Electric plan of the barn Sunday, 29-Dec-24 21:51:09 CET

Sunday, 05-Jan-25 19:54:31 CET

Molds for concrete cubes

This week, I finished creating molds for concrete cubes in the barn.

Monday 30 December

We had a slow morning. It was totally overcast again again. We had tea, and I sat syncing, Raining again and again. The song I uploaded yesterday, Ladies of the land, came live on YouTube this morning. DD liked the new song. I changed the blog I uploaded yesterday to include the link to the song. It would not be nice to have it wait a week before adding a link here.

A new week full of new possibilities. Everything is still grey. This morning, I didn't feel that broken from working with the manual pole driver. Just a tiny little feeling in my left shoulder, but not that bad. That is excellent.

Today, it is still 2024, but it is already the first week of 2025; according to ISO 8601, you write it 2025-W01. As a rule of thumb, you can check where the first Thursday falls to determine the first week of the year. So now we have that sorted, we can begin the first day of the year's first week. I live in Europe, so ISO 8601 rules here; they have other or no standards in other parts of the world. Besides, there are little resistance pockets of ISO 8601, even in Europe. Who would think?

I started the day with something I thought was a tiny task: Update the electric plan of the barn and resend it to Superman Mr Radi. I found errors I had to correct, which was unclear what I meant, so that had to be improved. Besides, there were things I had missed. I updated the thing, and then it was time for lunch. When the sky is completely overcast, you get no sense of time. I started feeling hungry but thought I had recently had breakfast, and that was a strange experience. Eventually, I sent the updated plan, and we had lunch.

After lunch, I continued on the fencing project. I finished the fence poles on the north side of the house. Well, it is as finished as it can be right now. We will have to figure out how we do this area around the barn later.

I also finished setting the poles around the north part of the barn, following the helophyte filter, until the tiny house. I did not do this stretch with great confidence. There is the pipe from the pump to the filter that I did not want to drill through. I know (approximately) where it goes, but it's better to be safe than sorry. I did not reach it, so that was fine. Then, I had a similar challenge at the corner of the tiny house. The electricity for the sewer pump goes there, and I pulled up the drill at the right moment. It had tangled itself in the barrier tape we laid above the cable. This means I avoided an accident with a few centimeters, an inch or two. I placed a shorter pole in this hole. That rhymes!

As a grand finale of the day, I went over to the fence of our vegetable garden. You might recall that we made a twig and branch barrier there. Since then, we have decided to extend the twigs and branch barrier because we produce so much and want more windshields for the garden. It is a win-win situation. I put in 9 poles here. Now, we need to fill the barrier with twigs and branches so the sheep cannot go through the barrier. It was completely dark when I was finished with this task.

I felt slightly broken in the evening because I used the manual pole driver today. I have not taken many photos, but it was an excellent day for the rest.

Tuesday 31 December 2024

Merida slept next to me last night. She is warm but still likes it when it is a little warmer, so she snuggles up next to me. Purring loudly from time to time. I don't receive that much love from Merida every night, so I let her decide where to lie. At one moment, when I woke up, and she was purring, I was thinking about what the next tune would be about, and I thought it would be a blues song about my bike. For the rest of the night, Ladies of the land rang in my ears as a persistent earworm.

I downloaded Spotify to my telephone. I don't have a subscription to this service, but I can use it for free, and it is sufficient to try out lyrics and see how my songs are presented. There are synced lyrics or no lyrics as it appears on Spotify. Lyrics are the mysterious part of music software. The free version of Spotify is annoying because you cannot select the tune you want to play. That is decided for you.

We did not have any hard work today. That was good because I had enough hard work yesterday when I worked with the manual pole driver and the earth auger.

But we had to do something, so we walked and bought a bag of traditional Dutch doughnuts. A tent had been set up at the end of the road, and a man baked them on the spot. His daughter was selling them.

Instead of sitting down and eating doughnuts, we went to a garden and animal supplies store to buy more chunks for Merida, but they were out of stock. We bought litter sand and one garlic and salt block for our sheep. We also tried to check out a garden tools shop, but it was closed. The second-hand shop was open. It had two huge speakers that I liked much, but I don't have the amplifier to run these. It would be a little annoying to get them working, so I decided not to buy them.

