View of the Léman and Alps

The Daily Walk When People are Back

Byrichard
Reading Time: 2 minutes

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.

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Sliding Between MacOS, Windows and Linux Daily

Sliding Between MacOS, Windows and Linux Daily

Byrichard

Recently I have been sliding between Windows, Linux distributions and MacOS throughout the day. I use a mac for blogging, and Linux to experiment and learn new skills, and windows to watch Netflix and YouTube. I might be over-simplifying but that’s the simplified version.

Pi and Linux

I find that I have come to be at ease in all three environments, especially since playing around with Raspberry Pi devices. “Why?”, you may ask. Because with a Pi you can try dedicated images for Nextcloud, for PhotoPrism, for Immich and more. You can also try them for Ph-Hole and others. The advantage is also that you use microSD cards. This means that you slot in card A and try A1, then you slot B and try B1 and finally you try C with C1. In the end you’re trying instances with what could be thirty seconds with your Pi being a PhotoPrism server, before it becomes a NextCloud server, and so on. With enough SD cards if you mess up you can revert to something that you enjoyed using with a minute or two.

MacOS

I am using the Mac for blogging for one key reason. The git history for this blog has become too big for a sync in a single go and I need to learn how to sync just the last 10 changes, rather than the entire history, but that requires RTFM. I haven’t taken that time yet. It’s not laziness. It’s about having more interesting projects to work on before reaching this one.

Windows

I use the windows machine for media viewing habits because it’s plugged in to external screens and a monitor whereas the other two aren’t. I practiced using Chocolatey and PowerShell, as well as other windows related experiments. I also use it for flashing linux SD cards. It’s good at that because it has an SD card reader built in so I don’t need a dongle.

And Finally

In the 80s, as a child I played with the CLI, and norton commander, and DOS, and Windows 3.1. I installed games and chose sound cards and more. I used to see displays that recently I have seen quite regularly. It’s interesting that the CLI interface to NextCloud reminds me of when I was playing with computers as a child in the 80s. For decades I left the CLI behind, but now I’m back. I use it daily at the moment.

When I first started playing with Linux in the 90s I had to download the ROM, burn a CD or a DVD, and then attempt to install the OS on a computer. I would often succeed, and sometimes fail. Now, you don’t need to burn a DVD. You just flash a microSD card and you’re ready to go. You don’t even need to prepare a USB key, and wait for an install on a desktop. Experimentation is faster now.

The next step is to install Nextcloud, HomeAssistant, Pi-hole and PhotoPrism to play nicely on a single device.

Trail Glove 7 After 440 Kilometres

Trail Glove 7 After 440 Kilometres

Byrichard

Since the 7th of May 2023 I have been wearing Trail Glove 7 Shoes for most of my walks. During this time I have walked in towns, villages, fields, the mountains and more. They have felt comfortable for almost all of this walking. As I am not familiar with this type of shoe I have been keeping an eye on the wearing out of the shoes.

Heels and Blisters

Usually with most normal shoes I wear out the rear part of the shoe, to the point that the soft material that pads the back of the heel is worn away to expose bare plastic, which then wears against the back of my feet, and leaves blisters. My solution, to extend the life of those shoes was to protect the rear of my foot from rubbing. This isn’t an ideal solution. That’s what encouraged me to try barefoot shoes.

Toe Box Spacing

For some reason as I wore new iterations of shoes that I previously really liked I found that the sides of my feet would sometimes rub against the side and adapt a way to protect themselves. I didn’t like the idea that normal shoes were damaging my feet. Designs that had been fantastic in the past, became uncomfortable to wear due to either poor design, or bad materials.

The Trail Glove 7

These are very comfortable shoes for the first 400 kilometres. They provide just the right amount of heel padding for the heels. After 400 km I believe that the sole of the heel is worn just enough for heel strikes to be felt in the bone, after a walk.

Over the last two days I have walked in rainy, wet conditions. Due to how worn out the soles of the shoes are I felt the shoe slide from under me. I expected that this problem would occur. The tread wears out within 120 kilometres depending on walking style and surfaces. After that you’re happy to have warm, dry weather, Slipping is less of a risk in such conditions.

The rest of the shoes look fine. There are no holes on the top of the shoes, no fraying or any other signs of wear.

Mud Grabbing

As I wrote before the tread of the shoes wears down quite fast, where our feet apply the most force to the ground, but remains intact everywhere else. The result is that if you walk in muddy conditions, as I did yesterday, the tread traps mud and you’re stuck having to clear out the mud with a skewer or tooth pick, rather than a brush. Brushing doesn’t work.

And Finally

Although I think the support from the heel of the left shoe is gone I will continue to wear them until they get a hole. I wore a pair of hiking shoes until the foot support was worn smooth inside the shoe, and the soles were also worn out. I have worn other shoes until the toes of the soles of the shoes were punctured. I plan to do the same with these shoes, to determine their endurance. At the very least I want to get them to five hundred kilometres.

You know it’s time to replace shoes when you walk through a shallow puddle and your socks get wet, from the bottom of the shoe, rather than the sides.

