Cold night

Jacob, my son. 

It turns out I'm not only the most boring man on Earth, I'm also Spiderman. Earlier in the day you managed to climb up on the sofa and grabbed something that could fall on you, I leapt across the whole room and grabbed you before you could injure yourself. You are at an age where you can climb on things but you don't know the dangers that lurk around the corner. Spider man is rubbish anyway, he only has two legs, real spiders have eight legs. They should just call him "Rope man". 

When you walk, you woddle and toddle. That is why they call your age group Toddlers, because you can't quite walk smoothly. 

Soon you will be a walking talking Steven Hawking, you are very intelligent I think. I will be learning things from you soon. I always listen and observe, there is a lot for me to learn about you. 

Chadwick Boseman

An actor called Chadwick Boseman died the other day, the cause of death was colon cancer. I felt that he was very young to be getting cancer. I guess that every day you are alive there is a chance of getting cancer. I try to make the most of every day that I am alive in this world because I don't know if it will be my last day. There are so many things that can cause death. 

I learned recently that elephants rarely get cancer, they have about 70 times more tissue mass than us so they should be 70 times more likely to get cancer, but they don't. They hardly ever get cancer. Their bodies have a defence against cancer that we don't have. They have something extra to protect them. 

I wonder what country has the lowest cancer rate and what country has the lowest heart disease rates, perhaps we could learn something from them, I am curious now. 

Saying no to the Boss

I learned a lesson about being cocky a while back from sega. In the computer game called "Streets of rage",  you eventually find yourself at a hotel, on the top floor of the Hotel is the office of the crime Boss. You have to fight your way up from the car park. When you reach the crime Boss' office he askes you a question, If you choose "yes" then a trap door opens up and you fall back down to the car park (about one third  the way back in the game), if you choose "No" then he tries to kill you but you win the game when he is defeated. I can't remember what the question is but I remember that the answer "yes" is cocky. I later learned that some people deliberately choose "yes" because they want to smash the scoreboard. 

Sometimes I would go to friends houses if they got the game after me and I would warn them about the question in the crime Boss' office. I would tell them whatever he asks, say "no". They wouldn't listen because they think I'm stupid, they would choose "yes" and I would watch their sega mega drive punish them for not listening to me, they would be sent back several levels and they have used up their continues so it is like game over. I don't have a word for it so I will make one up, Hindsight-cream, when you tell them something to help them and they don't listen and you watch them being punished for devaluing your advice. Hindsight-cream tastes great. 

In American cop shows they are cocky. They break rank and disobey their Sargent. In real life things are different, if a police officer is told by their Sargent to get off a case and they disobey orders they are called to the office the next day and given their P45 forms with ink that is drier than my jokes. 

A French thing

As a Brit I was always told that French food was very unhealthy. They eat crem Brulee ( I spelt it wrong deliberately), croissants, food that has a lot of butter, cream and cheese, baggettes, eclairs. They seem to have a cheese for everything.  

Anyway 

If French food is so unhealthy then why do they have less heart disease than us? Unhealthy food should create unhealthy people, right? 

Maybe it's their habits or the way they eat the food. I don't know. It is a mystery to me. 

Why the Bar Alan?

I imagined a time in the future when I was able to create my in-house bar and had a conversation with a visitor. 

Visitor...  Alan, why is there a Bar in your sitting room?

Me... It's an Alan thing.

Visitor... What's the point? 

Me... Well, it works just like any Bar, you can sit down on a stall then have a nice cold soft-drink or Beer, plus those mini 90's consoles on the table actually work. 

Visitor... So you made a bar where you can play 90's flash back games consoles and have a nice cool drink at the same time. 

Me...  Yes, plus there is a coffee machine there in case you prefer Tea or Coffee. 

Visitor... Why are the mini games consoles purched on wooden boxes? 

Me... That is to protect them from spilt drinks. 

Visitor... If the theme of the bar is 90s Gaming then why is there a Turbo Grafix 16 mini there, wasn't the turbo Graphics 16 released in 1987? 

