Walking Into Heavy Rain
|

Walking Into Heavy Rain

Byrichard

Sometimes you end up walking into heavy rain. That’s what I did today. I looked at the weather and because it was meant to get better over the coming days I assumed that this evening it would get better. Instead, as I walked it started to rain a little more, and then a little harder, and eventually quite a bit harder. Did I get wet beyond the top layer? Nope, but my beanie got a little wet, as did my fleece. My shoes on the other hand were clean, thanks to the flow of water.


I was lucky today, because if I had set off a little later then I would have been soaked by the time I got home. I skirted the rain by an amusing amount. I could have been drenched if I had set off later. I timed my walk to avoid the sunset, so that would have helped me avoid the rain anyway. I don’t want to walk at night.


Today I walked over 18,000 steps, according to the Casio, 8800 in the morning, and another ten thousand in the evening. In the evening, as the rain started, I decided to run for one kilometre. I tracked it with the Garmin instinct and the Casio. There was no reason to track with both, except that I was curious to see the result. If you want running time step count and distance then the Casio GBD-200 is fine. If you want cadence, heart rate zones, and other data then keep with the Garmin Instinct. To boot, with the Garmin instinct you get to check the weather first, and you might not be caught out, as I was.


And Finally


I was surprised that the Casio GBD-200 doesn’t allow you to select which sport you’re doing. If you track cycling then you will screw up the data, and if you track walking you will use the watch for many more hours per week than it is planned for. I am not often confused about how I feel about a device. I wish the casio would do more, but at the same time I bought it because it does less. I’m all the more confused because according to the Apple Fitness app I stood, moved and exercised enough and now I don’t know what the source for the data was. I need to keep experimenting.

When Rain Doesn’t Show Up
|

When Rain Doesn’t Show Up

Byrichard

They forecast rain and I looked forward to going for a walk and having clean shoes as shoes are washed by the rain keeping shows slick. The rain didn’t come so my shoes got muddy and I stood by the tap trying to get the mud to drain away from between the tread, without much luck. Tomorrow if I run down the stairs as I always do I will leave thick clumps of mud from my apartment down to the garage


Apparently the cleaner doesn’t like seeing clumps of mud that has fallen off shoes. If I was a cleaner I’d be happy. I’d ask if they want to increase the frequency of my visits, or alternatively I would ask for a shoe brush to be placed at the front door, so that people may clean their shoes before coming in.


Of course, in the 21st century shoes never get muddy because they are worn from the car park, for the walk and back. People never go for muddy walks without the car so they never have muddy shoes by the time they get home. By that time their shoes, and the mud has dried, and fallen off inside the car.


It is absurd that someone would go for a walk straight from home. Who in their right mind would do something so quaint and old fashioned. I write this as a joke, but also with seriousness. If people did go for walks from home, rather than taking their cars, walking paths would be more prominent, and easier to find.


It’s only during the pandemic that paths were worn out from villages and back in. During the pandemic people went for local walks, especially during lockdown. Now that people have their freedoms to burn petrol to go for a 40 minute walk, away from home, they do. People haven’t learned not to use their cars for everything.


I don’t make stairwells and halls muddy on purpose. I make them muddy because it’s hard to walk locally, without using a car, without walking where it’s muddy. If everyone was like me then you would need those taps and grates, like you see at football stadiums, where shoes can be brushed clean before going indoors. That will be my next purchase. I really need such a brush.


Puddles and rain would do the same, but for some reason, despite the ground being wet and muddy it never rains at a time, to prevent me from going for a walk.


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.

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


A Cloudy Sky

A Cloudy Sky

Byrichard

Today as I walked from one village to another I looked up the hill and I saw a cloud arch framing a nearby village and I had to take a picture. The framing of the image was rather unique. It is below. Is it kitsch? There is a good chance. It was unique, so I captured it.


The Cloud Arch
The Cloud Arch


I liked looking up at the sky today because it was different from usual. It was full of interesting clouds and the light played between areas that were in the shade, and others that were in the clouds. I saw a rainbow in one place, and a curtain of rain falling on the Jura in another.


