Energy Floss

At the end of winter 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Just before spring 2022 in march I believe, many nations placed trade sanctions on Russia. 

The thing that surprised me is the fuel suppliers instantly increased their prices. The fuel in the petrol station was already traded before the incident so I don't understand why the price should go up straight away. To me that was unfair. Later I found out that they made record high profit, to me that means it wasn't necessary for them to increase the price so early. The price should go up weeks after the incident. Why do we still live in a world where we rely on trade of fuel for our energy? 

I think the Nations that are independent and don't rely on trade of fuel to get their energy will be free of recession in winter. This winter we will have a recession because the cost of energy will be too high, it will bring down spending. 

I often wonder if Margaret Thatcher was right to privatise our gas and electricity suppliers. some of them are imploding so perhaps it's the fuel traders that are the problem and not the energy providers. I really don't know. 

Rained A Bit

It rained a bit earlier in the day. The air was filled with petrichor, that nice earthy smell you get when it suddenly rains after a dry period.  when the dried up roots of plants excrete oils to keep them alive, the rain reacts with the oils and the dormant bacteria in the ground. It is a lovely smell, similar to the smell of the tide going out at the coast. 

I think that is one reason I would love to build a veranda house one day. I wrote about that on another blog post titled Veranda House . 

It would be nice to sit on a sheltered porch and drink coffee or tea while it is raining. Listen the the rain drops and breathe the petrichor though my nose. For a little while I just think of nothing, I just accept that I am in this world and apart of it for a short time. The simple joys are the best sometimes. 

Raids and views

I saw a viral video of about 50 young teenagers raiding a McDonald's restaurant in Nottingham. I thought to myself, how can 50 young people come together and agree to do it. They even threatened the staff. They jumped over the counter and went into the kitchen and stole the food. The sad thing is the police won't be able to do much because they look like they are too young to face prosecution. I feel like my country is turning into a lawless mess. People are getting stabbed, there is armed robberies happening everywhere and crime is rising very high. The mind has to be somewhere else, I feel scared of the winter months because it will be my first winter paying over 10p per killowatt-hour for gas, heating a home will be challenging. 

I had a look at the 'James Webb' space telescope website jwst.nasa.gov, I noticed they have been looking at Jupiter recently. I thought they were wasting time because there is already a Juno space probe going around the planet. They also zoomed into the cartwheel galaxy and saw structures that were hidden from other telescopes. The hubble telescope can see infra-red light but it can't see mid infra-red so there is a whole other spectrum that is visible with this new telescope. I'm just wondering when they're going to zoom into 'Proxima B' our nearest known exoplanet that is going around the Proxima Centauri red dwarf star, the nearest known star to the Sun. 

Two Room thought

Sometimes I feel angry at society because there is little respect for ordinary people. I see people filming restaurant staff and complaining about their service. What they are doing is posting the video on social media and inviting other people to mock them, to me that is cyber bullying. I always speak up when things like that happen. I always condemn videos of staff being mocked on the internet. The same is true of traffic wardens and police, they share the video on social media and invite other people to mock them. It's very disrespectful and not the way to treat a human being. 

When abrasive thoughts like that enter my head, I try to replace them with happy thoughts. I imagine myself having a house big enough that I can use 2 large rooms for my hobbies. One room is a Man-cave filled with games and toys. The other room is a workshop filled with power tools that I use to build things. These are constructive thoughts in my view because they are displacing unwanted thoughts. 

Two Thirds of August

We are in that last third of August. I was thinking that over a large amount of time, the majority of beings that will read my thoughts in this blog are thinking machines, followed by people that hate me and are looking for a foolish post to mock me with. I don't care, I will be dead soon, perhaps in another 40 to 50 years time. One day the whole universe will die, all matter will decay into nothing and everything we know of will be nothing. Only the creater of the Universe will persist and those pardoned from death. 

