Brock – Page 40 – Brock at Cliff Cottage

2018-11-13

Flow

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, presents Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s theory that people are happiest when they are in a state of flow, which is a state of total absorption. In this state, a person is intrinsically motivated, goal-oriented, but seeking challenges that increase their overall happiness.

In Csíkszentmihályi‘s model, there are seven other states, but these are all in some way inferior to the state of flow.

At the prison where I worked as a teacher, my primary focus was to encourage flow. Prison sentences can be long, and unbearable. Allowing inmate students to immerse themselves into a topic, most often has a positive effect. In particular, I found that it was easiest for inmates to enter a state of flow through creative activities. The actual creative field was not important. For some it was through music, for others it was artistic painting. Drama and theatre were often used. Woodworking, knitting, ceramics were other areas. This does not mean that every inmate I was in contact with was able to flow.

One group that did not seem to benefit from this approach were those diagnosed, or more often suspected of being, sociopaths. These people had their own manipulative agenda that could be mistaken for educational activity, but was anything but.

One does not have to work very long at a prison to realize that inmates learn more working in a hobby room, than they do reading in a classroom. It has been documented, for example, that delinquent behavior can be significantly reduced in adolescents, if they are given the opportunity for two years of enhancing flow through such activities. (See: Nakamura, J., & Csikszentmihályi, M. (2001). The concept of flow. In Handbook of positive psychology (pp 89-105). New York: Oxford University Press.)

The Norwegian prison system has seen the positive impact that flow in creative areas has on inmates. Many prisons provide inmates with the opportunity engage creatively. Bands and theatre groups are actively encouraged. In November and December, inmates are given the opportunity to use the hobby room to make Christmas presents for their loved ones.

People who have experienced flow feel focused on what they are doing; ecstasy; great inner clarity, knowing what needs to be done, and how well they are doing; knowing that the activity is doable, that their skills are adequate for the task; serenity; timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by the minute; intrinsically motivated.

Flow experiences lead to growth. It is working to master an activity. To maintain this state, increasingly greater challenges must be sought out, resulting in skill improvements, personal growth and feelings of competence.

Flow has a documented correlation with high performance in the fields of artistic and scientific creativity, teaching, learning and even sports. It encourages persistence and achievement, lowers anxiety and raises self-esteem.

Sometimes, inmates need to move beyond art. For example, at one time I had a older herder as a student. He had actually signed up to study at the school because he wanted to avoid working in the pallet factory. In our conversation it turned out that he had a computer, but didn’t know how to do anything with it, except surf the net!

The prison has access to any number of text books, on almost any subject. Yet, they are of very little help, when a sizable minority of potential students are functionally illiterate. Even, if an inmate can read, it doesn’t mean that a textbook will be meaningful. The herder was taught how to use Microsoft Office products, based on his one and only consuming interest – herding. He was able to write texts about it, with graphics showing it, in Word. He was able to make PowerPoint presentations. Most importantly, he was able to model his herd, using Excel, where he could see the economic consequences of different decisions.

The herder was only in prison for a short time. Soon after he left, another herder was imprisoned. He had obviously been in touch with the first one, because he came to the school and asked to learn Excel, so that he too could model his herd.

Mathematics is often difficult to teach in a conventional secondary school, because students, even in the same class, are at different levels, and have different abilities and interests. At a prison school, this is also the situation. However, by focusing on the individual and – in particular – by giving individual, rather than group, instruction, some inmates can have surprisingly high learning curves in mathematics. They frequently surprise themselves. The key is to help that person unlearn those past approaches, that result in mistakes. Once these have been successfully unlearned, more appropriate problem solving techniques can be learned and developed.

Not all school administrators appreciate this focus on flow. Some are particularly keen on increasing the number of exams inmates pass. In their eyes, it improves school statistics, and makes the school look better. These administrators don’t seem to be aware that most inmates do not have the prerequisites to pass exams. Throughout their entire lives, most have been betrayed: at home, at school, by social workers, and by society in general. Inmates need to have positive school experiences, before they are able to study more rigorous subjects, and pass exams.

While there are many exceptions, the majority of criminals do not engage in criminal activity during their working hours. It is their leisure hours that are the problem. That is why it is so important to help inmates develop all consuming hobbies. If they are spending their time after their release restoring a Harley-Davidson CVO Street Glide, then they won’t be spending their time discovering the best way to break into your house.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-092043-2

Miswanting

Originally this weblog post was titled Miswanting. This theme seemed to be driving in two different directions simultaneously, so it was split into two sections: Leisure followed by Flow. Soon, I realized these would have to be published as two separate weblog posts.

While working on Leisure, it became apparent that it was going to be easier to operationalize my thoughts, by working on a specific example. So, rather than writing more generally about leisure, I decided to focus on Christmas, and what I regard as the festive season’s most serious challenge – its lack of structure and moderation.

This split into two posts, left me with a few paragraphs that didn’t fit in either location, the introduction to miswanting. Here it is, reworked as an afterthought.

Miswanting is the coveting of something that one mistakenly believes will make one happy. For a short introduction to the term, see: https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2004/04/pelham.aspx

Miswanting wealth. Typically, people covet money. Yes, one needs a minimum of it in this post-modern world, and far too many people have insufficient quantities. Money in excess can lead to other challenges, that can be just as numbing as poverty.

Miswanting leisure. People also covet leisure, and renounce work. It is a bad choice. It turns out that almost everyone is happier working, than engaging in leisure activities! Yet, they imagine that leisure will make them happier.

