Yesterday I went for a hike from Neuchâtel to Valangin. This is a 14 kilometre loop that begins with a relatively steep climb out of the city before heading into the woods. You hear the sounds of the road every so often as you crisscross paths with it. The castle was used from the 12th to the 16th centuries by the Valangin lords.
The Way Up As I mentioned in the intro the start of the climb is quite steep, through the woods.
Recently someone said “I wonder why they would build the Abbey d’Oujon in the middle of nowhere and someone asked the same about Romainmôtier and the idea is an interesting one.
It’s interesting because until motorways and before an extra four to six billion peoples wewre born and survived infancy the world, as a whole was much quieter. Look at photos of villages that are now towns. Look at villages where they have old buildings, and how old villas are now turned into apartment blocks instead.
Recently I have spent more time on Facebook and I have joined a few photo groups. One of them is for the Canton De Vaud, where people are sharing photos they have taken of the region. These photographs are well framed, well lit, and pleasant to look at. It feels like a community of photographers.
Part of my reason for wanting to return to Facebook is this group. If there is a group of local people sharing photographs then there is a good chance that there are other local groups for sharing other images, events and more.
Last night I was reading from a book, rather than from a kindle or audible book. As a result I had to keep the bedside light on. I also had to ensure that the light light the pages of the book. I was reading from the book “Beneath My Feet, Writers on Walking” introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull and I came across an exert written by Karl Philips Moritz. He wrote Journeys of a German in England in 1782.
Two days ago I watched Nanook of the North, a documentary about an Inuit man and his family. This isn’t a documentary in the conventional sense. This documentary dates back to 1922 when the Documentary film was a brand new genre. This is one of the first documentaries, if not the first. I read about it for years, until, when I was watching Northern Exposure I did a search and came across the documentary on Filmin.
Recently I watched a 1930s film about how photographs were transmitted by phone. What makes this feature so interesting is that it is explained in a simple to understand manner, using, string that has an image, of all things. This is a clear explanation of how image sending works, but also how television and other technologies would work in year to come. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLUD_NGE370
This is about the analogue sending of an analogue image.
When I read books i read to be transported back to a different time and a different way of thinking. That’s why i read James Bond books, among others. The books are old-fashioned but it is that obsolescence that makes them interesting.
They take us to a time before travel as we know it today. Imagine reading about being sun burned and sun oil. Imagine reading about speeding cars. Imagine reading about a time before road safety laws and speed limits.
Back in the good old days of Twitter the length of a tweet was limited to the length of an SMS. The aim was to make it possible for people to tweet and have conversations using GSM phones. With short messages we could leave the keyboard behind and read messages on our mobile phones.
Jaiku was similar except that it was more advanced, having an app that played well with Symbian devices.
Every Rocketdyne engine was fine tuned and perfected by hand, from plans, that were modified but not updated. This means that each engine was unique. It would take trial and error to build them again.
With GIT and other forms of version control the entire process could theoretically have been logged and preserved, not so, in this context. Interesting video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovD0aLdRUs0
Last night I watched a video about a visit to Perm36 but it covered just the trip. The video below is far more complete and informative. I am currently reading Gulag by Anne Applebaum, rather than The Gulag Archipelago, like she mentions. I started reading it decades ago but never finished it. I read A day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in a single day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgtjgPtGmx0
Reading Gulag, The Gulag Archipelago and other books helps give some context to what Soviet Russia was like.