February Update
Gosh, I so needed a vacation. January was a slog, and I started February in a foul mood. I am glad to report things are trending upwards.
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One cool thing that happened in February is that I had solar panels installed. Buckle up, this is nerdy.
Here are seven out of twelve total.
I had a choice to opt for an optional dedicated monitoring system which allows me to inspect production remotely. It was offered for “free” and even came with an incentive: it extends my inverter warranty from 2 to 10 years. I actually pay for it with my data. This too was spelled out in clear in my contract: no data upload, no warranty. I said yes, after satisfying myself that no personally identifiable information was sent.
Yesterday’s production. It was a sunny day. Less than 50% of max; the sun is still relatively low at this season.
February stats.
The main reason why I said yes to the little snitch is that it comes with a good API for use with Home Assistant.
Yesterday’s HA stats.
More stats.
Overall, I am treating this project as a financial investment, as a sort of asset diversification. The ROI will come both from the reduced grid consumption and selling my production back to the utility company. This makes me care about optimizing utilization.
Towards this, the HA integration revealed more clearly something I was only vaguely aware of when I was reviewing the setup beforehand.
For context, my home uses a 3-phase grid supply. With the exception of very few native 3-phase appliances, this effectively means I have 3 separate electricity circuits throughout my home. This is the wiring circuit for the installation so far.
There are three inverters. Each one is connected to one of the phases. Each phase carries only a part of the load inside the home. (Load wiring in diagram is neither accurate nor exhaustive.)
Because the phases are effectively separate from each other, each device inside the home is powered by at most one of the inverters, and thus max 4 panels. So imbalances arise: I am often simultaneously delivering power to the grid on one phase and pulling power from another phase.
This year, I do not mind too much because I will still come ahead overall: up to and including 2026, billing for electricity in the Netherlands substracts aggregate production and consumption throughout the year. But this changes next year, and then I will start caring more about utilization.
It’s unclear yet what will be the exact technical solution, but so far I am thinking about something like this:
Some home battery systems allow you to charge with a separate PV circuit. This is done with separate inverters. The setup is somewhat more expensive, but it effectively rebalances power across phases.
If you have better ideas, I’d gladly hear them.
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Another thing that happened last month was that I brought seven friends on a trip to Japan. We originally intended to meet the famed “Japow”, or Japanese powder snow.
Before we headed to Hokkaido, we adjusted from our jet lag in Tokyo. For context, I had been a tourist in Tokyo before but some members of our group hadn’t. These few liminal days were also an opportunity to relax.
To me, the cabling of residential power distribution is really a form of street art.
I learned there are sub-species of cherry trees that bloom early.
We visited the advanced art installation at teamLab planets.
We re-enacted the visit to the “New York Grill” bar on top of the Hyatt hotel from the movie Lost in Translation. The view over the city was breathtaking and this picture does not do it justice. The drinks were very nice too.
One of my favorite moments was to lie down on the grass of Shinjuku park and nap with friends.
We had numerous and exceptional food experiences throughout our travels. I do not like to be “that guy” and spam the internet with pictures of food, so here is just one modest proof.
Not illustrated here: lots of walking, otherworldly subway rides, glorious karaoke, giant Unicorn Gundam statue, and more.
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The longest segment of our travel was at the Niseko resort, in Hokkaido.
We were mostly outdoors and enjoying ourselves, with relatively little time for pictures. So here is just one view of Mount Yōtei, a relatively young volcano on geological time scales.
Overall, this project was a success. Sadly, we were too late in the season to meet the famed “japow”—in fact, the snow quality was mediocre, and I’m being generous. However, our spirits were high, the weather played ball, there were some exceptional food experiences, nobody got sick or injured, and we did a good job of enjoying each other’s company, so the whole thing gets a passing grade. I’d be happy to go back for better snow though.
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On the health front, my eyes have been complaining a lot lately. The main issue is some imbalance between my left and right eyes, which regular reading glasses do not correct.
On the one hand, I had procrastinated on the task of obtaining new glasses before: glasses are outrageously expensive where I live, and none of the store chains offer significant choices or options. It feels like a cartel and I did not want to support that.
On the other hand, I started to feel seriously impaired through the last few months and I had to do something.
