As I mentioned yesterday, I recently acquired a brand new Narwal Flow 2 robot mop/vacuum. Here are my notes after a week with "Carl the Fourth" (named after Carl the janitor in Sixteen Candles, as my previous three robot vacuums were).

As I noted yesterday, this is a darn good robot mop/vacuum, and my home has never felt this clean with any other robot before. So let's get into it...

When it comes to mapping out your home, Carl the Fourth is pretty darn smart. Like all devices now, it's got "AI onboard" which means it can "see" objects and obstructions far better than older vacuums. Instead of mucking about by bumping into everything over and over, the Narwal Flow 2 using twin sensors to get a 3-D view of your home...

The initial mapping of my home was shockingly fast because Carl just zoomed around sensing where everything is. From the map he makes, I can see how he is seeing my home...

The AI is smart enough to detect objects like phones, cables, fabric, and shoes. I have two pairs of shoes by my door and they were identified easily (albeit in singular instead of plural form)...

Furniture like beds, couches, tables, and even pet feeders(!) are recognized and marked on the map. The problem is that they are not marked on the map correctly. Here's the map that Carl made of my home...

Let's look closer at my couches...

You can see that the coffee table perfect lines up where Carl cleaned. But the couches? The large couch is shown 2/3 of its length for some reason. But look at the smaller couch. Not only is it drawn massive, it also doesn't reflect the angle of the actual furniture. This is truly bizarre. Why doesn't the map representation match what is actually on the map? Maybe this will get better with updates.

When it comes to creating cleaning zones within your house, it's very difficult. I turn the furniture icons off because they're not remotely accurate. I would use past mopping data, but it doesn't show up. All you get is the sensor map... WHICH FADES AWAY WHEN YOU START DRAWING ZONES?!?? They're barely visible...

Ugh.

Narwal recommends that you first do a full vacuum-only so that any dirt doesn't interfere with the mopping so I did that. Even though my Roomba had cleaned just two days before, the Narwal Flow 2 came back looking filthy. Which means Carl the Fourth is obviously doing a deeper clean and getting closer to areas which collect dust, cat hair, and cobwebs. This was quite impressive.

I left some cat vomit residue from the previous week because I had gotten a notification that Carl had shipped and was on his way. I wanted to see if he would be able to scrub it up...

The answer is no. Not only did Carl not get them cleaned up, he didn't even identify them as dirty spots so he would attempt to clean them up. In reviews and the sales promotion, I saw video after video of Carl scrubbing spots clean with the "Smart Stain Detection"... but not here. I don't know if it's because my floor is dark wood instead of light wood, but should that really matter when the spots are fully contrasted against the floor? How did all three of these get missed? I sincerely hope that Narwal sends improvements to the Flow 2 in order to upgrade its smarts for stuff like this. I ended up having to wet paper towels and manually wipe them up as usual. Bummer.

The next morning I woke up to find that Jake had tried to hack up a hairball, leaving fresh water vomit dribbled from the dining room to the guest bedroom. So I opened up the Narwal app... drew a box around the area affected... then unleashed Carl and waited to see if the fresh spots would be recognized. Turns out they didn't need to be. He blazed over them without a second glance, obliterating them easily...

And then... yesterday I woke up to find that one of the cats had done a scarf and barf. So here we go. This is why I got Carl in the first place. Will he think that this is poop and avoid it? Or will he recognize this as cat vomit and attempt to clean it up?

Oh heck yeah! Carl noted the stain, then turned his vacuum on highest speed and attacked it. Going over it again and again until it was gone, then he mopped over it until the floor was clean. Great job, buddy! Though this does worry me a bit. I haven't had a chance to look at Carl's undercarriage to find out if there's cat puke smeared on it. And does this mean if my cats end up pooping on the floor for some reason that he will try to clean it? That's a good question.

UPDATE: Carl ran through the vomit and got his wheels messy. Not good. Would probably have been easier to clean the vomit than clean these wheels.

