Lull FM

 If the government ever decided to pass a law to phase out fm radio, it should be broken. I would even think of setting up a pirate radio station myself. It's not illegal to think about making a pirate radio station only to do it. The trouble is if I went to prison for operating a pirate station, I would get bummed for sure. They would say what did you do, one guy would say I assaulted a traffic warden, another guy would say I robbed a bank then I would say I operated a pirate FM radio station. They would be like "bum him". The other problem is I'm boring so my pirate station would lull people to sleep. I would call it Lull FM.  

FM is a special gift because you don't even need to buy a radio to get it. An ordinary person like myself can make an FM radio. I just need some sort of dial to only allow one frequency to pass through, antenna, transistors, and a speaker. 

The FM signal seeps into the antenna and causes one side of a transistor to resist power less, this causes the wave to be copied, you can then pass the signal to a second transistor to amplify the current and so on and feed it strait to the speaker, I think that is why they call it a transistor radio. The dial could be a variable capacitor with a physical dial-head or if you're gifted you could make a digital dial with a micro chip or something like that. 

What is the advantage of this? FM works, it's simple and the radio itself uses less power because it's not running a micro processor to decode a signal. The sound is copied directly into the radio wave as it is. 

An ordinary guy like myself can make an FM radio or get a small one with change from fiver. Digital radio is different. The whole signal shuts off and on in pulses to encode characters. The code is interpreted by a micro processor, a small computer chip. One chip gathers the data and the other decodes it and turns it into sound waves. 

The advantage of digital radio is they can use signals that can't carry sounds very well because it's the pulses and interruptions in the wave itself that carry the data. They can cram many stations into a small space and each station would have perfect sound. The radio itself has to do more work so the battery would run down a bit faster in digital mode. 

I would say, lets keep both. I would prefer to listen to BBC radio 4 news hour on FM knowing my battery would last a bit longer but there are lots of other stations out there on digital so I can use both. 

Psalm 22

 A lot of people are looking to Nostradamus for prophecies about the future but I thought I should mention the Psalms of Kind David. I think King David was given vision and images from the future and he wrote them down as songs. 

I recall Jesus quoted Psalm 22 when he was on the cross. He said my father, why have you forsaken me. Psalm 22 describes a person being abandoned and scorned. It also mentions a person's hands and feet being pierced, I was amazed by this because the Jews and the Romans at the time of King David didn't use crucifixion as a punishment, I don't think they even invented it at the time. When I read through it, it was like the song was describing what it is like through the eyes of the person being crucified. It even describes the odd sensation of bones being out of joint and the pain and sadness.

I was wondering if he saw things that were happening today. I wonder if there is a psalm chapter that is describing things that will happen in the near future or recently. 

Look up Psalm 22 for yourself and decide if it is describing a painful humiliating death by crucifixion. I'm not infallible, I could be wrong. 

 

Angry Fired UPS man

 I watched a video online of a man having an angry outburst after being fired from his job at UPS. Let me share the video with you and you can have your own thoughts. 

Angry Fired UPS man video (remember youTube Plays ads before the video starts) 

I was in three minds about the video. I thought to myself that his anger was genuine. He felt like he was being cheated by the management team. I don't know the reason he was fired but i'm guessing there was an expensive mistake and he was blamed for it. He mentioned that they don't bother training their staff with the new system they use. I sensed his anger was building up for a long time. He also mentioned that they let him work a whole shift before being fired, if he was on a fixed salary then the extra spurt of anger would make sense. Perhaps if they fired him at the start of the shift, he could resign to save face so he felt like they were trying to screw him over. He mentioned he thinks they're cowards like the problem was their fault but they fired him to protect their jobs.  Was he a mistreated staff that had been with the company for 10 years? I don't know. 

I also thought to myself that he didn't think it through; he was still wearing his uniform, perhaps the video was recorded 2 minutes after he was fired. He is also showing the world he has trouble restraining his anger and does things without thinking about it. People might think they can't accept when he is wrong. It may put other employers off. Any hope of getting a reference from them for his next job may be difficult. Sometimes you need to think things through a bit.  

