Random Thoughts

Washing Machine

Before you start reading, start this song:

Mrs. Bartolozzi -- Kate Bush

Watch this video on YouTube

It should make reading the blathering nonsense below slightly less annoying.

Aren’t I helpful.

Anyway. We were chatting on irc the other day about this:

And I was going “and that’s why I’ll never have an Internet-connected washing machine. Never! That’s totally insane and only total morons would do that! Hackers will install ransomware on the washing machine and demand hundreds of bitcoins to set my laundry free!” But then somebody said “it sure would be convenient if the washing machine could tell me when the cycle was over” and I went “yes! I want that! I have to buy an Internet-connected washing machine straight away!”

Let me explain: I usually batch my laundry. Once in a while I’ll go “I sure do have a lot of things I should wash”, and then I spend the rest of the day running everything through the washing machine. But the problem is that I can’t hear the alarm that says “done now”, and I’m forgetful, so these laundry days aren’t as efficient as they could be: The washing cycle may have been over for an hour or two before I remember to check, and that means that I don’t get done with everything as planned.

This is the worst problem ever in the history of mankind! HOW CAN ONE LIVE LIKE THIS

But… I’m really satisfied with my Miele W 3923 — I’ve had it for… what… 15 years now? And there’s never been any problems, and it washes things very gently, and most important of all: It glows in the dark.

So I wondered: Could I detect the “beep beep”s at the end and use that to make some kind of notification device… but then I thought “electricity!” Surely someone has made a device to measure power usage that has a convenient local API I can access?

And… yes!

The TP Link Tapo P110 looks exactly what I need, and somebody has made a Python library to interface with it locally. So I can script something that detects that the machine is running, and when it stops running, it notifies… something… that I’ll actually notice? Worth a shot.

(No, I don’t want to integrate this with Alexa or anything. And I think I’ll block it from accessing the Internet, because these devices update automatically, and you can’t switch the updates off, even if the app says you can and they will randomly stop working because they change the API. And besides, I don’t want a botnet to use it to DDoS Sourcehut or whatever.)

So with the plug installed and configured, I can measure what the washing machine pulls when idle. Let’s see… when it’s idle and the light is on, it pulls 5W. When the light goes off, it’s 2W, so I guess that’s the basic idle wattage.

Let’s see what a washing cycle looks like.

The bad news is that a wool cycle is very… languorous.

It starts off by pulling in some water, and then it jumps up to 2kW while it’s heating the water to 30C.

But after that, it’ll mostly just soak the clothes, so it’s at 3W for a couple of a minutes at a time between doing anything. And at the end there, when it’s done (after that final spin cycle), it’s also at 3W!

So if I just do this naively, I’ll have to wait for several minutes to be sure that the wool cycle is over. And that sucks! It’s a very… “trailing indicator”, and I want to be Maximally Efficient, right?

And this is what a 60C cotton cycle looks like: It’s a lot more energetic, and it basically seldom goes down to idle wattage (i.e., 3W). However — it doesn’t really flatline at the end there, either? Let’s zoom:

Yeah, it does an anti wrinkle thing — it rotates the drum a couple times per minute after ending the cycle. So I can’t really do a “just check for idle power” here, either.

*sigh*

Well, perhaps we can recognise patterns in the data? Perhaps I should send the data to ChatGPT and ask “is the washing cycle over now? How about now?” Or perhaps not.

The wool cycle ends with 20s of 13-14W, and then we go down to 3W. That’s something that never happens elsewhere in the cycle, and should be easy to detect!

For the cotton cycle: It seems like the anti-wrinkle thing at the end is basically around 30-35 seconds of 3W, and then between 4s and 10s of >30W. And then repeat. And eyeballing the data… it doesn’t seem like that pattern ever appears during the wash cycle.

But does the end-of-wool signal appear during the cotton cycle, or vice versa? Hm… Well, I’ve got the data, so I can just implement my guesses here, and then simulate the thing.

When the thing is running, the algorithm should basically be: The script polls the P110 once every minute. If it detects that the washing machine is running (i.e., uses more than 20W, say), it shifts to polling every second, so that it can get the shape of the curves here. Then when it detects end-of-cycle, it notifies me by flashing some lamps in the apt. And then, if it detects either that I’ve started a new cycle, or that I’ve switched the washing machine off (i.e., it goes down to ~0W), it stops flashing the lights? I think that should basically be sane. (And perhaps I should have a button somewhere to switch the flashing off manually, in case of er me being to lazy to take the things out of the washing machine right away.)

