Tiles and OSB boards Sunday, 01-Jun-25 22:35:39 CEST

Sunday, 08-Jun-25 20:53:34 CEST

Finished OSB boards on the west wall of the barn

The sheep got sheared this week, and I put up OSB board on the whole west wall.

Monday 2 June

I worked from home today, and DW went to the office. A few droplets were raining this morning, and that was it for rain. I had a good day at work. After work, I went weeding in the beds. When DW came home, I took a chair and my blog laptop to the sheep and sat with them, blogging in the grazing area. They are currently at a place they are afraid of, but when I am with them, they feel safe. It would have been much easier if they had dared to graze the whole area. They see me as the leader of the herd.

Tuesday 3 June

This morning, I biked with DS to work. He's working at a location near the train station. He had a swift pace, and there was no room for blogging. A bridge over a canal was blocked because it was being maintained. For the rest, we followed a straight path.

At 5:50 PM, I biked home. The cows were now in the cow field as they should be.

I got the new version of the phoneme conversion to work. It still has bugs, but I'm sure I can iron out those soon.

I had a productive day at work today. I like the feeling of being submerged in the project I am doing. There is a flow. Did I learn anything new today? No, I don't think so. All right.

I am biking through the forest. All the elder bushes are flowering, and that is very cool. We planted elderberry bushes at home as well. Of course, the scent is rather intense here in the forest, with every so many meters between a flowering elderberry. It has white flowers that look like white horizontal discs from a distance. That is beautiful. When they finish flowering, there will be black elderberries. As far as I can see, millions will be in this forest. Birds will feed well on these elderberries.

I'm biking next to the canal, leaving the forest behind me. Here, we have fishers camping and catching fish or just sitting, browsing on their phone. I can see a dad and his son setting up the fishing rod. That was relatively amateur compared to what I usually see here. Usually, I see fishermen with fully automatic gear and five rods next to each other on a rack. They have electronic sensors that detect if there is activity. They also have camping gear and kitchen stuff for thousands of euros. What should I say?

Now, I am leaving the canal, biking through a group of tall trees, making it dark. I love it here. Then, I need to climb a tall bridge over the canal. From the top of the bridge, you have a wide view. Far away in the distance, you can see a person in a row boat. They have a bright orange vest. It's pretty windy out here. Farther away, you can see a bridge over the canal with cars and trucks moving over the bridge. On the other side, I can descend on the slope. The rest of the Netherlands' landscape lacks many hills and slopes. BIL likes the view from the hills and mountains. Every holiday, he's going up the mountain for lookouts. The further he sees into the horizon, the better his holiday is. The last time I met him, he told me he would be on a pension in about nine months. He is looking forward to that.

At home at 18:33 PM.

Wednesday 4 June

Today, I worked from home in the morning. DW had a day off. While working, I noticed birds swirling around our garden, aiming for berries. The first thing I would do after work is create a scarecrow. I took my old blue jacket, jeans, a hat, and a straw and created the construction in the barn. It was great fun. I had beams over from the barn ceiling, and with that, I created the skeleton.

He was mounted on the rest of an OSB board. For the head, I used a bag filled with straw, with the hat on top. I stapled the jeans to the base platform so the straw could not escape. Then I placed the scarecrow in the garden—the birds lined up on the house's ridge. More than fifty birds were waiting for a good moment to have a meal. Now, a man appeared in the garden and did not go away. They chattered up there on the ridge. One by one, they left. Phew, it was the last moment for this action.

Now, if the birds are eager to eat our berries, I decided to try some myself, and indeed. Some berries are ready to be eaten! I would not have known.

Then I went to the barn and put up one OSB board on the west wall. The electrician needs access to the corner, so I skipped that board. I had to make a hole in the board for the window. The next board was halved and stuck under a metal beam. Next time, I can continue on the other side of the beam at the large door.