The other thought that came into my head was the whole thing was a parody. None of the people in the video worked at UPS, they were just actors looking for internet fame.  Who knows what the truth is. 

Another thing that pops up on social media a lot is what I call the 'Covered Mirror Paradox'. I don't think all those people are daft, I just think they're misinformed, every square cm of skin on your body reflects light in all directions and every square cm of Mirror also reflects light in all directions so light coming for the side will be reflected by the exposed part of the mirror and make it look like it an see behind the towel.  You can cover one portion of a mirror and the other parts of the mirror will still reflect the object behind the blind spot because light goes in all directions. Perhaps if they used polarised light then the result would be different. 

A few thoughts

 I have a few thoughts in my head as time passes along. I was wondering why they tend not to sell radios with DAB FM and AM frequencies together, they usually have DAB and FM but without AM or they have FM and AM but no DAB . There are also very few pocket radios with DAB radio. Britain is an excellent place for digital radio. They have a radio station for everything, there are christian radio stations, radio stations where they talk about sports all day like radio 5, they even have radio where they read out books. I always look at radios in online shops. I never buy them because I have a radio already.  

I was also wondering why the Pterosaur was named with a silent P when it was named in recent times; why do they need to make everything more complicated than it needs to be. It was an extinct flying reptile. The name is pronounced Terosaur. 

I was also thinking about reading ("reding"), a town in Berkshire west of London. It sits on the river Thames just like London does. The train station in reading is amazing, it is like it is the gateway to the west. Trains from reading seem to go everywhere. There is even a train that goes to the coastal town of Bournemouth that doesn't go through London there. 

Getting About

 In London there are about 4 types of Trains used on their metro rail system, Deep Level trains, they're small and shaped like Swiss rolls, foreigners often think they look like toy trains, they can pass through deep tunnels that were built in the late 1800s. Then you have  Sub Surface trains, they're shaped like loaves of bread and can run on the same tracks as Deep level trains but can't go through deep level train tunnels. They have their own square tunnels that run under the old broad way roads of London. Then you have overground trains, they're more like the commuter trains, they even use ac power from overhead power lines. Recently the mayor decided to give the different parts of the overground network different line names because life wasn't complicated enough. Finally you have the DLR, Docklands light railway, they're small self driving trains, they're also often compared to toy trains. I think you have to press the open door button to get off. 

Some people that I know think Deep level and Subsurface trains can't run on the same rails. Those people should visit 'Ealing common' station, they share the same  northbound and southbound platforms. The same is true of 'Rayner's Lane'. 

To me the key stations are the ones that give you a smooth way to change lines by simply stepping off and waiting on the same platform. Stations that take you places beyond.  Ealing common lets you get off a Piccadilly train and Catch a district line train going in the same direction. The district line will go to Barking, trains at Barking station go to the Thames Estuary and as far as Southend on sea, the Nearest coastal town to London. The District line also goes to Victoria station, the national coach station, national express, mega bus and flixbus coaches from there go across Britain and Europe. Three subsurface lines share two platforms at kings cross station, Hammersmith line trains also go to Barking and the circle line trains also go to Victoria. St Pancras Station is next door to kings cross and there is a pedestrian tunnel connecting the two stations, Trains from St Pancras go to France and Kings Cross is also a Terminal station for trains from the north on the surface. Kings Cross and St Pancras are sometimes considered the same station because of the way they sit side by side. Some people say, there is a route to everywhere from those two stations. They wouldn't be wrong. 

Finding A Way

 I find a lot of people make superficial judgements about ordinary people like me. They may think I look at dirty things or I drink a lot of alcohol or stuff like that but every person in this world has depth to them, that includes me. I was lucky because my father always encouraged me to read a lot from a young age. I read for fun and my mind is set to find good deals and ideas to get by. 

My Home island of Britain has many small areas of outstanding natural beauty. Little zones of paradise and I'm always looking for ways to get there.  I don't always pick the fastest way but to look for the smoothest way. 

