A week at the cottage Sunday, 09-Aug-26 21:30:43 CEST

Sunday, 16-Aug-26 20:55:31 CEST

Productive holiday week

This week, my sleep score started at 87 and then went downhill to 27. In between, I designed and programmed a watch face. The curtain project came to fruition right before a day with a high of 36°C. I built an irrigation system out of second-hand parts. It was a productive holiday week.

Monday 10 August

Last night I slept really well. I got 87 points for my sleep, and that is extraordinarily good. So I was energetic today? Not at all. I used my inactivity to explore how to use my smartwatch better. I had a couple of wishes. I wanted a complexity plugin that could display the week number. I found it! So today it is day 222 of the year and ISO8601 week 33. I was not satisfied.

This must be the largest cucumber we had this year. The skin was a little hard, but the rest was delicious. It may be that the plant that grew this has now decided that this was it, the penultimate result, and will die. We will see.

We went to the people who looked after our house, Merida, and our sheep, and brought them gifts as a thank you for their work. They enjoyed it.

I cut the grass of the southeast field and the corridor going to that field. This time I cleaned the lawnmower after mowing the field. I also cut the part I skipped before the holiday.

It was not possible to contact the company servicing our robot mower at the cottage in Sweden. They are still on holiday, apparently.

That is about it for my part. I do hope I am getting over the travel tiredness and that I have more energy tomorrow. DW knitted and harvested Mirabelle plums that she laid to dry in our drying machine. It is the first time we have had anything to harvest from this tree. This is an experiment to see if they can work as raisins in our muesli.

Tuesday 11 August

Today my energy was further restored. I got in touch with the robot lawnmower service provider in Sweden, and he suggested a solution for the robot that was struck by lightning. He suggested a Honda 2500 system suitable for a 2,000-square-meter lawn.

It was majestic weather today. I expanded the grazing area so the sheep can also roam directly behind the house on the north side. This area has always belonged to the northwest field, but during the driveway construction, I temporarily removed it from the field. They loved this.

The main task for today was to mount curtain rods. I struggled screwing the wall bracket for the curtain rods. It was as if the screws never caught the thread. Upon closer inspection, as you can see in the photo, the tips of these screws look like dart heads. The issue is that the dart head is as wide as the thread. I can be standing moshing up the wood in vain. The result will be curtains falling off the walls because the screws are not gripping the wood by the thread; this is not good at all.

I came up with a simple solution. I ground the tips of the screws so that the arrowheads now only mash up the hole for the inner part of the screw.

I finished all five windows in DW's studio. I also finished the rods in my home office. This is really convenient for sunny moments when working on a monitor.

Sweden has a long tradition of using linen tablecloths. It is especially the elderly generation, having cabinets filled with tablecloths, passing things on via second-hand shops. In the Netherlands, you cannot find such linen tablecloths. Often it is high-quality fabrics. It can also happen that you get a free-of-charge monogram from the previous owner. This is what you get with the second-hand-stuff lifestyle.

Wednesday 12 August

Today we woke up early because DW was going to her wool club. I was thinking that waking up two and a half hours before she had to leave was sufficient.

I spent my morning designing a watch face. I call this creation an unobscured asymmetric hybrid analog-and-digital relative-time dashboard. I searched for this design and found a similar one, but it had several unacceptable flaws, so I decided to make a watch face myself. With forty years of programming experience, this should not be a challenge. Oh dear, am I getting myself into a new pet project besides the lyrics-editor.com?

As you can see, it is not a watch face for an information-shy person; it is a dashboard. If you are already struggling with information overload, you may not be interested in my blog. Here we go.

So my idea is to have both a digital representation of the time and an analog one, and I do not want the analog dials to obscure anything. I had an analog Citizen watch with a little window that showed the day of the month, but the dials obscured it. This annoyed me, so I cannot have that on my watch face. Surprisingly, many watch-face designers are doing the same in modern watch faces; it is like designing a kitchen where cupboards obscure the windows.

Then we come to the fun part: I like to see things in relative terms, so I display the week abbreviation and a small progress diagram showing what percentage of the week has passed. I will create an ISO 8601 version in which Monday is the first day of the week. After the month, a diagram of how far we got into that.

I want yearly, quarterly, current-season, battery, and full-moon percentages.

Could we include a percentage of time we spent between sunrise and sunset? During the night, I would like to present the reverse and display the percentage of time spent between sunset and sunrise. This slot will use extra space to display sunrise and sunset times.

I would like to include a countdown until next Yule, if I have room left. We will see.

