The Rational Decision to Deactivate my Facebook account

During the pandemic I deactivated my FB account for years because it felt so toxic as an environment. I reactivated it when Musk bought Twitter. At the time it felt like a “least worst” option, rather than a pleasant site. In the process I used FB extensively, and I found communities but I also found a lot of noise. Political Bias Recently I have noticed that when a post is written about something positive, there are a lot of angry smileys, and if something negative is written there are a lot of positive smileys.

The Strava IPO and My Desire To Quit the App

This morning I woke at 0530 and thought “I can’t be bothered to go for a ride so early.” Within a few minutes I was up getting ready. I put on my Autumnal cyclist stuff and pumped the tyres to 80 bar. I then road to the meeting point. I arrived 15 minutes early and was surprised not to see anyone appear until 5 minutes before. I had considered going for a solo ride as a result.

Autumn Cycling

The first bicycle ride, when it got cooler, felt unpleasant. My hands felt cold, the areas around zips felt cold, my legs felt cold, and then, over a few rides I got used to the temperature. When you cycle in the pre-dawn dark the temperature is cool. You can feel it biting through your long cycling shorts, and through the first three layers, and especially through the zip. Add a think windcutter, and you’re warm.

The Strava IPO and My Desire To Quit the App

Strava intends to float itself on the stock exchange. In my experience of Twitter, Facebook and other social media apps this is the beginning of the end for the app. In my experience when an app such as Zwift gets VC funding it loses control of its app. Users go from being the customer to investors becoming the client. In this situation user experience degrades continuously. Years ago, when I was using Zwift, they got VC funding, and within days bluetooth pairing between the speed and cadence sensors and Zwift failed and their solution was “Have you tried turning it off and on again” rather than “Which devices are you using, we’ll see if we can recrate the bug and patch the issue?

Google Adsense Ads Removed

For years, or even decades I have had Google Adsense on my site, and I have been paid several times over the years. In recent years though Google Adsense has flooded my site with ads, but has not flooded me with revenue so yesterday I removed the ads. For a while we had to tell Google Adsense where we wanted ads, and how we wanted them to be displayed. With time they gave us the option “Let google place the ads automatically” out of practicality, but Google placed ads so aggressively that legitimate sites looked like spam sites.

Broken FrontMatter Extension

For two days now FrontMatter has been slightly broken. When I want to create new posts via the interface it refuses, so I have to copy and paste the front matter info from the previous day, and add it to a new markdown document. The operation is quick and easy but it’s a shame not to have the tool working as well as it could. Every Hugo post has a title, a description, the date, preview, draft status, tags, and categories.

Strava - How to Upload Manually

Since Strava has decided to sue Garmin, and since Suunto has decided to sue Garmin as well, for different reasons, I feel now is a good opportunity to remind ourselves of how to upload to Garmin and Strava manually. Exporting to Strava Garmin If you record an activity with a Garmin device, you can navigate to connect.garmin.com, log in and go to the activity. You can export file, TCX or GPX.

Sports Tracker is Waking Up

In the 2000s I was using a Nokia N95 8gb with Sports tracker to track my walks every day. Eventually, when I started scuba diving I switched to Suunto to track dives, and eventually wore one for hikes, and then I upgraded to the Suunto Ambit 2, 3, Spartan Wrist HR Baro and then the Peak 5. At the same time as I was jumping from one watch to another Sports Tracker was growing, and then Suunto bought it, and it became Movescount and this app was truly fantastic.

Tired Heading Up to La Faucille

Yesterday I felt strong cycling with the group, up from Nyon to Saint Cergue and on to the Col De La Givrine before heading towards La Cure. Part of the reason for feeling strong is that I have climbed the Jura multiple times this summer, so climbing up has become less strenuous. I am now habituated to heading up the Jura for the first climb of the day. It’s on the second climb that I start to show fatigue.

On Strava Being Irrational

It is irrational and absurd for Strava to sue one of its’ most important providers of data, Garmin. Every run, hike, climb and other sport that I have done for years comes from either Suunto, Garmin, Apple Watch or another brand. Garmin is huge in the cycling community. I see people with Garmin devices, wahoo devices and more. People like me have a cycling computer, and a sports tracking wrist watch.