Yay! It works for the wool cycle!

But there’s a false positive in the cotton cycle at 21:05, and then it thinks that the anti-wrinkle means that it started again. OK, bugs…

Yes!

OK, I should have implemented that by a state machine and not half-assed it, because it’s pretty brittle… It might not work on, say, the silk cycle? But state machines are hard, man. I mean, to test.

For the alarms… well… a flashing duck? That should be alarming enough.

I don’t really have any singly-connected “subtle” lamps like that (and I guess they should be LED because they survive flashing better, perhaps?) in the living room, but how about this one:

Eeexcellent.

OK, this is going to save me at least… MINUTES… over the next decades.

Or until next year, when the washing machine breaks down and I get a WIFI-connected one.

Comics Daze

Merde! I’ve totally messed up my sleeping again, after being so good for yonks. That was a very late New Years Eve, and I guess I’m still working my way through that. Even so, getting up at one in the morning isn’t ideal, eh?

So let’s see… if I read comics all night long, then take a nap around eight, and then read comics until midnight, that should fix things, right? Yeah, doesn’t sound like a viable plan to me, either, but let’s give it a go.

And I see there’s a new temperature record in the surrounds here, but where I am, it’s just -20C, as you can clearly tell from my brilliant shot of that outdoors thermometer. Brr! But I’ve got a blanket and a couch, so I should be OK.

But since it’s so cold, I’m going to listen to music only from 1970. (And perhaps 1971, if I run out of albums from 1970.) You know it makes sense.

Art Ensemble of Chicago: Les Stances a Sophie

01:38: The Great British Bump Off by John Allison, Max Sarin and others (Dark Horse Comics)

I’ve never seen The Great British Bake Off, so I’m probably not the intended audience for this, but on the other hand, I like murder mysteries so…

Oh, it’s the same concept as The Great Canadian Baking Show? I’ve seen that. (Well, I’m guessing that the Canadian show is a version of the British show…)

Neil Young: After The Gold Rush

So you’d think this book was for me after all, but eh. It’s amusing, but it’s not actually funny? They go for Silly To The Max All The Time, which can work well, but it doesn’t here. And the artwork does nothing for me.

But it’s OK — I can totally see lots of people enjoying this.

Vashti Bunyan: Just Another Diamond Day

02:25: Red Ultramarine by Manuel Fior (Fantagraphics)

This is more like it.

I’m not quite it totally works, though — you’ve got a mash-up of Icarus and Faust and stuff, and told in this very dynamic way… It’s pretty good, but it creaks a bit under its own weight.

Fotheringay: Fotheringay

02:41: Power Button 1 by Zack Soto (Graphic Universe)

I’ve always liked Soto’s artwork, and I’m happy to see that he hasn’t straightened it out too much for this children’s book.

That’s excellent skin care advice!

The book is fun — if I have one criticism, it’s that things perhaps take a bit long to get started? But we get a lot of character development, and we get hints towards a bigger storyline (like — what’s up with that Uncle Cat guy anyway?), and it’s an enjoyable read. And perhaps it ends without much of a resolution — it feels rather a lot like the first episode of a TV series? But it’s fine.

03:15: Blah Blah Blah #4 by Juliette Collet

This is great — the book is a mix of shorter and longer pieces, but it has such a good flow: It’s almost stream of conscious-y the way the stories flow in an obsessive way.

And there’s a number of different approaches to the artwork, but it’s still cohesive.

And this story was just flabbergastingly amazing — a heartbreaking sucker punch of a story, really. And look at this artwork! Just fabulous.

Shirley & Dolly Collins: Love, Death & The Lady

03:37: Qualification by David Heatley (Pantheon Books)

This was part of the latest Mystery Box, and it’s from 2019. I’m just shocked that I don’t already have this book? So weird, because I was a big fan of his back when, but I guess I just didn’t know that this existed? Well, I guess like most people, I was impressed with his early work, but underwhelmed by his first Pantheon book, so perhaps I just didn’t want to read more…

This is a book about being addicted to Alcoholics/Debtors/Sex Anonymous, and it’s borderline incomprehensible at times. I mean, not what’s happening, but why. Like… his mother fell over at a skating rink (haven’t we all done that?) and that’s her “lowest moment”? That is, nothing that happens to these people seem to be very er hard, but Heatley dramatises it up to the max?

Shelagh McDonald: Let No Man Steal Your Thyme (1)

But I guess it’s all part of having religious damage. I mean, if you’re apt to depicting your mother calling you on a phone with dodgy battery as “it was a miracle”, then it’s just hard to take it all seriously. On the other hand, Heatley portrays much of this in a way as if he wants you to come to the conclusion that he’s perhaps insane, anyway…?