DW found jars to conserve vegetables. She also found a book she liked. I looked at the bookshelves but found nothing that caught my interest. When younger, I used to read, and I liked it. For a couple of years, I have been numb to that sensation. I bought books I had barely opened since a few years back. I do have to say I am missing the feeling of reading an excellent book. I have wondered if this is a sign of mental capacity decay or if I am in a new digital age. The jury is still out deliberating on this. My mind is collecting evidence as we speak.

When we returned to our neighborhood, we passed by the farm shop to pick up bubbly organic whine. The wind was picking up. It was a strong wind. Not so that the weather forecaster gave the warning grade of "Orange," they stayed at "Yellow," and yellow storms do not get a name in the Netherlands. That does not mean that the same weather formation cannot be more lethal in another country, "Orange worthy," the United Kingdom, for example, and then it gets a name from the UK weather service.

While waiting for DS to show up for dinner, neighbors came by and brought a bottle of Champagne and a bottle of Bacardi as a thank-you for the DJ set I played on 26 October. That was great. I was thankful for this beautiful gift.

We had dinner together with DS. We played a game together that he won. Then, we finally ate a couple of the doughnuts. All this time, you have thought we have forgotten about the doughnuts. Not at all. The doughnuts were heated in the oven throughout, and then we put them on plates with a nice pile of icing sugar next to them. You dip the oily doughnut into the sugar and eat it while as warm as possible. At least, the warm part is what I do.

DS did not feel that well, so he wished us a happy new year and went home early to bed.

When the new year happened, we wished each other a happy new year, and then we went out into the war zone to wish our sheep a happy new year. Our sheep were not all that happy, though.

	What is going on?

Our sheep got delicious chunks, so they cheered up a little. The new area to the east of us ran out of money quickly, so the bombardments from that side were not intense.

The area to the west is doing quite well, and it is a traditional area of meat-eating, and fireworks trigger happy Dutch people. The rest of the year, the Dutch morale is that if you can earn a penny, even by selling your neighbor or putting explosives on the other side of his living room, then that is what you have to do. On this day, the morale is turned on the head, and you have to burn as much money as possible to say that all those neighbors you sold were in vain. The greedy Dutch don't burn money; they smuggle their fireworks from Belgium and Germany and make a trade of it.

You can sell many fireworks to friends and family going unnoticed, but somewhere, it ends, so the trader sits with the stockpile on New Year's Eve. So what does he do? He set it off, of course. In other words, an illegal fireworks trader lives straight to the west in the adjacent area. I already knew that because he set off fireworks from time to time. It does not go unnoticed, like that time 21 September. That is what they do. There are always more fireworks for such a person. The explosives probably are lying on a shelf in the person's garage. If it starts burning, he will probably lose his house and the neighbors around him, too.

It is not so that the neighbors of the illegal fireworks trader will tip any law enforcement. I hope they did, but most neighbors are probably in on the deal.

Happy New Year!

Wednesday 1 January 2025

You guessed it! Yes, we had a slow morning. Another thing you could guess, it was completely overcast. Not only that, the wind was stiff. In the afternoon, it started raining. I went out to the sheep and cleared their hay rack from a layer of junk at the bottom, preventing them from having easy access to fresh hay. Then, they got a new layer of hay.

I cleaned the earth auger and collected the parts. DW and I brought it to neighbors who want to borrow it to plant trees and shrubs. They had 150 shrubs to plant. We wished them a happy new year. I told them about my new tune, Ladies of the land. They got a demonstration of the earth auger, how to start it, what not to do, and general tips and tricks. I told the neighbor he could borrow the auger because we were ready with our poles.

Then we went to the next neighbors and wished them a happy new year. They will also borrow the auger when time allows. Also, they were going to listen to the Ladies of the land.

The next neighbor was busy planting a Yule tree in the garden. I helped him. He showed us that he is building the kitchen right now. I told him about my new tune, Ladies of the land, and he set it up on his speaker system, and it sounded legit good.

The following neighbors we wanted to wish a new year were not at home. So then we went home.

