Outstanding by fun

It's cold, it is dark, the world is sick and I get spurts of stress. To get through the day I use my usual coping mechanisms. I read, play and imagine, write and pray. 

I keep my dreams alive, I watch videos on YouTube of "arcade1up" and "myarcade" merchandise and dream of the day when I will have a collection of arcade machines and share my hobbies with visitors and guests. 

The "happy zone" liesure room, the place to forget about the world for a while and be lost in a hobby or two.

Slowly, the collection has started. I will keep every game that is outstanding because of fun, Tetris, Galaga, Pacman, Street fighter and Mario cart. The ageless classics that were never about graphics. 

Witch Hunt

Not too long ago in the middle ages and up till the 1750s, thousands of people were accused of being a witch and killed in the most violent way possible, with fire. There is nothing more violent in this world than burning a person to death. Every nerve ending maxes out fully and every cell it split open and the blood boils and flows out. The skin is destroyed and all the organs stop working. Death is certain and very painful. 

Every last one of those people that were burned were innocent because witches are supernatural beings that use magic to harm others. No human in this world can do that. What would happen is something bad would happen to one person, then they would think it was because of another person, the suspicion would spread through a town or village.  There would be mass hysteria in a village when things were going wrong.  

I often wonder if I would become part of the mass hysteria if I lived in a village amoungst a person  accused of being a witch in that time period. Would I help them build the fire? Would I believe the other people that are around me or would I be the guy that thinks it was nonsense? Would I be cheering as their hair melts and skin peels off? Would I be one of them? I don't know. I hope I would be the guy that thinks it is nonsense and doesn't get involved. 

My little world traffic light

In my little world everything works differently, everything. It is not better or worse just totally different. 

Even a traffic light in my little world would work differently. In my little world there would be four coloured lights on a traffic light signal. "Red" to stop and wait, "Amber/orange" to prepare for a change, "green" to go and "Blue" for dormant signals. The blue light is the same as green but it is warning you that the other lanes in the junction are not being controlled so be cautious. The blue lights would come on at about 1 in the morning when there are very few cars on the road. The amber light would not sit under the red light but would be a bar on the side of the red and green lights that shrinks or grows to show the driver how long he has before the lights change, it would be like a countdown timer that takes about 7 seconds to expand or retract. 

The pedestrian crossing lights would also be totally different, they would just be a heads up sign and would not resemble a traffic light until a pedestrian presses the button to cross. When they press the button the text disappears and the green light shows with the orange bar on the side expanding upwards, when the orange bar has fully expanded the green light turns off and red light turns on. Then the orange light shrinks again, when it reaches the bottom the red light turns off and green light turns on. Then the green light shrinks and the heads up text returns to the screen. 

Atari VCS 800 slap

Back in the 90s, the Atari corporation went bankrupt. They went out with a bang, they made some amazing games consoles. Atari Jaguar and Atari lynx hand held with full colour screen. I like the first person shooter games like Doom and Wolfenstein that appeared on the consols. I would have chosen the Atari jaguar myself if I had a choice. 

I recently learned that a company has bought the Atari trade mark and remade a modern version of their retro consol called the Atari 2600. They are calling it the Atari VCS 800, or Atari box. This company is taking crowd funding and making a modern version of the retro Atari. They are setting it up so it can be used as PC and will boot any operating system that will run on ATX standard motherboards. (Windows and Linux). 

The problem is the price is about the same as the PlayStation 5 and is being released at the time, but it has less computing power. Also, everyone is being left in the dark about what the consol can do, the 11 thousand crowd funders and all the people that have pre-ordered it. And some people are looking between the lines, they are seeing a normal ATX computer that is being put in a retro case. Plus the Atari vault is very cheap so all the retro games can be bought cheaply on other consols. 

I want it to be successful, if I was loaded I would add it to my man cave, even if it was a rip off. Well, we will see what happens this winter, it will be very interesting. 

