Yesterday I walked from a “village” to a town. In the process I saw very few people out and about. I don’t know whether they stayed in because of the weather, or if they fled because of the three day weekend. Today is a cantonal holiday so shops in Vaud are closed. This could explain why it was quieter yesterday. It was funny to walk in the rain, equipped for it.

Yesterday I expected to be quite comfortable on a ride but I wasn’t. The climb was steep, with bits that were at 17 percent according to others. You pedal, and pedal. You feel the muscles in your legs fatigue. You think, “if only I could stop for a few minutes”, but you don’t. You keep going. You keep pushing. You get to the top. You rest for a bit, while waiting for others to join.

I have been up the Molard climb four times this year, and each time I sped up by a little. Twice my time improved by two minutes, and when I tried yesterday it improved by only a few seconds. With an average of 2000 meters of climbing per week I can feel the effects. I can feel that I am climbing with more power and I can feel a big change on short climbs.

From what I see the aim of AI companies is not to provide human beings with great tools to speed up work flows, to automate menial tasks, and to enhance our daily work lives. It is to replace us. For this reason I don’t like that there is so much hype about AI. Listening to the Keen At the same time as I write this I have been to half a dozen, if not a dozen talks about Vibe coding, AI workflows, MCPs, Agents and more.

This morning I toyed with the idea of wearing a proper winter cycling top. Instead I settled for a thermal layer, the usual top, sleeves, and a wind blocker. These weren’t enough for me to feel warm. 10°c The temperature has dropped. it was 10°c this morning and I was cold when I set off and I seriously considered turning back for another layer but thought that if I did, then when it gets really cold, I won’t have anything warmer to wear on bike rides.

Recently I noticed that with the iPhone 14 checking notifications is a challenge. You have to really want to see notifications for them to show up. In some cases I find that they are automatically bypassed by the current iOS. Whilst this might seem problematic, most notifications, in 2025 are a waste of time. They are duplicates from Strava, Linkedin, Udemy and plenty of other sites. If these sites are sticky enough, then we will see the notifications on the site, while we’re sitting at a computer, so we don’t need them to appear in our phone notifications.

Years ago, when we were on web forums with a dozen or more people we knew each other. Over time web forums and chat rooms became bigger, as more people adopted the World Wide Web. In the process we went from being part of several niche web forums to being part of MySpace, Friendster, Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk and plenty of other sites. As the number of people on these networks grew exponentially, so our social networks grew exponentially.

Those of us that are geeky, and old enough, will remember when apps were local and we saved data to internal and external hard drives. We would take photos with a camera, or a phone, and once we got home we would download them to our computer, using apps like Picasa and iPhoto. Both apps would help us to organise them chronolgically, and eventually by location, people in photos and much more.

I was perfectly happy hiking in solitude for years in a row, but eventually, as normal life returned, after the pandemic I felt a sense of isolation, especially on weekends. I would see groups walking together and I longed to revert to that habit. Eventually I did and now for more than a year I have been on regular group hikes and bike rides. I enjoy group hikes and bike rides but as an introvert I usually don’t start speaking with people near the end of an event, and if the event comes to an end then I usually don’t see people again for weeks, or even months.

When I think of going to the Roche Au Dade via ferrata I often think “but it’s far”. That’s when I am going by car. I think the same when I consider going to St George, Fort L’écluse and other places. The paradox is that when I think of going to these places, by bike, now, I don’t. When you go somewhere by car, it costs money, and time. By bike it costs time, but that time is the experience.