A curtain of rain falling on the Jura


Seeing such a dynamic weather system is nice. I got cold during the walk so I had to wear another layer. I feared that I would be rained on but luckily I was not. This is the type of weather where you setup a camera and you start recording time lapses in the hope to catch something interesting.


And Finally – Flickr


An old barn covered in growth
An old barn covered in growth


When you play with Instagram you share your daily life, and you share things for likes, and to feel that you are part of peoples’ lives. With Flickr you don’t. When you look at the right galleries you see people with an artistic eye. You see images that play with contrast, with composition and framing and more. You also get a sense of intimacy and currentness that you don’t get with Instagram. Looking at these images inspires you to take better pictures, and to think about light and composition, but also about the time of the day, and subject matter.

I Don’t Need to Go For A One And a Half Hour Walk

I Don’t Need to Go For A One And a Half Hour Walk

Byrichard

“I don’t need to go for a one and a half hour walk. I said that to a neighbour before my walk. I could have cut it short, if it started to rain too heavily. Paradoxically for most of the walk it was grey and drizzling. Nothing to worry about. I was almost dry for almost the entire walk.


It’s as I walked the last one and a half kilometres that it started to rain heavily. Within a few minutes my trousers were soaked, and within a few more minutes my shoes and socks were soaked. Luckily the walk ended before it started to whick up through my t-shirt. The rain was so strong that when I took off my trousers my legs were soaked, as if I had just come out of the shower. I had. It was a rain shower.


I am fully equipped to walk in the rain for hours if it is required, but according to the doppler radar I did not expect rain. I was wrong. I got wet. I don’t mind. Humans are waterproof.


Yesterday I mentioned that I was studying WPRig. I finished the course. It looks like a very powerful tool to design wordpress themese but I think there is a learning curve and the course, pushed me beyond what I was comfortable with. The next course I’m studying is WordPress: Custom Post Types and Taxonomies and this looks like it will teach me just what I want to know to convert this website to a fully wordpress experience. When the site is ready I will play with permanent redirections before deleting the old pages forever. One more step into modernising this website.



A Tractor Ploughing A Dry Field in Switzerland

A Tractor Ploughing A Dry Field in Switzerland

Byrichard

Today a tractor was ploughing a dry field. A cloud of dust was not that visible but you can see that rain would now be welcome. I walked by the usual river and looked down and the rocks in the riverbed are uncovered. There is no water running over them anymore. I notied that in another field pumpkins seem to be ready.


A dry Field In Switzerland
A dry Field In Switzerland


https://twitter.com/meteosuisse/status/1432303148119560193
Lack of rainfall in August


MétéoSuisse note encore qu’après les deux mois d’été très humides de juin et juillet, des précipitations inférieures à la moyenne ont été enregistrées dans la plupart des régions de Suisse en août

Météo – Un mois d’août plus frais mais avec moins de pluie – 20 minutes


Years ago I used to use weather apps to see when it would rain and I would even do things extra early to avoid being caught by the rain. Now I use weather apps for the opposite. Now I even consider driving to somewhere where I could be caught by the rain. I am bored of never seeing rain. I like rain. I like the sound. I like the smell, I like that it cleans everything. I also like that being indoors when it’s raining feels cosy.


Rain would also break the monotony of being able to go for a walk every single day without questioning whether the weather the weather is good enough. The weather is always good enough. The weather is so good that rivers are running dry. The climate has changed.


For several weeks I did not touch YouTube and as I have time to spend time there again I found that I am repulsed and don’t want to use the service anymore. Between the sensationalist content that is pushed on us, the non stop adverts and a general feeling of malaise the site is one I think I should now avoid. Its golden age is over, and now it’s time for it to become Yahoo or flickr.

Five Storks In A Field and A High River

Byrichard

Rain filled river


It has rained enough to fill the rivers now. I walked in the rain for an hour and a half and might have crossed one cyclist and one other person. I did count five herons in a field.


Hay balls in a field on a rainy day. Spot the five herons.


In one location several roads are saturated by rainwater flowing off of the fields.


Shoes in high water on a road.