Looking at the rock face near the Lac de Joux

The Long Walk and More Playing with Nextcloud

Byrichard
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Two days ago I went for a longer walk than usual. I walked along roads rather than along the narrow agricultural roads I normally use. I wanted to avoid crowds and dog walkers. The thing about solitude is that it’s enjoyable when you are not reminded that you are alone.

Today I will also have to try to avoid people. Some might be really happy for good weather, but not me. Good weather means that the reminder that others are not lonely is brought home. I go on walks to listen to podcasts and get some exercise. That little walk I went up was so good for my health that I had 18 PAI as a result of that single walk.

On a walk like I did two days ago I combine two, three or even four walks together. These are the walks that I started to walk years ago, after my scooter was hit by a careless driver. She hit the back of my scooter so hard that we slid for several meters. I stayed upright but the scooter needed to be fixed. It was. It took time.

Several times I walked to the scooter place to ask “Is it ready yet?” and several times I got a “nope” answer. In the end that walk that I did to check on the scooter became my ordinary walk. It became one of the circuit walks that I would walk daily for several years. I still like the walks. If people walked with smaller dogs, and kept them on leashes, I’d be happier. I would also be happier if people didn’t drive on farm roads as if they were normal roads, because on foot this is dreadful, especially when people drive too fast, too close, several times a day.

More Experimenting with Nextcloud

This morning I experimented with Nextcloud. I experimented with uploading photos from google takeout zips to Nextcloud using both an Ubuntu machine and a mac. The experiment was a partial success. I found that uploading individual pictures from individual folders is clumsy via Linux. I then tried via MacOS and that was also clumsy. Nextcloud can be used for photo management but that is not what it is really designed for.

There are a few features missing. One of these is the ability to select more than one image at a time. I’d like to select a range of images with ease, rather than have to select sixty video files one by one, before moving them.

I also experimented with moving images from one folder to another and that’s chaotic as well, via the command line. The issue is that Nextcloud detects the images, and indexes them, but if you remove those images it then keeps them in the database. I’d like to be able to refresh the database after making such a move.

Mount a Prepared Drive

Imagine that you have a photo archive that is already well organised. Imagine that everything is organised by year, month, date, and subject. With this tutorial you can learn how to mount your external drive. Nextcloud then sees the images and their folder structure and populates either Memories, or Photos, depending on which interface you prefer.

And Finally

After some trial and error I got Nextcloud to work as I expected it to so I can use it to backup photos from my phone automatically. In this regard it’s a great iPhoto and Google Photos replacement. I think I would have Photoprism and Nextcloud running in tandem. I would have Nextcloud taking care of backing images up, from the phone, and photoprism to work as a DAM/MSM solution.

I will experiment and comment, when I have an opinion.

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Caution: Bees

Caution: Bees

Byrichard

Caution Bees


I could have been closer to take a picture but I don’t want to run the risk of taunting Melissa, the bee, from Greek Mythology. I don’t like walking this close to hives.


You see plenty of little flecks flying around and you know that’s you’re going to cross their flight path. None of them showed an interest in me luckily. I don’t remember seeing them there before.

Walking Into Heavy Rain
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Walking Into Heavy Rain

Byrichard

Sometimes you end up walking into heavy rain. That’s what I did today. I looked at the weather and because it was meant to get better over the coming days I assumed that this evening it would get better. Instead, as I walked it started to rain a little more, and then a little harder, and eventually quite a bit harder. Did I get wet beyond the top layer? Nope, but my beanie got a little wet, as did my fleece. My shoes on the other hand were clean, thanks to the flow of water.


I was lucky today, because if I had set off a little later then I would have been soaked by the time I got home. I skirted the rain by an amusing amount. I could have been drenched if I had set off later. I timed my walk to avoid the sunset, so that would have helped me avoid the rain anyway. I don’t want to walk at night.


Today I walked over 18,000 steps, according to the Casio, 8800 in the morning, and another ten thousand in the evening. In the evening, as the rain started, I decided to run for one kilometre. I tracked it with the Garmin instinct and the Casio. There was no reason to track with both, except that I was curious to see the result. If you want running time step count and distance then the Casio GBD-200 is fine. If you want cadence, heart rate zones, and other data then keep with the Garmin Instinct. To boot, with the Garmin instinct you get to check the weather first, and you might not be caught out, as I was.


And Finally


I was surprised that the Casio GBD-200 doesn’t allow you to select which sport you’re doing. If you track cycling then you will screw up the data, and if you track walking you will use the watch for many more hours per week than it is planned for. I am not often confused about how I feel about a device. I wish the casio would do more, but at the same time I bought it because it does less. I’m all the more confused because according to the Apple Fitness app I stood, moved and exercised enough and now I don’t know what the source for the data was. I need to keep experimenting.

Cloud Storage Tiers

Cloud Storage Tiers

Byrichard

On the 17th of February I will stop using Google One Drive and I was looking at the smaller tiers. You have 15 gigabytes for free, 100, and 200 gigabyte options, and then 200 gigabytes. At the moment I have 200 GB on Google Drive for documents and three hundred GB for photos. All of those photos are now backed up with Immich, PhotoPrism, and possibly one or two other storage solutions.

