Posts

Reading Rather than Sleeping

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.

By Train or By Car

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.

Four Reading Tracking Apps

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.

Anti Social Media, Youth, And Feature Phones

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.

From La Sarraz to Romainmotier and Back

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.

Recycled Computers and RAM

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.

Which Hike to Do

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.

Playing With Computers

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.

CoffeeB - No Plastic, No Aluminium

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.

From Windows to Ubuntu

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.