Heatwave Eclipse

Yesterday there was a partial eclipse, I think about 90% of the sun was covered. Fifteen hours later the following day we were in a heatwave, the temperature rose above 35°c. This is the 5th heatwave of the year and there has not been a single drop of rain throughout the whole summer on this part of England. The draught is taking a toll on everything, some business that rely on water like hair dressers and various manufacturers have stopped making profit. The water companies are worried about running out of water for domestic use. It feels like we're in a desert. There is dead and dry grass and bushes everywhere. 

I learn something new every day, the last few days are no different. I always thought the river Thames : pronounced "tems" was a seamless flowing water mass, that a boat could just go from Windsor to Oxford; I was wrong. There are partitions in the river that are sectioned off by wiers and locks. You would have to bring your boat into a lock to make significant progress upstream. You would need to bring the boat into the lock, then shut the lock doors and wait for the lock to fill with water and then open the exit doors to the lock. 

The other thing I learnt is there is another BT advertisement board outside high Wycombe hospital, on the side of the board is a dial pad with a microphone and speaker in the panel, if you lost your things and found yourself stranded and far from home, you could make a free emergency phone call to a friend or family member to rescue you. You could even call the police or ambulance. 

I also learnt that some of the built in games on the Evercade-Alpha have a persistent score board. It's more than an emulator, they added some code to allow the score board to persist after you have turned the console off. I find that is useful because I would try to beat my best score every time I turn it on. 

Columbia near 8 quake

A few days ago on the 10th of August there was a very large earthquake in Columbia, it was what I call a near 8. The earthquake was 7.4 on the rickter scale. When the strength of an earthquake approaches 8, it becomes so strong that it would topple the strongest buildings and trees effortlessly. Those earthquakes are so strong that they can push vast volumes of water away from the ocean floor causing a tsunami. Near 8 earthquakes are like the 8 ball on the pool table; when they sink a near 8, it is game over. If the earthquake power is close to 8 on the rickter scale then the damage is devastating, it is game over for towns and cities. 

There has now been about 3 earthquakes that I call near 8 this year. In June there was a strong earthquake in the Philippines, then the same month there was one in Venezuela, now there is one in Columbia. 

I have my own speculation to why there are more powerful earthquakes occuring, I think that there are more droughts, water helps to lubricate fault lines so they can slide past eachother, when there is a draught, the fault lines become more stiff and smaller earthquakes get stopped, they get condensed into much larger earthquakes. More energy is required to dislodge the rocks when they are very dry so more energy builds up. When there are stronger earthquakes, they can trigger more energetic quakes. This is just a speculation though, I don't know if it is a fact. 

One third of August

One third of August has passed by, I was looking at the evercade cartridge library, each one of those cartridges are magical little worlds to explore and there is so much choice. There are old games I never got around to playing while I was younger so they would be new to me, there are modern retro style games and lots of lovely RPG titles to choose from. 

This is the link to the cartridge catalogue Evercade Cartridges . I don't know how long I will have the games console for, you probably know better than me.   

Everything in this world is connected, a decision made by a police officer could change the world. Let me explain. 

A police officer in the year 1805 could arrest a thief for stealing an item from a market stool. The police man didn't know that he actually saved the person's life because that same day the thief was going to walk into a pub and get drunk, while they were drunk they challenged someone to a duel, the duel ends in both of them passing away from blood loss. The duel never happened because he was taken to a jail cell and avoided the duel situation. The police officer finished his tea break 5 minutes earlier than normal so he was at the scene when the theft took place. He finished his tea break early because a fly landed on his breakfast so he didn't finish it and felt more hungry later. A decision made by a housefly causes a police officer to feel more hungry on their tea break and finish early and to catch a thief before they get themselves killed in a duel later that day. 

Everything the thief and duel opponent does the following day onwards hinges on a decision made by a tiny insect to land on the police man's breakfast. If the fly didn't land on the police man's breakfast, he would finish his tea break at the normal time and would not catch the thief, the thief would get himself and another man killed because he is not in jail and all their actions they make every day of their lives would not happen and everything in the future would be different. Perhaps even people would disappear because they are the descendants of one of the two men. 

Mega HMP thought

The thing that is most relevant these days in Britain is  some criminals are being let out early because we're running out of space in our jails. Sometimes they even let out murderers before they let out thieves: don't ask me why, I have no idea. 

We might need to build what I call Mega HMPs (mega his majesty's prisons). We may need to build tower block with more than 50 floors filled with prison cells. 