People are happier in structured situations, where they have specific operational goals, than they are in less structured situations, where they are out to have fun. They are less depressed, they have less anxiety issues, they have more confidence, and they feel more alive!

Please save me from leisure. The worst punishment I can imagine is being a passenger on a luxury cruise ship. I have nothing against the sea, but would prefer to work with the wind to make passage on a sailboat, rather than rely on fossil-fueled engines on some monster vessel. I would prefer to work as a crew member, rather than to be pampered as a paying guest.

Even though I am retired, I treat five (or even six) days of the week as work days. I may not put in as many hours as in my younger years, but I show up for work with an agenda, and a schedule. My goal is flow.

2018-11-122018-11-16

Christmas

In a few weeks the festive season will be upon us: this conjoined event stretches from Christmas to New Year’s day, or – for some – Hanukkah, which starts and ends even earlier, from sunset, 2018-12-02 to nightfall, 2018-12-10.

Thomas Nast, 1881 Merry Old Santa Claus, the iconic image of Santa Claus

The social costs of this festive season are extraordinarily high. There is a peak in drug offenses, drunk driving and other forms of anti-social behavior. Traffic accidents increase, not just because of increased drug and alcohol consumption, but because people are driving tired.

Another challenge with Christmas is that people attempt to buy happiness, through expensive gifts. These do not make people feel any better, but can put people into debt.

Overeating is another factor that has a negative impact on health. While in many countries suicide rates are at their lowest in December, mental health issues peak. Once Christmas is over, there is a sharp rise in suicides, often peaking on New Year’s day. Excessive eating and drinking combined with inadequate exercise erodes physical and mental health, including but not restricted to insomnia, depression and stress.

If that is not enough, then the Christmas season signals a time to file for divorce, or in other ways end relationships, including friendships.

Perhaps the best introduction to an American Christmas is Penne Restad’s Christmas in America. (Oxford University Press, 1995).

The celebration of Christmas is not an old tradition. It was not even a holiday until the middle of the 19th century. In the United States, the American Civil War combined with urbanization and industrialization helped to promote it as a means of creating social unity. Prior to this, people of different denominations followed traditions brought with them from Europe. With improved communication and transportation, there was a greater awareness of ethnic and religious pluralism. At the same time, there was increased political and economic tension between regions, and groups. Soon Darwinism and science were challenging religion.

This 19th century Christmas gradually transformed itself into a family gathering that merged faith with commercialism. Yes, people may attend church services, but it was not the church, but the house that was the focal point of the holiday.

Christmas trees were in use by 1832. By the 1850s, Christmas was fully entrenched in Northern cities. After the Civil War, it captured the South.

Christmas tree ornaments emerged about 1870, with imports from Germany. While there were some Christmas cards in the early 1850s, demand exploded by about 1875. These soon replaced the more traditional Christmas letter.

Christmas gift-giving had its origins in the 1870s. Part of this was related to problems of extreme economic inequality that threatened social relationships. Thus, many of the gifts were charitable.

The American Christmas is incomplete without Clement Moore’s An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas in the 1820s. Here is the spirit of Christmas in the persona of Santa Claus, with fur-trimmed red suit, sack of toys, reindeer, sleigh and home at the North Pole.

Christmas dinner is so notable that it warrants its own Wikipedia article. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_dinner

So how should Christmas be managed to avoid its negative aspects? The answer is to build more work-like attributes into it.

Activities should be planned, and scheduled. People should know what is happening, and what they personally are expected to do.

In the build-up to Christmas, people can be asked to design Christmas cards, to write an annual Christmas letter and/ or to plan meal menus. They should also use their skills to design and make decorations and presents. To reduce costs, guidelines can be given that make these more appropriate. For example, gifts are to be made from re-purposed materials.

Alcohol is not part of a normal work week, and (for me) there is no reason why it should be part of a leisure event, such as Christmas. Avoiding alcohol is yet another way to reduce costs, and to ensure relationships endure. To prevent meals from expanding waistlines, there should be calorie limits in place, and moderate quantities. At Cliff Cottage, the permanent residents weigh themselves daily. Some people make their weight publicly available, while others keep it private.

When families get together to celebrate, there should be fixed times to arise, and to head off to sleep. There should be opportunities for exercise, and opportunities for every individual to be alone. Child-minding should be an activity distributed among the adults.

While there may be a desire to spend some time listening to music, or watching a film, moderation is also a key here. In fact, it could be more fun to sing, or perform musically together, rather than to listen to someone else’s efforts. Perhaps, the entire family could have fun making a video, rather than watching someone else’s.

Let us all make Christmas fun again, but putting structure and moderation in place during Christmas, 2018!

2018-11-032020-11-23

A Work in Progress – Lighting

This weblog post is inspired by Friday’s shopping trip to Jula and Clas Ohlson, two Swedish equivalents of a hardware chain store, in Steinkjer, about 30 km north-east of Cliff Cottage, Vangshylla. On this shopping trip, I ended up buying a number of LED lighting components, not for any specific purpose but for playful learning. There was one impulse purchase, five meters of string lights with sparkly effect!

This is the walkway on the entry level of Cliff Cottage with Trondheim Fjord in the distance. String lighting illuminates the driveway, with 480 LED lights. Two hundred and forty string lights have been temporarily placed along the walkway, to brighten up November, while bags of insulation patiently wait to be fitted into the floor of the attic.