The Chasm From 200 GB to 2 TB

The issue that I, and others, come accross is that there is a massive leap from storing 100GB, 200GB or 2TB. There are no 500, 750 or 1TB tiers. You go from three francs per month to 10 CHF per month. I’ve had Google One with 2TB of space and used no more than 800 GB except for a day or two when I backed up my photos to Google Drive while migrating them off Google Photos.

Infomaniak is Cheaper, Microsoft 365 Offers A Better Tier

It turns out that Infomaniak’s Kdrive and Microsoft 365 Personal are two of the best options available. They’re priced with a 2 CHF difference. 67 CHF and 69 CHF per year. One offers Office Suite, as well as one terabyte of storage to use as you like, and the other offers two terabytes to use as you see fit. Both make it easy to backup photos from your phone to the cloud, and from the cloud to your laptop or external hard drive.

Self Hosted Replacements

As I mentioned above Google Photos has been duplicated via PhotoPrism, Immich and to some degree kDrive so I can delete those photos without concern, in theory. Google Drive is backed up to Kdrive so in theory I can delete that dat from Google Drive safely.

No Perfect Tier

My reason for moving away from Google is not based on conspiracy theories, or a moral problem with Google. It’s based on financial considerations. if they had a 500 GB or one terabyte tier then I would just downgrade my account for that tier size. This option does not exist so rather than downscale I might just jump ship.

Crowded Environment

The online backup market is huge. You have the choice between self-hosted solutions and cloud hosting solutions. Their pricing is quite similar but the question is whether you want your data to be in Europe, the US, or your own home, or the home of a friend or family member.

  • Google One – Google/Alphabet
  • iCloud – Apple
  • kDrive – Infomaniak
  • myCloud – Swisscom
  • OwnCloud
  • flickr – hosted
  • nextCloud – self hosted or hosted
  • PhotoPrism – self hosted or hosted
  • Immich – self hosted or hosted
  • Mylio – self-hosted or cloud hosted, although once you pay to backup to an exteran drive you have both

And Finally

I was happy to use Google One, Google Drive and Google Photos for years. The reason for which I decided to leave their service is that I saw the same experience, but for cheaper from Infomaniak. It has the added benefit that the data is stored closer to where I am. It’s nice to support local providers when the option exists.

Now that I have a local backup of my photographs, rather than depending on cloud services I can shop around and switch from the current cheapest to the next most affordable. I only need to check once per year, when the current contract is about to be renewed.

A Distinct Change In Pandemic Attitude – Pandemic Travel

A Distinct Change In Pandemic Attitude – Pandemic Travel

Byrichard

I am against travel during a pandemic. I am against venturing further than a two hour walk. To be more accurate I was against these things until the vaccines. My attitude since then has changed because of the indifference and incompetence governments have shown. Instead of having a primary and a backup safety measure they have gone for a primary, with no backup solution.


Switzerland and other nations behaved as if vaccinations, by themselves, without masks, without social distancing, without any other mitigating measures, were enough. Now we’re in the fifth wave and all age groups are vulnerable, from young children to older people. The entire social column is at risk at the moment.


Someone used the refrain “but some people can’t self isolate, they have a family, they have children, they have work, and other excuses. We are in a pandemic. People should be giving reasons for why they want to be safe, rather than make excuses for doing something that is unsafe, from meeting friends for fun, in a bar, without masks, to sitting on a train and eating crisps, to going for a walk without observing the recommended safety distance.


Two or so decades ago people spoke of six degrees of separation and networks. They spoke of 1st, 2nd and third degree connections. A pandemic benefits from people with plenty of social connections. If we are all walking alone then the virus would have to be exceptional to leap from one individual to another. In contrast, if people take trains, sit in cafés etc then the virus will have an easy time to jump from person A to group B and from group B to C, E and it will escalate.


Now that winter is back, and that people socialise indoors the virus is converging from group to group with ease. People are so busy making excuses as to why this group of people have no choice, that group has choice, and this profession has no choice, that the safety measures that were in place have disintegrated. In the process of excusing each other for not respecting masks, social distance, and waning vaccine effectiveness barriers are no longer in place. That’s why we have rapid increases in the number of cases.


Defeatism is making the pandemic flare up at moments, and is preventing it from being eradicated. Without defeatism the pandemic could have been over last August.


The reason I have changed my mind about travel during a pandemic, is that at the current rate it will take years for the pandemic to end. If people are actively trying to stop the spread of the virus, if they are holding each other accountable, then it makes sense to forego certain freedoms. In the current situation the opposite is true. Passionate self-isolation, masking and vaccination boosters make sense, but staying within two hours of home doesn’t.


I am not speaking of going to bars, meeting big groups, or taking over absurd risks, I am speaking about walking in open spaces that are slightly different, of seeing another landscape, and of going to a zone with a lower risk of contamination.


Imagine if Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett created a character named Pandemic, or Covid-19. We will see if a surrealist creates such a character.

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