Failed movie

A few years ago I tried to make a feature length movie for youtube, I believe I recorded my intention  in this blog. The movie was going to a documovie about our amazing world. The project was a failure. What had happened is I tried to make the whole movie in one chunk and I made up the story as I went along. The time line in the movie was getting messed up and it just turned into a mess. Although I failed to make a movie I walked away with a lesson, I learned that to make a movie, the story comes first. When you make a story you have to break the story up into parts then you split the parts up into scenes. If you break the movie up into 15 minute chunks then you can make sure that each 15 minute scene is in working order and would play well on their own. Then you bring together all the 6 or more 15 minute scenes in an editor software and publish your 1 & ½ hour plus movie. 

The other lesson is my voice. I need to make my voice strong and a bit more lively. My short documentary videos are not very popular and that is partly because I am the narrator. If my short documentaries become popular, then I can make a whole movie. So before I make a second attempt to make a movie I will improve my voice, I will record my narration in my car where I won't worry about disturbing anyone.

If my movie is successfully finished, I would call my movie "Alanasis ~ How Amazing" or something like that and it would be about everything that is Amazing. 

The scenes don't need to be made in the same order they play in, I learned that from one of my favourite movies "the thing". The destroyed Norwegian base in the movie was shot at the end after they destroyed the set of the American base. This allowed them to save money. Instead of destroying two sets they destroyed one set and filmed it again at the end as the discovery of the Norwegian base. The destroyed Norwegian base appears near the beginning of the movie but it was actually filmed at the end and edited that way. That is something to think about. The scenes should be filmed in the order that is easiest to do, not necessarily in chronological order. 

Free School meals cut

The government has voted to cut free school meals from schools. I'm not really in control of what the government does. Once we have elected them, they make big decisions on our behalf. 

I think it would be a good idea for parents to give their children jacket potatoes and busicuits as part of their meal. In the market place you can buy a 7 killogram sack of potatoes for less than £5. You would probably give them about 250 grams worlth  of potatoes for each meal so that works out as about 17p. Plus a few biscuits and a fruit, about 25p. Potatoes contain a small amount of everything, they contain iron which is good for the blood, they contain carbohydrates in the potato starch, they contain proteins in the skin and just under the skin, potatoes also contain fat plus the sauce that your kid would use probably contains fat, they would get most the nutrition they would need from that at a very low price. 

The other option I thought of is to make pasta or rice and sauce, use a microwave to boil pasta in a bowl then add sauce and fry some bread in olive oil and cut it into strips and add tomato puree and add it to the pasta. Again it would cost about 20 to 25p if you buy it in bulk. The total cost would be £1 to £1.25 per week.

I can't control what the government does but I give out some ideas to parents. 

In my little world

My mind is a little world, a kind reflection of the real world but everything would work slightly differently. 

If my mind became the real world then you would find yourself in a strange place.  It would be common to find slides for adults in my world. It would be a legitimate mode of transport, just like a lift. The slide would spiral around like a helter skelter or go towards an important location. Slides have two directions, forwards and downwards. 

On a metro rail system, people can take a slide down to the platform, the slide would have rollers with magnets in them. As the rollers spin, the magnetic field would move through wires below and generate electricity to help the station with power slightly, it wouldn't be enough to power the lights in the train station but it would help a bit. To leave the station, pedestrians would walk up a twisting ramp with a very shallow slope so people wouldn't realize they are ascending several meters upwards by walking. Slides would be everywhere, shopping malls, government buildings, multi-story car parks. Some slides would just be a sheet of metal, others would be rollers. The slides would have a self cleaning system, the pedestrian's bum wipes the dust off the slide surface, simple and effective. 

Rev 9 Locust

If there is one thing I would like to draw it is Locusts of the abyss in Revelation chapter9. There is a fairly long description of them in the book. It says they Have a face like a man, long hair like a woman, a body like a horse, they sting like Scorpion and their wings sound like many horses galloping. They also have features of a lion and they wear gold on their heads or something like that. 

It says they will cause immense pain to mankind and stop them from killing themselves. Perhaps their sting would paralyse them for 5 months. I don't know. 

I need to use my imagination to try and draw them. On YouTube many people have a different idea of what these beings are. Some people think they are Demons from hell, others think they are machines like helicopters. Some people think they are aliens and the abyss is space. 

If you lookup rev9 locust on YouTube, you will see what I am talking about. Or if you look up locust of the abyss  then you will see many videos of people's theories and premonition dreams. 

