Last day of January

It is the last Day of January, technically it is already February now here in Britain. The month just went by like that. The last thought I had this month was about the waste of water for toilets. The same clean drinkable water that goes to the tap in our home goes to the toilet. We flush our toilets with water that is clean enough to drink. 

wouldn't it be nice if a tank was used to store the grey water that comes out the back of a washing machine. The grey water is usually  hot so it would help to heat your home. The grey water from the tank can be used to flush the toilet instead of the clean stuff. You would need to use toilet blocks to hide the grey colour of the water. 

Just a thought. 

Healthy Habits

In recent weeks I have been adding vegetables to all my favourite foods to improve fiber and slow down the absorbtion rate of the food in my intestines. For cheese and tomato sandwiches I add lettuce, for pasta I add some frozen broccoli and cauliflower.

Now I'm remembering things that caused me to lose some weight. I tried to make a movie on YouTube based on my short documentary videos, Alanasis. All the focus I applied to the project caused me to forget I'm hungry. Unfortunately I hated my movie and never posted it. I felt like my voice was very dull and boring. The storyline of the docu-movie was also slow and dragged on. 

Now the new thing that causes me to eat less is virtual reality. When my brother visits me, he brings his vr headset. When I play golf in virtual reality, I don't feel hungry. If I feel guilty about playing games, I play language lesson audio files so I'm learning Spanish while I play. 

Should I try again to make a movie? if it's lame I will still lose weight, hmmm 🤔

The King has left the Building

I learnt earlier today that The King had left the hospital after recieving surgery for an enlarged prostate gland. The problem with the condition is it can stop you passing urine freely and can cause a lot of discomfort. You can find yourself always needing to urinate but unable to because the prostate gland is pressing down on the urine tract. 

The whole situation on the news caused me to read up on related articles. Apparently all mammals urinate through their penis, none of them have a separate urethra except monotremes. 

It is the urine that must effect the prostate gland. Perhaps if there is a lot of alcohol and sugar in your urine, it could cause your prostate gland to become swollen. 

Urine is made up of nitrate compounds and excess water that is released into the blood by our tissues. 

The King Gets prostate Treatment

I recently learned that king Charles III of Britain and Northern Ireland went to hospital to receive treatment for an enlarged prostate gland. He wanted to publicly announce his condition to give comfort to other men with this condition. He is a brave soul, I'm impressed by his actions. I think men that have the same condition were stepping forward for medical help after that. 

Men have prostate glands just below their bladder to add stuff to semen. But it can get enlarged and block urine from passing freely. In some cases, it is prostate cancer. Normally it is just the gland growing with age.  

Coca Lala evening

Jacob, my son.

The other day you told me you wanted Coca Lala, I didn't know what you were talking about. You pointed at it, then I realised you were talking about coca cola. when I took a closer look at the can, I could see the word cola looks like lala. I imagined writing a logo like that if I was high on coke. I'm not saying it was their source of inspiration though. 

You were innocent, you saw it the way it looks. Perhaps everything looks bigger to you and it would look smaller if you saw it as an adult. I remember going back to my primary school to vote as an adult and thinking the whole place looks very small compared to the way I remembered it. 

I have so much to show you. 

Upside down Probe

I recently learned more about the issue concerning the Japanese moon probe that landed on surface of the moon.  Shortly before the probe landed on the surface, one of the rockets malfunctioned and the software controlling the lander flipped it upside down to regain control and stop it crashing. The trade off was the probe landed upside down and the solar panels were facing away from the sun. It is still a successful mission because it landed safely in the intended location and deployed the two small rovers. We are now wondering if the probe will survive one moon night, two weeks of darkness. We will find out. 

I was thinking about screens recently quite a lot because I started using my Kindle paper white tablet. It is a tablet for reading; when the backlight is turned down the screen resembles printed paper and doesn't use power until the page is turned. 

I was wondering if the pixels of a typical screen were controlled in a tree like structure or a grid structure. Does the signal that changes the state of a pixel go through branches, left then right then left or does it go through a grid like structure, across then down in rows like seats in a cinema. I don't know. I would love to see if I can make simple displays myself with just 5 by 10 dots, enough to display letters. It would be an excellent hobby. 