After designing the watch face, I mounted the two final curtain rods in the guest room. Now 12 windows on the first floor have curtain rods. DW's project to buy tablecloths at second-hand shops in Sweden has yielded many useful curtain candidates. This feels amazing. Now I can decide to block the sun if it disturbs me while working. This is another step toward making the house more complete.

Today, Merida went to work with a serious attitude. She found a spot in the southeast field where she decided to look for mice. She stayed there fully concentrated for two hours. I am confident she did not catch anything, but I was happy she displayed some form of hunting instinct.

While Merida searched for mice, I searched for solutions to the bare soil left from the driveway project. Until now, there has not been a good time to water it. We could have started before our holiday, but then the sprouted grass and herbs would be dried out by the time we came home. Today is the moment we figure out how to water the soil.

A couple of years back, on 15 July 2023, we bought a water pump at a second-hand shop. On 31 January 2025, I bought a one-inch-thick hose for the pump. Could we pump water from our pond to the bare soil around the driveway? For that, I need more stuff for the pump.

I wanted a coupling to connect the one-inch hose to regular garden hoses. I cut off a tiny sliver of the one-inch hose that fit very well on my thumb. In my back pocket, I had my manual vernier caliper. This way I could try solutions in the shops. I went to a large consumer hardware store, and so I walked around with my hose ring on my thumb and my caliper in my backpack, and it occurred to me that I am a nerd. Perhaps it is also very daunting to buy a pump at a second-hand shop. Had it been more clever to buy a brand-new, complete system in which all parts fit together?

My list of failed shopping experiences got itself another item. I decided to go to the city center, to the more professional hardware store where I actually bought the house, to see if I had better luck there. Logically, if they sell the hose, they must have some couplings as well, would you not think?

I managed to find a 1-inch hose coupling converting to a three-quarter-inch thread. Then I found a twin tap connector with a three-quarter-inch fitting, so my shopping experience at E-norm van driel was excellent! It will be interesting to put this together.

Over the years, we pumped hundreds of cubic meters of rainwater into our pond. The idea now is to take back some of that water and use it for the sheep grazing area.

I cut off the narrower parts of the hose connector and clamped it onto the hose. That was easy. Then the twin tap connector was exactly right. I threw the entire pump into the pond, and there was plenty of water. The power cord could be routed to the barn canopy, where I would install my Wi-Fi power switch.

All was promising until the spreading mechanisms started to clog. All sorts of dirt came out of the pond, and it also smelled. I pulled out the pump and put a mesh around it. Now I hoped it would not suck up so much dirt. It worked better, but it was not perfect. Our delicate sprinklers got full of stuff.

At that moment, a neighbor came by. She got with her a zucchini and herbs from the garden. It was nice to hear compliments about the garden. I liked that.

It was getting late, but I started up the watering system. This was about the time the solar eclipse began. Here I used two sprinklers we bought plus a hand sprinkler mounted on a pin. I was not happy with the reach.

I had made no preparations for taking photos of the solar eclipse. Luckily, others had done that. In this photo, the solar eclipse had not reached its peak point. I dared to take a photo of the sun through the tree.

Here is what it looked like when most of the sun was covered by the moon.

Thursday 13 August

This morning DW had the idea of getting up early and opening all the windows before the warmth kicked in. She was very quiet during her opening operation. I woke up from a mosquito shortly after. At this point it was 16°C outside.

There was not a single cloud in the sky. This was going to be a warm day. Today I wanted to implement my idea for a watering system. I decided to make wooden triangles with a hole through which I could thread the hose. The triangles would stabilize the hose, allowing me to cut openings for the water to escape. My first idea was to use a soldering iron to make the holes. That worked on the prototype, but in the real hose, these holes were too perfect. I tried to make the holes less perfect, but that did not work. The next option was to cut openings in the hose. The idea here was that the water pressure would then force the water out, and the opening would work more like the nozzle of a spray can. This worked very well.

Here is a slow-motion movie of the watering system in action. It looks too good to be true, but this is what it is. I might even extend the hose tomorrow. The minor downside is that we have not curated the pond based on its smell. Now the smell spreads into the air, and how should one express it? It smells like a mixture of ditch water with a hint of sewer water.

Well, this will keep the soil moist no matter how warm it is. Today we only reached 34°C, and that was unthinkable last year, when we had only ever experienced 32 °C. Tomorrow it will be 36°C.

Our curtains are doing a fantastic job of keeping the heat out. In the afternoon, we had 24°C on the east and north sides of the house on the first floor. DW's home office was 25.2°C, and that is not that bad either. That is on the west side of the house.