The water in the base station is pre-heated in the tank to 140º, which is supposed to give you a better mopping. The problem is that even fresh off the base station, the water Carl leaves behind is not at all hot. Maybe slightly warmer than ambient room temperature. This is disappointing after reading it so prominently in the promo literature, but it doesn't seem to make much difference. Where it likely makes a lot of difference is in cleaning the mop head during/after he's been mopping. Multiple rinses with 140º water is sure to clean the head better than room temperature. For that, I am thrilled, because it addresses one of my biggest problems I had with the Bissell SpinWave robot, which doesn't clean its spinny pads at all. You have to manually toss them in the wash.

There's a bigger problem with the spinny pads and vibrating pads and roller pads on other mopping robots, though. They just smear the dirt around with water, and my floors never felt freshly-mopped. The Narwal Flow 2 doesn't use any of these technologies... Carl instead uses a flat mopping head which has a "rolling track mop" head that rolls around it while constantly being rinsed off and re-wetted. It actually cleans your floors...

Just look at how my SpinWave "cleaned" my floors in comparison...

But here's something else that's cool about the mopping... the head can extend outward from the side to get closer to edges than it would if it just stayed underneath the unit. The technology behind the Narwal Flow 2 alone makes it better than any cleaning robot I've ever had. After mopping, my floors look as clean as if I hauled out a mop and manually scrubbed them. It's so amazing to see. I walk on the floors in my bare feet and they feel great. So good that I could never go back to the spinny pads, vibrating pads, and other stuff I had in my other mopping robots.

Time will tell if the notorious hard water where I live is going to build up inside the robot or the base station and ruin them. I toyed with the idea of using distilled water, but that would get very expensive very fast.

As expected for a robot with the advertised suction power, the vacuum is great. But it seems to have a bit of a problem due to the way it sections off your home. Carl understands that the kitchen is a different surface than the dining/living/bedroom area, so it attacks them separately. This is a bit of a problem, because the kitty litter that gets trapped against the transition strip between them doesn't really get vacuumed for some reason...

There's an HD camera on board which allows you to look out the front as cleaning is happening. You see what the robot sees...

You'll note that there's a directional pad in the lower left where you can manually drive the robot. I haven't done this yet. It might be fun from a remote-control car standpoint, but if I have to do that in order to vacuum or mop, I'll just grab my vacuum or mop!

Disclaimer: My home is wall-to-wall hardwood, so I don't know how well it does on carpet.

So... yeah... love this thing. Hope it gets even better. Let's sum this up, shall we...

THE GOOD

• The low profile allows the Flow 2 to easily get underneath tables, beds, and toe-kicks.
• The vacuum is great. Suction power is excellent and the edge spinner brush moves dirt from the right side of the robot towards the vacuum brush. Cat kibble that spilled on the kitchen floor were sucked up without issue.
• The mop is excellent. The technology behind what Narwal is doing is far, far superior to any other mopping robots I've used. The flat surface, constant cleaning, and ability to extend outward to clean everywhere it remarkable.
• The camera system is pretty good for fresh stains. Carl noted the cat vomit and cleaned it up. Not sure what happens if he runs across a hairball or a pile of poop though.
• The battery life is great. My entire floor can be cleaned using only 25%, even though Carl has to run back to the base station half-way through cleaning to get the dirty water swapped out for clean.
• The base station clean/dirty water tanks can get through two full moppings of my home. I was anticipating them needing to be changed out after every mopping, so this was a pleasant surprise.
• Before docking at the end of a clean, Carl will raise himself up and turn on full suction to grab any dirt and debris that was trapped underneath him. Very nice.
• You don't have to manually add the cleaning solution to the water tank and mix it up. There's a separate reservoir for the cleaner that gets injected into the water as the robot is filled up.
• The base station is big, but not comically so. It can handle two full cleanings of my home, so I think it's just the right size (as it starts doing regular cleanings so things aren't as dirty, the sensor may notice it and even go up to 3 or 4 cleanings between tank changes). I wish I could afford buying the tankless model, but I can't afford to have it plumbed into the kitchen. There is a cool LED color light bar which turns colors based on what's going on, but I haven't bothered to learn which colors mean what.
• The mopping pad is not only washed with hot water, it's dried afterwards. The refuse bag is also dried so any bacteria vacuumed up is killed. I have the drying on "quiet mode" which takes quite a while. There's faster modes available but they're (assumably) noisier.
• The operation is shockingly quiet given how powerful the vacuum suction is rated. It's twice as strong as my Roomba, but twice as quiet at the same time? How? Silent? Not at all. But I can easily watch television while it's in operation.
• Supports the Matter Smart Home standard (among others). Robot vacuums are fairly new to Matter, so it's pretty basic. I don't know why you would use it instead of the app, but it's there for your automations and integrations.
• Comes with a 3-Year Warranty. — I've come to expect 9 months to 1 year, so that's nice.

