Recently I decided to re-explore Casio watches like the ones I had as a child. In the process I found that they’re minimalist, but great. They tell you the time. They beep every hour if you want them to. They wake you up if you set the alarm at the desired time. Some of them last for ten years, or more.

I experimented with several models including the F 91 and the A168 series. The F-91 might be 19-28 CHF in cost but the precision is not that great. It needs to be resynched every few days. In contrast if you set the A168 series of watches you set it once and it’s good for days, weeks or even months.

Yesterday I defederated my blog from the fediverse, and I removed the plugin from my blog this morning. I will probably never return to the Fediverse, whether Mastodon or other, for the forseeable future.

The Hostile Response

The reason for this is the following. A person asked a question. I gave two links to resources that could be useful. Instead of saying thanks and ignoring it the person chose to insult me indirectly so I wasn’t as diplomatic as usual. the result is that he, and a gang mobbed me with at least ten messages over two days.

Almost every day, whether on Facebook open groups, or Fediverse instances I post something, and someone feels the urge to say “You’re wrong” and if I answer a stream of trolls and flamers will pile in.

Yesterday someone asked “How do I do A on site B” and I gave two links to articles speaking about how to do A on site B. I was then told that it was not helpful, and then when I answered back a flame war started.

Today I read from Techcrunch and The Verge that there are new tools to limit things so that people can only get comments from friends and family. The irony isn’t lost on me.

The irony I’m thinking about is that we have built a social media landscape where the content from strangers floods our timelines without us wanting to see it. Rather than just give us chronological timelines with posts from our friends, they add mitigation factors for slowing down and stopping harrasment.

Last night I went to bed at a reasonable time. I took the time for a three pass shave with a DE blade, and then I browsed content. Eventually, at a reasonable time I opened the Kindle app on my phone to see how the choice of books has changed since the last time I looked. The result is that I found a new series of books to read.

I settled on The Complete McGann Naval Adventures. It was 2300 or midnight when I started to read and by the time I stopped reading it was beyond three in the morning. For some reason I was not tired.

For many years I could go to work by car so I did, because I had a parking. When I worked for other employers I took the train for a simple reason. Parking near work would cost 36 CHF per day whereas taking the train would cost about 14.50 CHF per day. I stopped using the car to commute for a simple reason, the cost of parking

20min just had an article about how the Swiss are bad at leaving the car at home, to replace it by the car, and for me there are two reasons. The first is that if parking at work is free, then you might as well take the car as it’s more convenient.

For years I have been tracking my reading, whether by Goodreads or Audible but more recently, within the last four months, or so, I also started using Bookmory, booktracker and a fourth one but I don’t remember the name. The one whose name I forgot was abandonned because it forgot my login information after an app update and I couldn’t be bothered renewing it, especially as I was been nagged to pay a monthly fee.

A year or two I read about how young people were switching to feature phones from smart phones and I thought it was about nostalgia and fashion. As a person who grew up with “feature phones” as they improved and evolved, and as a person who was either trapped at a laptop or desktop I couldn’t fathom why someone would want to disconnect by using a feature phone, rather than a smart phone.

It is possible to walk from La Sarraz to Romainmotier and back with barely any time spent on roads. You can get there by train b taking a train to Renens, and then switching to a train from Renens to La Sarraz. You can also drive to La Sarraz via the motorway and park at the P&R parking for five francs per day, via the app. It costs 1 CHF per hour but the walk took five and a half hours so I amortised the parking by staying more than five hours.

I don’t like to go recycling for two reasons. I usually end my daily walk just at the time when the recycling centre opens during week days so I don’t want to go back and spend time that I could invest in other chores in something as relaxed as recycling. The second reason is that because traffic is bad I usually prefer not to be one of the cars driving down a narrow path when it is not urgent to do so.