Year 2020. What a year! Sure, already around early January there were rumours/noise about Covid-19, but who would have thought where it will end up! Thankfully, none of my close or extended family was directly (medically) affected by Covid, so I/we had a privileged year compared to so many other people. I thought how to write a mini-summary, but prose is too difficult, so let s just go month-by-month. Please note that my memory is fuzzy after 9 months cooked up in the apartment, so things could 1 month compared to what I wrote.

Timeline

January Ski weekend. Skiing is awesome! Cancelling a US work trip since there will be more opportunities soon (har har!).

February Ski vacation. Yep, skiing is awesome. Can t wait for next season (har har!). Discussions about Covid start in the office, but more is this scary or just interesting? (yes, this was before casualties). Then things start escalating, work-from-home at least partially, etc. etc. Definitely not just intersting anymore. In Garmin-speak, I got ~700+ intensity minutes in February (correlates with activity time, but depends on intensity of the effort whether 1:1 or 2 intensity minutes for one wall-clock minute).

March Sometimes during the month, my workplace introduces mandatory WFH. I remember being the last person in our team in the office, on the last day we were allowed to work, and cleaning my desk/etc., thinking all this, and we ll be back in 3 weeks or so . Har har! I buy a webcam, just in case WFH gets extended. And start to increase my sports - getting double the intensity minutes (1500+).

April Switzerland enters the first, hard, lockdown. Or was it late March? Not entirely sure, but in my mind March was the opening, and April was the first main course. It is challenging, having to juggle family and work and stressed schedule, but also interesting. Looking back, I think I liked April the most, as people were actually careful at that time. I continue upgrading my home office - new sound system, so that I don t have to plug in/plug out cables. 1700+ intensity minutes this month.

May Continued WFH, somewhat routine now. My then internet provider started sucking hard, so I upgrade with good results. I m still happy, half a year later (quite happy, even). Still going strong otherwise, but waiting for summer vacation, whatever it will be. A tiny bit more effort, so 1800 intensity minutes in May.

June Switzerland relaxes the lock down, but not my company, so as the rest of the family goes out and about, I start feeling alone in the apartment. And somewhat angry at it, which impacts my sports (counter-intuitively), so I only get 1500 intensity minutes. I go and buy a coffee machine a real one, that takes beans and grinds them, so I get to enjoy the smell of freshly-ground coffee and the fun of learning about coffee beans, etc. But it occupies the time. On the work/job front, I think at this time I finally got a workstation for home, instead of a laptop (which was ultra-portable too), so together with the coffee machine, it feels like a normal work environment. Well, modulo all the people. At least I m not crying anymore every time I open a new tab in Chrome

July Situation is slowly going better, but no, not my company. Still mandatory WFH, with (if I recall correctly) one day per week allowed, and no meeting other people. I get angrier, but manage to channel my energy into sports, almost doubly my efforts in July - 2937 intensity minutes, not quite reaching the 3000 magic number. I buy more stuff to clean and take care of my bicycles, which I don t really use. So shopping therapy too.

August The month starts with a one week family vacation, but I take a bike too, so I manage to put in some effort (it was quite nice riding TBH). A bit of changes in the personal life (nothing unexpected), which complicates things a bit, but at this moment I really thought Switzerland is going to continue to decrease in infections/R-factor/etc. so things will get back to normal, right? My company expands a bit the work-from-office part, so I m optimistic. Sports wise, still going strong, 2500 intensity minutes, preparing for the single race this year.

September The personal life changes from August start to stabilise, so things become again routine, and I finally get to do a race. Life was good for an extended weekend (well, modulo race angst, but that s part of the fun), and I feel justified to take it slow the week after the race. And the week after that too. I end up the month with close, but not quite, 1900 intensity minutes.

October October starts with school holidays and a one week family vacation, but I feel demotivated. Everything is closing down again (well, modulo schools), and I actually have difficulty getting re-adjusted to no longer being alone in the apartment during the work hours. I only get ~1000 intensity minutes in October, mainly thanks to good late autumn weather and outside rides. And I start playing way more computer games. I also sell my PS4, hoping to get a PS5 next month.

November November continues to suck. I think my vacation in October was actually detrimental - it broke my rhythm, I don t really do sport anymore, not consistently at least, so I only get 700+ intensity minutes. And I keep playing computer games, even if I missed the PS5 ordering window; so I switch to PC gaming. My home office feels very crowded, so as kind of anti-shopping therapy, I sell tons of smallish stuff; can t believe how much crap I kept around while not really using it. I also manage to update/refresh all my Debian packages, since next freeze approaches. Better than for previous releases, so it feels good.

December December comes, end of the year, the much awaited vacation - which we decide to cancel due to the situation in whole of Switzerland (and neighbouring countries). I basically only play computer games, and get grand total of 345 activity minutes this month. And since my weight is inversely correlated to my training, I m basically back at my February weight, having lost all the gains I made during the year. I mean, having gained back all the fat I lost. Err, you know what I mean; I m back close to my high-watermark, which is not good.

Conclusion I was somehow hoping that the end of the year will allow me to reset and restart, but somehow - a few days into January - it doesn t really feel so. My sleep schedule is totally ruined, my motivation is so-so, and I think the way I crashed in October was much harder/worse than I realised at the time, but in a way expected for this crazy year. I have some projects for 2021 - or at least, I m trying to make up a project list - in order to get a bit more structure in my continued stuck inside the house part, which is especially terrible when on-call. I don t know how the next 3-6 months will evolve, but I m thankful that so far, we are all healthy. Actually, me personally I ve been healthier physically than in other years, due to less contact with other people. On the other side, thinking of all the health-care workers, or even service workers, my IT job is comfy and all I am is a spoiled person (I could write many posts on specifically this topic). I really need to up my willpower and lower my spoil level. Hints are welcome :( Wish everybody has a better year in 2021.

To start off, let me say it again: I hate light pollution. I really, really hate it. I love the night sky where you look up and see thousands of stars, and constellations besides Ursa Major. As somebody said once, You haven t lived until you ve seen your shadow by the light of the Milky Way . But, ahem, I live in a large city, and despite my attempts using star trackers, special filters, etc. you simply can t escape it. So, whenever we go on vacation in the mountains, I m trying to think if I can do a bit of astro-photography (not that I m good at it). Which bring me to our recent vacation up in the mountains. I was looking forward to it, until in the week before, when the weather prognosis was switching between snow, rain and overcast for the entire week. No actual day or night with clear skies, so I didn t take a tripod, I didn t take a wide lens, and put night photography out of my mind. Vacation itself was good, especially the quietness of the place, so I usually went to be early-ish and didn t look outside. The weather was as forecasted - no new snow (but there was enough up in the mountains), but heavy clouds all the time, and the sun only showed itself for a few minutes at a time. One night I was up a bit longer than usual, working on the laptop and being very annoyed by a buzzing sound. At first I thought maybe I was imagining it, but from time to time it was stopping briefly, so it was a real noise; I started hunting for the source. Not my laptop, not the fridge, not the TV but it was getting stronger near the window. I open the door to the balcony, and bam! Very loud noise, from the hotel nearby, where at midnight the pool was being cleaned. I look at the people doing the work, trying to estimate how long it ll be until they finish, but it was looking like a long time. Fortunately with the door closed the noise was not bad enough to impact my sleep, so I debate getting angry or just resigned, and since it was late, I just sigh, roll my eyes not metaphorically, but actually roll my eyes and look up, and I can t believe my eyes. Completely clear sky, no trace of clouds anywhere, and stars. Lots of starts. I sit there, looking at the sky and enjoying the view, and I think to myself that it won t look that nice on the camera, for sure. Especially without a real trip, and without a fast lens. Nevertheless, I grab my camera and just for kicks take one handheld picture. To my surprise (and almost disbelief), blurry pixels aside, the photo does look like what I was seeing, so I grab my tiny tripod that I carried along, and (with only a 24-70 zoom lens), grab a photo. And another, and another and then I realise that if I can make the composition work, and find a good shutter speed, this can turn out a good picture. I didn t have a remote release, the tripod was not very stable and it cannot point the camera upwards (it s basically an emergency tripod), so it was quite sub-optimal; still, I try multiple shots (different compositions, different shutter speeds); they look on the camera screen and on the phone pretty good, so just for safety I take a few more, and, very happy, go to bed. Coming back from vacation, on the large monitor, it turns out that the first 28 out of the 30 pictures were either blurry or not well focused (as I was focusing manually), and the 29th was almost OK but still not very good. Only the last, the really last picture, was technically good and also composition-wise OK. Luck? Foresight? Don t know, but it was worth deleting 28 pictures to get this one. One of my best night shots, despite being so unprepared

Stars! Lots of stars! And mountains

Of course, compared to other people s pictures, this is not special. But for me, it will be a keepsake of how a real night sky should look like. If you want to zoom in, higher resolution on flickr. Technically, the challenges for the picture were two-fold:

• fighting the shutter speed; the light was not the problem, but rather the tripod and lack of remote release: a short shutter speed will magnify tripod issues/movement from the release (although I was using delayed release on the camera), but will prevent star trails, and a long shutter speed will do the exact opposite; in the end, at the focal length I was using, I settled on a 5 second shutter speed.
• composition: due to the presence of the mountains (which I couldn t avoid by tilting the camera fully up), this was for me a difficult thing, since it s more on the artistic side, which is very subjective; in the end, this turned out fine (I think), but mostly because I took pictures from many different perspectives.

Next time when travelling by car, I ll surely take a proper tripod Until next time, clear and dark skies

I don t have to mention that 2020 is a special year, so all the normal race plan was out the window, and I was very happy and fortunate to be able to do even one race. And only delayed 3 weeks to write this race report :/ So, here s the story

Preparing for the race Because it was a special year, and everything was crazy, I actually managed to do more sports than usual, at least up to end of July. So my fitness, and even body weight, was relatively fine, so I subscribed to the mid-distance race (official numbers: 78km distance, 1570 meters altitude), and then off it went to a proper summer vacation in a hotel, even. And while I did do some bike rides during that vacation, from then on my training regime went just off? I did train, I did ride, I did get significant PRs, but it didn t click anymore. Plus, due to well, actually not sure what, work or coffee or something my sleep regime also got completely ruined On top of that, I didn t think about the fact that the race was going to be mid-September, and that high up in the mountains, the weather could have be bad enough (I mean, in 2018 the weather was really bad even in August ) such that I d need to seriously think about clothing.

Race week I arrive in Scuol two days before the race, very tired (I think I got only 6 hours of sleep the night before), and definitely not in a good shape. I was feeling bad enough that I was not quite sure I was going to race. At least weather was OK, such that normal summer clothing would suffice. But the race info was mentioning dangerous segments, to be very careful, etc. etc. so I was quite anxious. Note 1: my wife says, this was not the first time, and likely not the last time that two days before the race I feel like quitting. And as I m currently on-and-off reading the interesting The Brave Athlete: Calm the Fuck Down and Rise to the Occasion book (by Lesley Paterson and Simon Marshall; it s an interesting book, not sure if I recommend it or not), I am beginning to think that this is my reaction to races where I have overshot my usual distance. Or, in general, races where I fear the altitude gain. Not quite sure, but I think it is indeed the actual cause. So I spend Thursday evening feeling unwell, and thinking I ll see how Friday goes. Friday comes, and having slept reasonably well entire night, I pick up my race number, then I take another nap in the afternoon - in total, I ve slept around 13 hours that day. So I felt much better, and was looking forward to the race. Saturday morning comes, I manage to wake up early, and get ready in time; almost didn t panic at all that I m going to be late. Note 2: my wife also says that this is the usual way I behave. Hence, it must be most of it a mental issue, rather than real physical one

Race I reach the train station in time, I get on the train, and by the time the train reached Zernez, I fully calm down. There was am entire hour wait though before the race, and it was quite chilly. Of course I didn t bring anything beside what I was wearing, relying on temperature getting better later in the day. During the wait, there were two interesting things happening. First, we actually got there (in Zernez) before the first people from the long distance passed by, both men and women. Seeing them pass by was cool, thinking they already had ~1 200m altitude in just 30-ish kilometres. The second thing was, as this was the middle and not the shortest distance, the people in the group looked differently than in previous years. More precisely, they were looking very fit, and I was feeling fat. Well, I am overweight, so it was expected, but I was feeling it even more than usual. I think only one or two in ten people were looking as fit as me or less And of course, the pictures post-race show me even less fit-looking than I thought. Ah, self-deception is a sweet thing And yes, we all had to wear masks, up until the last minute. It was interesting, but not actually annoying - and small enough price for being able to race! Then the race starts, and as opposed to many other years, it starts slow. I didn t feel that rush of people starting fast, it was reasonable?

