What April 2021 means to me

It was Easter and Passover during the first week of April this year. The weather was very nice most of the month. Roughly in the middle of the month we came out of lockdown, the non essential shops reopened and the hospitality sector went back business. I saw queues on the street for people to go into clothes shops and hair dressers, some of the queues were akin to the queues outside Northern Rock high-street bank the previous decade when they went bankrupt. They were queues fit for a roller coaster ride. Super queues that zig zaged down the street. 

Around the time the lockdown ended, prince Philip died. Then it was my son's second birthday and I tried untethered high quality virtual reality for the first time. It was the same day as Prince Philip's funeral. My son's second birthday was semi isolated because there was still restrictions for how many people can come into your home at one time.  A few days later I witnessed the first powered flight on Mars, the Inginuity drone/probe flew a few meters from the ground. Mars' atmosphere is very thin so the rotor blades had to spin very fast. 

Spirograph Dislodge

I don't know the word to describe it so I will call the issue I have the Spirograph dislodge. I wanted to create a catalog of all the gear pieces and all the holes to know all the different effects you can make. I started out with my favourite gear piece, the one with 56 teeth in a 96 teeth bracket. 

I marked each hole starting from the middle going outwards. As you get closer to the edge of the gear piece, it gets harder it is to control. The gear piece tries to jump out of the bracket and sometimes it dislodges itself from the bracket. 

Every gear piece is like that, the outer holes are unstable and cause it to dislodge from the bracket and mess up the sketch, you need a super steady hand to control it.  I was wondering, couldn't they just put a flange on the outside edge to stop the gear piece from dislodging itself. I don't swear very often but I let out a few swear words. 

"Frack your garden you piece of shit", something like that. 

Just a thought

Wouldn't it be cheaper for governments worldwide to give their citizens cheaply made bio hazard suits to wear when they are in public places than to put their country into lockdown? No? 

That is what I would do if I was the government, I would find a cheap way to get everyone a bio hazard suit and put hoses on the street to shower people and wash away virus particles before they take the suits off. Or the suits could be covered in an acidic gel or alcohol solution. 

The head section would be rigid and have holes in it to allow them to breathe but the holes would be away from their mouth. I put the holes in the top in the diagram as a joke because the shower would wet their head. In the real suit then holes would be at the back away from their mouth. Did I mention that no one laughs at my jokes? 

Judging by the number of infections, I think we will need a bio hazard suit for everyone because the virus can mutate and it is very similar to SARS, I remember that the mortality rate of SARS was 10%. That means it kills one in ten people that are infected. If 100 people were infected with SARS 10 will die, not a nice thought, Covid19 is almost identical to SARS. It wouldn't take much for a new strain to emerge that is equally leathal as SARS, just a slight mutation in the RNA sequence. 

Be Prepared I say.  

Sunny Day

Jacob my son, 

The best drink in this world is plain water, it is the most refreshing thing to drink when you are tired and thirsty. I advise that you be grateful for food because some of your ancestors didn't have much of it. We descended from communities that were faced with shortages of food. In the ancient times a local famine would be a disaster for the people because there was no global supply chain, people would starve and feel hungry all the time. 

I prepare simple but delicious food quite often. One thing I will do is put fusilli pasta  into a clay cerial bowl and fill the bowl with water and spices and a little bit of oil then put it in the microwave oven for 20 minutes. Sometimes I would cook the pasta plain and add mayonnaise to it. The outcome would be the same, a delicious meal that is quick to make and very cheap. 

Sometimes I manage to get a 7.5 kg sack of potatoes for £2 or close to that price in the market place. I would wash the potatoes and put them in my ceramic cooking bowl with pyrex lid and place it in the microwave for 20 minutes, I would then leave the potatoes in the bowl for another 40 minutes and they would continue to cook themselves with stored heat. Then I would put lemon and herb mayonnaise on them and eat them with the skin on. They taste delicious. It takes the potatoes 40 minutes to cool off when they are in the ceramic cooking bowl. 

Robot head Paradox

Some time ago I watched an episode of my favourite generation of star trek, 'Next geration' with Captain John Luke Picard. In that episode the starship enterprise accidentally flew through a worm hole and travelled back to 1800s Earth. They beamed down to earth and the Robot crew member called 'commander Data' had his head dislodged inside an abandoned mine shaft. They beamed the Robot back to the ship returned back to the present time. They went down the abandoned mine shaft and found his head was still there so they brought it back and reattached it and it worked just fine. 

If Commander Data was 50 years old and his head was sitting in a mine shaft for 500 years then how old is he? You could say he is 50 years old but then his head was sitting in a mine shaft for 500 years. But then if you say he is 500 years old, that would also be wrong because the man that created him wasn't born 500 years ago. He emerged 50 years ago. These sci-fi shows really make you think. 

The same is true if I have an organ transplant. If I am shot in the heart and my heart was replaced by a heart from a person that was born 10 years before me then how old am I? My heart is 48 years old and I am 38. 

My Spirograph Set

I have a large collection of different coloured pencils and pens, some of them are not much use to me. I find it quite hard to work with gel pens, I also have different coloured pencils and find the yellow, pink and peach coloured ones to be quite useless. 

 I thought to myself for a while if there was a way to use the pens and pencils that I don't like. Then I thought about Spirograph, Spirograph is a drawing set that helps to make repeating geometric patterns. 

I bought a Spirograph set and practiced drawing some 'Spirograph shapes'. I hope to use the Spirograph set to enhance my sketches and make use of all the pens and pencils I don't find useful. 

I used the paper that comes with the spirograph set to practice and get comfortable with using the drawing gears. This set came with two nested gear sets and one rack gear piece.  

I will use the Spirograph set to enhance my sketches and use up the ink and wax of the colours pens and pencils that I don't like. 

Derek Chauvin Guilty

We are in the last third of April and I learned a few days ago on Tuesday that Derek Chauvin the former police officer that caused George Floyd to die by kneeling on his neck was found guilty of second degree murder and manslaughter in American criminal courts. 

I'm sure that George's Family will be pleased with the verdict. I am happy for George Floyd's family. I don't have a negative view of the American Police because I know there are more than half a million of them. Some stats claim there are 700,000 others claim there are 600,000 , I'll call it 650,000. One percent of 650,000 is 6,500. Out of all those thousands of police officers, there are only a hand full of them that are reckless with people's safety. If you have half million of anyone, you will have harmful people amongst them. Here in the UK there are about 300,000 doctors and we had killer doctors like Harold Shipman amongst them. There are harmful people everywhere in every profession I believe. 

One question I always asked myself is would someone that causes death be sentenced less if their victims were a working class family? If a man caused a lady to die by dangerous driving would he be sentenced to less time in prison if the family of the victim were working class? Would the judge just say they are only working class so I will sentence him to just six months in prison? Would he be sentenced to more time in prison if the family were middle class or rich? That is a question I have wondered about for many years and may never get the answer.