Super Park

In London there are many parks, but there is one park that is so big it dwarfs a few countries. 

Richmond Royal park, London's biggest park is absolutely huge, 9.53 km². 

Central park in new work is also huge at 3.41 km² and could also contain the area of the two smallest countries in the world. The Vatican city's area is about 0.5 km². Monaco has a surface area of about 2 km²

Central park, Vatican city state and Monaco City state would all fit inside Richmond park and there would be plenty of space left over. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (Gemini) 

Gibraltar island is not a country but it would also fit in the area of Richmond Park. The land area of Gibraltar is 6.8 km². 

On top of everything, Richmond Park is considered to be a significant nature reserve filled with ancient trees and countless wild creatures that aren't found anywhere else in the area. 

Interesting word Facts

These words are all spelt the same if they're written backwards. 

Deified 

Racecar

Rotor

Level

Madam 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (Gemini)

The word Strengths is the Longest single Syllable word. 

The word Arsenious contains all the vowels in the correct order. It is the name of an unstable acid containing arsenic. (Arsenious acid) 

The word rhythm is the longest English word with no vowels. 

The word set is considered to have the most meanings. The word set could mean a collection of items or it could mean to prepare something or arrange into a group. It has several other meanings. 

Coventry Light Tram

In the centre of England, In the small English city of Coventry, they are currently developing a small single car battery powered tram system called CVLR (Coventry Very Light Rail). 

The idea is to obtain a tram rail network without installing overhead power lines or reinforcement in the road. They simply bolt the steel rails to the ground and the tram powers itself until it needs charging. 

They are obtaining a rail network at a small fraction of the cost. 

According to their reports they want to have the new tram system installed across the whole city. 

Hybrid Arcade Console

Have you ever wanted to have a games console that takes cartridges and is also a small arcade machine in one. 

Such a machine exists, it's called the evercade bartop 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

This is the website for the system 

Evercade. They make retro style games consoles that take multi game cartridges so you can build up a licensed game collection. 

Moon Day

One day on the moon lasts for 28 earth Days(4 weeks), Two weeks of day and two weeks of night. This has caused probes to fail their missions as they freeze in the long moon night. 

The orbital period of the moon is also 28 days so we always see the same side of the moon on Earth. They call this rotation synchronization tidal locking. The moon is tidally locked to the Earth. 

Lane Loitering

In Great Britain many people don't know it is illegal to loiter in the overtaking lanes. All lanes to the right of the first lane are earmarked for overtaking unless the first lane is closed or the lanes are bifurcating into separate roads. It is listed as one of the stipulations of the Dangerous Driving law. 

Motorists that loiter in the overtaking lanes without overtaking can receive 3 penalty points on their driving licence and receive a £100 fine. 

Grand Tree

The Giant Sequoya redwood tree is so big that it can dwarf over 40 blue whales, the largest animals known to ever exist on Earth. 

The tree is known to weigh close to 6000 tons and the average blue whale usually weighs 150 tons, still impressive considering humans usually weigh less than 100kg, a small fraction of 1 ton. 

According to scholars, the rings on the trees show an age close to biblical times, some where around before the time of Jesus, over 2000 years ago. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

Sources 

Ai estimation by Gemini. 

Let's calculate how many blue whales match the weight of a giant sequoia tree.

First, let's establish the average weights:

 * Blue whale: Blue whales can weigh between 100 to 200 tons (200,000 to 400,000 pounds), with an average often cited around 150 tons (300,000 pounds or 136,000 kg). Some sources state up to 330,000 pounds (150 tons).

 * Giant Sequoia tree: The largest giant sequoia, General Sherman, is estimated to weigh around 6,167 tons (or 2.7 million pounds). Other large sequoias can weigh over 600 tons, and some estimates go up to 1300 tons or even 2105 short tons (1,910 metric tons). We'll use the General Sherman's weight as a prominent example.

Now, let's do the math:

Using the General Sherman tree's weight of 6,167 tons and an average blue whale weight of 150 tons:

6,167 \text{ tons (sequoia)} / 150 \text{ tons (blue whale)} \approx 41.11

So, approximately 41 blue whales would match the weight of a giant sequoia tree like General Sherman.

It's important to note that these are estimates, and the exact weights can vary for individual whales and trees.

~ Website https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/species/blue-whale?hl=en-GB

Hidden VMU

The DreamCast was so advanced that even the memory cards were games consoles in their own right. Certain games on the Sega would send an 8 bit game to the memory card and you could play a dot matrix side scrolling game similar to that of game boy game. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

When the Memory card was plugged into the game controller the screen would be used to display game stats. The memory card was refered to as a VMU. It would keep record of your game progress and allow you to play games retro style. 

Heavy Ice Cube

If you froze water that contains the heavy isotope of hydrogen known as deuterium, the ice cube would sink in normal water. This is because it is 10% more dense than normal water. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence(chatGPT) 

Water that is formed of Deuterium hydrogen is often called Heavy water.  Heavy water is also known is Deuterium Oxide. 

We Don't Go Around the Sun

The Planets including Mercury, Venus Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune don't go around the sun. They go around the solar system's center of gravity known as the Barry Centre. Because of Jupiter's mass the Barry center of our solar system is a point beyond the sun's surface. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT).  

It's natural to think we're going around the sun but where not. 

