As serendipity would have it I have been a wordpress blogger for at least 11 years. As I was looking through notifications on worpdress.com I came across the notification below yesterday. As I searched for ideas for blog posts for today I came across an e-mail. [caption id=“attachment_3709” align=“aligncenter” width=“169”] 10 years of Wordpress[/caption] [caption id=“attachment_3710” align=“aligncenter” width=“1024”] 11 years of Wordpress[/caption] On this day, eleven years ago I set up this blog.
Belaying is a core climbing skill. With good belaying a climber can climb as fast as he is comfortable to climb, as if without a rope and yet have his fall cushioned at be safe at all times. The belayer needs to be active. He needs to observe and be attentive. I first learned to rock climb with a rope about ten years ago on the Italian side of the Alps and at the time I enjoyed climbing more than I enjoyed belaying.
I am tired of the Facebook monopoly. While Google gets fined for helping people shop websites like Facebook do the opposite. Instead of increasing the diversity of content on the web and the sharing of ideas it has helped create silos of like minded people. Likeminded people is a polite way of saying brainwashed in the case where opinions are based on opinions rather than facts.
Low value posts Shorts on Facebook are usually very short.
Laptop backups are an integral part of my daily routine. I backup to the cloud with crashplan as well as to an external hard drive. I also back up files as they are every few days or weeks so that if a drive fails I have at least one or two backups. In some cases I have more backups.
Imminent battery failure Recently I was backing up the files from my most recent mac book pro because I noticed that the mouse was starting to fail every so often.
Yesterday D-Day Film Archives were shared on Facebook. These film archives were of landing crafts landing troops on the beaches, of battleships firing rocket salvos at the coast, of gliders being pulled by planes, of paratroopers getting and more. Over the years films have been preserved by transferring the footage from one film stock to another and then transferred from film to tapes. The problem with film and tape is that they are stored in a physical location that only archivists have access to.
Unhappy Facebook Users - Marketers and Academics are looking in the wrong place. Every single day they publish articles about why social media is bad for us. Every day they ignore that we meet people via social media rather than bars. Every day they ignore that those I meet through social media work on interesting projects. Every day they ignore that if it wasn’t for social websites I would not have taken up via Ferrata, rock climbing and other sports.
I come from the age of bloggers and self-installations. In fact, I come from the age of HTML pages and static websites. In those days we surfed the web looking for and finding content. We also found interesting bits of code and we added new features to our websites. We would install forums, guestbooks and more. In so doing our static websites became dynamic. At this point, our website could grow a community.
While in Spain for three weeks I was playing with the Xtorm solar Charger. I found that it worked well for the charging of tablets and e-book readers but not mobile phones. [caption id=“attachment_3462” align=“aligncenter” width=“225”] Solar charger and external battery[/caption] For years I have wanted to play with solar power. I have wanted to buy a solar panel that I could fix to my bag or that I could use to charge devices.
What is there to see in the lake is a question that people have frequently asked me. For at least two years I would go diving nearly every weekend. I would dive in the Lac Léman, the Lac de Bourget, the Gouille Du Duzillet. I also dived the English channel in November. I dived all year round. In summer we would cook in our dry suits and in winter our hands were sometimes so cold that we couldn’t take off our dry suits.
This year I am replacing Social Media with Book Reading because social media is no longer a conversational place. It has become a place for sensationalism and the spreading of fake news and emotional news. As a result of these factors the potential gain of new friendships and interesting conversations has declined. For this reason you might as well find some interesting books and broaden your horizons. [caption id=“attachment_3412” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”] Replacing social media with book reading[/caption] I currently have hundreds of books on Kindle and Audible and my collection on the Kobo reader is bound to grow.