This week no activities in the barn Sunday, 21-Sep-25 21:49:30 CEST

Sunday, 28-Sep-25 21:05:59 CEST

Moving planks

This week, we removed the planks from the sea container.

Monday 22 September

Today, DW went from mildly ill to severely ill. I did not tell her to stay away from work. That is what I hear from her when I am sick, but it doesn't happen often. She wanted to attend a meeting in the afternoon, but that did not happen. A colleague could stand in for her. She was bed-bound the entire day.

Today I let our vacuum cleaner robot clean the ground floor. I got the plants onto the tables we fetched from the PILs two weeks ago. It starts to look decent now. Can you recall how it was before the walls were insulated in October 2020? This is much better.

It was epic autumn weather today, but we did not enjoy much of it. I worked from home. After work, I made a zucchini soup. Usually it is DW cooking, but she was bed-bound and I wanted to make a soup. I made it from the mouth of this smiley.

But then DW came downstairs to eat the soup. Now, if she can keep the soup, then all will be fine. After dinner, we settled into our usual spots on the couch to do our regular evening activities. I blogged and programmed, while DW watched a Swedish TV show.

Tuesday 23 September

Good morning. I'm late but happy because I am biking to work. It was a really long time ago. There is a surprising number of things that need to be collected and fixed before the bike ride can start. The bike bags need to be packed, the tires need to be pumped, the seat cover needs to be found, and so on. The last time I went to the garage, I used to bike, and I took off the headlamp, but now I can't find it anymore. You should never take off things.

The bike is not ticking, that is wonderful.

DW decided to work today. She's not sufficiently fit, but without saying it, I understood that it is painful to have colleagues not living up to the standards, taking over her tasks.

And now it started raining. The sky is blue, so where are the drips coming from?

By the way, while we are talking about it, did you know I have an account at the microblogging social platform Blue Sky? I stopped using Twitter because it became useless. You cannot say I'm particularly active at Blue Sky. Follower counts have never really driven my motivation. Besides, I'm not good at it. However, if you happen to have a Blue Sky account and read this, you're always welcome to come by and say hello. I would appreciate it.

When I first launched this blog, I had a comment section. I had not built a review of comments, and I also received no notifications that the comment had been placed. Those were the things I had decided to build later. That moment didn't arrive. So when I inspected the results of the comment section, it was appalling. I found mainly the residue of people trying to hack the comment system. They attempted SQL injection and placed links to other websites. None of this worked because I had made the system hack-proof. This was when I decided to remove the comment section.

Now I'm on my way home. The sun is shining, but it's windy and not that warm. I had a highly productive day and thoroughly enjoyed it.

I passed someone driving an electric wheelchair. It was different, it was cool. The bottom part of the wheelchair resembled a larger version of a robot I was thinking of building. Something with four wheels. I know what you're thinking: Are you going to build a robot? Are you not supposed to finish the barn, for example?! You are absolutely right, but I need something to keep my motivation up, and one of those things is that I want to build a robot in the barn's workplace. If you find this blog occasionally gets nerdy, I can assure you that it will only get worse. But we take one thing at a time, so the primary goal right now is indeed to finish the barn.

The forecast indicated a slight chance of rain, but it has held up so far. The time is 6:30 PM, and it's hard to believe that in a couple of weeks, there will be no sun at this time, but it will be pitch dark. Perhaps I can experiment and then come back here to check the status of the light. I recall another year when I tried to bike through the pitch-black forest, and somehow I can no longer do it.

I would need to have excellent lamps, so when I have them, I will try again. For now, I first need to find the only lamp I have.

Do you recall the onion field I've got harvested before my holiday? Now I noticed it had been sown with white mustard. I couldn't believe it, so I tasted one, and it was slightly peppery. I suppose the farmer doesn't want his land to stay empty, but I thought we were so far into autumn that it was pointless to sow anything. It's also possible that this is just green fertilizer.

Wednesday 24 September

It was a sunny day today. I worked from home in the morning. DW had a day off. She was no longer sick. She was not fully recovered either, but she had a better day than yesterday. So far, I have not picked up her sickness; that is good.

She is preparing for the farmers' fair this upcoming Friday. She made pots with chutney of two sorts, as well as her wool products. It will be great.

I worked on the hatch to the attic of the barn. The idea is to load the attic with planks from the sea container, and to make that easier, I made a hatch to the attic.

