Igis, Switzerland (My parents’ house)
Time to head back to Switzerland. It’s summertime and quite warm. Back to my office and as always when I arrived there, a lot of packages were waiting for me. This time I got a new drone. An FPV drone, a new skill level I wanted to give it a try.
Alvier, Switzerland (Birthday hike)
It’s almost tradition. My best friend comes every year for her birthday to Switzerland to hike and celebrate her birthday at a mountain peak. This time we tried something challenging. The weather wasn’t that certain. Very foggy and also some thunderstorms around. Nevertheless, I decided to leave and hike up to the 2343m high Alvier. On the way up we saw nothing. It was so foggy. Better actually, because it was very steep. At the peak, we still saw nothing, but crazy winds. I decided to risk it and hike up despite thunderstorms, which can be very dangerous because I knew there was a cottage at the top. It was closed since it was too early in the season. But in the worst cases, we could hide somewhere next to it.
In the evening it started to lighten up a bit and we finally had a view over the mountain peaks close by. But still, the wind was quite strong and we saw a lot of thunderstorms around. But they never came closer to us which I liked a lot. After that, we went back into our tent and tried to sleep.
The next morning was a perfect one. No clouds and a perfect sunrise. The risk was worth it. All went well and had an adventurous hike/night at the top of the mountain top.
Since my friend stayed a lot longer in Switzerland we went to some more places close by to enjoy the view. For sure we also stopped at my grandmother’s place and enjoyed the very delicious local food.
Chur, Switzerland
Back to normal life for two weeks. Since I’m back home I can finally work as a cameraman freelancer again. I’m always missing this a lot. It’s a big passion of mine and I’m happy I can do it on a freelance basis.
For sure I was also happy to catch up with friends from school or former work. The European Football Championship was going on. So no better way than meeting up with them for a drink, watching the game, and talking.
Zurich, Switzerland
I did a weekend trip to Zurich, the biggest city in Switzerland. It’s not that I’ve never been there. Most trains reach their end destination via Zurich since it’s very central. But this time I really felt like a tourist. I and my friend went around sightseeing and doing all the touristy things. That was quite cool and I learned a couple of new places.
Brigels, Switzerland (Civil service—the yearly duty)
Same as every year, I’m heading up into the mountains to help a farmer during a period of 4 weeks. I know the area and especially work well. It’s physically hard work, but I’m enjoying it mostly and it’s a great option to be more active (which I’m not that much).
Bad Ragaz, Switzerland (Bad RagARTz)
On the weekend I had now some time to spend with my family and some projects at home.
On Saturday I went to a park with my mother to watch an art gallery by the Grand Hotel of Bad Ragaz (Bad RagARTz) and played some mini golf. It was a fun day and quality time.
Igis, Switzerland (New gaming computer)
Another project that I thought was quite fun is my new gaming PC. I’ve been an enthusiastic flight simulator player since I was very little. Fascinated by the airspace industry. It’s been years since Microsoft released their Flight Simulator version X which they stopped supporting and discontinued the development at all. Which left most with an old, inperformant version of the flight simulator. Even with modern computers, it was very hard to have it run smoothly since the game couldn’t access all resources. But lately, there have been some rumors about a new version of Flight Simulator. And definitely, it happened, Flight Simulator 2020 was released and I certainly wanted to play it. For that, I needed a new computer. So I bought one. A gaming computer with the newest standards. It’s been a while since I used Windows again. But I thought it would be fun to try it again.
A little fun home automation project
But what to do with it when I’m traveling? There’s no use to it and for you, it sounds strange to buy a new computer just to play a game on it for a bit. That’s right, but I really wanted to do it. So I needed another purpose for it. Since I’m never home, I can’t access it. But we do have solar panels on the roof of our house, so I had an idea for some kind of home automation project with my father. It’s not that hard but is a nice idea to make use of my gaming computer.
We started to mine some bitcoin on it while the sun was shining. It’s 2021 and the goldrush of Bitcoin is definitely over in terms of mining. Only big mining farms on scale and with low energy costs you can operate profitably. I quickly did the maths and it’s just unprofitable to let my PC tower run for that. But since we do have solar on the roof and actually free energy, that could be a nice use case. Most of our devices at home can be controlled via ethernet. This means that my computer can be started and shut down remotely and automatically. After building some scripts to make this happen and working together with my father to set it up with the home automation server, we got it running. The computer now runs autonomously for around 8 hours per day during a sunny summer day and generates a couple of bucks a day. If the Bitcoin value is above a certain level, that’s more than what we get from the local electricity company when delivering the energy back to the electricity grid.
DJI FPV drone
Lately, there’s been a big trend in FPV drones. I started using normal drones years ago. Around 10 years ago. So I followed the new developments in that space as well. DJI, the biggest manufacturer of drones, just released its first FPV drone. After doing some training in the simulator, I thought it would be fun to finally get a real one. So I bought the first version of the DJI FPV drone. It’s very heavy and can’t do all the crazy maneuvers. But for that stable and pretty okay to learn I would say.
Glarus, Switzerland (Freelance cameraman work)
In September there are a lot of events happening. So I’m ready back behind the cameras. Sports events, concerts/festivals, and conferences. I like this time because I can walk in a very different job than usual when I travel and get to be outside and at events.