If we did, I would advise making the standard cells  bigger than normal, I would make them U shaped and interlocking  so they share water lines with a slightly partitioned toilet and another slightly portioned sitting area and work space to give them some dignity and encourage them into a new profession. I would also add oubliette type cells, they would be small box cells that are a hole in the floor and the door to the cell is the ceiling. Those cells would be for shoplifters to stay for 3 days or people that commit crimes in prison to stay for a month. 

A prison in my world would be to rehabilitate offenders into a new lifestyle.

Evercade Club

I recently joined the evercade club, I have an evercade console. When I was young I was told I would grow out of computer games or become sick of them; the problem is they're wrong, I'm in my fourties and I still love to play computer games. My joy of video games hasn't faded even slightly. 

Games are worlds to explore and puzzles to solve. They are trance  and escape on demand. I play video games for a little happy hour or reward for getting through the day. I also play netflix in the background while I do chores to listen to detective stories, the software knows what I like and gathers more of it. I play it but I'm usually just listening to what they're saying, I'm listening to the story instead of actually watching it. 

I was looking at the evercade cartridges library, there are plenty of dungeon based RPG and click control story based games in the library, plenty of stuff to keep me busy. Hopefully  I will get many years of happy memories from my new games console. 

It could also help with small talk, I could ask other people if they use evercade consoles and they could talk to me about what they like. Perhaps I could talk to people  about old computer games I played in the past. The other thing is when visitors come over, I have something I can talk about to them, it is like an ice breaker for conversations. The thing looks very cool to me. 

The Rougecoft dx cartridge looks very interesting, perhaps I could get that one after I play the broken sword collection and the full void game. Plus they have all the duke nukem games I never got around to playing at the turn of the millennium. 

Start of August

It is the starting point of August, I just wanted to point out a few observations. I think there is three types of people that can see the future; people that can see where the ball is going and predict things because of the events happening now. There are people that are gifted and they just see the future because of supernatural premonition and there are people that do things and feel confident they are changing the future themselves. Anyway, 

Some people say the Simpsons creators can see into the future. To me the most convincing premonition of the Simpsons would be the intro scene, the couch prelude. You see all the family rushing carelessly as if they need to be at a very important appointment. Homer is in such a hurry that he flips a radioactive fuel rod into his shirt. Marge is in such a hurry that she nearly runs over her husband , they're all recklessly rushing but only to get to a couch and watch TV. I feel like that is what is happening now, people are rushing for nothing. They drive fast and sometimes take crazy risks only to sit down on a couch, they're not heading to an important appointment or a meeting, they're just rushing for no reason. The Simpsons looked like they were crazy back then but now their behaviour is almost normal. 

The other thing is the moonwalker movie from Michael Jackson. The whole movie seems to have no story or plot, it is some short films stitched together and there is no clear story line, it's off the wall. It is a lot like the CGI Slop that kids watch these days, you see a video of an AI generated cat arguing with his friend, then he wins the lottery, its all over the place. When kids go to the cinema, they don't really want to sit through a full feature movie with a persistent plot. They just want to see a series of short clips, all with completely different stories. They call it CGI-slop or ai-slop because it is usually created by using a command prompt to a video maker ai system. I think they can sit through Michael Jackson's moon walker because he must have known  kids in the future would be like that. Michael  Jackson's creations were future proof, his music and his movies.

I think they will need to make movies like Michael Jackson's moon walker soon because those kids will still be like that as the grow up. 

What July 2026 Means To Me

It never rained a single instant throughout July 2026 in my part of England, and it didn't rain for some time before July either. I considered it a drought when I saw the grass was dead and dried from above the roots. The grass verges by the road resembled straw. 

Most of the World cup played out in July, they added a 32 team knockout stage but only had 12 four-team groups, this caused me a great deal of confusion. If there are 12 groups then only 24 teams would pass through to the knockout out stage, it turns out they let 8 losing teams with the next best points also pass through. The ai had to explain that to me. To cut a long story short, Spain won and Argentina were the villains, their fans behaved like animals and their players were rude and aggressive. 

When the world cup finished, Andy Burnham replaced Kier Starmer as the leader of the United Kingdom, his party had already run down the clock so he only has about half a term to prove his metal, good luck to him. He reminds me of Rishi Sunak because he was also left with only part of a term to get things done. The clock for him was also run down and his party was in the dog house already.

Towards the end of the month the drought persisted in Europe and wild fires burst out in the wooded area of Bordeaux in France : it's pronounced "bordow". 

As for me, I published my first free Cartoon Strip magazine on the internet, for me it is an act of bravery because I'm acutely aware that I'm not the most gifted cartoonist or sketch artist but I did it anyway. I don't know if I will stick with it, you probably know better than me. 

This is the hub page...

https://jokejohn.blogspot.com/p/cheerbus.html?m=1