First part of the race (good) Thus started the first part of the race, on a new route that I was unfamiliar with. There was not too much climbing, to be honest, and there was some tricky single-trail through the woods, with lots of the roots. I actually had to get off the bike and push it, since it was too difficult to pedal uphill on that path. Other than that, I was managing so far to adjust my efforts well enough that my usual problems related to climbing (lower back pain) didn t yet appear, even as the overall climbed meters were increasing. I was quite happy at that, and had lots of reserves. To my (pleasant) surprise, two positive things happened:

• I was never alone, a sign that I wasn t too far back.
• I was passing/being passed by people, both on climbs but also on descents! It s rare, but I did overtake a few people on a difficult trail downhill.

With all the back and forth, a few people became familiar (or at least their kit), and it was fun seeing who is better uphill vs. downhill.

And second part (not so good) I finally get to (around) S-chanf, on a very nice but small descent, and on flat roads, and start the normal route for the short race. Something was off though - I knew from past years that these last ~47km have around 700-800m altitude, but I had already done around 1000m. So the promised 1571m were likely to be off, by at least 100-150m. I set myself a new target of 1700m, and adjust my efforts based on that. And then, like clockwork on the 3:00:00 mark, the route exited the forest, the sun got out of the clouds, and the temperature started to increase from 16-17 C to 26 +, with peaks of 31 C. I m not joking: at 2:58:43, temp was 16 , at 3:00:00, it was 18 , at 3:05:45, it was 26 . Heat and climbing are my two nemeses, and after having a pretty good race for the first 3 hours and almost exactly 1200m of climbing, I started feeling quite miserable. Well, it was not all bad. There were some nice stretches of flat, where I knew I can pedal strongly and keep up with other people, until my chain dropped, so I had to stop, re-set it, and lose 2 minutes. Sigh. But, at least, I was familiar with this race, or so I thought. I completely mis-remembered the last ~20km as a two-punch climb, Guarda and Ftan, whereas it is actually a three-punch one: Guarda, Ardez, and only then Ftan. Doesn t help that Ardez has the nice ruins that I was remembering and which threw me off. The saddest part of the day was here, on one of the last climbs - not sure if to Guarda or to Arddez, where a guy overtakes me, and tells me he s glad he finally caught up with me, he almost got me five or six times (!), but I always managed to break off. Always, until now. Now, this was sad (I was huffing and puffing like a steam locomotive now), but also positive, as I never had that before. One good, one bad? And of course, it was more than 1 700m altitude, it was 1 816m. And the descent to Scuol shorter and it didn t end as usual with the small but sharp climb which I just love, due to Covid changes. But, I finished, and without any actual issues, and no dangerous segments as far as I saw. I was anxious for no good reason

Conclusion (or confusion?) So this race was interesting: three hours (to the minute) in which I went 43.5km, climbed 1200m, felt great, and was able to push and push. And then the second part, only ~32km, climbed only 600m, but which felt quite miserable. I don t know if it was mainly heat, mainly my body giving up after that much climbing (or time?), or both. But it s clear that I can t reliably race for more than around these numbers: 3 hours, ~1000+m altitude, in >20 C temperature. One thing that I managed to achieve though: except due to the technically complex trail at the beginning where I pushed the bike, I did not ever stop and push the bike uphill because I was too tired. Instead, I managed (badly) to do the switch sitting/standing as much as I could motivate myself, and thus continue pushing uphill. This is an achievement for me, since mentally it s oh so easy to stop and push the bike, so I was quite glad. As to the race results, they were quite atrocious:

• age category (men), 38 out of 52 finishers, 4h54m, with first finisher doing 3h09m, so 50% slower (!)
• overall (men), 138 out of 173 finishers, with first finisher 2h53m.

These results clearly don t align with my feeling of a good first half of the race, so either it was purely subjective, or maybe in this special year, only really strong people registered for the race, or something else One positive aspect though, compared to most other years, was the consistency of my placement (age and overall):

• Zuoz: 38 / 141
• S-Chanf: 39 / 141
• Zernez: 39 / 141
• Guarda: 38 / 138
• Ftan: 38 / 138
• ( next - whatever this is): 38 / 138
• Finish: 38 / 138

So despite all my ranting above, and all the stats I m pulling out of my own race, it looks like my position in the race was fully settled in the really first part, and I didn t gain nor lose practically anything afterwards. I did dip one place but then gained it back (on the climb to Guarda, even). The split times (per-segment rankings) are a bit more variable, and show that I was actually fast on the climbs but losing speed on the descents, which I really don t understand anymore:

• Zernez-Zuoz (unclear type): 38 / 141
• Zuoz-S-Chanf (unclear type): 40 / 141
• S-Chanf-Zernez (mostly downhill): 39 / 143
• Zernez-Guarda (mostly uphill): 37 / 136
• Guarda-Ftan (mostly uphill): 37 / 131
• Ftan-Scuol (mostly downhill): 43 / 156

The difference at the end is striking. I m visually matching the map positions to km and then use VeloViewer for computing the altitude gain, but Zernez to Guarda is 420m altitude, and Guarda to Ftan is 200m altitude gain, and yet on both, I was faster than my final place, and by quite a few places on overall, only to lose that on the descent (Ftan-Scuol), and by a large margin. So, amongst all the confusion here, I think the story overall is:

• indeed I was quite fit for me, so the climbs were better than my place in the race (if that makes sense).
• however, I m not actually good at climbing nor fit (watts/kg), so I m still way back in the pack (oops!).
• and I do suck at descending, both me (skills) and possible my bike setup as well (too high tyre pressure, etc.) so I lose even more time here

As usual, the final take-away points are: lose the extra weight that is not needed, get better skills, get better core to be better at climbing. I ll finish here with one pic, taken in Guarda (4 hours into the race, more or less):

Climbing in Guarda

Until next year!

Note: all this is my personal experience, on my personal machines, and I don t claim it to be the absolute truth. Also, I don t directly call out names, although if you live in Switzerland it s pretty easy to guess who the old provider is from some hints. For a long time, I wanted to move away from my current (well, now past) provider, for a multitude of reasons. The main being that the company is very classic company, with classic support system, that doesn t work very well - I had troubles with their billing system that left me out cold without internet for 15 days, but for the recent few years, they were mostly OK, and changing to a different provider would have meant me routing a really long Ethernet cable around the apartment, so I kept postponing it. Yes, self-inflicted pain, I know. Until the entire work-from-home thing, when the usually stable connection start degrading in a very linear fashion day-by-day (this is a graph that basically reflects download bandwidth):

1+ month download bandwidth test

At first, I didn t realise this, as even 100Mbps is still fast enough. But once the connection went below (I believe) 50Mbps, it became visible in day to day work. And since I work daily from home yeah. Not fun. So I started doing speedtest.net - and oh my, ~20Mbps was a good result, usually 12-14Mbps. On a wired connection. On a connection that officially is supposed to be 600Mbps down. The upload speed was spot on, so I didn t think it was my router, but:

• rebooted everything; yes, including the cable modem.
• turned off firewall. and on. and off. of course, no change.
• changed the Ethernet port used on my firewall.
• changed firewall rules.
• rebooted again.

Nothing helped. Once in a blue moon, speedtest would give me 100Mbps, but like once every two days, then it would be back and showing 8Mbps. Eight! It ended up as even apt update was tediously slow, and kernel downloads took ages The official instructions for dealing with bad internet are a joke:

• turn off everything.
• change cable modem from bridged mode to router mode - which is not how I want the modem to work, so the test is meaningless; also, how can router mode be faster
• disconnect everything else than the test computer.
• download a program from somewhere (Windows/Mac/iOS, with a browser version too), and run it. yay for open platform!

And the best part: If you are not satisfied with the results, read our internet optimisation guide. If you are still not happy, use our community forums or our social platforms. Given that it was a decline over 3-weeks, that I don t know of any computer component that would degrade this steadily but not throw any other errors, and that my upload speed was all good, I assumed it s the provider. Maybe I was wrong, but I wanted to do this anyway for a long while, so I went through the find how to route cable, check if other provider socket is good, order service, etc. dance, and less than a week later, I had the other connection. Now, of course, bandwidth works as expected:

1+ month updated bandwidth test

Both download and upload are fine (the graph above is just download). Latency is also much better, towards many parts of the internet that matter. But what is shocking is the difference in jitter to some external hosts I care about. On the previous provider, a funny thing was that both outgoing and incoming pings had both more jitter and packet loss when done directly (IPv4 to IPv4) than when done over a VPN. This doesn t make sense, since VPN is just overhead over IPv4, but the graphs show it, and what I think happens is that a VPN flow is cached in the provider s routers, whereas a simple ping packet not. But, the fact that there s enough jitter for a ping to a not-very-far host doesn t make me happy. Examples, outgoing:

Outgoing smokeping to public IPv4

Outgoing smokeping over VPN

And incoming:

Incoming smokeping to public IPv4

Incoming smokeping over VPN

Both incoming and outgoing show this weirdness - more packet loss and more jitter over VPN. Again, this is not a problem in practice, or not much, but makes me wonder what other shenanigans happen behind the scenes. You can also see clearly when the work from home traffic entered the picture and started significantly degrading my connection, even over the magically better VPN connection. Switching to this week s view shows the (in my opinion) dramatic improvement in consistency of the connection:

Outgoing current week smokeping to public IPv4

Outgoing current week smokeping over VPN

No more packet loss, no more jitter. You can also see my VPN being temporarily down during provider switchover because my firewall was not quite correct for a moment. And the last drill down, at high resolution, one day before and one day after switchover. Red is VPN, blue is plain IPv4, yellow is the missing IPv6 connection :) Incoming old:

Incoming 1-day smokeping, old provider

and new:

Incoming 1-day smokeping, new provider

Outgoing old:

Outgoing 1-day smokeping, old provider

and new:

Outgoing 1-day smokeping, new provider

This is what I expect, ping-over-VPN should of course be slower than plain ping. Note that incoming and outgoing have slightly different consistency, but that is fine for me :) The endpoints doing the two tests are different, so this is expected. Reading the legend on the graphs for the incoming connection (similar story for outgoing):

• before/after plain latency: 24.1ms 18.8ms, ~5.3ms gained, ~22% lower.
• before/after packet loss: ~7.0% 0.0% , infinitely better :)
• before/after latency standard deviation: ~2.1ms 0.0ms.
• before/after direct-vs-VPN difference: inconsistent consistent 0.4ms faster for direct ping.

