This week we had the start of autumn Sunday, 27-Sep-26 23:24:08 CEST

Sunday, 04-Oct-26 23:39:18 CEST

Our sheep Selma limped on and off this week

What is going on with Selma's hooves?

Monday 28 September

Today, both DW and I worked from home. It was an overcast day. Not that inspiring weather. It had been dry for a couple of days, so it was about time it rained again, but it didn't come down in abundance. The air was moist; that was about it.

We didn't even have a particularly interesting sunrise this morning. I suppose it cannot always be party weather. We ran the vacuum cleaner robot, and it behaved well. Merida, our cat, came to sleep on the platform above my laptop.

After work, I cleaned the water bucket for the sheep. The bucket had green water; it was not nice at all.

Clean and fresh water- that is how it is supposed to be.

Tuesday 29 September

I am biking to work; there are leaves on the ground, and it's a little wet. 16°c and overcast, with a slight hint of mist. While biking, I will use Voice Access to type the blog.

I've been running experiments with Notebook LM deep dive audio. It is like a podcast of two people talking about my blog, but it is all generated with AI. It is interesting because my blog is structured around the days of the week; that's most practical for me, but in the deep dive, they often bundle themes across several days, creating more coherent story arcs. For me, that writing would be something I had to do on Sunday evening because that's the first moment when I have the entire blog in front of me. I would then rearrange the text by theme. This would not work for me. So that is interesting to listen to, and sometimes it brings up angles I hadn't thought about; I like that.

They never fail to use the word mundane at least once, sometimes twice. I rarely use the word myself until now.

And then there is the issue of political views. I figured there are trigger words for political stuff, and when Notebook LM detects that, it slaps on a disclaimer. So last week I experimented with that. One of the hosts interpreted my frustration and actually expressed it better than I did. Then, in the next sentence, that same disclaimer came up again. But it was as if the panel didn't realize they had read the disclaimer, like sudden amnesia. A human would find that situation highly awkward and at least make a joke about it or transition into the disclaimer somehow.

Next week I will load this text and see how the man and the woman hosts of the Notebook LM deep dive handle talking about themselves.

I am still biking and typing the blog via Voice Access. I was a fan of the dictation functionality in Microsoft Word. Still, since they broke the UI by putting a hovering menu over the area where you type, I switched to Simple Text Editor and Voice Access, and I'm slowly getting used to it. YouTube Shorts have large navigation icons right on top of everything, mid-center, when you enable Voice Access. Different platform, but I was still haunted by large hovering stuff on top of things obscuring the view. At first I was upset and disturbed, but I don't even care anymore; I've gotten used to it. Of course you want to have large icons obscuring the short videos' exclamation mark! Apparently you can't have two exclamation marks in a row; that's not implemented. I asked Voice Access to bring me to the end of the document. It typed 'go to hell'. I suppose it's tired of listening to me. It could be an on-the-minute subject: my strained relationship with my voice-typing software.

Here I arrived at work. Then I worked an entire day. Then I hopped on the bike and blogged again while biking. A nice thing that happened today was that Gwen came with cake! She made so much cake that she had leftovers she couldn't get rid of. It was an apple pie, so the colleagues and I munched on it again. A little bike tour doesn't compensate for eating cake at the office. I need to watch out.

I stopped at a park to sit down for a little while. It is warm. That makes me think of some weather gurus on YouTube talking about the jet stream and how it changed patterns. That doesn't necessarily mean the jet stream will behave the same as it did the last time we had a really large El Niño. But once it found its way, it can be surprisingly stubborn.

I worked on something today that was supposed to be a really simple little task. But it wasn't. A section of the database got into an incorrect state, and it didn't recover on its own. I could reset that part. As I used to say, debugging is the funniest part of my work.

I emailed the facility manager about this smoking situation, and he forwarded the issue to the building manager. I'm really pleased with how quickly the facility manager handled this issue. The facility manager even included additional details I hadn't thought about. That feels good! It feels like he is really listening to me, and he understands that more employees are having problems with this, but they aren't saying so much. I did not feel well, though. I was in between a tobacco high and a slight unwell feeling.

I'm nearing home on the last race of sunlight. It was about this moment last week that I wrote a poem. I'm not going to do that today. Great fun, though, now and then.

