Nice sunrise pictures Sunday, 09-Nov-25 22:30:24 CET

Sunday, 16-Nov-25 19:36:25 CET

Finished cleaning the sea container

This week I finished cleaning the sea container. Arranged a drying rack for onions under the barn's canopy. Did a couple of dormant tasks.

Monday 10 November

Today, DW went to work really early. If there had been a lovely sunrise, I would have been read, but alas, there was none. This became a dull, totally overcast day on the chilly side. In the morning, it was 7 degrees Celsius, and by midday, it reached 9 degrees Celsius.

Yesterday I was too tired to make a proper conclusion of last week at the end of the blog. That the electrical appliances are done for now is beautiful. That is a milestone. It was great to see the PILs yesterday. This week, I started blogging before starting the work for the day. Merida came to lie on the platform I built on top of the laptop. She wanted to hold my hand and purred loudly. That was so sweet!

Most of the day was overcast, but the sun was visible for a while in the afternoon. At that moment, Merida was sitting on the platform above the warm laptop. Merida was exploiting the heat produced by the laptop. She was illuminated from behind. It was magical.

After work, I went outside in the dusk and put up all I needed to continue washing the sea container. I also put up a lamp on a tripod. It was just moments until the dusk turned into dark. I washed a couple of meters of the west side of the container. It was more challenging to wash the container behind the grapevine and the pallet with leftover rooftiles.

I worked on the lyrics-editor.com in the evening. The idea is that I will build the sign-in and sign-up system, but I got caught up in the aesthetics of how it looks when opening and closing a dialog. I have been chasing animations and transitions. It all became confusing, but I solved most of it tonight.

Tuesday 11 November

Good morning! I'm biking to work. I checked the forecast, and it looks like it will stay dry for the next 24 hours. Actually, before leaving, I stood with my tripod trying to fit it in the bag, but it was too much. I got Word for Android in dark mode, which saves battery time, and not only that, I can blog in pitch dark. Today, during lunch, I will go to the bike shop and try to find extra lighting to mount on the bike.

I have an issue with my back right now. Because of this, I'm doing exercises. I cannot say I've done the physiotherapists' exercises much. I mean, I do have an ambition to look more proud because I am proud, but it feels like putting up my chest strains my back. There are new muscle groups that need to be practiced, and you cannot just run a marathon without any preparation. So I'm doing my usual curl-ups, and I added the back exercise from the physiotherapist.

In the forest next to the long water canal, the sunlight is coming towards me. The backlight looks beautiful. The leaves on the ground are still colored. Took photos of knotted willows.

 

There's a traffic jam, but I don't mind because I am biking.

I noticed two police officers in a police car waiting at a traffic light. The driver was busy with her mobile phone (in her hand), and I laughed at her and pointed at her while biking across the street, and the officers started waving back at me. I don't think they liked my pointing finger. Well, I've got my phone in the phone holder, so I'm totally fine.

A couple of years back, a new law was introduced in the Netherlands prohibiting people from holding their phones with their hands while biking or driving. As far as I can recall, this was before the E-bikes, when biking was slower.

I am still laughing about the policewomen in the car holding their mobile phones, me pointing at one of them, and them waving back.

I see police officers as role models. They are sitting in their police cars, breaking the rules by using their mobile phones without a hands-free car kit. What is the rest of society thinking about that? If you are waiting at the traffic light, you're part of the traffic. Can you really operate your mobile phone while waiting at a traffic light? I don't think so. I will poll my colleagues to see what they think about that.

I'm on my way home. The phone is on dark mode, and I have two headlamps at the front. During the lunch break, I went to the bike shop and bought an extra headlamp; it is excellent. It is a Sigma Buster 800. It has five lighting modes. The strongest modes produce 800 lumens. There are two blinking modes, but I never really understood the benefit of those, so no need for them. In the city, I used the lowest steady mode, which was more than enough. The lamp isn't giving much light to the sides, so you're not visible from the sides with this lamp. My regular lamp has lighting on the sides as well, so I must use both if I don't want to get run over from the side. The lamp was Euro 69.95. It is charged with a USB-C cable. That's convenient.

Today I brought with me mittens that DW knitted. I displayed the mittens to the colleague who had given us the pressure washer, and her thank-you gift became exquisite fine-wool mittens. The mittens she got were made of wool from Reftele in Sweden, and the pattern was "Piitumits" by the Finnish designer Heidi Ahlander from Jyväskylä. The pattern can be found on Ravelry. The first part is a Finnish name, and the second part is a short version of mittens.

Before the sun disappeared below the horizon, it showed a little light spectacle, and I captured the best of it.