Me... Yes, but the turbo Grafix 16 had a 16 bit graphics processor and most of the games on it were made in the 90s. Plus, the mini flashback console is full of side scrolling shooter games. I'm a sucker for side scrolling shooter games, you can't tell if they are 8 bit or 16 bit, because there is loads of tosh happening, this is especially true of the Capcom games like giga wings, Capcom also made all the street fighter games that we all know so well and they also released a two person arcade consol made with their logo, it looks off the wall but it is so cool. 

Me... What I am saying the turbo Grafix 16 belongs in the 90s, they just jumped the gun and released it early. Plus there is a golf game on there, I have never played a golf game I don't like. You really need to look up TurboGrafx 16 mini on you tube to see what I am talking about. 

Visitor... Why isn't the PlayStation 1 there then, wasn't that from the 90s? 

Me... It will be there, I'm just waiting for them to iron out the creases. The emulator on the PS1 mini isn't smooth and the games collection is missing tomb raiser, spyro the dragon and crash bandicoot. 

Visitor... This must have been expensive. 

Me...  Sort of, I am building it bit by bit, excuse the pun. It started out as a high table with shelving behind, then I added 2 stool chairs. Then I added another high table and pushed them together then another stool and then the TV screen and mini sega mega drive. I spread the load over a long time and people buy presents for my bar on my birthday and Christmas, things like the novelty bar light sign on the sheving and the little Mario brothers doll. 

Visitor... Why in the sitting room? 

Me... Where else? my home is small.

Visitor... When you are able to buy a house with an extra room then it would be a proper man cave and you could add a pool table. 

Me... That is what I was thinking, but for now it will just have to be in the sitting room. Anyway the bar stools rotate so you can watch TV. 

Visitor...  Very cool. Let's play Chill. 

Windy Day

Jacob, My son. The things that are relevant to your time as a toddler is Bamboo, Illegal immigrants and machines playing dumb. I will explain. 

When we go to the shops I notice more and more products are being made with Bamboo plant fibers. Bamboo looks and feels like wood but it isn't wood, it is in the grass family. I see tooth brushes made of bamboo, coffee cups, boxes, all sorts of things like that. Plastic is the devil's material so Bamboo is the ethical breakthrough to replace it. 

Very often I see on the news immigrants coming into the UK on small boats. I don't have any negative feelings towards them, I think there are bigger issues like the cost of living and the £2 trillion UK debt, I think that is the highest amount of dept the UK has ever had. 

The other thing is machines playing dumb, my radio can pick up DAB (Digital Audio Broadcasting). The entire signal on DAB turns on an off in pulses to encode characters that describe how to assemble the sound. A micro processor is required to interpret the code, this means my radio is actually a computer that pretends to be a transistor radio. Another example is the retro flashback consoles. The emulator that upscales the graphics for modern TVs uses more computing power then the original system that is displaying, so when you are playing a mini sega, you are actually using a powerful computer that is pretending to be an old sega mega drive. It is doing several times more work than the original system ever did to make that game work on modern TV sets, adding pixels and smoothing out the graphics, things like that. 

There it is

I made an attempt to draw the 90s Gaming bar that I want to build, I simplified it and drew it with a pen but it would look something like this 

I will describe it from the wall back. There would be rows of shelves. The tops of the shelves would have TV screens on them for the flashback games consoles that sit on the bar table. The screens would sit in a retro case so they look like the old CRT screens.  In the picture there is only one TV screen to keep the diagram simple. The lower shelves would house novelty lighting to make it look like a bar. Then there would be rows of tall thin tables that are pushed together to look like a bar table. The bar table would have mini flashback consoles on it that are raised slightly to protect them from spilt drinks. Next to the bar tables are seating stools. 

Later when I can put the man cave in a room on its own there would be arcade cabinets in a row that form a wall to partition the bar from the rest of the man cave. That's it... 

Got to draw it

This week while I was queueing, waiting or doing something very boring, my mind was inside my man cave, a place that doesn't exist but is waiting to be made. My man cave exists in different phases. 

Phase 1, is a shoe Box with my hand held games consoles. This phase already exists. 

Phase 2, Is a Bar with Flashback consoles in it and a recliner with big screen. 

