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Doing the Via Ferrata(VF) on Sunday, and then hiking down was physical. For a start, I was doing a Via Ferrata, something that I have done once, before, within the last six or seven years. The hike down was also quite physical. Combined the VF and the hike tired me.

62 Hours of Rest

According to Sportstracker I needed to give myself 62 hours to recover from the huge effort. It’s over 400 minutes of exercise, of which some of it was walking at up to 1900m for the first time in years. I could feel that I was out of breath where I usually did not struggle.

On Friday I organised a Via Ferrata at the Via Ferrata du Moléson and it went well. I met new people including people that were not part of the group. The weather was cool so there was no risk of heat stroke or dehydration.

What made this VF so relaxed for me, is that I was behind someone who was afraid, so I continued at a relaxed pace behind. It gave me time to look at the landscape, to take pictures and to speak with someone who was stuck behind us. I wasn’t in a rush, and luckily neither was the person behind.

For years I did activities with people, usually not as an organiser for one very simple reason. Micro-managers. These are the people that have an opinion, and a schedule, that want to take control of a simple activity. These people take a spontaneous activity and make it a nightmare.

For me the entire joy of going to do a hike, or a Via ferrata, or other things is to decide on a meeting place, and time, and do it. The logistics of getting there and back take time, but once there it’s simple. Follow the signs, do the thing, head home.

There was a time decades ago, when we had a choice of five channels. TSR, TF1, Antenne 2, SRF and RSI. Over time we got more channels offered to us, and with satellite TV and cable our choice mushroomed to the point where we could watch documentary channels for a morning, and move on to something else once the programs looped.

Watching More and More

The result of this TV watching is that we watched hours of programs but we also wasted huge amounts of time on ads. That’s okay for a half hour program. You would see ads at the start, ads at the middle, and then ads at the end.

Yesterday afternoon as I set off for my walk I noticed that the Pi AI Kit was in my post box. I moved it to the locked compartment and then went for my walk. After the walk I took the time to set it up and it went well.

Easy Assembly

If you’ve got your own kit but haven’t assembled it first, the long screws are there so that you can fix the Raspberry Pi and AI kit within the default Pi case. I made the mistake of using the shorter screws and had to swap them. It delayed me only slightly.

Yesterday I had to drive from Nyon to Founex to do a favour for someone. Normally I would have used the car but it was in for a tire change. I was switching from winter to summer tires at last.

On the way to Founex I took farm roads as much as possible because they’re less likely to have cars, and I’m less likely to be in the way of those cars. The ride was easy. I used just one or two bars of power on the way out so I still had plenty of battery left. I then walked around, and then picked up a book about technical writing before riding home.

Last night I attempted to watch the WWDC conference and failed. This wasn’t a technical issue. The issue was a cultural one. I find the show to be too kitschy for me. From the pretending to leap out of a plane to the tone of their conversation, it’s just unwatchable for me, with European sensibilities.

Apple came out with Apple Intelligence which, at face value, is fantastic. I say at face value because it won’t work on Intel devices, and it won’t work on devices that came out before the iPhone 15. This means that almost all Apple users will be isolated from Apple Intelligence instead they fork out thousands of francs for phones, laptops and desktops.

Today I spotted another clear sign that modern social media are toxic and unhealthy. I see this through the boy sober movement.

A new trend is sweeping TikTok: #boysober. Its rules? No dating apps, no dates, no exes, no hookups. Thousands of women are uploading videos describing why they have gone boy sober and extolling its benefits.

In my opinion this is a clear demonstration of why algorithms are so awful on social media. For me this illustrates that with algorithms social networks become unusable for close personal connections. The reason for this is that when you’re competing for likes, comments and re-shares you’re forgetting about the core purpose of social media, for human beings. The ability to connect with people that do not live in the same village or town that you live in, and to stave off loneliness.

This morning I noticedd that a wine Cave is having an event where they will make noise but it will stop at 22:00 because the law requires them to stop at that time. In the 21st century anyone can buy a loud sound system that could fill a village with noise pollution, and that’s one of the problems with modern life.

For the last four nights I have been unable to sleep before two to three in the morning because the local music festival, the Caribana had their speakers on so loud that I could hear them despite having two fans on full power, laptop speakers at full volume and even airport hearing protection.

Yesterday I picked up a 2017 mac book pro that I had been given and the first thing that struck me is that it looked brand new. the keys were not worn. It was clean.

Mine on the other hand is dusty, but more than that. Some of the keys are so worn from use that they have become transarent on a 2007 machine, and glowing on a second. It’s the asd keys that are the most messed up.