THE BAD

• The map on the app has to be fixed, because it's awful. The furniture is recognized, but not oriented properly so I turn it off. The mapping data becomes so light when drawing zones to clean that it's almost impossible to draw areas accurately. And even if you could, the zone drawing tool is horrible. Instead of dragging corners you get one corner to resize, then have to drag and re-size over and over until your get it right. And it's tough to do that because the touches aren't registered very well. You also can't draw non-square areas, which is baffling. The app is such a critical feature to get right, but the Narwal blows it utterly.
• Carl seems to get confused when he tries to dock with his base station. He comes up to it, turns around, starts backing in, then stops, comes forward, turns around to look at where he's supposed to park, then turns back around and finally backs in. Not sure what that's all about. Kinda cute though.
• There should be spinny brushes on both sides for a cleaner in this price range.
• As noted, the "Smart Stain Detection" didn't notice my dried-on stains at all. Not even a little bit. Since he will attack new stains, I guess this isn't a big deal? Time will tell.
• The sensors on the robot must be pretty good, because there's minimal bumping into furniture. All my other robots bash into stuff repeatedly no matter how many times they've cleaned my home.
• The retail price of the Narwal Flow 2 is a jaw-dropping $1500. If you bought it during its pre-release/early release, the price was $1100. I don't know that it's worth this cost. If I were pricing the value of it vs. the capabilities it has, I'd say around $850. Even that is really too expensive. But given how helpful it is at performing a task I no longer have to do... and doing that task very, very well... it could be worth it.
• The replacement parts (rollers, bags, fluids, etc.) are pretty expensive. The official Narwal bags are two for $20 on their site. Sure, third-party manufacturers will release cheaper parts, they always do, but why doesn't Narwal have reasonable pricing? Isn't this costing them business? Notable that Flow 2 supplies are very difficult to find on their site right now, and some of the information is not correct yet. Since the product is new, I'm guessing this will be resolved soon.

Ultimately I'm very happy with Carl the Fourth. He's very expensive, but does his job very well. Much better than I do with my quick cleanings on Sundays. Yes, I will still do an occasional deep-clean, but probably not every month. Maybe every-other-month or when company is coming. In-between, Carl will be vacuuming and mopping Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I just hope that he has a long service life, because when you have built-in obsolescence or planned failure at this level, because if he dies right after the 3-Year Warranty ends, that's too soon.

I've purchased a number of robot mops and vacuums over the years. None of them have been noteworthy. Sure they work, but they don't work well. In the case of mops, they always seem to smear dirt around rather than mop it up... in the case of vacuums, they always seem to lack the ability to suck up dirt efficiently. So, more often than not, I end up mopping and vacuuming manually while my robots sit idle.

The problem is... I have cats.

In addition to year 'round kitty litter getting kicked around, this time of year Jake and Jenny are shedding like crazy. This means fur is everywhere and hacking up hairballs are more frequent. Yuck. Every Spring I toy with the idea of buying new robots to help keep things clean (all my floors are hardwood, so it's very noticeable).

So every Spring I toy with the idea of getting new-and-improved robots. Then I don't because I don't want to spend the money only to be disappointed again.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago and I said something to a friend about cat hair being everywhere and I was presented an option for a too-good-to-be true new robot that was being released on April 20th... the Narwal Flow 2.

So of course I researched all the pre-reviews of the product and did a deep dive into the competition.

The robot I was looking at a couple months ago was the Matic, former Google Nest engineers. The reviews were amazing and its reimagining of floor cleaning seemed a smart take. But it was way too tall. It wouldn't fit under any of my furniture, which means all the cat hair blowing under it would never be touched. So I passed.

