Sea container almost empty! Sunday, 05-Oct-25 21:26:54 CEST

Sunday, 12-Oct-25 18:16:55 CEST

Sea container is empty!

This week the sea container was emptied! The smoke machine arrived!

Monday 6 October

This was a grey, uninspiring October morning. Not even a spectacular sunrise. It was overcast and 12 degrees Celsius. DW went to the office for IRL meetings, and I worked from home.

Last night, Merida came to sleep next to me. She purred loudly and put a paw on my face. How sweet can she be? The paw was warm. After a while, she took the paw away, and I looked at her; then she put it there again. This happened several times. In between, I slept as well, luckily.

At lunchtime, they tested the warning sirens. You can hear them at noon on the first Monday of every month. All other occasions are not a drill. I don't want to find out the hard way.

I let the vacuum robot clean the ground floor. It makes much noise, but at least I am not the person operating the vacuum cleaner manually. It's okay with the sound when I am in my home office.

Last week, I reached a new milestone in my spellchecking software: I checked 16 million words since 2007!

Tuesday 7 October

Good morning! I'm biking to work and I'm well on time. I recall that last time I biked to work, I decided to bring my DSLR camera with me. It's amusing how writing in my blog encouraged me to take action, as I put my DSLR camera in my bag this morning. Had I not thought aloud about bringing my camera, it wouldn't have happened. So, this doesn't mean I'll automatically take any beautiful pictures, but there are moments when biking to work, and I think, 'Wow, that's nice.' It's a pity I don't have my camera, and now I do!

Another thing that intrigues me is how fear can block us from doing things. And here I'm not thinking of justifiable fear but especially unjustifiable fear. Such as "I shouldn't take so many photos because the web server will run out of space too quickly".

Just look at me, I had a web server with half the capacity for how long? I got the virtual private server on 5 June 2016, which is 9 years, 4 months, and 2 days ago. Not a single moment when logging in, seeing you've got 50 gigabytes, realizing I'm paying for 100 gigabytes. That is so silly, actually. Now I have 175 gigabytes, and the world is full of opportunities. Okay, I'm paying for it as well, so let's not get too carried away, do we?

So, the question is: what is stopping me, and is it real?

Here, I stopped at the sprouts field (it was real) and took out my camera to make photos of the workers harvesting the sprouts. This is nice! And I documented the full circle of the field, and now I've even got the harvesting, which is nice. The people at the harvesting machine looked at me. They were far away in the field.

I do like full circles. I like to see projects finished, and I do realize there are many definitions of 'finished.' However, in the life cycle of a sprout's field, the harvest is essentially a finish.

When you live in a house, you don't just set up your scaffolding to do maintenance on your walls, do you? That's what I'm doing when I'm maintaining my walls. I'm currently at the Starley Bridge over the Long Watering Canal. Now I could take the photo I wanted, with the houses mirrored in the water of the canal.

Can a power line be beautiful? Of course, it's sometimes about seeing the beauty within. When I'm making paintings, there might be someone out there who finds painting attractive, and it doesn't necessarily need to be the painter himself.

Sometimes I see those videos of portrait photographers taking photos of strangers. I wish I dared to do those things; there are so many beautiful people out there.

I am on my way home. It is still completely overcast. It went better with the smoke-in-the-air issue. Perhaps it is the Thursday issue. That would mean someone in our office is smoking a lot, or perhaps outside the office.

I am biking on the folks' dance path. I still need to adjust the gears on the bike. The chain is falling off the sprocket in the lowest gear. That is not good.

Yesterday, I experimented with the "Add to Home Screen" feature on Chrome on Android. With that feature, my application lyrics-editor.com becomes an application on the phone's desktop. That's cool! I would like to know if it downloads the HTML of the page and stores it locally. I could remove the app just like any other app on my phone.

Another feature I discovered in the Chrome application was 'Listen to this page'. AI generated it, and it was like a conversation between two people discussing my webpage on a podcast. It was certainly interesting.

On the way to work, I took a couple of photos. On the way home, I took no photos. Now, if I'm going to use the DSLR more, I need to incorporate it into my blog workflow. It has happened: I took a photo with the DSLR and forgot about it. It is a bit strange to talk about photos you took a couple of weeks ago.

For a couple of weeks now, I have had an issue with my hip on the left side. It has been annoying, but I have not had any issues with it. I started talking about taking it easier some time now. Depending on what I am doing, I follow my own advice, but often I ignore it. This evening, the hip started to be more painful.