Phase 3, is the "Happy Zone" man cave room. A whole room inside my home specifically for liesure. Filled with playing tables such as pool and table tennis. 

Phase 2 is straight forward. What you would do is buy 3 high thin tables and push them together. Then on the other side of the table from where you would sit would be coolers that are filled with drinks. Behind that would be a space to walk and then behind that would be shelving that is filled with small themed lamps that decorate the bar, nested between the lamps is Tiny TV screens that are connected to the flashback 90s games consols, the TV screens are inside boxes so they look like old TVs. Later some of the games consoles would be made into arcade cabinets, the arcade cabinets would partition the bar from the rest of the man cave so the 90's gaming bar would be a man cave inside a man cave. I really need to draw it if I can find the time. 

Arcade Cabinet

I was looking at flashback home arcade systems on YouTube. The two that stand out to me are Neo Geo and Capcom because I was a kid in the 90's. 

Someone should tell the YouTubers that they can be used to make a arcade cabinet, that is why they send loads of stickers. Someone should also tell them not to waste 3 minutes showing the box it came in, I don't care about the box. 

The two companies made fighting and shooting games in the 90's. Not sure which one is better, Neo Geo or Capcom. I don't think they should be compared, it is best to have both for your man cave ( liesure room).

90s-a and 90s-b

I split the 90s decade up in my head into two parts

90s-A and 90s-B. 90s-A was the first 5 years of the 90's decade and 90s-B is the last five years. 

90's-A was all about VHS casset tapes being used to store video. I liked VHS, the tapes were the size of a small book and nested in a plastic sheath that opened on one side. For some reason the recording ones were usually sold in a pack of 3 for £5, something like that . You would push the tapes into a letter box slot on the VCR and a robot thing would snatch it from you, open the sheaf then press the tape onto a reading head, it was a missed opportunity in my view, they could have given the machine a barking sound like a dog when it ingests the cassette. 90s-A was about Games consoles that ran on a 16 bit processor so you could play side scrolling 2D games with a smooth finish and plenty of multilayered graphics.  It is the birthplace of domestic internet, some clever guys realised that you could use a modem through the telephone to connect computers together with the existing commercial internet. 

90's-B was all about games consoles that were powered by 32bit processors so the rapid memory was big enough to store many polygons and graphics, 3D open world games were being developed. It was about the Euro tunnel opening so you could take a train from London to Paris under the sea. It was about everyone realising what the internet was and trying to get it in their homes. Those days ISPs were just phone numbers that your modem would dial up but broadband was very close by. It was also about wide spread use of the DVD, I didn't like DVDs. I thought that the players that could record to them were very expensive and very unreliable.

Flashback rehash

I would like to collect all the flashback games consoles that are being released to put in my 90s gaming bar in my future man cave. At the moment my man cave is a small shoe-box where I keep my Nintendo 3DS, Phone with re-released classic games and my blue tooth joystick, I hope to expand my man cave in the near future so it takes up the space of a walk in Cupboard or part of a sitting room that has been partitioned by furniture or a shed, anywhere you can fit a small recliner sofa and TV screen. Then the final phase would be a large room that is especially for liesure, a place you can fit everything, pool table, table tennis, football table and the small drinks bar that is themed with 90s gaming with flashback consoles and small screens. All the flashback consoles have to be based on real 90's only consoles, so no rehashed Atari's or Xboxes. They would be SNES (super Nintendo entertainment system), SEGA mega Drive (Sega Genesis in America), Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, NEO Geo, Play station 1, and Capcom 

The Capcom guys like their logo a lot, ha ha. Neo Geo and Capcom games are all those top down shooters and Fighting games. 

When I think of the 90s, I split the 90s into two parts. 90s-a and 90s-b. 90s-a is the first five years of the 90s and it was the Fourth generation games consoles that ran on 16bit processors. The 16 bit processors allowed the devices to have over 50,000 bytes of rapid memory. This means that 16 bit games consoles could fill a TV screen with thousands of pixels and render side scrolling games smoothly.  Then 90s-b was the fifth generation games consoles with 32 bit processors that could have over 2 billion bytes of rapid memory, these consoles were designed to run 3D Open world games. Nintendo 64 had a 64 bit processor but the rest of the motherboard was 32 bit, so it ran as a 32 bit system so I will still call it 32 bit. Sorry Nintendo! 