I have mixed experiences with Dyson (I find them mostly sub-par) but was told they have been investing loads of their cash into robots, so I looked at some reviews. But their latest and greatest Spot+Scrub was getting terrible reviews.

The previous Narwal models were always in competition with Mova, Roborock, and Dreame, so I investigated their offerings. I had experience with i-Robot and Ecovacs, so I looked into those as well. After exhaustive research, I decided that the models competing with the Narwal Flow 2 weren't much better or worse, so I pushed the button on it because the offer I had was too good, then I hoped for the best.

After living with the robot for a week, I have opinions.

Which I will share tomorrow.

SPOILER ALERT: This is a darn good robot mop/vacuum, and my home has never felt this clean with any other robot before.

Don't worry about the impending doom of planet earth and all life on this hunk of rock... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts...now...

   
• Amaze! Cubed! If you haven't seen Project Hail Mary you should most definitely do that. And once you have, you should watch this interview with the book's author...

Now that's science fiction!

   
• Four Decades Meatless! April 22nd was Earth Day! Or, for me, Vegetarian Day! I became a vegetarian on Earth Day 1986... 40 years ago. My girlfriend at the time said when she kissed me that she could "smell meat," which was apparently a bad thing because she was a vegan. And so... I went to Burger King, ordered six regular burgers, ate them all, then never ate meat again.

Sure we broke up a couple months later and I could have gone back to eating meat, but I realized that the numerous allergy problems I dealt with since I was very young were... diminishing? So I decided to stick with it. And, sure enough, my allergies slowly faded away. No idea if it was the meat... or steroids or antibiotics in the meat... but my quality of life improved dramatically. It was not easy being a vegetarian back then because food options weren't as prevalent as they are now (especially at restaurants), but I stuck with it and never turned back.

   
• Series Two! One of the biggest surprises of 2024 was the BritBox series Ludwig. It's a murder mystery show staring David Mitchell in the role he was born to play...

The second season will debut this year. But when this year hasn't been disclosed.

   
• Peace! And so... disabled veterans peacefully protesting the Iran War is against the law now...

Fucking disgraceful. There is no bottom with this fucking administration.

   
• All for the B! I've been a fan of Cardi B for a while... then I became a super-fan when I found out she's a serious history nerd (and her appearance on Hot Ones sealed the deal). But the thing I love most about her (and her team) is that she loves her fans. So many stories of her being truly grateful to the people who recognize her amazing talent and got her to where she is. The latest from a fan who got seriously shit on at a show was fully redeemed when Cardi's team reached out to make it right...

@calvngaming CARDI B UPDATE 🪦🐦 ⬛ #cardib #littlemissdramatour #fyp #storytime #foryoupage @Cardi B @Xfinity Mobile Arena ♬ original sound - Calvin Losacano

I love how the comments in the original video had people saying "Yeah, Cardi is going to be pissed!" because everybody knows she cares about her fans.

   
• NEWSFLASH: Tim Cook stepping down this year, John Ternus confirmed as next Apple CEO. I hope that John Ternus has even a fraction of the gravitas and drive that Steve Jobs brought to Apple. Tim Cook always seemed like a capable CEO (he took the company to a three trillion dollar valuation, after all), but ultimately he didn't seem like he wanted to push Apple towards greatness. He seemed more like a "don't rock the boat and keep the money flowing to our shareholder" kind of CEO. Which is a serious problem for a tech company like Apple. I look at the products which debuted under his tenure... Apple Silicon, AirPods, AppleTV, ApplePay, Apple Music, Apple Watch, AppleVision Pro, to name a few... and I can't help but wonder if he was the one pushing these projects forward. Maybe. But I doubt it. And if he was, then he didn't do much to show it. With Steve Jobs, you knew he was driving the boat, and that's what Apple needs moving forward. It's okay to not want to overshadow your team, but you have to at least project that the team is under your management.

   
• Idiot! I swear, these dumbfucks are so low IQ that I finally understand why that's the insult they lob at other people. It's the "I know I am but what are you?" vibe...

So... I guess this whole insistence of America having a ready military force is all bullshit then, isn't it? Now you can have a bunch of soldiers coming down with the flu, mutating it, and spreading it to each other so they're having to call out sick from battle? God.

   
Now you can go back to inundating yourself with all the horrific things going on in the world. Sorry about that.

