Almost finished the fence of the southwest field Sunday, 17-Nov-24 20:41:04 CET

Sunday, 24-Nov-24 20:43:20 CET

Finished the two south grazing fields

This week I finished the two south grazing fields. I started animating with OpenToonz.

Monday 18 November

This morning, it was 4°C outside. The clouds from yesterday cleared up in the morning. It stayed sunny the rest of the day. It was a real pity that this weather did not arrive one day earlier.

Both DW and I worked from home today. Merida stayed with me at my home office.

I learned today that Ukraine got permission from Joe Biden to strike 300 km into Russia, but only in the Kursk region where the North Korean troops are currently located. So much for operational ambiguity.

This evening, I managed to create the first animation!

This is a video with a mountain landscape panning and zooming the camera.

Tuesday 19 November

Good morning. It is 3°C outside this morning, raining, and windier than last day. Today I go to the office. DW works from home today. Right now, I am driving to work and blogging.

Yesterday evening, I finished the animation; it is the first animation! This morning, I pondered what to do next with the animation. It could be cool to make an animation of a little guy walking across the screen. The background passes by, and then the little guy jumps into a puddle of water. I want the animation to work well in a loop. If possible.

Using an animation like that from my visual effects program is possible. Do you remember I made a program for visual effects for my DJ sets? The landscape panning loop video I made yesterday would work perfectly well in the visual effects program. I have to do some programming to make that work, but it is worth the effort now that I can produce little noodle soup animations.

Haha, Microsoft Dictate is so funny at times. What I said was when I can produce doodle animations. OK, Microsoft, I could take you up on noodle soup and make it, too.

I am seeing where my hobbies come together in the fruitful joint venture. Playing DJ sets with the visual effects that I made. I am making music. I can see myself making an animated music video. When the pandemic started, I stopped painting, and I have been wondering what I want to do with my painting skills. Going into digital art makes my art get viewed by most eyeballs. Also, combining art with music makes my music reach more ears. But now I arrived at work.

It is now 3 ½°C, and I am driving home by car. I had a lovely day today; things went fine.

If I were a car manufacturer, I would design spectacular rear indicator lights. I would do the impossible. The rear indicator lights would especially need an overhaul. Many cars with a trunk hatch these days have split the tail lights, so one part of the light is on the hatch and the other on the car's body. That gives a dark stripe through the light.

That doesn't look very good. You can see that the designer put a good amount of effort into making it look right, but the seam of the hatch goes right through the design. I would not allow that in my design.

When the hatch is closed, the gap that you usually see in the rear light where the hatch is would be closed mechanically. A motor could move an extension of the light into the seam. Either that or I would solve it optically by putting lights in the seam. I would do anything to close the gap so there would be a hatch but no gap in the rear light. The rear indicator light would be one seamless field covering the car's rear.

I don't know how I would do it, but I would do it if I were a car designer. Think of Tesla that is lowering the window to make it possible to open the door. If that is what it takes, I would do it.

When the rear has a continuous field of LEDs in a band, it is possible to make all sorts of animations and texts if that is what you want. When showing the direction, that could be possible with animated arrows, little figures walking, or walking ants. Anything. I would make an app that allows people to configure their rear light animation and add new animations. Having artists make rear light animations in OpenToonz would be possible as well. There would be an app store for that kind of thing.

So that is what I would do if I were to design a car's rear lights. I may have an obsession with rear lights and how they are developing. In the last 20-30 years, the rear light has been a significant showpiece of the car manufacturer's technologies. Can you imagine opening the trunk? First, the gap is cleared of the lighting system, and then the trunk opens. Brilliant.

Today, it was 1000 days since the full-scale invasion of Russia into Ukraine. I think I heard Russia lost between 800,000 soldiers. Russia will not win this war, not in 1000 years. It is simply impossible to win, to merge a lobotomized country with another country of creative, lively, clever, intelligent people who don’t want to be part of Russia. The idea that you can bully people into wanting to become a part of another country is grotesque. It is also essential for the West that Russia is not going to win because of the war crimes that Russia has carried out. It cannot be so that you steal kids, rape women, use chemical weapons, destroy cultural sites, cause ecocide, genocide, and get away with it. That's not allowed. The people who staged this should and will be brought to justice.

I noticed that my jacket was covered in sticky clay. It had to be washed.