In my little world

In my little world everything would work differently. Electric cars would work a lot like Diesel Electric trains. They would have batteries but not enough power cells to drive very far. They would have very small petrol engines that don't power the wheels directly, the engine would be used to generate electricity for the electric motor. When you are waiting at the traffic lights, the fuel engine is spinning frantically to recharge the batteries. The fuel engine would cost about £200 and be just strong enough to spin an electric generator. The roof of the car would be a 4 or 5²m solar panel. Sunlight would help the car to charge up its power cells more quickly. 

The fuel engine would be very small and weak, it would slide out of the car easily and the fuel tank would sit on top of the engine so it wouldn't need a fuel pump, gravity would pull the fuel into the engine as the throttle opens. There would only be two connections between the fuel engine and the car, a fuel line and power out socket, that's it. It would be bolted down in the bonnet just like a harddisk on a desktop computer. 

The batteries would be very strong but they would only store enough power to take the car 20 kilometres. When the car is parked, the fuel and electric engine would both be switched off but sunlight would help to finish recharging the batteries through the solar panel that is integrated into the roof. 

If you wanted to go more than 20 kilometres it would be fine because the small fuel engine and solar panels would help to top up the charge and slow down the charge depletion. 

The electric motor wouldn't work very hard because there are no excess parts, the car wouldn't weigh much, there would be no exhaust pipe, no clutch, no gears, the fuel engine would weigh as much as a lawnmower engine, about 8 killograms and the electric motor would weigh the same. 

That is the way I think. It is not necessary right or wrong, just a thought that may never get beyond this blog. 

I'm a planeteer

In the 90s I would watch Captain planet and I would sing the chorus of the theme song. 

"We're the planeteers, you can be one too, saving our planet is the thing to do. Using and polluting is not the way, hear what captain planet has to say". I think the song went something like that.

It suddenly dawned on me that I am a planeteer because I stop loads of bread from being thrown into landfill. I go into a shop and buy all the bread that is being reduced to 30p and put them all in my deep freezer, then in the morning when I wake up I break off slices of frozen bread from a frozen loaf and put it in the toaster. I have to turn the thermostat on my toaster higher for frozen bread but it comes out just fine. I have a never ending supply of toast that won't go bad. 

I also freeze reduced milk and then leave it in the fridge overnight to thaw. I use the milk for my porridge oats. I have dark brown sticky sugar that I put on my oats. I microwave one cup of oats and one cup of milk for 3 minutes then I mix the dark brown sticky sugar, they taste delicious. 

I don't know what ring I would have, electricity perhaps? "Earth!, Water!, Wind, ice, Electricity. Go captain planet have some toast and oats, say hi to the thunder cats". 

 

Vectrex, my Verdict

I see myself as an armchair backseat marketing expert, armed with a lifetime of hindsight from observing the fate of companies in the 90s and new millennium, I think it is a position every other person would fill in some way or another. 

Well, in the 80s there was a kind of struggle. The cost of making micro processors was very high compared to today because they couldn't be made very quickly. In fact the new google chrome that costs less than £50 would be considered a super computer at the time I was born. The common processor in the 80s was a z80, it was an 8 bit processor. 8 bit processors dominated the 80s and had a presence in the early 90s in all the hand held games consoles. 

There was one device that caught my attention recently, the Vectrex. The smiths electronic company wanted to make a table top games consol that had its own screen but still be affordable and have decent graphics, for a very short time they pulled it off. The Vectrex had a black and white screen but the games came with translucent overlays, the overlays would have coloured tints and graphics printed on it so you would put it on the screen, it would make the games on it appear to be multicoloured. If they did have a true coloured screen they would need to make sacrifices on other parts of the system like the size of the screen would need to be smaller to allow the processor to keep up, or maybe the sounds would be less detailed. 

To cut a long story short, I would say it was a failure because they didn't sell enough of them to make a significant profit and they gave up. What had happened is many people in the 80s were buying their own TVs so they didn't need a game system with its own screen so the system appeared overpriced and screen was black and white.  Naming one of your computer games "Rip off" didn't help. I just wonder what would happen if they kept going, if they made the Vectrex 2 and they remained in the home gaming market to this day? What would Vectrex gaming system look like today and what would it be like to play it? Perhaps there would be a Vectrex 12 or something like that. 

