Merida caught two mice Sunday, 06-Sep-26 23:54:35 CEST

Sunday, 13-Sep-26 20:50:00 CEST

Tilled a part of the southwest field

This week I tilled and sowed a part of the southwest field.

Monday 7 September

This was actually a great Monday. The weather forecast called it the last day that felt like summer. From here on, temperatures are getting colder. That would be great, but considering that we are approaching a super El Niño, I take that forecast with a pinch of salt. Before the workday started, I reconfigured the Google Console page for my watchface app so the testers in Pakistan could start working. Now that it's rolling, it feels great.

I had a good day working on my work things, and I felt happy. We both worked from home. The vacuum robot has new rolls, a filter, and brushes, and it happily cleaned the ground floor.

After work, I published last week's blog; things are falling into place this Monday! I even had energy to start writing on this week's blog. I hope I have the stamina to keep going throughout the week. The words not written when thinking a thought can rarely be reproduced later.

Tuesday 8 September

This morning, I got a message from the tester that he can't test smartwatch apps; that's a bummer. He backed out of the project, and I got my money back. For a moment, this made me almost consider giving up on the entire watch face project. I will have to let the watch face project rest for a while.

Other challenges remain. Since Microsoft decided to obscure the last line in the editor where all editing takes place, I need to find alternatives that suit me. For voice typing, I have now decided on Google Access. I must say that although Voice Access doesn't disengage the microphone after 5 seconds like Google Voice typing does, when things go wrong, the text becomes a shitshow really quickly. Misunderstood commands are written into the text, and when I try to remove the garbage, even more misunderstood commands are written into the text.

Today we had an even bigger frustration about smoking in the building. I set up six signs today and went in person to speak to the smokers. They had difficulty understanding that they were smoking 2 meters away from the building's fresh-air inlet. I became tobacco-high and slightly annoyed behind my desk, and I think the annoyance is the most depressing thing for my concentration, to be honest.

Now I'm on my way home, and I'm feeling a little bitter. Yesterday was so great, and now I'm back to square one. We are having visitors tonight; it's DD and WB, and they will talk about designing and installing a cupboard in the hallway on the first floor. It will be great to see them again. I took a photo of WB working with his laser while measuring.

Yesterday I already talked about stamina for blogging; the guests left really late, WD made a magnificent meal, and I processed the dishes. While I was standing and washing, it occurred to me that I should not give up the watchface project just yet. It needs a few more adjustments to the face, and then I will try again on Reddit but in a different subreddit.

Wednesday 9 September

Today I worked from home in the morning. While making breakfast, I tried a new voice-typing app, but it also disengaged after a moment of silence. Rubbish, uninstalled.

Since I was a kid, I admired people who could speak in complete sentences without hesitation, still saying things that make sense. Talking into a microphone can be stressful, and if you know the microphone will disengage already, something blocks inside me. That makes me think of a classic game on Swedish radio and the BBC.

The Swedish radio program is called På minuten, and on the BBC it is called Just a Minute. A panelist is given an anecdotal subject. The panelist tries to talk about the subject for one minute but needs to avoid hesitating or repeating words. The more you can talk, the more points you gather.

If I had played this game as a child, I could probably keep the microphone engaged for longer periods.

DW had the day off. She went to a wool event in the morning together with a friend. When I finished work, I changed the watch face so it now also displays days until Easter and days until the end of the month. I didn't remember to take a screenshot of the watch face until Sunday morning.

When DW came home, we had lunch, and then we went to MIL. MIL was in a really good mood. She was as happy as a child about the digital picture frame we gave her. I loaded more images onto the frame. We also went to a notary where DW signed a paper.

We came home late.

Thursday 10 September

I'm about to make a breakfast smoothie. I picked pears from the garden. Most of the pears are ready to be picked, but they aren't really in good shape. Insects are consuming the pears. A lot goes to waste.

It had been a long time since I biked, and I had scattered all the biking gear all over the place, and the tires needed pumping. It took a while before I could get on the bike and ride to work.

I got the Hollyland microphone to improve my voice typing while biking. The sound quality is indeed better, but the USB-C dongle can fall off while biking, and that is not good at all. Today I wanted to solve this issue. I attached a steel wire to the smartphone holder, bent so the USB dongle stays firmly attached to the smartphone. This project obviously took time.

But now I'm on the bike, and everything is working fairly well. Voice Access is doing a great job! I'm trying Voice Access together with a simple text editor, and it doesn't auto-save, but I can get to the menu with voice commands and tell it to save, so it works in a way.