I was thinking about Prestige-Alan, a version of me that doesn't exist. If Prestige-Alan did exist, he would be a nuisance. He would have nothing useful to say, he would also refuse to accept awards because he doesn't like conditional respect. Servant-Alan (present day me) also hates conditional respect and superficial judgements. 

There are plenty of times in my life when I am being judged unfairly. If I go to a waiting room at the opticians, they will treat me differently depending on if I am wearing a nice shirt or a cheap t-shirt. I am the same person but one person is an iritation, the other is welcome to remain seated. 

Mini Grin

There are so many things in this world to make people feel angry: videos of road rage, disrespectful outbursts, things not working, delays and things like that. But I don't want to be angry or stressed. I just want to be a man of liesure that is lost in his hobbies. 

I was window shopping on the internet, looking at all the mini retro flashback consoles that have been released. I was a kid in the 90's, between me and all my cronies we had every console, I had a sega mega Drive(UK sega Genesis), one of my neighbours had an 80's Nintendo, my next door neighbour had a Amiga 500, my cousin had a super Nintendo. I have played on all of them. Even the Atari vcs. If I collected all flashback mini replica consoles to put in my small man cave, the younger generation wouldn't understand why. They would say, why don't you just download the games to your phone or computer, they would say the graphics are tosh. They wouldn't understand that those games were special to me. I would love to see a small working replica of those consoles in my home again. 

If you're American, the sega Mega Drive was the same as the sega Genesis but sent pal code out to the TV instead of the American NTSC. The American TV screens had a different number of scan lines and refresh rate. We used Pal and America used NTSC. Flat screen TV screens can take both and detect it automatically. 

Flog Bot and Frogger

I was sitting outside in the sun earlier, it was a lovely day, the sun was shining brightly and all the grass was dry and dead. 

I was thinking about a Flog bot, a robot that flogs people. It would look like a statue that comes to life when it hears a certain tune played by a flute. The robot would grab a bamboo cane and tell the person what they did then flog them. The Robot's voice would sound like shredder from the children's cartoon called 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' from the 90's. It would say "Ben, bend over; you were stealing stuff from a shop" or it would say "John, take one, you vandalized a car" Then... "Swoosh kerboosh", the bamboo cane would strike their bum or back leg. It would be so cool if we made a robot like that. Plus we would have cultural flair because we play a flute to wake it up. The casing of the robot would have stone panels so it would look like a statue sitting down on a chair. When it stands up it would be 2 and a half meters tall, not so tall that it can't strike very well but tall enough to look intimidating. A robot that delivers justice consistently. 

Then I was thinking about Frogger because I was playing 'Crossy Road' on my phone. To me, Crossy Road is like Frogger, but it never ends. My son likes that game, I imagined playing computer games with my son when he is a bit older. I have a picture in my head of us playing Mario kart or a two player adventure platformer. It is nice to saturate your time with activities, playing computer games during your down time and things like that. 

Warm Day

Jacob, my son. 

Never think too much about what people say to you and don't think about your own thoughts too much because your own mind may be naturally filled with doubt, instead just think about what you want and do little things every day that gets you closer to those things. 

In this world, roughly one third of all people are pompous, they judge other people too much and compare themselves to other people and they make a list in their head of people they think are less important than them. The more pompous a person is, the more likely they are to drink too much alcohol and put other things in their body that poisons their organs. If a pompous person doesn't like you then they are doing you a favour because they will keep you out of their toxic zone. I drink alcohol twice a year, once on my birthday and once on Christmas Day; the rest of the year I drink coffee with no sugar or milk and squash water.  If I have health problems in the near future, it would be because of bad luck. 

If a pompous person sees something bad happening to a person, they think it is a punishment from a God or proof there is no God. Both those people are two sides of a pompous coin. They would probably find a lot more things they have in common if they met.  

Drought in England

I was listening to the news on the radio and they said they will declare there is a drought very soon, possibly as soon as tomorrow in some districts. I thought to myself that it is obvious, we have had just a few hours of rain in the last three months, all the grass verges and lawns are dried up and dead. There is wild fires breaking out everywhere. Parts of Britain had temperatures above 40°c for the first time in History that we know of. It's not just the weather that is unstable, global leadership seems to be in a bad place. 