Alan Pasta

When I cook food for myself, I often balance time with quality. If I don't want to spend too much time cooking I will put pasta into a ceramic bowl and fill the bowl with water, then I will microwave the bowl for 20 minutes. My microwave oven is weak compared to other microwaves, more powerful microwaves would need less time. 

When the microwave has finished I would remove the excess water and mix a table sauce into the pasta instead of cooking a bolonase sauce. I would add tomato ketchup and catch up with the news. I would add peri peri lemon and herbs and think of something superb. 

I wonder what Gordon Ramsay would think of my cooking, My parents always told me if you pull faces it will stay like that when the wind changes. I guess it would also be true of an angry face. 

I swear

I hear more swearing now than ever before. People are always angry. Swear words are so old, they should make up new ones. I thought of some modern ones. 

Frack you! and your Garden for shale gas. 

Your motherboard is stupid.

Put a smart chip in your brain and meditate you chipmonk!

I can't imagine putting a microchip in my brain. Even if the chip allows me to play a mario cart game on a screen that floats in my vision. Even if the chip has Netflix on it and I watch movies while I work. The only chip the goes into my head is made of potatoes. 

Narration breakthrough

Yesterday night I created a one minute short documentary video for my YouTube channel. The biggest flaw in the video is the sound. My voice isn't very clear on there. That is because I didn't want to wake up my young son and wife while they were sleeping. To overcome this problem next time, I will record the narration in my car before I start my job or when I am parked somewhere. I can then bluetooth the sound file to the little smart box from my phone. 

The key is to write the narration out then print the narration, then I will record the audio in my car while I wait for my job to start. 

My car is a vehicle that takes me to my job and home, it is also a classroom where I learn Spanish, now it is a sound recording studio. The one place where I can project my voice for recording without causing a problem for other people.

Five pence video

Last night was a new first, I created a one minute short documentary video on a droid box. I used a £25 smart android TV box to create, edit, publish and post a one minute video. The video has the same look and feel as the other short documentaries I made. If you can make a one minute video on a droid box then I'm sure you can make a 5 minute and 10 minute video. I chose that topic because I knew it would be very quick, I would go straight to the point. The purpose of this video is to experiment with the abilities of the hardware I was using, to see what my little box of keeps can do. 

One lesson I have learned about making short documentaries is that the story comes first. First you do your research and write out the audio lines and then record the narration. After that you build the graphics around the narration audio. Then you polish off the animations and play it through a few times to find mistakes. I tried to make a feature length 90 minute movie about amazing things in the past but it was messy and unplanned so the project failed. 

The planing and story always comes first. If I do make an "Alanasis" 90 minute movie I will make it 15 minutes at a time and follow a plan. Then I would stitch the 6 videos together in the editor. It is on the bucket list. 

Three lines and three dots

Very often when I am interacting with software on my smart phone, I will find that to open a menu I press an image with three dots or three lines. 

Three dots or three lines has become the standard way to open or expand a menu on an app. While I was using Chrome browser I found a very useful menu item. 

the "add to home screen" menu item allows me to add links to web pages on the desktop, the links sit with the start icons for apps. Some sites don't seem to have a standard app of their own, like Britannica encyclopedia so I created a desktop shortcut to the site that sits next to my Wikipedia app in the same folder. I read both encyclopedias to compare an article or topic for the sake of accuracy. 

I am the only person I know of that spends more time reading encyclopedia articles than using social media. I don't spend very much time on social media at all, sometimes I only use social media for 1 minute to share my blogs. 

Bluetooth

I read through the article about bluetooth. The logo for bluetooth is the initials of Harrold Bluetooth (Viking king of denmark) and the blue bit is a blueberry. The king unified Denmark, he loved to eat a lot of blueberries to the point where is mouth turned blue. The old Viking character for H resembled a line the an X in the middle. 

If a technology was named after me it would be a slice of bread plus letter A and B pushed together, perhaps with a cup of coffee in the logo. 