So to my previous provider: it can be done better. Or at least, allow people easier ways to submit performance issue problems. For me, the moral of the story is that I should have switched a couple of years ago, instead of being lazy. And that I m curious to see how IPv6 traffic will differ, if at all :) Take care, everyone! And thanks for looking at these many graphs :)

It is said that with age comes wisdom. I would be happy for that to be true, because today I must have been very very young then. For example, if you want to make a long bike ride in order to hit some milestone, like your first metric century, it is not indicated to follow ANY of the following points:

• instead of doing this in the season, when you're fit, wait over the winter, during which you should indulge in food and drink with only an occasional short bike ride, so that most of your fitness is gone and replaced by a few extra kilograms;
• instead of choosing a flat route that you've done before, extending it a bit to hit the target distance, think about taking the route from one of the people you follow on Strava (and I mean real cyclists here); bonus points if you choose one they mention was about training instead of a freeride and gave it a meaningful name like "The ride of 3 peaks", something with 1'500m+ altitude gain
• in order to not get bogged down by too much by extra weight (those winter kilograms are enough!), skimp on breakfast (just a very very light one); together with the energy bar you eat, something like 400 calories
• take the same amount of food you take for much shorter and flatter rides; bonus points if you don't check the actual calories in the food, and instead of the presumed 700+ calories you think you're carrying (which might be enough, if you space them correctly, given how much you can absorb per hour), take at most 300 calories with you, because hey, your body is definitely used with long efforts in which you convert fat to energy on the fly, right? especially after said winter pause!
• since water is scarce in the Swiss outdoors (not!), especially when doing a road bike ride, carry lots of water with you (full hydro-pack, 3l) instead of an extra banana or energy bar, or a sandwich, or nuts, or a steak mmmm, steak!
• and finally and most importantly don't do the ride indoors on the trainer, even though it can pretty realistically simulate the effort, but instead do it for real outside, where you can't simply stop when you had enough, because you have to get back home

For bonus points, if you somehow manage to reach the third peak in the above ride, and have mostly only flat/down to the destination, do the following: be so glad you're done with climbing, that you don't pay attention to the map and start a wrong descent, on a busy narrow road, so that you can't stop immediately as you realise you've lost the track; it will cost you only an extra ~80 meters of height towards the end of the ride. Which are pretty cheap, since all the food is gone and the water almost as well, so the backpack is light. Right. However, if you do follow all the above, you're rewarded with a most wonderful thing for the second half of the ride: your will receive a +5 boost on your concentration skill. You will be able to focus on, and think about a single thing for hours at a time, examining it (well, its contents) in minute detail. Plus, when you get home and open that thing I mean, of course, the FRIDGE with all the wonderful FOOD it contains everything will taste MAGICAL! You can now recoup the roughly 1500 calories deficit on the ride, and finally no longer feel SO HUNGRY. That's all. Strava said "EXTREME" suffer score, albeit less than 20% points in the red, which means I was just slugging through the ride (total time confirms it), like a very very very old man. But definitely not a wise one.

Fine art printing at home It is very interesting how people change over time. Way back in the analog film era, I was using a very cheap camera, and getting the film developed and pictures printed at random places in town. As the movement towards digital began, I started dreaming of a full digital workflow take picture, download from camera, enjoy on your monitor. No more pesky physical stuff. And when I finally got a digital camera, I was oh-so-happy to finally get rid of films and prints. But time passes, and a few years back though, at the end of 2013, I had the misfortune to learn on various photography forums that, within certain limits, one can do high quality printing at home quality high enough for serious prints. I always imagined that "serious" prints can only happen on big, professional stuff, but to my surprise, what I was reading was that many professional photographers can do their prints themselves (for certain paper sizes). I tried before printing photos on my laser printer that I wrote about, but that is a hilarious exercise, nothing more. Thinking process was pretty simple:

• another hobby? check!
• new gear to learn? check!
• something more palpable to do with my photos? good enough reason, check!

So I decided to get a photo printer. Because hey, one more printer was the thing I was missing the most. Ink The think with inkjet photo printers is that the bigger they are, the more cheaper the ink is, and the more optimised they are for large volume printing. The more optimisation for large volume, the worse the printers do if you don't print often enough, in the sense of dried ink. This means clogged heads, and each of the serious printer manufacturers (Canon, Epson, HP) deal in different ways with it; some by having extra, spare lines in the print head that replace the clogged ones, others have replaceable printer heads, others rely on wasting ink by trying to flush the ink lines, etc. Also within each manufacturer's lines, different printers behave differently. So one must take this into account how often will you print? Of course I thought very often, but the truth is, this is just another hobby, so time is lacking, and I have weeks going by without turning the printer on. And so, I did have some problems with dried ink, but minor I'd say; I only had once to run a "power cleaning", when due to real world I didn't have time to turn the printer on for months; I managed to choose a good printer in this regard. I never though computed how much ink I wasted with cleaning the heads Paper Another issue with printing is the fact that the result is a physical object, outside of the digital realm. And the transition from digital to physical is tricky. First, the printer itself and the ink are one relatively straightforward choice: decide (by whatever criteria you want) on the printer, and most printers at this level have one set of inks only. But the problem is: which paper? And as I learned, since how the paper looks is a subjective thing, this is an endless topic

• first question: glossy or matte ink?
• if glossy, which type of paper? actually glossy (uh, no), semi-gloss, pearl, satin?
• if matte, are we talking about textured or smooth matte?
• what weight? fine art paper that I tested can go from a very interesting 100gsm (almost like standard paper) Rice Paper, to 210, 286, 310 (quite standard), 325, 350 and finally towards 390-410 heavy canvas;
• on the more professional side, do you care about lifetime of paper? if you choose yes, then take care of choosing paper with no OBA optical brightening agents;
• and if you really want to go deep, what base? cellulose, alpha-cellulose or cotton?

As you can see, this is really a bottomless pit. I made the mistake of buying lots of sample packs, thinking that settling on a specific paper will be an objective process, but no. Three years later, I have a few favourite papers, but I'm sure I could have almost randomly chosen them (read 3 reviews, choose) and not gotten objectively different results. ICC profiles and processing Another thing is that simply having the printer and the paper doesn't mean everything is fixed. Since printers are analog devices, there needs to be a printer and paper specific colour profile, so that you get (on paper) what you see on the screen (which also needs to be calibrated). So when choosing the printer you should be careful to choose one which is common enough that it has profiles, ideally profiles done by the paper manufacturer themselves. Or, you can go the more basic route, and calibrate the printer/paper combination yourself! I skipped that part though. However you get a profile, if you tell your photo processing application what is your display profile and your printer+paper profile, ideally you what you see is what you get, this time for real. Except that sometimes the gamut of colours in the picture can't be represented entirely in either the display nor the printer profile, so the display is an approximation, but a different one than your printer will do on paper. So you learn about relative and perceptual colorimetric conversions, and you read many blog posts about which one to use for what type of pictures (portraits have different needs than landscapes), and you wonder why did you chose this hobby? Of course, you can somewhat avoid the previous two issues by going more old-school to black and white printing. This should be simple, right? Black and white, nothing more. Hah, you wish. Do you do the B&W conversion in your photo processing application, or in your printer? Some printers are renowned by their good B&W conversions, some not. If you print B&W, then the choice of papers also change, because some papers are just awesome at B&W, but only so-so for colours. So says the internet, at least. But even if you solve all of the above, don't give up just yet, because there is still a little problem. Even if you send the right colours to the printer, the way a certain picture looks on paper is different than on screen. This circles somewhat back to paper choice (glossy type ink having deeper blacks than matte, for example) and colour-vs-b&w, but is a general issue: displays have better contrasts than paper (this doesn't mean the pictures are better looking on screen though). So you use the soft-proofing function, but it looks completely weird, and you learn that you need to learn how specific papers will differ from screen, and that sometimes you don't need any adjustment, sometimes you need a +15, which might mean another run of the same print. You print, then what? So you print. Nice, high quality print. All colours perfect! And then what? First, you wait. Because ink, as opposed to laser toner, is not "done" once the paper is out of the printer. It has to dry, which is a process taking about 24 hours in its initial phase, and which you help along by doing some stuff. The ink settles during this time in the paper, and only after that you know what the final look of the print will be. Depending on what you plan to do with the print, you might want to lay a layer of protective stuff on top of it; a kind of protective film that will keep it in better shape over time, but which has the downside that a) it must definitely be applied after the ink has dried and the the paper has for sure finished outgassing and b) it's a semi-hard layer, so you can roll the paper anymore (if you were planning to do that for transport). Or you say damn it, this is anyway a poor picture So with the print all good and really in its final state, you go on and research what solutions are there for hanging prints at home. And look at frames, and think about behind-glass framing or no glass-framing, and and and and you realise that if you just printed your photos at a lab, they'd come directly framed! I still have the really minimalist hanging solution that I bought a year ago unpacked Getting there, sometime! Costs/economic sense If you think all this effort is done in order to save money on prints, the answer is "Ha ha ha" While professional prints at a lab are expensive, how much do you think all the above (printer, inks, paper, framing, TIME) costs? A lot. It's definitely not worth unless your day job is photography. No, for me it was more the desire to own the photographic process from start to end: learn enough to be able to choose everything (camera which implies sensor which implies a lot of things, lens, post-processing, printer/ink, paper), and see (and have) the end result of your work in your hands. Is it worth all the trouble? Fast forward three years later, I still have the printer, although many times I was thinking of getting rid of it. It takes space, it costs some money (although you don't realise this as you print, since you already sunk the money in consumables), it takes time. Being able to print small photos for family (e.g. 10 15) is neat, but a small printer can do this as well, or you can order prints online, or print them from a memory card at many places. Being able to print A4-size (for which framing for e.g. desk-use is a pain) is also neat, but here there are still simpler solutions than your own big printer. The difference is when you print large. You look at the picture on your big screen, you think/imagine how it will look printer, and then you fire an A2 print. The printer starts, makes noises for about 10 minutes, and then you have the picture in your hands. The ink is still fresh (you know it takes 24 hours to settle), and has that nice ink smell that you don't get anymore in day to day life. With a good paper and a good printer, the way the picture looks is so special, that all the effort seems trivial now. I don't know how looking at pictures on an 8K 30+ inch monitor will be; but there's an indescribable difference between back-lighted LCD and paper for the same picture. Even at the same relative size, the paper is real, while the picture is virtual. You look at the people in the picture on your display, whereas the people in the print look at you. Maybe this is just size. A2 is bigger than my monitor wait, no. A2 has a diagonal of ~29 inches (vs. the display at 30"). Maybe it's resolution? An A2 print out of D810 is small enough to still have good resolution (it's about 320dpi after the small cropping needed for correcting the aspect ratio, which matches the printer's native 360dpi resolution). Coupled with a good printer, it's more than high enough resolution that even with a loupe, there's enough detail in the picture to not see its "digital" history (i.e. no rasterization, no gradients, etc.) Note that 360dpi for photo inkjet printers is much different from 600-1200dpi for laser printers (which are raster-based, not ink droplet based, so it's really not comparable). In any case, the print, even at this (relatively large) size, feels like a reflection of reality. On the monitor, it still feels like a digital picture. I could take a picture of the print to show you, but that would defeat the point, wouldn't it And this is what prompted this blog post. I had a pretty intense week at work, so when the weekend came, I was thinking what to do to disconnect and relax. I had a certain picture (people, group photo) that I wanted to print for a while, and it was OK on the screen, but not special. I said, somewhat not very enthusiastic, let's print it. And as the printer was slowly churning along, and the paper was coming out, I remembered why I don't get rid of the printer. Because every time I think about doing that, I say to myself "let's do one more print", which quickly turns into "wow, not, I'm keeping it". Because, even as our life migrates into the digital/virtual realm or maybe more so we're still living in the real world, and our eyes like to look at real objects. And hey, on top of that, it was and still is a pretty intense learning experience!

Solarized A while back I was looking for some information on the web, and happened upon a blog post about the subject. I don't remember what I was looking for, but on the same blog, there was a screen shot of what I then learned was the Solarized theme. This caught my eye that I decided to try it myself ASAP. Up until last year, I've been using for many years the 'black on light yellow' xterm scheme. This is good during the day, but too strong during night, so on some machines I switched to 'white on black', but this was not entirely satisfying. The solarized theme promises to have consistent colours over both light and dark background, which would help to make my setups finally consistent, and extends to a number of programs. Amongst these, there are themes for mutt on both light and dark backgrounds using only 16 colours. This was good, as my current hand-built theme is based on 256 colours, and this doesn't work well in the Linux console. So I tried changing my terminal to the custom colours, played with it for about 10 minutes, then decided that its contrast is too low, bordering on unreadable. I switch to another desktop where I still had open an xterm using white-on-black, and this being at night my eyes immediately go 'no no no too high contrast'. In about ten minutes I got so used to it that the old theme was really really uncomfortable. There was no turning back now Interestingly, the light theme was not that much better than black-on-light-yellow, as that theme is already pretty well behaved. But I still migrated for consistency. Programs/configs Starting from the home page and the internet, I found resources for:

• Vim and Emacs (for which I use the debian package elpa-solarized-theme).
• Midnight Commander, for which I currently use peel's theme, although I'm not happy with it; interestingly, the default theme almost works on 16-custom-colours light terminal scheme, but not quite on the dark one.
• Mutt, which is both in the main combined repository but also on the separate one. I'm not really happy with mutt's theme either, but that seems mostly because I was using a quite different theme before. I'll try to improve what I feel is missing over time.
• dircolors; I found this to be an absolute requirement for good readability of ls --color, as the defaults are too bad
• I also took the opportunity to unify my git diff and colordiff theme, but this was not really something that I found and took 'as-is' from some repository; I basically built my own theme.