Now I have reached the bike path along the long water canal. This new lamp works absolutely beautifully. The new lamp is mounted on the steering bar. I can adjust the lamp's angle on the fly. If I meet anyone, I can lower the lamp a little. For the deep forest, a more straight angle is more to my liking. This is absolutely fantastic. I will be able to bike many more days this winter. I love it.

There was no spectacular sunset this afternoon. I noticed 3 trees with beautiful leaves, and I took a photo of them.

I just discovered that my bottom is wet, and I'd like to know if I put on the seat cover before I left. If that is the case, I lost it. Strange feeling this is. Did you or did I not? There are several procedures to follow when you are about to bike, and it's like a ritual that needs to be followed; otherwise, you end up in this situation.

This evening, children will come to the door and beg for candy. DW made the front door look nice—actually, the workshop door.

The children arrived, showed their candles, sang a song, and got candy in return. It is a transactional tradition. Now we have a load of candy that no kids came to pick up. When we eat all that, we will be rounder than our sheep. Throwing away the leftover candy is not an option.

When the kids in the area were done, I started working on the dialogs for lyrics-editor.com and got the fading in and out to work.

Wednesday 12 November

This was an early morning. DW went to an ISACA conference, and the bus service acted up, so I brought her to the train station. It was pitch dark when we left. When I was back home, I could capture the sunrise. I noticed that the line of trees has become transparent since last week. That means the leaves are starting to fall off the trees.

I worked from home this morning. It was sunny today. After lunch, I went outside and started cleaning the sea container again. I finished the container, so now we can put up new photos for the advertisement. I have no idea how you do that. I will find out.

Thursday 13 November

It is a beautiful morning. I'm biking to work. The weather forecast says it will rain in the afternoon, but I decided to go biking anyway. I have proper rain gear with me, so that shouldn't be a problem.

Last time I had forgotten my saddle cover, and I was afraid it was lost, but it wasn't!

I realize I really love to bike to work. The bike is no longer ticking, and that still makes me so happy.

Yesterday evening, I got the plumbing of the dialogues in lyrics-editor.com working. So now, when I switch from the sign-in dialog to the sign-up dialog, the first dialog retracts, then the new dialog opens, and it's clear what happens. I made it so the dialogue opens from the top, like pulling down a projector screen. So instead of switching at the blink of an eye, I make it look like I pull up the dialog, then pull down the new one. I talked about the project with DW, and she said she always has trouble entering her email address first, then realizing, "I have no account here." She said she finds it annoying that you lost the email address you just entered. I made it so that if you entered something in the first dialogue's email field, I copied it to the following dialogue, so you don't need to re-enter it. I told DW about this feature, and she laughed out loud and asked if I did it just because of what she told me—and indeed, that was the case.

The next step will be the logic in the sign-up dialogue. I want people to provide a valid email address. I will need to check that. And then I want people to enter a password, and it needs to be strong. I want people to use numbers, special characters, etc. When all that is fine, people click the sign-up button. I will need to send this to the server securely. I have no idea how long this will take to make.

When I just passed under the railway tracks entering the villa area, I was so impressed by the view that I had to take a photo. Perhaps someone likes Sweden or Ukraine on this street. I don't know.

I had a great day in the office. There were many people in the office, and that's always nice. I was disappointed with my own production, though, because I thought I would finish a product today. But when I thought I was done, I realized I had made a mistake in my thinking. You have bugs coming in different classes, and incorrect thinking is probably the worst. So now I have to refactor my routines to something that will work, but I wasn't able to finish before the end of the day.

I knew it was going to rain at the end of the day, and for a long time, the forecast said it would start raining when I got home. I am almost home, and it's still unclear whether I'll get the whole load. Ohh no, here it comes... No, it did not. I was lucky, again.

When I came home, I updated the advertisement for the sea container. It now shows the newly cleaned container, and the ad says you should not bid via direct message. I also placed an English text in the advertisement.

Friday 14 November

Today, it was completely overcast in the morning. The forecast called for rain all day. If I had waited to make photos of the sea container, I would have been highly frustrated, but now I am happy I already have that done.

This morning, MIL fell badly. She got a bandage around her head, and there was blood on the carpet. She survived this, but the incident shook FIL. MIL pressed the alarm button she is wearing around her neck herself. She got help in seconds. We did not hear about this commotion until the evening.

It rained the entire day. Sometimes it rained more than other times. I moved the sheep to a new area. They are now grazing on the northwest side of the property outside the dyke.

What could be a nice indoor project? I decided to paint the hatch door of the first floor above the bathroom. So, when did you finish that hatch door, Jens? Well, that was on 3 January 2024. So it has been standing waiting since then. Well, it is being painted now. I gave the wood a primer layer.

I also worked on the sign-up dialog for the lyrics editor. I got the screen mechanics working, and I started sending data to the server. That failed miserably. No idea why. I got an error related to cross-origin resource sharing, CORS. I am not doing any of that. I am using my page from my server. This was the clue that I missed. At this point, I was just confused.

