Headworx

My key discovery from the COVID pandemic has been: how little I need. Especially material goods. This has started an avalanche of other thoughts, observations and discoveries. One important category there is this whole concept of economic growth is wrong. Growth is the problem we have had for the last 200 years or so, and the solution to this problem has been the rise of consumerism. (desire for) more profits → (over) production → (over) supply → (aggressive) marketing → (over) consumption → waste / pollution / deteriorating quality of life It is unimaginable how many unneeded / unnecessary / unwanted inventions and developments we have created. Here is an exercise: can you (from memory) tell the difference between iPhone 8 and iPhone 7? Or between 7 an 6? Most of us cannot. This means the whole series of these flagship models could have not existed and nobody would notice. Unnecessary developments. Probably Apple could skip them altogether going straight from i...

It turns our winter is a great time to test renewable energy systems. Both on a state scale - like in Texas last week and on a private [smart] home scale. Last year I upgraded all my battery powered sensors and light switches to photovoltaic with the goal to have them running forever . I opted for supercapacitors rather than rechargeable batteries, as supercapacitors supposedly have infinite life span. A 5F capacitor at 4.5V (discharging down to 3.6V) is able to power a radio transceiver for two days. The sun rises everyday - I thought - so that would be 100% extra margin. Which turned out not to be enough.  My mistake was making the upgrade in springtime and it all worked beautifully throughout Summer towards Autumn... In November problems started popping up. As the days were shorter and I stopped getting any direct sunlight (I live in a valley) and the sensors started falling out of the network. Quick voltage check showed there was not enough charge to keep them going. In most c...

So it seems Garmin was right. Which is puzzling to me. But anyway.... The problem has been solved. Although probably the root cause has not been found... This bothers me but probably there is no way for me to find it and no one else cares... The problem, as reported back in September last year , was that my Garmin watch could not multitask. It was either playing audio or recording an activity but could not do both. To me it looked (and still looks) like a software problem, but Garmin support decided otherwise and offered to replace the unit with a new one. Generally it is difficult to discuss things with support - you are lucky of they are responding anyway, so I agreed, sending them back the "faulty" watch as instructed. Weeks passed... even months... After several more email exchanges finally in January 2021 the replacement unit arrived. It took them 3 months, which is a shame, but probably there is nothing I can do to fix their logistics. Anyway the replacement unit does e...

One thing discovered during the pandemic is that I have been mostly wrong. Wrong about values, attitude, metrics. Thankfully the pandemic has allowed me to get (what I think now is) a proper perspective.  First - GDP is a flawed metric. GDP contraction does not actually have to be a bad thing. Consider bicycles and fast food meals (not mentioning any names but you know the usual suspects in this category). A bicycle is inherently bad for GDP and bad for economy. Cyclists do not buy gas (and thus do not contribute to GDP and tax revenue). They are healthier - do not contribute to health care revenue nor gyms. On the other hand there are more hamburgers consumed by people driving cars. Many of them have weight problems. So not only they buy hamburgers - they also buy body slimming diet supplements (contributing a lot to pharma revenues). And they are more likely to need health treatment, so the huge health industry benefits. Actually why don't governments provide fat-free burgers to...