Daily Facts

Sunday, 15 March 2026

Nyctinasty and Planter Fasciitis

Daisies and many other common flowers often close their petals at night. This is action is known as Nyctinasty; tissues at the base of the flower petal absorb water and swell up, the swelling puts pressure on the base of the petal and pushes it shut.

It is thought they do this to keep condensation off the flower parts and prevent frost damage. It also helps keep nuisance insects off the flower at night. It must be amazing to be a small mite living on a daisy flower and see the flower close and open around you.

Have you ever felt a feeling of pain in the heel of your foot as you take your first steps that fades away. Is the pain usually only in one foot? The chances are you have Planter Fasciitis. The Planter Fascia tissue that connects your heel to your toes can become swollen and push back into the nerve fibres inside your heel tendons.

It's not a serious condition but it can cause a lot of pain and discomfort. The best way to treat the condition is to do foot stretches and to lose weight. Finding more comfortable shoes can also cause a rapid improvement.

The cause of the condition usually stems from the calf muscles in the leg pulling your Achilles tendon for prolonged periods of time causing tightness in the arch of the foot.

Saturday, 14 March 2026

Taxi Vs Train

Through my own investigations I can confirm that is is now cheaper to take a train 50 km from Barking in London to Southend Central by the coast in Britain than by taxi.

With an Uber Taxi, it gets cheaper per person as the passengers increase up to 4 passengers, then the price goes up because you need a more expensive 6 seater Uber. But the train is cheaper in every metric.

With 3 or more Adults, each person is paying just £6.05 because of Group save supplied by the c2c train line.

With 4 passengers, an Uber ride from barking station costs just £15 per person because the taxi costs £60 regardless of the number of passengers. However, one passenger is only paying £9.10 on C2C so it is cheaper by train in every way. If your just one passenger or 6, it is cheaper than the cheapest configuration on Uber taxi although is gets close with 4 passengers.

The Uber is slightly more convenient because you can chose the pickup and dropoff point and with 4 passengers, you're only paying £8.95 more than the train.

The train is cheaper still when you add return tickets and rail cards.

Thursday, 12 March 2026

Commander Keen game

When the Mario Brothers Game was released for the '80s Nintendo (NES), it was thought the hardware on most PC home computers could never compete with the smooth side scrolling of the game system because the graphics processor was so advanced.

However, The ID software team that later made Duke Nukem found a way around the hardware limitations. They used a technique called double buffering, they were aware that the VGA graphics controller keeps two copies of the screen so they programmed the game to draw the graphics changes of the hidden copy of the screen then switch the panes around when the rendering is complete at the end of each frame cycle. They also programmed the game to only render the parts of the screen that had changed, like a brick was that was half way off the screen.

When commander keen was released, people were amazed that is was still smooth scrolling as well as the mario brothers despite running on much slower graphically challenged dos based PC computers.

Tuesday, 10 March 2026

Red Dead Redemption Game

Red dead Redemption is one of the most popular games of all time. Did you know it was nearly abandoned; When Rockstar games was developing red dead redemption, there was so many bugs in the code that the game seemed unfixable and the development team were considering whether they should abandon the project. In forums and press interviews, they claimed they had made the game too complicated and caused software bugs to emerge.

The game is so advanced that the animals in the desert hunt other animals in real time without user input. Sometimes you can witness a deer being hunted by a bear or wolves hunting a rabbit.

There is also many hidden things in the game and if you just want to play you can always go to a bar in the game and play blackjack or layers dice.

More Daily Facts

https://riddlebooth.blogspot.com/

Mr Cheerman cartoon strip / comic

https://jokejohn.blogspot.com/

Alan's Public Diary Journal about Everything

https://alspresso.blogspot.com/

Saturday, 7 March 2026

Biggest and Smallest Seeds

The largest seed in the world that we know about is Coco De Mer palm tree seed. They weigh 30 kg and are roughly 50cm across. They are native to The Seychelles islands on the African continent and are found no where else in the world except in human cultivation.

The Smallest seed that we know of is from the Orchid flowers that are often sold in supermarkets and florists. Their seeds are so small that they resemble dust. They are so small that the need a fungus partner to get them growing because they won't germinate on their own. You need a microscope to see the individual seedlings.

Thursday, 5 March 2026

The Seychelles

The smallest country on the African continent is the saychelles islands. It has a surface area of about 459 km². The population is 100,000; less than many cities and towns in Britain.

There are many plants and Animals that are unique to the Seychelles atol, they're found nowhere else on earth.

Tuesday, 3 March 2026

Tree Net

Trees have been known to communicate with other trees through their roots. They relay information about the conditions in the soil like having too many pests or poor sunlight.

I thought they just log on 😂. The floor of a forest or the woods is a communication network for trees and bushes.