Cashew-beige not white

I'm a white man but I don't see myself as white, I see myself as light beige like a processed cashew nut, or like a peanut split in the middle. If there was a zombie apocalypse, I could hide in a cashew processing factory and I would disappear in plain sight. If I put white paper or toothpaste on my skin, there is a big difference in the colour. If I was actually white in colour, I would go to hospital for suspected internal bleeding. I accept that society simplifies our identity so I'll call myself a white man but I don't like it. I'm Alan first and a white guy second. I have a little world of my own. 

There are lots of things happening all around us, conflicts, exploration and breakthroughs. It would be nice if we live in a world where respect isn't conditional, it is default. I wouldn't want to be respected because of a thing. I would want respect because I didn't do anything negative to anyone. 

I was thinking about dots for a while, I was wondering if there is an easy way to make an LCD display as a hobby. It's on the bucket list. Perhaps a simple 10 by 10 dot display. 

Japan Lands a probe on the moon

I recently learned that Jaxa, the Japanese space agency had successfully landed a probe on the moon. The landing was on the 19th of January.

As far as I know, they have successfully released two rovers onto the surface. Japan is the 5th country to send objects to the moon. They claimed the landing had some issues. The main probe's solar panels were facing away from the sun, that might be an issue. It will be interesting to see what happens next. 

Radio 4

In my kitchen there is a compact portable dab radio. It is a about the size of a small brick. It's connected to the mains but it can also take 4 AA batteries; rechargeable AA batteries with lithium can store 2500 milliamps these days. I set the default station to BBC radio 4, a station about stories and debate, a talk station with no adverts. BBC radio 4 is presently transmitted throughout the island of Britain. 

I thought its clever how dab radio works. They send coordinates that describe how to assemble the sound wave as codes. The codes are identified by interruptions in the signal, the length of the interruption affects the character that is chosen. 

Even though a small amount of coordinates are sent, the processor connects the dots and finishes the sound wave. By doing this they can cram hundreds of stations into a small band width and if some of the signal is damaged, the code still gets through because the computer in the radio is looking at the spaces between radio pulses to extract the information. 

I was looking at pocket radios earlier on the internet. It would be nice to perch a pocket radio on my desk and listen to people talking while I work. I saw a nice yellow one that looks like the old Sony walkmans but it has dab digital radio. Then I saw the azatom one. 

Looks a good size and a bit more modern than the yellow one.  The phone can do all this but it needs the internet and if the signal is interrupted for one minute it quits. 

Cut above

My smart phone isn't outstanding compared to other phones but I find it amazing that the processor can perform nearly 20 billion instructions per second. It has 8 cores. My first desktop computers' processor did less than 5 billion instructions. 

On my android phone, if you connect a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to it, a cursor appears on the screen; it behaves like a laptop pc. I recall being able to use the smart phone this way when I had android 10 and I think it would even work with version 7. Technology can be comforting sometimes. 

I thought about a situation where I'm in a country where the penalty for murder is death by beheading. I visit a friend and leave their home. Later an assailant kills my friend but he leaves no evidence. I'm charged with murder and the court finds me guilty and sentences me to death. 

They would ask me if I have any last requests. I would ask if I can wear a virtual reality headset during the execution, they agree. I set up the head set so I'm crouching on a golf course. A voice says any last word? I would say, "no side burns, number 4 on top and 3 on the sides", my last dried up Dad Joke. Then swoosh I'm rolling around on the golf course and passing out. 

Someone said I should write a children's book once.

Familiarity is Joy

Part of being happy is seeing the same objects every day in your home and being familiar. A while ago in the previous year I bought a radio alarm clock from a charity shop, I'm guessing the original owner bought a new one with dab radio instead of FM. I love the way my radio alarm clock is designed. It has nice orange numbers displaying the time, a pin stripe grill on top and all the controls are spaced out. There is two alarms so you can make a buzzer and radio each with their own times. 

I'm aware that a lot of thought went into the design of it, there is a separate button for each function and it is rounded. Dab radio is so cool, they make the whole signal turn on and off in pulses to generate code the represents the sound so they can fit many stations in a small frequency.  I have a dab radio in the kitchen. 

Another happy familiar sight is playing cards. I like to play all sorts of card games. FreeCell, Solitaire, BlackJack or pocker; never for money, just for points.  There are some card games on my phone. 

