You go to Italy or France to see old buildings but you can see them in Switzerland. Some villages and towns do not destroy buildings with character and replace them with sugar cubes. Coppet is one example. Parts of it look old and of architectural interest.
Yesterday the drive was easy. 12-13 hours of easy driving with good road conditions. The exhaustion came from having neighbours that start making noise at 20:00 so the “early bed time” you planned is ruined. I woke at 0230 and by 0330 I was driving for 12hrs straight.
If I had been able to sleep as I had planned to I would have found the drive very easy.
Recently I have spent time focusing on JavaScript and EcmaScript to make sure that I understand it. By now it is over a year ago since I felt that I wanted to study Angular but felt that I didn’t have enough knowledge to resolve the challenges so I decided to return to basics. My return to basics involved a number of courses and books but it also led me to study this Linkedin Learning Pathway. It is easy to study, get a certiciate and move on, especially for extroverts or outgoing people who find interacting with people easy.
If I know people then I do find it easy. In other scenarios I struggle. I am working to ensure that if and when I say that I have certain skills, that I have those skills. I want to understand what I am doing and why.
A while ago I managed to get my instagram feed from Instagram JSON files to Wordpress via a number of steps and this felt good but I felt that I did not fully understand what I had done. Since then I have studied JSON, JS and other related technologies so I should be able to accomplish the same task more easily, and with fewer tools. I have to decide whether I want to import this data into wordpress or whether I want to run it outside of the CMS.
Such a project will encourage me to conceptualise and then realise my goal, without the skeleton of a course behind it to provide me with guidance. I want this to be a self driven project. It will indicate my progress. When I decide to take the plunge I should find the task easy.
I always find new things to learn, during this pandemic, and these new things keep me occupied and distracted from the eternal return that are these days.
For years now the noise in this village has been frustrating me. It is the noise of industrial cutting. The noise of an angle grinder on metal, of a circular saw on bricks, stone and wood. It is the constant wail of a circular saw cutting into something, every few seconds, or minutes, for hours at a time, for months at a time.
It is the reason for which, instead of opening windows I turn on a fan and swelter in summer. It is the reason for which I don’t open the window and close it at night. It is the reason for which I have gone from having windows open the entire time there is daylight, to keeping them closed.
Industrial Noise In Rural Settings
People idealise and romanticise the idea of repairing one’s own tractors, cars and more. People idealise doing one’s own carpentry, rather than calling professionals. I don’t.
I don’t idealise people who redo the decking for their swimming pool and other things because they’re using industrial machines in a village settings. This is not the noise of centuries gone by. This is not the sound of a manual saw cutting through wood. This is not the physical fitness training of cutting wood, and repairing a deck. This is industrial noise, in a private garden. Modern tools have made the process of home repair industrial, acoustically. This is a shame because the old fashioned way of doing things was quiet, considerate of neighbours.
When I Made Noise
A few years ago I was told off for making noise for using a machine to sand wood on the partition between two properties, before putting fresh varnish on the wood. I had made noise for two days. When I made noise I was told off after two days. In the village where I live now noise pollution is constant.
Part of the noise came from the building of one or two new buildings, for two years or so. More noise pollution came from a farmer doing maintenance work on farm equipment. The third was a repair shop making noise. The last source of noise was the rebuilding of a roof.
Years of Noise Pollution
The result is years of noise pollution, on a daily basis for years. The result is that the windows stay closed during sweltering summers. The result is that I am cooking in a 26°c appartment when the Outside Air Temperature is just 16°c.
The Privacy of Silence
People worry about web privacy. They worry about other privacies. They never consider the privacy of silence, the privacy of keeping windows open without being harassed with noise pollution. I miss the intimacy of silence. I miss being able to open windows in the morning, and closing them before sunset.
Adaptation
Noise pollution has forced me to adapt to living in a sweltering apartment without open windows. If I open the windows I am constantly distracted by the noise of industrial cutting. I have had to grow used to being too warm for months at a time.
Sweltering
I used to love the heat. When you’re in the top floor of an apartment, unable to open windows due to noise pollution you’re stuck with adapting to heat. Walking in the noon day sun on a 37°c day is refreshing, after spending time in an apartment where the windows are closed, due to noise pollution.
I don’t use the fan for cooling, because it’s worthless for that. I use it as white noise machine, so that I can focus on tasks, and achieve my goals. Until I lived in this apartment I never understood the value of white noise machines. Now I do.
And Finally
One of the easiest solutions is to go for my daily walk when people start to be too noisy. That’s why I go for a walk at the time I do go for a walk. I found that this was the time at which the noise pollution annoyed me most. Switzerland might have been quiet back in the day, but no longer.
As I looked straight down from a bridge today I noticed that the river is so low that the river bed has become bone dry in places. In other places you see that the gress is turning yellow. When tractors tend to the fields you see that they are stirring up clouds of dust. It is so dry, so often, that it is only a matter of time before forest fires burn down local forests.
Plenty of people are miserable for the rain, but when these consistent droughts lead to forest fires that remove the landscape and vegetation that we are used to they will not be so happy. They do not understand that these droughts are not normal. The fact that I didn’t use weather apps for years tells you how stable the weather system we’re in is.
I often walk by a door in a wall that frames this view. It’s a nice view. A nice garden with nice trees, the lake, a boat from the Belle époque and behind it the French side of the Lake, Haute Savoie and the Alps. A churchyard has a similar view, but with the train line as a bonus. If I was patient I could get the boat, a train and the rest of the landscape.
I am currently studying node.js, to see what I may eventually understand. So far most of the ideas and concepts are self-explanatory. The challenge will be in finding a project idea and getting it to work. Slowly I am getting to understand this topic. Node.JS looks intuitive to use.
Part of my motivation came from listening to the Javascript Jabber podcasts while I walk. It’s easy to hear about React, Angular, Laravel and other frameworks but it’s more interesting to hear about all the other smaller projets, like history.js, apline.js and many others. I like the idea of having specialist frameworks for specific tasks.
I felt overwhelmed by Angular, and then by Javascript. By changing context I am trying to get a different perspective, in an attempt to get a broader understanding of what various parts do. I am already better equipped for when I return to Laravel or Angular. I am also better equipped to understand typescript and Coffeescript etc.
