago and called it a super spreader event. This morning I saw multiple reports of people testing positive for covid, and aranet4 readings in the 2000+ range of c02 parts per million. Western countries are constantly selling the lie that the pandemic is over, when all of the data and previous seven waves prove are premature. The Northern Hemisphere should work towards Covid Zero but has chosen covid denialism instead, so the window of opportunity to stop covid before window is being missed. Spring and summer are the ideal opportunity to get to Covid Zero with the lowest social cost.


We have provided the virus with a pilot light of opportunities to spread this summer and we will pay the price in September, yet again.


When I check glocals I see that no events are planned anyway, so i am not missing out at the moment. Those that do sports where groups meet, and use cars, are still self isolating. it is only the alcoholics and others that are meeting and socialising without masks during a pandemic.


And that’s it for today. Less euphoric than sometimes, but this situation induces a level of fatigue that we just have to get used to.

Stormy Skies Near Nyon
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Stormy Skies Near Nyon

Byrichard

The weather was finally dynamic today. The storm warnings were flashing towards Hermance, on the French side of the lake. This gave a nice contrast between the yellow of the Colza fields and the dark threatening clouds behind.


At moments I thought that rain would begin to fall but luckily the doppler radar, and my instincs were correct, so I did not get drenched in rain or pelted with hail. At one point it did feel as though hail could be a possibility.



In the last week or two I have cycled around 150 kilometres, which isn’t bad. It could be better but single rides are around 49 kilometres. Once the ride was 49 kilometres but I saw that I could easily get an extra few meters to make it 50 so I made the effort. The second time I skipped.


My only trips into Geneva this year have been by bike, but only up from the lake, up the Via Appia and then back towards Vaud. No stops in Geneva itself so far. We are still in a pandemic and I am not going to play Pandemic Roulette, as I like to call it. I am not taking risks that are not worth taking.


If you are so inclined you can now listen to Germinal as podcasts via France Culture. Each episode is 28 minutes long so easy to slot into your day, either commuting or doing other things.


During the pandemic I spent a lot of time reading swiss news, to keep up with current affairs. Now that the Swiss government has decided to pretend that the pandemic is over I have stopped reading the RTS info site. There is not much value when they do not provide relevant news and information.


I will update this blog erratically because it’s hard to know when I will or will not be inspired. Today’s blog post is mainly as an excuse to share photographs.

The Pandemic Duality

The Pandemic Duality

Byrichard

There are currently two societies. On one side we have those who believe what they are told and take everything at face value. On the other side we have those that look at the bigger picture, that follow international news, and look at the big picture.


The society that believes what they are told without asking questions believes that the pandemic is over and that life is back to normal. They believe that there is no longer a need for masks, and that big events with plenty of people are without danger once again. Paradoxically the behaviour of the virus will give these people their moneys’ worth because it will not make them sick instantly. There is always a nice calm, before a wave of new infections. People will have normal lives of insouciance for a while. Eventually though, by mid September or later a new pandemic wave will hit and those that danced with the sirens will fall victim to their songs.


On the other side you have those that are looking at the big picture, that are seeing in international news that the pandemic doesn’t just end, by some miracle. We see that China and New Zealand make a massive effort to keep the pandemic under control. Shanghai went into full lockdown. Beijing is currently busy testing everyone, to see whether there is a problem, and if there is they are willing to react instantly.


In South Africa we see another wave, similar to the one from last year, but with reports of “The death rates may have been under-reported last year. The aim of this blog post is not to document every article and idea I saw, but rather to give a global view of what I remember to provide people with some context.


Every summer the number of sick drops down, so every summer in Europe would be the ideal time to work towards Covid zero, but people never do. This means that for year after year we live in pandemic insecurity, knowing that spending time indoors, with too big a group, will result in a mass-spreader event.


You may think “But you’re an idiot to worry so much, it’s just a little virus, plenty of people are fine.” and you’d be partially right. The problem is that there is a “what if?” element. When you’re hiking, climbing, diving or doing something dangerous you always ask “what if” and you assess whether the risk is too high to go ahead or not.


I was going to list all the organs that Covid could affect but instead I will simply refer to the tweets we see often that say “I went from training for my 11th marathon to struggling to shower” to “my resting heart rate is 120” to “my spouse died of Covid” to “my child is unable to attend school due to long covid”. The problem is serious enough for people with Long Covid to be dispensed from the GCSE exams. This is not nothing, and self isolation is for a valid reason.


Do I feel good or smart about isolating? Am I overfilled with joy? No, I feel like an idiot in certain circumstances. I feel sad that I don’t socialise at the moment. Is being this cautious worth it in the end? Of course the answer is no, until you fall sick with Long Covid, and you’re one year into your recovery, wishing you could finally be well enough to walk for 10 minutes without getting tired.


