Rationally it makes sense to go for a run when the sun is setting because the heat from the sun is lower. In theory this means that the body is dealing with a cooler environment.

In practice, when I go for evening rides and runs my body remains warm for hours, and that heat, during a heat wave, in a minergie building makes it unbearable.

For a few days it was cooling, and I had stopped using fans. I questioned why. I suspect that it is because when the building is exposed to heat wave temperatures for several days the air heats, but eventually the buildings’ structure begins to radiate its own stored heat energy. This means that you’re dealing with hot air, which isn’t bad. It’s when the building becomes a radiator that it becomes unpleasant.

When you ride solo, or with a group it is easy to ride along routes that are familiar but it is more fun to add a little variety. I believe that seeing a path, and following it often leads to developing “The Knowledge” for local bike rides.

I use “The Knowledge” to link to the familiarity that London Black cab taxi drivers have with London. As you cycle, and as you explore all the different roads, so you develop a mental map linking everywhere to everywhere else. You know which routes are flatter, which roads have fast cars, and which ones are more convivial to ride along. You also find the roads that encourage you to ride sustainably.

Around two months ago I decided to see if a Garmin mid range device would cure my desire to upgrade and try new devices so I went for the Garmin Forerunner 570. In many ways it didn’t deliver drastically more than the Garmin Instinct 2. I noticed that it was just as bad at sleep tracking. The key issue though, is that after a swim, and a ride one day I noticed that a plastic o-ring seemed to have made it’s way between the glass and the watch body.

Years ago I noticed something. All of the games on iOS and Android that are promoted are crap. By this I mean that they have a very simple design. Complete a challenge, fail, watch an add, compete, win, watch an ad. Every single game makes you see an ad every few seconds.

These games aren’t especially good. They’re designed for infinite obsessive, absurd game play. Absurd because once you reach a level you fail again, and again, and again. The failure is intentional. It wants you to fail so that you pay to win. The pay to win model is flawed because in the end you fall into an absurd loop and you have to either pay to play, after watching dozens of ads, or pay money for boosts.

Today I grabbed a unique opportunity. Since the Triathlon de Nyon is taking place I went for a walk along the route. Initially I felt like doing something short. In the end I walked the 10-11km loop on foot. There are one or two bits that I missed due to human traffic and routes being closed but it went well.

The route is around 12km and there was a constant show of triathletes cycling by me yelling “to your right” or “to your left” to each other, not to me. I was careful never to be in their way. After a while it died down because they had finished their race, so I had a closed road to myself.

There is a high probability that we well get stung at least once per year. When I am cycling I often notice bees, bumblebees and wasps bounce off of me. Sometimes I feel something hit me but luckily I’m fine. Yesterday I wasn’t that lucky.

Yesterday I hit a wasp, bee or something else and it stung me. I went to my lip to pull the stinging insect away and threw it away. I continued to cycle for a bit, and then I stopped in the shade to send a message that I had been stung.

INTVL is a new game that you play by running, cycling, or both. The concept is simple. Every time you go for a run you capture “territory” from others and every time others go for a run they do the same thing. For this game you don’t need to stare at your phone. You simply walk, run, or cycle.

I write walk but it’s counted as running by the game. I also speak about walking because with Ingress the concept of fielding is similar, except that you need to capture portals, and then walk between portals and link them, before creating fields. Some fields are huge, because people use bikes, trains, cars, planes or trains, and others are small because local portals make it easier.

In the last two or three weeks I have been re-reading A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and I barely remembered any of it. I had read it two or three decades ago and I read it again recently. The first thought this time, after reading Gulag by Applebaum, and other history books, is that it’s quite tame compared to other books. The other thing I noted is that it ends with him thinking that he has had a good day.

It’s worth noting that after my historical post was deleted from a group chat I aborted my run with that group. The reasons were rational, rather than emotional. Something else came up and by the time that something was over the run had started. I also expected it to rain very heavily and storm.

Yesterday the forecast was similar but I chose not to just sit at home and miss out. I could see that a storm was coming for 18:50 and again a few minutes later. I thought “If I wait too long it will be cancelled and I will have had a second day in a row without sports. That’s why I got dressed and cycled to the shop. I said “I expect the ride is cancelled”, and it was.

When I go out to cycle, run, and do other things I take photos and when I come home I sync them to photoprism on one laptop and immich on a separate Raspberry Pi. I use photosync to sync to Photoprism.

Once images are ingested I usually run a script almost daily. Rather than give you the lines of shell script I’ll explain what it does. It checks that the photos SD card is mounted, as well as the backup drive before using rsync to synchronise between the primary and backup locations and then from the laptop running photoprism to the Pi running a second instance of Immich.