Tag Archives: woodworking

#weeklyreview 34/24

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Was working from the countryside this week. Kiddo had a friend from school over for camping on our grounds for 3 days. That was fun. The weather was good and they went swimming several times a day.

On Wednesday we attended the opening concert of the “be:fes classic music festival”

This festival takes place since more than 20 years on the grounds of the former soviet military airport in the Uckermark.

You can listen to the whole concert on the DLF Kultur Podcast

Friday we picked up the middle kid from his hiking trip to Norway in Hamburg. Took the chance to have a stroll around the Elbphilarmonie. It’s was a beautiful day with strong winds.

Finally finished the wood stacking of the last piles from this spring. That should last for some years now…

The tomatoe game is strong again this year

#weeklyreview 17/24

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Ok, trying to get this one done a bit earlier than usual 🤣

Rowing against myself

The rowing machine in the gym has the feature to re-row a previous session. Then you’ll see a pace boat on the display with the past sessions speed and can compete against that. I used my session from last weeks Monday and beat myself by a few dozen meters. Coming week will be harder to achieve this I guess.

otherwise the gym and fitness week wasn’t spectacular. At least got one running session done with my friend on Tuesday. Slow and shorter than usual, but better than nothing. The evening appointment the same day got skipped.

The weather this week was a little weird. We literally had snow on Monday. I had an appointment to get the summer tires put onto the car for Wednesday. I’m usually late with changing my tires. But this might have been a close call this year.

Food experiments

Saw a recipe on my insta stream to make some tasty paste from chilli flakes, garlic, onions, soja sauce, salt and pepper and sunflower oil. The ingredients meant to be topped with the heated oil and then stirred. The oil supposed to be 180ºC.

On my first try I got the oil much too hot for lack of proper measurement equipment. The chilli flakes almost got up in flames and turn to charcoal pretty quickly.

After getting a proper thermometer the second attempt yielded a glass of tasty hot paste 🙂

Hacktivism

Printed out some shopping cart coins and left them in shopping carts in the countryside supermarket. There is room for improvement on the surface quality. I’ll need to find a better model or make one myself. But the mission is clear: put the locals into conflict between a free cart token and their political views 😀

Obligatory woodworking

Of course there was some woodworking on the weekend. Stacked the firewood that we had split the last weekend. One more round stack finished. Just a few more weekends and we should be done 🙈

Also managed to mow the lawn. Was about time. And we hadn’t mowed the back of the property the whole of last year. It’s meant to be a meagre meadow, which, despite of its name, is actually very rich in plants and insects. As opposed to a nicely manicured lawn. But every other year you should mow it, to encourage the grow.

And while mowing I suddenly catched the smell of fresh peppermint. Apparently I found the spot where we had planted them last year. Found a few plants I didn’t mowed down and made the first fresh peppermint tea this year 🙂

#weeklyreview 14/24

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more wood work

This week of course had more firewood working. We spent another day in the forest to cut & haul out some more firewood. Got 2 and about one third new stacks now. But still need to split the remaining logs for stacking. That will likely make another 2 stacks … that should last us a couple of years.

Easter weekend

We’ve been out for a delicious brunch on easter Sunday at the famous Hotel Döllnsee. The buffet was rich and delicious as always. They even had Eierlikör on tab!!!

a boat house in a lake, seen from the lake side. One can see that the water level must have been about 1,5m higher when the house was built.
a plate with some braised pork belly and noodles with gravy.
a large pan with sliced meat and vegetables.
interior view of a wooden boat house on a lake. One can see stairs going to to the water

On easter monday we’ve been over at my parents house for coffee. The traditional egg hunt took place in the garden. I hope we’ve found all the rather well hidden eggs.

Cooking lamb and sauce hollandaise

It’s asparagus season again. And as a good German we had to indulge ourselves with a delicious meal of cooked asparagus, lamb steak and self-made sauce hollandaise. Especially the latter is rather easy to make yourself freshly from just a handful of ingredients.

two pieces of lamb steak on a plate. Behind the steak some asparagus covered with a pale yellow sauce hollandaise can be seen.

2 days working

Originally had planned to take the whole week off work. But then decided to cancel two of the vacation days and get some work done. The “joy” of Powerpoint …

Was rather quite as many colleagues were also off for easter holidays or sick. Seems almost like the new flu or cold also spreads over online meetings. Large numbers of sick leaves across the globe with a cold…

Flyer delivery

My wife was helping to organise another “Dorfgespräch” of “DIE GRÜNEN” Uckermark. That’s a series of open topic conversations with the locals. We had attended one sessions already a few month ago and found it rather good. I like that they take the time and courage to listen to the people and take their feedback. This party faces a huge amount of hate among people in the rural areas for no good reason. They are blamed for every bad decision the previous governments made and also solely for all decisions and impact the current government makes.

Windows on the Mac

Installed a Windows 11 VM with UTM on my MacBook. Was surprised that there is an ARM64 version of Windows and that it’s really snappy. It’s still annoying Windows though…

Also tried to emulate a x86 Windows machine. That was significantly slower and not really fit for practical use I’d say. Despite my powerful M2 Max CPU with 64GB of Memory. Will give an older windows version a try next to see if those perform better. All this in support of friends who consider moving the Apple platform again, but still have some legacy Windows software without alternatives. So they need a way to run those old programs somehow.

R.I.P. Mr. Tit

K3 found a dead tit in our garden and gave it proper funeral

Motor scooter drive

Hario Mill Stick mod

Got myself a Hario mobile mill stick. Thats a battery powered motor driver for their hand coffee grinders. It also comes with adapters for some other brands of hand mills. I’ve got two HARIO hand mills. The older model HARIO MSCS-2TB (Skeleton) which is formally not compatible with this mobile mill stick and a smaller HARIOD MSS-1DTB. The latter is compatible.

The mobile mill stick looks a bit like a power tool with a bit adapter on one end. The Skerton got an M6 screw shaft which is flattened on two sides to hold the crank. To make it usable with the mobile mill stick I macgyvered it with some M6 screw extension and an M6 screw from the DIY shop. The screw extension sits on top of the Skerton rod and allows for the M6 screw to go in on the open end. Now the Skerton got a normal screw on the axel that can be driven with a normal power tool and bit of your choice. My Makita Powertools spins a bit too fast for my taste (heats up the beans during grinding too much). Thats why the HARIO mobile stick is the better choice.

For the HARIOD MSS-1DTB the mobile mill stick comes with an adapter to properly hold it in place.

AirTag battery swap

I’ve got an Apple AirTag on my keys and it eventually ran out of battery. I really thought those AirTags were single use and one has to buy a new one after about 1,5 years. Give Apples talent for reaching into your purse that did make total sense to me. But then my brother told me that you can just screw open the AirTags and swap the battery. I was slightly baffled. Fortunately I had the correct type of button cell at home at swapped the battery in a matter of seconds. That was but also some sort of Apple experience that it’s finally that easy to swap.

Open Stage Templin

On Saturday there was last session of the open stage at the Multikulturelles Centrum Templin. As always it was a fun evening with a good variety of music from folks to rock and even some poetry this time.