Sports

Translated from French, Sport the nicest of meetings reminds me of the legend that is told in Il Nuovo Cinema Paradiso. In Il Nuovo Cinema Paradiso we hear about the guy who waits outside a woman’s window for one hundred days and nights to show his devotion to her, and in the end he loses interest. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=144&v=a8fsWRHfg6g

This is following the same theme except that rather than a man lusting after a woman it is the other way around. Instead of a woman using crappy dating apps and other rubbish she sees someone she finds visually appealing and so decides to take up running. At first she is slow but with time she gets fitter and she can keep with the group for longer and longer. 

The Apple Watch rather than fill a niche provides a fifth screen. According to Wikipedia the four first screens are the cinema screen, the television screen and the mobile phone and tablet screen. The fifth screen is the smart watch as designed by Apple, Samsung, Sony and others. Apple and others have designed phones that bring the mobile phone experience to the wrist. Energy efficient Suunto, Garmin, Fitbit and other brands fill the wrist worn niche effectively because they have designed devices with energy efficient displays that provide tracking whilst at the same time giving extended battery life. Extended battery life in use Health trackers by fitbit and other companies have been designed to last for a week or more whilst tracking movement 24 hours a day. Suunto, Garmin and other brands have designed watches that can track activities for hours or even days before they need charging. Long stand by time When not in use all of the devices mentioned above can last for weeks. In the case of the Suunto Ambit two I have found that it loses one percentage of charge per day. As a result of this it can be used as a watch for three months before I need to think of charging. Data analysis All of these tools are for collecting data about the route you took, the intensity of the exercise tracked, heart rate and complementary information. When synced on the computer or website a lot of information is presented. Garmin syncs with Runkeeper, Strava, Garmin connect and other services, Suunto syncs with Movescount and Strava intuitively. Fitbit syncs with the fitbit site and other fitness apps. The most interesting data is analysed on a computer rather than the wrist unit. This leaves the device to track information cost effectively, where cost is battery life, and effective is defined by how long you can track an activity. Conclusion: My passion for “smart watches” stems from scuba diving. I bought a Suunto D9 to track dives and loved taking dive data and analysing it in view of improving my diving ability. I tracked training at the gym, hiking and other activities with various phones and their weakness was battery life. When you go for a hike in the mountains, go for a via ferrata or do a number of other sporting activities for extended periods of time you want a device that can last as long as you do. Suunto’s Ambit 2 filled that need very well, so well that I upgraded to the Suunto Ambit 3. As an android user I can’t  take advantage of all the features yet but that will come soon, this month in fact. The Apple Watch does not fill any of the requirements I have listed above and for this reason I am not tempted. I see it as a fifth screen that does not fill a niche. Fitness trackers, fitness watches and other devices cost the same price or less and fill niche requirements effectively. Why would I want a gimmick?

warzabidul - Feb 4, 2009

What makes the first meetups so great is that you spend weeks and months talking to people, you develop a relationship with those people so that when you finally meet them you’re really happy. That feeling is made even nicer when you realise you have similar interests to people you had not met yet.

Now the tweetups and other meetings often feel like a formality, nothing fun, nothing innovative. That is not to say that I don’t like tuttle. In fact I do like tuttle because there you still have that young entrepreunerial spirit, those innovators and thinkers. There’s a lot to be gained from the tuttle meetups. That’s a concept that works really well in my eyes.

There is a video of me at the only Twestival event I have ever been to and I lay into the event for the fashionistas that attended the event. I was so disappointed with the event as a whole that I have lost my passion for going to social media events, especially when I need to travel over a thousand kilometers. Environmental conscience is one good reason for not travelling to these events but the second is the quality of the people there. When I talked to people at the Twestival event and asked them about twitter they looked at me strangely, when I asked them about how many tweets they had written they told me from five to two hundred on average. As a passionate twitter user and having been to a lot of social media events, tweetups and seesmeetups this really dissapointed me. The event felt like nothing more than a facade, nothing more than an opportunity for people to say “look at how trendy I am, I’m on twitter” yet not understanding anything about the ethos of the twitter way of life. I love twitter, and I love those that use it well, I love how certain people use it the same way they use sms and other social means. I don’t like that in Switzerland I’m strange because I use twitter. I like it even less that over here twitter will never be popular. There is no reason for it because of social cohesion, but also a far smaller community. Switzerland is about skiing, sailing, cycling, hiking, parapente and more sports. We’re not in a city. We’re in the countryside, Europe’s playground. Why be geeky when sports would be more social. More to the point everything is current. I don’t need to wait two to five years for people to adopt the sports. That’s why I’m coming back to Twitter on Valentine’s day. (It’s also the day I got my driving licence ;-))

Switzerland is a land of mountains, rivers, and lakes. it’s a great place for skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, walking, and sailing. Those are all sports I’ve done. When I was several years younger we had a day’s racketing: Racketting is walking with rackets attached to your feet across the trees up in the mountains. It’s fun, although occasionally tiring sport. At one point we took a break for lunch. During this time a few of us were jumping over a young tree and someone was taking photographs. Within a period of weeks, one of those photographs was blown up to poster format and used in several shopping centres. it was also used for the cover of a local tourism magazine. The picture was of a younger me in a ski suit with rackets attached to my feet. Many people have seen that photograph and I was a cover boy for at least one issue of the local magazine. Recently that picture was in a shopping center much closer to where I live and we recuperated it. It’s now sitting on my desk at home. I’m thinking about going raquetting if there’s enough snow for it to be worthwhile. I haven’t done that sport for many years and I think it’d be interesting. It’s simple. No need to drive to where the snow is good, Thirty minutes and I’d be where I may be able to raquet. If there’s snow that’s what I may spend a few hours doing.

I went snowboarding at it was great fun. At some moments the snow was great fun so it felt really good. I love the feeling of snowboarding at a fast rate down ski slopes and keeping up with skiers who don’t mind waiting too much. All the snow canons were active because there’s a lack of natural precipitation. Some resorts are worried about what to do but as long as it’s cool then fake snow can be created to make a base on which for skiers to have fun. It’s tomorrow the resorts open properly, when all the tourists arrive. On the way home on the radio I heard there was a traffic jam on the way to lausanne due to a christmas tree being on the road and I burst out laughing. only in Switzerland would you hear such a traffic jam warning.