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Visiting the Creux de Van and spending time with Bouquetins.

Byrichard
Reading Time: 4 minutes

Images I saw of the Creux de Van made me want to visit the location in person. Yesterday despite the mediocre weather I went there. From Neuchatel you drive towards Noiraigue. Free parking is available.

For the first hour you are walking up a steep winding path. A few trees have fallen, stones and mud are also present until you reach the top of the cliff. From there you see a glimpse of the cliff and views to come. As I stood there I saw a solitary Bouquetin on the rocks.

From there I went right and walked along the cliff. On one side I had green grass and a farm and on the other side I had a steep cliff. I walked along and came to an outcrop. From here you could see the full cliff face. I walked around the arc until I came across a herd of Bouquetins. They were right in my path. I took several pictures before heading back down the other side. I came across a wooden hut and table where people can have a snack. As you walk through the woods you get towards the end of the Gorge De L’Areuse. It was full of water due to the recent rains. By this point I had already walked 10km so I continued back towards the car.

Another view of the valley

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Woods, Bouquetin and cliff

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80/20 Running into Practice
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80/20 Running into Practice

Byrichard

I have been putting the 80/20 running rule into practice. The principal is simple. Instead of running to your max you run at a comfortable pace for most of your running instead. Instead of pushing yourself to be fast, you push yourself to have endurance. You train at a pace that is 80 percent or less of your maximum, to perform better when you race.


Train for Endurance, Not Speed


The concept is rational. You could train to your max but by doing so you tire yourself emotionally, physically and mentally. Instead of improving you hit a wall. The 80 percent rule builds on the idea that by training consistently at a lower intensity 80 percent of the time you build stamina and endurance.


With the Garmin program by Greg I find myself having to slow down, rather than speed up. I find that I need to run at a pace that is easy, rather than strenuous. With other coaches they say “do 150-200 steps for 30 seconds, then do glides etc.” Others say “Run this distance” and “Now run that distance”.


I prefer the coaching I have now. “Run at this pace for that duration” It isn’t about distance, and it isn’t about duration so much as it is about pace. I have to consciously tell myself to slow down, to take it easy. It isn’t that far from running pace. I know I can run faster. I need the discipline to slow down.


I am avoiding speed because I want to keep my knees from hurting. I want to strengthen them gradually, by training at a lower intensity, to give them the time to adapt and toughen up. This isn’t about speed. This is about being able to run sustainably for longer distances, without discomfort. Today I felt that I am getting to that goal. I felt that I could run for longer.


A Dog Chase


I actually stopped running because a dog, that was not kept on a lead, showed interest in me, and then charged me. I left the road and it followed, so I stopped in a field. For an instant I was convinced that I would be bitten today. It felt that way. I thought it had finally happened again.


Normally I would avoid a car, especially one that stops there, because usually dogs jump out and tend to charge. I didn’t turn around and change route. My habit of turning around and choosing another route, is justified after what happened. I hate that I keep being attacked. No, the dog didn’t bite me, but it did run after me. Dogs do that. That’s why I walked with hiking sticks before. That’s why on one route I picked up a big branch.


Dogs scare me. They threaten me several times a year. If I had continued running it would have bit me. I had to stop, so that it would stop. I am tired of overcoming my fear of dogs on every walk. I am even more tired of having my fears confirmed by these attacks, several times a day. I class a dog that threatens or runs after me as an attack.


Next time I will walk the other way. I will not walk towards a car that is stopping. Once again my fear is justified.

The Case for Reverting to Web Forums

The Case for Reverting to Web Forums

Byrichard

There is a case for reverting to web forums. Web forums are small communities of like minded people that form around topics, ideas, or ideals. They want to have conversations where you look at topics and sub topics, rather than following people. By having conversations on a smaller scale there is more waiting around for answers, but the connections should be more worthwhile.

