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The Bike Ride

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

During a pandemic one of the safest places to be is on a bike on quiet rural roads. The only people you meet are sporty so there is a higher likelihood that they are sporty.

Today I had to be respectful when passing two horses. They can often be afraid when they see cyclists, as we look strange. Bright colours, a strange machine underneath us. It can also be that the rider is also a little afraid. I always pass or let horses pass with caution.

A few bike rides ago I was told that they get spooked when they don’t know what is behind them. In this case I was in front of the horses.

I take the paths because I want to avoid dangerous roads and cars. The weather was good for cycling today.

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The Luxury of Walking Paths Away From Cars
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The Luxury of Walking Paths Away From Cars

Byrichard

I love to walk and cycle every day. I love to walk from home and not touch the car. This morning I refuelled the car and it cost 90 CHF for 44 litres or so. Every single time I refuel the car I get a shock. Petrol is expensive, and yet people drive every day.

Usually I go for five days per week without touching the car. I walk from home and back. This saves on driving time, parking and petrol. I come up against a clear frustration.

The Need for Foot Paths and Cycling Lanes

When I drive by some communes and villages, for example between Gingins and Cheserex, or between Reverolle and Hautemorges I see a wide pedestrian band where people can walk, far from cars. Imagine the luxury of walking two or three meters away from a road, rather than in the wet, muddy grass.

Consistently Endangered

Yesterday on a stretch of road that is no more than 700 meters long I had three, not one, not two, but three cars that drove too fast, and too close. They did this without needing to. If a car is coming towards them, and they can’t avoid me, then I will walk into the grass, because there is no choice in the matter.

Veiled Threats

Yesterday, a nun, I believe, a white van driver, and a third person drove too fast, too close, without driving to the other side of the road as they passed me. European law says that people must give one and a half meters between cars and cyclists, but also, by empathy, with pedestrians. These people don’t. They just drive on top of you. They want to scare you off the road, and it worked. I did step into the mud when one homicidal person endangered my life.

Give Space and Slow Down

When I drive I always treat pedestrians and cyclists as I would like to be treated. I give them one and a half meters, as required by law, but I also slow down to a humane speed, as I pass them. I don’t want to intimidate people. I want to show empathy. The more people walk, the fewer cars are around, and with fewer cars, so traffic decreases.

Overtraining

I have been frustrated with how cars behave around pedestrians and cyclists for years, so it can’t just be fatigue and overtraining. I still think that fatigue and over-training play a role. If I was less fatigued, if I was going for shorter walks, then the selfish behaviour by car drivers wouldn’t be so toxic. Of course it’s not just physical fatigue.

Exposure Toxicity

Often when I hear a car I go half a meter to a meter into the grass, or even muddy fields, to give space for cars to pass. They thank me but I very often want to flip them the bird. I’m not giving them space, out of empathy. I’m giving them space because I am tired of having cars driving too fast too close, on agricultural roads. It’s not that these people are fast on main roads. They’re fast on agricultural roads, where cars should not be. There is nowhere you can walk, in Switzerland without escaping from cars.

A Desire For More Paths Away From Roads

There are two awful roads, for pedestrians. On one road there is plenty of space to walk, but rather than place a walking path they put bushes, to stop people from walking. This forces people to walk on a busy road where people are driving above the speed limit. If you walk on the foot path you have your back to the homicidal drivers.

On the other road there is plenty of space where a foot path could be added, for pedestrians to walk comfortable between two villages, without being exposed to homicidal car drivers. Yesterday on one bit of road three cars in a row drove too fast, and too close. If I slipped and fell, or fainted, they would run me over.

I saw a woman walking down that road with a pram yesterday. There should be safe options for people walking between villages.

Invest in Walking and Cycling

With a small investment farmers could make walking between villages more pleasant. We could walk away from busy roads and farmers could benefit financially from turning a metre wide band of land into a walking path for pedestrians and cyclists. The space is there, if only someone had the vision.

And Finally

The walks around where I live are nice, but there are two roads that feel really dangerous, especially when the grass is long, and after a few hours of heavy rain. It’s unpleasant to walk half a meter from where people are driving at 80 kilometres an hour. It might not be intimidating for the cars, but it is for pedestrians. I want car drivers to be aware that they can drive more empathetically.

Day 45 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – The Need For Outdoor Exercise.

Day 45 Of Self-Isolation in Switzerland – The Need For Outdoor Exercise.

Byrichard

This aftrnoon reminded me of the need for outdoor exercise. I was feeling lazy and unmotivated to go outdoors. I thought that the rain would come back during my walk, as it did during my scooter ride, and as it did yesterday. I checked the weather app and I saw that we should have good weather until tomorrow so I took advantage to go for my walk.


This time I was light. I went with my AirPods, my phone, and money just in case. I walked the usual route but this time I think I saw farmers and their child, and plenty of people on bikes. It would be interesting to see how important a role physical exercise played in Switzerland managing to flatten the curve for now. With so much sunshine and exercise you’d expect the Swiss to be primed for coping with such a virus.


@richardazia

##cats ##catnap ##lazy ##afternoon

? Summer Days – Martin Garrix / Macklemore / Patrick Stump

The Wastefulness of Mobile First Design

The Wastefulness of Mobile First Design

Byrichard

For a few years now I have noticed a worrying trend, one that sees content become so sparse on a web page that you see one tweet or facebook post per screen height. 


Before mobile first design, and the proliferation of React websites you would find pages that had twenty to thirty tweets per page. The same is true of Facebook. Now it’s barely one post per screen height. This means that you see one tweet, facebook post, instagram image and more. 