Wednesday 8 October

I slept well last night. Today I worked from home in the morning. DW had a day off, and not just a regular day off; she attended a wool event that lasted until the afternoon.

After logging out of work, I had lunch, and then it was time to move the sheep to a new area. I opened up the area outside the dyke on the north and west side of our property. Then I opened up the north and east sides so that people could walk there. I took out the lawnmower and cut the grass.

At the end of the patch, the ladies had not been grazing, so the grass was standing tall and lush. The lawn mower had trouble cutting through the thick carpet of grass. Then I cut the grass along the road.

With the sheep task complete, I could finally do something I had been looking forward to for some time now. To build a temporary platform so that I can drive the lawn mower into the barn. I piled up pallets that the insulation material had been delivered on and topped them with an OSB board.

It worked! It did not work as I had hoped to drive in with one movement. I had to step off the mower and nudge it to make a sharper corner than it could by itself. I got it working; the mower in the workshop, and not only that, but also the tiller machine!

With that, the container was empty! That was a moment I had looked forward to for a long time. I have been working on this barn project for over a year now. Now it is DW who will sell the sea container. I hope it goes well and quickly!

I went to the food co-op to fetch our order for this week. Usually, it is DW doing that, but she was at her wool event.

In the evening I made a song. It was great fun! I made it with lyrics-editor.com, and it worked. I introduced a new feature in the rhyme screen of the lyrics editor. It is now possible to look up the meaning of a word by clicking a link in the rhyme window. I made the first verse by putting together a couple of random words. Okay, I want to make a song. It will be great.

I got the idea of a repetitive verse because I usually do not do that. It was time to do that. So now I had the verse about stomping to the rhythm. Now I asked myself what rhythms you can stomp to? The first thing that came into my mind was old train tracks. New train tracks in the Netherlands don't have rhythms. But in music, train rhythm is a term, so I decided to use it anyway.

Then, in the next verse, I had this idea that I had to have something more about a beat you can stomp your feet to. It had to be something funny as well, so here came a memory of how it was at our old house with neighbors doing it.

For the next verse, I continued on memories from our old house. It is all true and real. I figured cops banging on a door is also a rhythm.

The final verse is a little macabre, but I like it; it has humor as well. It is not a subtle song.

[Intro]
In a world, you've got to be.
In a world, you've got to be.

[Verse]
Here is a new, fantastic song.
Listen to the words rolling on.
Clap your hands to the beat.
Stomp to the rhythm with your feet!

[Verse]
Now stomp to the rhythm.
You stomp to the rhythm.
Stomp to the rhythm (yeah)
Just stomp to the rhythm.

[Verse]
I am sitting on the train.
Not much for me to entertain.
Listen to the wheels.
A feeling starting at the knees.

[Chorus]
Now stomp to the rhythm.
You stomp to the rhythm.
Stomp to the rhythm (yeah)
Just stomp to the rhythm.

[Verse]
The people next door are okay.
Proper jobs, no issues, I must say.
They like each other, and they are tight.
But what do I hear late at night?

[Chorus]
Now stomp to the rhythm.
You stomp to the rhythm.
Stomp to the rhythm (yeah)
Just stomp to the rhythm.

[Verse]
After some years, they broke the relation.
New neighbors with low education.
Barking dogs, I missed the peace from before.
The cops came banging on their door.

[Verse]
Now stomp to the rhythm.
You stomp to the rhythm.
Stomp to the rhythm (yeah)
Just stomp to the rhythm.

[Verse]
One day, you will see me die.
It is just a fact, no need to cry.
My coffin is lowered into the ground.
Knocking from inside to the sound

[Verse]
Now stomp to the rhythm.
You stomp to the rhythm.
Stomp to the rhythm (yeah)
Just stomp to the rhythm.

For this song, I decided to make it into techno! In due time I will publish the song to streaming services.

Thursday 9 October

It was a lovely morning this morning. Both DW and I went to the office, and at a glance, I could see the canal with the boats in the sun and a lovely haze near the ground. I drove a car, and there was no possibility to stop, get out, and take a photo like I can when biking to work. It was a pity we went by car today.

It stayed sunny, the haze evaporated, and in general, it was lovely. Someone decided it was necessary to keep a window open; I have no idea why. I had my coat on, and it worked out well.

When we drove home, I noticed a sound coming from the car's transmission. I don't understand what it can be.