Originally, we had planned a curtain in the bathroom as well, but we will find another solution there. So that leaves us with a vacant curtain rod set. We decided to use that in the living room on the west side to avoid letting in heat there. DW ordered more curtain bracket holders for the living room. This means we have to go to IKEA to pick up more of the curtain rods as well.

Today, DW's package arrived with a stack of Finnish knitting books. DW is expanding her knitting horizon. There is Norwegian, Estonian, Swedish, and now Finnish knitting. I like that. DW has no time for blogging, though. She dyed yarn with Indigo from our garden. Yarn she made herself from our own sheep.

It is not practical to handle the dying process with gloves, so now DW has shockingly blue hands for a couple of days. Last time she dyed yarn, a colleague thought DW had an oxygen deficiency disorder. We are still chuckling about this incident.

In the evening, I downloaded the Watch Face Studio application and started building my own Watch Face app. I created a mock-up of the app where the digital and analog faces actually worked.

I turned on developer mode on the watch and was able to upload the watch face to it; here is a screenshot from the watch itself. At this point, I am not worrying about whether things look nice, and if it is too challenging, I will not worry about it later either. The blue boxes are progress bar components where I will insert the calculations. In this layout, there is room for three complication plugins. That is for a later worry.

Friday 14 August

Last night I did not sleep well. It was not because of heat; we had normal temperatures in the house. It is amazing. There were too many exciting things going on in my mind with the Watch Face Studio. Early in the morning, DW opened the windows in preparation for the hottest day of the year.

It was not going to be a very active day with 36°C. After a slow morning, we picked mirabelle plums. We removed the pits and put the plums in the freezer. We already picked over 2 kilograms of the plums. They are delicious in the smoothie.

Then I decided to work a little on my watch face. I challenged myself to finalize the first row with the weekday abbreviation and the percentage of the week. At first, it looked like I could not put a percentage sign after a number in WFS (Watch Face Studio). I asked Google's AI for solutions, and it came up with all hallucinations. That was rather frustrating. At last I figured it out all by myself, and that made me happy.

I managed to get the first row working, calculating the percentage of the week we're in. Right now we are 66% into the week. I told DW about this fantastic achievement, and she said it was a strange metric. She would rather know what percentage of the workweek we passed. It is a nice idea; I give her that, but it is probably far beyond WFS's capacity.

I went to the hardware store where I bought more hose for my watering project. I found a cheap hose that fulfilled my requirements. It was still over €24, so I started thinking I could get a hose at the second-hand shop. I went to the second-hand shop in the city, which, in my opinion, specializes in stuff nerds like.

There I found a hose that was neatly bundled, but when you looked closer, you noticed it was smaller snippets. The cashier quoted me a price, and I pointed out that these were smaller snippets, so he lowered the price by €1. I got the bundle for 2.5€, which was good because there was a coupon on the hose; on its own, it is worth between 5 and 7€.

While walking around the hardware store, the week was at 67%. I concluded that the text could be a little bigger and the font bolded to make the percentage easier to see.

When I came home, I had hoped I had enough energy to work on the watering project, but instead I continued on WFS. I got the month and quarter percentage working.

Then I started on the daytime and nighttime percentage, but I hit a wall here. That was totally impossible. WFS had no tags for sunrise and sunset times. Not in a way I can make calculations on them. There exist formulas for calculating these values, but it would be too complex for what I want to achieve here. I gave up on this for now.

The best solution would be to connect to the user's calendar. Let's say the user could specify the work week, but you already guessed it: that is so totally completely not possible with WFS. If I really want this, I have to go much deeper. That is not my intention right now. So here I was stuck; my daytime/nighttime percentage idea died.

Saturday 15 August

We slept well. The temperature in the house is fine, even at 36 degrees outside. The curtain project came to fruition at the right time.

This morning, while blogging, I concluded that, with all the correct daytime percentage solutions ruled out, the only way to do anything similar to my original idea would be to take a humorous angle. I can make Dolly Parton's percentage fixed to working nine to five. You heard it right: no configuration possible, just centered on a fixed nine-to-five Dolly Parton schedule. Perhaps that is not possible either?

It was not so that I could sit and program the Dolly Parton time; there were other things to do. We were going to MIL today. At the same time, the zucchinis in the garden had been growing during our holiday, and what should we do with them? I got in touch with our friend who sells vegetables at the market in Amsterdam. He was back at work this Saturday. I could bring the zucchini to Amsterdam in person; that was okay. Luckily, this idea came just in time to not conflict with the visit to MIL.

