Miguel Anjo


Carte Journalière vs Abonnement Général – same same but different

Encore une fois les trains de montage m’ont fait la morale car j’ai confondu le “rayon de validité de l’Abonnement Genéral” avec la posession d’un Abonnement Général.

Pour la visite de ma mère j’ai acheté une carte journalière d’Interdiscount et je suis parti dans la région de l’Jungfraujoch. J’ai moi même un l’abonnement général. J’ai acheté le supplément à partir de Grindelwald dans l’application des CFF. Comme la carte journalière dit être valable dans la “région de l’AG”, j’ai marqué ma mère comme ayant Abonnement Général, lors de l’achat de du billet de Grindelwald à Eigergletscher.

Dans la montée au nouveau téléphérique le QR code n’est pas reconnu, mais les contrôleurs après regarder les billets, ouvrent les tourniquets pour nous laisser passer.

Dans le train de retour entre Kleine Scheidegg et Wengen, la contrôleuse du train dit que le supplément de ma mère n’est pas suffisant, qu’elle a besoin d’un supplément entier et pas de uniquement de l’AG. Elle veut nous faire payer depuis Grindelwald Terminal, ce que je ne suis pas d’accord, car là on nous a contrôlé et laisser passer. Heureusement la contrôleuse n’arrive pas à faire le billet de supplément depuis Grindelwald Terminal et fait payer uniquement le train où on se trouve.

Long story short: le problème de tout cela est l’utilisation du terme “AG” pour “abonnement” et “rayon de validité”, avec des concepts distincts.

Je propose à l’Union de Transports Publiques Suisse de modifier la désignation de “rayon de validité de l’AG” à “zone standard” et créer la “zone premium” pour les transports où l’AG ne donne droit qu’à une réduction de prix et les cartes journalières ne sont pas valables.

Ainsi, on pourrait bien avoir un tableau simple:

Type billetZone StandardZone Premium
GAfreediscount
1/2 tarifdiscountdiscount
carte journalièrefreenot included
Dans l’application CFF il faudrait aussi pouvoir alors dire qu’un passager a une carte journalière.

Reasons I don’t like Switzerland – Swiss Post

Again today I got angry at Swiss Post. I’m sending a small A5 photo calendar to Portugal. I check online, the stamps for 125 grams cost 7,50 Fr and I decide it is easier to go and send it directly at the office.

Arrived there, while waiting, I got approached and when looking at the envelopes they warn me: “you need a customs declaration” and gives me a cut off QR code that sends me to the Swiss Post website.

As my turn arrives soon, I wait few seconds to get to the desk. There she confirms that for sending a calendar I need a customs declaration, even though in the last few years I never did that and was never a problem.

The person starts to fill it up and at the end says: it is 28 Fr for the two letters. So, no only it is not considered letter but a “package” that costs 9 Fr and they charge 5 Fr for filling the form, without even informing before about it.

Just for the record, my previous adventures with the Swiss Post:

  • registered letter from Portugal (for voting in the elections) was returned after arriving to Bern, without trying to deliver. They admit it was a mistake
  • Several letters from Switzerland are returned without trying to deliver, because they are sent to my full name and on their system I had only one surname. It took months to solve and was even the Post Bank who at the end helped out to find the reason.
  • A registered priority letter with signature to Portugal took 20 days to be delivered and never got the signature or confirmation of deliver.

My summary is: Swiss Post delivers a bad expensive service, that unfortunately I cannot easily avoid.


Train Lisbon-Madrid

For checking again in 10 years, if something changed.

When the train time would be the same, and we could go between Lisbon and Barcelona in 6 hours (or night train), then I think I could always travel by train from Switzerland back to Portugal.


Make it look like scanned

Example today:

I need to send via email a five page PDF document to a public service. As usual, I filled the document directly on the computer. One of the pages needs to be signed by me and another person. I printed out, got the signature and scan it back – but only this page. And this page only information is the date and signature of this person and mine. All remaining information – which the other person signed to confirm it is true – is on on the other pages.

Meaning: I’ve a scanned page I’m joining the other 4 pages to it, with the content I which. Not to make it look clearly a merge between a scanned page with 4 non-scanned pages, I use one of the online services that make PDFs to look like scanned!

Service used today: https://lookscanned.io/scan


Porta-te bem, pai!

