Add weeknotes

src/posts/2024-07-22-weeknotes.md

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+---
+title: Weeknotes
+---
+# Weeknotes
+
+I found the concept of weeknotes [elsewhere](https://sometimes.digital/posts/about-weeknotes/) and I'd like to try it out to give some more persistence to what I do. I'll try to cover what I was busy with in the week before writing the notes, and just share what I feel is interesting.
+
+## Spray Nozzle
+
+I got a spray nozzle for one of my water taps and I really like it every time I wash my hands. It's sold cheaply [by IKEA](https://www.ikea.com/de/de/p/abaecken-zerstaeuberduese-fuer-mischbatterie-90423825/) and I got one used from Kleinanzeigen.[^1] The reviews on the IKEA website are very mixed: People either love it or complain that it does not work. I was afraid to fall into the second camp, until I put the old nozzle into citric acid, dissolving the limescale and being able to swap out the inner sieve with one that came with the nozzle.
+
+It's a very, very fine spray, saving somewhere upwards of 90% of water. This means it's too little for the boiler to activate, but it's a very nice, soft feeling on my skin.
+
+I wanted to try it out since I read about [mist showers](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/10/mist-showers-sustainable-decadence/spray) in the Low-tech mag. I'm living in one of the driest areas of Europe, and it's drying out even faster than most other areas. Water rationing is very likely happening soon, it's [already pretty common not too far away](https://www.euronews.com/green/2024/05/07/rainfall-allows-catalonia-to-ease-water-restrictions-for-first-time-since-drought-began). I feel like experiments like this allow me to come to terms with it in a playful way, and in a way that doesn't feel restricted or imposed, but rather lush and just smarter.
+
+It could be a cool thing to try when organizing festivals as well!
+
+## Hitomezashi Patterns
+
+I found out about Hitomezashi patterns last week. I don't know very much about them to be honest, and I'll gladly learn more. What I know is that they are a type of stitch pattern that originated some hundreds of years ago as a form of Sashiko, embroidery that is used for both aesthetic and functional purposes.[^2] Nowadays it also seems to be pretty hot as a mindfulness practice on YouTube, so I hope I'm not coming across as completely tone-deaf for playing around with it. This whole "repairing things" shtick is pretty dear to me, and if there's an interesting aesthetic connected to it, I'm even more interested.
+
+Put simply, the rules of the mathematical model are like this:
+
+- Draw a square on a dotted grid, one dot is the unit to use. Start with a small grid, something like 5 × 5
+- Draw a pattern of zeroes and ones on each axis, one digit for each step on the axis
+- Pick an axis and start drawing the stitches perpendicular to it: If there's a zero, start at the axis and draw a line for one unit, leave one out, draw a line. If there's a one, start the series of stitches by leaving one line out, drawing a line, leaving one out again…
+- Repeat the previous step for the other axis
+
+That's it. You should have a nice pattern! If the previous steps were hard to follow, there's [a Numberphile video](https://youtu.be/watch?v=JbfhzlMk2eY) that explains it nicely. I have also created a small webapp that allows you to [toy around with different patterns](https://arnes.space/fleck/hitomezashi) and save the result as SVG.
+
+It's nice to see how different the shapes look, depending on the different patterns of ones and zeroes, only a small bit of information showing complex behavior. I liked how after a short while I could figure out how to cause kinks in the shapes, and draw diamonds.
+
+I took the resulting shape [to a friend's self-built plotter / CNC mill](https://post.lurk.org/@computersandblues/112819638781507468) – probably the largest I've seen with a drawing area of more than A2. The pen holder had a bit of wiggle room on one axis, so the result didn't look as good as I'd hoped for a pattern that's this precise. I'm looking forward to figuring this out at some point, so I can put some of those patterns on my wall.
+
+I really liked how said friend was able to pick up [the code](https://git.arnes.space/arne/computersandblues.hitomezashi/src/commit/00fed1c95b3a4dce121da9b33b188b2af3bd16d5/src/main.ts) pretty quickly, and made their own modifications to draw patterns based on their own rules. They told me they never made generative art before, and were completely hooked.
+
+[^1]: German cragislist, basically.
+[^2]: There's a [nice paper](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17513472.2023.2187999) that both goes into the history and cultural aspects of the embroidery and develops a mathematical model of the patterns.