16 vs 256 colours The solarized theme/configuration can be done in two ways:

• by changing the Xresources/terminal 16 basic colours to custom RGB values, or:
• by using approximations from the fixed 256 colours available in the xterm-256color terminfo

Upstream recommends the custom ones, as they are precisely tuned, instead of using the approximated ones; honestly I don't know if they would make a difference. It's too bad upstream went silent a few years back, as technically it's possible to override also colours above 16 in the 256-colour palette, but in any case, each of the two options has its own cons:

• using customised 16-colour means that all terminal programs get the new colours scheme, even if they were designed (colour-wise) based on the standard values; this makes some things pretty unreadable (hence the need to fix dircolors), but at least somewhat consistent.
• using 256-colour palette, unchanged programs stay the same, but now they look very different than the programs that were updated to solarized; note thought I haven't tested this, but that's how I understand things would be.

So either way it's not perfect. Desktop-wide consistency Also not perfect is that for proper consistent look, many more programs would have to be changed; but I don't see that happening in today's world. I've seen for example 3 or 4 Midnight Commander themes, but none of them were actually in the spirit of solarized, even though they were tweaked for solarized. Even between vim and emacs, which both have one canonical solarized theme, the look is close but not really the same (looking at the markdown source for this blog post: URLs, headers and spelling mistakes are all different), but this might be due not necessarily the theme itself. So no global theme consistency (I'd wish), but still, I find this much better on the eyes and not lower on readability after getting used to it. Thanks Ethan!

Warning: Spoilers below. Rant below. Much angry, MANY ALL-CAPS. You've been warned! So, today we went to see "La La Land", because I've heard good things about it, and because I do enjoy good musicals. And because of this, I wrote this post, instead of what I originally had in mind (related to kernel configuration). Was it a good movie? Definitely yes. Was it a good musical? So and so. Did I like the ending? HELL NO, over and over NO. The movie itself was much better than I expected. I don't read plot details in advance nor real reviews, so I expected more of a musical, and less of a good plot. But the movie had a very good plot. Two young people, striving to fulfil their artistic dreams, fall in love, and they fight through-sometimes helping, sometimes hindering each other until, finally, each gets their own breakthrough, etc. The choice of actress was spot on halfway through the movie, I was thinking that I can't imagine the same plot played by a different actress. Of course many other actresses could have played the part, but Emma Stone played so well, I have trouble seeing the same character with the same always half-happy, half-sad attitude. The choice of actor was I think OK at first I was in doubt, but he played also well. Or maybe it was just that I couldn't identify with him at first. Not that I identify well with artists in general The dance scenes were OK, and the singing good, but as I said, the musical part was secondary to the actual struggles of the characters. The movie itself was, technically, very well done; a lot of filming was in bars/clubs/locations with difficult lighting, and the shooting was very good. They also had a scene on a pier, looking towards the ocean and the setting sun, and the characters walking towards the beach so heavily back-lighted, and I kept thinking "If I get only one shot this perfectly exposed and colour correct(ed), I'm happy". So high notes here. Back to the plot. The story of how she and him fought their own struggles was very nicely told. Tick-tack, up and down (hope and rejection), leaning on the other to get morale back, is a captivating story. The cliff-hanger at the pre-end with her career, the going back home, the last minute save, all very well told. So at this stage, I would have given the movie a 9/10. And I was happy. Then we have the usual "one character has to go away to a far away country for a long time", except in this case it was just 4 months. And they have the usual discussion "what do we do with our relation, where do we take it", and she says "I will always love you", to which he replies "And I will too" (or equivalent). In my mind, this means they'll have to survive during the break, they'll have to also survive through his touring months/years, but in the end love will be stronger. Because this is what the movie told us until now, that she made it because of him, and he made it because of her. Neither of them would have been this strong without the other (he wouldn't have picked up the invitation from his old pal, she wouldn't have gone to the final audition request nor write the play which got her the audition/recognition). Estimated movie ending: awesome. And then something happens. The timeline jumps 5 years in the future (as expected), and she is famous, married (WITH SOMEONE ELSE) and happy mother of a 3-year old. Through fate, she and her husband enter the club of Sebastian (as he also fulfilled his dream), she and Sebastian see each other, he plays their song, during which we're served a re-run of the movie but in stupid "everything goes well" style (all bad events eliminated), in which it is she and Sebastian who enter the club (which belongs now to somebody else), and then we're back in real time, song ends, she and her husband leave, but before that she and Sebastian exchange one last smile, THE END. And I'm sitting there, not believing my eyes. WHAT THE? So I get home, not write this post for four hours to calm down, but I can't. Because this doesn't make sense. AT ALL. What does the internet say? Quoting from this CNN article, written exactly today. The director says:

"That ending was there from the get-go," [director Damien Chazelle] told CNN in a recent interview. "I think I just have a thing about love stories where the lovers don't wind up together at the end; I find it very romantic."

Huh, excuse me?

"I think there's a reason why most of the greatest love stories in history don't end with happily ever after," Chazelle said. "To me, if you're telling a story about love, love has to be bigger than the characters." Chazelle sees Mia and Sebastian's love as a "third character" and something that "lives on." "[The ending gives] you that sense that even if the relationship itself might be over in practical terms, the love is not over," he said. "The love lasts, and I think that's just a beautiful kind of thing."

OH FOR THE LOVE OF. This is a wishy-washy explanation that tries to approach the thing from the artistic side. No, this is bullshit, because of multiple things. Let me try to roll back and explain what I think was the intention.

1. An earlier fight between Mia and Sebastian points to the fact that they're both very dedicated to their careers, and this means it's hard for them to stay together if they both chase their dream. He has to be on tour, and she has to rehearse for her play, so they won't see each other for at least two weeks (in this instance). Later, she calls him and leaves a message that she hasn't seen him in a while (complex scene which ends in another fight, which is very well done). So we see the conflict that seems to say "You can't have a relation of equals; one party has to give up their dream". While this might be partially true in the real world, I don't go to movies to see the real world.
2. After the year-long window into their life, I can't think that either Sebastian or Mia can be really successful without the other; because they are so alike, so passionate about their dreams, that a normal person wouldn't be able to understand and push the other when they need. However, the ending show both Mia and Sebastian quite successful, so one has to wonder: did they make it alone? Sebastian seems so (we don't see a partner for him), Mia unclear, likely not. How did Sebastian get through? What did Mia find in her husband?
3. This is very one-sided, since I'm a man, so bear with me: Sebastian helped Mia through her tough time. Once she got the breakthrough (and they split), she found somebody else, and I have to wonder in what circumstances they met. In the sense that maybe her husband only knew "successful Mia" and not "struggling/aspiring Mia". Her husband seems completely oblivious to all the eye contact between Mia and Sebastian in the club, seems to know Sebastian/about Sebastian not. How deep is their relation?
4. This is still one sided, sorry. When they break up (before Mia leaves for Paris), Sebastian asks "so where do we go from here?". Mia says "Nowhere". He asks once more, she rejects him again. So after one year of mad love and cries and happy moments, he gives up over two sentences? He's been following his dream (proper Jazz) in spite of all downturns in life until then, but he gives up on his real love over this? It doesn't make sense; trying to identify my self with the character, I can't reconcile this scene at all, unless he didn't really love her.

So no, I don't see them ending apart as romantic. I see it as the director is saying "You can't have both love and your [career] dreams. Choose either.", and he gives the "love" fake ending in the mini-re-roll of the movie, and the "career" wrong ending in the actual ending. And worse, he does it by negating significant parts of the character development done until now. Moreover, this conclusion is wrong. Wrong because this is a movie, and if movies don't manage to make you dream that you can achieve all, if movies tell you "choose either", then all is lost. Their love is not a separate character; them struggling to find each other in the successful phase of their life, learning to adapt to the new "he" and "she", would be the third thing. As it was shown, their love is simply a young love, that can't really survive the changes in life; they each said "I'll love you forever", but with this ending it sounds more "I'll cherish the memory of young you forever". Or differently said, it sounded like a cheap excuse to use when ending their relationship, in order to not negate the relationship itself. My version of the movie is another half hour long. It explains how Sebastian get over the "only jazz is pure old jazz" and manages to build a successful business around his old-style-but-modern jazz, instead of the pop-style jazz of the touring band (while thinking about her). It explains how Mia becomes a successful actress and gets over her first/second movies (while thinking about him), because one movie doesn't make one really successful (that reminds me: 3 year old child after 5 year forward-jump? when/how did her career go?). Hell, make it even more bitter show how their correspondence starts strong but becomes more and more sporadic over time, dying after the first 2 years. Show how both of them try other relations, and not find the same spark that they had before. And then, after they have matured, they meet again. And, just like the first time, they fall for each other, once again. She for his music, him for her passion for acting/for acting itself. She finds that him naming his club after her suggestion is oh-so-grown-up-and-sweet, he is happy that she finally grew into what he saw in her from the beginning. And he sings their song once more. But no. I'm not an artist, so I can only get the "die hope die die die love because I can" version. I still recommend the movie, but not the "after 5 years" scenes. Also, I didn't get time to bike today nor yesterday, so all you really get here is an ANGRY RANT. Because while I drink the coffee black and the tea without sugar, I like my happy endings, DAMN IT.

Almost all traces of the snow are gone. After a very dry December, January was an awesome month. Lots of snow, even in the city, that held for (I think) three weeks very rare for Z rich. This happened because the temperature never went above -5 C, even during the day proper winter for the city! It was awesome to bike in these conditions. At first fresh snow (best! but slow), then packed snow, it never actually became dangerous ice. And then, at the end of last week, temperatures started climbing. First near zero, then 1-2 C above, then it finally started going warm (above freezing even during the night). And the snow started melting a bit, then more, and then it started raining. And it rained for three days. The worst thing, seeing snow being rained upon. Dirty grey snow, slowly melting away I don't like this picture. At least now the snow is gone, and the streets are almost dry, and we can look to either some more snow (I wish ) or spring. I'd rather take -2 C global average temperatures than +2 C. I'm not sure what -5 would mean, but compared to no winter

Human languages, part 1 I do enjoy writing blog posts, but sometimes time is lacking, other times inspiration. As I was eating dinner today, I was lost in thoughts and my eyes stopped on the documentation from a certain medication for coughing (the thing almost noone reads, like EULAs). I was surprised quite surprised with te text that I said well, some blog posts on languages might be interesting . Background: My mother tongue is Romanian. While growing up and learning foreign languages, I considered only the utilitarian aspect of languages, but as I get older (not old, older! ), I find human languages more and more interesting. Back to the subject: this being Switzerland, most everything is written in German, French and Italian (in this order of frequency). German is still a foreign language to me (let's say I get by, but not nicely), French is the fancy high class cousin, and Italian Well Italian is a special case. When I first saw Italian on TV (a newscast while travelling in Italy) I was shocked at how much one can understand without learning Italian in any way (much, much more than German after years of trying). So Italian language is quite close, and usually one understands a third to half; this is both spoken (less in common language, more in official language) and in writing. In this particular case, the instructions of use say (sorry for typos, manually copying):

In casi rarissimi possono manifestarsi reazioni di ipersensibilit grave con tumefazione del viso, difficolt respiratoria (dispnea) e diminuzione della pressione arteriosa.

What was surprising here was not the list of side effects (hah), but that this short phrase is 98% identical to the translation in Romanian; not only words, but also phrase structure. I don't think I've ever seen this before:

n cazuri rare se pot manifesta reac ii de hipersensibilitate grav cu tumefac ie a fe ei, dificultate respiratorie (dispnee) i diminuare a presiunii arteriale.

