Energy Floss

At the end of winter 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Just before spring 2022 in march I believe, many nations placed trade sanctions on Russia. 

The thing that surprised me is the fuel suppliers instantly increased their prices. The fuel in the petrol station was already traded before the incident so I don't understand why the price should go up straight away. To me that was unfair. Later I found out that they made record high profit, to me that means it wasn't necessary for them to increase the price so early. The price should go up weeks after the incident. Why do we still live in a world where we rely on trade of fuel for our energy? 

I think the Nations that are independent and don't rely on trade of fuel to get their energy will be free of recession in winter. This winter we will have a recession because the cost of energy will be too high, it will bring down spending. 

I often wonder if Margaret Thatcher was right to privatise our gas and electricity suppliers. some of them are imploding so perhaps it's the fuel traders that are the problem and not the energy providers. I really don't know. 

Rained A Bit

It rained a bit earlier in the day. The air was filled with petrichor, that nice earthy smell you get when it suddenly rains after a dry period.  when the dried up roots of plants excrete oils to keep them alive, the rain reacts with the oils and the dormant bacteria in the ground. It is a lovely smell, similar to the smell of the tide going out at the coast. 

I think that is one reason I would love to build a veranda house one day. I wrote about that on another blog post titled Veranda House . 

It would be nice to sit on a sheltered porch and drink coffee or tea while it is raining. Listen the the rain drops and breathe the petrichor though my nose. For a little while I just think of nothing, I just accept that I am in this world and apart of it for a short time. The simple joys are the best sometimes. 

Raids and views

I saw a viral video of about 50 young teenagers raiding a McDonald's restaurant in Nottingham. I thought to myself, how can 50 young people come together and agree to do it. They even threatened the staff. They jumped over the counter and went into the kitchen and stole the food. The sad thing is the police won't be able to do much because they look like they are too young to face prosecution. I feel like my country is turning into a lawless mess. People are getting stabbed, there is armed robberies happening everywhere and crime is rising very high. The mind has to be somewhere else, I feel scared of the winter months because it will be my first winter paying over 10p per killowatt-hour for gas, heating a home will be challenging. 

I had a look at the 'James Webb' space telescope website jwst.nasa.gov, I noticed they have been looking at Jupiter recently. I thought they were wasting time because there is already a Juno space probe going around the planet. They also zoomed into the cartwheel galaxy and saw structures that were hidden from other telescopes. The hubble telescope can see infra-red light but it can't see mid infra-red so there is a whole other spectrum that is visible with this new telescope. I'm just wondering when they're going to zoom into 'Proxima B' our nearest known exoplanet that is going around the Proxima Centauri red dwarf star, the nearest known star to the Sun. 

Two Room thought

Sometimes I feel angry at society because there is little respect for ordinary people. I see people filming restaurant staff and complaining about their service. What they are doing is posting the video on social media and inviting other people to mock them, to me that is cyber bullying. I always speak up when things like that happen. I always condemn videos of staff being mocked on the internet. The same is true of traffic wardens and police, they share the video on social media and invite other people to mock them. It's very disrespectful and not the way to treat a human being. 

When abrasive thoughts like that enter my head, I try to replace them with happy thoughts. I imagine myself having a house big enough that I can use 2 large rooms for my hobbies. One room is a Man-cave filled with games and toys. The other room is a workshop filled with power tools that I use to build things. These are constructive thoughts in my view because they are displacing unwanted thoughts. 

Two Thirds of August

We are in that last third of August. I was thinking that over a large amount of time, the majority of beings that will read my thoughts in this blog are thinking machines, followed by people that hate me and are looking for a foolish post to mock me with. I don't care, I will be dead soon, perhaps in another 40 to 50 years time. One day the whole universe will die, all matter will decay into nothing and everything we know of will be nothing. Only the creater of the Universe will persist and those pardoned from death. 

I was thinking about Prestige-Alan, a version of me that doesn't exist. If Prestige-Alan did exist, he would be a nuisance. He would have nothing useful to say, he would also refuse to accept awards because he doesn't like conditional respect. Servant-Alan (present day me) also hates conditional respect and superficial judgements. 

There are plenty of times in my life when I am being judged unfairly. If I go to a waiting room at the opticians, they will treat me differently depending on if I am wearing a nice shirt or a cheap t-shirt. I am the same person but one person is an iritation, the other is welcome to remain seated. 

Mini Grin

There are so many things in this world to make people feel angry: videos of road rage, disrespectful outbursts, things not working, delays and things like that. But I don't want to be angry or stressed. I just want to be a man of liesure that is lost in his hobbies. 

I was window shopping on the internet, looking at all the mini retro flashback consoles that have been released. I was a kid in the 90's, between me and all my cronies we had every console, I had a sega mega Drive(UK sega Genesis), one of my neighbours had an 80's Nintendo, my next door neighbour had a Amiga 500, my cousin had a super Nintendo. I have played on all of them. Even the Atari vcs. If I collected all flashback mini replica consoles to put in my small man cave, the younger generation wouldn't understand why. They would say, why don't you just download the games to your phone or computer, they would say the graphics are tosh. They wouldn't understand that those games were special to me. I would love to see a small working replica of those consoles in my home again. 

If you're American, the sega Mega Drive was the same as the sega Genesis but sent pal code out to the TV instead of the American NTSC. The American TV screens had a different number of scan lines and refresh rate. We used Pal and America used NTSC. Flat screen TV screens can take both and detect it automatically. 

Flog Bot and Frogger

I was sitting outside in the sun earlier, it was a lovely day, the sun was shining brightly and all the grass was dry and dead. 

I was thinking about a Flog bot, a robot that flogs people. It would look like a statue that comes to life when it hears a certain tune played by a flute. The robot would grab a bamboo cane and tell the person what they did then flog them. The Robot's voice would sound like shredder from the children's cartoon called 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' from the 90's. It would say "Ben, bend over; you were stealing stuff from a shop" or it would say "John, take one, you vandalized a car" Then... "Swoosh kerboosh", the bamboo cane would strike their bum or back leg. It would be so cool if we made a robot like that. Plus we would have cultural flair because we play a flute to wake it up. The casing of the robot would have stone panels so it would look like a statue sitting down on a chair. When it stands up it would be 2 and a half meters tall, not so tall that it can't strike very well but tall enough to look intimidating. A robot that delivers justice consistently. 

Then I was thinking about Frogger because I was playing 'Crossy Road' on my phone. To me, Crossy Road is like Frogger, but it never ends. My son likes that game, I imagined playing computer games with my son when he is a bit older. I have a picture in my head of us playing Mario kart or a two player adventure platformer. It is nice to saturate your time with activities, playing computer games during your down time and things like that.