First, I cut open the vapor barrier where I wanted to have the hatch. The vapor barrier is a special type of fabric or tarpaulin installed inside the wall, ensuring that no moisture enters the house. The builder has asked if I would like to leave a review, and I am hesitant because there is one thing about the building that I really do not like: the nails for the facade are too long. The idea was that I should insulate the building from the inside, and when doing that, the nails are poking through the vapor barrier. That is not how it should be if you are asking me. If I file an honest review, I will have to admit that I bought a barn with a vapor barrier that has been pierced in thousands of places. Alternatively, I could choose not to file a review. Perhaps a better alternative.

I got a little saw with a curved blade. I used it to scratch the planks along the line I intended to cut the hatch. I usually don't use the round edge, so it was sharp and functional. The regular straight saw side was dull. That was annoying, but after a long time of scratching, I had managed to cut the hatch open from the inside without using a power tool.

I removed the spikey things sticking out. Then I installed diagonal beams to strengthen the hatch against sheer forces. I painted the newly cut surfaces with red paint.

Ideally, I would like to hang the hatch on hinges, but for now, I have screwed the hatch closed with two extra beams. I need to visit a hardware store to see what types of hinges they offer and determine if any of them suit my needs. It is not bad to have the hatch open with the help of a screwdriver; it is still a valuable addition to the barn, and this way, I can start on the next phase of emptying the sea container.

Without hinges, the hatch was nearly invisible.

	Before I made the hatch.
	Hatch finished and closed.

As you can see, the hatch is nearly invisible.

This evening, I asked Kevin J. Sinclair, the owner of lyricseditor.com, what it would cost to buy the domain. He responded with a lengthy rant about how he disliked the email address I had chosen for this inquiry. I created an email address specifically for him on my email server, so that if he chooses to reply, I know it is from him. He gave the price $150000. That was three zeros too much for me. I decided to register my own domain, lyrics-editor.com, and that cost me 10 euros for the first year. Look, this is a hobby project; I will not earn any money from it, as far as I can see. I understand that by registering a "neighbor" domain with just a dash difference, I probably gave Kevin more annoyed feelings. I suppose that if I had given Kevin J. Sinclair an anonymous email, he might not have reacted so unevenly and perhaps offered a better price; I don't know. We will never find out because I have my domain with a dash, and it is fine for me. Perhaps Kevin J Sinclair is not the best salesperson after all, I don't know.

Thursday 25 September

This was a beautiful morning!

I went to work and it was a good day. A colleague came back from maternity leave. That was nice! You have so many colleagues around you, and if they are pleasant to work with, then you miss them when they are gone. Next to your family, you spend much time with colleagues. That is just how it is. We had bought her presents, and she liked them.

In the evening, I started to put the new domain lyrics-editor.com to live. Created a small webpage saying "Hi, Bye!" I did maintenance of the web server. This was long overdue. This domain had a glitch that allowed the page to be opened with or without the 'www' prefix, which was not intended. I got it working. I fixed this for www.sunneras.se as well as the new website.

Friday 26 September

Today I had a day off. DW worked from home. In the morning, I worked a little more on the web server. It was not easy. Instead of getting it to work, I went to the hardware store and bought things to fasten the hatch properly without the need for a screwdriver. I also bought handles, so it is easier to pull out the hatch. Then I mounted the handles and the locks.

When the hatch was finished, it was time to pack the car with things DW had prepared for the sale at the farmers' market. Merida was curious about the things I packed.

I loaded the crates in the car. DW had a meeting that would end a tad late, but that would not be an issue if we were ready to leave directly after the meeting had ended. All went according to plan. The meeting ended, and moments after, we were on our way to the farmers' market.

It wasn't as warm this afternoon. It would not rain, but there was a chill wind. We put on loads of warm clothing.

DW sold gloves, mittens, and hats that she had made herself. She also sold homemade chutney from tomatoes and from rowan berries. Two different sorts. She also offered coffee filters and homemade soap bars in a wool jacket. There was a lot to see at her desk. The sales went very well.

On the market was also a professional apple juice maker. They came with a factory on a trailer. On one side, a conveyor belt transported apples into the machine, and on the other side, packages of apple juice emerged from the machine. We don't have so many apple trees, but in the area, there are plenty of apple orchards. People arrived with trailers full of apples.

In the evening, we came home a little cooled down but happy that all had been such a success.

I worked on the web server and found it to be a little more challenging than I had anticipated. I learned a few things: The disk in the web server was not 100 GB, but much smaller. The disk had almost no free space left. There were a couple of issues with the disk. All these things were not fun.

Saturday 27 September

This morning, I got the idea that perhaps I could ask a friend for help in fixing the web server. It is a person who knows a lot more about Linux servers than I do. I had a feeling that I wanted to go there right away in the morning, but that is not a good idea. They are probably busy.