Lighting the stairway

According to my timeline, sometime in 2020, the house will be have a new main stairway. I intend to make it myself, using solid oak. It is difficult to buy hardwood, especially in rural Trøndelag. My solution will be to buy solid oak kitchen counter material which comes 26 (H) x 600 (D) x 2 400 (L) mm ( or about 1″ x 24″ x 96″) , and to cut it into suitable pieces, four treads to a countertop. Materials will cost me about NOK 4 000 (USD 500). Getting someone to make a stairway would cost at least five times that price. Here is a link to what I am thinking about. Biltema can be translated as “car theme”, and is the same in Swedish and Norwegian. It is yet another Swedish chain, even more dominated by male customers, than the two chains previously mentioned.

Before, I start building a new stairway, I want to experiment with lighting. Yes, there will be lighting from above, but I am particularly interesting in lighting each tread, so that old people can distinguish the nosing, and avoid falling. On the two bottom-most treads, I intend to drill holes and fit 4mm (Christmas) lights into them, at about 50 mm intervals. On the next two treads (three and four from the bottom), I intend to fit 100 lm spotlights, one on each side of each tread. If I come across new ideas, I will try them out as well, trying to put the most controversial closest to the bottom.

A Work in Progress

I have no intentions of living in a “finished” house. While the timeline for major improvements stretches over four years from 2018-01-01 to 2021-12-31, the intention is to allow continuous improvement, and to have the house serve as a laboratory in three areas: 1) smart house (computer control using sensors, actuators and communications components), 2) energy reduction with an emphasis on solar thermal energy, 3) assistive technology, including adaptive and rehabilitative devices for the elderly, as well as the general population.

Lighting – The Theory

A lumen (symbol lm) is a measure of the total amount of light visible light emitted by a source in any particular direction.

Lux is a measure of illuminance, how much light there is on a given surface area. One Lux (lx) equals one lumen per square meter.

Activity	Lux
Direct sunlight	32 000 – 100 000
Daylight	10 000 – 25 000
Full moon	1
Kitchen/ workshop ambient	100
Kitchen/ workshop task	500
Dining/ living area ambient	50
Reading/writing	400
General task	300
Bathroom ambient	50
Bathroom task	300
Laundry	300
Sewing	500
Garage/ carport	100
Detailed task	1 000

Lighting Requirements

Here is a list of lighting requirements in lux for various household activiites. The list has been compiled without recording sources. There is considerable variation in what people need, and standard values will not suit everyone.

Ambient Room Lighting

1. What type of room is it? In this example, it will be assumed that the room is a kitchen.

2. Ambient lighting for a kitchen requires 100 lx.

3. What is the size of the room? For illustrative purposes, assume it is 4 000 x 3 000 mm (4 by 3 meters). This gives an area of 12 square meters.

4. To find the number of lumens, multiply the lux requirement from step 2 by the area from step 3: 100 lx/m² x 12 m² = 1 200 lm.

Clas Ohlson has a 450 mm diameter ceiling light that provides 1 500 lm that would be suitable:

Dot, a dimable 450 mm ceiling light to provide sufficient ambient lighting in a kitchen.

Model	36-7503-2
Energy class	A
Bulb type	LED
Power	24 W
IP class	IP54
Dimable	Yes
Lumens	1500 lm
Colour temperature	2700 K
Colour rendering index (Ra)	80
Lighting time	1.5 s
Temperature range	– 20 to +40 °C
Number of lighting cycles	15 000
Lifetime	30 000 h
Replacable light source	No

Task Lighting

1. Where is the task lighting? In this example, the focus will be on a kitchen counter top – the same one that the stairs were made out of, but this time used more conventionally.

2. Task lighting for a kitchen requires 500 lx.

3. What is the area where the task is taking place? The countertop measures 600 mm x 2 400 mm = 1.44 m², this could be rounded up to 1.5 m².

4. To find the number of lumens, multiply the lux requirement from step 2 by the area from step 3: 500 lx/m² x 1.5 m² = 750 lm.

I had hoped to find something equivalent at Jula, but found this set of downlights at Clas Ohlson: https://www.clasohlson.com/no/LED%20downlights/Pr365874000

As the specifications indicate, 4 downlights would be required to meet the task lighting needs of the countertop work area.

Downlights in a kitchen, but not quite how I would use them.

Model	36-5874
Energy class	A+
Bulb type	LED
Power	3.3 W
IP class	IP20
Dimable	No
Lumens	190 lm
Colour temperature	3 000 K
Colour rendering index (Ra)	80
Lighting time	0.5 s
Temperature range	– 20 to +40 °C
Number of lighting cycles	100 000
Lifetime	unspecified
Replacable light source	No
Diameter: hole/ lamp	60/ 65 mm
Depth	15 mm

Transformer, able to attach up to six downlights.

2018-10-22

A Work in Progress – The Attic

A month ago today, I wrote about construction at our house. See: https://brock.mclellan.no/2018/09/22/a-work-in-progress/

Fjellheim (Mountain Home) as it once was officially called, Cliff Cottage as we refer to it, was built in 1963, to replace a log house set up on the same site the previous year, that had burned down.

The new house was undoubtedly financed by Husbanken (The Norwegian Housing Bank) which set strict limits on most features of the house, including size and choice of materials. The original house was 10 meters by 9 meters, or 90 square meters (968.75 square feet for those wanting excessive precision, and non-metric units). In reality, the original house had almost twice that area because a lower floor occupies about the same area. Indeed, the main entrance to the house is on this lower level. The house is built on a slope, so that there are no windows on the lower level at the back of the house.