Wednesday 20 November

Good morning! The time is 7:03 AM. Outside, it's 3°C inside. I haven't slept so well this night. I can't say I had very many things to think about. I'm pretty pleased with my situation but I haven't slept well. Merida came to sleep between my legs, which was a bit annoying. Perhaps I'm getting a cold, I don't know. I moved her from the legs position. I placed her next to me, and she didn't start a fight, which was a good thing, and I was pleased with that. But then she was lying next to me, and she was pretty warm. After a while, she didn't become so comfortable either. I can sleep well beside her, so that's not the problem.

DW had a day off today, but she also worked a little. I worked from home in the morning. After lunch, I created new photos for the shed builder.

They wanted photos where the location of the shed was marked. I made it, and in response, I got questions about where the dug-out soil will be stored. I had to think about that.

Last night, I experimented with OpenToonz. I tried to use a Wacom tablet. It didn't feel easy to use. It may take some time to learn; perhaps I shouldn't combine that with learning how to use an animation program. I figured out what I wanted to draw, so that is nice. There will be a little dude with an oversized jacket, a shawl, and a large hat. He's wearing wellingtons and walking; when he arrives at a puddle, he jumps into it.

I wanted to use this technique for background https://youtu.be/4Ttqem-LE88?si=Stbu5Bx0qRFZOrvs, and this for the puppet https://youtu.be/QVqybq68K4k?si=I9oIeOj5lLPVyoBs.

I got a basic version working! It was hard, though.

Next time, I will make it more interesting. I will make the puppet jump into a puddle. We will see. Now, I made the puppet from the front. Having the puppet walk sideways this way will be challenging, so that will not happen. This time.

Thursday 21 November

Good morning. outside it is 1°C and inside it is 21°C. Last night, I did not sleep very well. Again. This time, it had to do with my brain being busy with animation.

We both went to the office today. I had my newly washed jacket. It was nice!

It snowed today. That inspired me to find out if it can also snow in the animation. It is possible! I found this tutorial for how to make snow: https://youtu.be/yIQ0oZ23aNM?si=0XsVdY6lXGHGUqXR.

This evening, I told the shed company they could make a pile of soil in the southeast sheep pasture. We will see if that is sufficient.

Friday 22 November

Good morning. Right now, it is 3°C outside. DW is working from home, and I'm having a day off. I looked at the weather forecast, and right now, it looks like tiny clouds with scattered rain are moving over us.

There will come rain or snow at any moment. Therefore it's not especially appealing to go out working. My solution for that is to use my hand heater. The last time I filled the heater and started it was when we worked on the façade of the house. We worked in the cold wind on the scaffold in the winter in February 2021. I recall I was crying from pain in my hands while we worked on that. The solution was to fire up my hand heaters.

It was not necessary to have the heater. Today, I upped my photo game! I brought with me a tripod and made a photo of myself drilling a hole. This was supposed to be an action photo. I had hoped you would be able to see more of the action, but I have one photo of myself that is not bad.

I made the corner pole supported by two diagonal poles. This way, the pole can handle the side forces better.

At this point, it started raining, and I had a break. A long break. I left the tools outside under a wheelbarrow. It rained and snowed and hailed. Luckily, the tools were safe under the wheelbarrow. Somehow, I got my newly washed jacket smeared with clay again.

I found a break in the rain in the afternoon to finish the fence and bring the tools back in.

This afternoon, I got a message from the tractor and garden tools workshop saying they had finished repairing the tiller machine! I will see when I pick her up. I have no idea why it is a "her," but it feels like that right now.

When the corner pole is enforced, and the net is applied with pressure, the gate opening acts up. I will have to redo the gate opening as well. I must add another pipe on the other side of the gate. I will dig out a trench and put in an extra pipe tomorrow.

My jacket was covered in clay again. This is almost hopeless.

Saturday 23 November

This morning, I discovered that it would be rain-free in the morning and then rain the rest of the day. The rain was forecasted to start at 10 AM. I went to work before I had a proper breakfast to make the best use of the morning.

I remembered to bring my tripod again. This time, I got more action with sparks when I cut a pipe from the rest of the building fence sections.

The poles of the gate had to be held together, and my idea was to dig a trench between the poles and put a metal pipe in the trench, screwing either side of the pipe to the poles of the gate. I had already done that on the one side and discovered that the gate poles get pulled apart in a slight rotation. The only logical solution is to fasten the two poles with two pipes. Then I just put a blue ratchet band between the poles and pulled them together, and when I got them at the proper distance from each other, I screwed the pipes to the poles. It worked! The clay was sticky.