I found a smooth way to get from the north west corner of London to the national coach station in Victoria. From there, you can go across the whole island on a long distance coach and access those remote little paradises without paying too much for transport. What you do is take the Piccadilly line train from Uxbridge Station and get off at 'Ealing Common' that station only has 2 platforms, northbound and southbound but they are shared by two train lines, so you can step off a Piccadilly train and catch a District train on the same platform heading in the same direction. The district line train will go to Victoria Station, the national coach station is in Victoria  next to the train station on the same road. This route is not the quickest, it is the smoothest. You don't need to traverse connecting corridors in other stations and walk up stairs, you just step off one train and onto another.  

The other thing I found was those overseas shops like Temo sell sofas for less than £200, it looks too good to be true. I thought that was cool because luxury sofas cost more than £1000 in most shops. Next time you see a guy looking at his phone, don't jump to conclusions about him, he could be just reading or looking for a good deal. 

What March 2025 Means To Me

Lots of things happened in March but my thoughts were dominated by the disaster that happened in Myanmar. They had what I call a near 8 Richter earthquake. On the 28th of march, Myanmar and nearby countries were rocked by a 7.7 Richter earthquake. When earthquakes are that strong, the strongest of buildings and trees are toppled over. If they happen under water, it can kick vast volumes of water into a tsunami. My poor heart sank low in my chest when I saw the buildings topple over and collapse on the news. Multitudes of people were facing a horror that I can't imagine. When I was a young man I recall those types of Earthquakes were quite rare, they would happen once in 5 or 6 years; these days they seem to happen twice a year. Every year, two crowded communities in the world are struck by a near 8 Richter  earthquake. Some people say it is a natural cycle of the earth, others are saying it rains more in dry places and the fault lines are lubricated. I don't know what is happening, I just notice there are near 8 earthquakes happening more often as time passes by. 

The other thing was the trump tariffs, he wanted to increase the import tax of goods entering the united states to make them less competitive against  American goods. I think he also wants them to move their factories into the states avoid the tariffs and increase manufacturing jobs. I don't know much about economics but I thought it would be a good idea to give them time to prepare, I would say they have 9 months to prepare for the new tariffs. It may also be a good idea to raise tariffs in stages as well.  I think businesses need time to prepare for changes like that. Don't rock the boat too much I say. 

I'm an ordinary man, I can't do anything about it so I continue reading and doing my hobbies. Window shopping can also keep the restless mind settled. I look at all the prices of hotels in the coastal towns of Britain so I can go there for a short break on my birthday and have a nice cold drink, a small glass of whiskey twice a year. One for my birthday in a paradise and the other for Christmas.  

Myanmar Quakes and Trump tariffs

It was at the end of March on the 28th when a powerful 7.7 rs earthquake struck Myanmar and caused devastation. I felt pity for all those people that lost loved ones and their homes; in the game of pool, sinking the black ball 8 is game over and the same is true of earthquakes. Anything close to 8 in the Richter scale will devastate the nation around it, the ground is leaping and undulating with too much force for strong buildings to stand up. A near-8 earthquake will topple the strongest of buildings. It will spare wooden bungalows and tents but anything with supporting walls will topple over.  

There were two thoughts in my mind around the time of the earthquake. One was short breaks and the other was trump tariffs. I get what president Donald Trump is doing, if there is a bigger import tariff, it would make imported goods less competitive against domestic produced goods and it would pressure companies to move some of their factories into the united states to avoid the import tax altogether. He is looking to create lots of jobs in the long term. It is a very big risk and bad news for us. I'm in two minds about his decision, other countries will do it back to him and he may cause everything to become too expensive. I don't know what is going to happen, I try not to think about it too much. 

The other thing is short breaks, I like to look at all the coastal towns in Britain and see if there is a good deal available somewhere. The price of a train journey in Britain isn't based on distance but what tools you have available. If you have a good rail card and use the internet to book early that you will get a much better deal. All the different train operators have different perks, some give you a discount for return journeys, others let you use more than one rail card. There is no consistency. If you travel 50km, it will vary a lot depending on the time you get on the train and your perks. The possibilities are endless because you can use a bus service to get into a discounted zone so you can use a mixture of different transport services.