It was time for the annual sheep shearing. The sheep-cutting professional arrived. This year, he had a battery-driven cutter. He cut our ladies swiftly as if he had been doing this job for a long time. He has.

 

Then, we gave the sheep a new grazing area. We made it possible for the ladies to graze on the east side of the property between neighbors and us.

In the evening, I worked on the phoneme conversion program. It has now passed the level of stupid bugs. Now, I have entered the area of bugs originating from flaws in the thinking. In Swedish, we have the word Feltänk. Much easier to have a word for flaws in the thinking. Feltänk! One such flaw is that the phoneme pair K and S can represent x. I had features for that in the previous program, but the new program is blissfully incapable of turning multi-phonemes into something. So I have to make that in the new program, but not tonight.

Then I went out in the garden to terminate slugs.

Thursday 5 June

Good morning. 8:30 AM. I'm driving to work. Yesterday, when the sheep were sheared, they didn't recognize each other. They did not recognize themselves. Selma and Bea they are too chubby. Hannah is fine.

The weather right now is excellent for biking. However, it will rain in the afternoon, so I will go by car. And by the way, I was pretty busy yesterday, so I'm a bit tired today.

So it's 6. PM, and I am on my way home. It has rained a lot today, and the sky is full of dark clouds on the horizon. But it's not raining right now. I am not sure if I have been able to bike home without getting in the rain.

There's a building next to my office, and we are sitting on the 4th floor. We are overlooking that other building. The building has a patio garden, but you can see it from above. It appears as if a less legal plant is growing on that patio. I'm not an expert on those plans, but I don't think they may grow there. It would be funny if I am correct. I will ask others if they think it looks like special plants.

Friday 6 June

I had a day off on Friday. DW worked from home. I looked into the phoneme conversion program. I worked on it until lunchtime. After lunch, I worked on the boards in the barn.

I called the company from which we ordered the lawn mover tractor, and they said the delivery would be sometime next week. We will see.

Saturday 7 June

We started the day by building a rack to support berries in the garden. We used birch trunks we brought to the Netherlands from the cottage for the feet. For the frame we used leftover ventilation beams from the house. The construction was good, but a little bit too wide.

DW worked with sorting wool, standing under the canopy of the barn. I worked on setting up boards in the barn. It rained heavily; we were happy with the barn.

I finished boarding the south wall. There are two three places the electrician wanted access so those boards are just cut into shape but not screwed on to the wall. Now we can insulate the restroom walls and put boards on them. We need to buy 8 or 9 centimeters of insulation material for that.

We will go to the old house of PILs tomorrow with the small trailer. For that, it needed to be emptied. We went to the recycling center, the second-hand shop, and the hardware store. I ruined the blue jacket we bought when I worked on the tractor. The jacket we bought second-hand in Malmö is too large so it will be decommissioned.

In the evening, I worked on the phoneme conversion program again. I reached word 12468. This current test run started at 7000. I got so tired of words starting with a that I had to skip forward. But I successfully parsed 5 and a half thousand words. That is promising.

Sunday 8 June

Today we went to the PILs with the small trailer. We picked up a green cupboard in questionable condition, but DW loved it. We also picked up a chest with tools. That is the stuff I love. DW's brother was there as well. It rained heavily in short bursts. The weather was mild for the rest.

Then we went to the PILs. They were in a good mood. Today, FIL talked a little; he is usually not that talkative. He was enthusiastic that young ladies washed him. MIL gets to meet people; there are excursions and activities. They sounded happy.

Our sheep had gotten out of the grazing area when we came home. Luckily, they were still in the zone between the neighbors where they are allowed to be. I got them in again, and they were happy to get the delicious chunks.

In the evening, I got to the word 17298 of the phoneme database. The ideas from the second algorithm still hold up, but it is tedious.

Here ends this week's blog. The sheep got sheared, and I arrived with the boarding project at the door of the north wall in the barn. That means we must also insulate the restroom and put boards on those walls. This week I wrote 1797 words.