This is such lovely weather. I wonder how the smoke situation will be today. When I arrived at work, the USB dongle had not been lost. My solution worked!

I had a productive day with few disturbances. There was smoke today, and I was feeling dizzy. On the plus side, I contacted the facility manager, and he promised to look into the issue and see what he can do. The offenders aren't in the same organization as we are, so he will need to talk to other facility managers. At least it felt good to be heard.

I was a little late biking home because I was late in the morning. While biking home, I stopped at a junction to take a beautiful photo of the place. I looked around, and just behind me, a lady stopped as well to take a photo, and I complimented her on her excellent choice of motif. Then I prepared to take the same photo she had chosen.

I delivered zucchinis to the market this evening. I gathered 17.7 Kg this time.

I spent the evening scrolling. I was a little tired, but we did not go to bed in a timely fashion. Not good at all.

Friday 11 September

Today both DW and I worked from home. She had a busy day with meetings. I worked on finalizing an increment. It was nice to have that done before the weekend. DW wasn't that lucky; people kept talking to her into the evening. I had not let that happen; I had just cut off. I would have said, "Now it was the weekend. Talk to you next week." DW was polite, and eventually the other person wished DW a nice weekend.

After dinner, I realized I hadn't been blogging since Monday evening. It was not a nice feeling. I had a literal backlog to process.

This evening I also had another realization. Earth has several seasonal regions. The Northern Hemisphere usually follows the four astronomical seasons. Around the equator, there are two seasons, but they are flipped. There is also a Hindu 6-season system. Modern Australia uses a month-bound 4-season system. If I support all this in my watch face, I'll need to do more work.

Saturday 12 September

It had been a hectic week. We were a bit slow in the morning. DW wanted to work on the tomatoes, and I wanted to take out the tiller machine and continue on the southwest field.

When I picked pears for the smoothie, the sheep came up to me and asked what I was doing. Hannah and Selma came to me. Bea was nowhere to be seen. I found her. She was eating elsewhere, perfectly fine. Normally, if one sheep is "lost," it's physically stuck or sick. Bea looked at me, totally fine. No worries this time.

After breakfast, I decided to work with the Tiller machine. I stood there, looked at the machine, and saw that something wasn't working correctly. The machine's knives had been mounted in reverse, meaning the sharp edge wouldn't cut the soil. I switched the knives to the correct configuration, and now I'm interested to see how it works. This also explained why the tiller machine jumped around and did little good work last time I used it. Of course, I felt stupid. I still had my blister wound on my left hand from the last time I used the tiller machine.

Tilling with the knives in the correct spot was a delightful experience. I do wonder when the knives came on in reverse and how long I have been using them like that. Are we talking about two years? I don't know.

DW made grilled tomato sauce.

I managed to till about one third of the southwest field. I evened out the surface and sowed it with the sheep grass mix. In the evening, it started raining. That was fantastic.

Sunday 13 September

This morning we were even slower. We didn't finish breakfast until almost lunchtime. To make the day useful in any sense, we decided to go to two second-hand shops. The first shop specialized in clothing. They had branded clothing from the UK and Italy.

They had a ten-meter-long table with jeans. There wasn't much of a system; the sizes were all over the place. It would have been much better if they had sorted the jeans somewhat.

I found a pair of jeans for myself and two sweaters. DW also found a couple of items. The owner was talkative and said he might have to close in December because he couldn't keep renting the space. We will see.

Next, we went to another secondhand shop, but I couldn't find much of interest there.

I retreated to the café while DW continued shopping. It would have been perfect if I had brought my keyboard to the second-hand shop. But I didn't, and I couldn't fetch it. Of course I could use the pen as well. It felt much better than the on-screen keyboard. I really hate on-screen keyboards.

While searching for secondhand shops, I found a secondhand shop for DJ equipment and amplifiers in the city, but it's closed on Sundays. If I'm sure of that, I will go there.

DW found two cups and a plate, so our cupboard will fill up even more. When I go to the PA secondhand, maybe we will get a new amplifier and two speakers. Where will I store these?

At home, we set up a net to protect the newly tilled part of the southwest field. With that, we could open the gate so that they could graze here. In the background of the photo, you can see the newly tilled part of the field. They were delighted to be served a new, fresh grazing area.

Here ends this week's blog. It is as if my striving to improve things around me brings new challenges in turn that must be improved.