Norwegian Post-war domestic architecture.

After the second world war, Norway was poor, and had to rebuild after its German occupation. Even in the 1970s there were housing shortages, and the country engaged in a number of (short-sighted) short-cuts in its rebuilding efforts.

The original owner of our house had made provision for the house to be expandable towards the fjord. They added a 6 meter by 10.5 meter cement terrace extending out from the house. Underneath this was a walkway to the front entrance, a carport, and a storage shed.

When new owners purchased the property in the 1970s, they had different (and to my mind, inferior) ideas about putting on an addition, and built a 15 square meter structure behind the original in the early 1980s, with a deviating roof slope, and non-standard ceiling height.

We moved into the house as renters 1 March 1989, and purchased it 31 December 1990, after the death of the second owner.

Because of a sag in the concrete terrace above the carport, we had half of the terrace sawn out and removed. I then rebuilt the carport and walkway (and half of the terrace) using wood.

Cliff Cottage in October 2018, with new windows and horizontal siding. Prior to this incarnation, the house had vertical siding and some of the windows were considerably smaller. The concrete terrace was originally put in place to allow an expansion of the house towards Trondheims Fjord, behind the photographer. The parts of it covering the walkway and the carport were removed, and replaced with a wooden structure. In the living room there appear to be three large windows. In reality this consists of a large non-opening window, followed by a post supporting a knee wall in the attic. To the right of this post is a sliding door, first with an opening section, followed by a fixed section.

The Attic

A cold attic, with a knee wall on the left, a theoretical 150 mm of insulation between the floor joists, 0 mm of insulation between the rafters. Additional 36 x 198 mm joists have been placed at 90° to the original joists to avoid cold bridges. When the project is complete, these will be filled with 200 mm insulation. The white pipe will be providing cold input air to a wood stove in the living room.

In Norwegian, this style of attic construction is referred to as a kald loft, a cold attic. What this means is that the insulation is placed in the floor, between the joists, rather than in the ceiling, between the rafters. Theoretically, this means that the attic is as cold as the outside. This type of construction is no longer used, and in new builds with i-beam and other types of rafters, insulation is placed between them. Truss roofs have their own system.

The original insulation was supposed to be 150 mm thick. While it is sometimes that thick, much of the time it is only 100 mm. Sometimes it is even less. I found one area, normally hidden from view with stored materials, where tradesmen had removed insulation to put in a vent, and then not bothered to replace the insulation when they had finished. This problem was noticed only when stored items were moved, recently, into the centre of the attic. This is one reason why I want to do most, if not all, of the work myself.

The attic is effectively divided into three, by the two knee walls. The two outer thirds have had four additional 36 x 198 mm joists placed at 90° angles to the original joists to avoid cold bridges. These will be filled with 200 mm insulation. This takes up much of the space, but there is room at the edge for heating ducts that will supply the living room, dining area and bedrooms with “heat exchanged” filtered air.

In the center third of the attic, additional insulation will be added between the rafters. Because the room slopes, the effective thickness from 200 mm insulation is 250 mm. This provides a total of 400 mm of insulation.

The white pipe in the photograph will be providing cold input air to a wood stove in the living room.

CAD (Compuer-aided design)? Not so much. This sheet of paper provides the necessary information for me to rebuild the attic so that the house will be better insulated. In addition, it points out how I expect the heat exchanger to function, but with specifics left to the imagination. There are still a number of decisions to be made, including the entry point for fresh air (underground?), and the exit point for exhaust air (vented through roof?). Hot air will also be transported down to the entry level of the house, and exhaust air will be extracted from there as well.

Balanced Heat Recovery Ventilation

This illustration shows many of the features that I would like to build into a balanced ventilation system, including its placement in an attic. The ground heat exchanger shown here, will have to be a much more primitive affair, unfortunately. (Illustration: Kobraklb, Wikimedia Commons)

According to several sources, the ideal (read: cheapest) construction system for the installation of a balanced ventilation system is a cold attic. That is because there are few obstacles in the way of piping. The number and placement of new joists added in the attic, allows piping to reach the living room and bedrooms of the house, as well as rooms on the lower level.

In many cold climates, including Austria and Denmark, but not Norway, it is common for supply air to be transported underground in a pipe for some meters, so that heat from the earth can warm up the air. Typically, the pipe has a diameter of between 100 and 600 mm (4 to 24 inch), and slopes upwards towards the house so that any water drains out. There should be a MERV 8+ filter at the entry point, but even 1 mm insect netting will prevent many bugs and larger life forms from entering the pipe with the air. Smooth-walled pipe is preferred to prevent condensation and mold. These can be rigid or semi-rigid plastic, plastic-coated metal pipes or plastic pipes coated with inner antimicrobial layers. These are buried 1.5 to 3 m (5 to 10 feet) underground where the ambient earth temperature is typically 10 to 23 °C (50 to 73 °F) all year round in temperate climates.

While vendors of domestic heat exchangers delight in showing their units housed in kitchens and bathrooms, these are not ideal locations. Thus, the system planned for Cliff Cottage will be located in the attic directly above the main bathroom, which is located beside the kitchen.

Storage

I remember fondly ads for a moving company (Allied Van Lines?) who were keen to announce that they would keep other people’s junk away from your valuable possessions. Yes, it can be difficult to separate trash from treasure. Fortunately, most of the items in the attic only hold sentimental value.