And so I have a new cleaning robot.

I'll write all about it on Monday. But for now all I can say is that my cats didn't appreciate my old ones, and they don't appreciate the new one either. Jenny is outright terrorized by the thing, as she always has been. Runs away the minute it starts up.

And Jake?

Jake is just annoyed. I filmed his reaction when it started up, and this is what I got...

This model is quieter than my old one, but he's still irritated. Just glares at the robot as it goes about its business...

Eventually it won't be new anymore. Jake will ignore it. Jenny will walk away instead of run.

And life will go on.

Albeit with cleaner floors.

Project Hail Mary is one of my favorite books. As a fan of The Martian and Artemis, I blazed through the novel the minute it went on sale. And I loved it.

When it was announced that they were adapting it to be a movie, I was dubious. There was so much in the book that didn't seem like it would translate well. But I had hope because A) They managed to make a good movie out of The Martian, and B) The project was being developed by Lord & Miller, who know their way around creating a good movie (mostly through animation).

Turns out I shouldn't have worried. This is the best film I've seen in a while, and sure to land on my "best of" for 2026...

Ryan Gosling is phenomenal in every role he takes on, but since he's essentially playing against a puppet for over half the movie, his talent is critical to making the entire thing work. And he doesn't falter. He sells it perfectly...

Highest possible recommendation.

On my MacBook Pro I always install the most bleeding-edge beta versions of MacOS X and the various Apple apps that I can get my hands on. This rarely results in any problems. Occasional hiccups, but nothing long-term or destructive.

But last week my email stopped working on both Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. Any time I click on a message to view it, there's nothing there. The emails are blank. They're just fine on the server, but on the MacBook they don't display. My guess is that the internal database where programs store their data is somehow corrupted. And no amount of rebuilds or restarts would resolve it. And so I decided to wipe everything and start over.

It's been interesting.

All the clutter that's been accumulating... all the abandoned parts and pieces of discarded software... all the fragmentation... all the things that made my computer grow increasingly inefficient over the years... it's all gone now. My computer isn't noticeably faster in all things, but it is faster in some. And also more efficient to use.

I should probably write down the steps I took to reinstall everything and just intentionally do a scrub and reset every year.

I'm just not sure it's worth the effort if nothing has gone wrong.

But it does feel good.

One of my most favorite parody sites, The Onion, has finally won their bid to purchase InfoWars assets, which notorious piece of shit Alex Jones lost after the families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting won a judgement of $1.4 billion. He called them "crisis actors," despite all evidence to the contrary.

In celebration of this victory over somebody who really deserves to lose, I present this banger remix of some of Jones's nonsense...

FROGS!!!

Today on his social media, James Gunn announced the start of production for his Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow. And he did it by revealing the logo for the film.

Now, it's been no secret that the big bad for the flick is Brainiac. A villain that could be very cool indeed if Gunn has cracked a way to make it interesting. And, let's face it, there's no reason to believe that he hasn't.

But anyway...

When I saw the logo my mind screamed "GAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

Then I took a second look and my mind screamed "GAAAAAAAAAAHHH!" again.

First of all, here's Brainiac in several incarnations (including his ancestor, Brainiac 5)...

You'll notice a common element is his "logo," which is three connected circles.

But look at the logo for the movie... IT'S UP-SIDE DOWN!!!

And just as I was telling my mind to calm down... that they likely did it up-side-down because it fit around Superman's logo better... I realized that the lines weren't lining up, which was when the designer in me nearly came unglued...

A good designer would have made the logos work without making one of them up-side-down. But a half-good designer would have known to have lined up the lines! I mean, holy shit, how hard was it to do something like this...

So, as you can clearly see, I hate this logo for two reasons (though there's a third I didn't mention: you should be able to see the Brainiac connecting lines through Superman's logo).

I sincerely hope this travesty isn't the final logo. And, if it is, I hope that the movie ends up being better than this would indicate.

When I was considerably younger I wanted to make my Bible easier to study, so I added tabs and notes to it. I was worried about the tabs looking too "flashy" and distracting from the Word of God, so I made them out of masking tape. I even found Post-Its which were white instead of yellow.

