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Over seventy thousand tweets and my opinions about twitter have not changed.
For tree years I’ve been using twitter and for at least a year I believed that this was the great social connector, the website that would turn our passive, faceless web habit into something more personal. Of course I was wrong about this. Anonymity is still as great as ever but in a new sense of the word.
That motivation to connect, to establish meaningful relationships with people is weak. You see this through every twitter tweet, through every interaction. You see this through the contemporary attitude towards online and electronic conversation.
Have you ever listened to two non users speak about computer communications? “I don’t want to use it because I don’t want to lose my privacy”, and the second person “I won’t use it because I don’t want to be stalked, I don’t want someone calling me without me consenting to it. It’s the same line over and over. It’s the line we were given as children about accepting sweets from people we don’t know.
The only difference is that these people are grown ups, and the bad stranger is a globalised system of conversation commonly referred to as twitter and another called facebook. Both have been around for a while now and it’s interesting to see how much greater the usage of facebook has grown compared to that of twitter.
Facebook, however foreign, however bizarre, however shy in nature is a relatively well respected and appreciated addition to the student life, and to some lesser extent the professional life. That is because it was built around a very private and closed community. So private it was exclusive to one university, then one nation of universities, then the global university before finally becoming a public hangout where you say who your real life friends are, and where their names are visible, their picture is available, their affiliations too.
In a sense Facebook is the greatest breach of privacy you could think of. Stalking, as some people worry about is so much easier. At the same time it’s relatively untouched because of the personal security settings that are a common part of every day life.
Now take a look at twitter. It’s a hundred and fourty characters of text at a time. That’s not much information. It’s less than an SMS. It’s basically a chat on a global scale. There is no threading, or at least there wasn’t. There was no @ sign. There was no concept of reply.
Everything that twitter has become is through a great enough number of users agreeing on a communication convention for it to become part of the site’s fabric. This has been demonstrated a number of times. What makes twitter so “versatile” is also what makes it so unappealing as a communication tool for the most interesting people you know.
Anyone with a normal life does not feel the need to communicate virtually to strangers. They prefer person to person interactions in the real world. Twitter is a waste of time. Spend an hour looking at a timeline and you’ll see what strangers are doing all around the world. Now ask just one person to meet and you’ll have no one to meet in great swathes of landscape. That’s because it’s for wealthy people according to some research, 67 percent of college graduates, so educated too.
I read in a read write web post that whilst eighty seven percent of people asked knew about twitter or facebook fourty seven percent use facebook and only seven percent use twitter. The article, in it’s analysis went on to say that twitter is far more complicated to start than facebook. I can’t help but think creating a username on twitter would be faster than on facebook. All you need on twitter is the username after all.
I think it has a lot to do with today’s social values, the fabric of the society within which we live. People have no problem with e-mail communication. They have no problem with phone conversations. They have a serious problem with electronic social interaction. There are a number of factors for this being the case. One of these is our superficiality, why commit to a person whom we have never met, never smiled at? Why commit your thoughts and opinions on paper, in a place where google can index them so easily, and eventually to be called on them. Does that make twitter appealing? No, it doesn’t.
What about the barrier to entry. How many people have a computer that boots up within ten seconds, a permanent internet connection and a machine performant enough to deal with twitter and other sites. You may scoff at this last suggestion but have you tried using social websites on older less powerful machines? I have and it’s a laggy unpleasant experience. Hardly appealing to your average user. Then there’s the matter of time. How many hundreds to thousands of tweets do you need to read before you come to an interesting person? How committed are they to the site? If they post five times a month no personal connection will be established. If they spend all of their time on twitter is this as a result of unemployment or are they on the move with any of a number of smartphones? Do your normal friends have the funds for a smartphone and data contracts so that they are online? Is there a need?
The conclusion is a simple one. In a society where people see the computer as a geeky waste of time for nothing more than work, where face to face interaction is prized above all else then facebook is the clear winner. You add friends from every chapter of the life you have already written for yourself. On twitter you’re building on the future, behind a computer, only to find that the early adopter lifestyle means you have to travel to meet these individuals. In other words unless you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer then twitter is a complete and utter waste of time.
I bought an Iphone because my N97 crashed too much
This is an about face for me. As an appreciator of the latest technology I always want to have the latest technology but I can’t always justify the cost. As a result of this appreciation of technology so I have gone through a number of devices. As a child losing devices is a good excuse to buy a new one. As a grown up though desire is enough.