Soon, there will six short, insulated doors, one in the middle of each storage area that measures 3 meters in length, by 1.8 meters in depth. Height varies from about a meter to 10 – 25 cm, depending on how it is measured.

The main challenge is being able to find something when it is needed. This is why the storage spaces will lettered from A to L. Each of the four people in our immediate family will be assigned two letter sections.

2018-10-12

The Charm of the Utøy Recycling Station

The new recycling station at Utøy in Inderøy municipality was opened for waste delivery on 18 September 2018. At the same time, the two older centers in Røra and Mosvik were shut down.

The recycling station is open Tuesday and Thursday from 12:00 to 19:00.

Inderøy Recycling Station is a state-of-the-art facility with ample space, efficient land use and easy and safe waste delivery. Hazardous waste and electrical/ electronic waste are delivered and stored under roof. Outside the recycling station, a 24-hour return point has been established, so cottage owners can deposit their waste when the facility is closed.

The official opening was Monday, September 17 from 11:00 to 14:00. Trish and I attended.

Program:

11:00 Opening with Mayor, Director of Innherred Renovation and students from Utøy School
11:30 Serving hot dogs, coffee and cake. Tours.
12:30 “Round and Round” a theatrical performance of Scenekompaniet. Kick off-theater against resource wastage, and for recycling!

The recycling station is located at Røvika in Utøy, Utøyvegen 500. The address numbering system indicates that it is located 5 kilometers from the start of the road in Straumen.

Inside (Hot dogs provided on opening day).

Window recycling, used as a stage during the opening.

Outside the entrance, “Nothing is Garbage”, in the Trønder dialect

Containers for different categories of waste, for cottage owners

2018-10-042018-10-05

Wikipedia 2018

Soon I should be receiving those irritating annual appeals to donate to Wikipedia. This year I won’t be giving! The main reason is this article appearing in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/oct/03/donna-strickland-nobel-physics-prize-wikipedia-denied

This week Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel prize in Physics. In March, she was deemed too insignificant to warrant a Wikipedia article.

Donna Strickland, one of three people who earned a Nobel prize in Physics in 2018.

Wikipedia is yet another male dominated organization that needs to be disrupted. What this world needs now is gender balance. I would like to know what Wikipedia is doing to ensure that more than 16% of the site’s volunteer editors are female? Is the Wikipedia working environment making life inviting enough to encourage more female editors? Indeed, I would like to know more about gender bias in the criteria for notability, and why only 17% of entries dedicated to notable people are for women?

I will end this post by offering my congratulations to Donna Strictland for earning her Nobel prize.

Update

An reader was concerned about today’s blog and suggested I ” should actually look into the matter before starting rogue boycott actions. If [I] feel there isn’t sufficient coverage of a topic on Wikipedia, don’t complain about others not writing articles, start writing them yourself.”

In a conversation with this reader, it was pointed out that the issue was not about Strictland’s notability, but verification of this notability that was lacking. Verifiability is especially important for living people, since incorrect information can have serious consequences, and be difficult to correct. This reader also pointed out that the number of notable men is larger than notable women.

2018-09-222018-09-23

A Work in Progress

It has now been over a month since I have published a weblog post. The reason for this is best described in the photograph below.

Cliff Cottage aka Fjellheim, 2018-09-19. Photo: Trish McLellan

Yes, construction work is time consuming, but provides healthy exercise. The goal of the construction work is to re-construct the house so that it is suitable for a couple of old people to live in. In March 2019, we will have lived in the house for 30 years.

The outer wall of the main level of the house has been replaced. From the outside inwards the new wall consists of 25 x 340 mm horizontal siding (cladding), 23 x 48 vertical nailing strips, a wind barrier, 36 x 198 mm (vertical) studs with 200 mm of insulation, a vapour barrier, 48 x 48 horizontal nailing strips with 50 mm of insulation, 12 mm inside paneling in panels measuring 600 x 2390.

The horizontal nailing strips allow space for services for power and communication. Potentially, other services such as water and waste water could also use this space, but they are not needed along this particular wall. Services are not permitted to penetrate the space provided by the 36 x 198 studs.

On blustery days, work is being done in the attic. Previously, ceiling/ roof insulation consisted of 150 mm of insulation between the floor joists of the attic. In the extension (added on about 1984, five years before we moved into the house in March 1989) to the right in the photograph, it was impractical to add any extra insulation. For the original house, two solutions were needed to upgrade the insulation. In the center third of the attic insulation is being added between the rafters, a 50 mm airspace is being provided to prevent moisture buildup (and wood rot). Then 48 x 48 mm strip is being added to the bottom of each rafter so that 200 mm of insulation can be added. In both of the two remaining outer thirds of the attic, 36 x 198 joists are being added at 90° to the original joists. These measures will provide a total of about 350 mm of insulation.

During the summer, Alasdair was of great help during the construction process. Since he returned to Bergen, I have usually worked alone, with help being provided by Trish as needed. Since the photograph was taken, scaffolding has been added to the wall to facilitate the replacement of studs and the window in the attic. A chain pulley block, fastened to the peak of the roof, will allow heavy objects to be freighted up and down.

A chain pulley block showing lifting chain (black) and control chain (gray).

Cliff Cottage in May 2018. The new siding will be painted the same colour as the old, vårgul (spring yellow). Rot in the bedroom window on the right is clearly visible.

