New Pope

Yesterday I learned that the Vatican cardinals had chosen a new pope to replace Pope Francis, he died from an age related illness on the 22nd of April. They chose Robert Prevost, he was born in the USA and had dual nationality, he is both Peruvian and a USA citizen. When I think of the Name Robert, I instantly think of the famous British Radio manufacturer, they make all sorts of hybrid FM, Dab and Internet Radios and like to use polished wooden panels on some of their models, they look very cool. They Renamed him Pope Leo XIV(Leo the 14th). I think Leo means Lion in the Latin language. Pope Leo has a ring to it. 

Close to the time the pope was appointed, we had local councillor elections. The results of those elections had shown that the British community had largely written off the main parties and gravitated to independent leaders and the Reform Party. The Main Labour and Conservative parties had become very unpopular in recent months. 

While the Pope was appointed and local British councillors were elected, Nintendo had started manufacturing a new games console called Nintendo switch 2, it is like the Switch 1 but it can handle PlayStation 5 games and can run 4k games at their intended frame rate, for a portable console that is astonishing. The pre order market for the console had opened so one can buy the console before it was manufactured and shipped over. They will be shipped to Britain by June onwards. It is backwards compatible with switch 1 games. I don't like the prices of the switch 2 games though. 

Unfortunately there was a conflict at the India and Pakistan Border. The Indian government believes the Pakistan government was involved in an attack on their territory in Kashmir. The Pakistan government deny their involvement, they claim the terrorists worked alone and had nothing to do with them. There was an exchange of missile fire and the two nations are at loggerheads at the moment. Hopefully they will avoid war. I wish the best of luck to both nations. 

Just There

 The other day I was sitting outside looking at the trees swaying in the breeze thinking of nothing for a little while. I see the trees were driven by purpose, it was reaching out, reaching out for the light and reaching out below for water, the solvent of life. I live for those little moments when I forget about who I am and where I stand in the world and just observe the world. Looking up at the clouds and the grass on the ground and breathing in the fresh air in the morning. 

My steadfast tea drinking parents that I love very much always showed me the beauty of reading. Recently a few years ago they bought me a kindle paper white. It imitates the inky paper-like nature of real books. With amazon prime, you're permitted to read through a selection of e-books on your kindle account. I thought I should mention that on here because that feature wasn't available when I first set up my kindle  account. At this time of this post, you could read a lot of popular books for free. It's still nice to keep real books. Some of the best books I have come across have been from charity shops; I'm guessing that when people are done reading them, they send them to the charity shop to be read by a new person. They're making space on their book shelves. 

Take time to be still and allow the good positive thoughts to seep through your mind. Perhaps on your day off, early in the morning. 

One Hundred Men vs one Gorilla

I noticed in recent days a debate about one hundred unarmed men fighting one silver-back Gorilla was trending on social media. I think it was a popular debate on all platforms; x, Facebook, Tick Tock and You Tube. It is an interesting debate, the Gorilla is much stronger than the men but they outnumber it. Would the Gorilla beat the one hundred men or would it get tired before it was done beating up all the men to death. 

I was thinking to myself that in a lot of car parks there are 15 disabled parking bays and only one or two of them are being used, the other 13 disabled parking bays sit empty. I was also thinking to myself I could learn sign language so I could have a conversation with the Gorilla. 

Alan: Hello 

Gorilla: Hello

Alan: When I park my car, 13 out of the 15 disabled parking bays sit empty, if you cripple 100 men, I would call it capacity building. 

Gorilla: That's True, Why do they want to fight me to the death? 

Alan: There are 100 gullible thugs out there ready to respond to an internet debate. They risk their life for fame.

Gorilla: They're Daft

Alan: True.... Have you seen the movie 'The thing' from 1982 ?

Gorilla: The Zoo keeper showed it to us 

Alan: Do you think Palmer knew he was an assimilation? He got the other assimilation burnt. 

Gorilla: He knew, it was all a part of his deception, remember he looked very nervous during the hot needle test. 

Alan: I thought that he didn't know because, he was infected by contaminated food and slowly taken over from the inside.

Gorilla: So why were there torn clothes in the kitchen? was he not taken over in one go?

Alan: I thought the torn clothes were from Blair or Norris. I think Blair was assimilated quite early. 

Gorilla: Could be. But look at his face during the hot needle test. He looked worried. 

Alan: That's true. But maybe he thought McReady had gone insane and was about to burn everyone. 

Gorilla: We can debate about this later, the zoo keeper is bringing lunch, see you later alligator. 

Alan: In a while Crocodile. 

What April 2025 Means To Me

 April is that kind of month when you don't know what to wear. The weather seems to change by the hour from hot to cold. There were lots of little comforts, little familiar sights, Dandelions and Daisies sprouting flowers on all the grass verges and lawns. Migratory Birds returning to nest. Longer days, temperature in double digits. Lots of things like that. 

We went on our first short break for the year to celebrate Jacob's birthday in Southampton in Paulton's park. It's nice to use public transport to visit these places because the Journey is a part of the break. An opportunity to see another part of your country. You also get to see how your country is linked together through infrastructure. You can't really appreciate all that when you're driving. 

In the background was a lingering trade war between America and China. Import tariffs were shooting up higher and faster than the temperature. At the same time there was hope of the Ukraine war coming to an end. Negotiations were under way. I thought to myself they should let go of the Crimea Peninsula because the people that live there consider themselves to be Russian anyway; that was the one area of Ukraine that didn't resist the Russian annexation. The rest of the occupied lands are different. I don't know but the war is pointless and is going on for too long.   

The Pope passed away during the last third of the month, he was aged in his eighties and his death was common for his age group. While I was writing this post, they were in the process of choosing the next Pope to take his place.  

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.