Twelve hour drive.
I drove twelve hours today. For the first part I had snow falling and salt machines, and for the second part I had strong winds. I am now tired. This reads more like a tweet than a blog post.
I’m writing for future generations now. As I looked at the stats for the most recent posts i see that readership is low. I’m tempted to start writing about something else as a result. In two or three weeks if we’re still seeing low numbers of new cases I might.
The biggest change since two days ago is that when I went to the shops I saw that InterDiscount and other places are open. Restaurants are open too. I saw some people in these places but without counting.
Inspiration to write usually comes from meeting people and having conversations but it’s at least 58 days since I met someone new and had a different conversation so it’s hard to explore new ideas.
The CSS front page I’ve been working on for the past three or four days is almost ready to be shared. I still need to tweak three or four things. I’m happy about this. When I replaced the time I spent on social media with playing with CSS I gave myself a great opportunity to learn two or three new skills. I was afraid that I would be confused and lost but so far I’ve found the opposite to be true. I’ve found it relatively easy.
The biggest challenge is getting the content to be desktop and mobile-friendly so every experiment I run has to look good on both. So far this has been a good experience. It’s something that I haven’t done, possibly since social media came along, and distracted us. It’s a shame that social media didn’t grow in quality of conversations but it has benefited my drive to learn something new.
We have to keep upskilling, and upskilling by working on a website is good, because we learn skills that others can see and assess within seconds. The more time I spend tweaking the first page the better it will look, and the more knowledge I will come away with.
See you tomorrow for day 59. We’re just two days away from two months without being within two meters of another person.
I have logged 799 activities with my Suunto devices. This includes hikes, via ferrata, climbing, swimming and scuba diving. I like Suunto devices because their battery life is good enough to last through entire days of hiking and the battery lasts for weeks between charges when used as a simple watch.
I like to track my heart rate but I often feel self conscious about putting the heart rate monitor belt on. With the latest Spartan watch I no longer need to worry about the belt. At the same time as I start the activity I will be able to keep track of the heart rate. This is especially good for group activities when you do not want to keep people waiting and in winter when you’re wearing layers of clothing.
I like that devices like the Fitbit Charge 2 can be worn at almost all times and track heart rate effortlessly when at the climbing gym and during other activities. I look forward to the same simplicity with a Suunto device. I especially like that Suunto devices survive swims and showers.
I like that the Suunto Ambit 3 tracks how many steps I take during the day. It’s a shame that the step count is not logged and visible on Movescount. I like to see how energetic or lazy I have been on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis. It’s not unusual for me to go from a 21,000 step day to a 6000 step day. It depends on weather, work and other factors. If you go for a bike ride your step count will not be high.
I will wait to see whether they apply this technology to the Suunto Ambit watch collection. If they come out with the Suunto Ambit 4 Wrist HR then I will be tempted to upgrade. With 799 tracked activities I believe Suunto devices have demonstrated that they are reliable.
In the 21st century technology exists that could make music festivals sound good for festival goers, whist not ruing the night of sleep for neighbours of the festival. I would like EPFL and other academic groups to work towards finding a way to make music festivals more considerate of neighbouring humans, and wildlife. Music festivals should apply Corporte Social Responsability by reducing noise pollution.
During the summer months people organise outdoor events, which is fantastic. What is less fantastic is that those outdoor events are organised to take place from mid to late afternoon, all the way to 2 to 3am. This means that if you live downwind from Music Festivals you will not be able to sleep for days at a time.
Instead of going to bed by 2200 and sleeping by midnight you’re stuck trying to outdo the festival with noise. If you go to bed then you’ll have the noise pollution from the festival for hours.
When I was a university student living in halls I would make sure to go to sleep by two or three am, every single night. I wanted to go to sleep after all the noisy people had gone to sleep, to avoid being bothered by noise pollution. It worked extremly well.
The paradox is that I went to sleep after everyone else, but I also got up before a lot of people. I was easily living on four hours of sleep per night. The problem is that I am now two decades older, or thereabouts. I actually need my sleep now.
The problem with music noise pollution from music festivals is that it is getting louder, with time, rather than quieter. For years I had the noise of the Paléo, during Paléo, but I could sleep through it. It was just barely loud enough to sometimes make out what was playing.
With the Carbiana the music is so loud. three to five kilometres away, as the drone flies, that with an air conditioner and a fan going at full power in a small room, or an extractor fan in a living room/kitchen, the thump is still audible. The speaker stacks are set so loud that two or three villages away you hear the festival as if you were there. That’s with all the windows closed, and double glazed windows.
Caribana and other music festivals have people who are not that intellectually astute. I say this, because, in the 90s and the zeros there was an excuse for that flood of noise. Technological limitations. In 2023 that excuse is moot. The speakers are more powerful, more noisy.
With speakers becoming smaller, more efficient, and less visible it would make sense to distribute the speakers, within the crowd, and set them to a lower volume. It doesn’t make sense to pump out a wall of sound for a tiny festival venue.
I’m writing this blog post because I think the problem is getting worse, as the technology makes noise pollution easier to create. I’m writing this because if we have people gluing themselves to roads, because of car pollution, then we should have people protesting music festivals, for failing to consider the environmental impact, and corporate social responsibility in regards to noise pollution.
Festival goers are meant to be altermondialistes, in favour of a fairer, more environmentally friendly society, and yet for five days per year individual festivals make sleep difficult or impossible. Boiled down to one word festivals like Caribana are selfish. They don’t consider that people want to sleep at night, that they don’t want their personal sphere to be invaded by the noise pollution from a festival.
I want Paléo, Caribana and every other festival to consider the noise pollution that they create, and stop it. Paléo collaborates with EPFL, so EPFL and Paléo, should find a way to play music loud enough for festival goers to hear it, without earplugs, and for the neighbouring countryside to be silent. How Caribana and Paléo behave, in regards to noise pollution is immoral and unethical. I want it to change.
I know I am one solitary voice, but don’t forget, the fêtes de Genève had to stop making noise by midnight when they were allowed, and eventually I think they were banned, because locals complained.
Remember, the Geneva motto, between neighbours is “The less we hear each other, the better we get along.” Festivals are loud and disruptive. Something should be done to resolve this issue.
I expect to have another sleepless night tonight. Monday I will have my first night of sleep, since Tuesday.
Oh, to have quiet summers, like we did during the part of the pandemic, when governments were not ignoring the spread of the virus.
Ordinarily you see pictures of cows standing up looking towards the camera but occassionaly people like me walk by cows when they are on their chewing the cud break. They lie around and slouch. It’s amusing to see three cows in close proximity like this. They have their eyes closed, their legs out. Are you used to seeing such scenes?
Cows in Switzerland have a good life. They head from the valleys to the top of mountains, eat grass, and then have siestas in the middle of the day. Their quality of life is good. Not all cows are the life and soul of the hike.
I didn’t know that as adults they would rest their heads on each other.