Fast forward to today, and I was exposed to concept of a "Loaded Bible" which is a Bible that's been plastered with gaudy crap that's clearly meant to be some kind of competitive challenge with other Christians. The exact opposite of what my "loaded" Bible was.

And you don't even have to put the work in yourself... you can just buy one off Etsy for $250! Yikes. Performative Christianity has gotten expensive.

I mean, just look at this...

Bedazzled Bibles are the best Bibles.

And, on the inside? Bible scrapbooking at its finest!

Now, far be it for me to tell anybody how to study their Bible... I mean, it's refreshing to see that Christians are actually studying their Bibles at all. Maybe writing Scripture out with colored pens and stickers like it's some kind of craft project helps people remember what they're reading. Whatever brings you closer to your Faith, I guess. But turning Bible study into a crafting project? It doesn't seem much like study at all.

Which explains a lot about what we're seeing now-a-days.

Self-professed "Christians" who don't read the Bible. They don't study the Bible. The don't know the Bible. They can't even tell real Scripture from fake scripture out of Pulp Fiction. Heck, the president can't even name a favorite Bible verse... or answer even the most basic questions about the Bible. It's been proven again and again and again that these people are liars and scammers... and fake followers of Christ... yet people still say they are doing God's will? Which god would that be, exactly? Not any Christian God I know of. They're exploiting faith for power and betraying every Christian principle in the process. Yet their "Christian" followers don't seem to care. Not even a little bit.

Maybe because they spend more time decorating their Bibles than they do reading them.

After four weeks of being consumed by work, my house has become a complete and total disaster area. But I won't be cleaning up under the bullets are done... because an all new Bullet Sunday starts... now...

   
• It Takes a Village! Looks like I need to start playing Crimson Desert straight away...

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Of course my objective in the game is probably going to be quite different than most people.

   
• Fries! AMERICAAAAA, FUCK YEAH! EXTRA LARGE PORTIONS MEAN EXTRA LARGE FREEDOM! AMERICAAAAA, FUCK YEAH! GREAT FREEDOM FRIES FOR THE GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH! AMERICAAAAA, FUCK YEAH!

@phoebeisginger1 why are we putting that in fries?! #uk #fries #usa #mcdonalds #culture ♬ original sound - Phoebe🧡

Now I want fries.

   
• Luna Luna! In 1987 there was an installation in Hamburg that was rather unique... it combined art with a theme park. Back in 2023, I found out about it when it was unpacked, restored, and went on a global tour. I toyed with the idea of flying down to see it in L.A. in March of 2024 as a birthday present to myself, but never made it. Then I promptly forgot about it. Enter Mike From the Party, whose amazing YouTube channel I subscribe to, and he's done a brilliantly extensive video on Luna Luna. It's an hour-and-a-half long, but it's interesting enough to be worth your valuable time...

One one hand, I dearly wish that Mike would make more videos like this. On the other hand, I worry that the quality of his videos will suffer if he does.

   
• This isn't just me being a dickhead! Another brilliant YouTube channel I obsess over is Folding Ideas. And his latest is an interesting take on Mr. Beast which includes a surprising behind-the-scenes look I never would have expected...

I'd argue that these YouTube channels are every bit as important and interesting as anything you'll see on television or in the movies.

   
• Ungentlemanly Free! One of my favorite movies of all time, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, is streaming FREE (ad supported) on The Roku Channel. It's Guy Ritchie at his Guy Ritchiest, and has a stellar cast (including incredible turns by Henry Cavill, Alan Ritchson, and many more) and worth a watch if you missed it...

I can't even tell you have many times I've watched this film.

   
• Reversal of Fortune! Food for thought...

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Yeah, ladies!

   
• Here We Go Again! Yes. Yes. I am still reeling from the Fake Moon Landing and Flat Earth idiocy clogging up social media since the Artemis II mission. I'm only able to stay sane because of the people debunking these dumbasses. However... there's also something to be said for just calling them out for being stupid and ignorant...

And this 11-year-old video from Vsauce is an old but a goody that absolutely anybody in the above video could have watched to understand why they're speaking nonsense...

But, of course, asking them to educate themselves is like asking for the moon.

   
And now I suppose I should get back to cleaning my home.