Wednesday 30 September

DW went to the office, and I worked from home. I got things working.

Today the weather was surprisingly warm at 25°C. I cut the grass in the newly sown areas around the driveway. It can't get too tall because it forms clumps when you cut it, and clumps of cut grass can damage the grazing area. I had to clean the lawnmower afterward.

I was not that bloggy this Wednesday.

Our sheep Selma was limping. I checked her hooves, and to my surprise, I was allowed to inspect them all. If it really hurt, she wouldn't let me come anywhere near. I checked for anything between her toes, but there was nothing. I checked whether the tramp pads were in good shape. The left hoof was a bit worn, so I trimmed the edges to create a neat line again. Then I removed some dirt from under her left pads. That was all great, but she was limping on her right leg, so I have no idea if this would help. She is a bit overweight; the sheep-scherer called her fat. She was obviously offended by this foul language.

We are planning for a vacation at the end of next week. It will be hard to leave Selma if she is still behaving like this. The timing for a patient sheep is not good. This is not the kind of excitement we appreciate.

Thursday 1 October

Both DW and I went to our respective offices. It rained a lot in the morning, which was two good reasons not to drive. That meant I couldn't babble into the microphone to dictate the blog, so I didn't collect many words this Thursday.

This day is a typical example of the drawback of my blog's weekly structure. I faced a dilemma: I could write that I was so busy there was no time for blogging and stop there. That would not feel satisfying. Although this might look like a placeholder, and in a way it is. When I read back on this day in the future, it would be a bit strange to leave it out.

We had to have the AC on in the office, apparently, so it was too cold, but there was only a faint smoke in the air, so all in all my brain could slush around in the cold skull slightly into a tobacco high. As long as I don't feel unwell, I suppose all is fine. At times, I wonder what I am enduring to be part of the important cohesion.

On the way home, I picked up DW at the train station. We stopped at a grocery store. There, I could pick up a used cardboard box, and at home I filled it with zucchinis. It was 9.7 kg of zucchinis. During the day, it is still warm, like 22°C, but overnight the temperature drops to 8°C, and I don't think it will be long before the zucchini harvest is over.

Today, MIL's house was officially handed over to the new owners. They will rebuild the whole thing.

Friday 2 October

Today, the weather was beautiful all day. I worked from home, and DW had a day off. The first two hours today were more productive than all of yesterday!

For a long time, I refused to admit that my free Fridays benefited my blogging and creative endeavors. I have to admit they were really good to me. Well, they had a price, for sure. I spent much of my time building the barn, so I am happy about that. It makes me a little sad that I did not blog that much today and, in a way, spoiled my free Wednesday afternoon.

During lunch, I walked around the garden and shot a couple of flower portraits. Stunning vibrant colors with contrasting backgrounds: beautiful!

	Selma is on and off this week. One moment she looks fine; the next, she is limping again. Sometimes with the other foot. Always the front legs.

 

I watched a video about making videos this evening. It was well made. The moral of the story was to continue working consistently and improve gradually over time. I think I like that. I've tried to write better since the summer, and right now it seems that the more I put into writing, the less boring it is and the fewer people read the blog. It is not just me; it is the general climate of the internet. Right now, we are changing how the Internet works. It's less about what we are changing than about Google changing who appears in search results and why.

Saturday 3 October

We got up at our usual weekday time because it was going to be a long, eventful day. Our first task was to move the sheep to a new grazing area. We had them in the northwest area inside the dyke for two weeks. Now we will let them graze the entire area outside the dyke between the neighbors. Usually, we divide this area into two parts, but this time we will let them graze the whole area. We are already near the end of the season, so we decided on the whole area. Here are photos from all sides. The rain has made the grass lush and fluffy. A paradise for our sheep.

	East.
	Northeast.
	Northwest.
	North.
	Northwest.
	West.

The north neighbor had cut branches from his hedge. It is all sea buckthorn and other sticky things that we cannot have lying on the ground with our woolly sheep roaming around. The thorny things would get stuck in their wool, and they would wander around and collect more and more of the stuff. The neighbor was about to collect the cuttings some day, so we did it for him. He was thankful.