In 2016, David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister of the UK because the referendum was in favour of Brexit. That same year Theresa May took over but she resigned in 2019 because her team couldn't break the Brexit deadlock. Now Boris Johnson is resigning because he can't hold down working team. It was during the hot dry summers of the recent years that I noticed staff throughout government was changing very often, not just the leaders but the cabinet staff as well. Nothing seems to be normal anymore. It is like no one trusts anyone anymore and everyone is cold hearted. They love themselves but hate others. 

I was thinking that there shouldn't be one prime minister. There should be at least five of them because ego should never be a motive to make progress. It should always be down to care and passion. It shouldn't be we are better than you because we get quick results, it should be we are doing things now for people that are not even born yet. I don't know. There are so many things I don't know. 

Toy Train

I imagined what would happen if I owned a city railway. The first thing people would think is "is this a toy train?" Because the trains are very small and they have a face on the front of them. The face on the front of the train would be lighting shaped like a face to show kindness to the passengers and light up the space in front of the train for safety. 

The trains would be so small that there is only one row of seats on one side of the train, there is also doors only on one side of the train, opposite the seats. The reason is because there would be more trains and they would run parallel on separate tracks, as soon as one train leaves a station, another train is directly behind it. The trains would weigh less so they wouldn't put much stress on the tracks and sleeper blocks. The wheel bearings on the train would also have less weight pressing on them. The passengers on the train would have a lot of space and a bike rack next to their seats. Each train would only go to one station from the platform, there would be a train stopping for every station over time and they would skip stations until they get to the one station they are heading for. 

When there are very few commuters, perhaps at 22:00, there would be less trains running and they would use less power because the electric motor would have less mass to overcome. But when it is busy, the work load is spread out evenly across the whole line so it would be quicker and more efficient than normal metro systems. 

Perhaps this thought only makes sense to me. 

Butterfly Effect thought

The butterfly effect is small things causing chain reactions that effect very big things; a butterfly can flap its wings and the air flowing away from its wing tips affects the surrounding air and that causes a chain reaction that eventually triggers a hurricane on the other side of the world. That is what the butterfly effect theory is. 

My example is I can write the word pin on this blog post, someone on the other side of the planet reads the word and remembers they left a box of pins in their car, they walk outside to get the box of pins and a virus goes into their nose and they catch the flu, they then take two days off work because of fever. While they are off work they watch TV and see an advert for an exhibition for a franchise. They book a ticket and eventually buy a franchise for a café. The café is a big success. Two years later, a customer in the café sees a picture on the wall in the café, the picture inspires them to book a vacation. While they are on vacation, they meet someone and fall in love, they later get married and have a kid called John. His whole existence and everything he does in his life hinged on the word pin in this blog. If I didn't write that word then all the events that causes him to exist wouldn't happen. Everything he does in his life also hinges on the word and even all the thousands of his descendants in the distant future. People living 5000 years in the future exist because someone went on vacation, the person went on vacation because of a picture hanging in a café, the café is there because someone caught a virus while they walked to their car, they walked to their car because my blog post reminded them they left a box of pins in their car. If they caught the virus one day later, they would have missed the advertisement and all those events wouldn't happen. 

I have a good imagination. 

Dry Day

Jacob, my son. 

You are 3 years old. This summer has been extraordinary, we had temperatures above 40°c in the UK for the first time since they started taking records. Right now we are going through a drought, it has hardly rained at all for nearly 2 months, just a few brief spurts of rain. The grass verges and lawns everywhere have dried up and turned yellow; water is like life in a glass. It is so nice to drink a cool glass of water after a very hot day. If you are very thirsty, plain water tastes the best.

90's Alan Chat

Just imagined another conversation with 90's Alan. 

Servant Alan :  "Hi 90's Alan, how are you?" 

90's Alan : "I'm fine how are you?"

