What February 2024 Means To Me

I call February 2024 the trickster spring because there was no frost in the mornings and we had a lot of rain like we do at the start of spring. Many plant beings were tricked by the climate, fruiting trees opened their blossom flowers early; I saw daisies sprouting flowers in the grass verges next to the road. That sums up February for Britain, lots of wind rain and unusually high temperatures for the tail end of winter. 

It was during February that NASA and a private company sent a probe to the south side of the moon looking for water ice, it was called  Odysseus. The probe landed badly and toppled over. In recent months, several probes were broken on the surface of the moon. They didn't land right or they couldn't persist through a moon night; two weeks of darkness and very cold temperatures. 

The Israel-Gaza war that started at the end of October last year was still ongoing. I hate all wars, ordinary people like myself that just want to live in peace get killed and injured. War is a ticket to the blues. I don't take sides. I just want everybody to live in peace. 

The Moon Again

I learnt just today that NASA and a private company had sent a probe to the south pole of the moon. The probe called Odysseus was carrying several instruments. 

I wonder if it can survive one moon night, 2 weeks of darkness and super frigid temperatures below -100 °c. I think the moon night often kills probes, some of them can't turn back on at sunrise. 

Every nation is obsessed with the moon now. It is like a stepping stone to deep space, or possible second home for people to live on. 

Faces and Names

The trademark logo for the British National lottery has a face on it hidden in plain sight. It looks like a hand with two fingers crossed but if you look closer, you'll see a face. I'm one of those people that notices things like that. I just wonder what the lottery logo's name would be. You can't have a face without a name. Perhaps it Hanz or something like that. 

Then I start thinking about God's name. 

God's Name is Yahwey, "Yar wai" It means 'I am'. I was wondering if it is a coincidence that it is also the sound effect the junction of your lungs makes. If you put a microphone in the Bronchi tubes next to your heart, you would hear the sound "Yar Wai" every time you breathe. 

Your lungs are saying 'I am' in Hebrew every time you Breathe, the sound is close to your heart, you can't hear it but the sound is there deep in your lungs. Perhaps every being that breathes air in this world is saying God's name. Why did God call himself 'I am'? Perhaps because God existed before everything, time and the universe. I don't know, I will have to ask. 

Fifty-two Means Balance

In a year there are 52 weeks. Ordinary working guys like myself tend to only buy clothing once per week so I buy 52 clothing items per year. I follow this rule very strictly. If I get a two or three t-shirt multi buy deal, I will wait 3 weeks before I resume buying clothing again. I slowly replace all my worn out clothes week by week. Unfortunately society doesn't except poorly dressed people, If I wear clothes that are damaged or worn out, people will think I'm stupid or lack integrity. Life literally becomes more difficult if you wear scruffy clothes, people expect you to be a nuisance or something like that and you get blamed for bad deeds. 

The number 52 means balance to me. If I'm in a job that is paid weekly or every four weeks, I would use the number 52 to work out my monthly wage. 

 Monthly income = Weekly income × 52 ÷ 12

52 weeks is one year and one month is 1 twelfth of a year. 

52 means balance to me. A balance between cost and personal presentation. I don't spend too much and I don't dress too poorly. I balance in the middle. 

Trickster Spring

Earlier in the week I noticed there was daisies sprouting out of the grass in roadside grass verges. I also noticed fruiting trees were producing blossom yet it is February, the tail end of winter in this part of the world. We had a very mild winter. I consider it spring when I see daisies in the grass. This year I'll call it spring on the first day of March for the sake of neatness. 

We're lucky in a way, on Friday I injured my right arm but it is healing. The triceps at the back of the arm were swollen and it hurt a lot. I don't understand how I injured it, the injury appeared gradually. just walking was painful because the arm didn't want to move. My arm is healing, If I was a robot then I would need to go to a repair shop to fix my arm. 

Eye Blinds

One of the challenges of sleeping these days is dealing with unwanted light. You have sodium street light rays bleeding in from the corners of the curtain, sometimes the new bright LED lamps and LED display lights for all the devices that are on standby. If you work at night then you have daylight getting through a bit. 