Anyway, bluetooth is lots of different connection technologies put together. Different profiles but they all use ultra high frequencies (UHF). This means the waves are over a million Hertz and are about 10cm wide. Most of the transmitters are deliberately weak to be power efficient because they only need to transmit a few meters. 

There is class one two and three blue tooth transmitters. Class one is very weak and used for devices that are near. Class two is for 10 meters, most devices use class 2. Then you have class 3, it has no upper limit, you could fill a whole valley with the signal. 

On Wikipedia, there are so many related articles to the Bluetooth one that I rediscovered reading lists. On the Wikipedia app you can open a menu on an article and add it to a reading list for later. It is a very useful feature.

Nephew on the way

Last week I learned that my Brother's wife is expecting a Boy, this means I will have more than three Nephews, my wife's sister has a son and my Brother has a son and one on the way that is due end of winter and my brother's wife's family also has sons.  His older brother was born at the start of Summer, it is nice to have a birthday where you can have a BBQ in your party, my birthday is in the middle of Summer. 

I am very happy to be an uncle again. I wish them a smooth and straightforward delivery before spring 2021. I look forward to meeting my new nephew that is less than two years younger than my son. 

At the time of learning of my future nephew, I had reached a phase of my life where I was merging some of my hobbies together. I am bringing my pen sketches into my videos and into my blog posts. I also write about some of the computer games that I play. I have five active hobbies at the moment, blogging, video making, sketching, video gaming and reading for liesure. I make them fit into my busy life by doing them bit by bit and saving the progress. I don't try to finish everything in one go, I aim for quality over quantity. I would be walking in a shop and writing a blog with one hand and then at home when my son is sleeping I would draw a picture with pens and paper. When I am laying in bed I will read an e-book on my phone or read a Wikipedia article. 

My goal is to make my hobbies very outstanding, to the point where millions of people around the world enjoy seeing them. I look for excellence like the Swiss and the Japanese. Excellence is the word, I'm not there yet. I'm no Bob Ross at drawing or Charles Dickens at writing but I do my best and try to improve every day. One day my work will be excellent by my own standards but not yet. 

Cool night

Jacob, my son. We are heading for Halloween, you imitated the laughing sound of a witch and vampire. I wonder what they find so funny? They are definitely not laughing at one of my jokes. 

You are more independent now and hate being picked up. I have seen how much you have changed. You were born when Therasa May was still at the helm, she resigned because there was a Brexit related deadlock in parliament and her cabinet couldn't make any progress. The whole house of commons was pulling in different directions over Brexit for 3 years and nothing was getting done. You were born during the Brexit deadlock. Then at the end of your infancy you learned to walk during the Pandemic. 

Being Consumed

One of the best states of mind to be in is to be completely consumed by something. For me it is reading a book about mysteries or playing a piont and click management game where you build things. 

That is being consumed, drinking a super strong coffee and connecting my Bluetooth joystick to my TV box and using it as a mouse so I can build beautiful things in the comfort of my couch. They made bluetooth 5 now. If I get the time I will try and find out what the difference is between Bluetooth 5 and Bluetooth 4. I think I will read through the whole Bluetooth article until I sleep. Wikipedia has an article for so many things. 

Bluetooth is like WiFi but it is weaker, it is used to connect two devices together. I can send files from my phone to my android box through bluetooth and I can connect input devices like keyboards and joysticks and I can connect output devices like headphones. Blue tooth has become a very versatile connection platform. 

Buses in my little world

If my little world was the real world, everything would work slightly differently. 

In my little world, bus stops would be integrated into roundabouts. The island in the middle of the roundabout would contain at least two asphalt aprons for buses to park on. When people get of the bus they find themselves on the roundabout Island with cars circling them. To get off the island they would walk up a ramp that would go to the pavement on the other side or down a ramp to a subway below. 

In my little world there are also bus parking asphalt aprons on the turns in the road so the bus wouldn't need to manoeuvre it would just remain in a turning state and straighten as it enters the bus stop and then the bus would just drive in a straight line to leave the bus stop. Does my little world in my head make any sense to other people? I don't know. 

In my little world, the island in the middle of a roundabout isn't a garden, but it may contain plants and large boxes. 