Servant Alan :  " fine."

90's Alan :  "Do you still watch knight rider?" 

Servant Alan : "No, But I talk to machines every day?" 

90's Alan : "really, how?" 

Servant Alan : "Not too long ago my DAB radio broke, but I realized that smart speakers cost the same price at the time so I replaced it with smart speaker". 

90's Alan : "What is a DAB radio?" 

Servant Alan : "It is like a transistor FM radio, but  the signal turns off and on in pulses to encode characters that describe how to assemble the sound perfectly"

90's Alan :  "Like Morse code?" 

Servant Alan :  "A bit like that, but a microprocessor interprets the code and spurts out crystal clear sound, it is a computer that pretends to be a transistor radio."

90's Alan : "What do you say to the smart speaker?"

Servant Alan :  "I ask it for the news, I ask it logical questions like what the date will be in 97 days and 8 hours, I also ask it to turn on gadgets. Sometimes I just ask it to play the radio and it plays it through the internet". 

90's Alan : "Wow.... Why do you call yourself servant Alan?" 

Servant Alan : "I am like millennium Alan but I don't think global warming is a mild problem that will fix itself when the fossil fuels run out and I realized that everything I do in this world creates a never ending chain reaction that goes around the whole planet and eventually effects every person in the future so I try to be a good servant to all people of the future, that is what they call the 'butterfly effect'. 

90's Alan : "What is the butterfly effect?" 

Servant Alan : "Look it up, not with your internet speeds though, ha ha ha ha. Better start now, ha ha ha, see ya". 

Bad dream finally stops

I think we were all given a gift of premonition but we don't listen to our unconscious minds; a machine like side of us that persistently looks for answers. 

I had a dream that repeated about six times on six nights. It was a deluge of rain causing a large object to dislodge and fall down, the object was very much like a hill. The hill caused other problems when it dropped that was a danger to many people in the world. I saw stuff being push sideways and thrown outward. The amount of rain falling in this place was very unusual, it behaved like a lubricant because the object was stuck in place and couldn't move. When it rained constantly for a long time, it broke free and triggered a deadly chain reaction. 

We are worried about war and disease but we are not worried about what the Earth can itself can do to us. We are just little specks compared to the world around us. Just Specks... We are almost nothing. Why do we look down at other people when our lives are so short.  

The good thing is the dream has stopped now, I don't want to think about the dangers that surround us. If nothing happens then I will be pleased because my sleeping dream was horrible. 

July 2022

At the start of July 2022 Boris Johnson was unable to hold down a working team in government because they were all spontaneously resigning from cabinet duty. The reason was because they thought Boris' government were unlawful and unethical. He had no option but to resign as leader and start the 3rd conservative Leadership race. By the end of the month we were aware that one of two people would get the job; we now know it will be Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss. 

By the middle of the month we had record high temperatures and from the 19th onwards, Britain recorded temperatures of 40°C for the first time that we know of. Throughout the world vegetation dried up and burned up because of dry weather and careless human behaviour. 

The new space telescope called 'James Webb' was working well and we saw things we never saw before, we saw light that was transmitted 10 billion years ago, 5 billon years before the earth and sun formed. We learned that Galaxies flatten themselves into a disk shape as soon as they form and many other things like that. There is so much insight coming from their web site jwst.nasa.gov right now. 

On my birthday I was given a smart watch as a gift, to me it was amazing because I could see my blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen level and steps taken any time I wanted. It is like having a computer on your wrist. I never knew my average resting heart rate was 75 beats per minute, now I know. I never knew that my blood pressure was normally 112 over 72, now I know. I never knew my blood oxygen level was 98% in the day time and 99% when I sleep. I could take a reading from my phone without touching my watch and look at my health data without touching the watch because my phone and watch are both connected. 

During the last week of July we learned that the ports were not prepared for Brexit because they didn't have enough passport inspectors to keep up with the flow of people going on holiday so many people were held up by hours and days before their holidays started, ouch.