Not too long ago I tried folding a T-shirt three times and putting it on the top half of my face above my nose, the darkness was very peaceful. I lay there for a while and listened to the radio. After a while, the folded T-shirt became a bit irritating, it caused an itching sensation on my face. I wonder what it would be like to wear eye blinds to sleep, ones that are made for that one purpose. 

I could listen to my favourite podcasts while I lay down in total darkness.  There is something very comforting about complete darkness; I think it is letting go of your ego and just thinking about other things. I could just be listening to a story that has nothing to do with me, like the story of two fishermen that were stranded on a small life boat and ran out of fresh water.  Perhaps I could listen to Neil Armstrong talking about walking on the moon and being the first Human to walk on the moon. There are so many stories out there to listen to. 

Scroll Away

Social media across all platforms has become very much like a stinking open sewer; they're filled with angry violent videos and hateful messages. I have become sick of it all. I don't want to be angry because of a violent video or annoyed because of false dogma. 

I go on social media to post my greetings and blogs, then I get out. I can go to the news articles directly and read science blogs. 

I like the Express site because they follow interesting projects like new railways and buildings. I ignore the other stuff they post. The metro is an all rounder. Bucks free press talks about stuff near me. 

Until I can get my feeds under control. I won't spend much time on social media. 

Flow Change

In recent days I noticed they managed to put lithium power cells inside standard cylindrical batteries and it is quite common to see batteries that can store 2500 milliamps of current. This means just one 'AA' battery can release 2.5 amps over an hour.  It can power my 50 inch TV for a while if it was connected. My radio can take 4 AA batteries. 4 of those things would power my radio all day. I don't know how long my radio would last on 10 amps though, I never tried it. I'm sure it can stay on all day and still have plenty of power the next day. 

AA batteries are small cylinder shaped batteries with a raised bump on one side for the positive charge and a flat side for negative charge. The negative flat side is usually held in place with a spring that doubles as an electrode. I don't know why they do it like that. 

In recent months, I noticed X social media spurts out videos full of violence, people fighting and throwing things and stuff like that. I started clicking the 'Not interested in this' menu, I don't want to get angry. I want to learn. Sometimes it is better to go directly to the news and science pages. 

I added a shortcut to my local digital newspaper Bucks Free press today. On the smartphone chrome browser, you can add a shortcut to the home screen, the link then appears along side the shortcut to your apps. 

Going direct to digital newspapers is the way I react to excessive violence on social media. I cut out the middle man. 

Hikiwake-face

I think all men have a Hikiwake-face, Hikiwake is the term used to describe two sumo wrestlers that can't make progress during a match and end with a draw. 

I think my Hikiwake-face makes people feel nervous. My Poker face also makes people feel nervous. If my right Brain and left brain are arguing or if I'm constipated, I will display a Hikiwake face. One part of my brain would be complaining because I didn't confront someone that was rude to me 8 years ago, the other part would think so what, it was 8 years ago, forget about it. The two parts would be wrestling, one side is beating me up for things I did wrong in the past and the other would be pushing pack. Then when it all settles down I would have my pocker-face on.

My Pocker-face has no emotion, it's just me thinking about things, I could have won the lottery, discovered I have cancer or remember a book I liked and the face would be the same. 

I was thinking about getting some eye blinds so it is always very dark when I sleep. I could play a podcast and be in absolute darkness just listening to the story playing. Then I was thinking about trying to build some experimental rigs to see if a concept would work. Then I would wonder if a tamagotchi from the '90s could be reprogrammed to play card games. These are the random thoughts of a man with a pocker-face, impartial to everything and without care. 

Podcasting From Home

When I'm cleaning my home, I like to connect my Bluetooth headphones to my phone and play a podcast. 

A recent podcast I was listening to is 'Stuff you should know' by How stuff works on the tunein radio app. This is the link Stuff You should know. I'm not sure the link will work without the app though. 

I also have lots of interesting podcasts on other apps like Amazon music. I won't share my Amazon ones because I think you need Amazon prime to listen to them. There are lots of podcasts about near death experiences. People describe what they saw when they had a heart attack for example. I like the ones where people claim they met Jesus when they left their body, that's quite interesting. 