Recently the ActivityPub plugin for Wordpress jumped to version 1.0.0 from version 0.0.something. In so doing I expected to find that two way conversations would be possible from wordpress to the Fediverse, and back from the Fediverse to WordPress and ClassicPRess.

That isn’t the case. Much Ado about Nothing. I really thought that the experience would have bounded to be a full-fledged solution.

Facebook and Twitter

When they were new Facebook and Twitter were great. Twitter was great because it was a community of strangers who had deep conversations online, so that when they met in person they felt like old friends. With hashtags, and the desire to have more followers people lost track of conversations, and so it became an impersonal popularity contest.

With Facebook we had a community of university friends that we got along with, in person, that reconnected with online, to share images, events and more. At the time this was great. The problem occurred when we went from conversing with friends, to playing Zynga, because after that Facebook became a place to waste time, through no fault of our own. It was designed to become a waste of time, to keep us active.

The Fediverse

For a few weeks, or even a few months I felt that the fediverse had a lot to offer. Eventually I saw that all the problems that I saw with Twitter were also present on the Fediverse. People wanted to be followed by millions, they wanted lists, and they wanted hashtags. I also felt quite a bit of aggression, trolling, and people with baggage. I deleted myself from several Fediverse instances because I didn’t feel that they were healthy places to be.

Enter phpBB.

phpBB is one of the oldest parts of the social web. phpBB boards have been around since the 90s but as we got used to Twitter, FaceBook, Myspace and other sites we forgot about the smaller, interest based communities. I don’t want to invest thousands of hours in a twitter clone. I went to become part of an online community that is small, but convivial. Setting up a web forum is easy. It’s finding a community that is challenging. That’s the challenge I face.

My Ideal

My ideal is to find an online community that is local, to chat with online, before meeting in person on a regular basis. I should be able to find that through a sporty community, like I had for years, before the current doldrums.

And Finally

One of the weaknesses of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other online communities is that we follow people, rather than topcics and ideas. Of course we can follow “hasthags” but for me this is awful because it helps people spam, and distracts people from having conversations around ideas. By following people, rather than threads of conversation we’re on an open web of noise. With web forums we revert to a quieter social network where we wait for answers. in theory we can ask for notifications, rather than waiting.

I think that reverting to web forums is a good idea, because it allows us to re-build communities on a personal scale.

For now I am trying My Friends Misfits

FIFAD Day 8 – Sylvain Saudan and the winners

Byrichard

Sylvain Saudan was at the FIFAD event on the final day from 11am onwards both to project two of his films and to speak about his experiences as a pioneer of extreme skiing. During the conference he presented his film about the Grandes Jorasses descent as well as his trip to Denali. If you go to his wikipedia page you will find information about all of his first descents with skis. The first film he showed was with music but narrated live as he stood on stage.

from The Snaz on Vimeo.

What I really enjoyed about his first film and his live commentary is that he brings us back to the skiing style that I learned and really enjoyed. In the olden days (within my lifetime) we learned to ski with our feet parallel and close together. We would leap to turn and it was technically demanding. The skis were longer and thinner. The whole of the edge could be used as this skiing style was before the era of carving skis. As a result it meant that skiing extreme slopes was simplified by having a longer edge.

The Denali descent and film were impressive. It took an expedition to get him to the base of the mountain and then up. The cameras were film cameras with three minutes of film before the cartridge had to be replaced. Camera operators had to ascend and wait for him to come back down. It required alpine skills to get to the top and once at the top, in the rarified air he had to change from climbing clothes to skiing clothes, put the boots on and then descend. It took him 7hrs to go from 6200 metres to 1800m. This achievement was never repeated by other skiers. In the Q&A session he said that those who attempted to do the same thing failed.

In the evening films that were awarded prizes were screened once again.

Application Programming Interfaces, Really Simple Syndication and the Open Protocols

Application Programming Interfaces, Really Simple Syndication and the Open Protocols

Byrichard

Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to use their API despite already wanting people to pay them directly. Twitter decided to drive users away and make itself more expensive. As a result of this the website is imploding, rather than thriving. 


