For months I was passionate about Ingress. I was passionate about the game until fuel costs, parking costs, device costs and time costs were too high. When you play from level one to eight the game is fun. You progress quickly and you meet new people. You discover new places and it’s enjoyable. As you reach level 8 and above the game becomes more like a chore. You have to walk hundreds of kilometres and you need to perform tens of thousands of actions to progress anymore.
BRAGI - The Dash – Wireless Smart In Ear Headphones from BRAGI on Vimeo. I enjoy cycling, running, climbing and via Ferrata so this type of device is well suited to my needs. The price is not. At 300 USD it is an iPod shuffle replacement at its core. From what I understand The Dash can track steps, heart rate and duration of sports so in theory you can go without a sports watch, sports tracker or mobile phone.
StravistiX for Strava Stravistix for strava is a Chrome plugin. It allows you to analyse the data from your ride in more detail and with more graphs. In the detailed view you can see heart rate information, speed, power, grade, elevation and  ascent speed. It allows you to see each metric in more depth. It allows you to look at your statistics in detail. You can see what percentage of the ride was flat, uphill or downhill.
Ben Thomspon wrote, “How Facebook Squashed Twitter”.  The article looks at social networks from a marketing point of view. I like conversational social networks. Social networks by their very name are for conversations. They are about connections and they are about friendship, collaboration and more. In its Golden age twitter was a social network to establish new friendships with people we had yet to meet. It was a great tool, especially in places like London where the community of users was big enough to be interesting.
The history of entertainment is a long one. We have gone from banquet entertainment during Roman and Medieval times. We have had radio and television to entertain us. We have also had books, magazines and kindles. The idea of Virtual Reality and dinner is not that strange. What is fascinating about Virtual reality is that in our lifetime it has gone from requiring massive computers and cumbersome devices. Today virtual reality can be experienced with a mobile phone.
I have been using sports tracker for years. I first used it on the Nokia N95 8GB several years ago. This was an excellent app that allowed you to track your moves using the mobile phone as a GPS. The limitation of such an app was battery life on mobile phones. The battery usually did not last more than an hour at first and eventually progressed to two hours or more.
After cycling over 1100 kilometres in 2015, I aim to cycle 1200 kilometres in 2016. This goal is an easy one to achieve. It’s the 21st of January and I already have 100 kilometres logged. The weather over the last three weeks has been cold and wet. We have had rain almost every day and it recently turned to snow. As there is a lack of good weather there is no choice but to go out in the bad weather.
When people write about self-driving cars they write from the perspective of people living in cities. I live in the Swiss countryside at the foot of the Jura which results in me seeing the potential of self-driving cars differently. For a start at the moment buses operate from 5 in the morning to 9 in the afternoon. There is a tow hour gap at lunchtime when there is no service and at other times the frequency is once an hour, except at rush hour.
15A Cave exploration is really fun. You go from an autumn day, lie down and pull yourself forwards with your elbows and push yourself with your feet. You turn your head sideways so that it fits through. The gravel moves under your hands and body and eventually you are through in to a large chamber. You can duck waddle from this tunnel to another chamber. You get to a pile of rocks and you look around until you find a path where you can cross.
When the temperature drops and we find ourselves living beneath the clouds for weeks or even months going up to the mountains to get above them is always pleasant. Another option is to take advantage of the cool temperatures to explore caves where the conditions are constant year round. For Halloween a group of us went to have a bonfire and barbecue at the entrance to the Big cave of the Grottes des Fées.