2018-08-132019-08-05

Ethan & Ethel 05: First Stationary Machine

Today, Monday, 2018-08-13, the real-life Ethan is 16 years old. Happy Birthday Ethan! This date also marks the day when I have spent precisely half my life as a father.

Ethan & Ethel are wanting to improve their woodworking workshop by buying a stationary machine. They estimate that using this type of machine can increase their production capacity. Because these machines are expensive, they will have to plan which one to buy first. They are thinking that if they make the right investments, they will be able to build things that others want, and make some money. For example, they have an aunt who wants a garden shed, other relatives who need new kitchen cabinets; and family friends who want hardwood furniture. However, they can’t build all these things at once, and decide to concentrate on building garden sheds.

There are many designs for garden sheds. Usually they are small uninsulated buildings. Ethel & Ethan are thinking of using softwood lumber for framing, then covering it with OSB. When they made up a cut list, they realized that they should build it using full sheets of OSB. That means dimensions of 1 200 mm, 2 400 mm or 3 600 mm. Beyond that, and the buildings would be far too big with their limited skill sets. They decided that their first building should be 2 400 mm long by 2 400 mm wide by 2400 mm high at the eaves. At the ridge, it would be 600 mm higher, or 3 000 mm. It is a small shed, but there is less that can go wrong, and less time and equipment is needed to make it.

They started thinking about pre-cutting the pieces for one shed to save time in the short building season. Then they thought that if they could pre-cut one, they could precut more. Then they contacted other people in their network to see if they could find buyers. After these conversations, they estimated that they could build and sell five of these small sheds in the summer.

They want to buy a chop saw, and know the maximum dimensions of the material they will be working with on the sheds will be about 50 mm by 100 mm. What they really want is a flipover saw, such as a DeWalt DW743. One challenge with this model is its inability to cut joists, if they work on bigger projects. The saw was originally made by the German power tool company, ELU, that was bought by DeWalt in 1994.

At the Unit One workshop, a Ryobi compound sliding mitre saw is used. It was selected because of price, and the fact that the sliding mechanism is in front of the saw. This prevents it from being used with materials thicker than about 100 mm. Most sliding saws go back towards the wall, which means that the saw has to be set further forward, increasing the amount of space used. Perhaps the best mitre saw is a Bosch axial-glide saw. Its main disadvantage is price, costing almost four times that of a Ryobi.

Lumber dimensions: A 2 × 4 when dressed is 1-1/2″ × 3-1/2″ or 38 mm × 89 mm. In Europe it is 48 mm x 98 mm.

A sliding compound mitre saw and a plunge saw make a versatile pair. Table saws are more dangerous than either of these saws, because the operator holds the material being cut, instead of the saw, making it easier to accidentally move hands into the spinning blade.

2018-08-112019-08-05

Ethan & Ethel 04: Computer Control Basics

In the last post, Ethan & Ethel had to do a lot of work, to keep track of their heating costs.

Time used = Time turned off – Time turned on. Example: 17h05m – 15h31m = 94m

They wrote down the time they turned on their heater, and then the time when they turned it off. They then subtract the “on” time from the “off” time to find the number of minutes the heater was on. This had to be repeated for every visit to the workshop with heat on. At the end of the month, they had to add all of these minutes together to find their monthly usage. What a boring job, and so unnecessary when a computer can do it, automatically! All that is needed is a few lines of code. Code that has already been written, and is waiting to be reused.

Workshop computer control means that computing equipment is running hardware and software that senses and activates workshop activities.

Stop the Press!

This post was originally written 2018-03-02. It is now 2018-08-11, more than five months later. Reviewing it at the time I was dissatisfied with the previous paragraph, that continued with, “a Raspberry Pi single-board computer will be used to run Home-Assistant software. The raspberry pi will be connected to two different Arduino micro-controllers using USB cables.”

The problem, both then and now, is that while the above solution would work, it is not optimal. Why should one use three components, when one should do? Ideally, a single microprocessor should be able to run 1) home automation software, in this case Home-Assistant; 2) connect to analogue sensors and have analogue input data converted to digital data; 3) connect digitally to relays to trigger activators; 4) communicate with other components on the local area network using wires (Ethernet); 5) receive electrical power over those same wires.

The best way forward to gain an understanding of workshop problems is to pretend that the ideal solution exists, a fantasy Unicorn IoT (Internet of Things) microcontroller.

Home-Assistant

If Ethan and/or Ethel are to work in a computer controlled workshop, one of the first things they need to control is the workshop computer. It should be designed in such a way that it can respond to their needs turning on and off lights, heat, tools, etc.

While a Raspberry Pi (and its clones and near relatives) is capable of running this software, an Arduino microcontroller is not.

Sensors

In a workshop there can be a large number of different sensors measuring all sorts of things. There can also be a large number of actuators using the same data. For example, both a heater and a vent may use data from a room temperature sensor, but in different ways. The heater may be activated if the work space is too cold. Once it gets hot enough it will shut off. If the temperature continues to rise, then a different actuator, the vent will be activated, but only if the outside temperature is lower than the inside temperature. To determine that, there needs to be a second temperature sensor, this one measuring the outside air.

A sensor is any device that measures a physical quantity. Temperature sensors can be found not only in the workshop space, but also inside machines. This Wikipedia article lists sensors by sensor type: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sensors

Some of the other sensors in a workshop include: humidity, measuring water vapour in the air; infra red, detecting body heat; light, measuring light levels; smoke, detecting fires. Those are sensors that can be used anywhere in a house. There can be some sensors that are specific to a workshop: wood moisture content and dust particles in air.

