On Long Drives

On Long Drives

Byrichard

In Switzerland a three hour drive feels long, but in France or Spain it does not. I drove from Switzerland to Spain and from Spain to switzerland. The drive to Spain is easier because traffic gets lighter as you get further south. Most of the time this is true. This time, as I drove from Spain to Switzerland I came across the opposite. From the moment I started driving I encountered traffic.


The problem with traffic is that some people are driving above the speed limit, while others are driving below it. You have to decide whether you want to slow down behind the car that is blocking you, or go out, blocking the fast car behind you. I usually let my speed go, rather than risk a high speed rear collision, flashing lights and other unpleasant behaviour.


This time when I arrived at La Jonquera there were plenty of cars so I stayed in the car and skipped this refueling stop, to refuel at the next petrol station in price. The difference in price was big but I thought that saving time was more important than money. I wasn’t wrong.


At the first péage in France I lost 20 minutes, and then I had regular traffic jams until 20 minutes or so before Grenoble. From there traffic was easy, and I even began to find driving between Grenoble and France easier. I have driven that route regularly enough. It has become a relaxing part of the drive.


This was especially true, because of how quiet the road was compared to the rest of the journey. I drove from around 0910 or so to 2220, so a thirteen hour drive. Yesterday I was tired from the drive.


Horses grazing, with the alps behind
Horses grazing, with the alps behind


Recent Reading


I read two books during the drive. I listened to them with Audible. I listened to The Jewel That Was Ours by Colin Dexter and finished part two of three of The History Of the Ancient World. The Jewel That was Ours is a reasonable book, although I do not feel that it is ideal for road trips. It requires focus and attention, two things that driving in heavy traffic also require.


I think that listening to books where you can half listen are better suited to long drives. Big Mile Cycling by Sean Conway was a better choice for the drive down. I will see about finding similar books for my next long drive.


Recent Listens


Today I listened to two Le Cours De L’Histoire podcasts. One was about Cretinism and Iodine deficiency, and the other, which I still need to finish is about vertical exploration of the mountains. For a while I found that I had no interest in listening to podcasts but for once I felt ready. I try to find pandemic friendly content, that explores ideas, concepts and history, rather than self-pity. I don’t think self-pity is the right term, but something along those lines. I like to read and listen to things that distract me from pandemic solitude.


JavaScript


It has taken a while, and some effort but I finally feel that I am getting to understand JavaScript better, and that I am more confident with it. I am not rushing, but rather seeing the code, and re-writing it with my own terms, words and more. I am pushing the envelope slightly, to deepen my learning. Today I played with encoding letters to learn about functions. Tomorrow I will experiment with something else.


And Finally


Tomorrow I get my booster, so we will see how it affects me. I want to eat a raclette, to see whether my dreams are more interesting, afterwards. 🙂

With A view of the Mont Blanc
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With A view of the Mont Blanc

Byrichard

I’m afraid to open the veluxes because of the threat of finding yet another large spider. I don’t mind having to dispose of it, but I hate the idea of having one walking around without me knowing. A great alternative to open windows is to go for your daily walk. You’re far from neighbours, from smokers, from metalworking and more. You are free to daydream. Today the Mont Blanc was clearly visible. The image is at max zoom with an iphone 8+.


A view of the Mont Blanc, as seen from Vaud


Yesterday and today the harvesters are out collecting corn and sunflowers. I captured a harvester as it dumped sunflower seeds into a trailer before moving on to finish the field. It is a shame to miss it at work.


A combine harvester unloading Sunflower seeds
A combine harvester unloading Sunflower seeds


What I Am In The Process Of Learning


Today I got a step closer to being able to control WordPress more proficiently than I can at the moment. With hierarchies related to taxonomies via specialist post creation. Coding your own post types and your own taxonomies gives you enormous control over what you can do with WordPress. I have projects. I know how I want to use this newly acquired knowledge.


This website will be overhauled. The static part will be moved into the CMS, and the CMS will behave, as the old website did, but with ease of new post creation and more. The challenge is in updating to new technologies, and using this process as a learning and consolidation phase, as I did with CSS and other technologies over the years and decades.



I don’t feel comfortable writing about my trials and tribulations on Linkedin because it feels as though you need to be at your peak, rather than as a between achievements point. With the blog, I can document the learning curve, and the progress I make as I work towards acquiring new skills, in my efforts to build a different career path than the things I have done so far. I also have a project to work on in my free time, aside from the website. The second project is ambitious, and useful. You will learn more, as I get ready to reveal more.