The emotional yoyo only goes up when I am reminded of the life I am not living. When I am in solitude I feel fine. When I study I feel fine. When I cycle and when I walk I feel fine, until I cross people not walking in solitude.


How young people felt during this pandemic in Switzerland


The table above shows how people have felt during this pandemic and what you see is that the young people have felt the worst about this pandemic but that for the first wave they were not happy but they seemed okay. I see this data and I believe that it shows that society could have coped with a prolonged soft lockdown to get to Zero Covid. With Zero Covid the second wave and the obligatory certificate would have been unnecessary.


It’s interesting to see how the 30-50 year olds joined together in mysery by December 2021.


Before I conclude this post I think that it’s worth looking at what New Zealand, Italy and Covid Zero countries are doing because they will suffer less from Long Covid, once the pandemic is over, twenty two years from now. I mention Italy because they have decided to keep masks at least until summer, if not longer. I would love for Switzerland and other countries to do the same. We are sleep walking into the next wave, but we are also missing yet another opportunity to get to Covid Zero.


SARS CoV-2 in wastewater


That is it for now.

Playing With The Aranet 4
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Playing With The Aranet 4

Byrichard

Countries like Switzerland recently decided that the pandemic was over because lobbies wanted it to be over. Despite high numbers of infections and the percentage of tests being positive Switzerland decided that the acute phase of the pandemic was over. For them the lack of deaths, and the lack of people in ICUs meant that the pandemic had entered a safe stage.


557 PPM in a shopping centre at around 0845


From Wednesday to Friday we went from masks must be worn indoors to “there is no need for masks anymore, even on public transport. From one day to the next we went from “masks are obligatory” to “masks will be tolerated”. In Spain we read about how some psychologists noticed an “empty face” syndrome within the Spanish teen community, which was then spread via the free press to other European states. Wanted to wear a mask had become stigmatised as almost being a sign of mental illness.


From one day to the next the Swiss media went from writing twelve lines of text about the pandemic to writing zero for days at a time. We now hear about Swiss covid numbers once per week. The body that was in charge of monitoring the situation has been dissolved, the state of emergency has been lifted and the pandemic is being ignored.


Meanwhile France, next door, is blood clot read on the RTS map of European infections. The pandemic is far from over but the Swiss government has decided to pretend it is.


That’s where devices like the Aranet 4 come in. For as long as Switzerland was taking the pandemic semi-seriously I felt that such a device was a waste of money and a gimmick. When Switzerland decided to ignore the pandemic such a device became crucial because we need to know how risky the environment we are is. The higher the co2 level, the higher the risk of Covid-19 transmission.


You can set the device to update every minute, two minutes, five minutes or ten minutes. The battery lasts for two years and there are two apps. The first Aranet 4 allows you to keep a log of the air situation over time and see the trends. Aranet 4 display allows you to see the display but nothing else. In theory every mobile phone can access an Aranet 4 without the need for pairing with the display app.


I go to the shops as soon as they open and in the time it takes for me to shop the reading goes from 540ppm to 600 within a few minutes of the shops opening. I have not been later in the day, to see how much further it climbs. The point is simple. co2 rises very quickly, whether you are home alone with closed windows, in a car, or in a shopping center.


We see people queue to wash their hands and disinfect their trollies, but they fail to wear a mask. Masks are the single and best line of defense and people are washing their hands instead.


Aranet 4 devices are great because they are small, light, easy to carry, easy to read and the data is easy to keep an eye on. It allows you to assess air cleanliness within one minute of walking into a room. You can see how quickly opening windows can make a room safer. You can also see whether a lift or hallway is safe. Surprisingly I got low readings in a lift.


Aside from checking that shops, lifts and hallways are safe you can also use it when you visit friends or family. When you step into a room, you can go and open the windows, and when you see that the Aranet 4 shows that the air is fresh you can take the mask off and behave more normally.


And Finally.


The Aranet 4 is expensive for what it does and outside of a pandemic where governments of several nations fail to keep people safe I would class it as a luxury. Due to Switzerland and other EU countries deciding to pretend the pandemic is over the situation has changed and such a device becomes worthwhile. It provides us with a quick way of assessing the level of risk in a room, so that we may decide whether to stay, leave, or open windows. It allows us to quantify whether removing the mask is a risk worth taking or not.


I do not carry this device unless I plan to spend time indoors. It is not designed for falls, being exposed to the outdoor elements etc.

Wearing a Dumb Watch Or a Classic

Wearing a Dumb Watch Or a Classic

Byrichard

Before the pandemic I liked to track sports, whether walking, indoor climbing, cycling, walking or more. I have tracked sports activities for two to three years at this point. I think I have almost 3000 tracked activities. That’s tracking my walks and more almost every day for at least ten years.