Not all the words are identical, but even the one that is obviously different (it. 'del viso', ro. 'a fe ei') is easily translatable as 'visiune' in Romanian means 'to see', so the link is clear. This phrase structure is also quite a natural way to say the things in Romanian. I was then curious to see the French version, which is:

Dans de tr s rares cas, [the medicine] peut d clencher de violentes r actions d'hypersensibilit s'accompagnant d'un gonflement du visage, de d tresse respiratorie e d'une chute de tension.

French is usually quite different from Romanian that one has to learn it (for quite a while, especially for grammar) in order to be proficient in it, but here you can make also word-by-word translation (transposition?) that doesn't lose the meaning:

n cazuri tare rari, [the medicime] poate declan a violente reac ii de hypersensibilitate acompaniate de o umflare a fe ei, de ???? respiratorie i de ???? a tensiunii.

Basically here we have two non-equivalent words, and a bit more wierd phrase structure it sounds more like coloquial speech than written language but for French is also surprisingly close. You'd invert some of the adjective-noun pairs (fr. 'violentes r actions' is understandable in Romanian as 'violente reac ii', but it sounds very poetical and you'd usually write it as 'reac ii violente'). The next phrase is no longer that similar, but the one after is again obviously identical:

Se osserva effetti collaterali qui non descritti, dovrebbe informare il suo medico, il suo farmacista o il suo drogerie.

which is:

[Dac /If] se observ effecte colaterale care nu sunt descrise, trebuie informat medicul vostru, farmacistul vostru sau [xxxx - no real equivalent].

And the French is also identical, modulo again 'droguiste':

Si vouz remarquez de effets secondaires qui ne sont pas mentionn s dans cette notice, veuillez en informer votre m decin, votre pharmacien ou votre droguiste.

which is:

Dac remarca i efecte secundare care nu sunt men ionate n aceast not , informa i medicul vostru, farmacistul vostru sau al vostru [xxxx].

This is even closer; 'votre' is more similar to '[al] vostru' than 'suo', and the phrase structure is much more natural - this is exactly how you'd write it in 'native' Romanian, whereas the Italian is not (I had to add the 'if' to make it parseable). The 'vous' in 'vouz remarquez' is 'voi' in Romanian, but doesn't need to be added as it would be redundant; but it doesn't confuse the phrase. The 'veuillez en informer' doesn't have a 1:1 translation (it would be written as 'v rug m s informa i'), but is still understandable; a false friend translation would be 'vede i s informa i'/see to inform/voir informer. Why is this all surprising? Because Romanian has a significant amount of words of Slavic origin (~11% in overall vocabulary, 15% in most commonly used 2500 words) and some from other nearby countries (Turkey, Greek, some Hungarian and German). At a stretch, it's even possible to write simple but complete sentences entirely with words from Slavic origin, as I learned from this interesting youtube video. Also, our accent is almost always confused with Russian, not with Italian or French. So to get to a summary: normally you see sentence elements that are similar or identical, but not entire sentences, and definitely not phrases. What made the three languages here keep, in this particular case, not only similar but almost identical words and also almost identical phrase structure? Is it the subject (medicine)? Maybe. Is it a random fluke? If so, I don't remember seeing it before. Do I just see similarities where there are none? Possibly , but at least I thought it worth mentioning; it was quite surprising to me. Did my brain get confused by too many languages and I misinterpreted words that don't really exist (e.g. I was sure that 'vizajul' is a Romanian word, but upon checking, it isn't )? Also possible. In any case, for me it was a good subject for a blog post. Now let's not go near Spanish and definitely not near Portuguese

Had some printer fun this week. It was fun in the sense that failure modes are interesting, not that there was much joy in the process. My current document printer is an HP that I bought back in early 2008; soon 9 years old, that is. When I got the printer I was quite happy: it supports Postscript, it supports memory extension (which allowed me to go from the built-in 64MB to a whopping 320MB), it is networked and has automatic duplex. Not good for much more than document printing, but that it did well. I didn't print a lot on it (averaged it was well below the recommended monthly limit), which might explain the total trouble-free operation, but I did change the toner cartridges a couple of times. The current cartridges were running low for a while, but I didn't need to change them yet. As I printed a user manual at the beginning of the week (~300+ pages in total), I ran out of the black half-way through. Bought a new cartridge, installed it, and the first strange thing was that it still showed Black empty - please replace . I powered the printer off and turned it on again (the miracle cure for all IT-related things), and things seemed OK, so I restarted printing. However, this time, the printer was going through 20-30 pages, and then was getting stuck in "Printing document" with green led blinking. Waited for 20 minutes, nothing. So cancel the job (from the printer), restart printing, all fine. The next day I wanted to print a single page, and didn't manage to. Checked that the PDF is normal, checked an older PDF which I printed successfully before, nothing worked. Changed drivers, unseated & re-seated the extra memory, changed operating systems, nothing. Not even the built-in printer diagnostic pages were printing. The internet was all over with "HP formatter issues"; apparently some HP printers had "green" (i.e. low-quality) soldering, and were failing after a while. But people were complaining about 1-2-4 years, not 9 that my printer worked, and it was very suspicious that all troubles started after my cartridge replacement. Or, more likely, due to the recent sudden increase in printing. Given that formatter board fixes (bake in the oven for N minutes at a specific temperature to reflow the soldering) are temporary and that you can't find replacement parts for this printer, I started looking for a new printer. To my surprise (and dismay at the waste that capitalism produces), a new printer from a higher class was cheaper than replacing all 4 cartridges in my printer. So I had a 90% full black cartridge that I couldn't reuse, but I'd get a new printer for not much more. Interestingly, in 9 years, the development was:

• In the series of printers that I had (home office use), one can't get a Ethernet-only networked duplex printer; the M252 series has only an 'n' variant (Ethernet only, no duplex), or 'dw' variant (Ethernet, WiFi, Duplex); if one wants duplex but no WiFi, it's available only in the next series, the M452.
• The CPU speeds increased 2-3 and memory capacity by 2-4 ; however, memory or font expansion is no longer possible.
• The M252 series still uses Fast Ethernet (which is enough and consumes less power), whereas the M452 series has Gigabit.
• It seems the cartridges come in two different capacities, but basically colour laser printers still employ the same 4-colour cartridge set (compare to photo printers at 9+).
• I did just a brief examination of the market, but for home use, it seems the recommendation is still HP for no-troubles use or other brands for cheaper costs. Of course it varies a lot in reviews, but this is what I understood from forums; maybe I'm biased.
• There was no increase in real resolution; the native grid is still 600dpi (photo inkjet printers are also stuck at 360/720 native for a while), but the ImageRet software processing seems to have advanced (from what the white-papers say).
• Print speed however has visibly increased; still the same 2-3 increase, but this is wall-clock speed increase, whereas the CPU/memory is less relevant.

I was however happy that one can still get OS-independent (Postscript), networked printers that are small enough for home use and don't (necessarily) come with WiFi. However, one thing still bothered me: did I have such problems because the printer died of overwork at old age, or was it related to the cartridge change? So I start searching again, and I find a post on a forum (oh Google, why did you remove "forum search" and replaced it with "language level"?) that details a hidden procedure to format the internal storage of the printer, exactly for my printer model, exactly for my symptoms. Huh, I will lose page count, but this is worth a try So I do press the required keys, I see the printer booting and saying "erasing ", then asking for language, which makes me happy because it seems the forum post was correct in one regard. I confirm English, the printer reboots once more, and then when it comes up it warns me: "Yellow cartridge is a non-HP original, please confirm". I get confused, and re-seat all cartridges, to no avail. Yellow is non-HP. Sigh, maybe that cartridge had something that confused the printer? When I visit its web page however, all cartridges except the newly installed black one are marked as Non-HP; this only means that I can't see their remaining toner level, but otherwise the printer is restored back to life. I take the opportunity to also perform a firmware upgrade (only five years newer firmware, but still quite old), but this doesn't solve the Non-HP message. The printer works now, and I'm left wondering: was this all a DRM-related failure, something like new cartridge chip which had some new code that confused the printer so bad it needed reformatting, at which point the old cartridge code is no longer supported (for whatever reason)? Was it just a fluke, unrelated to DRM? Was the problem that I powered off the printer soon after replacing the cartridge, while it was still doing something (e.g. preparing to do a calibration after the change)? And another, more practical question: I have 3 cartridges to replace still; they were at 10% before this entire saga, and I'm not able to see their level anymore, but they'll get down to empty soon. The black cartridge in the printer is already at 77%, which is surprising as I didn't print that much. So should I replace the cartridges on what is a possibly fully functional, but also possibly a dying printer? Or buy a new one for slightly more, throwing out possibly good hardware? Even though I understand the business reason behind it, I hate the whole concept of "the printer is free, you pay for the ink". Though in my case "free" didn't mean bad, as a lifetime of 9 years is good enough for a printer.

Wow, a mouthful of a title, for a much simpler post. Up until earlier this year, I had only one sport GPS device, and that was a watch. Made sense, as my "main" sport was running (not that I did it very consistently). Upgraded over a few generations of Garmins, I mainly used it to record my track and statistics (pace, heart rate, etc.) The newest generation of watch and heart rate monitor even give more statistics (left-right leg balance, ground contact time, so on). Most of this data can be looked at while running, but only as an exception; after all, it's very hard to run with one hand up in front of your face. The other useful features guided workouts and alerts during normal runs I've used, but not consistently. So when I started biking a bit more seriously, I wondered whether it would make sense to buy a bike computer. The feature intersection between watch and bike GPS is quite large, so clearly this is a "want" not a "need" by far. Reading forum posts showed the same question repeated multiple times What convinced me to nevertheless buy such a bike GPS were the mapping/routing features. A bike GPS with good routing features, or even just maps on which tracks can be overlayed, can certainly ease the discovery of new routes. After a few months of use, my most useful feature is one that I didn't expect. While the mapping is useful and I do use it, the one that actually is significantly better than my watch is the large display with data fields that I can trivially check almost continuously on road biking, and during technically easy climbing sections for mountain biking. My setup looks like this: It's a 9-field setup; the Edge 1000 can go to 10, but I like "headline" field. The watch can only go to four, and is basically not usable during rides, unless one would use a quick-release kit for mounting on the handle bar. This setup allowed me to learn much better my physical capabilities, why I sometimes run out of energy, and how the terrain affects me. Random things that I learned:

• Gradient: on a road bike, +2% grade is just fun, -2% grade is excellent; on a mountain bike, -2% is somewhat felt but not so much. Going above 6-8% on a mountain bike is tiring, and above 15% means I can bike but I will dip too much into my reserves. Not sure yet what the numbers are on a road bike
• Cadence: on flatter routes, my most efficient cadence is 102-108 RPM; between 98-102 I feel I need to extra push, and below 98 I know (now) my muscles will get tired too early; on significant ascents, I don't have enough gearing to sustain such an RPM, and that tires me faster. On medium distance flat rides (~70Km), I usually do ~100 averaged over the whole distance.
• Heart rate: below ~140 is recovery, ~140-150 is sustained effort, ~150-160 is short-duration pushes, and anything above ~160 will eat through my anaerobic budget, which means I'd better stop soon or my performance for the rest of the ride will suffer; this, surprisingly, matches quite well with my latest run lactate threshold (as computed by my watch), which was 161bpm.
• Condition: when cruising without pedalling or when stopping, I can ballpark my current condition very easily by seeing how fast my heart rate goes down.
• Total ascent: useful for two things: to make me proud how much I've already climbed, and if I know the total ascent for the route either make me despair how much I have left, or make me happy that the climbs are done

Seeing all this data only after the ride is less useful since you don't remember exactly how you felt during specific points in the ride. But as real-time data, one can easily see/feel the correlation between how the body feels and what data says. One thing that would be also useful would be real-time power data (3 sec average, not instantaneous) to correlate even better with the body state. I now use heart rate and cadence as a proxy for that, but being able to see actual power numbers would increase the usefulness of the data even more. Unfortunately, none of these makes the climbs easier. But at least it allows me to understand why one climb feels hard and another easy (relatively speaking). I wonder if, and how this could be applied to running; maybe with smart glasses? Conclusion: yes, I do recommend a bike computer with a large display (to be able to see many fields at once). Just in case one has disposable income at hand and doesn't know which hobby to spend it on