I thought I would like to make a new song last night just before going to sleep, or rather this morning. It should be a song about my bike and will be a blues song. I explained my idea to Chat GPT:

For many years, I had second-hand bikes. They were not of good quality. They often broke, and they were heavy. A couple of years ago, I decided to get a new, really good bike that would not break, precisely how I like a bike to be. It was a Gazelle named after a slender antelope representing beauty, speed, and graze. Indeed, the bike is light, and I passed all the people with this bike. One day, I was passed by an old lady on her new bike. In a few years, I am no longer a fast biker. Most people pass me, including the elderly and really young people. They all have e-bikes. With my bike, you need to use muscle power. It was now less fun biking, and the bike started to break; one tire was flat after a few days. It was not fun anymore. I stopped biking. One day, I realized that I was putting on weight. It got me thinking that I actually missed that feeling of using my muscles while biking to work. It is silly to desire an e-bike while I need to exercise more. I decided to fix my bike again and use it, even though I am a slow biker. It worked! I lost weight and saw new places, beautiful parks, flowers and animals. I was happy with my old Gazelle without a battery.

Here are the lyrics that Chat GPT produced:

#Verse
I used to ride those second-hand wheels; oh, they'd break down every time,
Yeah, I rode those heavy second-hand wheels, always breaking down the line.
But then I got my Gazelle, oh, she was smooth and fine.

#Chorus
Oh, my old Gazelle, you carried me so true,
Yeah, my old Gazelle, I was flying, nothing I couldn't do.
But now the times have changed, and I've got those e-bike blues.

#Verse
I'd pass by everyone, yeah, I was quick and free,
Like a slender antelope, no one could catch me.
Then one day, an old lady, she flew right past me.

#Chorus
Oh, my old Gazelle, you carried me so true,
Yeah, my old Gazelle, I was flying, nothing I couldn't do.
But now the times have changed, and I've got those e-bike blues.

#Verse
The years rolled on, my legs slowed down,
All those e-bikes passing made me wear a frown.
My tire went flat, and I gave up the crown.

#Bridge
But spring came along, and I felt the call,
I missed my old Gazelle, the best bike of them all.
Fixed her up, got back on, now I'm standing tall.

#Verse
Now I'm riding slow, but I don't even care,
Feeling the wind, seeing beauty everywhere.
With my old Gazelle, I'm living without a care.

#Outro
Oh, my old Gazelle, you're still my pride and joy,
Yeah, my old Gazelle, you're my trusty, faithful toy.
No battery can beat the love of muscle and alloy.

I found a suitable photo of my bike when I bought new bike bags. I used that photo to create the artwork for the new song.

We noticed that it will be sunny for a couple of hours tomorrow. That will be genuinely nice!

This evening, I discovered that the synced lyrics of Sitting in my Skoda had been uploaded! I don't have a Spotify subscription, so I cannot verify it works on that platform. It works on YouTube Music. I suppose I have to stop making new songs and ensure the songs I have all have synced lyrics.

I have been experimenting with the Blue Sky platform and am unsure it is right for me. I cannot see how I will thrive when people are only there to grow their (own) following. I decided to wind down my activity on the Blue Sky platform tonight. I will post sometimes, but I will not focus solely on it. I thought it would be nice to expand my social media posts in a viable direction. But would that be? Tonight, I came across the fact that there is a community section on YouTube. Perhaps I can investigate that a little more. I made my first post. We will see where it goes.

Thursday 2 January

I slept really bad last night. The tiny, soaring feeling at my left shoulder got worse. I even got up in the middle of the night to get myself a Paracetamol. I have a reservation to rent a vibratory plate compactor for tomorrow, but I cannot operate any vibratory plate compactor in this condition. I called the rental company, and they returned my deposit money and wished me good luck recovering my arm.

The sun was shining in the morning; it was beautiful, epic winter weather. I would have been in an excellent mood if I had not had an issue with my arm.

We had breakfast, and I gave the sheep their morning hay ration. It was feeling okay to do something with the arm. It hurt, but I liked using my arm. How was this day going to be? It was not fun at all.

Here, we had a spontaneous meeting with neighbors from the area. I was ready to hear that I had to pull the song Overcast Skies. On the contrary, they liked it. Perhaps they are not fluent in English and missed all the intricacies, but I will not dig into this subject further. Other neighbors had left for a long holiday in Asia, and when they returned, the barn stood there. The group got a spontaneous tour through the barn. It did not go entirely without accidents; one person held on to a beam and got a splinter in her hand. It started bleeding.

I decided to work on the concrete cube molds. I want to make concrete cubes from the rest of the concrete that will result when they pour our floor. For this, I wanted to use the boards I got from neighbors last week. We can put the cubes along the road to avoid having people drive beside the road.

