What April 2021 means to me

It was Easter and Passover during the first week of April this year. The weather was very nice most of the month. Roughly in the middle of the month we came out of lockdown, the non essential shops reopened and the hospitality sector went back business. I saw queues on the street for people to go into clothes shops and hair dressers, some of the queues were akin to the queues outside Northern Rock high-street bank the previous decade when they went bankrupt. They were queues fit for a roller coaster ride. Super queues that zig zaged down the street. 

Around the time the lockdown ended, prince Philip died. Then it was my son's second birthday and I tried untethered high quality virtual reality for the first time. It was the same day as Prince Philip's funeral. My son's second birthday was semi isolated because there was still restrictions for how many people can come into your home at one time.  A few days later I witnessed the first powered flight on Mars, the Inginuity drone/probe flew a few meters from the ground. Mars' atmosphere is very thin so the rotor blades had to spin very fast. 

Spirograph Dislodge

I don't know the word to describe it so I will call the issue I have the Spirograph dislodge. I wanted to create a catalog of all the gear pieces and all the holes to know all the different effects you can make. I started out with my favourite gear piece, the one with 56 teeth in a 96 teeth bracket. 

I marked each hole starting from the middle going outwards. As you get closer to the edge of the gear piece, it gets harder it is to control. The gear piece tries to jump out of the bracket and sometimes it dislodges itself from the bracket. 

Every gear piece is like that, the outer holes are unstable and cause it to dislodge from the bracket and mess up the sketch, you need a super steady hand to control it.  I was wondering, couldn't they just put a flange on the outside edge to stop the gear piece from dislodging itself. I don't swear very often but I let out a few swear words. 

"Frack your garden you piece of shit", something like that. 

Just a thought

Wouldn't it be cheaper for governments worldwide to give their citizens cheaply made bio hazard suits to wear when they are in public places than to put their country into lockdown? No? 

That is what I would do if I was the government, I would find a cheap way to get everyone a bio hazard suit and put hoses on the street to shower people and wash away virus particles before they take the suits off. Or the suits could be covered in an acidic gel or alcohol solution. 

The head section would be rigid and have holes in it to allow them to breathe but the holes would be away from their mouth. I put the holes in the top in the diagram as a joke because the shower would wet their head. In the real suit then holes would be at the back away from their mouth. Did I mention that no one laughs at my jokes? 

Judging by the number of infections, I think we will need a bio hazard suit for everyone because the virus can mutate and it is very similar to SARS, I remember that the mortality rate of SARS was 10%. That means it kills one in ten people that are infected. If 100 people were infected with SARS 10 will die, not a nice thought, Covid19 is almost identical to SARS. It wouldn't take much for a new strain to emerge that is equally leathal as SARS, just a slight mutation in the RNA sequence. 

Be Prepared I say.  

Sunny Day

Jacob my son, 

The best drink in this world is plain water, it is the most refreshing thing to drink when you are tired and thirsty. I advise that you be grateful for food because some of your ancestors didn't have much of it. We descended from communities that were faced with shortages of food. In the ancient times a local famine would be a disaster for the people because there was no global supply chain, people would starve and feel hungry all the time. 

I prepare simple but delicious food quite often. One thing I will do is put fusilli pasta  into a clay cerial bowl and fill the bowl with water and spices and a little bit of oil then put it in the microwave oven for 20 minutes. Sometimes I would cook the pasta plain and add mayonnaise to it. The outcome would be the same, a delicious meal that is quick to make and very cheap. 

Sometimes I manage to get a 7.5 kg sack of potatoes for £2 or close to that price in the market place. I would wash the potatoes and put them in my ceramic cooking bowl with pyrex lid and place it in the microwave for 20 minutes, I would then leave the potatoes in the bowl for another 40 minutes and they would continue to cook themselves with stored heat. Then I would put lemon and herb mayonnaise on them and eat them with the skin on. They taste delicious. It takes the potatoes 40 minutes to cool off when they are in the ceramic cooking bowl. 