I really dislike this trend because Twitter, Facebook and other content heavy websites show one bit of information at a time. You’re forced to look at content individually, before moving on to the next, and the next. We might be in a single page app world, but it’s also a single piece of content. I miss the old way of displaying content, where you could see ten to twenty articles, and choose the one that you find most interesting. 


YouTube now shows 6 videos per screen height, compared to 20-30 videos at a time before. This means that if you’re browsing you’re doing so more slowly. 


It seems paradoxical that a time when we worry about the energy spent on light or dark screens, we are wasting an enormous amount of power, relatively, to display just one tweet, one post, 6 videos at a time. We are wasting time and energy by designing for mobile phones, without considering that people are browsing on desktops. 


It does get worse. Mobile phone screens are huge now, so when you design for mobile first you’re designing to display one tweet on an a 5.5 inch screen. We see less, in 2023 than we did in 2007. We’re wasting space.


Of course there is a clear reason for being so wasteful. It means that people see one advert or influencer post at a time. We’re guaranteed to be forced to see individual pieces of content. 


We need to correct this error. We need to provide more content per page, once more. I’m using Day One to type this blog post and this use of screen space is better. We need to design websites so that we see ten more more articles once again. I’m typing this blog post in Day One and I see 30 or more lines of text.


We should see 15-20 tweets and posts per page. Even 8 would be an improvement. A post or tweet should only take up the entire screen when we select it. 


And Finally


If people’s attention is measured by how little information you show on a single screen height then Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are awful. Their users are as distracted as kittens on a hike, discovering life outside of an apartment for the first time. We need to stop being so wasteful with website and content design. We need to return to using space more effectively.  What is the point of having a screen in dark mode if we display one tweet per screen, before we need to scroll? 

Playing Wordle

Playing Wordle

Byrichard

I saw the little boxes, and then I saw that the New York Times had an article on the distraction so I read about it. It’s a game some people were playing via whatsapp during the lockdown, spread to friends, and then it spread wider and wider. Boiled down Wordle is hangman for people who no longer feel comfortable with capital punishment even in game form.


I read an article seasons, or even years ago about how schools were having to rethink the game of hangman because it no longer reflected the sensibilities of people of the current age. Wordle is a good solution.


At the same time I think that Wordle is an interesting way of practicing thinking of words by yourself, before playing scrabble with others. The faster you can find the word in Wordle, the better prepared you will be for playing wordle.


I anticipate that Wordle could become addictive for three reasons. The first is that you have one problem to resolve per 24 hours, and you only have five tries before you need to wait for another problem. I find it unpleasant, but in such a small dose, that I could go back daily, until I am addicted, like so many are.


There are more interesting challenges. Crosswords are one. At least with crosswords you are entertained for an hour or two, until you get better. If you learn a new language you could be entertained for 770 days in a row before finally finding the need to try something different. Finally, I think that learning to code, or reading books may be more enjoyable.


On the topic of coding, I would like to write an app, where if I give letters and their positions in a word, that it comes up with suggestions. I don’t want to cheat at scrabble or Wordle. I think it could be a way of designing crosswords, for example. The game is to find which word it is, by the letters that it has, and by their position. My aim would be to use that thought process, for a different context.


And Finally


I can see how Wordle would be a good game for children, writers, and people with five minutes spare. It is a quick and possibly entertaining word to expand one’s vocabulary and think laterally.

My thoughts on the Iphone 3g

Byrichard

Today I played with the Iphone 3g and was left indifferent. That’s because aside from having the same design as both the ipod touch and the 1st generation iphones it doesn’t offer anything innovative. What really interests me is the idea of more data.

Last month i did quite a bit of data streaming. 100 megabytes inclusive of my current setup. I also used quite a bit of extra data. With the Iphone 3g Plan I’d get 1 gigabyte of data per month, ten times more at relatively little extra.

When I can get the Natel Liberty Grande paired with the Nokia N95 then I’ll be happy. Until then I’ll feel that they could do better.

The Age Old Hatred of Pedestrians

The Age Old Hatred of Pedestrians

Byrichard

Last night I was reading from a book, rather than from a kindle or audible book. As a result I had to keep the bedside light on. I also had to ensure that the light light the pages of the book. I was reading from the book “Beneath My Feet, Writers on Walking” introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull and I came across an exert written by Karl Philips Moritz. He wrote Journeys of a German in England in 1782.

In this book he writes about walking in England and about how people were puzzled that someone would want to walk from London to Richmond and back. People couldn’t fathom that someone would want to walk such a distance on foot.

Pleasant English Miles

At one point he says “Walking four miles in England feels like walking one mile in Germany”, to paraphrase. He enjoyed walking in England. He speaks of stopping by the side of the road, finding the shade of some bushes and reading. Apparently people on the road were puzzled that someone would stop by the side and read.

What is so striking about this writing is that it is from 241 years ago, before cars, before the steam age, and before the forms of transport we are familiar with today.

Several centuries later another eccentric would go for long walks, Grandma Gatewood. People were puzzled that someone her age would walk the Appalachian Trail alone, more than once.

Confused

According to Google Bard walking was normal in 1782, as was horse back riding, horse drawn carriages and sailing ships. Given the context it’s interesting that so early, before steam and trains people would have seen walking from Point A to Point B as strange.

The idea we have that the car encouraged people to stop walking is erroneous, in that people did not walk from A to B long before then. The idea that the carriage was an ordinary form of transport to get from A to B, rather than walking is interesting. Was the writer trying to save money, for his travels, or did he simply enjoy the act of walking?

And Finally

I found copies of the book in electronic format so I will take the time to read a copy, to understand more about the reasons for this long walk.

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