My idea is to make a cube of 40 centimeters side. I made it, and we calculated that it was 64 liters and concrete is 2.35 kilos per liter, which is 150 kilos, or about 330 lbs. That is on the heavy side. DW did not like that idea at all. I suggested making cubes of 30 centimeters side. That is 63 and a half kilos. That is still a lot, but I can handle it. Perhaps. It still breaks my heart to discard the 150-kilo cube mold.

It was indeed more sunny today. Late in the afternoon, the sun set behind a row of leafless threes. It was great to experience a day that was not completely overcast.

At 2:30 PM, Merida had an epileptic seizure. It was the third seizure since she got the new medicine on 31 July last year. That is 52 days between each seizure, on average. All the feelings come back from when I made the track Merida, Merida.

I worked on the new 30 cm cubes. I made one unit with three cubes, totaling 81 liters of concrete. I do not know how long hose the concrete truck will be provided with for our floor, but they want to empty the whole when done. To be precise, the truck has no hose; it just pours the concrete into a pump trailer, and it has a hose. When the hose of the pump trailer is emptied, I want the cube molds ready so we can make good use of the rest of the concrete. It was dark while I was still working in the barn on the cube molds. I almost finished the first three cubes. It occurred to me that the barn is not finished, but it is already a delight to have it. I sawed the plates to size. Covered them with the plastic from a garbage bin sack and mounted them in pieces. The idea is that the plastic will make the mold more uncomplicated to take apart. The concrete will not merge with the boards when there is a thin layer of plastic towards the board.

Friday 3 January

My left arm was doing considerably better today than yesterday, but I was happy I did not rent a vibratory plate compactor. The driveway is already reasonably compact anyway. The part I have done with the compactor is smoother, but the rest is not bad. I can leave it as it is in this condition.

I finished the cube mold I worked on yesterday. Then, I started working on the following three cubes. I came a long way, but they were not finished. Then we had lunch and other things to do. We went to the grocery store to do some shopping.

In the afternoon, DW made an alcoholic-free drink from the recipe she found in a flyer from the farm market. The basis for the drink was a punch drink. The punch from the recipe was sold out, so we had another sort. There was a cinnamon stick and a rosemary branch. That looked festive!

The rosemary came from our garden. An avid reader of this blog recalls the rosemary project. It started on 21 October of 2021. We ordered a bag of rosemary seeds. Of all seeds, one sprouted. Only one. Last year, the plant got a place in our garden. At the beginning of January 2025, we got two rosemary branches in our drink. I find it magical. The drinks were colorful, and I liked that a lot. On 15 May 2024, I summarized the rosemary story.

In the evening, I finished my next song. It is metal, an angry hard rock with an angry rap in the bridge. Even my spellchecker started suggesting more positive wording, but I stood firm and discarded all such suggestions. The song title is You had one job.

I crafted these lyrics myself. I figured out all the rhymes and the language. No help of ChatGPT here.

#Verse
Take the walrus down (yeah, down)
He lied a thirty thousand times.
He should pay a fine (huge fine)
Punish him hard for his crime.

#Chorus
Leave his cult before it is too late.
This is bad. It is not great.
You took the conman's bait.
Now, the world will disintegrate.

#Verse
A disgrace to the US nation.
A threat to the democratic world.
A Russian infiltration.
So bad he makes me want to hurl.

#Chorus
Leave his cult before it is too late.
This is bad. It is not great.
You took the conman's bait.
Now, the world will disintegrate.

#Bridge
The first time he got to power, there was a scandal every hour.
You could vote down this clown, but what did you do?
Discarded your voice; it was wrong, and you knew.
You believe in trickle-down bullshit and useless status in a cult.
Now, we all will suffer from chaos and tumult.
When you wake up from this nightmare, you will be old.
Red hat friends are no more rife.
Humanity is pushed out of the corridor of life.

#Verse
Slam his cell door, hear the thunk,
Lock him up; yeah, he's a punk.
No more grifting from this skunk,
Stop him spewing his bunk.

#Chorus
Leave his cult before it is too late.
This is bad. It is not great.
You took the conman's bait.
Now, the world will disintegrate.

#Instrumental

#Verse
I cannot stand to hear you crying.
You voted for him; now the world is dying.
It is not a man. He is a hob.
You had one job.
Quit that sob.