Tubeing Out

The phrase 'netflix and chill' is well known these days. I wonder if there is a phrase for playing a queue of videos on 'youTube'? Tubing out? 

I have two play lists on YouTube I use for my down time, 'Watch Later' which is private and 'Down Time',  which is public. The goal of both of them is the same, to help me stop thinking for a while so I can rest a bit. Sometimes I watch videos that I don't agree with so I can think about the topic so they go in my watch later play list for privacy. For example, I don't think Hell is a place where you're tormented for eternity but I watch Bill Wiese's videos anyway just to think about it. If someone saw me watching his video, they would think I agree with what he is saying. 

I found some interesting videos that can be added to a downTime playlist. 

Swiss Army Knifes

sega X32 Games

Creepy Stuff

Visual Stats

Scenario Simulation

Nachos and Netflix

Nachos taste much nicer when the cheese sauce is hot. There is a new cinema in my town that serves natchos with heated cheese sauce in tubs. I hope they keep it that way. I won't name any cinemas because I don't want to have a negative effect on any business. Cinemas are still relevent today, you can get a membership card and see unlimited movies like on netflix, plus you get a giant screen and powerful surround sound that is too powerful  for homes. Cinemas are still cool, especially if the natcho cheese sauce is heated, I think it smells more and that makes it taste better. 

The problem with cinemas is they don't play a lot of documentaries. That's where netflix comes in, it is crammed with documentary box sets. 

The other good thing about cinemas is you can take your children there and watch cartoon movies with them. 

The Thing about Reading

In the Thames Valley beyond London in Berkshire there is a town called Reading (🗣️ "red-ing").  It has lots of beautiful water ways, lakes and canals and is the place where the river Kennet merges with the River Thames( 🗣️"tems") . Yet it isn't really set up as a tourist area. It has lots of burgundy brick pedestrian broadwalks and burgundy brick buildings. There is a large shopping mall there on the river Kennet. There is also a vast business park filled with software companies but I feel like it's not set up as a tourist place. It is just a place where a lot of software is created mostly. 

Reading is one of those places that are in my reach, I can take a bus or drive there in less than an hour so I'm no stranger to the place, I even know where their local weatherspoon's pub is, the Hope and Tap.  

I have good access to north west London Reading, Oxford and all the towns in between. I don't get reading, it is like the place is trying its best to be dull and dutyfull, to be a place that hides from prestige. I just don't get it. 

Horizon and three

Recently, I learned that some of the postmasters that were affected by the horizon accountancy software glitch were not falsely prosecuted by the state owned post office because they paid the balance with their own income. Some of them closed themselves down because they were losing too much of their salary. Others refuse to pay the discrepancy and we're charged with fraud. It is sad to think about it. Try to think about food instead. 

All wheat based cereals have a very slight natural sweet taste and milk also has a sweet taste. I don't need to add sugar to it. Why sugar coat it, keep it simple. Keep life simple is the theme here. I try to divide everything up into 3 equal parts so they are smaller tasks. 

The Alan-moment is 20 minutes, one third of an hour. I try to get all my food preparation or cooking done in that space of time. Then the remaining 40 minutes I use to eat the food. 

The Alan-week is 10 days, one third of a month (roughly). The last week is sometimes 10 days and sometimes 11 or 8. 

I try not to think too much because there are endless ways for life to go wrong and thinking about them cause stress. 

First Third of January

One third of January passed by just like that. One minute we were celebrating , the next we are a third the way through the month. My resolutions for the year are very simple. One of them is to eat the same food but add vegetables to it. The fragments of vegetables would come between the wall of my intestines and sugars in my food and cause the absorbtion to slow down. I would have fibre in my diet and a way to slow down digestion so it is spread out evenly. 

I was just thinking that next year we will be one quarter the way through the century. I remember the millennium parties we had 24 years ago. 

Everybody seemed to have a millennium project going on. Even a church near where I live. 

They made a millennium Tapestry 😂

I remember everybody that sold lottery tickets could sell you tickets to the millennium dome because the tickets were sold through the machine. Smart phones hadn't quite caught on yet. 

Brain Cut and ZX Spectrum

One thing that is cool is to play a video of a compilation  of games of an old system from the past. I was looking at the ZX Spectrum yesterday, it was a popular micro computer in Britain during the 80s. The game data was loaded by Audio cable; the system didn't care where the sound was coming from but it was usually a cassette tape. I could load the game from a record player if the data was encoded on one. 

