The Crosscall Odyssey Plus fills two niches. It is a rugged weather proof phone rated to the IP 68 standard and is equipped with dual sim capability. This makes it ideal for the sports I enjoy, mainly via ferrata as pictured below and hiking. It comes with a smaller carabiner than the one pictured below. I swapped it for one of my own.
IP 68Â is a code to determine how resistant a device is to both particulate matter and liquids. 6 denotes that the device is dust tight so particulate matter will not make it’s way in. 8 as defined by the manufacturer denotes that this device can be submerged for half an hour at 1m before damage occurs. If you get caught in the rain or have to cross a river the phone should survive.
Another interesting feature is the dual sim capability. This phone allows for two microsims to be used at once. In my case I have a Swiss sim card and a french one. Both sims are constantly active so you can select whether to make phone calls from Sim 1 or Sim 2. You can also select which sim card is using the data plan.
It runs android 4.3 and works fine with the TomTom app, the ingress and others. I found that battery life is also comfortable. With me as a user the battery lasts for a day.
Social networking websites should never be down because their success comes from three factors; ease of use, accessibility, and reliability. With a good layout and good interaction, the website attracts the novice as well as the weather-beaten web surfer that’s seen it all. Accessibility is about it being easy to use on all browsers, whether mobile phones, laptops, or desktops. The third one is the key.
One of the reasons I’ve moved away from Hotmail and yahoo is that they became slow and clogged up in spam. What this meant is you’d waste a huge amount of time waiting for pages to load and even more time deleting all the junk. That’s why I moved. Myspace is another case in point. Whilst it’s an interesting website there are several flaws such as page load time, too much freedom in layout, and more.
Facebook is currently the flagship of the social networking community worldwide because it’s simple, fast loading, and reliable. Today that has not been the case and I hope that they are not going to take too long with their upgrades. It was working fine therefore taking the website offline with no visible change in layout is just inconvenient and will see me looking for another solution… in fact, I have one. My website. This has been a constant since 1997 and has seen me through my IB, my HND, my BA, and now career building.
We’re living in a different age. Anyone can follow me on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, and one or two other websites but my flagship is my part of main-vision.com because this is where I have full control of the website. Facebook has become a very useful tool thanks to the number of people joining the website but recently they’re going through a bad period. I’m not talking about a bad period where they’re struggling to keep users or make money but rather bad in that it’s a hormonal teenager trying everything at once before gaining the stability of a mature website like Flickr after it was bought by yahoo or last.fm after CBS purchased it.
Whenever a website goes down I wonder about my future use of websites. One of the greatest things about RSS feeds is I can operate facebook remotely due to all the apps they’ve added. I add a few RSS feeds, take a few website API and it gives the impression that I’m on Facebook more than I really am.
The worst thing about social networking websites is that when they start offering a crap service you have no choice but to keep using them in order to keep in touch with what friends are doing. Last night for example I went to an event which was advertised both on Facebook and on myspace. There were not that many people but it was a practical way to keep in touch. That’s why I went to a silent disco, a silent rave, and know what others are telling us they’re doing.
I hope that this is nothing more than Facebook sneezing and that the quality of service we have grown to expect from the website resumes once more.
Yesterday when I tried to migrate nextcloud between two locations I used one that I installed from scratch and when I got to another network I was unable to use it. In the evening when I got home I re-installed Nextcloud but this time I used the NextcloudPi package, rather than installing it myself. I tested sudo raspi-config and went to change the SSID. When I saw that I could do this I decided that it was safe for another experiment this morning.
Sudo Raspi Config
Although it sounds like nothing having “sudo raspi-config” available is key to making a Pi install flexible enough to “travel” with. If you can play with the config from this interface all you need is a keyboard and a monitor and you can do what you need, with ease.
The second part of the experiment, although only glimpsed at, just now, was to connect to the Pi remotely. It worked with ease. If you setup a Pi for yourself, or for someone else, that is in a remote location remote access is key. It means that you can take care of system updates, upgrades and more, without needing to go to a location in person. Remote access isn’t just limited to administrative tasks.
Remote Backup
With a Nextcloud, Immich or Photoprism device you want to be able to access it remotely to update data from site A to site B, but also from a mobile phone while you’re at a café, or walking. If you can backup your photos while you’re driving back from a day’s hiking or cycling then you can afford for your phone to be lost, or smashed to pieces. If you’re climbing then that isn’t so far fetched. Having written this, don’t litter.
And Finally
If you setup a Raspberry Pi with Nextcloud, Immich or Photoprism you can get the same functionality as you get from iCloud or Google Photos, but also as from a NAS from Synology, for a fraction of the price. You also gain the freedom to migrate Data from the cheapest cloud solution to the next on a whim, if you already have a local backup of your data. For years mine was trapped in the cloud and I only just released it from there and now I have more freedom to choose cloud services.
I quite like Garmin devices. I like that my Garmin Instinct Solar can run forever in summer, and less time in winter. I like that the Garmin Etrex SE can last for days or even weeks with my type of use. I also love the idea of the Garmin Etrex Solar. They make the claim that you “Get unlimited battery life when used in sunny 75,000 lux conditions or up to 200 hours with no solar charging.”
This means that if you get the bike mount for summer bike rides you don’t have to worry about battery life. It also means that you can go for your daily walk, run or bike ride, without ever worrying about charging. Of course you need to keep it facing the sun, so that it charges.
The great thing about the Garmin Etrex family, especially the SE and the Etrex Solar is that they have battery charges that last for days or even weeks, when running off of batteries, and with the Etrex SE you can swap batteries and within seconds be on your way again.
