Now that the hiking season has started again it isn’t rare for me to have to choose between two or three activities on a Sunday. Do I do the mountain hike from Villars Sur Ollon or the historical one to Romainmôtier?

This is what I was thinking about last night. Should I do the hike with 15 people or the one with just two or three people?

Small Groups are Better

There are a number of ways to simplify the decision process. The first is that as an introvert it is better for me to go with the smaller group because there is a higher probability of establishing a friendship or two. In theory the same is true of big groups but often such groups are already bonded.

There are two types of computer users in the world. Those that use them for what they need to use them for, and those that play with computers. In the 90s an English teacher was frustrated by the grammatically incorrect “playing with computers” because for him, and others people play computer games on computers, but do not play “with computers”.

Knowing the Bare Minimum

I was reminded of this by a thread on Facebook yesterday. There was a conversation about people saving files in the recycle bin or trash, and then finding that their files had vanished so they called IT support to ask for help. That someone would store their files in the recycle folder or the bin is absurd, for those that know computers well.

I have played with Dolce Gusto machines and Nespresso machines and both of them have the same flaw. They’re quick and convenient when you’re preparing coffee but less convenient when you need to get rid of the capsules. With Nespresso getting rid of the aluminium capsules is easy, once you have a container for them. You amass them at home and when you go to the recycling centre you have two wheelie bins devoted to the task of recovering the aluminium capsules and their content.

For a while I was thinking of moving from MacOS on the MacBook Pro to Ubuntu on the MacBook Pro and I prepared a remote boot option for this to be possible. Eventually I changed my mind and finally installed Ubuntu on the Windows HP machine. There are two reasons for this.

The first reason for which I decided to install Ubuntu on my HP laptop is that when I tried to play audio and use wifi on the Mac book pro there were issues. By running on an HP machine I have audio working, wifi working, and video playback.

Several years ago I volunteered at an event and rather than put us up in a hostel or hotel they put us up in a bunker and the experience was good. The advantage of a bunker is that it’s clean, and quite spacious, so you can choose which room to spend time in.

The beds are minimal, and you sleep on a simple bunk bed with just a pad and your sleeping bag. The showers are minimal too, just a cubicle like you would expect at a swimming pool, rather than with any privacy.

There is an old rule that I live by. If in doubt, abort. It’s related mainly to when I was diving but is linked to other forms of extreme sports. The logic is simple. If you’re going hiking, climbing, diving or some other dangerous sport and you have some doubt, for any reason, the rational thing to do is to abort.

Turning Around or Aborting

The idea is that if you’re 200m from the summit of a hike and you get hit by a hail storm you turn around, despite being so close to the summit. The idea is that if for any reason one person doesn’t have the right gear to dive, and you’re diving with someone else, then you abort.

There are two rules that we know well. The first is that we should take our shoes off before crossing a stream, to avoid getting our shoes wet. The second rule is never to cross a stream barefoot because you need to protect your feet.

Last week I crossed a stream and I broke the second rule of stream crossing. I crossed barefoot. I eventually slipped and smashed my toes into a stone or two which got me to yell in pain, and stumble.

Over a few days I have watched a few minutes at a time of a video on youtube. They used Unreal Engine 5 to model the entire ship. It’s a walking tour where you start on the grand staircase and explore the ship one deck at a time. It shows how the furniture might have looked, and gives you a sense of scale.

Such a video is interesting because it brings the ship to life. It takes us back in time to when the ship. The project is part of the Titanic HG Vintage Digital Revival project. At the time of writing this post they have modelled 50 percent of the Titanic.

Last night I started to install wordpress on the Pi5 and I got it to work. I then started to install ClassicPress via the ClassicPress switchtoclassicpress plugin and got blocked. I was blocked because in order for WordPress to update plugins, themes and wordpress it needs to have access to itself via FTP. That’s when I stopped for the night.

VSFTPD

This morning I installed vsftpd and the first part went well. Within a few minutes I had access to the Pi via FTP, and then changed from the default tutorial directory to the wordpress directory where apt install wordpress places WordPress. I was able to navigate the directories and see the files.

A few days ago I was asked once again why I wore two watches and I gave the usual answer of “this is my GPS watch and that is my Smartwatch”. People still fail to understand so I elaborate and that’s where I saw that blogging is useful.

When you write blog posts daily, for weeks, months, or even years in a row you get into the habit of elaborating on thoughts. Many years ago I thought that using Twitter made me short winded, maybe even succinct. With blogging I feel that the opposite is true. I don’t mean that it makes me long winded. I mean that it gets me to elaborate on ideas.