This is the video I saw zx spectrum compilation. I liked the golden axe port, it sort of looks like the original game. 

Later I watched a video about what happens to people when their left brain and right Brian are deliberately severed to stop seizures taking over their life. Their consciousness becomes fragmented in strange ways. 

Brain Cut in half video

First Bit of January

It is the first week of January and the winter appears to be returning to normal, the temperature is dropping down close to 0°c and there is a cold chill in the air. We recently had a new thermostat installed in our home. The Goldilocks temperature for us is 22°c, we consider 22 °c to be a comfortable temperature. All parts of our heating system conspire to keep the temperature at 22°C. A boiler gets a signal from the thermostat when it drops below 22, then it burns gas and heats up water and a pump pushes the hot water around our home until the thermostat reaches 22°c, then it stops and waits. 

I was thinking machines are driven by purpose, they don't possess malice or cunning, they're not sly or evil like people. 

Then I was thinking about the ZX81 and the ZX spectrum, the cheap micro computers that were popular in Britain during the '80s. They used cassette tapes that played tones to encode data through  an audio socket. I was thinking that those computers didn't care where the sound was coming from, I could have a sound file of the game codes on my smart phone and play it to the computer through the audio jack and it would work the same. It is even possible for a radio station to play the sound of the game codes and it would still load the software if it was connected to the radio with and audio cable. 

The older ZX81 computer was very simple, very small memory, black and white screen with no sound and people tried to push the limits of the hardware to see how far they can go. Someone managed to make a first person dungeon game on there called monster maze, wow. This is a video I watched on YouTube:  Video about ZX81 games. 

Good Poop

One of my new year resolutions was to add more vegetables to my starchy grain based food. I'm not sure if my reason is correct but this is what I think. 

When you eat bread, rice or pasta, the food turns into a liquid while it is in your stomach, then when it reaches your intestines, the gluten sugars quickly pass through the walls of your gut and into your blood. Then your pancreas releases large amounts of insulin to make your fat cells absorb the sugars. Then within two hours, everything is finished and you feel tired because the nutrients surged into your blood in a short space of time and suddenly there is nothing. 

I imagined that fragments of vegetables in the food would come between the starch and walls of your guts and get in the way of absorbtion so instead of taking 2 hours, it takes 5 hours for the gluten sugars to pass through. 

You still absorb all the glutens but it is spread out over a longer time and your muscles can use it straight away. The vegetables act like fibre and remain solid all the way through so it makes the stool less sticky. You absorb nutrients from the vegetables as well but most of it passes all the way through. Sometimes I eat enough vegetables to make my poop turn green. I will have less sticky slobs for poop and more fibrous firm stools. Perhaps all my poop will be green one day. 

This is the way I think at the moment. I'm not 100% sure it is the truth. 

Eight Eight Eight

On January the 1st, there was a powerful Earthquake in Japan. I was told it was 7.5 or 7.6 on the richter scale. Super earthquakes like that seem to happen more and more frequently; less than a year ago there was a similar earthquake in turkey, 11 months go in February last year. When you get a Richter 8 earthquake, it is like the number 8 ball in pool, game over. Everything gets smashed up when earthquakes are that powerful. 

The number eight reminds me of the zx 81 and zx spectrum computers. I think they used the Z80 8 bit processors just like the Commodore. These days my phone has an 8 core processor, each core is about 2 & half gigga hertz; my phones processor performs 20 billion instructions per second, a pocket super computer by my standards. 

New Year Resolution

My new year resolution is straightforward. Just four little things. 

Play More computer Games because life is very short. 

Pray more because God brings love, joy and peace. 

Watch more television because I overthink and get stressed.

Add Vegetables to my food. Most of the food I eat is starchy food like bread, rice and Pasta. Those foods turn into a ball of liquid while they're still in the stomach, then when they get into my intestines the gluten sugars pass through quickly so my pancreas has to make a lot of insulin. 

If vegetables are mixed with the starchy food, they can't pass sugars into my blood quickly because the vegetables get in the way and they act as fibre, especially sweetcorn. If I eat 400grams of pasta with vegetables, the pasta is spread out.