I will talk about 90s-a and 90s-b later. 

Saturn shadow

At the end of the 90's, Sega had created a games console that reads games stored on an optical drive. They called it the Sega Saturn. The games console was considered a commercial failure because it sold less than 10 million units worldwide. Every person I know that has a view about it has a slightly different opinion. Some people think they released it too early, others think it is because game developers didn't like the hardware. 

My view is simple, it was because of Nintendo and Sony. All the main game franchises of the Nintendo 64 were made into open-world 3D 3rd person platformers, games like, Mario 64, Kirby, Zelda, Donkey Kong 64, Star fox. They were all made to be fun and 3D, with Nintendo it was all about the games. Sony Playstation had a large collection of Games and often sold cheaply as a bundle console and game package. Sega focused on the hardware and their main games franchises didn't go into 3D very well, most of them were "beat em up" games like streets of rage and golden axe and Sonic wasn't fun in 3D. Despite having a superior console it didn't sell very many units. It was 

a brilliant system but the other guys won in the market. That is only my view based on my observations, it is not a definitive explanation. What is your view?

90's Alan

I imagined a conversation with 90's Alan

Me... "Hey 90's AL, how are you?" 

90's Alan.. I'm fine, how are you? 

Me... Not bad, our world has changed so much. 

90's Alan.. really? How? 

Me... The world wide Web will be speeded up and called the internet and people will buy everything through it, even bananas. They will also watch TV through the internet. The Planet Pluto will no longer be called a planet. The twin trade towers will be knocked down by airplanes, which will give president Bush an excuse to attack Iraq. 

90's Alan..  really and why wouldn't Pluto be called a Planet. 

Me... Because "Sedna", "Make Make" and countless other objects with a similar mass that behave like commets would also need to be called planets so they decided to create a subclass called a "dwarf planet". This class includes the Asteroid Ceres, Sedna, Make Make and even our moon if it wasn't orbiting the Earth. 

90's Alan.. Why did they crash planes into the trade towers? was it an accident?

Me... I thought it was an accident until the second plane hit the second tower, at that moment everyone on Earth knew what it was. You know, there is so much more but I won't say anymore because you are not ready to hear it. Pandemics, everything made smart, phone speakers, things like that. See you later

90' Alan... ok bye for now. 

Peddle away

In a way this Blog is a bit like a time machine because my thoughts stay fresh for years. The trouble with time machines is that you would need to keep your body inside the vehicle, otherwise you would send your back to the future or you could go to the 15 century without a bum, plus the solar system is moving constantly so you will find yourself in empty space anyway. 

The thing I was thinking about now was electric bikes. I would like to see a full powered electric bike for £500 or less with good build quality and more than four fifths customer rating. A bike that gets me around effortlessly. I look and observe around me. They are getting close to my specification. 

I think they should redesign the bike so there is a comfy seat above the front wheel and another above the back wheel and one in the middle and a canopy to keep the wind and rain out of the passengers face. Perhaps an electric bike that steers and drives itself. 

Yellow green chill

In Christmas 2019 we had a snap election to break the Brexit deadlock. We had a political earthquake throughout the kingdom. Most of England and Wales turned blue and Scotland turned yellow and northern Ireland turned Green. What had happened is Scotland and Northern Ireland showed us that the EU is more important to them than the UK. Being British isn't important to them, at least not as much as the EU. The English and the Welsh voted conservative showing they wanted to get Brexit over with and finished quickly. 

If the SNP cut Scotland off from England and Sinn Fein unite Ireland as a single republic and only England and Wales are in the United Kingdom of Great Britain then what would it mean to be British? Would it be easier for me to call myself English? Or Would we call ourselves lesser Britain? Or formally GB? Or Perhaps Britain itself would become a republic. This is not a new idea, we had devolution in Scotland a few years back the union referendum in Scotland was a close shave, I'm sure Mr Tight fist himself lost some hair over it, not as much as his EU referendum result. 