Robot head Paradox

Some time ago I watched an episode of my favourite generation of star trek, 'Next geration' with Captain John Luke Picard. In that episode the starship enterprise accidentally flew through a worm hole and travelled back to 1800s Earth. They beamed down to earth and the Robot crew member called 'commander Data' had his head dislodged inside an abandoned mine shaft. They beamed the Robot back to the ship returned back to the present time. They went down the abandoned mine shaft and found his head was still there so they brought it back and reattached it and it worked just fine. 

If Commander Data was 50 years old and his head was sitting in a mine shaft for 500 years then how old is he? You could say he is 50 years old but then his head was sitting in a mine shaft for 500 years. But then if you say he is 500 years old, that would also be wrong because the man that created him wasn't born 500 years ago. He emerged 50 years ago. These sci-fi shows really make you think. 

The same is true if I have an organ transplant. If I am shot in the heart and my heart was replaced by a heart from a person that was born 10 years before me then how old am I? My heart is 48 years old and I am 38. 

My Spirograph Set

I have a large collection of different coloured pencils and pens, some of them are not much use to me. I find it quite hard to work with gel pens, I also have different coloured pencils and find the yellow, pink and peach coloured ones to be quite useless. 

 I thought to myself for a while if there was a way to use the pens and pencils that I don't like. Then I thought about Spirograph, Spirograph is a drawing set that helps to make repeating geometric patterns. 

I bought a Spirograph set and practiced drawing some 'Spirograph shapes'. I hope to use the Spirograph set to enhance my sketches and make use of all the pens and pencils I don't find useful. 

I used the paper that comes with the spirograph set to practice and get comfortable with using the drawing gears. This set came with two nested gear sets and one rack gear piece.  

I will use the Spirograph set to enhance my sketches and use up the ink and wax of the colours pens and pencils that I don't like. 

Derek Chauvin Guilty

We are in the last third of April and I learned a few days ago on Tuesday that Derek Chauvin the former police officer that caused George Floyd to die by kneeling on his neck was found guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter in American criminal courts. 

I'm sure that George's Family will be pleased with the verdict. I am happy for George Floyd's family. I don't have a negative view of the American Police because I know there are more than half a million of them. Some stats claim there are 700,000 others claim there are 600,000 , I'll call it 650,000. One percent of 650,000 is 6,500. Out of all those thousands of police officers, there are only a hand full of them that are reckless with people's safety. If you have half million of anyone, you will have harmful people amongst them. Here in the UK there are about 300,000 doctors and we had killer doctors like Harold Shipman amongst them. There are harmful people everywhere in every profession I believe. 

One question I always asked myself is would someone that causes death be sentenced less if their victims were a working class family? If a man caused a lady to die by dangerous driving would he be sentenced to less time in prison if the family of the victim were working class? Would the judge just say they are only working class so I will sentence him to just six months in prison? Would he be sentenced to more time in prison if the family were middle class or rich? That is a question I have wondered about for many years and may never get the answer. 

Two Thirds of April

On the 20th of April we were exactly ⅔ the way through April. I would say that the second third of April is the middle of Spring, the last part of spring will be during May. 

My son Jacob's birday is in the middle of April, in the middle of Spring. He is now 2 years old. Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh's funeral was on my son's birthday, he died a week before from age related health issues. I celebrated my son's birthday with a small amount of pity in mind because they were married for decades. A day after my son's birthday, the Inginuity drone flew on Mars, it was the first powered flight on another planet that we know of. The atmosphere of Mars is very thin so the rotor blades had to spin very fast but they managed to fly after a software glitch the previous week had been fixed. 

My brother brought his Oculus virtual reality headset with him and let me try it for the first time. It was the first time I used an untethered high quality virtual reality head set, I was very impressed. I like the idea of playing golf in virtual reality. You can teleport to the ball and the weather is always perfect and you can play when it suits you, like at three in the morning. 