Nationalpark Bike Marathon 2016 report: gravity rules! "Marathon" is a bit of a misnomer, since I did the short route, not the medium nor the long one. But hey, it's the official name! Setup This race has four possible lengths: "Valader" which is full round-trip Scuol-Scuol (137km/4'026m), "Jauer" (Fuldera-Scuol, 103km/2'934m), "Livignasco" (Livigno-Scuol, 66km/1'871m) and "Put r" (S-chanf to Scuol, 47Km/1'051m). After many debates, I settled on the Livignasco route, as that was what I was reasonably confident to be able to do. The only problem was that this route (and all the longer ones, of course) were going over Pass Chaschauna, which is a quite hard climb. My bike shop person, who did the full length a number of times, just said when hearing the route I was planning: "Chaschauna is a bitch " Bad language, proper characterisation. The route choice also impacts the logistics: except for the full route, the question is where to sleep the night before? One can sleep either at the start place, or sleep in Scuol itself and take the official shuttle to the start place, but this means waking up much earlier. I decided to sleep in Livigno, as with a 7:45 start this would allow me to sleep until ~6:30, have a quick breakfast and be in time for the race. Problem #1 So on Friday (26th) I drove to Scuol, picked up my start number, and then drove over to Livigno and checked in to the hotel. Speaking of picking up the start number, I saw this at the start area: An STI needed as pacer? How fast are these people, I wondered? Day of the race My plan to have a relaxing sleep until relatively late failed. I went to sleep with difficulties: late dinner due to my late arrival in Livigno, and then I was stressed enough about not missing the race that at 05:05 I already woke up, and was checking the clock every five minutes. Finally at 05:30 I gave up and got out of bed, with only about 6 hours of sleep. Problem #2. The other problem was that I na vely thought the hotel will have breakfast from 07:00 or even 07:30. Hah, as if this was Switzerland. The hotel had breakfast from 08:00, no reason to hurry, right? So I had a poor man's breakfast in the room, some energy bars and an ice tea. Problem #3. At least I had time to grab this picture from the hotel room: Not bad. On to the race! But before that, remember to fill my hydration pack with 3L of water, and put it in my not-so-light backpack. Of course I had tools and some spare parts with me, what if something happens? Problem #4, over-planning. The race The setup at the start was pretty easy. Wait near the start until 07:45, then go. For me, not too in front, of course: Pass Chaschauna About 3 kilometres of easy/flat road, and then it starts. Pass Chaschauna, killing your legs softly But at least the pictures were nice! The climb is difficult. It was around 22% for most of the time, and very few people were able to bike up. Not only the absolute meters were the problem, but also the fact that the ground was quite loose, and pushing the bike, or rather climbing up while pushing the bike, was difficult to do in bike shoes with cleats. Proper hiking shoes would have been much more adequate. Maybe this is why despite the effort, some people biked as much as possible? I was careful not to over-exert myself and walked almost all the way up. Hence the pictures But at last, reached the top of the pass, and was very happy to be done with it. The GPX file from my Garmin says it took only 4 minutes (1.2km) after the race start to actually start climbing (it was not obvious we were climbing so early), and then 1h:20m/8Km to get from 1'817m altitude to the highest point at 2'658m. 8Km in 1h:20m, faster than walking pace but quite slower than running pace (on flat terrain, of course). At the top of the pass I was quite happy: And then the descent started: All the way leading to the race I kept thinking only about climbing Chaschauna, and not about going down on it. It was quite an experience, which I won't forget soon. The trail was already well travelled, which means that besides the loose ground in form of large clumps of dried earth, there was a layer of fine, somewhat moist earth, about 3-5 centimetres deep, which made the downhill "interesting". Coupled with what was a much steeper trail than going up I saw most of the time ~33% it's no surprise that many, or even most, of the people were walking their bikes down. The GPX track says that the trail goes 319m down in 1Km (so a 31.9% over one entire kilometre), then another 130m over the next 1.4Km (9.28%), and then (not sure if this is the pass per se or after) another longer segment of ~260m over 3Km (8.56%). The first steep segment needs lots of skill and concentration, the others are normal gradients. But at least things go fast. What took uphill took ~40 minutes for the last 450m up, downhill it took only 15 minutes! Falling I was able, thanks to recent training, to bike down the trail, or at least I thought so. So on the steep segment I was struggling to bike down and keep control of my bike, putting one leg down on some sections but in general being "on the bike", being hit by the dirt I was throwing in the air despite the mud-guards, being careful but at the same time enjoying this difficult section. That is, right up to the point where I got, I think, too comfortable. After the second-to-last curve, the rear wheel slides, I lose balance and fall in the (thankfully soft) dirt a bit more forcefully than I should have, the bike also sliding along in the dirt. No damage to myself, just some trivial scratches; the bike seems a bit shaken (fork was turned 180 , full of dirt, etc.). I get again on the bike and I continue down; however, something seems off: the rear brake level doesn't have a return anymore, I have to push it to go back. Still usable, but strange. So I continue the other two segment of this descent, and over these ~4-5Km I feel the brake issue going worse and worse: it's actually hard to push the brake lever back, and even pressing it doesn't seem to have much effect. And then the realisation dawns on my: I have hydraulic brakes, and the worsening thing leads me to think my brake hose has been punctured (by what? I fell in loose dirt) and I'm losing the brake fluid with every press. Now, on flat road, biking with only the front brake is tricky but doable. On an MTB course, having only one brake is not a smart thing . Not easy, not smart, and definitely dangerous. It also felt very strange to not have both brakes, and then I realised how much I work with the brakes in unison. I knew that there are repair posts in the race, but I didn't know if they can fix such things (and doing a brake fluid refill how complicated is it, how much time does it take?). Anyway, I resolved to try and continue if the terrain allows until I reach the first repair post, and stop if it gets too steep. It would be pretty sad to have to abort the race after only 10Km, right? The terrain did cooperate: up and down, so I was able to bleed speed easily, and even though through forest, the visibility was good enough that I could plan ahead. It was strangely lonely at this time: I was going slowly and thus not reaching from behind anyone, but also not being reached by riders from behind. I did enjoy it a bit, the quietness of the forest, just interrupted by the squeaking of my front brake And then I finally see the sign for "Repair: 1Km". Yaaay! maybe I don't have to quit the race. And then, about 100m further on, another sign: "Danger! Steep descent". Uh-oh tantalisingly close Let's go slow. And yes, here I was overtaken by 3-4 other cyclists. This was the single moment in the race where I did have a moment of real fear: at one point, I was going down with the remaining brake as pressed as I could without compromising stability, and I was still gaining speed. Not smart, and as I was debating how to fall to stop my descent, the terrain started to get less steep, and I finally reached the repair station, at kilometre 21. Difficult repairs There was another person being serviced for a flat rear tire, so I wait in line and discuss with him my problem. Upon hearing I only had the front brake, he said: "Wow, how did you manage to descend this last segment?" "Well, slowly ". My turn came up, I explain my problem and my theory, and the repair guy gives me one look, the bike one look, but doesn't look at the brake hose. Instead, he looks once at the brake lever, sees that another cable guide on my handle bar was bent during the fall and actually was mechanically interfering with the brake lever, unbends that thing, and says "here you go". I was stunned. 15 seconds of looking at the problem without stress, and the problem was solved. I could have done this myself if I took the time to look and think, and not hurry. And I could have enjoyed all the downhill on the pass, with two functioning brakes. Some lessons have to be learned the hard way, and this was one. I got off easy though, as I didn't have a real accident while biking with only one brake. And they say you get wiser as you get older Anyway, brake repaired, I stopped at the Sanit r tent to have my scratches disinfected, and onwards. The following few kilometres until S-chanf I enjoyed very much. S-chanf And then, 2 hours 10 minutes into the race, I exit the forest trail, reach S-chanf, and start climbing and descending and climbing and descending. In the sun, which now (after 10 AM) is not that light anymore. The initial climb at S-chanf, while not much, took away my remaining short-term reserves. The route is 50m ascent, then down and then another 50m ascent, and after a bit of flat another 75m ascent I was getting tired, despite eating energy bars and drinking water (and juice at stops). This goes one for an entire hour, during which I cover about 23Km, so not a bad speed everything considered. But getting more and more tired. There were also some very nice segments, along the river, in the shade of the forest. Some fast downhill, some fast flat. I got overtaken by quite a few real racers, that were going so fast I couldn't keep up with them as in I didn't dare ride that fast even when I had the energy. Clearly they were from the longer segments, and boy were they fast! A number of couples (or pairs?) one woman one man, a number of bigger groups, all going as if they had E-bikes or super-powers, not just biking along tired like me Last climb And then, the last big climb: half an hour of going about 300m up (absolute values, so cumulative number would probably be higher), in the sun, over about 6Km, so only 5% average gradient. But I was tired and even resorted to walking on some portions At least I could take some pictures again: Or have pictures taken: Nice views: At one point, in a bit of a shade, I stop to catch my breath. Somebody else stopped as well and, seeing as I was checking my GPS, asks:

• "How much do we have left, about 10K?"
• I say yes (or was it 15K? the numbers don't match well)
• "And how about altitude?"
• "About 350m left "
• "Sigh "

I got overtaken by a lot of cyclists here, although many of them were from S-chanf route (based on the number colour). Sad The thing is, besides the climbing and the sun, this and the previous part was a very nice route: through small towns, high above the valley, beautiful landscapes, etc. Just enjoying it was hard, since I wasn't a) trained well enough and b) prepared well enough. Last segment, last downhill In any case, after that hard half hour, it's flat (or rather said, average gradient zero): Good road, good views, but I'm on the last virtual bar of my battery, so the remaining 15Km I do in 40 minutes, also "eating" the last ascent meters still about 300 left, I think, but up/down/up/down, so you could reuse kinetic energy to gain potential one. The only question I had now was, the route was at this moment about 400m higher (in absolute altitude) than the finish point, so when do we lose that altitude? The answer was a very very nice answer: in the last 5Km, for an average gradient of 8%, just perfect. I was tired however, so I couldn't really enjoy or go fast here, but it was a good feeling. Finish! And then, entering Scuol, not really believing I'm near the finish, that I will be able to actually stop and relax. My finish picture doesn't do justice to how happy I was at that moment: However, after passing the finish line, it was a bit weird. I just stop now? What next? So weird to just walk, not push pedals, and not go up. Or down. The funny thing here was that I thought I didn't use much of my water (hydration pack) during the race. But soon after finishing, I drank the equivalent of about two glasses (let's say 0.5L) and it was over. So I did manage to drink 2.5L during the race, plus the sport drinks at the stops. Time for stats: my Garmin says 67.07Km, 4h:29m, average speed 15.0kph (hah), 1'615m elevation gain. Official numbers say 66Km, 1'871m elevation, and thus 14.22kph. Ranking-wise:

• 147/192 in the overall men Livignasco route
• 44/60 in my age category

Sigh, could have done better. I was aiming for somewhere around last 33%, not last 25% First classed was ~66% faster than me Going to the train station was hard as in difficult to move my legs. Took one nice picture of Scuol though, so was able to think a bit: And then the long way back to Livigno. Took me 4 h to bike to Scuol, and about 3 hours to go back via public transport. At least I ate a sandwich in the meantime. Then reached Livigno, which was also looking nice: Then got on my bike, which at this point was magically light and easy to ride (it seems I was at least partially recovered), rode to the hotel, packed my stuff, and drove home. On the highway I had my first real meal for that day, but I was quite tired so didn't feel like the achievement it should have been Lessons The biggest takeaway from this race was the huge learning experience I got. The race was itself awesome, but the learning even more so. First, for this particular race, it's much better to sleep in Scuol and (if not doing the whole route) take the shuttle to the actual start. Yes, one has to wake up earlier, but you have assured breakfast via the organisers (++++!), and after the race you don't have to get even more tired by taking the train and the bus and Second, I need better logistics: I don't need to carry that heavy load (spare tube, pump, tools, jacket in case it's cold) when the race is well organised. The water in the hydration pack was useful, but carrying it up Chaschauna was a pain. Not sure what I'll do next; it's possible to survive only on water/drinks from the food posts (basically 2.5-2.8L is equivalent to only 4 750ml bottles, and there were I think about 6 stops?), but the hydration pack is so easy to use Keeping one's head cool and not stress about things also would help: had I looked at my brake lever in peace, I could have solved it myself, and not ride ~10Km with only one brake. Also, losing some weight (as in losing fat, not having a lighter bike) would definitely help. I could stand to lose 5Kg easily, probably 10Kg, and that would bring me more in line with other people in the race (at least looking at the pictures). And hey, my Watts/Kg would improve magically! And last but most important, I need better training. Training on how to use my energy, training longer rides so that my body gets used to it and doesn't bonk after 3 hours, training training training. Which I like, but the problem is time to do it Also, in case anybody wonders: yes, I do recommend this race! It was definitely fun, and the route itself is very nice, nicer than the pictures here show. Closing words: gravity rules. Up or down, it's hard and punishing. Still: Ride on!

