There was a time decades ago, when we had a choice of five channels. TSR, TF1, Antenne 2, SRF and RSI. Over time we got more channels offered to us, and with satellite TV and cable our choice mushroomed to the point where we could watch documentary channels for a morning, and move on to something else once the programs looped.

Watching More and More

The result of this TV watching is that we watched hours of programs but we also wasted huge amounts of time on ads. That’s okay for a half hour program. You would see ads at the start, ads at the middle, and then ads at the end.

Yesterday afternoon as I set off for my walk I noticed that the Pi AI Kit was in my post box. I moved it to the locked compartment and then went for my walk. After the walk I took the time to set it up and it went well.

Easy Assembly

If you’ve got your own kit but haven’t assembled it first, the long screws are there so that you can fix the Raspberry Pi and AI kit within the default Pi case. I made the mistake of using the shorter screws and had to swap them. It delayed me only slightly.

Yesterday I had to drive from Nyon to Founex to do a favour for someone. Normally I would have used the car but it was in for a tire change. I was switching from winter to summer tires at last.

On the way to Founex I took farm roads as much as possible because they’re less likely to have cars, and I’m less likely to be in the way of those cars. The ride was easy. I used just one or two bars of power on the way out so I still had plenty of battery left. I then walked around, and then picked up a book about technical writing before riding home.

Last night I attempted to watch the WWDC conference and failed. This wasn’t a technical issue. The issue was a cultural one. I find the show to be too kitschy for me. From the pretending to leap out of a plane to the tone of their conversation, it’s just unwatchable for me, with European sensibilities.

Apple came out with Apple Intelligence which, at face value, is fantastic. I say at face value because it won’t work on Intel devices, and it won’t work on devices that came out before the iPhone 15. This means that almost all Apple users will be isolated from Apple Intelligence instead they fork out thousands of francs for phones, laptops and desktops.

Today I spotted another clear sign that modern social media are toxic and unhealthy. I see this through the boy sober movement.

A new trend is sweeping TikTok: #boysober. Its rules? No dating apps, no dates, no exes, no hookups. Thousands of women are uploading videos describing why they have gone boy sober and extolling its benefits.

In my opinion this is a clear demonstration of why algorithms are so awful on social media. For me this illustrates that with algorithms social networks become unusable for close personal connections. The reason for this is that when you’re competing for likes, comments and re-shares you’re forgetting about the core purpose of social media, for human beings. The ability to connect with people that do not live in the same village or town that you live in, and to stave off loneliness.

This morning I noticedd that a wine Cave is having an event where they will make noise but it will stop at 22:00 because the law requires them to stop at that time. In the 21st century anyone can buy a loud sound system that could fill a village with noise pollution, and that’s one of the problems with modern life.

For the last four nights I have been unable to sleep before two to three in the morning because the local music festival, the Caribana had their speakers on so loud that I could hear them despite having two fans on full power, laptop speakers at full volume and even airport hearing protection.

Yesterday I picked up a 2017 mac book pro that I had been given and the first thing that struck me is that it looked brand new. the keys were not worn. It was clean.

Mine on the other hand is dusty, but more than that. Some of the keys are so worn from use that they have become transarent on a 2007 machine, and glowing on a second. It’s the asd keys that are the most messed up.

One of the greatest problems with music festivals is that they can be noisy until three or four am for days in a row. This means that sleep is affected. It is because sleep patterns are altered that it is the perfect excuse to watch several hours of television a night for several days in a row.

Usually I try to be disciplined. I try to watch one or two episodes of two or three shows, and then head to sleep. During a music festival I take liberties. I watch an hour or two of TV, and then I watch a full length film. Usually I don’t watch films because I don’t want to watch the same thing for an hour and a half or two.

When I got the electric scooter I was curious about whether it could be used when looking after children while they ride their bikes and the answer is “yes”. You can stop reading now.

Yesterday I was near the Lac de Divonne and since the children wanted to race it was a good opportunity to see whether I was faster than them on their bikes.

Due to the electric scooter being limited to 20 kilometres per hour I thought that it might be too slow. In fact it’s too fast, so you can modulate looking after children while riding an electric scooter. They can ride to their limit and you can ride beside them, without having to run to keep up.

In the good old days noisy music festivals made sense, because technology was not what it is today. There was no choice but to build huge speaker stacks with huge amounts of power, to deafen an entire crowd of festival goers. It was also a different age, where attitudes to noise pollution were different.

In the 21st century, as people are crammed closer and closer together in villages, towns and cities, so the need to control noise pollution should increase. In summer, if you live Nyon there are two awful festivals. One of them is the Caribana and the other is the Paléo. Both of them make noise for four or five days, from the sound checks at lunch time to the concerts that go until 0200-0300.