Lockdown ended in the UK during the second third of April and I saw queues similar to ones outside Northern rock bank when they declared themselves bankrupt. The queues zig zagged down the whole street. 

I keep my chin up for a happy spring and summer. 

Son's Birthday

Yesterday on the 17th of April was my son's birthday, a day of Joy, wonder and pity. My son Jacob turned 2 and I was filled with Joy to see my little walking talking child celebrate his second birthday. Jacob is making good progress, he can count and recite the alphabet, he can also say basic phrases like hello and goodbye or Yes and No. 

My Brother's family came over to share the celebration and he brought his occlus rift with him. I was filled with wonder to use the Occlus virtual reality head set and controllers for the first time. I played a round of golf and danced with a robot and even played virtual reality angry birds on there. To me, the best thing to do on virtual reality is play golf because the weather is always nice in virtual reality (unless you are playing a horror game) and you can teleport to where the ball lands. I felt like I could reach down and touch the grass because the graphics were so good. Much better than phone virtual reality. 

I also felt pity because Prince Philip's funeral was on the same day and I thought how hard it must be to be married for so long and then be widowed, they had been married many years even when I was born they had been married for decades. 

Pa8it games console

We are half way through April and I was daydreaming about what a 90s games console would look like if it was designed by me. I gave it the name Pa8it, an abbreviation of the phrase 'Parents hate it'. Because it would use about 650 watts of power. It would be a projector system that projects from a controllable turret. Any flat surface could be turned into a screen, a wall, the ceiling, even the floor. The light source would be three Halogen strip lights because they were cheap and powerful; that is where all the power comes from. The lights would shine through a LCD matrix. At night time the light could be dimmed a bit to use less power. 

The system would come with an overlay that can be placed on a TV screen so you can project the game screen onto the TV screen and watch TV at the same time. Press a piece of paper against your TV screen to see what I mean. Before I released the system, I would release two development kits, one that is free and one that is expensive so people can make their own games for the system. The free development kit would come with a disclaimer that allows the company to copy some of the graphics and designs. 

 The controller would have two analogue sticks and a d pad. It would also be a 8 bit handheld console itself. The Bit processor would control the sound and the pixels so it would be challenging for developers to get the most out of the limited hardware. The controller would also control the projector turret if it is set to projector mode. 

I imagined people finding creative ways to use the projector on the main unit, perhaps bringing a small power generator and projecting Wolfenstein 3D onto Buckingham palace at night. Nothing like playing Wolfenstein 3d on the wall of the queen's palace. 

25 Years of TV remotes

For the last 25 years, TV remote controls have had the same appearance and layout. They are a small plastic brick filled with rubber buttons. The top left corner of the remote is the on & off button. The Top right is the port button to change the device displayed on the screen. Below is the N Pad, a cluster of numbered buttons from 0 to 9. Then the volume and channel change rocker buttons. Somewhere in the middle of the Remote is the Dpad (direction pad), it is used control menus. In some remotes, the D pad is shaped like a cross, others like a disk.

My two favourite buttons on the Remote are, EPG and the Red button. The EPG brings up the Electronic Program Guide, a catalogue showing the TV programs that are showing on each channel. They send a TV program guide through Freeview signal. Some TV sets have Freeview plus built in so they will automatically record programs on a memory module if you select the program on the EPG to record. The red button or the TXT button opens a digital news paper that is also embedded in the TV Freeview signal, you can read the news while you watch TV. Unfortunately it is only the BBC channels in my country that supply a red button service. It would be nice if the other channels had a red button service. I wonder what the Red button service does in other countries? I will have to look it up. 