The clock arrived at 10 AM, but there was still no rain or breakfast. I finished the gate of the southwest field and continued with the new stretch of the fencing, forming a corridor around the northwest field. The corridor makes it possible to have one central place for the sheep where they are resting when it is raining. All fields are connected to this central place. It is here where we will build a stable. I had already drilled many of the holes for the corridor last Saturday, but some were not deep enough. I fixed that this morning. Then, I unpacked a new box of sheep fencing. I screwed it to the gate on the south point of the field and pulled out the roll to the north side of the house. I have work to do here because I need to create a new gate. That is all for another day because DW told me the breakfast was finished!

Even though it had not started raining, I went inside for breakfast. We talked about what we would do today. I had to buy more screws for the fencing project, and we had to go to the second-hand shop to find clothing for a party that DW would attend. We also had a particular project! Find pepper nuts without palm oil. We went to the local bakery, but they did not have them. We went to the local patisserie/pastry shop, but they did not have it. The farm shop had it! It had three different sorts of peppernuts without palm oil. We were delighted!

Then we went to the second-hand shop. DW found a jacket and a blouse to wear at the party. I found a jacket for myself to put one jacket in the washing machine while smearing clay on the other. It is sticky at this time of the year.

I also found a PA system! Woohoo! It was slightly smaller than my current box. It is a 125-watt system. I am not sure. It took me some turning of the knobs to get a sound I liked from the system. I will use it together with my other PA as well. Tonight, I only managed to get it to play by itself, which was loud enough for our house. I found a new way of connecting the subwoofer. I put it on the booth output of the DJ controller. That way, I can control the bass with a separate knob, which was fantastic. When I was satisfied with the sound, I placed little dots on the panel so that I could remember where to put the knobs for the best sound.

I can understand that the knobs make it challenging to use the box, and indeed, I found people that did not like this PA. I like it, though. It works very well with my subwoofer.

In the evening, it rained continuously. The weather forecast said it will be dry from 7 AM tomorrow. I hope that is true because I need to clear some trees for next Tuesday when the building company comes to set out the shed's foundation.

Sunday 24 November

Today, it was marvelous autumn weather. It was 12 degrees Celsius. It may have been too windy at times, but it was mostly sunny and no rain.

We started the activities today by clearing the area of the new shed of trees and bushes. It was sad to cut down the things we planted and nourished for so long. One of our trees was taller and more significant than the rest. It sprouted spontaneously and grew to a diameter of about 12 centimeters. The oaks, birches, and berry bushes were not nearly as large.

All the twigs and branches went into our new branch stack fence. It grew considerably, but that fence has room for more stuff.

After lunch and some rest, I went to work on the corridor fence around the northwest grazing land. I knew we wanted a gate at the end of the corridor, so I selected a building fence section to use for the gate. Then, I cut two gates out of one fence section.

Next up, I decided where the gate would be. That was still easy. I installed a corner post for the gate. Ratchet bands are my secret power. They can pull most things together. I broke a couple of ratchet bands in the process, but that is part of the deal.

DW and I deliberated about the final stretch of the fencing and concluded that we could not put it out right now. Before we continue on that, we need to have the stable finished. That will be in a year if we are lucky. Until then, we could make use of building fence parts. Especially parts that we halved. That works well. I went to neighbors to pick up some building fence feet and set up the last stretch from the corridor to the house.

Then, I finished stretching the corridor fencing. I clamped two pieces of wood on both sides of the net and pulled them toward the corner pole. I managed to stretch the net sufficiently. At that point, continuing on the net was a little late. The net of the corridor was so efficiently strapped that I could let in the sheep in the corridor to the southwest pasture. They loved it. They went all the way to the pasture along the road, grazing.

While the sheep were out grazing, I rearranged the net around the rain-roof. They got a narrower area around the rain-roof. At that point, it was so dark outside that I had to bring extra lighting. I collected all my tools and brought them back to the workshop. Somehow, there are many tools involved in making a fence.

I was delighted with the result. In a way, I am happy when I am finished, and today I was not finished, but the sheep could go to the new area, which had a sufficient feeling of being finished.

With that, we ate dinner, blogged, and relaxed. Outside, it was windy. I think it was the outskirts of the storm Bert that passed us.

This week, I worked on fencing and came a long way on the south and west sides of the property. I made my first animation. We finished the preparations for the shed. There are still a couple of minor things to do, but not much at all. I found a new PA system! I wrote 3143 words this week and was better at taking photos of myself. Next week, we will get a visit from the shed builder to set out the poles for where the shed will be.

See you again next week!