Today’s topic is quietness. As the weather was bad, and as there is no reason to leave the home unless you have to work, or to go for a walk everywhere was quiet. The roads were quiet, with few cars, the paths between fields were quiet. Even the motorway was quiet, as you can tell from the image above. It took just seconds for traffic to be rare enough for me to take this image.
It’s Day Five of ORCA in Switzerland. Next time we discuss shaking hands we should stop, and go into self-isolation. We had all the signs that a pandemic was coming. We knew about China and we saw what was going on in Italy. We knew that a virus was infecting people at a rapid rate.
When I chose not to go to the Graduate Institute because I knew a Pandemic was coming I was right.
On Day Three of ORCA in Switzerland, I have decided to deactivate my account. In the last three days, I have been bullied by two people, a third tried to discredit me and a fourth reported a link for spam. As a result of these unpleasant experiences, I have deactivated my Facebook account.
Facebook used to be a network for connecting us to university friends as students, and professional colleagues in the world of work.
On one side of the Channel, you have people like Colin Furze building fun machines that have the fatal flaw of having an internal combustion engine. On the other side of the Channel, you have people like Marc Gyver building an electric car with easily bought components. The video below shows the construction process without talking, and without music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FIznSec7BA
For about 2000 Euros, with bike parts, and the right skills, you can build your own cars.
When you work or live by the lake you see it change as the wind, temperature and light change. Sometimes it’s beautiful and pleasant as it was before, as you walk and keep warm. Now that I sat down to write this post the clouds have gone in and you can feel the cold.
I like the complexity of the image above. You see the diving boards, you see the winter trees, you see the flag and the people walking.
Does the World Wide Web dumb is down to much to read is an article exploring the idea that we have too many distractions and that as a result we are unable to focus. Yesterday I wrote about blogging rather than writing twitter threads and this article goes some way to exploring the same theme.
The first thing I would look at is the quality of writing and the quality of information.
I have been studying languages with Duolingo for 134 days.
For 134 days I have been studying German as well as other languages every single day. In so doing my reading comprehension has gone up and I no longer become a “deer in the headlights” when someone asks me a question in Spanish. I was even able to understand the questions people asked, and able to answer.
As I have been focusing on German and Spanish I find it increasingly easy to understand words so I can go through exercises that translate from German to English easily enough.
Today I participated in two Zwift events, a social ride and a race. The social ride was one hour of pedalling at a comfortable pace trying to keep to the same speed as the group. Rather than trying to be as fast as the group I was trying to pace myself to be within the peloton rather than riding off. Social rides are amusing because you start on the peer and wait for the counter to get down to zero and when it does you go from being on a home trainer in the real world cycling on a home trainer in the virtual world to cycling on the roads of Watopia.
The Apple Watch Series 3 is more interesting than I thought it would be, I like that it plays nicely with Strava and that it is possible to track shorter duration activities without worrying about battery life. I found that it loses about ten percent per hour. This is fine for most people. Daily goals Another feature that I like is that it measures daily goals in standing, calories and activity.