Turn the Sod

Recently, I learned that king Charles was diagnosed with cancer. To me this is another reason to be grateful, for now my health is ok. Every day I live in this world a roulette wheel spins with a chance of a terminal disease. I don't know when my last day is but I know it will come one day. 

Many of my fellow Brits don't like the monarchy, they feel like they're too privileged and well-off for no reason. If you're an ordinary person in Britain, life can be difficult; we get plenty of problems and lots of anxiety. When many Brits go on holiday, they want to think less because they take their rubbish thoughts with them. To think less they drink lots of  alcohol. I don't, I just turn the Sod. 

I fill my head with other thoughts and sip tea or coffee. I pray to God and talk about what is bugging me then I just turn my thoughts away from the anxious ones. When I'm in the kitchen washing dishes or preparing food, I turn on the radio and listen stories on radio 4, Or I play a pod cast to my Bluetooth headset while I vacuum clean the floor. If I'm ironing clothes, I watch a netflix documentary mystery show. 

A recent thought I had was what would happen if I had unlimited money and created a football team out of thin air. 

If I was loaded like an oil sheik, I could buy contracts for all the best players in the world. The team could be an obscure town in the middle of Britain with no football team. I would build the stadium there and climb up all three divisions. Perhaps they would be called 'Milton Keynes Upsetters', the turf party-poopers. 

Just a surplanting thought. 

Egg Day

Jacob, my son. 

I recently learned that the king has cancer, I'm assuming it is prostate cancer because the cancer was discovered during treatment for an enlarged prostate gland. I don't know if king Charles is still the monarch when you read this or if prince William has taken the throne. Perhaps the monarchy has been abolished. I don't know. 

It was while the king had prostate cancer that you were learning to read. The software reading eggs seems to help I think. We installed the reading eggs app on your tablet { Reading Eggs} , the same company makes a maths program as well called maths seeds. 

I hope you learn to love reading when you're older. There are so many books out there. 

Balance is important

When I was younger I wondered why the Atari Jaguar games console failed to succeed. Now I'm older I understand what happened. It was too advanced. The thing was released in the first half the '90s but it had a 64 bit data bus and 5 processor chips. It was very hard to manufacture and games developers never used all the chips, they just used the Motorola sprite chip used for backwards compatibility. The console could probably play games like 'Zelda and the ocarina of time' or Spiro the dragon but the system was underused. They couldn't make it fast enough so it was always sold out in the shops. Very few people were able to get their hands on it. Doing too much can get you trapped. 

These days I find it hard to choose things. If I go on netflix or I want to play a podcast while I do chores, I spend 10 minutes just choosing something to play. In the old days there was less choice. You would turn on the radio and pick from a few stations. I was wondering if they have a similar problem to Atari, they put out too much stuff and make their own trade difficult.  

I often wonder what would have happened if atari managed to sort out the manufacturing problems and made a development kit that abstracts games developers from the hardware. If they made it easy for games developers to use the hardware fully. 

Balance and simplification are essential. Do not do too much with too little. And keep it as simple as possible. 

What January 2024 Means to Me

January seemed to pass by very fast and had the likeness of spring; there was even a spring time like storm called Isha that hit Britain in the last third of the month on the 21st. The only thing that was missing was daisies in the grass. There was frost at the beginning of the month in the mornings but the temperature increased later. 

The Japanese Space agency, Jaxa sent a probe to the moon. They're the 5th nation to land an object on the moon. One of the thrusters malfunctioned so the software flipped the probe upside down to regain control of it just before it landed to avoid a collision. The probe landed upside down and the solar panels were facing away from the sun so it had very limited power but it still carried out some experiments and released two small rovers. 

The King had surgery to fix an enlarged prostate gland. Men have prostate glands at the base of their bladder and if it gets swollen it can put pressure on the urine tract making it very hard to pass urine. The King wanted his surgery to be announced publicly to comfort other men with the condition and encourage them to get treatment. It was a big success, many men came forward seeking medical help for their enlarged prostate glands.