Hm! I think I must have read this before after all. It’s now seeming extremely familiar to me. Or were parts of this published in a different format before?

Anyway, reading this can be pretty exasperating, but the storytelling is pretty good? The artwork is effective, and it’s oddly propulsive: Even if I can’t claim to actually like the book, I didn’t feel like putting it down either?

It’s an oddly unfocused book, though. I didn’t much enjoy reading the bits from all the AA meetings (which is most of the book (and I can’t really imagine how Heatley justified over-sharing on behalf of these people (although he says that the characters are composites))), but the sequences like this are more interesting, right? But they’re scenes any good editor would have edited out, because they don’t have much to do with anything beyond “this also happened”.

So what did the critics think of the book? Here’s The Comics Journal:

Heatley’s great sin isn’t that he is a sinner, a horrible, petty, carping mess of a human dominated by urges and appetites he will hardly account for. It’s that he is a boring sinner who offers neither aesthetic pleasure nor insight only to then demand sympathy for unveiling his wriggling ego.

I get a vague feeling he didn’t really enjoy it.

Indeed:

David Heatley writes a way, way over-long narcissistic study of his own narcissism through the potentially humorous lens of his own addiction to 12-step programs.

Right:

A narcissist creates a monumentally narcissistic work about his narcissism.

Harh!

This book needs a sequel from the wife’s pov. Hopefully it will end with her leaving him.

OK, that’s enough time spent on this not very compelling book. I guess I didn’t hate the book?

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young: Déjà Vu

06:20: Clamp #5

This is great — it’s an anthology of mostly short pieces, with different approaches but feeling cohesive.

I do wish they’d put the artists’ names on the pages, because I have no idea who did what.

But it’s all good stuff.

Very nice.

I thought I was the only one that did that with plastic straws!

John and Beverley Martyn: Stormbringer!

06:46: Roxane vend ses culottes by Maybelline Skvortzoff (Tanibis Editions)

Heh. Fun how the French title is a lot more direct: Roxane Sells Her Underwear.

It’s an oddly traditional plot…

It’s basically “woman starts selling sex, descends into depravity (including obligatory Eyes Wide Shut scene), before going back to her true love”. I didn’t think these books were legal to make any more! (I.e., it’s not “sex work positive”.) But it’s pretty good.

Sudden Joe Matt reference!

07:06: Mini Kuš #1119-122 (Kuš)

Latest batch arrived in the mail the other day…

Weng Pixin does a really compelling story about anger and stuff.

Nuka Horvat is more abstract.

Gary Colin goes geometrical.

And Anu Ambasna does a very appealing (and amusing) story about the secrets of DJ-ing.

Kraftwerk: Kraftwerk 1

07:22: Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (Shortbox)

This book collects three stories that are similar in tone, and two of them seem to be slightly connected (both are about memories as currency/energy, I guess).

It’s really good. The stories have this elegiac, tragic quality to them, and the storytelling is rather dissociated — it’s pretty unique.

And dramatic.

OK, perhaps I should take a nap now to try to get myself back on a more reasonable sleeping schedule… I mean, it’s getting light out, after all.

Jimmy Lyons: Other Afternoons

14:53: Gristle by Lily Blakely (Shortbox)

Oops! That was way too much napping! Wow, I must have been tired or something…

Hm… this seems very familiar. Hm. Oops! I’ve already read this a couple years ago! Oh well; I’ll just read it again.

It’s still really good. It’s body horror, and it’s really creepy. And rather affecting.

The Pentangle: Cruel Sister

15:12: Milky Way by Miguel Vila (Fantagraphics)

Wow, the storytelling on this one is something else. Very Chris Ware, of course, but used for a very different effect than Ware uses it for.

Simon & Garfunkel: Bridge Over Troubled Water

It’s a difficult read not because of the storytelling, though — it’s really kinda horrifying. It’s the squishiest book I’ve read in a while. It reminds me of what was happening in American indie comics back in the 90s? Renée French, Dave Cooper, etc — i.e., there’s a lot of very unattractive sex in this book. Or perhaps attractive! It might all be a fetish book! I don’t know — there’s a disgust that pervades the book, but I’m not sure what Vila thinks of it all, but I get the feeling that Daniela is Vila’s viewpoint character, sort of. (He’s the dorky friend of the woman being wronged.)

What I’m saying is that the book is really accomplished, but it’s a really depressing read.