Last weekend I had to stay at home, so I did some more virtual training (slowly, in order to not overwork myself again). This time, after all the Zwift, I wanted to test something else: Tacx Trainer Software. Still virtual, but of a different kind. The difference between Zwift, which does video-game-like worlds, is that TTS, in the configuration that I used, uses a real-life video which scrolls faster or slower, based on your speed. This speed adjustment is so-so, but the appeal was that I could ride roads that I actually know and drove before. Modern technology++! And this was the interesting part: I chose for the first ride the road up to Cap de Formentor, which is one of my favourite places in Mallorca. The road itself is also nice, through some very pleasant woods and with some very good viewpoints, ending at the lighthouse, from where you have wonderful views of the sea. Now, I've driven two times on this road, so I kind of remembered it, but driving a road and cycling the same road, especially when it goes up and down and up, are very different things. I remembered well the first uphill (after the flat area around Port de Pollen a), but after that my recollection of how much uphill the road goes was slightly off, and I actually didn't remember that there's that much downhill, which was a very pleasant surprise. I did remember the view points (since I took quite a few pictures along the road), but otherwise I was completely off about the height profile of the road. Interesting how the brain works Overall, this is considered a "short" ride in Tacx's film library; it was 21Km, 835m uphill, and I did it in 1h11m, which for me, after two weeks of no sports, was good enough. Also Tacx has bike selection, and I did this on a simulated mountain bike, with the result that downhill speeds were quite slow (max. 57Km/h, at a -12% grade), so not complaining at all. Next I'll have to see how the road to Sa Calobra is in the virtual world. And next time I go to Mallorca (when/if), I'll have to actually ride these in the real world. In the meantime, some pictures from an actual trip there. I definitely recommend visiting this, preferably early in the morning (it's very crowded): A few more pictures and larger sizes here.

So, I've been sick. Quite sick, as for the past ~2 weeks I wasn't able to bike, run, work or do much beside watch movies, look at photos and play some light games (ARPGs rule in this case, all you need to do is keep the left mouse button pressed). It was supposed to be only a light viral infection, but it took longer to clear out than I expected, probably due to it happening right after my dental procedure (and possibly me wanting to restart exercise too soon, to fast). Not fun, it felt like the thing that refills your energy/mana bar in games broke. I simply didn't feel restored, despite sleeping a lot; 2-3 naps per day sound good as long as they are restorative, if they're not, sleeping is just a chore. The funny thing is that recovery happened so slow, that when I finally had energy it took me by surprise. It was like oh, wait, I can actually stand and walk without feeling dizzy! Wohoo! As such, yesterday was a glorious Saturday I was therefore able to walk a bit outside the house this weekend and feel like having a normal cold, not like being under a cursed: -4 vitality spell. I expect the final symptoms to clear out soon, and that I can very slowly start doing some light exercise again. Not tomorrow, though In the meantime, I'm sharing a picture from earlier this year that I found while looking through my stash. Was walking in the forest in Pontresina on a beatiful sunny day, when a sudden gust of wind caused a lot of the snow on the trees to fly around and make it look a bit magical (photo is unprocessed beside conversion from raw to jpeg, this is how it was straight out of the camera): Why a winter photo? Because that's exactly how cold I felt the previous weekend: 30 C outside, but I was going to the doctor in jeans and hoodie and cap, shivering

A (forced) relaxation week This was an interesting week, much more so than I expected. The start of the week was the usual: on Monday a run, although at an easier pace after Sunday's longer indoor bike ride, on Tuesday a 30Km outside bike ride (flat, on road, with a mountain bike so not fast at all). On Wednesday however, I had a planned "intervention" at my dentist bone reconstruction (or regeneration, not sure what the right term is for the implantation of scaffolding). The dentist told me I won't be allowed to do sports, especially in the first few days after the procedure, so I knew I will have to take it easy; easy bike rides are fine, but not anything more (e.g. especially not running). The procedure went well and after that I went to work (the dentist looked at me in a funny way when I mentioned I'm not going home but instead back to work). There was a bit of pain a couple of hours after the local anaesthesia went away, but the painkillers did work, so I was able to function somewhat OK. Laughing was the only thing that caused pain, so I tried to be very serious; didn't work well On Thursday morning however, I did feel funny and when I looked into the mirror, I got a shock. The affected side of my face was heavily swollen, and I was feeling as bad as I looked. I had a followup checkup at the dentist, so I went there, and they told me Oh, this is normal. Bone reconstruction is much more difficult on the body as opposed to extraction, since the body actually has to rebuild stuff, instead of just healing the wound. And yes, you should just go back home and take the day off! . OK, logically that explanation makes sense, but my dental extraction had a very predictable pain/recovery curve (spike right at the extraction, plateau for that day, then slow recovery that went to faster recovery after a few days). This procedure was very different, with the first day easy, and the second day much worse. The dentist continued Oh, and by the way, expect this to be worse in the morning, as the body can work all night; also, this should go away by itself over the weekend, so let's meet again on Monday. At this point I realised than I'm not allowed to do sports is not by doctor's orders, but rather my condition doesn't allow me to do sport . Sad panda Friday was even worse; my face was swollen in a different way, such that I looked even more like a monster from the Witcher games. I had to stay at home again, not being able to do much, as the painkillers I got were mostly ineffective. From my usual ~10K steps a day (or more if I run), my Friday was a paltry sub-2K step day. The only thing I was able to do was watch anime. I found Log Horizon to be a pretty interesting anime, much more so than what the synopsis said; the ramification on politics and how to interaction between the two cultures unfolded was much more in-depth than I presumed. Didn't finish it yet, so this is a partial but very strong recommendation for it. Besides watching stuff, I also went to the shop to buy some food, which turned out to be an excuse for "junk food foraging!". The pain took my willpower away and instead of the planned and short grocery list, I found myself with lots of chocolate and ice cream on my hands. Funny how the brain works On Saturday I was a bit better; the swelling went partially away, so if you squinted you could pretend I look my normal-ugly, not the monster-ugly from before. I was able to go outside of the house, do some shopping, etc. so I was able to go back to a ~9K steps day. I also stopped taking painkillers since anyway they weren't of much help, and kept myself entertained with movies and other stuff (cough cough Grim Dawn , since it's a mindless click-kill-loot-repeat ARPG that one can play even when only partially functional). Today (Sunday) was swelling was slightly worse; however, I was feeling well enough to try to go back on the bike trainer (the first three days of "no sports" were over), and planned to do a slow/relaxing one hour Zwift ride. Right, as all the people who ever tried this, it works as long as only fast people overtake you (since you can't catch them anyway), or as long as you don't get to sprint sections. I did slightly improve my Watopia 300m sprint personal record (29.20s 28.29s), which was good enough. After the first lap I took it easier as in had to, since I was not really in shape. I was in any case very glad about ending my 4 days long break from sports! So, my dentist was right indeed. The swelling did by and large clear up over the weekend (although I'll have to see how tomorrow will be), and was also right about how much more difficult this was. On one hand makes sense (growing bone does sound complex), on the other hand, I couldn't imagine that the body works so hard that it puts you out. The dentist was however slightly wrong with the you should not do any strenuous activity, especially in the first three days ; they should have said, ha ha, you'll be flat out for the first days, take it easy and enjoy the painkillers instead. Looking forward now to get back into my regular routine; relaxation is good, but only when done by choice like most things in life

Random things of the week In no particular order (mostly). Coming back from the US, it was easier dealing with the jet-lag this time; doing sports in the morning or at noon and eating light on the evening helps a lot. The big thing of the week, that has everybody talking, is of course brexit. My thoughts, as written before on a facebook comment: Direct democracy doesn't really work if it's done once in a blue moon. Wikipedia says there have been thirteen referendums in UK since 1975, but most of them (10) on devolution issues in individual countries, and only three were UK-wide referendums (quoting from the above page): the first on membership of the European Economic Community in 1975, the second on adopting the Alternative vote system in parliamentary elections in 2011, and the third one is the current one. Which means that a referendum is done every 13 years or so. At this frequency, people are not a) used to inform themselves on the actual issues, b) believing that your vote actually will change things, and most likely c) not taking the "direct-democracy" aspect seriously (thinking beyond the issue at hand and how will it play together with all the rest of the political decisions). The result is what we've seen, leave politicians already backpedalling on issues, and confusion that yes, leave votes actually counted. My prognosis for what's going to happen:

• one option, this gets magically undone, and there will be rejoicing at the barely avoided big damage (small damage already done).
• otherwise, UK will lose significantly from the economy point of view, enough that they'll try being out of the EU officially but "in" the EU from the point of view of trade.
• in any case, large external companies will be very wary of investing in production in UK (e.g. Japanese car manufacturers), and some will leave.
• most of the 52% who voted leave will realise that this was a bad outcome, in around 5 years.
• hopefully, politicians (both in the EU and in the UK) will try to pay more attention to inequality (here I'm optimistic).

We'll see what happens though. Reading comments on various websites still make me cringe at how small some people think: "independence" from the EU when the real issue is EU versus the other big blocks US, China, in the future India; and "versus" not necessarily in a conflict sense, but simply as negotiating power, economic treaties, etc. Back to more down-to-earth things: this week was quite a good week for me. Including commutes, my calendar turned out quite nice: The downside was that most of those were short runs or bike sessions. My runs are now usually 6.5K, and I'll try to keep to that for a few weeks, in order to be sure that bone and ligaments have adjusted, and hopefully keep injuries away. On the bike front, the only significant thing was that I did as well the Zwift Canyon Ultimate Pretzel Mission, on the last day of the contest (today): 73.5Km in total, 3h:27m. I've done 60K rides on Zwift before, so the first 60K were OK, but the last ~5K were really hard. Legs felt like logs of wood, I was only pushing very weak output by the end although I did hydrate and fuel up during the ride. But, I was proud of the fact that on the last sprint (about 2K before the end of the ride), I had ~34s, compared to my all-time best of 29.2s. Was not bad after ~3h20m of riding and 1300 virtual meters of ascent. Strava also tells me I got 31 PRs on various segments, but that's because I rode on some parts of Watopia that I never rode before (mostly the reverse ones). Overall, stats for this week: ~160Km in total (virtual and real, biking and running), ~9 hours spent doing sports. Still much lower than the amount of time I was playing computer games, so it's a net win Have a nice start of the week everyone, and keep doing what moves you forward!

