I was talking to my wife about how our children should properly learn to deal with all the AI stuff we experience today. AI-generated videos, texts, and code that we get bombarded with every day. When we were young we had only text messages (SMS) sent around. Life was so much easier. We figured that the only two things you could have on a phone were text messages and SNAKE. We both loved SNAKE. We played it on the Nokia 3310, which my anecdotal evidence says was the most popular phone when I was in middle school.
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I use a Landis Gyr ULTRAHEAT®T550 (UH50) meter to measure my district heating consumption. As I have used “smart” technology throughout my home, I also wanted to integrate this meter, enabling me to collect and later display its measurements.
During my research on how to get values from the meter, I came across the Volkszähler project. Conveniently, there was an existing wiki entry specifically for the UH50 meter. After ordering all the necessary parts, I found some free time between Christmas and New Year’s to put everything together.
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Today my wife bought a used IKEA DUKTIG play kitchen for our children. We payed about 35 € for the kitchen with several accessories like pans, pots, cooking spoon etc. The highlight of the kitchen is the cooktop which can be turned on and off to glow red which look like a real cooktop.
After putting in six (!!1) AA batteries I pushed the buttons and… nothing happened. Damn. The cooktop was broken. My daughter (2.5 years) supervised every step. She pressed the buttons like 20 times before she looked in my eyes and asked: “Putt”? (German children’s language for broke). Her voice was deeply saddened. I smiled and responded that she should not worry and that I am certain we can repair it. She immediately started smiling and responded with: “Pieren?” (German children’s language for repair).
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