I guess this is a pretty ambivalent review:

Vila’s English-language debut swirls the erotic and the grotesque into a tart tale about the perils of sexual obsession.

Various: Amchitka (1)

16:12: Unended by Josh Bayer (Uncivilized Books)

This book has gotten a lot of buzz on the interwebs…

Wow. This is so full on from the very start — this is the first thing you see when you open the book.

This introduction, though, had me confused for the first, like, thirty pages of the book?

Because Bayer says that the book adapts his father’s unfinished play, and I thought that this was that play, or wasn’t sure whether it was the play or was Bayer talking about his father. It was confusing, is what I’m saying.

Various: Amchitka (2)

But perhaps the confusion is what Bayer is after. I mean, I like being confused when reading a comic — it makes you more involved. Like this bit — is it fiction, or is Bayer this much of a dick?

Archie Shepp: Live in Paris

But we do get to the play about halfway into the book, and everything becomes clear.

Anyway, this book is great. The storytelling is almost overwhelming, the artwork is exciting, the story is interesting, and I really enjoy how he ends the book by upping the ante on fictionality. It’s something really special. I’m surprised that it wasn’t on more people’s “best of” lists — just four, if I count correctly? But it was released late in the year, and perhaps (like me) they hadn’t read it yet.

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & The Trinity: Jools & Brian

18:57: Pill Hill by Nicholas Breutzman (Uncivilized Books)

This reminds me a lot of Tom Kaczynski, so it makes sense that it’s published by Uncivilized…

King Crimson: Lizard

But then again, it doesn’t really.

Joni Mitchell: The Reprise Albums: Ladies of the Canyon

It’s a really harrowing book, but it’s also funny in parts. It’s about a nightmare of a divorce, and the struggle to save his kids from a meth addicted mother. While it’s totally gripping in parts, it’s also frustrating: The flights into fancy with the lizard people didn’t really bring anything to reading other than a slight blizzard of dandruff from scratching my head so much. What did he want to achieve with those bits? Add a distancing effect? Make us doubt all of the story (i.e., pretty forcibly telling us that the narrator was insane)?

It’s just very odd.

But OK, it’s really very well done otherwise — it’s propulsive and gripping. Except for the lizard bits.

Hm… I googled a bit, and it doesn’t seem to have gotten much attention? That’s weird. Is it too straightforward to be appreciated by the art comics crowd, and too odd to be appreciated by mainstream outlets as the next Nick Drnaso? Dunno. It’s a good book, anyway.

Led Zeppelin: III

20:50: Haruki Murakami: Manga Stories by Jean-Christophe Deveney (Tuttle Publishing)

Ah, I assumed that this was going to be comics stories written by Murakami, but instead if just a collection of adaptations of his short stories.

It’s pretty good? These are (of course) slightly mysterious stories, but the adaptations are extremely straightforward. So — not very exciting, exactly, but pretty entertaining.

David Bowie: Hunky Dory

21:46: The End

Well, I think that’s enough comics for this er “day” — I’ve been reading for *counts on fingers* 21 hours, with that “little nap” in the middle.

I may have forgotten to do something on the balcony this autumn…

… but what!? I guess I’ll never know.

The Books of 2023

I haven’t read that many books in 2023… what you see in this lil’ bookcase are all of them. (I empty it out every year and then watch it fill up slowly…) I guess there’s about *guesstimates* 60-ish? I guess it’s been more of a comics year than a book year.

Below is a list of the ones I found er either interesting or annoying, I guess? At least I found them memorable.

Oh, and I’ll snap pics of the first three pages, because that’s how I determine whether to read a book or not: I start reading and see whether it seems OK. (I never read the back cover because what’s the point of reading an ad anyway?)

The Last Days of California by Mary Miller.

I read a short story by Miller in the Paris Review, and it was awesome. So I got this novel, and it wasn’t. I guess I found the subject matter slightly boring (an evangelical family making a trip to California before the world ends), but it was just kinda meandering… Not in an unpleasant way — I rather liked the book — but I was underwhelmed.

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.

I saw the movie, and it was so much fun. So I got the novel, and it’s … tedious? Yeah, tedious. I mean, I guess McQuiston can string sentences together, but that’s about it. It goes on and on and on and I got fed up with it toute de suite.

Hawkmoon by Michael Moorcock

I bought a bunch of fantasy books recommended by China Mieville, and this was one of them. It’s horrible! Just the worst. Perhaps Mieville read it when he was 10 or something? This book collects several novels, but I bailed after the first.