After last week's bike ride, I had to pack my bags, and get on Monday morning on a plane to Seattle. The time was so short that I even left the bike mounted on the car. So 8:15, plane to Frankfurt, and then plane to Seattle. To my big surprise, the Lufthansa "extended leg room" seats were overly generous; I could actually extend my foot completely and put it on the back of the seat in front of me. Very good value when travelling in economy The only downside was that these were "standard" not "premium" economy, so the seat had leg room but was very narrow. And with normal sized adults on either side of me, it was somewhat difficult. The leg space allowed me to work on my laptop without fearing the person in front of me will recline their seat and break my screen (almost happened once). The funniest thing when travelling is that food is always tricky: even familiar food can be not what you expect. Case in point, me at the salad buffet, seeing slices of green vegetables, and asking myself: Are those jalapeno slices, or bell pepper slices? Hmm, I'm sure they're bell pepper , which resulted in my first vegetable salad with jalapeno. Would definitely recommend if you like spicy things! Otherwise the trip was as usual, but shorter and more densely packed with meetings with a one day exception: had the opportunity to experience for the first time Whirlyball, which was more fun and more difficult than it first looked. Also spent an afternoon on Whidbey Island, which fortunately was also the nicest day, weather-wise, of the week (all phone pictures, not colour corrected, straight-out-of-phone): A few more pictures here. I keep being amazed by the nature in this area, definitely my preferred place in US from the relatively few I visited. Had a nice dinner as well at Cafe Langley, which surprisingly had reasonably-authentic Mediterranean food; the Baba Ganoush was excellent. Other than that outing, nothing worth describing, except that I really missed my Zwift or outdoor rides. The experience of using the stationary bikes in the hotel does not compare, so I resorted more to running on the treadmill (hmm, Zwift for running, hmm ); if the foot pod calibration is to be trusted, I continued to slightly improve my 1K, 1mi, and 5K times. Not bad, I might want to join some running races as well this summer, but I need to take it easy though and make sure to not get injured again. And finally, week over, flew back home, slept a bit mid-day (which will ruin my jet lag recovery program), unloaded my bike from the car (and checked it still works), and and and got on the trainer and did a Zwift ride. Jet lagged, but managed to beat my Watopia sprint record by a tiny bit, and complete a new workout ( The Gorby ), which was interesting. I can stop any time I want, definitely (I just need to take a trip away from home ).

Elsa Bike Trophy 2016 my first bike race! So today, after two months of intermittent training using Zwift and some actual outside rides, I did my first bike race. Not of 2016, not of 2000+, but like ever. Which is strange, as I learned biking very young, and I did like to bike. But as it turned out, even though I didn't like running as a child, I did participate in a number of running events over the years, but no biking ones. The event Elsa Bike Trophy is a mountain bike event cross-country, not downhill or anything crazy; it takes part in Estavayer-le-Lac, and has two courses - one 60Km with 1'791m altitude gain, and a smaller one of 30Km with 845m altitude gain. I went, of course, for the latter. 845m is more than I ever did in a single ride, so it was good enough for a first try. The web page says that this smaller course est nerveux, technique et ne laisse que peu de r pit . I choose to think that's a bit of an exaggeration, and that it will be relatively easy (as I'm not too skilled technically). The atmosphere there was like for the running races, with the exception of bike stuff being sold, and people on very noisy rollers. I'm glad for my trainer which sounds many decibels quieter The long race started at 12:00, and the shorter one at 12:20. While waiting for the start I had to concerns in mind: whether I'm able to do the whole course (endurance), and whether it will be too cold (the weather kept moving towards rain). I had a small concern about the state of the course, as it was not very nice weather recently, but a small one. And then, after one hour plus of waiting, go! Racing, with a bit of "swimming" At first thing went as expected. Starting on paved roads, moving towards the small town exit, a couple of 14% climbs, then more flat roads, then a nice and hard 18% short climb (I'll never again complain about < 10%!), then entering the woods. It became quickly apparent that the ground in the forest was in much worse state than I feared. Much worse as in a few orders of magnitude. In about 5 minutes after entering the tree cover, my reasonably clean, reasonably light bike became a muddy, heavy monster. And the pace that until then went quite OK became walking pace, as the first rider that didn't manage to keep going up because the wheel turned out of the track blocked the one behind him, which had to stop, and repeat until we were one line (or two, depending on how wide the trail was) of riders walking their bikes up. While on dry ground walking your bike up is no problem, or hiking through mud with good hiking shoes is also no problem, walking up with biking shoes is a pain. Your foot slides and you waste half of your energy "swimming" in the mud. Once the climb is over, you get on the bike, and of course the pedals and cleats are full of heavy mud, so it takes a while until you can actually clip in. Here the trail version of SPD was really useful, as I could pedal reasonably well without being clipped-in, just had to be careful and push too hard. Then maybe you exit the trail and get on paved road, but the wheels are so full of mud that you still are very slow (and accelerate very slowly), until the shed enough of the mud to become somewhat more "normal". After a bit of this "up through mud, flat and shedding mud", I came upon the first real downhill section. I would have been somewhat confident in dry ground, but I got scared and got off my bike. Better safe than sorry was the thing for now. And after this is was a repetition of the above: climb, sometimes (rarely) on the bike, most times pushing the bike, fast flat sections through muddy terrain where any mistake of controlling the bike can send the front wheel flying due to the mud being highly viscous, slow flat sections through very liquid mud where it definitely felt like swimming, or any dry sections. My biggest fear, uphill/endurance, was unfounded. The most gains I made were on the dry uphills, where I had enough stamina to overtake. On flat ground I mostly kept order (i.e. neither being overtaken nor overtaking), but on downhill sections, I lost lots of time, and was overtaken a lot. Still, it was a good run. And then, after about 20 kilometres out of the 30, I got tired enough of getting off the bike, on the bike, and also tired mentally and not being careful enough, that I stopped getting off the bike on downhills. And the feeling was awesome! It was actually much much easier to flow through the mud and rocks and roots on downhill, even when it was difficult (for me) like 40cm drops (estimated), than doing it on foot, where you slide without control and the bike can come crashing down on you. It was a liberating feel, like finally having overcome the mud. I was soo glad to have done a one-day training course with Swiss Alpine Adventure, as it really helped. Thanks Dave! Of course, people were still overtaking me, but I also overtook some people (who were on foot; he he, I wasn't the only one it seems). And being easier, I had some more energy so I was able to push a bit harder on the flats and dry uphill sections. And then the remaining distance started shrinking, and the last downhill was over, I entered through familiar roads the small town, a passer-by cries "one kilometre left", I push hard (I mean, hard as I could after all the effort), and I reach the finish. Oh, and my other concern, the rain? Yes it did rain somewhat, and I was glad for it (I keep overheating); there was a single moment I felt cold, when exiting a nice cosy forest into a field where the wind was very strong headwind, of course. Lessons learned I did learn a lot in this first event.

• indoor training sessions only help with endurance (but they do good on this); they don't help with technique, and most importantly, they don't teach how to handle the bike in inclement weather; biking to work on paved road also doesn't help.
• nevertheless, indoor training does help with endurance
• mud guards ; before the race, I thought they'll help; during the race, I cursed at the extra weight and their seemingly uselessness; after the race, after I saw how other people looked, I realised that indeed they helped a lot I was only dirty on my legs, mostly below the knee, but not on my upper body. Unsure whether I will use the again.
• a drop seat is not needed if your seat is set in-between, but sure damn would have been more easy with one
• installing your GPS on your handle-bar with elastic bands in a section of non-constant diameter is a very bad idea, as it lives in an unstable equilibrium: any move towards the thinner section makes the mount very loose, and you have to lose time fixing it.

Results So, how did I do after all? As soon as I reached the finish and recovered my items, among which the phone, I checked the datasport page: I was rank 59/68 in my category. Damn, I hoped (and thought) I would do better. Similar % in the overall ranking for this distance. That aside, it was mighty fun. So much fun I'd do it again tomorrow! I forgot the awesome atmosphere of such events, even in the back of the rankings. And then, after I reach drive home and open on my workstation the datasport page, I get very confused: the overall number of participants was different. And the I realised: not everybody finished the race when I first checked (d'oh)! Final ranking: 59 out of 84 in my category, and 247/364 in the overall 30km rankings. That makes it 70% and 67% respectively, which matches somewhat with my usual running results a few years back (but a bit worse). It is in any case better than what I thought originally, yay! Also, Strava activity for some more statistics (note that my Garmin says it was not 800+ meters of altitude ): I'd embed a Veloviewer nice 3D-map but I can't seem to get the embed option, hmm TODO: train more endurance, train more technique, train in more various conditions!

Short trip to Opio en Provence I had a short work-related trip this week to Opio en Provence. It was not a working trip, but rather a team event, which means almost a vacation! Getting there and back I dislike taking the plane for very short flights (and Z rich-Nice is indeed only around one hour), as that means you're spending 3 as much going to the airport, at the airport, waiting to take off, waiting to get off the plane, and then going from the airport to the actual destination. So I took the opportunity to drive there, since I've never driven that way, and on the map the route seemed reasonably interesting. Not that it's a shorter trip by any measure, but seemed more interesting. Leaving Z rich I went over San Bernardino pass, as I never did that before. On the north side, the pass is actually much less suited to traffic than the Gotthard pass (also on the north side), as you basically climb around 300m in a very short distance, with very sharp hairpins. There was still snow on the top, and the small lake had lots of slush/ice floating on it. As to the south side, it looked much more driveable, but I'm not sure as I made the mistake of re-joining the highway, so instead of driving reasonably nice on the empty pass road, I spent half an hour in a slow moving line. Lesson learned Entering Italy was the usual Como-Milan route, but as opposed to my other trips, this time it was around Milan on the west (A50) and then south on the A7 until it meets the A26 and then down to the coast. From here, along the E80 (Italian A10, French A8) until somewhere near Nice, and then exiting the highway system to get on the small local roads towards Opio. What I read in advance on the internet was that the coastal highway is very nice, and has better views of the sea than the actual seaside drive (which goes through towns and is much slower). I should know better than trust the internet , and I should read maps instead, which would have shown me the fact that the Alps are reaching to the sea in this region, so The road was OK, but it definitely didn't feel like a highway: maximum allowed speed was usually either 90km/h or 110km/h, and half the time you're in a short tunnel, so it's sun, tunnel/dark, sun, dark, and you're eyes get quite tired from this continuous switching. The few glimpses of the sea were nice, but the road required enough concentration (both due to traffic and the amount of curves) that one couldn't look left or right. So that was that a semi-failure; I expected a nice drive, but instead it was a challenge drive If I had even more time to spend, going back via the Rhone valley (Grenoble, Geneva, Z rich) would have been a more interesting alternative. France Going to France always feels strange for me. I learned (some) French way before German, so the French language feels much more familiar to me, even without never actually having used it on a day-to-day basis; so going to France feels like getting back to somewhere where I never lived. Somewhat similar with Italian due to the language closeness between Romanian and Italian, but not the same feeling as I didn't actually hear or learn Italian in the childhood. So I go to France, and I start partially understand what I hear, and I can somewhat talk/communicate. Very weird, while I still struggle with German in my daily life in Z rich. For example, I would hesitate before asking for directions in German, but not so in French, unrelated to my actual understanding of either language. The brain is funny The hotel We stayed at Club Med Opio-en-Provence, which was interesting. Much bigger than I thought from quick looks on the internet (this internet seems quite unreliable), but also better than I expected from a family-oriented, all-inclusive hotel. The biggest problem was the food - French P tisserie is one of my weaknesses, and I failed to resist. I mean, it was much better than I expected, and I indulged a bit too much. I'll have to pay that back on the bike or running The other interesting part of the hotel was the wide range of activities. Again, this being a family hotel, I thought the organised activities would be pretty mild; but at least for our group, they weren't. The mountain bike ride included an easy single-trail section, but while easy it was single-trail and rocky, so complete beginners might have had a small surprise. Overall it was about 50 minutes, 13.5km, with 230m altitude gain, which again for sedentary people might be unusual. I probably spent during the ride one of the deserts I ate later that day The "hike" they organised for another sub-group was also interesting, involving going through old tunnels and something with broken water pipes that caused people to either get their feet wet or monkey-spidering along the walls. Fun! After the bike ride, on the same afternoon, while walking around the hotel, we found the Ecole de Trap ze volant open, which looked way to exciting not to try it. Try and fail to do things right, but nevertheless it was excellent and unexpected fun. I'll have to do that again some day when I'll be more fit! Plus that the hotel itself had a very nice location and olive garden, so short runs in the morning were very pleasant. Only one cookie though each Back home and then it was over; short, but quite good. The Provence area is nice, and I'd like to be back again someday, for a proper vacation longer and more relaxed. And do the trap ze thing again, properly this time.