Billy of Time February

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a real life zombie apocalypse? I imagined just finding a good hiding place would cause you to feel relief. A building with strong doors and lots of heavy things to block the doors from behind. Another thing would be a bunker. Some people set their mind to building bunkers under their back yards; the reason for the bunker would be in case of an apocalypse like an asteroid strike or nuclear holocaust, they would't imagine their bunker would be used because of a zombie apocalypse. 

I wonder what it would be like to live off the grid in the wilderness. I imagined a large boat that floated up in the air during the daytime. It would have wings that are filled with mirrors. The mirrors would reflect sunlight onto different parts of cloth balloons, the air inside the cloth would become very hot and provide lift. 

I call it the 'Billy of Time', a boat-blimp with large fabric envelopes that act like hot air balloons, they heat up air inside them from light reflected on mirrors on wings. This causes the boat to rise out of the water and float up high in the sky. Then at sunset, the large flying boat would descend and the wings would help it glide down safely back to the surface of the sea. You would spend your time tending to the fruit garden on the deck; growing tomatoes and berries to live on. The fruits would be irrigated by water condensation gathered in the air and from rain. At dusk you would watch the sun set on the cloud tops, they would be covered in pink and red beams of light. Then at night would would sit on the deck for a while and look at the stars. Your bed would be a hammock below deck wrapped in lots of fabric to save weight. If there was a zombie apocalypse, you would be oblivious.  

The hard part would be to stop the boat-blimp crashing into land and making sure your crops persist. Some of the tomatoes and berries would be dried out to store in case some of the crops failed. 

The mind wonders when you need it to...  

 

 

Fishless Aquarium Air Vent drama

Sometimes imagination is an effective way to break the cycle of overthinking and stress. I was thinking about a fishless aquarium subway vent for a while during this week. It is a vent shaft in a house that takes stale air out of the house but it would be big enough for a person to comfortably walk through; it is very much like a typical hallway of a house. 

The vent isn't just a vent, there are TV screens nested inside fish tanks that play videos of fish swimming around but there are no real fish in there. 

I imagined being accused of a serious crime and police got a warrant to search my home. They would turn around and ask me why there is a train network hidden behind the walls of my home, I would explain to them that it is actually a fake aquarium that turns into a micro train line. I would tell the police it is just a hobby of mine, I wanted to make a novelty micro subway train network in the spaces between the walls of my home. But I also wanted to make a fake aquarium and tell people it is real when they visit it. They would come back some months later and take a ride on my little train then they would go down to the basement and walk through the same space but all the screens and lights would turn on and it would look like they're in an aquarium. 

I would tell them to come back when I'm in the clear and I would show them how it works. How I would spent lots of time adding things to the project. Making the little stations better and improving the little trains. 

I would sit next to an empty cupboard that is the entrance to the little micro station and look at the reaction on their face when they see it. 

If I had guests, I could take their children down to the basement and show them the entrance to the fake aquarium. I would say welcome to my private aquarium, I have over 50 fish tanks inside. They would walk through it and think they're looking at real sea creatures but they're not. The halls of the aquarium would zig zag around the house all the way to the top floor. 

My Metro rail

One thing I often think about is what a metro rail network would look like if I was in charge. I created a metro rail network inside my head, didn't give it a name, but the way it works is very clear to me.

I would make the trains very small. This would allow space for extra tracks. The passengers would sit on the train in single file facing sideways and there would only be doors on one side of the train. The seats on the train would be made of hard plastic and would have a rounded bucket shape for comfortable seating. The small trains only have enough space for people to sit in single file and hold less people than normal trains, but they come more often and some of them go directly to busy hub stations. There is also over taking rail to allow trains to pass trains that are in the station. The trains would be driverless because there would be too many of them and trains are like lifts that go forwards and backwards instead of up and down. The jobs would be engineers that maintain all the trains. The trains themselves would be very bright and colourful and would have faces on the front of them.

When there are very few people using the network, the trains would use less power because some of the trains would not be running but the ones that are running are small and use less power.

In the station there would be two platforms one for passengers getting off the train and one for passengers getting on. The train would stop at the platform for people getting off the train then would move forward 100 meters to the next platform for passengers getting on. The train would move to the getting on platform as soon as a train ahead moves away so people won't worry about missing their train.

Like I said earlier, there is always at least 4 lengths of track along the network. Two for going from a to b and two for going from b to a. The outer tracks are for express trains that go past some of the stations the inner tracks are for trains that visit every station.

The parts of the network that are not underground would have a frame around them that holds solar panels and aluminum sheet walls to keep the trains enclosed inside and away from the wind and rain.

There are so many quirks to my imaginary metro rail network but I don't have the time to share them with you. If I wrote down all the things about the network it would fill the typical space of a book.

Game memory

When I was a young boy I would play a Ms-Dos game on my Dad's computer called Captain Comic. It was a side-scrolling computer game and you would collect itinerary to enhance your gameplay, there were all sorts of strange creatures in the game and different places behind different doors, I loved to play it because it was as good as games got in those days.

If I made my own computer game I would make a top-down side-scrolling computer game. By top-down, I mean that you are looking down from above the way you do in sim city. But the itinerary panel in the bottom corner would look the same. The panel above would be used to show interaction graphics like if you met a person on the ground, their face would appear where the health and fire panel bar is. The game would be more of a quest or puzzle based game.

I am grateful for my imagination because it comforts me all the time. How wonderful it is to lie down and be absorbed by your imagination instead of by stress and concerns, I  am thankful for these gifts.