I collected the zucchinis. It was 37.3 kg! Then we drove to Amsterdam. To the western part of Amsterdam. We arrived at our friend's vegetable storage.

Our friend met us, and the large metal gates opened automatically. He placed the zucchini in his enormous walk-in fridge.

Then we were invited to have a look at the market itself. There were a lot of people at the market.

He loaded some of the new zucchinis for sale. His parents worked there as well, and we greeted them and had a small chat. This is a family business.

There were vegetables in long rows. Since they were starting up after the holiday, there was not much variety, but I did not see any lack of variety. It was overwhelming; I enjoyed this visit very much.

After the market, we went to MIL. First, we went to MIL's previous house to pick up some things. BIL is still feeding the birds. The house is sold, and the new owners will arrive at the beginning of October.

In a village nearby, MIL has her new apartment. She likes it there. Now, when FIL is not there, there are not many nurses coming by to take care of her. She is out and about doing creative and social things almost every day. This is a great place. Her oval mirror with edge-cut glass is hanging in the hallway. It is a typical photography quirk of mine to try to capture both the mirror and a motif in its reflection.

I had two cups of coffee at MIL. That way I would be clear and fresh when driving home.

It was an active day, but did we go straight home? Perhaps sit and program the Dolly Parton workweek percentage? Absolutely not. Near Amsterdam, it turned out that our regular motorway was closed for construction. We had to drive the ring on the other side of the city. While driving, it occurred to me that we would drive close to an IKEA this way. DW ordered the remaining curtain parts, but we still need some rods and other items from IKEA to complete the sets.

We knew exactly what was needed so that we could pick it up rather efficiently. No issues there. Then we had dinner at IKEA. Would it not be nice with a cup of coffee after dinner? Oh yeah.

Merida was not happy that we came home late. She wants her food around 6 PM and not two hours later. I programmed the Dolly Parton work week percentage. It got it working, and it is a beautiful jibberish of formula characters.

((([DAY_WEEK]==1)+([DAY_WEEK]==7))?100:((([DAY_WEEK]==2)*([HOUR_0_23]<9))?0:((([DAY_WEEK]==6)*([HOUR_0_23]>=17))?100:(round(((([DAY_WEEK]-2)*8)+(([HOUR_0_23]<9)?0:(([HOUR_0_23]>=17)?8:([HOUR_0_23]-9))))/40*100)))))

Now I had three cups of coffee. I was awake. DW and I went to bed, and she fell asleep. I could not sleep. So what should I do? Listen to DW breathing next to me, or should I get out of bed and program the Watch Face? I did that.

It turned out to be impossible to access the magnetic north data using simple Watch Face tags. I had to scrap the compass idea. For the rest, I made good progress. At 3 AM, I went to bed. Now I could get sleep.

Sunday 16 August

I got 27 points for my sleep last night. That is an all-time low. But I had great improvements on my watch face. I will put the day number before the month abbreviation. The two complication plugins need improvement because they do not look right.

Now, when there is no need for a compass face, I have room for something else. I would add a Yule days countdown. That is important information! There are possibilities to get weather information. I will see if I can do anything with that. It would also be nice to have a few different colors. All this is possible before I try to get this thing published. I am not sure whether that is possible.

I also don't know how I will survive this day with only a night's sleep with 27 points.

Today we picked the remaining Mirabelle plum fruits from our Mirabelle tree. DW cleaned and picked out the pits. She is drying these in a fruit, vegetable, and herb dryer machine we bought a couple of years ago. The result is something similar to raisins but made from plums, our own plums. It is good for use in Muesly.

I mounted a curtain rod so that both our west windows in the living room now have curtains. That will lower the temperature from the afternoon sun.

Today I also worked on the watch face project. I think it is now in a state that I am happy with. There is now a Yule countdown below the analog face. I got two complication plugins to work, and here I used them for step count and UW index. I changed things to all sorts of colors. The colors make the watch face so much more professional. I am happy with this result. Much better than having other people's watch faces, where the handles obscure information. I will submit this to Google Play. That would be cool.

Yesterday we were not at home. I think we overwatered throughout the day. Our pond was not depleted, but it was not at level either. I measured the soil humidity, and it was more than sufficient, so I stopped the watering schedule. It looks like the seeds are sprouting, so that part works well. I will not extend the watering pipes at this point but try to keep watering the area I started on. We will see how the pond is refilling; finding out how all this will work is also part of the project.

We have now reached the end of our two-week holiday. It has been wonderful. We have done useful things while also having fun.

Here ends this week's blog. I wrote 4122 words this week. Welcome back next week!