Having so many sensors can be a major distraction, so from now on the focus will be on just one, a LM35 temperature sensor.

LM35 Temperature sensor

Several companies make temperature sensors, but Texas Instruments makes one that is world famous, the LM35. It costs about $1.50.

While information about the LM35 is available in a data sheet that contains more than enough information about every aspect of the sensor, most people don’t need to read it. Why? Because all of the engineering work has been done before. Since Ethan and Ethel will be using an Arduino, they just need to know how to connect a LM35 with an Arduino. Then they have to find a (free) program that uses the LM35, and upload it onto the Arduino. With a little practice, anyone can get a sensor working on an Arduino in about five minutes.

The LM35 is cool. The main reason is shown in this graph. Most sensors express themselves as a voltage that varies smoothly with the quantity being measured. On a graph this makes a straight line. The LM35 is exceptional, because at 0°C output voltage is 0V. Every 1°C up or down adds (with positive temperatures) or subtracts (with negative temperatures) precisely 10 mV. At 100°C, the output voltage is exactly 1V. The LM35 is also very flexible regarding input voltage. It can use anything from 4V to 20V.

LM35 graph — This may be the first time in your life where you see a graph that is actually useful! This shows the output voltage of a LM35 temperature sensor for temperatures that range from -50° C to +150° C.

ADC

Computers use digital data, and can’t normally read voltages directly. On micro-controllers there are Analog to Digital Converters (ADC) that automatically change an input voltage into a digital value. On the Arduino Uno, there are six analog pins that can read voltages from 0 V to 5 V (or 0 mV to 5 000 mV). This means that up to six different sensors can be connected to an Arduino board. There are ways to add more, if needed. Each sensor then has its voltage converted into a digital values between 0 and 1023. These analog pins have a sensitivity of 4.9 mV. So a voltage from 0 to 4.8 mV will be given a value of 0. From 4.9 mV to 9.8 mV they will be a value of 1. This will continue right up to 4 995.1 mV to 5.0 mV, where they will be given a value of 1023.

It takes about 100 µs (100 microseconds or 0.0001 s) to read an analog input. The maximum reading rate is 10 000 times a second. Usually, reading a temperature once a second is good enough. In fact, in some circumstances reading it every five minutes or every hour would make better sense, especially if all this data has to be stored.

Arduinos have ADC units, Raspberry Pis do not.

Relays

Microcontrollers do not respond well to large currents, and will be permanently damaged if connected to too many volts, amps or watts. If one wants to turn on an electric heater to warm up a space, this is typically done by a relay. A Relay is an electrically operated switch. When an electromagnet is activated with a low voltage, typically 5 V, it makes or breaks a high voltage circuit.

Many microcontrollers have supplementary boards that attach directly to pins on their main boards. Both the Raspberry Pi and the Arduino have them. On a Raspberry Pi they are called Hats (Hardware Attatched on Top). On the Arduino they are called shields. The Raspberry Pi hats allow the main board to identify a connected hat and automatically configure the pins.

A Seeed Relay Shield V 2.0. It allows a single Arduino to control up to 4 relays. (Photo: Seeed)

Communication

For automation systems, wired communication is preferred. The most common form of wired communication is the Ethernet, developed at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in 1973-4 and used ever since. Most people would be advised to use CAT 6A cable, for workshop automation.

In the future, almost every significant power tool in a workshop will be connected to the local area network, including dust collection and air filtering equipment. Even in home workshops, various variants of CNC (computer numeric controlled) equipment will be taken into use, including 3D printers and laser cutters.

Microprocessors in the 1970 would process data in a single program that ran continuously. In the 21st century, not so much. The reason for this is that each sensor (and each actuator) is treated as a separate object. Sensors publish data, about a specific state, and actuators subscribe to the data they need to make decisions about how they will operate. To do this they use a publish-subscribe protocol called MQTT. It has been around sine 1999.

Sensor actuator — Home Assistant uses a MQTT broker that allows sensors to publish and actuators to subscribe. With this information, a heater can be turned on and off as required.

PoE (Power over Ethernet)

Power over Ethernet allows electrical power to be sent over the same Ethernet cable used to send and receive data to a device. This simplifies life considerably. There are no batteries to change or high-voltage power cables to install. The main challenge is that only a few microcontrollers are capable of utilizing this feature. Using a Hat or shield with PoE connectivity is another possibility.

2018-08-05

Wicked Problems

The California water crisis is an emblematic wicked problem. My personal awareness of the problem began in the 1950s, with the North American Water and Power Alliance proposing to divert British Columbia water to California. For many, awareness came with Chinatown, Roman Polanski’s 1974 neo-noir film. Other people were much more directly affected – having to live their daily lives in a drought-ridden California, or becoming environmental refugees.

For passionate insight rather than raw emotion, the standard work is Marc Reisner’s (1948-2000) , Cadillac Desert, 1986. With the book being over 30 years old, B. Lynn Ingram and Frances Malamud-Roam have written a worthy follow-up, The West Without Water, 2013.

Two proposals for the massive transport of water from Canada to USA. (Illustration: Thomas Kierans, 2005)

Today’s weblog post is not about the California water crisis, as gruesome as it is for some, and could be for many more. It is about wicked problems. The essence of a wicked problem is that it is so complex, that it is impossible to understand all its implications. Any resolution will require a bespoke solution, which will only partially resolve disputes.