One drawback of the Etrex GPS is that it’s fine for tracking the route, when you know where you’re going, but not if you need to navigate with it. The map is “cities only” which means you don’t see rivers, contour lines or anything else. For that you need the Explore app on your phone but phones can be unreliable due to battery life. A map and compass are a low tech alternative.
The last option is to find a GPS track of the route you want to walk and download it to the device. This can be fiddly, even for someone as geeky as me.
The Garmin Etrex Solar is 279 CHF whereas the Garmin Etrex SE is 179 CHF. If you get four rechargeable AA batteries then you can keep two in the device at all times, and two spare, ready to replace the first pair. The cost of rechargeable AA batteries is still less than the Etrex Solar price difference. I am not clear on whether you can replace the Etrex Solar batteries.
As I was looking through the applications I found an application that helps to map your friends according to the geolocation details they added to their profile. As your social network is more global so you will find that your friends are more spread around the world. As you’ll see for me there’s a lot of clustering around London where most of the people I know on Facebook are living.
There is a nice spread in other parts of the world. Some of them are in Australia, various parts of Asia, Africa, and the US. As you zoom in you can see a nice amount of detail as to where they live. With high-resolution satellite images you can see the street they live on. They can see the street where I live as well.
This is one of the Facebook applications which I feel is not there to fill your profile with junk but rather to provide an interesting insight as to the global spread of friends you’ve met over the years.
Twitter is one of those things that’s really hard to explain due to it’s sheer simplicity. It’s a website that allows you to answer the “what are you doing question”. That is the initial phase. When you’re new to twitter you’ll be confused because you know no one therefore the codes and conventions are blurred. You may tweet once or twice a day and that’s enough. Over time you will look at what other people are doing and that’s when you move to phase two of twitter use.
When I first started using twitter I had no idea how to use it. i thought that it was a storm of 140 character postings that are completely unrelated. Some refer to it as microblogging but it’s not a blog. instead it’s a great tool for entrepreneur for two key reasons. The first is brevity. Anything you say must be summarised to 140 characters. As a result you’re efficient. The second factor is the interaction between twitter users.
If you take a look at my profile and my twitter block then you’ll see the ten most recent tweets in my public feed and what everyone within my circle are talking about. As a result of this you’re entering a communal environment. Out of those I’m following on twitter I know from ten to twenty of them, occasionaly meeting a few of them two or more times. As a result I know what they’re doing and they know what I’m doing as well.
Each one of us is in charge of a number of projects we find of interest. I’m a recent graduate therefore I tweet about one set of things. Loudmouthman and Documentally both tweet about other things that are related to their activities. Links help to get all of this information and work distributed to the right people. Most of those on twitter have at least one website and quite a few profiles on a variety of other websites. We’re embracing what’s called web 2.0 by many people.
It seems to be the tool of choice for entrepreneur to keep up to date with what everyone else is doing at the time. Just take a look and you’ll see this for yourself.
Twitter is a great tool for it’s brevity and it brings together a great number of content creators who are having a conversation across borders and timezones. It’s boundless in that it can be viewed from the mobile phone to the Itouch to the computer. It’s versatile and quick and I’m going to continue using it for many months to come.
Two days in a row I have poured water on my head. The reason for this is that yesterday we were in 35°c heat and today we were in 33°c heat. When you’re walking for two or three hours at the solar Maximum the best cooling strategy is to pour water on your head, as I did. It’s a quick way of cooling. It’s not that the water was cool. The water is warm, heated by direct sunlight for the last half hour, or even hour.
I Feel Okay
I set off with 1.6 litres of water and drank every few minutes. I have a 600ml camelbak eddy+ in my hand and a 1l Sigg water bottle in my bag. I drink from the camelbak because I can walk at full speed, and sip. With the Sigg bottle I need to stop.
Refill from the Sigg Bottle
When I get low on water in the Camelbak I refill it from the Sigg Water bottle. It takes a few seconds and then I can continue walking. As I refilled the water bottle the first time I had a tractor heading straight for me so I went into the corn crop. The driver was looking at his phone. At least by being in mature corn he would sub-consciously know to avoid the corn. I was fine.
Replenishing on Electrolytes
For a long time I haven’t had electrolyte drinks because I felt no need. Now that we’re in a heat wave I am taking the time to remineralise, after the walks. I get so warm during the walk that I’m constantly “glowing” or “glistening”. My body is constantly covered in evaporating water and I am cooling down.
The Soaked Hat
During the last two walks I have felt that the sun was getting a little too strong so I soaked my hat twice today, once yesterday, and I soaked my entire self two days ago. Although I feel in control I know that these walking conditions are dangerous. That’s why I have 1.6 litres of water, and why I routed myself so that the fountain was near the end of the walk rather than the beginning. I can also catch buses home on two different bus lines if I suddenly feel overwhelmed and unable to continue
Why I Walk At The Hottest Time Of The Day
One of the reasons I love walking after 1300 is that no one else does. Most people lock themselves indoors and sleep, nap or do other things. I like to walk when it’s too hot for normal people to walk. It’s nice to have the landscape to myself.
During my walk I saw clouds of dust two or three times. They are created by tractors preparing the soil to plant the next crops. In one case I saw the dust rise high into the air and considered how strong the thermals must be at the moment, for the column to be so well pronounced.
And Finally
I have been for two walks and a bike ride. I came home feeling fine. I didn’t feel too thirsty, or too faint, or coughing. I am pushing myself by being in the sun at the hottest time of day but this year has been more gentle than others. I also carry more than enough water, and know where fountains that work are. If I saw a negative effect then I would stop exposing myself to these weather conditions.
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