Week 28 My Guardian Angel

 

Week 28

How many boats?

For the first time, all recreational vessels visible from the air in the Netherlands have been counted using a computer program. Researchers analyzed hundreds of satellite photos using artificial intelligence.

The first analysis came to 250,000 vessels. The errors by the AI ​​model were manually checked and removed. Any missed boats were manually added. The final total number of boats counted is 211,237, of which 181,734 on the water and 29,503 on land.

The developed AI model identified both vessels on land and in the water on photos taken in the summer period of June, July and August 2023. Vessels that were covered, such as in a hall, a storage facility or under a canopy, could not be counted via the satellite images. The accuracy of the model on the water is 95%. However, on land the accuracy is only 25%, due to the amount of objects on the land. This has been corrected by the researchers.

This number surprises me _ I would have thought that there are many, many more...

the article went on to say...

The number of pleasure craft in the Netherlands is difficult to estimate, because they are not registered. It is generally assumed that our country has 500,000 recreational craft. That number is therefore possibly much lower, given the figures of the AI ​​census.

I really wonder if the number is not closer to 1 million :)

Around the farm...

Kids' Weekend again - always a slightly different routine, with Janny working and me trying to keep my "Saturday Helper" busy.

Monday

Tjeerd and I finally glued the Stairway Renovation pieces in place...

Tuesday

Janny had bought and painted some IKEA cupboards for the living room. I had some misgivings about having to drill holes in the new plasterwork, but we made a start...indeed, also keeping in mind the location of the electrical and internet/TV cables - which we had also built in this time around... (I've taken so many photos over the years - to help me remember where everything goes - cables, electricity, drains, etc. In the beginning I had to ask Janny's brother and/or father where it all was - when we did the driveway and other paving in 1998ish - we managed to break just about everything except the gas)

(the dark shadow is the electricity cable - the plaster took longer to dry)

(haha, it does look like Tjeerd is doing all the work - not the case! and we do work so well together - I must remember to ask him to take an occasional photo of me).

Wednesday

Janny left early to go to Amsterdam to spend some time with Ben and go to a Pink Concert.

Pink is a female singer. Sounds like she does an acrobatic act whilst still being able to sing - a spectacular show, says Janny.

My Guardian Angel

So, it was just Boeke and me for Wednesday evening and Thursday morning. I had a different routine while the cat was away - no clients to pick up, so I was a little slow in getting started...

Normally, I klomp (with my clogs) my way to the front door to open it for the builders and then set the coffee and get things ready for the Day Activity clients. This could be any time from 0530hrs...

Janny's Mum always hears me (she still has very good hearing) as I walk past her bedroom.

But, on Thursday I didn't... so she gathered up a few old newspapers and "pretended" to be delivering them at about 0730hrs... Boeke barked so I had a look - she was just checking that I was OK! "Je weet het nooit" she said... (you never know). So, we both had a laugh, but it was comforting to know that the 91 year old was looking out for me (the next oldest in the family).

On Thursday, Tjeerd and I finished off the cupboards. It was fairly fiddly work as we as we used our own method of fastening them - rather than the IKEA fittings.

Also on Wednesday, all the new doors were fitted - I've worked on the more than 100 doors we have here over the years - but I was glad that I wasn't doing these!

Saturday

Together with my Saturday Helper: the stairway handrail

And lastly, I made a conscious decision to stop listening to American Politics podcasts (more than 2 weeks now) - as Robin once said "it does my head in" listening to that stuff. The shamelessness, the outright lies, the power of Big Money...unfortunately the list does go on.... I also said to Robin once that "I hope that there are enough good people" to make a difference (there was last time, but I doubt it this time). Now to see if Europe can weather the world changes...

So, I'm listening to my extensive library of audio books more now -  it was not without a touch of irony that Gray by Lou Cadle (24 hours listening time) was about surviving an end of world catastrophic event :)

I also enjoyed a couple of books by Australian writer Patricia Wolf - set in outback Queensland and Surfer's Paradise.