I really like the n97 and what it could be but it didn’t live up to my expectations. I spend a lot of time participating in social media, whether blogging, commenting, seesmicing or tweeting.
Data plans are cheaper. Apple has demonstrated that people want applications on their mobile device. This has led the mobile landscape to move away from simple telephony. As a result the devices have had to evolve. Bigger screens are needed, batteries with more capacity are needed too. As a result of this new market segment you have many operating systems and more and more choice.
That choice does come at a cost. When using both the e51 and the n97 in paralel, one for work and the other for pleasure I found that I was using the e51, a mid range device rather than the n97 because it was easier to use, and more reliable. That changed my focus. Having the latest alternative was fun, but it wasn’t reliable. It’s only after a few weeks of not being able to stop the alarm and a few missed calls, because the device froze that I wanted to change to the next latest thing. I was thinking of the n900 that uses maemo as my next device.
Two things stopped me. Firstly reliability, what’s the point of buying a device that costs a lot but may not perform as you want it to perform. The second is the maturity of the third party applications. If you get maemo how hard will it be to install new applications and more importantly how much choice is there? Is it worth waiting another three or four months to get that device only to find that it doesn’t work?
That’s why I’ve gone to the Iphone 3G S. It’s the more mature phone. It is well settled into the market, most people find it easy to use an best of all it has a great diversity of applications. It is also reliable.
In a year or two we’ll see which devices are out, as well as which are the most reliable. At that point I may switch to another OS. I’d rather wait for Maemo and S60v5 to become more reliable before spending yet more money.
Day 39 of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – Taking Portraits of Cows
I spent a few minutes taking portraits of cows during my afternoon walk today. Cows were standing by the barrier so it was easy to go up to each one and take their portraits. It’s not as if our vibrant social lives enable us to take portraits of people when we’re self-isolating. It’s day 39.
Mobile First Website
This morning for three hours or so I continued working on making webpages mobile first and resubmitted them for indexing by Google. In the process I thought about how I have images that I could use to illustrate some of the points about geography, rock formations and other topics.
In the process I realised that some pages have been online for their fourth decade now. They were uploaded in the 90s, the navigation style was changed in the 2000s, they were dormant in the tens, and now in the 20s they’re mobile compliant. A side effect of this is that they now have a page load score of 100.
Climbing in Dorénaz
Dorénaz is a small village on the way to Sion and about 18 minutes from Saillon. It is also a few minutes from Aigle. I walked around the area before climbing two of the routes and I noticed that the rocks around here appeared to be magnetite. I saw rust where old climbing equipment had been removed. The magnetite idea came from the rust colour on some of the larger blocks that had broken free decades ago.
[caption id="attachment_3305" align="aligncenter" width="576"] One of the climbing walls in Dorénaz[/caption]As I continued the exploration of the village I noticed that on one roundabout they have a mining wagon so I looked up the village but there was no mention of mining so I extended the research to include mining in the region. It is at this point that I found mentions of anthracite mining in this village. As this pdf illustrates coal mining was one of the local activities. The coal was hard to extract for two reasons. The first is that the deposits are only thin and they have been folded by geological activity. In 1881 they extracted 900 tons of coal from one of the deposits.
[caption id="attachment_3307" align="aligncenter" width="576"] I did not expect that Dorénaz was going to be a former coal mining town.[/caption]Ce tour d’horizon des mines et carrières de Dorénaz met en évidence la vocation particulière de cette commune. Elle sort du schéma habituel du Valais, ayant abandonné le «labourage » et le « pastourage » traditionnels. Les Diablerains – puisque c’est ainsi que l’on appelle les habitants de Dorénaz – se sont presque tous adonnés à l’industrie de la pierre. Elle leur a insufflé une extraordinaire dynamique économique : les Diablerains parcoururent la Romandie en livrant et posant leurs ardoises54. Il y a aussi eu un revers de médaille. Dorénaz a eu des allures de ville du Nord de la France avec ses façades noircies par la poussière du charbon. Et la silicose a frappé nombre de carriers.
That is what I noticed in the village. I saw two or three old chalets built on stilts like you expect to find. The church looks darker than in other villages. In the quote above they wrote “Dorénaz as the appearance of cities from the North of France with its coal darkened walls.”
Le charbon: un bassin houiller s’étend des bords du Léman, entre Lausanne et Montreux, jusqu’à Oron et Sensales/FR. Un très grand nombre de mines ont été exploitées de 1709 à la deuxième guerre mondiale, sur la base de 120 concessions attribuées. L’utilisation de ce charbon sera la cause de la première pollution de l’air sur les bords du Leman. D’autres mines importantes ont été exploitées par exemple entre Colonge et Dorénaz.