At the bottom of the remote are buttons to control a player, they seem to do nothing. I thought they were for other models that have a built in DVD player but I later learned they are CEC controls. CEC sends remote control commands through the cables so you can control devices connected to your TV with the same remote control. The CEC on my TV was turned off by default so I had to open the settings menu and turn it on. I can pause and play videos playing on my Chromecast with my TV remote because of the CEC. My Roku stick doesn't support CEC. If you have a CEC enabled device you have to make sure that the CEC function is enabled in the settings on both devices, the TV and the player. I learned recently that the new Chromecast with Android TV also has CEC and allows the Dpad on the TV remote to control it's menu, I think that is excellent. You can control the device with the TV remote fully. I have the plain Chromecast stick at the moment so I just use my phone cast to my TV. I mentioned earlier in this blog that I will often make a playlist while I am on my tea break then cast it to the Chromecast when I get home. YouTube has a watch later playlist, you can also make other playlists. Facebook also has a save for later play list but it is harder to use, it can also be sent to the Chromecast stick. 

Super Chip

At the turn of the millennium, broadband internet was becoming more popular than dialup. A question I asked myself was why would you need an internet connection that persists all day everyday. Now the world has changed, all the TV I watch, all the radio I listen to, all the phone calls I make and almost everything I read comes to me through the internet. Even this blog I am writing now is being sent through the internet.  I have a Roku stick and a Chromecast stick, two devices that make my TV smart and are powered by the TV. Then it dawned on me, when I was a child, those two devices would be considered super computers. To match the power I would need a large cabinet full of circuit boards and cooling fans. If you take off the protective casing of a Chromecast stick and remove the heat sink, you are left with a machine the size of a stamp, let that sink into your mind for a minute. 

I watched a video of a man running emulators on his Chromecast stick with Android TV 10. He ran emulators for every major console from the 90s. He played 80s Nintendo (NES), Super Nintendo, Sega Mega Drive, all the game boys, Atari Jaguar, PlayStation one. A small microchip the size of a stamp matched the computing power of all the great games consoles that were popular in the 90s. The device uses just 12 volts of direct current, less than 5 amps of power. It is a system on a chip. A whole computer system on a microscopic circuit that is mass produced so quickly that it costs less than £5 to make. They sell it for around £30. To me that is amazing because I have perspective, my son's generation may not find that amazing, even my own age group may not but I do because I understand what has happened. 

Entire computer systems are now made on a single micro chip, graphics, sounds,  software, input, everything on just one little chip that is the size of a stamp and it has no moving parts. 

Noisy Day

Jacob my son, 

One week before your second birthday, the Queen's Husband Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh died, he was months away from his 100th Birthday. His Funeral will be on your birthday. I wonder if Harry regrets the Oprah interview he did the previous month.  

The good thing is that his own children were aged before he died and got to see his great grandchildren. You saw your great grandfather on your mothers side of the family through live stream video, I doubt you would remember though. You never got to meet him because of the Pandemic. We were isolated from the other parts of the family for one year and he was killed by the virus. 

In my view, if you were born in April, you are born in the middle of spring. If your birthday is between the first ⅓ and ⅔ of April (10th and 20th)  then you are born in the true middle of Spring. You my son were born in the middle of Spring. 

One Third of April

We are ⅓ the way through April 2021. This ⅓ of April has been quite interesting. The Inginuity Drone has unfolded and detached from the Perseverance Rover and is erected of the surface of Mars, I believe it will attempt to fly on Monday. If the probe manages to fly, it will be the first powered flight on another planet. 

Boris Johnson, the British Prime minister was announcing the end of the current lockdown. He said that on Monday the 12th of April, everything will reopen. 

This first ⅓ of April I was a bit stressed at night time so I would wake up at 3am and turn on my Sega Mini emulator and play Tetris on it for a while. Playing Tetris and Columns is one of the ways I cope with stress. I share my habbit with other people on this blog because it may help other people to cope with stress. I looked into the eyes of other Brits around me and saw that they were frustrated and afraid of the near future, they didn't know what was going to happen to them. Perhaps they feel like this pandemic will never go away. Frustration and Fear are common emotions that many Brits have right now. 

Just today I learned that the Queen's Husband, prince Philip passed away. I feel pity for the Royal Family for this time of sadness. I send my best wishes to them and hope that he is at peace now. I feel pity for the Queen because they were married for a very long time. 

