At the moment I study seven days a week without fail. Today I was learning about “Coding Your Own Wordpress Custom Post Types”. I think this will be interesting because you can create a new section to a website, or if not a section then at least a collection of assets. In the course they speak about businesses, events or other things. If this is what I think it is, then I will be happy to learn it.
This website has a Roman, Geography, Environmental Studies and other sections. If I could create custom post types for each then the entire website would be contained within WordPress and modifiable centrally. I did not want to do such a thing for a long time, but I think that the learning experience is worth the time investment.
I am happy it rained. I went for a walk and there was some rain but so light that it didn’t soak me.
For a few weeks you see piles of sugar beet at one end, or another of fields. They stay that way for a while, until it rains for some reason. When it rains those piles of beet are loaded into hundreds of tractor trailer loads and transported to the train yard. The closest to Nyon is in Eysins.
A tractor lifting a trailer to unload sugar beet into a machine to load train wagons.
During this time you see two things. Tractors going back and forth from the fields to the loading yard all day long filled with sugar beet and muddy roads. I don’t know whether they wait for the rain to clean the sugar beets before moving them, or if the wagons just happen to be free when the rain falls. In either case the roads around this train stop are covered in mud. It’s dangerous for scooters and bikes at this time of year.
Sometimes you see six to eight tractors with their loads parked with a sheet of paper with “25m3” or some other reading. Apparently the farmers drive their tractors to be unloaded and seem to leave them there either because it’s lunchtime, or because they are waiting for the train or loaders to get more wagons ready.
It would be interesting to pick up one or two sugar beets that fell by the side of the road during transport and try to process the beets to make sugar.
I walk almost every day, and by walking I see the seasonal changes in fields, and the different stages of different plants. We can all get in cars, drive for an hour, and walk for an hour but I prefer to walk locally, to see local seasonal changes, and to avoid spending money on petrol. I also like to reduce my carbon footprint, by driving less.
I hate pandemic weekends because out of pandemic I would be free to do a lot. In pandemic I am not free to do those things.
I will write longer posts when i regain my healthy solitude.
Recently I have started forgetting my phone at home when I go out. I use it to take pictures and for the fitness apps but but not much more now that Twitter is gone and Mastodon and other alternatives are unpleasant.
Pandemics are not fun when you’re surrounded by people living with the delusion that the pandemic is over. We have lived with that delusion for two years.
The Microlino is made by the same people that made the trottinette that I loved getting around with when I was unable to drive for a month due to overtaking a slow moving vehicle where I had plenty of visibility.
The beauty of the Microlino is that it’s a small light weight car, where you get in from the front of the car, rather than the sides. The other nice thing about the Microlino is that it has a roof that opens. You can stargaze with your lover, if you have one, or enjoy the fresh air in the warmer months.
The two things I noticed immediately is that the steering feels heavy, but also that the brakes feel sluggish. In the case of the steering weight you forget about it within seconds. This is very easy to get used to. What does get some getting used to is the braking. It feels slower and more sluggish than with other cars so I felt the need to start braking sooner. I did find that I always stopped where I wanted to. I think this is the effect of driving modern cars where braking is really aggressive. This car is gentle. I could think of a better term, I’m sure.
The boot is large enough for your week’s shopping, but too small for a bike. the volume is good, so you can transport things for hikes that are within driving range of the car.
Getting in and out of the car is fun. It is also fun that you have to move the “love seat” as I’ll call it, forwards and backwards, to suit your arm and leg lenghths, to drive, and press the pedals comfortably.
I call it a love seat because it’s a bench and there is nothing to separate the driver from the passenger, hence why it could be called a love seat. It’s a car that encourages a more intimate driving experience than most. At the start of a day of hiking this would be nice, but at the end of a day of hiking this might be sub-optimal.
I personally really like this, car, especially now, in the pandemic era. Now that I don’t drive long distances to do various sports I don’t need a petrol car with a long range. I need something to get me to the recycling centre, and to go shopping. The adventure side of life was killed when people decided to live with COVID, rather than eradicate it.
I like this car because it’s unique, because it’s eccentric, and because it has character. Most cars are dull and boring. This one attracts people’s gaze, without being a friend of carbon dioxide and global warming. It’s electric, so you never have to go to a petrol station again.
Facebook would like us, in Europe, to start paying to use Facebook, Instagram and Threads, eventually. I will never pay for any of these services because they do not provide us with anything of value. The day we begin to pay for Facebook and Instagram we will be paying to be spammed by influencer content whilst not seeing content by friends, family and colleagues. In light of this we’re paying to see more adverts. We’re paying to have our time wasted.
Influencer Spam Rather than Posts by Friends
At the same time as Facebook wants us to pay for their mediocre sites there is another option. For 6CHF per month or so we can setup a mastodon instance, or a Pixelfed instance, and we can microblog, or share images, or both, for 12 CHF per month. Facebook wants us to pay 14 Euros per month to be spammed. I will not pay Facebook anything. They experimented with making us miserable, without saying sorry. They did nothing to stop the genocide that was being orchestrated from their social media platforms. They turned Instagram from a photo sharing app between friends to a spam network for influencers. Why would I thank them, by paying for services that they made worthless?
Interesting Alternatives
Flickr is still alive, and people are still active on the site. People are still sharing hundreds of pictures per day, in some cases. Others are sharing occasional images. For 156 CHF per year for Instagram you could get Flickr, and share with people passionate about photography, rather than utilitarian influencers.
For around 6.47 CHF per month you can get a mastodon instance that can be shared by five users. For around the same price you can also get a Pixelfed instance but I think Flickr is more interesting, because it’s a legacy community with 20 years of conviviality. I also think that Pixelfed might be pleasant to install on most instances, unlike Mastodon which I have tried, and so far failed to implement on a personal web server that I control fully.
And Finally
Since 2007 I said “think of ROI for users, not advertisers” and Facebook is finally realising that they should have, but too late. I would have paid for Facebook and Instagram when they had healthy communities of friends that I met on a daily basis. Now that it’s a dormant network of friends, populated by influencer spam, I have no desire to pay for their services. I was on Facebook and Instagram for the IRL community I knew. Now that it’s a network of strangers it would be irrational for me to pay 13 Euros for a primary account and 6 euros per supplementary account. For 20 Euros a month you can get something much more interesting.
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