All tiles mounted Sunday, 14-Sep-25 07:28:20 CEST

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

Sunday, 21-Sep-25 21:49:30 CEST

This week no activities in the barn

This week, the barn activities did not move forward. Instead, I installed the electric outlet frames in the house.

Monday 15 September

Today we both worked from home. It was a windy day. I had thought Mr Radi would come and work in the barn, but he had other plans. He got the keys to the barn so he can work there even when we are at our offices. As far as I know, he has not made use of this; I don't know why.

I was tired from the activities of the last couple of weeks, but then after work, I unloaded the car of the things we had brought home the previous day. It was three small tables, a small vintage ladder, and a concrete bird pond with a sculpture. That pond was especially heavy. When that was done, I took out the vacuum cleaner and cleaned the trunk of the car. I sat there in the car and could feel the wind shake the car from time to time. It really had to have some cleaning done in the car. I will need to go over the rest of the car as well because it is filthy.

I also picked a carrot from the carrots I sowed in July. It was not big, but it is a real carrot! It tasted sweet.

In the evening, the wind picked up to Baufort level 5. That is a lot of wind. This evening, I received an email from Mr Radi. He outlined the plan of the barn and requested feedback from me on what to purchase, etc. I will work on that tomorrow.

I received the orders for vegetables from the food co-op, and apparently, I was set to deliver 3 kilos of potatoes. I had not submitted that I would deliver anything. That must have been a mistake, but perhaps I should do it. If I don't, people will be disappointed, and that is worse. Since I still have the potatoes in the ground, it is just a matter of digging some up and delivering them, although the idea was that I wouldn't deliver anymore this season.

Tuesday 16 September

Today, both DW and I went to our offices. I drove DW to the train station, and then continued to my office. I talked about the village fair I attended during the weekend, and a colleague wanted to buy one of the pieces!

After work, I started to make an inventory of the electrical outlet material that I have, and installed the remaining parts to see what is left over. It was a lot of work, and I didn't get around to making a proper list of what to order as Mr. Radi had requested. This was exhausting, climbing on ladders and behind cupboards, etc.

The good thing was that I got things mounted and installed, so that is done. It is a wonderful feeling for me when things are finished. I don't like having unfinished tasks around.

Wednesday 17 September

Today, DW had a day off, and she used it to harvest the rest of the tomatoes. She made tomato chutney from the unripe tomatoes. She wanted her day off to be more relaxed, but she did excellent work.

I worked from home in the morning. After lunch, I began organizing the order of what we have and what we still need. We did not need any more of the schukos. We do need frames and whatnot. I mailed the list to Mr Radi. I hope we can continue working on the project next week, but I don't expect things to arrive that quickly.

Today came the replacement of the broken WC bowl. This time, I opened the box and checked the contents right away. It looked like it was in good condition. The previous package had a rough ride before it arrived at our place. I remember I got it in my arms from the chauffeur, and it had a tingling sound in the box. That was the broken parts scratching against each other.

In the afternoon, I finished the list of things our electrician needs to buy. I was uncertain about one item on the list. I produced two alternatives so that one of them would be right. It turned out to be a good idea. The same evening, I got more things to figure out, but before we went to bed, everything was ready. Now he needs to order the items, and they need to be available. That is not always the case. We will see how that pans out.

Here is a movie of Merida. It is just two seconds long!

Thursday 18 September

Today we went to our offices. DW is giving a training. It was draining. I had a good day at work. We were not that many in the office, but the people I work with a lot were there. It was nice.

In the evening, I worked on the phoneme conversion project while Merida slept next to me on the couch, and DW was knitting or spinning. Many times, DW is spinning wool while Merida is producing a spinning sound.

I made good progress. Last week, I ended the project at line 37498 on the third round through the file. At the beginning of this evening, I had moved forward to line 52229. This evening, I made a significant step forward to line 78397. Here at the word Metcalf, I found a situation I had anticipated for some time that I would encounter.

The word itself is originally a name of northern English origin. It was a nickname for a calf that was fattened for the purpose of being eaten. It could also be used for a person working with metal. It is also the name of a theorem explaining how network value increases with the number of nodes. I know very little about that, but it sounds like something that could be in my computer science books that I was reading when I went to the University of Umeå to study computer science. Anyone remembering the pigeonhole theory, raise their hands.

At the word Metcalf, I realized that I had a flaw in my conversion algorithm. I decided that I would look into this tomorrow morning.

The electrician suggested I order a restroom heating element, so I did that this evening. I wonder when it will arrive.

Friday 19 September

It was a sunny morning. DW worked from home, and I had a day off.