In the evening, we heard about MIL's accident.

Saturday 15 November

This was another overcast day, although it rained less than yesterday. We went to a shop for animal and garden supplies. We got more litterbox sand and chunks for Marida to eat. They got thick socks that I like a lot. There is no point for DW to make socks for me, I am wearing them too hard. I bought a new hat. Now I can have a dirty hat while working at home and a nice hat when I go to the office.

After the animal shop, we went to a second-hand shop in the same city. I found a rain jacket, a label printer, tools, mugs, and whatnot. Great shopping tour! The label printer still had the protective film on the display.

With the rain jacket, I can bike a little more often.

While we were driving, we heard the car wheels again. The sounds stopped, and after a while, we got the warning on the tire pressure. The sound is related to the tire pressure measurement. I reset the pressure to remove the warning.

We talked about setting up a system to dry things in the canopy. DW did not want to go to any shop to look for that. I suggested we go to a boat equipment store. I could convince her. We have never been to that shop before. It was in a part we have not been to for several years. There were high-rise buildings here now. The shop was marvellous. It had much hardware for boat people. We don't have a boat, but we wanted to hang onions to dry. We found what we needed and bought it.

Then it was time for lunch. After lunch, I applied the final coat of paint to the hatch.

While the paint dried, I mounted the rings and holders for the onion rack. To do this, I had to access the canopy's ceiling beams, but that is no problem because the scaffold is still standing there. The onions are hanging on a birch tree trunk from Sunnerås. We can now lower the trunk by unhooking a rope and hauling the onions down. This means I can unmount the scaffold under the canopy. While working on the onion rack system, I noticed a bird hiding above the guest room window. I need to set up the scaffold there to have a closer look at that.

Then I could mount the newly painted hatch. It would be nice to have a knob or handle to grab the hatch, but, as I usually say, that is for another day. Will it take another eleven months before the handle is mounted? I hope not.

In the evening, I introduced the headers to handle CORS because I was still clueless. The CORS message disappeared, but it did not start working. Then I decided to go over the samples again, and now I noticed others were using a local path to the service without https. That worked! This means I can remove the CORS headers because they are not needed.

DM texted me with the news that the passion flower had a flower at Sunnerås! I don't think I've ever seen that plant with a flower in the last 20 years.

Sunday 16 November

The forecast for today was overcast until just before dawn, then a little sun, then dark. I will be standing ready with the camera if I don't forget about it by then.

We received a message from someone interested in the sea container. The possible buyer will even come by and inspect the container. I checked the value of the metal in the container, and we concluded it's around 455 hundred euros. We had people offering below the metal value. Now that the sea container has been washed, I am not willing to lower the price.

The barn's electricity is finished; it feels more appropriate to take on dormant tasks. The hatch above the bathroom on the first floor was an example of this. The lamp at the living room's garden doors is another example. Today, I would hang up the lamps in DW's office. Immediately, the question arises: how did we support the area around the hole where the lamp cables are coming out? I found photos from 18 August 2021, from before we hung up the gypsum boards. The photo is taken straight up the ceiling. At the bottom of the image, you can see the chimney. I did not publish this photo at the time.

I am on my way to the hardware store to buy hooks for the lamps. The hardware store had the hooks I was looking for! Now I can continue with hanging the lamps. There were things similar to the boat shop of yesterday, but there was less to choose from.

The lamps are hanging! The bulbs from our previous house have stopped working. With new bulbs, the lamps were working again. DW was delightful.

We got visitors today! It is the same hooligan gang as last time. The fourth member is not in this picture; it is a light-feathered type. 5 April was the last time I got a visit from this gang. I am surprised they are still alive, to be honest.

For a long time, we blocked their way to our property with the fences we set up for the sheep. I am removing many of these, and here they are again. We have a paradise here for chickens. The thing is, we do not want chickens on our own just yet. In that way, it is nice they come and sprawl around here. If they are not doing any harm, that is.

The afternoon turned into early evening. Had I promised myself to be ready with the camera? The possible buyer of the sea container had promised to come and have a look, and I told him it was better to come before sunset. When the sun had set behind the horizon, it was only a matter of minutes before it was dark. At that moment, I got a message that he was on the way. He arrived and could see the magnificent white sea container for himself. I told him I pressure-washed the container, and if it had holes, there would be water in it. He liked that it was not leaking. We will hear from him in a day or two. I told him that if we did not hear from him in a week, we would continue selling the container to others.

When the sun set a little more, we had a possibly sold sea container!

This afternoon I had a warm feeling in my left side. That is my bursitis complaining that I am doing too much. It was an active week. I wrote 3,382 words this week and met my goal of writing every day. Welcome back next week!