With the sheep grazing area done, we went into town to pick up the new glasses of DW. While we were there, DD (Dear Daughter) arrived by train, and we went to a lunchroom terrace for lunch. That's when the fun part of the day started. We went on a second-hand spree. It was the national day of second-hand and thrift store shops, with additional events at the shops. We first went to my personal favorite that DW calls the clutter shop. They are the only second-hand shop in the Netherlands that features tools. DD picked up a lot of hand tools. She was delighted. I forgot to ask the price of each bit in the bit basket.

I found a light effect for my DJ show. It was white lights with a rotating ball with little lenses. I think it can work very well with the smoke machine. They offered no lower prices, but they had free poffertjes. Those are traditional Dutch batter cakes with powdered sugar and butter. It was delicious. I gained weight.

The next thrift store had clothing. We went there a couple of weeks ago. All their jeans, 32 inches wide and 32 inches high, were sold out. If I had been 2 inches taller, I could have bought 10 pairs of trousers. DD was pleased with the good-quality branded clothing and low prices.

Our next secondhand shop is located in another city. We have been here before and really like this place. We usually also go to a garden center and an animal-related store in this city. Here I found a 3D viewer set for mobile phones. You put your phone in the contraption, and then you can view films in 3D. You can adjust two lenses to fit your skull. I bought it just for fun. When we got home and I tried it, I found plenty of roller coaster films. There were films of someone swimming in the ocean, but the film flickered with the camera, so it wasn't pleasant. It worked, but the films made me feel unwell.

DD bought a thousand-piece puzzle. We spent the evening laying the puzzle together. DW didn't knit anything, and I didn't blog, but we had a great time with DD. It felt like we socialized more than we usually do when we get together because of the puzzle. It was nice. We laid the puzzle on a mirror of all things.

Sunday 4 October

I actually got out to take a photo of our house in the mist this morning. I recall saying to myself in a blog some time ago that I wished I had the stamina to actually do something about it and take some photos in the mist when the situation arises. Here I did it! If I hadn't talked like that in the blog, I wouldn't have done it. Here you see what writing a blog can do to a person.

Today DW had arranged for us to go to the wool club and pick up a fur. We went to the clubspace storage container to find a fur with proper fiber. It had to be soft and long, and with different nice colors other than what our three sheep produce. There was a fur with very dark hair that I liked a lot, but the fiber was too short, and DW did not approve of short fiber length, although the color was fantastic.

Here is a slideshow with pictures of the wool club. We received a presentation about sock knitting machines; it's a very technical machine, and it was interesting.

	Here are people attending a course in dyeing yarn with Japanese Indigo plants.
	This is a building where the sheep stay in the winter.
	This is the storage container. A knitters paradise.
	The container is insulated with foam. It looks a little like a cave.
	DW explains what type of fur she wants to buy. Hanneke helps DW to find it.
	Dried dyeing plants are stored in neat boxes.
	Could this be the fur? DW and DD are checking the quality of the fibers.
	Beautiful dark color, but the fibers are too short. The fibers are a little stiff, too.
	This is soft fleece, with nice colors. Long fibers.
	These little sheep stayed in their own place.
	The fur is nice, but it stinks.
	Here we get a presentation on sock production on the sock knitting machine. Hanneke is telling us about it.
	Hanneke is very patient. The machine is dropping stitches from time to time.
	This is a photo of the little window you could see from the other side of the hall.

 

After the presentation, we were a little hungry and looked forward to going to the cafe next to the wool club. We discovered that their Sunday opening hours are only for the summer.

On the way home, we went to another restaurant by a pond, and on the other side of the pond is an ape sanctuary. I zoomed in with my phone and took a picture of one of the apes walking around while I sat at the table waiting for food. There are not many restaurants around here with that kind of entertainment.

The interesting thing was that although the kitchen was up and running and they were serving, I couldn't figure out the restaurant's name. I could count at least four different names for the restaurant, so I had to ask about that. It turned out the restaurant had recently changed owners in quick succession, and the new owner hadn't even finished all the paperwork yet. It was a pity because I couldn't leave a review on Google Maps, as I usually do when I like something. I left a review anyway. They got five stars.

When we came home, I was tired and took a nap. After the nap, I went weeding nettles from the northwest grazing area. I filled one wheelbarrow with nettles. Then I cut the remaining grass and cleaned the lawnmower.

Here ends this week's blog. This week I wrote 2940 words. Welcome back next week!