After breakfast, I started on the issue with Metcalf. Here are the sounds of that word: M EH1 T K AE2 F. The algorithm, as it is now, was missing the letter l at the end of the word. I match the l with a multipattern sound of AE and F. This conflicts with the multisound pattern K AE. The latter is not doing any good work here because it matches 'car', but it masks the AE F pattern. How is this possible? It has to do with the Cartesian product part of the algorithm. It is a large, complex chunk that I figured I actually do not need. When a pattern does not match, we need to skip it. So today I will remove it. It is usually easier to remove code than to write new code, and this time it was really easy, and it worked.

But then you wonder, and so do I, by changing the fundamental working of the algorithm, are there not plenty of new cases that emerged throughout the 135166 lines? It can be. I will have to test anyway.

Another question is, why couldn't I figure this out much earlier? From the moment I decided to use multi-sound patterns, they have not coexisted well with the single sound patterns. Now, finally, for two weeks, I can say the two forms of patterns live well next to each other in the code. They share the same level mechanism. There are patterns that I created with the workarounds, but I will find these patterns and remove them.

However, I cannot sit and program phonemes all day. There is real work to do as well. I harvested the remaining potatoes from the garden. Perhaps you missed the 'banana for scale' meme thing from around 2012, but here it is again.

When the potatoes were harvested, I was feeling tired. I kept this feeling for a large part of the day. Perhaps I have been too busy lately.

A couple of weeks ago, I got a stretcher from the PILs. This afternoon, it was perfect weather for using it in the garden. It was perhaps a little windy, but it was a warm wind. Eventually, the afternoon turned into early evening, and I got inside.

After dinner, I worked on the phoneme project. I got to line 108633!

Saturday 20 September

This morning we went to the farmers' market. We got there well on time. The last time we were too late for buying bread. This time we bought bread, nuts, cheese, and some regular groceries from the farm shop. That is true; the regular farm shop is also having a stand at the farmers' market. We had a cup of coffee and a cookie. DW talked to people from the wool business also at the market. We had a great time. The weather was marvellous.

When we got home, we got the barns restroom heater delivered. That is quick.

DW picked raspberries, and I moved the sheep to a new area. They are now grazing on the northeast part between neighbours. Until now, we have let the sheep also graze the area between the two northern neighbours, but that part is narrower. In combination with the dog Tito, we decided to skip that part. We now let them graze in the broader part between the neighbors. We will see how that works.

I took out the lawnmower and mowed the southeast and northwest fields. When this was finished, it started raining heavily.

Not everything was happy today. I had a stiff neck, and DW had a sore throat. We will see how that will develop. My wound from the kitchen sink has healed nicely.

In the evening, I finished the third round of the phoneme project! I started on the fourth round.

Sunday 21 September

DW is not feeling well. I made a can of tea for her in the morning. She does not want any honey in the tea, but she likes tea made from ginger root. I added sage from the garden. I think it tasted nice.

The third round was by far the most complicated run. I had 94 times that I stopped and had to investigate what the program did wrong. The idea is that with every run, I will have fewer and fewer investigations to do; however, if I change the algorithm fundamentally, then that might not be the case. For a long time, I had the conflict between single sound patterns and multiple sound patterns, but that looks like it has been solved satisfactorily. That is, by the way, word 106208. In the earlier rounds, I adapted the patterns so that they became sloppier and sloppier, and at some point, the patterns started to overlap. That was round one.

Then I created the multi-sound pattern system, but it did not cooperate reasonably with the single sounds. It consumed sounds and made it more and more challenging for the remaining words to be deciphered. I finished round four yesterday, cleaned up some garbage introduced earlier, and made the system more robust.

After breakfast, we looked over DW's stock of self-made products she will sell at a farmers' market next Friday. She made a variety of nice wool products, as well as chutney and soap. I hope it will be epic autumn weather next Friday.

I went out to the sea container and unmounted the scaffold I used as a shelf system in the sea container. Now, if the electrician was finished on the attic of the barn, I would go ahead and prepare for moving planks from the sea container to the barn. As it stands now, it is better to have the electricity finished, and then I can continue to fill the barn.

We had a fast-growing, unwanted tree on the south side of the sea container. I decided to cut it down today.

DW developed a mild fever during the day. I don't know why it is important to stress that it was a mild fever, because it was a fever. That was how DW wanted it. I'm feeling okay; my stiff neck is with me, but I'm managing so far.

I worked on the phoneme project today and managed to get to line 47512 of the fourth round. It is an okayish result.

Here ends this week's blog. This week was not a full steam ahead on the barn, and I was happy about it because I was feeling like I had worked a little too hard lately. I finished mounting the frames around our electrical outlets in the house. That is not bad. I took down the shelf in the sea container. There is progress, but no tremendous progress. I wrote 2209 words this week, not bad! Welcome back next week!