Giant Phone

I noticed they installed some more 'BT Global' digital billboards. What's special is they're actually phones. They are advertising displays that use video screens but they also have a dial pad, microphone and speaker on the side to make a free call.  I tried it out and was able to call my mobile phone and hear my voice on my phone and I could also hear my voice on my the dial pad speaker. They installed one on Belmont Road near Uxbridge Station and I saw another one just outside High Wycombe Hospital. I thought it is a good idea because if someone is stranded and lost their possessions they can use the dial pad to get help. 

I also learnt that there is a London bus that uses a civil car park to turn around, the 331 from Uxbridge to Ruislip. When the 331 bus gets to Northwood station, the road is a dead-end and narrow so it needs to go into a car park at the end of the lane to turn around. I never saw a bus use a car park for cars to turn around before but I guess that is the only way they can keep the station bus stop open. 

Nothing Makes Sense

Very often I find there are no straightforward routes in this world, every turn leads to more confusion and every pathway goes nowhere. 

I went to get a bus and the bus driver told me a one way ticket costs £3 and a return ticket costs £7.50. That didn't make sense, if it costs £1.50 more to get a return ticket then why are they selling it, they should just sell the one way ticket for both directions. Even the driver warned me because some people will buy a return ticket thinking it would be cheaper. 

Everything is like that but at least there is something I see every day and it doesn't change. I see the daisies sprouting out of the grass verges by the roads and they're always the same. I don't touch them, just admire them from a short distance as I pass by. They have little yellow center and white petals. A simple little flower that emerges in spring and stays around till autumn. 

I was reading through the NASA blogs and saw that the James Webb space telescope was observing a planet going around a star that had died, the star went through a red giant phase as it ran out of fuel and turned into a white dwarf, a dim dead star that just barely glows. I thought to myself such an event could transform a planet, a planet like Jupiter could have all its gasses striped away exposing a rocky core and it could become like a terrestrial planet or it could become bigger. Perhaps a planet the size of earth crashed into Jupiter millions of years ago and the material is still there in the centre of the planet. 

We know so little.  

Black and Yellow Bus

I described to artificial intelligence what a bus should look like in my opinion and got it to draw the bus for me. I think a bus would look cool if it was black and covered in yellow polka dots. In my head it looks cool but when the ai drew it, it looked lame so I asked it to reverse the colours. 

In my head it looks better the other way. The black paint would hide blemishes like UV damage to the paint and small dents and the yellow dots would make the bus easy to see, even if some of the passengers were partially blind. The interior of the bus would look pink and have pink filtered lights. At night you would would see a spotted bus with pink light sweeping out of the windows. .

I think the problem here is there isn't enough contrast. In my head the bus would be very black and the dots would be smaller and more numerous. 

Bus Cap Raise

I recently learned that the government have increased the national single bus fare cap from £2 to £3. The cost of running buses is usually more than the fare charged to customers, the government pays out the remaining cost to keep trips capped at £2. This was so cool because I took the bus from my town to Heathrow airport and paid just £2 for the whole trip. The only bad thing is it would work out cheaper to pay individual fares than get a bus pass in most situations, so if I bought a bus pass, I would feel like a mug. It looks like the government is clawing at funds to free up public funding, what a stressful time we live in. 

The other day I was looking at the Glasgow metro rail on YouTube, their trains look small like toy trains, but they get the job done. I've never been to Glasgow in Scotland, I have to go there and try out their neat little subway system and see what their city is like. 

Let me show you a video so you see that I mean...

Glasgow Metro

Face on a train

I was wondering what it would be like to make a large 1 metre sized plastic Thomas the tank engine face and stick it on the front of a tube train.

Wouldn't it be nice to see a face on the front of a train with a happy smile on it. It would cover the ungrateful train driver's face nicely.

Wait a minute!!

Stick a large face on a bus also just above the driver so he can still see the road.

I wonder what else would look better with a plastic face on the front of it? Hmmm

*******

Today I am so happy and grateful for all my fingers because I use all of them to manipulate objects and would notice straight away if one of them is missing.

Alan Booth, author of "unanswered questions of Alan John Booth" on kindle