Plumbane Lake

The other day day I was thinking about Lead, can't quite figure out why. There is a lot of Lead on earth yet it as very hard  for the universe to synthesise. It is made in very small quantities in the universe yet there is a lot of it on earth. I call that the Lead on Earth paradox. The Lead on Earth paradox was solved a long time ago. What happens is everything that is heavier than Lead is unstable so it eventually decays into Lead, one day all the Plutonium, Uranium, Radium and all other heavy radioactive elements will become Lead through radioactive decay. Lead is in the same family as carbon because it  can have 4 bonds. 

When the 4 bonds are used for Hydrogen, Lead becomes Plumbane, it is like Methane but Lead is used instead of carbon. 

Plumbane condenses at -13°c I think so it would be a liquid quite easily.  I was wondering what a Plumbane Lake would be like, would it look like water. What would a methane lake look like? I don't have to imagine that, there are methane lakes on Titan. 

Lockdown Livestream Hero

There is a guy called Dom Whiting, he is a DJ that found a way to reach the people without breaking the lockdown rules. What he would do is Livestream himself playing music and he would play while he was on his music bike so he was exercising. 

Thousands of people would watch him livestream playing music through the internet. He would be an uplifting character to many. He deserves to be more famous than he is already in my view. Some people are famous because they are a spouse of a big shot, others are famous because they did something scandalous, Dom is becoming famous because he used social media to show the world his talent. 

A lot of people criticise Facebook for privacy and things like that but I would say, you don't have to use it. If you don't like the bus, take the train, if you don't like the train, take the car. If you have a talent, you can show the world and be famous for that reason. That is what social media is about for ordinary people like me, it is a way to show everyone your gift or just share your hobby. 

Happy Machine Veranda House

When I can only wait, like when I am waiting to fall asleep at ten in the night, my mind tries to think happy thoughts. I dream of the house I would build if I was wealthy.  A home I call the happy machine because it is the home that gives and shows people that it is the simple things in this world that brings joy. 

My pen sketch of the Happy Machine Veranda House inside my head

The Happy Machine Veranda house house has a porch that goes all the way around the building. Between every window on the porch is chairs to sit on, I didn't put them in the sketch because my sketch skills are in their infancy. The house looks like a pyramid with a veranda but at the front it looks a bit like a boat because the north facing walls on the ground floor are rounded. The ground floor is shaped like a slice of bread, this is to let the sun shimmer through the window from the pond at the front. The whole ground floor is 1meter off the ground to allow light to flow into the basement. The pond at the front of house is sometimes rounded and sometimes rectangular depending on my mood. The porch is also rounded and hugs the pond at the font. The wall at the end of the pond is white and reddish lights are shined on it at night to make a fake sunset. 

In the center of the ground floor is a windowless cresh, gym, workshop, and study area filled with books and is very quiet. The next floor is smaller than the floor below so it has a elevated lawn and makes the building look like a pyramid, each floor going up is smaller than the floor below and the space lost is an outside area. On the top floor is the Happy zone man cave, a large room filled with games, pool table, table tennis, and arcade machines. The happy zone man cave is smaller than the bedroom floor below so the outside area is an elevated patio made of glass bricks, under the glass bricks are solar panels. The whole Happy zone man cave at the top of the house is covered in solar panels. 

It feels strange is bring my thoughts to life like this. 

Start of April

We are in the first week of April. This year Easter and Passover overlapped, both religious festivals were side by side and both finished on the same day, April the 3rd. A major topic in my country at the moment is if the British Union flag is offensive to other people. Why? I think. 