Sonic and Knuckles dock

I was a kid in the 90s and I was given a Sega Mega Drive. Most of my readers are American so I will just like to point out the sega Genesis and Mega Drive are the same thing, the Sega genesis was in America and Mega Drive in Europe, the European's TVS worked differently, they use PAL video encoding and Americans use NTSC, different refresh rates and number of scan lines. Now all TVs made can interpret both. 

I loved to play computer games on my Sega Megadrive and there was one game that blew my mind twice, let me explain. 

Sega released Sonic the hedgehog then sonic 2 and Sonic 3. Then came an amazing game, Sonic and knuckles. What the game does is it has a cartridge dock on the top of it, this allows another cartridge to be plugged into it. You can play the sonic and Knuckles on its own. But if you plugged the sonic 2 game into the top it would edit the ROM as it loads and remove sonic and tails and replace them with Knuckles the Echidna. Echidnas are mammals that look like Hedgehogs plus they lay eggs, strange but true. You could then play sonic 2 as knuckles, so it was a different game. If you plugged sonic 3 onto it, the two games would merge into a bigger game. So if you had sonic 2 and Sonic 3 and sonic & knuckles you would have 5 games. I thought that was cool. 

Later I learned that what had happened is the cartridges had a limited capacity so sega had found a way to make a game that has more graphics and sound and game maps than  could fit on one cartridge by adding a port to one of the cartridges. So if you play sonic 3 with knuckles, you are playing a game that won't fit on one cartridge. They called it "lock on" technology. They saved a fortune because the games could be made in the same factory as the other ROMs. They made a game that doesn't fit on a cartridge without making a new format like CD. To me that is Amazing twice. It is Amazing to buy 3 games and get 5 and it is Amazing to push the technology more that it can go by thinking outside the box. 

In this time I can't talk about this amazing thing because my social status is small in society. I don't have enough friends to talk about the Sonic and knuckles lock-on cartridge so I will just share it in here. 

Family Death

Last Saturday my Grandad on my wife's side of the family passed away. He was infected with the Covid19 virus and died from Pneumonia related to the disease. I would say that he definitely died before his time because he had a lot of energy. At my wedding he danced more than the other guests. I learned that he was in the military and mastered several musical instruments and was very active up until recently. I feel pity for everyone that knows him better than me because he seems like a wonderful man and they will feel a bigger loss. 

There was a language barrier so I didn't get a chance to know him better. I wanted him to meet his great-grandson but the Pandemic caused our flight to be blocked and cancelled. At least he saw his great grandson on video chat through the internet. 

It is important to make every day count because my days are numbered. A time will come when I can live no more and will leave this world. I must do something constructive every day and visit a new place every week. I try to learn a new thing. 

Too Hot Day

Jacob, my son. It is your second summer in this world. The most recent changes that have emerged in you is that you try to climb over barriers, you lift your little leg on and try to pull it over. 

I sit with you on the sofa and we watch word learning videos on YouTube. Also when you fall over you put your hand in the way to stop your head hitting the ground. You seem to like outside more than inside, perhaps because there is more to explore. 

You also like to open and shut cupboard doors over and over and over again and to push your toy car over and spin the wheel around. It was while you were a young toddler that a dockside warehouse full of Ammonia Nitrate exploded in Beirut, Lebanon. The blast was so powerful that it created a mushroom cloud and a small localised earthquake. 

Beirut and WH Smith

Recently there was a very large explosion in Lebanon, it was as powerful as a low-yeild nuclear blast.  The origin of the explosion wasn't malice or conflict, it was an accident. A warehouse full of explosive material caught fire, where I come from they call that an 'open and shut case'. Well, I feel pity for all the families that lost someone, I'm no stranger to tradgedy myself, will say no more. It is hard to look at the footage of the explosion, it looks terrible.  There was a large mushroom cloud that rose up into the air, just like in a real nuclear explosion. I Hope I don't see anything like that again! 

