Bus Day

Jacob, my son. 

I recently learned that one of the bus companies where we live will close down their depot. This means the routes they run will stop or be replaced by the other major operator in our area. I was surprised this is happening; they claim the depot was making a loss. I think the other company had the right idea. They would use small vans as buses during off peak times to save on fuel and stuff like that. They also ran an airport service so they would get customers from nearby towns and the edge of London in Uxbridge. 

I think we will have virtual reality in our home at some point this year. I have played  golf in virtual reality on other people's headsets. If they make a walking device that works with it, you go for a walk by the coast for a while without leaving your home. Perhaps when you're an adult, virtual reality would be a health product, something that promotes walking. You could walk through museums and other worlds while you're still in a room. 

Tomorrow Robins will sing

A famous song I can relate to is 'Tomorrow Robins Will Sing' by Steve Wonder, I think the song is trying to say things will improve in the near future. You can have a bad day or bad month but one day everything will be fine. 

A few thoughts come to mind this month are, If there was a cat in my house and I was suddenly paralysed, would the cat eat me while I'm still alive?

I was wondering what it would be like to build a large shed in the garden and turn the inside of the shed into a man-cave complete with bar, recliners and even projector.

Northern Lights and Stuff

The Arora borealis was visible in Britain a few days ago. There was a purple and green smears in the sky, it looked out of place and a bit bizarre. 

Shortly before we had the northern lights, Mc Donald's were adding miniature Uno playing card decks to their happy meals. My 5 year old isn't interested in that game but it's fun for all ages, even adults; I thought it was a good idea. Uno is a straight forward game to play, you are given 5 cards from a shuffled deck, one card is placed facing up on the table and each player has to find a card  that is related to the card on the table, the number, colour or icon can be used. The goal of the game is to lose all your cards before the other players. It's a bit like dominos. Your card becomes the card on the table if it is related to the target card. 

These days I order my food with an app on my phone and I can use a table number as a reference. One thing all fast food restaurants have in common is their ice cream machine stops working often.  I don't know why. Perhaps the moving parts overheat or something like that. 

The Billy-of-Time

I imagined being the captain and sole crew member of a solar blimp air ship thing called the Billy-of-Time. The world is full of tosh these days. There is loads of dogma spurting out of collages and protesting  and the world is at loggerheads but the Billy-of-Time is off the grid and away from it all floating above the Pacific ocean in the middle of nowhere. 

The hot air blimp would work by using mirrors that focus the sun's rays onto black pipes, the pipes would get hot and vent out hot air that flows into balloon canopies. The trouble is it would go down at night. The captain wants to stay airborne indefinitely. He would get water from clouds and irrigate fruiting plants on his ship. He would sleep in a hammock because it is light. The net weight of the whole vehicle would be an issue. The captain of the ship would try and see if different sand particles can store heat during the night. He would also dry out his poop at he far end of the blimp and burn the poop to get more time in the air. Plus the mirror arms would have flaps below them that tilt when there is a gust of wind. After all those innovations, there is no hope of staying airborne, every morning he would wake up and the vehicle is floating on the ocean, then it it would start to rise again as the sun heats up the vents. The crew man captain never quits, he tries to figure out a way to stay in the air. Perhaps he could sand down the shacks below deck to make the vehicle  lighter. 

There would be some solar panels on the blimp to get electricity, he has a games console and plays computer games. At night before the blimp goes down he would lay down on the top deck and look at the stars in the sky and wonder what is happening out there in deep space.  

Floating in the air away from it all. No dogma, no anger, no disrespect. Just a drive to float away.  The Billy-of-Time, a ship in the sky that will never be. Only in the mind of blogger with a time for a day dream as he waits to sleep. 

Day Dream : Billy of Time

If you lay in bed and can't sleep just day dream. I was day dreaming about a giant hot air Balloon called Billy of time. 

It has many mirrors that focus sunlight onto tanks , the tanks get very hot and cause an envelope to inflate. The 3 inflated balloons would lift the vehicle up. The vehicle would have some shacks suspended by ropes. 

Is it a village, a blimp, a balloon or a plane? no it is Billy of time, a happy hot air balloon that is powered by solar energy. The captain of the vehicle wants to keep it airborne indefinitely because he is sick of society. He wants to live off the grid and grow his own food up there in the sky. 

What April 2024 Means To Me

Throughout April I thought this may was going to be a general election but I was wrong because they had a snap election in December 5 years ago so the new general election will be later this year. There are still elections on may but they're for the mayors and commissioners. 

It was always cloudy this month and very dark. The Israelis are still trying to rescue their hostages and people are still protesting about the conflict. They're ignoring all the other conflicts in the world, even the ones that have more casualties, lots of selective outrage. In the middle of the month there was a direct exchange of missile fire between Israel and Iran. It started when Israel accidentally hit the Iranian embassy in Damascus city in Syria. 

I managed to get a good deal on a Nintendo switch and was playing Red Dead Redemption throughout the month. It is an old game and they ported it over to the console the way it is; to me it is a new game because I never played it. I missed out on playing a lot of the 3rd person open world quest type games from the previous decade. I have no regrets with the way I use my down time, life is too short to care. A young boy was killed by a maniac with a sword the other day.  I feel pity for the boy and his family. Life is short and it can be shorter than you think. That is why I try to enjoy my down time. 

Here Comes May

It is may tomorrow; I think the time stamp in this blog is set to an American time zone. Here in Britain we're preparing for general elections. I like my local MP because he works as a cabinet minister but he still makes time to respond to his constituents. I know this because I reached out to contact him before. I thought it would be a good idea to make some of the back roads one way so the lane lost could be used for parking and bike lanes; he passed the information over to the council and followed up and contacted me later to inform me what they thought, then he offered  to meet me in person. To me that merits another term. The political party he is in now is in power but they're unpopular at the moment. If my local MP is replaced, I could try to contact the new MP with the same message and see if he is equally diligent. 

I think all politicians are forced to lie. Every policy they make can be vetoed by the house of lords and opposition; even the reality of funding can cause them to go back on their words but they act like they're certain their plans will succeed. If they didn't, no one would vote for them. Humans judge superficial things like confidence and dress-code. 

I was playing Red Dead redemption throughout April. It's definitely not a game for kids, you witness violent cruelty too often. It's an interesting game, the story unfolds bit by bit. Now I'm left with questions like why did Edgar Ross kill John at the end of the game after he helped him get all the gang members. I'm guessing he knew too much and the people at the top wanted him dead. I like the way you can continue playing the game after you finished the main missions as the son of John Marsden, Jack Marsden and they look alike. You can even complete the less important stranger missions that John Marsden didn't finish. A true open world game.