This evening, I decided to explore how to log in to the lyrics-editor app. I could build the login myself, but it has the disadvantage that I need to make it, and how secure will it be? Another method would be to use a well-established cloud service for the authentication. These are new things for me. I touched on it at work, but briefly, so this would be a totally new experience. I looked at the pricing, and it is free for up to fifty thousand monthly regular users. I am reading about it. Are there any hidden costs? If I only use the authentication part of Firebase, then I can have 50k users without an issue. I need to turn off SMS authentication, that is for sure. But that is okay. If I use Firebase only for authentication and my own virtual private server for everything else, I am fine. Hidden costs should not be a problem unless new hidden costs are introduced along the way. If I start using more services, they obviously cost money when I exceed the free limit. The free limit is different for each type of service.

This evening, the issues with my hip became more acute. I am now limping; it is impossible to hide the pain. When doing special movements with the left leg, the pain stings through my body.

Friday 10 October

I did not sleep well. When I placed a cushion under my leg, I could sleep better. DW suggested I book an appointment with a physiotherapist. DW also told me it could be one of two things: Either a painful connection between a muscle and a bone or bursitis. She knows more about those things. I got an appointment with a physiotherapist, but not today. I can go there in 12 days. Much can happen in 12 days.

This morning I took photos of the sea container. In the evening, DW will put an ad for the container in a local Facebook group.

 

It is lovely weather this morning.

This about Firebase does not feel right. The lyrics editor is still very much a hobby project. That is also how I would like to keep it. I can buy more services to set up the lyrics editor, but that is not my intention. As it is now, I have already bought the domain for 9 euros for a year. Next year it will be 32 euros. There are literally thousands of websites out there with their own login systems, and it wouldn't matter if there were another one. Besides, I can always add Firebase at a later stage if I want to.

How about email? I may need to look into that first.

Before looking into email capabilities of the webserver, I received the fog machine! This is one of the items I have been longing for over a year. Now I got it! I was eager to see how it would perform with my light equipment, and more wattage from the lamps is necessary to make good use of the fog machine. I limped to the barn to try out the fog machine.

	The package arrived!
	A box with the fog machine and the jerrycan of fog juice.
	Here is the fog machine.
	All is neatly packed.
	Merida has to investigate the box.
	I need to assemble the bracket of the machine.
	Here I tried the fog machine in the barn.
	It works!

Here is a film of how I tried the machine for the first time!

The fog machine will be great. What is not great is my hip. DW had concluded it was more likely bursitis. Usually, bursitis is treated with a little more rest and paracetamol. We will see how that goes.

In the evening, I went to the local snack bar to pick up an unhealthy meal. I got into the car as I usually do, and the car seat smacked into my tensor fasciae latae muscle and the bursitis. I screamed out loud in pain. When I arrived at the snackbar, it was a similar situation as I got out of the car. The seat has protruding sides designed to keep the passenger from sliding off the seat when taking curves. That side poked into my bursitis. No worries, I just screamed out my pain at the car park. Driving the car is not a good idea with bursitis.

I got the meal without any incident. I could get into the car without embarrassing myself from screaming, but when the door was closed, I let out my cries.

Saturday 11 October

The night was okayish. I slept with a cushion under my legs. I now have a warm bump on the left side of my hip.

This was a completely overcast day. No single opening in the clouds. It was dry and about 19 degrees Celsius.I did maintenance of our indoor plants. I removed spider webs and took away dead branches.

We did autumn maintenance of the kitchen garden, the garden in front of the house. DW took down the rest of the beans and the cucumber. I removed the last zucchinis. Since I do not want to have thousands upon thousands of zucchini seeds in the compost, I cut almost all remaining zucchini into pieces and removed all the seeds from them. The seedless parts went to the compost. DW and I really enjoyed how we worked together in the garden.

All these activities had to be done in a calm and restful way to avoid aggravating my bursitis. It went okay. The question was how I would feel in the evening. When I pulled off my boots, I missed. The boot slipped. Ooh, that hurt!

Sunday 12 October

I had a good night's sleep. Before we went to bed, I ingested a paracetamol tablet, and in the middle of the night, another tablet. I use to chew on the tablet, I understand I am the only person in the world doing that. DW swept the platform of the sheep and brought the manure to the compost. I harvested pumpkins. Today it was likewise a completely overcast day. Can it be that we will not see the sun for the next six months? Last year, I wrote a song about overcast skies. It does bring up feelings in me, apparently.

Today I also worked on the mail server. I am following detailed instructions by Guoan Xiao at www.linuxbabe.com. It is a joy following instructions when they are well written!

Here ends this weeks blog. The sea container is empty, I drove in the lawnmower and the tiller machine. The sea container is put out for being sold. We will see how that goes. This week I wrote 3090 words, not bad for someone with so much pain.