Instead, we decided to move planks from the sea container via the hatch to the attic of the barn. This is something I have been thinking about for a considerable amount of time. Now it would happen!

We had a stack of planks at the opening of the container. I had figured out that it would be possible to lean the planks against the opening of the hatch and then drag them into the attic.

I remembered when we first moved the planks. The planks arrived on 10 July 2020. We got them delivered to the driveway. From there, we had to move them off the driveway. We loaded the sea container, but we also placed a heap outside it. The idea was that it would be easier to grab the planks outside the container. That was true, but the grabbing would not happen that quickly, so in the end, it was better to put all the planks into the container. On 30 July 2020, we began loading the last package of planks into the container. "It was a terrible decision to store the planks outside the container".

Then we put up the planks on the house, but at the front of the container, we still had some left. Perhaps we were too scrimp with mounting the planks. It worked out well; we got the house covered in planks, which is what matters.

Today, we are moving the remaining planks one more time. The new location is a couple of meters above the same spot five years ago, outside the container. This time in the attic of a barn.

 

The electrician still needs access behind the planks in the attic, so we could not block the walls. That does not matter; it is better to have some room over at the walls. What's left in the container are smaller pieces of wood and some random objects.

The lawnmower still lives in the sea container. I will also need to find a spot in the barn. There is currently a height difference of almost 80 centimeters. I will need to build a ramp so that the lawnmower can be driven into the barn; that is another project.

The tiller machine also lives in the sea container. I can get it into the barn, but it smells a little bit, so I am a little hesitant to move it. It is not urgent to remove it from the sea container at this time.

Once all the planks were moved, we had lunch, and afterward, we took a walk in the neighborhood. During that walk, we met up with many neighbors and friends. I had the opportunity to discuss my server issues with my friend, and he was willing to take a look at the server. It is this very server on which you are reading this blog; if it disappears from the Internet next Wednesday, something went terribly wrong.

DW made a delicious meal of quiche containing pieces of pumpkin. To this we had chutney. I liked the tomato chutney better than the rowan chutney. After dinner, we had a glass of seathorn liquor! We started on this last year. DW picked a couple of branches of the hawthorn and put them in the freezer. Then the berries lived there. We had a good harvest of berries this year and filled up much of the freezer, but the seathorn shelf was still occupied. On 18 August, we prepared the liquor. Now that it is finished, we can taste it. It was delicious. It had a fruity taste.

Sunday 28 September

This morning, I finished the fourth round of the phoneme conversion project. I finished this round with 81 interventions. The last round had 94 interventions. It is better, but it is still not good enough. Ideally, the next round will have many fewer interventions. If I manage to reduce the number of interventions to a handful per round, then I will be finished with the analysis. Ideally, I would like to have zero interventions, but will that be possible?

We had a really slow morning. Yesterday, I already suggested a slow day, and after that, we moved 200 kilograms of wood. DW was a little disappointed with my definition of slow day. Today we tried to do it better. I programmed the phoneme conversion project, and at noon, we went outside to try discarding the stems from the corn plants. For this, we used the chopping machine I had repaired the previous year. I took the machine apart on 27 April. I ordered the guide plate for the chopper machine on 5 May 2024. On 7 June, the guide plate arrived. Then I called it a wood chipping machine, little did I know. Today, the new guide place is already well used. The issue was that the bolt pushing the plate to the knives had become crooked. It was no longer possible to adjust the guide plate. I need to disassemble the whole thing to get access to the bolt. I will not do that anytime soon. If I already knew how to weld in aluminium, I could repair the guide plate. That is currently not the case. I do have space for the defunct machine in a corner of the attic. I will put it there and see if I can modify the machine when I have the welding machine.

We ran the corn through the machine, and it shredded the stems, making them more suitable for composting. The machine is not a wood chopper. That is clear. It is more of a compost machine.

The pumpkins are almost ready to be harvested. I already harvested 19 bottle pumpkins and 7 orange pumpkins when I harvested the potatoes. Now we counted the remaining pumpkins, and there are 30 still to be picked.

In the evening, I worked on the phoneme conversion project. I reached line 66654! There are fewer interventions needed for round 5. If the program had been quicker, it would have been nicer.

Here ends this week's blog. The planks are removed from the sea container. That is a nice milestone for this week. The farmers' fair was a lovely experience. There was no further progress on the electricity and plumbing in the barn, but that is fine. I don't want to rush the electrician. He will emerge when all things to be installed have been delivered and he has time in his schedule. I bought a domain name for the lyrics editor. That's cool.

I wrote 3254 words this week. That is a lot of words.