Wicked is a term used in operations research. Some practitioners infrequently or never apply it, while others use it more extensively. Regardless, many hold it with reverence. Working with these ultimate problems has the potential to elevate or destroy one’s professional reputation. More importantly, resolution of a wicked problem may positively affect the lives of millions, in some cases – such as world poverty, billions of people.

Operations research as a subject area is, itself, often misunderstood. Part of the problem is that practitioners value precision to such a degree that they find it difficult to define words. Sometimes, one suspects, their motivation is to discourage or to impress readers, rather than to clarify. In one common definition, the words advanced analytical methods appear. While most people may have a basic understanding of what method means, their understanding may be fuzzier when it comes to understanding the term analytical. Adding advanced onto that, just leaves people dumbfounded. A simpler approach is to define operations research as: the process of designing solutions to complex problems.

Wicked problems arise when operations researchers feel out of their comfort zone, which is a very numerical place. Wicked problems usually involve several groups of people, stakeholders, who see a problem from many different, and sometimes opposing, perspectives. Challenges with wicked problems often begin with finding a suitable definition of a problem and end with finding a suitable stopping point for proposed solutions. By then other related problems are revealed or created of because of complex interdependencies.

The term, wicked problem, originated with Horst Rittel (1930-1990) but was popularized by C. West Churchman (1913-2004), while both of them along with Melvin Webber (1920-2006) worked at The University of California, Berkeley. Churchman wanted operations research to take moral responsibility “to inform the manager in what respect our ‘solutions’ have failed to tame his wicked problems” ( Churchman, C. West (December 1967). “Wicked Problems” Management Science 14 (4).) Tame problems are so simple, that they can be resolved using basic mathematical and other computational tools.

Rittel and Webber specified ten characteristics of wicked problems (Rittel, Horst W. J.; Webber, Melvin M. (1973). “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning” Policy Sciences. 4: 155–169)

There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem.
Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse.
There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem.
Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial and error, every attempt counts significantly.
Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be incorporated into the plan.
Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem.
The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained in numerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’s resolution.
The social planner has no right to be wrong (i.e., planners are liable for the consequences of the actions they generate).

Over thirty years later, Jeffrey Conklin (?-) generalized the concept (Conklin, Jeffrey (2006). Dialogue mapping : building shared understanding of wicked problems. Chichester, England: Wiley):

The problem is not understood until after the formulation of a solution.
Wicked problems have no stopping rule.
Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong.
Every wicked problem is essentially novel and unique.
Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one shot operation.’
Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions.

A wicked problem is so interconnected with other problems that one can’t intervene somewhere without impacting something else. It involves incomplete or contradictory knowledge, a large number of people and opinions, a large economic burden either to live with it or to resolve it.

Strategies

Nancy Roberts (1943?-) identified three strategies to cope with wicked problems. See: Roberts, N. C. (2000). “Wicked Problems and Network Approaches to Resolution”. International Public Management Review. 1 (1)

Authoritative. These strategies limit problem-solving to an elite group of stakeholders, typically including experts and those with financial or political weight. This reduces problem complexity, as many competing points of view are eliminated at the start. The disadvantage is that authorities and experts charged with solving the problem may not have an appreciation of all the perspectives needed to tackle the problem.

Competitive. These strategies attempt to solve wicked problems by pitting opposing points of view against each other, requiring parties that hold these views to come up with their preferred solutions. The advantage of this approach is that different solutions can be weighed up against each other and the best one chosen. The disadvantage is that this adversarial approach creates a confrontational environment in which knowledge sharing is discouraged. Consequently, the parties involved may not have an incentive to come up with their best possible solution.

Collaborative. These strategies aim to engage all stakeholders in order to find the best possible solution for all stakeholders. Typically these approaches involve meetings in which issues and ideas are discussed and a common, agreed approach is formulated.

Before Roberts, the collaborative approach was the only one acknowledged, at least in public.

IBIS

On the surface, wicked problems have a simple answer, and its name is IBIS, Issue-Based Information Systems. What distinguishes IBIS from other solutions, is that it views design as argumentation. That is, the design process requires people to reflect on the problem, deliberate, and to argue for and against different perspectives. It is also instrumental. Yes, another big word, which in this case refers to something being goal oriented. (Hulme, Mike (2009). Why We Disagree about Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge University Press.)

Computer-based versions of IBIS are available in Windows (up to version 8), Mac and Linux variants, at: http://compendiumld.open.ac.uk/download.html . While IBIS was conceived in 1968, it had to await for appropriate technology to become an effective tool. Using hypertext data-structures, the latest incarnation was implemented by Douglas E. Noble (?-).

Social Media

Much social media discussion involves wicked problems, but without the poster understanding that they are dealing with such a comprehensive issue. Instead, much of the discussion may involve a very specific personal challenge, deliberately isolated from its context. From there responses are solicited, ranging from a like to a supportive comment. Yet, the response may be anything but positive. While the first poster’s position may be attacked, not infrequently there will personal attacks as well.

It is here that social media fails. It is very effective at allowing people to trumpet out problems, but does nothing to help people manage or resolve them. Where is the social media IBIS that will allow social media users to put their problems into perspective?

Social media users facing wicked problems need help to argue for their perspectives. This is very different from a vitriolic attack. They need help to structure a design problem, and to participate with others in a design solution, a process where they can reflect on that problem, deliberate and to argue for and against different perspectives, and come up with a solution that is better than the current situation.

Coming sooner or later: Russell L. Ackoff on Social Messes.