Miracles of this world

There is a mammal on this planet that lays eggs, it looks like a duck and a beaver at the same time. It also has a venomous sting behind its legs, it is called a Platypus and it is a type of monetreme. They live in Australia. 

It is a mammal because it has a four chambered heart and produces milk. And I think it has 3 ear bones to amplify sound. It has all the mammal features, except it lays eggs. 

If I am in the presence of a very young person, would they know that such a creature exists? Young people seem to know a lot of things but they miss the miracles of this world. They don't realize that the world around us is full of amazing things. 

To me it is important to observe that these things exist because they are amazing. They are more amazing than the celebrity lineup for a TV show. They are more amazing than a movie or a song. I want to live in a world where young people are telling me about amazing creatures that I never knew existed. I want them to tell me about historical events I didn't know about. I want to be the guy that listens. 

Point and Click haven

There are times when there is nothing to do but wait, like when you are laying down in bed at night and waiting to drift off. There would be something bugging you and keeping you awake sometimes.

All I have is praying, reading and playing. I play roller coaster Tycoon. It is a point and click management game. During the day time I have my active hobbies, blogging, video making and sketching. 

The best thing is when I connect my bluetooth controller to the android system. My bluetooth controller has two modes, games controller and mouse controller. I set my bluetooth joystick to mouse controller, the left analogue stick controls the mouse pointer, the right analogue stick also controls the mouse pointer but in slow motion. The left shoulder button that is used to control a gun in a game is used in mouse mode to left click and the right shoulder button is right click. When I play roller coaster Tycoon, I am consumed by the game and feel fine. Being consumed by something like drawing a picture or writing a blog brings peace in the mind. 

There are three roller coaster Tycoon games, I have one of them, roller coaster Tycoon 4 mobile. I want the original classic one from the turn of the millennium. There is also a 3d one where you can visit the park that you have created. I will get the other two soon. 

Gift of the rain

It has been raining incessantly for 2 days now. One thing I have noticed is when it rains a lot, I can get TV and radio from other valleys. The town I live in is in a very steep valley with very large hills. If it is raining a lot I will get extra digital TV channels when I retune the TV. I can even get radio from the Midlands and Surrey sometimes. 

The question is why? I have two theories, one is that the clouds are reflecting the signal back down to the ground and over the sides of the valley. The other is the rain itself is bending the signal around. 

I have no idea why I can get TV and Radio from other valleys when it is raining a lot, I guess I will just need to ask the all knowing internet when I have the time. Some of the TV I get when it is raining a lot is very nice. 

Trump Sick

I recently learned that Donald and Evanka Trump both have a Covid19 infection. I wish them both a quick recovery and good health. 

My country UK is trying to stop the Covid19 virus using a smart phone app. The idea is to create many dead ends for the disease, it tells you when you were near someone that had tested positive for covid19 so you can test yourself before you have symptoms and self isolate early so you won't transmit the disease to another person. I hope it works. I think it uses Bluetooth to scan other people's unique app ID. 

There is one test I would love to do but I have put it on ice because of the Pandemic. I would like to see what iphones do when you connect a Bluetooth input device to it. I have a bluetooth keyboard and touchpad, when I connect it to my android phone, my phone behaves like a desktop computer. A mouse pointer appears on the screen and the keyboard gets overridden by the Bluetooth one. This effect is the same with all android devices, phone, tablet, smart TV with android & bluetooth, android TV box with bluetooth, they all behave like a desktop pc when a bluetooth keyboard and mouse combo is connected to them. Would the same be true of an apple product? 

I will wait until the Pandemic is gone to find out, we get no visitors at the moment so there is no way for me to try. 

Trump and Biden

I watched the televised political debate between the two candidates for the next term as American president. I would compare it to a bulimia convention, they were bringing up everything except what I want to hear. 

I wanted to hear a plan to bring down the cost of living and get rid the deficit from government spending. I don't care about stuff they said the previous year and decade. 

They were both just saying how incompetent they think the other guy is. It was all tosh. I pity the people of America. You all saw two old men insulting and arguing for one and a half hours. I'm sure some Americans will just flip a coin to vote.