Recently the English, Swiss, Danish and other governments decided that they would declare the pandemic over, with no concern about the reality on the ground, or the warnings by the WHO not to assume that the pandemic is over. I also keep reading about how serious long Covid is, so despite the billions spent on propaganda to tell us that the pandemic is over, I am not convinced.


This does come with a psychological cost. While others can return to normal life, and either ignore the risk because they have already fallen sick, or ignore the risk because they don’t read hard news like some of us do, there is a social divide. On one side there are people who want to be careful and reach covid zero before resuming normal life, and on the other the people who don’t worry or pay attention to the details.


This summer we have a choice to make. Do we self isolate, to stay safe, and continue to wear masks, or do we give up and give in, and play Covid roulette? The data shows that solitude and masks are much better than long Covid but others are not careful. It is within this context that I am tempted to give up on fitness watches, and smart watches. What value is there in tracking our every move, our every breath and our every heart beat if we’re going to dine alone, walk alone, and ride alone?


I hardly look at Strava, Garmin Connect or the Apple Fitness app. I was excited that I walked five and a half million steps in a single year, but at the same time where is the end of this pandemic? Where is the safe social event? Where is the guarantee that a state or country is covid free.


The shift from pandemic mode, to no pandemic mode, in Switzerland was from one evening to the next morning. Within 10 hours we went from masks and being cautious to no covid passes, no masks, no social distancing, no event restrictions or anything else. In other words we went from being able to do things without danger. Now that there are no safety measures it is better to shop online, and not to do anything social in meat space.


I don’t expect any summer waves. What I am frustrated by is that we could profit from the summer virus lull to get to Covid Zero and eradicate the problem. Instead society is going to do everything it can to leave the pilot light burning for the virus, so that, when Christmas and New Year comes, we will have another tragic winter.


It is within this context that I am tempted to wear dumb watches again, to downgrade from the iPhone 8 plus to the iPhone SE and more. It is hard not to lose hope for the future. I haven’t lost hope. I study two to three hours a day now, four if you consider podcasts as studying. I am working towards a future, because I see no short term possibilities, during this pandemic. I am not depressed. I am despondent. I am going through the motions, whilst waiting for hope to reappear.


On The Desire To Change Career
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On The Desire To Change Career

Byrichard

If I had been smart I would have changed career path around 2006-2007 when I was in London surrounded by entrepreneurs and web developers, rather than now during a pandemic. Normally I struggle to find new contracts because of two things. The first is that for camera and editing work there are very few opportunities per year, and the opportunities that do arise have hundreds, if not thousands of candidates so the probability of success is low. The other issue is that because there are few jobs, if you fail you may have to wait months for an opportunity to appear.


That’s why I have spent the entirety of the pandemic reskilling. Every single day I study web development. I have gone from IT support courses, to CSS to HTML, to Javascript to frameworks and back to JavaScript. The journey is long and hard. When I was finally free to study Angular in depth I found that my knowledge of Javascript was not deep enough, so I went back and studied on JS pathway, and now I am studying a second one on Linkedin Learning. My goal is to be proficient. This isn’t a one day goal. This is a journey.


You can follow my journey on github to see what I am learning. One of my side projects, to practice what I have learned is this one. At the moment it is a simple app that retrieves a random image from my instagram gallery and displays it with its title. This self-project is worthwhile because it is easy to follow a course and code along with the teacher. The problem with this is that when there is no teacher, and no model you need to innovate and find your own solutions.


Last year when I tried something similar I found a way to convert from Json to CSV to bring it into Wordpress. Now I am working with Fetch, random number generators to find a post, let to be within the scope of one block, converting epoch time to human readable date and time, and more. If I followed instructions I would find it easy to do, but I couldn’t find any, so I am experimenting with ideas from courses. The next step is to find how to use classes and ids’ to embellish it with CSS.


I started with the random post generator. The next steps will be to use constructors, for each loops, display ten posts at a time, but also to enable finding them by year and month. I can also add more metadata fields than I can with Instagram. I could add country, type of landscape and more. I can practice building a CMS from the ground up. In letters of motivation I wrote about learning about Media Asset management tools from the ground up, and now out of curiousity, that is what I am doing.


It has taken a while to understand how Javascript works, but now that I have I can spend more time experimenting and learning each day. My increasing proficiency will be shown through the projects I build in courses, but also the self-led project.


Sometimes I add comments to commits, to explain what I found hard, and then I show the code that resolved the issue. If you’re curious as to why I would use a self-hosted json file and media files the answer is simple. I don’t need to go through the process of asking for permission to acccess an api to access my own data. For an example of working with ajax and json you can refer to this project.


And Finally


When you work in the media and broadcasting you constantly need to look for opportunities, to face rejection, and continue looking. With the skills I am learning now people are already interested, and that is the reason to change from skills that are less interesting, to those that are.