So this time, I chose a different approach. First, I went to multiple practitioners to get my sight measured and cross-check the results. (This was pretty much necessary: there is a lot of variability across opticians where I am and two of the five measurements I sought were wildly off.) Then, I walked away with my prescription instead of doing further business with them, and instead ordered my prescription glasses online. This appears to be way more reliable today than it used to be, say, ten years ago. It saved me hundreds of euros!
I am expecting the new glasses in a week.
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The last significant thing that’s happening is that the political campaign for my city council elections is now in full swing. For example, yesterday, I was distributing flyers and chatting with random passerbys on the local marketplace.
I am taking a moment to reflect on this for a single observation: how effortless and enjoyable the bit about greeting and speaking to strangers was. The version of who I was just five years ago would have found all kinds of excuses to avoid doing this, and I probably would not have believed any suggestion that I would one day come to like it.
As to what changed, I am pretty sure that the key shift happened through my reading of various books on the psychology of sales last year. This is when I more fully understood that there is very little downside to rejection. Just a smile, a greeting and general politeness leave a good impression even before the rejection happens, and that good impression will carry forward indirectly to later decisions or discussions by the passerby.
Of course, the real challenge starts beyond that, with maximizing the number of people we can reach overall. I will be chatting outdoors for many more hours through next few weeks.
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On the reading front, I finally finished reading this recommendation by a friend:
- The Creative Act: a Way of Being - Rick Rubin
- Overall, this was enjoyable to read. In a nutshell, this a “feel-good” book for artists and creators. The introduction is dubious and pseudo-scientific, but can be skipped with no harm to the rest of the reading experience. This is not a book you read to be entertained by a story, nor a book you read to learn stuff. It’s a book that rakes in the author’s ideas about a creator’s emotional state across many areas of the creative process, then presents them back to you as a toolbox that can make you stronger as a creator. The overall theme is not exactly self-help nor productivity or psychology, and also not quite religious. In hindsight, that reading experience felt very “right-brainy”. But it did help me put two and two together regarding some obstacles I was encountering in my work, and I feel somewhat changed after finishing the read. Just for that, I feel thankful.
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Links
Lorin Hochstein Poor Deming never stood a chance https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2026/02/16/poor-deming-never-stood-a-chance/
Joan Westenberg Communities are not fungible https://www.joanwestenberg.com/communities-are-not-fungible/ (“two perspectives - corporate + social”)
Josh Collinsworth AI optimism is a class privilege https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/sloptimism
Miles Q. Li et al A Benchmark for Evaluating Outcome-Driven Constraint Violations in Autonomous AI Agents https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.20798
Grant Harvey Wait, Attention is NOT What You Need? Two Papers Signal a Rethinking of Transformer Fundamentals https://www.theneuron.ai/explainer-articles/wait-attention-is-not-what-you-need-two-papers-signal-a-rethinking-of-transformer-fundamentals/
Zhang Chong Attention Is Not What You Need https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.19428
Benjamin Breen What is happening to writing? https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-to-writing
Roya Pakzad Don’t Trust the Salt: AI Summarization, Multilingual Safety, and Evaluating LLM Guardrails https://royapakzad.substack.com/p/multilingual-llm-evaluation-to-guardrails
Sachin Benny Will vibe coding end like the maker movement? https://read.technically.dev/p/vibe-coding-and-the-maker-movement
Tuan-Anh Tran Relicensing with AI-assisted rewrite https://tuananh.net/2026/03/05/relicensing-with-ai-assisted-rewrite/
G Gauthier et al The political effects of X’s feed algorithm https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10098-2
Xipu Li Thinking Hard Burns Almost No Calories—But Destroys Your Next Workout https://vo2maxpro.com/blog/thinking-hard-burns-no-calories-destroys-workout
Adam Aleksic human infohazards https://etymology.substack.com/p/human-infohazards
Matt Stoller https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/amazon-busted-for-widespread-price
Andrea Nepori Goodbye, Tesla-style giant touchscreens: cars return to physical buttons https://www.domusweb.it/en/news/gallery/2026/02/20/cars-return-to-physical-buttons-ferrari-tesla.html
Brian Tyler Cohen and Barack Obama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI-hgSE5QIw