Yesterday I read that Reddit, too, wanted to charge users to access its API and whilst this may make sense to some, it’s absurd. It’s absurd because Twitter and Reddit can already charge their users directly for use. By increasing the cost of API use they are trying to get money from their users twice. Once for use of the website, and again for use of the website via APIs and third party apps. The result is that people could spend over a hundred francs per year to exchange messages. For that price we might as well return to SMS. 


Running alongside APIs we have really Simple Syndication and ActivityPub. Both are means of syndicating content but one is centralised whilst the other is not. 


Years ago people complained that Facebook sucked data into its ecosystem but then behaved like a silo, unwilling to share it. Twitter is making the same mistake. 


The ChatGPT explanation


Really Simple Syndication (RSS):

    Functionality: RSS is a standardized format for publishing frequently updated content, such as blog posts, news articles, podcasts, and more. It allows users to subscribe to content feeds and receive updates whenever new content is published.

    Use Case: RSS is commonly used by content publishers to provide their audience with a way to stay updated on new content without having to visit the website regularly. Users can use RSS feed readers or aggregators to subscribe to their preferred feeds and receive updates in one place.

Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):

    Functionality: APIs are sets of rules and protocols that allow different software applications to communicate and interact with each other. APIs define how different components of software systems can interact, exchange data, and access functionality provided by another application or service.

    Use Case: APIs are used for various purposes, such as retrieving data from external sources, integrating different systems, enabling interactions with third-party services, and building software applications that rely on the functionality and data provided by APIs.

ActivityPub:

    Functionality: ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol that enables users to create, share, and interact with social activities across different platforms or instances. It facilitates the exchange of social data and interactions between federated platforms, allowing users on one platform to communicate and engage with users on other platforms.

    Use Case: ActivityPub is used in federated social networks, where users can create profiles, post updates, follow other users, comment, like, and perform other social interactions. It allows users to have control over their data while being part of a larger interconnected social network.

chatGPT, as generated on the 3rd of June 2023 with the prompt: “What is the difference between Really Simple Syndication, Application Programming interfaces and Activitypub”


Twitter and Reddit want to charge for the use of their API but in the new age of social networks the shift is towards a decentralised model where everyone can talk to everyone else. 


On the FediDB website you see that Mastodon, Misskey, Peertube, pixelfed, Writefreely and Wordpress are included within the fediverse. People already have the freedom to join the instance and community that they want, whilst being connected to other instances. In so doing instances are individually controlled, but the reach is global. 


Whilst Twitter, Meta et al try to trap users into their ecosystems and charge them to use their website, their API and more, alternatives are being created where voluntary contributions are possible, to keep servers running. 


Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to access their databases and use their APIs, at the same time as the ActivityPub and Authenticated Transfer protocols are being developed.  At a time when Reddit and Twitter should be fighting to keep third party developers interested they are doing the opposite, by pricing them out of the development cycle. 


And Finally


For the first time since 2006 the Social Web is broadening again as new projects and ideas are developed and implemented that help connect people, without making them vulnerable to single points of failures. When Instagram and WhatsApp were bought by Facebook the web lost a lot of its resiliency. With the buying of Twitter by an individual the need to prevent this from ever happening again became clear and interesting solutions are coming up. I like that the Fediverse exists and is coming of age, and that BlueSky may run in parallel. Twitter and Reddit are trying to charge for their data, but their data is no longer niche. 

Roses From A Daily Walk
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Roses From A Daily Walk

Byrichard

Sometimes you go for a daily walk and all the roses are starting to emerge, and these are not tiny ones. These are saucer sized roses. They are mainly growing at the side of orchards. These are Red and pink, but there are other colours, so if I walk in the right places I should find them too.



I could have posted these images to Instagram or Facebook, but I’d rather post them on my own website, for the world to see, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually, three to six years from now. 😉

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