Normally I like to go for a run in the afternoon, after I have had a productive morning. This morning I went for a run first. This afternoon I have to go to an indoor meeting, which doesn’t fill me with euphoria. I feel an e-mail would achieve the same thing within a few minutes. Having said this I have skipped that meeting for three or four years so I feel obligated to go this afternoon.

For a while Whatsapp was a fantastic cross platform messaging tool for friends, families, groups and more. It was cross platform, fast and convenient. Eventually rather than rely on Facebook Messenger and Facebook, Facebook bought Whatsapp to consolidate its monopolistic grasp on the social web. As a result of this I tried to dump Whatsapp but it is hard to do so.

The reason for this is simple. Most people have not read Mindf*ck by Chris Whiley so for them it doesn’t matter that Facebook owns Instagram, Facebook, Whatsapp, Oculus Quest and more.

I have often had the temptation to dump Audible.com since it was bought by Amazon but I haven’t. It used to be that I had so many books that I didn’t want to lose them. Now that I have my own self-hosting solution, Audiobookshelf, for my own listening of my own books I can toy the idea of sliding to another provider. The first option is Kobo.

Kobo offers a plan for about 12 CHF per month for access to unlimited books to be read at once on its own catalgue but the catalogue is a quarter as big as that of Amazon/Audible so it would seriously limit what I can read and listen to. On the flipside part of my money would remain in the EU and the rest would go to Japan rather than the US. In the current climate it would be nice to remind the US of the cultural monopoly they currently hold, without showing gratitude. By dumping Audible for a US or Japanese solution for three years, or more we would remind the US that it exports to the world.

How many computers do you have at hand. Years ago I used to have two computers. A Mac Book Air and a Mac Book Pro. Eventually I sold the Mac Book Air and just used the Pro. I went to an event with the Pro and it was stolen so for a few days I was without any computer.

I then bought a much cheaper Mac Book Pro and since then my collection of computers has grown. My work horse from 2016 onwards was a Mac Book Pro, but during the pandemic I got an HP machine running windows. Now it’s running Ubuntu. I also have a chrome book as a spare.

In the golden age of chatrooms and instant messaging there was a rule. Do not post more than two or three messages before waiting for an answer. I regularly broke this rule until at least two or three times I was told off for the deluge. From then on I posted two or three messages and waited for an answer before writing another post.

Alongside the habit of waiting for an answer after a post or two I also got into the habit of writing longer posts rather than short ones- If I have a more detailed thing to write I write a paragraph, maybe more. I prefer to send one long message than a dozen short ones.

Last night I watched the first episode of a documentary series on the Vietnam war, made by Apple TV. It’s eighteen hours of documentaries covering different aspects of the conflict.

In the first episode they speak about boots on the ground and tunnel rats. Through the exploration of this topic we see some footage of traps being prepared and some footage from within the underground tunnels.

In the footage we see an operating theatre in an undergorund room. I have watched just one episode so far but I hope that it offers visual context to what I have read about in various books on the Vietnam war over the years.

One of the reasons for which I keep using Facebook has to do with peoples’ sharing of old photos, paintings, sketches and more. I love to see photos of Nyon, Morges, Neuchatel Lausanne and other places through time.

Recently I saw a photo of La Dole with a group of children skiing before the Doppler radar “boule” was installed as well as old photos of the Little Red Train as locals call it. I saw a photo of the steam train that connected Divonne to Nyon before it was removed to make way for the motorway. Part of that line is still used by Landi for farm produce. The rest of it is used as a voie verte for cyclists and walkers to enjoy a path away from cars and other traffic.

The US has a culture of streaking. I don’t mean running around naked at events. I mean of trying to do something daily for weeks, months or even years. As great as it can be, to develop consistent habits I believe that it can have a negative impact.

For months I wanted to get my daily streak of Duolingo, and eventually I got mentally tired and gave up, after 270 or more days in a row. With Kindle they encourage us to read daily which is great because reading is great, but it’s detrimental because I think finishing a set number of books per month is healthier.

When I went snowshoeing as a child I was photographed and it was used by the St Cergue Tourism board. I still have that poster in a room. Since then I went snowshoeing a few years ago and didn’t really enjoy it. The snowshoes didn’t feel comfortable. A few weeks ago I saw that people were planning a snowshoeing trip so I checked that they were set to my snowshoe size but skipped. Yesterday I finally went up with that group.

Tomorrow I could go for a drive and then walk on snow shoes to get to the top of a peak I have wanted to go up for a while. What slows down my desire to do this is the possible need to wear snowshoes. In theory they’re fine but ordinarily I find snowshoeing quite hard compared to just walking in snow. The advantage of this walk is that if it was cold and people have already walked the route, then the snow is compacted and walking in hiking shoes will be fine.