As pernas desta vez venceram. Mas tenho a certeza de que o meu pai já está a preparar a próxima maratona, onde quer que ela seja. E eu lá estarei – estaremos todos -, em pensamento, a acompanhar e a vê-lo atravessar a meta.

Este ano foi difícil.

A doença que o acompanhava há 12 anos chegou às pernas. Ao centro da vida do meu pai.

Foi o momento de começar a viver um dia de cada vez:

  • Ir em cadeira de rodas, com meu primo Pedro, ver o Benfica a ganhar;
  • Rever os amigos
  • Pôr no site, sempre que a concentração o permitia, as estatísticas em dia.

E o ano terminou. As pernas dele pararam.

As memórias que guardo do meu pai são as mesmas que as vossas.

As de alguém de espírito conciliador, bem-disposto, com sentido de humor, muito optimista e sempre disponível.

Nunca me vou esquecer, no tempo da Revista Atletismo, em que todos os meses fazíamos centenas de envelopes para enviar aos assinantes.

Lembro-me de irmos à Volta ao Minho com os amigos – mesmo quando a Volta ao Minho era na Serra da Estrela.

Lembro-me de começar a fazer atletismo em jovem, treinar na pista de 500 metros do Estádio Universitário, e participar em competições. …mas, ao contrário do meu pai, nunca cheguei a ser campeão de nada!

Lembro-me de, em criança, ir com ele ao estádio torcer pelo Benfica. De ver jogar o Benfica aos ombros dele no estádio da Covilhã. Fez-me sócio desde que nasci…

Lembro-me de ir com ele às redações do jornal do Benfica, do Record e da Lusa.

Lembro-me das viagens que fizemos para participar nas maratonas em Londres, no Hawai, na Africa do Sul e no Sahara. Ele ainda foi, mas só com a minha mãe, correr ao Ártico e à Antártida.

Lembro-me de ver o meu pai entrevistar os atletas nos finais das provas.

Lembro-me de ditar os dados para os seus cadernos de estatística de atletismo.

Lembro-me das histórias que contava sobre as lutas políticas do 25 de Abril e das recordações dos colegas do liceu Pedro Nunes.

E, se estamos aqui hoje, é porque as memórias que têm dele, tal como as minhas, são boas e ficarão gravadas para sempre.

Porta-te bem, pai!


Swiss web hosting comparison – what is the best?

Engineer answer: it depends. 🙂

Currently my hosting is in the US. It works fine, is quite cheap, but does offer Let’s Encrypt SSL certtificates. Also, from Europe, reaching sites in the US there is always some latency.

I’m going to show the results of my comparison of four different hosting providers in Switzerland, for small websites, mostly WordPress based, including its email management.

What are my web hosting requirements?

I manage three independent domains, with different users and targets. They are all wordpress based websites. Apart of that, I’ve a few PHP pages self developed, some dynamic photo albums, and other static pages.

For each of the domains I’ve a few email addresses, almost all of them only forward the email to other provider (Gmail or other).

I like to have SSH access. I need also one less secure FTP user to upload files to a specific folder.

Less than 100GB of space are needed. The space for emails is not important. I could also survive with 50GB.

As currently the browsers show the sites as unsecure when you do not have a SSL certificate, I also need one for each of the domains.

(more…)

Mobilité piétonne 2

Depuis 2019 j’habite une ville où ça fait du plaisir marcher. Marcher en ville. C’est une ville de plus de 100 mil habitants et la capitale de la Suisse. Les clés du succès sont certainement multiples. Les principales à mon avis sont:

  • Peu de voitures en ville
  • Respect des piétons lors des travaux
  • Respecter les piétons dans les feux lumineux
  • Pas de mobilier urbain ni poteaux au milieu des trottoirs
  • Trottoirs traversants

Chaque fois que je retourne à la ville ou j’ai grandi, je remarque que ces points ne sont pas encore ancrés dans la culture local et il manque une responsabilité au niveau municipal que guide le changement de culture et paradigme.

Lisboa, Mai 2021: poteaux, (mauvaise) signalisation et autres empêchent le trottoir
Lisboa, Mai 2021: voitures empêchent le trottoir

Lisbonne est de toute façon une des meilleures villes pour marcher au Portugal et il y a beaucoup de progrès les derniers années. J’espère que cela continue et bientôt on aura le même plaisir de marcher que dans la capitale suisse.