Quechua MH900 Shoes

Byrichard

People who walk as much as me wear through shoes within a few months. The soles that were deep and ridged when new, become smooth as we walk, and wear away the soles. Usually I know that shoes are new, or that they need replacing the same way. They start to cause blisters, and I feel that stones are starting to be felt through the soles.


These shoes stand out from others because they are waterproof almost to the top of the shoe, so as long as lake waves are small you’re fine. I tried on the lake, but with a speed boat passing seconds before, I didn’t insist. I tested in the blue shower by the lake to see the result. They performed as expected.



Usually we would put shoes on, and walk once or twice, down the aisle, to see if they were comfortable, but this time I took a liberty, I walked around decathlon with two or three pairs of shoes, to see which ones I liked most. This is a worthwhile. If you forget you’re wearing the shoes you’re trying on, then that’s a good sign. That’s how I chose these over two other shoes I tried on.


According to the marketing content they are meant to be comfortable for walking 20 kilometres a day, 6hrs a day. I haven’t put them through that test, due to recent rainfall.


Testing waterproofing


It feels childish, to put a shoe in a basin of water like I did in the photo above. It confirms your expectations of how waterproof a shoe is. Now that I have confirmed my suspicions, I can walk through puddles, without fear of getting socks wet. With these shoes, the problem is rain seeping in through the trousers and socks, rather than through the fabric. They also have “gaiter” although I would call it a gaiter, to keep stuff out.


With time, we will see if I like them more than other shoes.

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Scotland’s Roman Wall – Tweet

Byrichard

When I started writing about the Roman civilisation in the summer of 1996 content was still new on the web. Wikipedia didn’t exist and we still relied on books and encyclopedias. We still had to visit ruins and more. Today the web has matured to such an extent that you can find tweets about the Roman civilisation every day. This means that history is not updated when books or newspaper articles come out. It is updated on a weekly, or even hourly basis. The beauty of tweets, as opposed to blog posts or articles, is that you can share snippets of information, as you get them.


https://twitter.com/RomanScotland/status/1491544826772344838

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Initial Thoughts on the Crosscall Core-S4

Byrichard

Not for FB or Twitter


Today I started to play with the Crosscall Core-S4 and my impressions of it so far is that the Facebook and Twitter apps are not optimal for this device. They do not consider that with a small screen you should prioritise text over images. For those reasons I think that FB and Twitter are a reason to avoid this phone. This might actually encourage you to buy this phone.


Good for E-mail, FM radio, Whatsapp etc.


The purpose of a phone is not necessarily to provide you with social media. Sometimes the aim of a phone is to check your e-mails, look for quick information, and communicate via whatsapp and other platforms. In this case the phone is fine. It also has an FM radio, which is nice, for when you want to listen to local, rather than international content.


Environmentally Friendly Packaging.


I like the packaging. It is brown cardboard with a simple diagram of phone phone, black print on brown cardboard. It is functional and environmentally sound. It emphasises that the box can and should be recycled. For some reason I can’t fix one box back into the other.


Dual Sim or Microsd and Sim


You can have either one sim and a microSD card (max 64Go) or you can have two sims running in parallel.


Repairable, by Screwing and Unscrewing


One of the unique selling points of this phone is the image that shows the component parts of this phone. It is adertised as repairable, with screws to loosen and tighten again, rather than glue and suction cups, like with iphones and other devices. It is meant to be durable and this is good for climbing, extreme conditions and more. You could fall in a river with this phone, or use it in the rain, without a decrease in usability.


When I read the manual it says that we cannot change the battery ourselves.


Long Standby


In theory the standby time on this phone is 240 hours, ten days. With many other phones the standby time is hours, especially with a user like me. This one is different. 240hrs of standby, 13-14hrs of talk time, and it has the old familiar keyboard that some of us spent our teens using. Typing on the keyboard is fast and easy. I found that the keys actually felt soft, rather than hard. It feels like phones used to feel.


Why This Phone Rather Than Others


In my experience you can buy expensive flagship phones and be dissapointed by a number of things. Either apps don’t run as well as they should, or they crash. Sometimes the phone is so slippery that you drop it once, get it fixed, drop it again, and get it fixed again, and eventually give up. New iphones and new Android phones are big and fragile, which means that they’re fragile. Fragile phones break and you need to replace front and back covers. If you don’t they may feel much farmer.


With cheap Android phones you may have problems with 3G or other antenna issues, you may get constant app crashes and you may get older versions of Android.


I was tempted by feature phones but they don’t have access to whatsapp and other essential communication tools of this day and age, so unless you call actual phones they are of no value. With KaiOS that problem is resolved. With devices starting at 80 CHF it is worth taking the risk.


Two Steps For It To Be A Viable Primary Phone


For this to be a viable primary phone it would need two things. The first of these is access to Signal. This is an app I use regularly, and if it had it then I could think about dropping the iphone. The second would be a better podcast app, and audible. With these three apps the phone would reduce my need for a second phone.


And Finally


If you want to develop for KaiOS you need knowledge of html, CSS and JavaScript. If you don’t find an app you want then you can write it yourself with a little bit of effort. This is great for those who feel like experimenting with a phone without developing for Android or iOS.

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