I don't have a view of the topic, I just see the flag as a logo that represents the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The British flag doesn't represent anything except the UK. If you use apple computers, you will see an apple on there; perhaps Steve Jobs was appalled by other computers going "fluub" and showing a blue screen. If you drink coca cola you see the word Coca cola written like the person was high on cocane (in my view). I don't care about logos or flags, I'm not offended by them or by other people hating them.  I see myself as a kind servant that respects their country and doesn't get offended by logos or symbols. If you get offended by the flag then remember that everything is offensive to someone, so if we keep everyone happy then we won't be able to function. I am offended by the consumption of meat, should I go and try to force everyone to stop eating meat? No! I should just be tolerant respect other people and their views, even if I get offended. Should I slap someone in the face for eating a sausage roll? There are political parties I don't like, should I try to force people to stop supporting that party, no that is fascist! Even if I call myself anti fascist, trying to force other people away from a party is the definition of fascist. 

 I share ideas to other people, like the idea of playing Tetris to clear your head from stress or how to make a good hot drink. That is what Alan is about, he is trying to be a good Alan and be constructive. That's it... 

Bank Holiday

Jacob my son, 

You are nearly two now, you have changed quite a lot. You started to like chocolate and also like to eat starchy foods like rice and pasta. You also like to eat chicken nuggets and the vegetarian ones I eat  and chips. You feed yourself and want to do everything yourself. You grabbed a crayon the other day and scribbled on the tumble dryer, luckily we were able to wash it off. You did the same to the TV. 

Perhaps by the time you read this post, TVs would be very different to the way they are now. At present most TV sets have 4k picture quality and are smart in some way, they have small computers built inside of them so you can stream TV through the internet. 

Easter Thoughts

It is Easter Sunday now, this is a Christian celebration of the resurrection of the Messiah after 3 days. If I met Jesus in person I would have many questions to ask him. I don't ask rhetorical questions. 

I would ask if he feels annoyed that we got his name wrong. His name was pronounced "Yeshuar"(Joshua). The Greeks added an s on the end because 'S' denotes males. All male Greek names had an s on the end. The letter 'J' is pronounced as 'Y' in Mediterranean languages. 'H' also had different sounds in different languages and is often a silent letter.  Is it better if I just call you the son of man or Messiah? 

I would ask what he meant when he said sins against the Holy spirit will never be forgiven? What does that mean? 

I would ask if it was him that was wrestling with Jacob, Jacob mistook an angel for his twin brother and wrestled with him, the identity of the being was unknown but he said he saw the face of God when he wrestled with the angel? I am confused. 

I would ask Jesus what will happen in the near future. He predicted many things. I would be curious about current events. 

I would ask if he visits the Earth in disguise from time to time to see how people are doing, perhaps he appears as an everyday person. 

I would ask about paradise, I would ask what it looks like and what do people do when they are there. Would I be allowed to play golf and Tetris in that place. 

I would ask him if Satan was always rebellious and why he wasn't thrown into the lake of fire straight away when he was turning against God. Was God being merciful or something like that? I don't know. 

Upside down Britain

I feel like I am the only person that sees Antarctica as the top of the Earth, it is the one continent that contains a small area of land that is moving very slowly as the Earth turns. Antarctica is the only continent that is over the polar part of the earth.  If Antarctica was the top of the world then all the maps would be upside down. My island home of Great Britain would look very different.

Hand sketched upside down map of Britain ....

I also think that the capital city shouldn't be in the bottom right corner or the island so in my world London would not be the Capital city of Britain. 

The trouble is there is no city in the Centre of the island, it is just a village and some farmland next to the Yourshire Dales, the nearest city would be Sheffield. I would settle for Liverpool, plus it is very close to Wales. I would make Liverpool the capital city of Britain and extend it so it is inside Wales slightly. 

Start of April

April has started, days are getting longer and warmer. I have started to draw pictures every day with some colour on them. 

The theme that I carry with me this spring is 'Lines of trance'. There are things that cause me to go into a trance like state of mind that is free of tension and stress. Things like playing Tetris and breaking lines when the falling shapes are fitted into place correctly. When I play Columns I also go into a tance like state of mind while I match up the gems. The ink lines I carefully draw on the paper are trance lines because they require my full concentration. Drawing sketches doesn't come naturally to me but it is a good way to tell a story in a blog.