… MINES DE LA MÉREUNE (DORÉNAZ)
Dév : 5’000 m  Déniv. : 200 m
Remarque : anthracite
Source: Mines et carrières souterraines de Suisse romande.
I find it really interesting to read about how Polish coal miners helped in the mining of resources from Valais.
Dans la lettre envoyée à Joseph Dionisotti, de Muralt exigeait encore que ces internés reçoivent un salaire relativement élevé, soient bien nourris, bien logés et surveillés par la gendarmerie valaisanne. Le 27 septembre 1940 déjà , les premiers internés militaires polonais arrivèrent aux mines de Chandoline. Le lieutenant polonais Raspondek était responsable des quarante-cinq internés. Il fut d’une aide précieuse pour l’entrepreneur montheysan, grâce à sa grande expérience acquise aux mines de Kattowitz.
source: Camps et Homes d’accueil du Valais
If and when I go back to Dorénaz I want to walk up the path I walked up. I was looking for a route to get above the climbing wall but instead I found a steep path. On either side of this steep path I saw stone walls had been built on either side. These walls looked old so I went back down to get my hiking boots, my bag and the camera. When I saw that the hike was about 1hr30 I turned around and came back down.
Les mines d’anthracite (charbon) de Dorénaz ont été exploitées durant une centaine d’années. Le gisement principal d’anthracite se trouve au Plan de La Méreune, au-dessus de La Giète (commune de Dorénaz), où trois bâtiments sont encore visibles de nos jours. Les premières extractions ont lieu dans les années 1855-1859, mais la véritable exploitation commence dès 1874 grâce au président de la commune de Dorénaz, Pierre-Maurice Paccolat. La concession du charbon de La Méreune passe en novembre 1913 aux mains du chimiste saint-gallois J. Billwiller, de Goldau, mais celui-ci n’exploite finalement pas le filon.
C’est la société “Dorénaz SA, Charbonnages du Valais à Vernayaz” qui reprend le flambeau en 1917 par la remise en état des deux anciennes galeries à La Méreune. Un véritable village industriel se construit alors au Plan de La Méreune; il accueillera jusqu’à 750 ouvriers, avec trois grands bâtiments et vingt petites baraques. Le charbon est conduit à la briqueterie de Vernayaz grâce à un téléphérique qui relie La Méreune à la gare de Vernayaz, avec une station intermédiaire à Alesse.
Passée la production de charbon liée à l’économie de guerre (1917 jusqu’en 1921), la société Dorénaz SA est liquidée par voie de faillite entre 1922 et 1924. La faillite englobe les mines et la briqueterie, avec un découvert de plusieurs millions de francs. C’est alors la Société de Banque suisse qui reprend les mines et bâtiments de la Méreune.
Au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, la société anonyme “Mines d’anthracite de Dorénaz”, sous la direction de l’industriel sédunois Oscar Machoud, relance l’exploitation de l’anthracite. O. Machoud rachète les immeubles en 1941 (logements, cuisine, bains, bureaux, magasin, infirmerie, salle des machines), puis, la même année, la société entre dans le giron de l’industriel montheysan Joseph Dionisotti, détenteur des concessions de Chandoline, Nendaz, Salins, Aproz, Collonges, Veysonnaz, Maragnénaz et Sion. L’administration est concentrée à Monthey où J. Dionisotti dirige aussi une fabrique de chaux vive et sa carrière de “grès dur” de Choëx. Il exploite la mine de Dorénaz jusqu’en 1953, année où celle-ci est délaissée et à partir de laquelle les installations sont laissées à l’abandon. Malgré plusieurs projets de relance de l’exploitation, aucune activité ne reprendra dans les mines de Dorénaz. Source
Travelling experience, going to places like Kiruna in Sweden and towards old railway lines in the Jura have taught me to do some research to see how places in the middle of nowhere, that you would not normally visit can be historically interesting.
This is a village with a current population of about 800 people and they commute to work according to the English wikipedia entry. If you are still curious here is a final document about mining and Dorénaz, in French.
Although the village was interesting I was disappointed by the climbing. If I drive for one hour I want to go to the real mountains, to enjoy a nice landscape and to feel closer to nature. This climbing wall is right on the road side and this detracts from the usual pleasure of climbing. If you do want to climb here then this site will provide you with the required information.
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