Earlier in the week I learned that WH Smith is laying off over a thousand staff because they were losing money. I like WH Smith, I would go into WH Smith and look at all the Annual booklets, sometimes they would call them bookazines. They were extra large magazines that summarize the whole year of publishing. There is a magazine for everything, fishing, gaming, music, science, media, you name it, they have it. I think the last thing I bought from them is a Phyphon programming guide, I wanted to get back into game development. I never got around to it really but the interest is still there. I love the smell of the place and looking at all the books, they have books of biographies mostly and a few of the big authors, JK Rolling, Steven King, people like that. I read "who goes there" by John Campbell. It is the source book for the sci-fi horror "the thing" it is nice to compare the book to the movie and see what they cut out of the movie, it makes the movie more interesting when you have read the book. 

Confusion

This week is all about confusion.  There was a nuclear explosion in Beirut city yesterday but it wasn't a nuclear explosion, I'm guessing that someone was smoking inside a fireworks warehouse, that habbit is very bad for your health. The fireworks warehouse house was next to a fertilizer warehouse, the explosion was so large that it created a mushroom cloud. Ouch. I feel pity for all the people that were injured and killed. 

The Atari corporation has released a retro and modern games consol but they also haven't at the same time. I can't find the Atari VCS anywhere. It is like the Atari VCS doesn't exist. They made a hand held games consol that looks very cool. 

I think that wood is going to make a comeback in modern devices. Bamboo is the new super material, it grows very fast and has the look and feel of wood, I also think it is more flexible than wood. To me bamboo is wood and not wood at the same time, if that makes sense. I have a feeling that bamboo and wood will become very popular on hardware like car dash boards and radios because plastic is like the devil's material and companies that stop using it win popularity in the market. 

Spock o clock

Sometimes I feel like I am turning into Spock from Star Trek. My ears are getting bigger and I apply an orderly system to everything I do, and I show my emotions less often. 

Ordinary people like myself apply a balanced approach to spending. For instance I only buy one item of clothing per week. Sometimes I buy a multipack, like 3 boxer shorts, then I wait three weeks to buy the next item such as a t-shirt, or I will buy a pack of two t-shirts for £5 and wait 2 weeks to buy the next item. I get 52 items of clothing every year, including socks. Some cheap grocery stores will sell sleeve shirts for £4 in a metal spoked basket in between some welding masks and drill sets. 

That is the way an ordinary man lives, they refresh their clothes but not too quickly, they try to spread the load over a year and a half. Eventually replacing all their old clothes but not too quickly. 

SpaceX and the moon

I was reading about Elon musk's goal to reach Mars in the near future. I even think they want to change the atmosphere of the planet so it is more like the planet Earth. 

In my view it would be Easier to change the moon then Mars. All the moon needs is a strong magnetic field and it would build its own atmosphere. Dust crashes into the moon all the time and some of the dust contains gases. The solar wind knocks the gass molecules away from the moon's surface because it doesn't have a magnetic field. The moon Titan is only slightly bigger than Earth's Moon but it has a thick atmosphere because it is inside Saturn's magnetic field and it is far from the Sun the solar wind is weaker there. 

Imagined that if the moon had a weak magnetic field it may link up with the Earth's magnetic field and form a bigger magnetic field and that would just be enough to deflect the solar wind particles. Then as dust and Gases collide with the moon they would stay there and build up the moon's atmosphere. Unfortunately the moon is outside Earth's magnetic field right now so it has no shield. 

Nice Day

Jacob, my Son.

If I have been killed by a disease or Hazard that was out of my control before you read this and want advice on dating then I would say a few things. 

People often judge other people by the way they dress and their outward appearance. If you wear old clothes that are slightly damaged then people will think you are stupid or have a poor moral fabric, excuse the pun. Humans are very poor at judging other people, if aliens took humans to other planets then they wouldn't allow them to work as judges or inspectors because they will make poor judgements based on appearance. A man could have a tattoo on his face and the jury would think he is guilty of because of the way he looks, especially if the tatoo said the word guilty, they would say he has a guilty look on his face. 

My point is that you should wear clothes that are not to old and damaged. Try to buy one clothing item per week or once every two weeks and discard the clothing that is worn out the most. I will say no more.