The Daily Walk When People are Back

The Daily Walk When People are Back

Byrichard

The daily walk, when people are back, is less pleasant because the roads and paths that were quiet when everyone was on holiday catching the virus were quiet. Now that everyone is back it is a challenge to avoid people again and it could be worth finding quieter routes.


View of the Léman and Alps
View of the Léman and Alps


I still track my walks with an app or two, but as I walk the same route so frequently something like the Garmin VivoSmart 4 is fine. It counts steps, measures heart rate, and measures oxygen levels, but not very well. It also tracks how tired or full of energy you might be.


The Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro still works fine but I think I’ve been using it for four years and I believe that the battery may be getting tired. It’s a shame that it’s while owning this watch that I have had the least interesting sporting habits. I have walked and cycled in circles for four year. I have hardly been to the mountains, or lakes. Same circles, different days.


I am tired of the pandemic. I am tired of the fatalism that the government shows towards controling this virus. We could have eradicated it from Switzerland twice already. We’re in wave four. Instead of being worried and doing everything possible to stop the virus from spreading the government says “oh but you just need to vaccinate and you’ll be fine.” The issue arises from children below the age of twelve having no chance to vaccinate.


The government has a cavalier attitude towards the health and safety of children, when it should do everything in its power to make sure that they are safe. They prefer to pretend they are unaware of the risks, and just to carry on regardless.


What I’m studying


I started the Becoming a Node JS Developer pathway. I don’t know whether I will concentrate fully on this pathway or if I will look at something afterwards. The knowledge I have gained so far from this course is useful. When I experiment with frameworks I will find the process simpler to understand. I am on day 718 of studying German and I practice speaking more.


Web Dev Studies During The Pandemic.

Web Dev Studies During The Pandemic.

Byrichard

During this Pandemic, I have decided to study Web Development and I am slowly making my way through one or two Linkedin Learning Pathways. In the process, I have learned about CSS, PHP, JavaScript ECMAScript2016, Frameworks and more.


The course I have studied are:


Angular Essential Training / React.js Essential Training / Git Essential Training / Learning ECMAScript 6 /Node.js Essential Training / Javascript Essential Training / RubyonRails Essential Training / CSS Essential Training / Ruby Essential Training : 1 The Basics / Installing and Running Ruby On Rails 5: Mac / Programming Foundations: Web Security /PHP with MySQL / Essential Training 1 and 2 /PHP Essential Training / Programming Foundations: Databases / Responsive Layout / HTML Essential Training / Introduction to CSS and CSS Essential Training.


With these studies I am getting a good overall appreciation of the options and solutions available to web developers. When I complete the “Become A full-Stack Developer and Become a Web Developer Courses I want to focus on a single framework and try to do everything from scratch, from setup to deployment, or at least to it being “completed”.


It’s easy to watch hours of videos and not learn much. It’s for that reason that with these courses I have re-written every line of code and when it did not work I persisted until I resolved the issues.


With CSS I took the opportunity to re-work the entire website. I made it mobile compliant and more visually appealing. I plan to take the same approach to learn about frameworks, taking my website and its sections, and using a framework as a CMS.


For now I need to keep progressing with the learning pathway. I have eighteen hours of courses to go but that’s without including the hours of effort put into getting things to work after I’ve written the lines of code.


At least this is a productive way of taking advantage of being in self-isolation for the foreseeable future.

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On studying what you love

Byrichard

I love technology, especially in the form of online communities. I’ve been part of so many online communities I have some degree of expertise. I’ve seen the birth of the chatroom and it’s evolution, the popularisation of instant messaging and through flipside and nochicktrix I’ve seen the forming of virtual communities.

More recently I’ve seen the increase from virtual communities to real communities. Over the past two years, almost everyone I know has created a myspace account and for a while, this was the best place for people to be. More recently though people have moved to Facebook. Having more than 140 friends, of which only three I do not know, is a sign of how times have changed. It’s actually fashionable to be part of an online/offline community.

All the parties I’ve recently been to have been advertised on Facebook among other places and it’s become the social networking site of choice. If you’re not there you don’t know what’s going on anymore. It’s a great shift. It’s also replacing e-mail.

Why e-mail people when all your friends are on Facebook. Why not take advantage of unlimited photo uploads to Facebook to add all those past nights for everyone to enjoy.

I love the way technology is going. It’s sociable.