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore

I absolutely love Moore’s short stories (I mean — absolutely), but her novels are slightly more… uhm… I dunno. Not as awesome? I mean, she’s so brilliant at writing on a word for word basis (always inventive, always witty) that it almost doesn’t matter? I’ll always buy her books.

The Grip of Film by Gordy Lasure by Richard Ayoade

I’ve been on an Ayoade (and related) binge the past few years — I’ve read all his books and seen his movies and watched the TV series he’s contributed to (like the Garth Marenghi series). He’s a smart cookie, and he can be very funny, but this book — which is a parody of a “book on film”, “written” by somebody who only likes 80s action movies — was a slog. I think I bailed about halfway through.

Iron Council by China Miéville

Hm… am I picking mostly books I wasn’t that impressed with for this blog post? I guess I don’t have anything to say at all about most books, but if they annoy me, I remember them better? Anyway, Miéville has written some good book (Perdito Street Station and The City and The City, for instance), but this was a pointless slog: They build a railway line for half the book, and then they return for the other half of the book.

The Book that Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

This is hugely entertaining. It’s much harder to find well-written fantasy books than just about anything else, and this is well-written and exciting. So I got some other Lawrence books as e-books after reading this (the Red Sisters trilogy), and you get the feeling that Lawrence’s main motivation for writing those books was to write endless scenes of torture. So… I don’t think I’ll be reading any further Lawrence books than the ones in this series, because that shit’s just tedious.

Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher

This is a series that I see recommended All The Time on the Intertubes — is Kingfisher some kind of internet celebrity or something? Anyway, it’s awful — badly written, badly printed, stupid and boring.

Garth Marenghi’s Terrortome by Garth Marenghi

This is part of my Ayoade binge, but I guess he’s not involved with this one? It’s pretty funny, but goes on a bit too long.

The Book of Dust v1 and v2 by Philip Pullman

I quite enjoyed the His Dark Materials series, and these new ones set in the same universe are quite entertaining. They’re not flawless, though — the plot in one of the books is creepy to the max (and it’s not meant to be, I think). But still, very entertaining.

Answered Prayers by Truman Capote

My god, Capote’s tone could be really grating, couldn’t it? Reading this is like being at a gossipy party where somebody keeps gossiping at you about people you don’t know, don’t care about, and that don’t seem that interesting.

Remain Silent and Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner

When I’m hung over, I read mysteries, and finding well-written mysteries is almost as difficult as finding well-written fantasy books. But these are quite good.

Tsalmoth by Steven Brust

I love the entire Vlad Taltos series, and this was another banger.

Crosstalk by Connie Willis

Willis has one simple trick when plotting: People run around a lot and can’t find each other. That’s it. That’s what 85% of her books are about: People who can’t find each other. The rest is mostly people who don’t tell each other what they need to know, so that there’ll be more running around. This book was obviously written after Willis was stung by the critique of her previous novels: People have cell phones now. There’s no need to run around and not find each other. So she’s finally introduced cell phones, but it turns out that people forget to charge them and stuff, so she still has them running around and not finding each other.

The Last Supper by Rachel Cusk

The Outline novel was amazing, so I’ve been picking up her older books, and they’re mostly really interesting, too. This one is a travelogue about being in Italy, and Cusk’s writing is witty and thought provoking.

The Trees and Dr. No by Percival Everett

I read Erasure the other year, and I thought it was pretty amazing. The Trees is pretty good, but Dr. No is… er… OK, it starts out swell — it’s about a professor who specialises in nothing. That is, the physical concept of nothing. So we get lots of jokes about people misunderstanding him when he talks about nothing, and then there’s an evil billionaire and things are going swimmingly. Then it seems like he loses interest about half way through, and just starts piling on the silliness in the hopes that the novel will resolve itself, but instead it just kinda gets boring. Because silliness is a tough thing in a novel: Too much, and you lose faith in the novel.

(And I’m starting to think that Everett is a bit of a dick.)

Happy Trails to You by Julie Hecht

I think I’ve read all of Hecht’s fiction now, and I love it all. And this short story collection (which mostly feature the same character as from her other two books) is wonderful. And there’s an added bonus with Hecht’s books: You can read the Goodreads reviews and find several people horrified that somebody would write about these characters that they can’t identify with at all. Hilarious! Like this one:

The characters are completely foreign to me. More than halfway through the book I could not find a single aspect of either main character that I could relate to. Moreso, these characters just made me sad. Their idiosyncrasies are impenetrable, unrelenting, and just plain weird.