Summer summer summer time…
To start with a cliche: It’s hot. It’s been over 30 degrees for the past few days, and there’s not much decline of temperatures in sight. Strangely, I find myself able to better cope with the weather than in previous years. It must be mentioned that spending a nice afternoon in the shade with the missus, a couple of cold beers and a few nice topics to talk about helps with the coping a lot.
Yesterday however, through quite a coincidence, we found ourselves surrounded by horses, damsels, swords, dogs, hell, even a true African owl. It turned out that there was a Knights’ festival in the city park. Despite the rising levels of hotness we decided to go check it out, after all, how often do you find a medieval festival right around the corner?
Honestly, I was expecting to find a handful of medievally clad people, a couple of tents and some shoddy ‘knights’ in plastic armour. I was pleasantly surprised. The ladies wore beautiful gowns, the knights wore authentic replicas of medieval armour, and there were many people just sitting around their tents surrounded by authentically made pottery and carpentry. We even got to find out how chain mail was made in the olden days.
There were also a couple of demonstrations, like a bird-show, a hunting demonstration, and the most exciting of them all, a jousting event. There would also have been a melee fight between knights, however, due to the heat, they opted to cancel that particular event. Fighting hand-to-hand combat, when the sun is at it’s highest, wearing full armour weighing at approximately 35 kg ís of course a tad bonkers.
After surviving the hottest part of the day happily sipping Murphy’s from lovely glazed earthenware (which you were allowed to bring home, yay), júst when we were about to leave for home, the jousting event started. As expected, this turned out the be a very exciting show, where the opponents’ shield shattered lances more often than not.
It was a good day.
Project hachiue
It has been a while since I wrote something. Mainly, conducting my research and writing my thesis are the culprits, however, I’ve been meaning to write something about my newest hobby, gardening.
Last autumn, I decided I wanted to grow some herbs. Just some coriander, thyme and basil, in a homemade greenhouse. I could go into details, but to save some time, let’s just say it was no success. So, when spring came, I decided to try again, this time with a little better understanding of what not to do: Gardening tip #1. Do not use the cheapest potting soil you can buy at the local grocery store, it most likely contains plant material that has not completely decomposed. As such, adding water, and placing it in a warm spot may (which happened to me) promote larvae growth. Those little buggers were particularly attracted to the newly sprouted roots of the seedlings. Attempt number 2 was therefore not a huge success either…
So, attempt number 3. Went to local gardening shop, picked up some 50kg of potting soil, and a baggy of seed mix soil. Additionally, growing from seed takes a while, so I also decided to buy me a few bell pepper and red pepper plants, a bay leaf ‘tree’, an olive tree, and a tomato plant. The first 6 images were taken on June 6, the latter ones 20 days later…
I especially like how the thyme and the coriander has exploded. Additionally, sowing thyme directly outside in potting soil seems to be a bad thing. Of all the seeds I sowed, only a handful actually sprouted… I therefore tried it once more indoors. Coriander on the other hand was no problem, it’s sow, wait a week, watch it grow for a couple of days, and then start and keep harvesting to delay flowering (I was not as persistent with the harvesting, hence it has started flowering already).
As for the bay leaf, it’s a slow growing tree (as far as I can see at least). It will be a while before I dare harvesting leafs on a regular basis. The olive and citrus will probably not set any fruit until years later, but that’s ok, I want them to grow into nice large healthy trees anyway. The tomatoes, well, a couple of them at least should be ready for harvesting soon.
I really love to watch this stuff grow, and such a small balcony based ‘garden’ doesn’t take too much of my time either. The best part however, was about two weeks ago, when I harvested some coriander and used it in a curry I quite frequently make. This curry is based on Jamie Oliver’s vegetable jalfrezi. I make it non-vegetarian by adding chicken fillet, and leaving out some of the vegetables, such as the cauliflower. It’s a very nice dish, doesn’t take too much work to make either (it’s best to prepare the curry in the morning/afternoon, and let it cool down during the day, ensuring a better blending of the tastes). However, when I added the homegrown coriander, it turned into something completely different, as the fresh coriander has an incredibly strong scent and taste. Honestly, I can not wait to try out the other herbs/fruits/vegetables growing right now, to see if those have the same taste enhancing properties.
Mental models
My amplifier broke two weeks ago. It was intermittently cutting off the sound to the right speaker. When I jiggled the speaker cable at the right speaker output port on the amp, the sound usually came back. Therefore, my logical conclusion was that the output port was broken. I tried fixing the problem by cleaning the amplifier (after 9 years, there was a fair amount of dust built up inside), however this did not remedy the problem.