#Instrumental

#Outro
I cannot stand to hear you crying.
You voted for him; now the world is dying.
It is not a man. He is a hob.
You had one job.
Quit that sob.

I got the pieces together but did not upload the song this evening. This song is angry at the people electing resident number 47 of the white house and now regretting their choice. Here are a bit of background to the different words in the song:

That part with Corridor of life is a term coined by Johan Rockström. I made an artistic twist to it, but the claim is scientifically valid in some form. The word walrus comes from remarks of E. G Carol; she called him that. The Washington Post said he lied 30k times in the first term. To be precise, 30573 times. This is bad. It is not great. That is a jab to the letters on the red hats. There have been investigations into the role of Russia in the 2016 election, and it has been found that Russia tried to interfere. So what is a hob exactly? It has many meanings, but I am referring to slang for mischief or trouble. Something that is not rife in my interpretation is that it is not abundant. It appears as if using a negation before rife is an uncommon construction (no?). I have to blame that on not being a native English speaker. It rhymes, so it is chimes. The sentence about useless status in a cult comes from the documentary Unfit by Dan Portland. I wrote about it on 18 September last year. My summary of the documentary is 5 words. Trickle-down bullshit refers to Trickle down economics. The whole verse with thunk, punk, skunk and bunk is a tribute to my own song, now eight years old. Besides, reports said that he sat farting loudly during the trials at the beginning of last year.

The song actually asks people to stop sobbing about electing the wrong guy. There is a faint suggestion of starting to do something actively instead of sitting down, giving up, and regretting that they elected the wrong guy. What people should do is not mentioned in the song. I don't know, really.

I suppose we all mourn the loss of the world as we know it. I write a song, and someone else might sit and stare out into the void. We are all up for a challenging ride. I do enjoy the feeling of being able to say: What was it I said?

Saturday 4 January

Do you understand I want the song out before the mayhem starts? I remastered the song while drinking tea in bed in the morning. I got the song uploaded. Now, the wait can begin.

Today, it was overcast. It was not that warm, and the weather forecast predicted snow on Sunday morning.

DW started knitting on a pattern of a sweater she created herself. It looks really cool. She made the pattern with Excel. It would be cool if she blogged about it. She placed numbers in the cells to represent different colors and then used conditional formatting to show the colors. Then, she made the grid cells about the size of the knitting pixel. Then, she could design her pattern freely. Beautiful.

I continued on the cubes project. I finished the cubes from yesterday and then made a third and final set of three cubes. Tomorrow, I will make a minor adjustment to the cube molds. Then they are done for the pour of the floor. It rhymes!

In the evening, the song You had one job was published on YouTube.

I worked on syncing lyrics, and two songs are now synced on YouTube Music. It is mesmerizing to see the lyrics appear when the song is playing. I love it.

Sunday 5 January

It had snowed when we woke up this morning. I wish I had not known it and that it had come as a surprise. It will rain in the afternoon, so this is all the snow we get this winter.

It rained on and off the entire day. That did not matter because I worked in the barn. I had an issue with the right eye. Something was itching in the eye. But for the rest, all was fine. I tend to itch back, which might not be the correct thing to do when something is itching in the eye. The left shoulder and arm are also acceptable. It is incredible how one can go from rather intense pain to nothing at all in a couple of days.

I continued to work on the cube molds. All three molds of three cubes each are finished. In total, I made molds for 243 liters. I have no clue if this is too much. It is about 571 kilos of concrete.

I will need to redig some of the trenches for the case-tubing. In two weeks, there will be a concrete floor here. It is hard to imagine.

Then we had lunch, and I napped on the couch after lunch. I had Merida sleeping on my chest for the first time. That was magical.

We measure all the openings between beams we want to fill with insulation material. DW made an Excel sheet with the data, and I measured it. That was fun. Now, DW can calculate how much insulation to buy.

In the evening, I started on a new song! I hear you complain already. Have you not made enough songs for a while already? No, I have one more song idea. It will be great. I will finish it next week. It will be completely unique, nothing you heard of anywhere.

Here ends this week's blog. It is the last blog of last year and the first blog of this year. I finished the cube molds for the concrete rests produced when the floor is poured. I wrote 4861 words this week. That is amazing.

See you next week!