So, I bought a new (second hand) amplifier. Incidentally, it turns out to be much better than the one I used to have, even though that was a good one to begin with. And the problem was fixed. I rejoiced and spent quite some time annoying the neighbors with a much richer sound system. Until it broke again…
Now, as the title suggests, there’s a reason here for me to mention mental models. It is a phenomenon used to describe a person’s understanding of something, as a mental representation. For example, if you flip a light switch, the light turns on. Therefore, your mental model would entail something like ‘the light switch acts as a gate for electricity to flow towards the light bulb’. If you flip the switch, and nothing happens, you might conclude that the light bulb is broken. Upon replacing the bulb with a new one, the light switch once more turns the lamp on and off, and you update your mental model with this information: ‘when the switch is flipped, and the light doesn’t come on, the lamp is probably broken’.
My mental model of my previous amplifier is a good example of a model being wrong. Whenever the sound was not reaching the right speaker and whenever I jiggled the speaker cable, most of the time the sound would come on again. Therefore, my mental model was reinforced with the ‘fact’ that jiggling the cable, which in turn led me to believe the contact between the cable and the output port was impaired, ‘fixed’ the problem. My solution, to buy a new amp was therefore correct. However, my mental model was not: after buying the new amp, the problem returned. It would seem that the sound returning only coincided with the jiggling of the cables. This led to a faulty mental model. Now, sleep won’t be lost over this, on the contrary: I’ve got a sweet new (old) amp.
However, in 1989 there was a plane that crashed near Kegworth (Leicestershire, UK), because of a similar faulty mental model of the pilots. The story there was, that one of the engines broke down, causing a vibration throughout the plane. The pilots identified the engine responsible and turned it off and at that exact same moment, the vibration stopped. However, it turned out that they were wrong, and when they realized the wrong engine was turned off, it was already too late. The result was the tragic loss of 47 lives (Besnard, Greathead & Baxter, 2004). For a complete account of this crash, and the influence mental models may have had, I suggest you read the article at the bottom of this post, it is not too difficult a read.
Anyway, I tried everything to fix the problem that didn’t include me unnecessarily buying more stuff: switching cables, changing cables, replacing parts in the entire system where I could, reinstalling/updating audio drivers. But nothing worked. I eventually brought the amp and the speaker to the store where I bought both the amp and the speakers, to see if they could find the problem. They could not. The problem couldn’t even be reproduced in the store (and not from lack of trying). In the mean time, the missus’ miniset we had hooked up to the pc started displaying the same problem. So, that left us with only one possible solution, replace the cable between pc and amp.
So far it works fine. Let us hope it stays this way… In any case, I believe this to be a good illustration of how a faulty mental model can cause incorrect decisions based on your perceptions. So the next time, something is not working as it should, remember your mental representation might not be entirely accurate. Additionally, I really should’ve headed the advice given by my instructor to become an audio technician, a course I once had: ‘when there’s something wrong with the sound, ALWAYS check the cables first. In 99% of all cases, the problem lies there’. He was right again…
References:
Besnard, D., Greathead, D., & Baxter, G. (2004). When mental models go wrong: co-occurrences in dynamic, critical systems. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 60, pp. 117-128.
Spring, motherf…
Spring is just around the corner!
I like the spring. It’s like waking up from a long night, filled with loads of darkness, rain, snow and coldness. It’s like, well, a sunny spring morning, with the smell of dew and the songs of birds. Additionally, my own birthday is in March, so that’s another good thing about spring 
Every year, I am filled with joy when walking to class, or work, on a bright and warm morning. And for some reason, my prime choice of music to listen to, falls to the very ‘unspringy’ genre of rap. For those who don’t know me very well, I am no fan of rap-music in particular. Sure there is the occasional song that I like, but mostly, I find it quite uninteresting to hear people talk (more so than actually singing) about their cars, their bling, their money, and the ho’s, or about how tough they are and how many people they’ve killed.
One rap group in particular that never seems to bore me, is Captain Dan and The Scurvy Crew. This, as the name suggests, is a group that makes novelty Pirate rap. And whether you like it or not, the life of a pirate is a perfect topic to rap about. It has the ubercool vehicles, the bling, the money, the roundthecorner Sallies and to be sailing the seven seas, you would have to be tough. The thing I find most puzzling however, is how, as I mentioned, do not particularly like the songs about the killing and the toughness, but additionally, I never really liked pirates either, but I do the songs by Captain Dan.
It is weird that the combination of two things I do not like, make something I do. Maybe, mathematics has gotten it wrong all along and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Whatever the reason, the time of year has come once more where I can bob along with the Yarr’s and Scurvy’s wearing a big grin on my way to work.
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