Longest Line

The Longest tube line in London is the Central line. It goes from West Ruislip to Epping for about 76 kilometres or 46 miles, a distance that is considerably longer than London itself. The reason it is able to cover that distance is because it doesn't go in a straight line but sort of zig zags across it. 

The Longest Journey time wise would be on the district line because it goes to 80 stops and takes about one and a half hours. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

The Elizabeth line goes from Reading("reding") to Shienfield in Essex, 100 kilometres or 62 miles. (You would need to change trains at one of the tube stations to get to Shienfield.) It acts like a tube line for part of the journey but is more like a commuter train. It covers the whole journey in less than 1 and a half hours 

British Radio

Here in Britain DAB+ is the latest version of digital Radio and only works on radios that support DAB+. 

According to the DAB+ website, the sound quality of DAB+ is better despite requiring a lower data transmission rate, less than 64kb per second. At the time of writing this post, Britain intends to keep both technologies running. 

According to official documentation DAB+ uses the codec He aac V2, part of the MP4 framework. It has a much higher compression compared to the MP2 codec used by plain DAB. 

The drawback of this technology is the radio itself has to do more work. After extracting a data stream, microprocessor in the radio has to decompress the sound data and turn it back into sound waves. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (Gemini) 

Digital Radio

Digital Radio is different around the world, In most of Europe they use DAB+. MP4 the whole signal turns of and on in pulses to encode the characters in the data stream. This allows for more stations to be crammed into smaller bandwidths. The problem with this is you need to buy new radios to pick up the signal and the micro chip in the radio is working hard to decompress the signal. 

In the United States they use FM HD. In FM HD, the digital signal is hidden on either side of the FM frequency. So every FM station can have additional digital stations. It works a bit like Teletext. The signal can't be perceived in the FM but it is there and contains the digital sound codec. This system allows more FM stations to persist and still provide digital stations.  Ordinary FM transistor radios will still pick up the FM signal but you need new radios to pickup the additional digital stations. 

Tennis Balls and the Sun

Tennis Balls were originally white but sir David Attenborough, who was the head of the BBC at the time decided they should be yellow so they could be seen clearly on colour (colour) TV screens. White balls were very easy to see on black and white screens but not so clear on colour ones. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

In space the sun is white but the blue portion of the light separates from the ray when it passes through the atmosphere and makes the remaining colours appear yellow. The Blue portion of the sun light eventually becomes scattered and causes the sky to appear blue. 

So the sun and tennis balls both originally appear white. 

Sources

~2024 QI facts by John Lloyd 

~BBC

~ NASA.gov website 

Otis Law Suit

A Jury were heading to the court room and found themselves stuck in the lift. The lift was made by the Otis Company. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

The Jury were heading to a law suit against the Otis lift company. They went into an Otis lift that broke down on the way to the court room. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

source QI Facts

Give Me a Name

I asked some artificial intelligence systems to give me a name based on what I'm interested in and their perception of my personality. I have been talking to the them for a long time. 

ChatGPT named me Dust walker

Gemini called me Retro Canyon 

meta ai called me Spark

kuki called me Star

Grok has stopped operating in the UK. 

~ Image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

You can ask AI to give you a name if you tell it a little bit about yourself.  

New A.I. on the block

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram has joined the AI club. The A.I. software is called Meta A.I. and the interface runs inside the meta owned what's app messenger. 

I doesn't have all its features just yet but seems like a promising contender. 

Born to Run Song

According to the judgement of most artificial intelligence systems, Bruce Springsteens song titled Born to Run is about being resilient and strong in the face of adversity. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

It is not only artificial intelligence that is given that impression, I felt like that was the message of the song. We are champions that overcome adversity. 

Wizard of Oz

According to notes taken from the set of movie, the Snow scene in the Wizard of Oz is actually aspestoss dust. Aspestoss is very toxic and is known to cause terminal lung disease and cancer. They didn't know that at the time.

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

New Kid in town song meaning

According to Don Henley and Glen Frey, the Gegles musicians. The Eagles song 'new kid in town'  contrasts the volatility and fickle nature of new found fame and a romantic relationship. You can go from being adored to being ignored. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT)

Perhaps suddenly becoming famous feels like being in love or something like that. If you were famous for something shameful then you wouldn't have that same feeling. 

Sleeper Trains

Despite the Island of Britain being small; (less than 250,000 km² in area. The longest measurement of the island is less than 1000km) There are multiple sleeper trains available, the Caledonian Sleeper and Reviera Sleeper to name a few. You go on the train and sleep in a small hotel room overnight and wake up in the morning at your destination. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence 

The Caledonian sleeper goes from London to various Scottish cities and towns and back again. 

The reviera Sleeper goes from London to Penzance and back again. 

Colour In AI

There is an artificial intelligence website that specialises is generating hollowed graphics that are suitable for colouring in. You could make your own colouring in book. You can even use pictures you have taken, or a command prompt to describe the image you want. 

~Image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

The website is called Colorify (colorifyai.art) The website is in high demand so you may need to wait a while before you see the image but that's not a problem. Just run it in the background while you do something else. 

Tequila Sunrise Song Meaning

The song Tequila Sunrise by Eagles is a song about a man that can't hold down a long term relationship. He wants to stay with a woman but his relationships have all failed. 

A Tequila Sunrise is a cocktail drink made from Tequila, Orange Juice and Grenadine Syrup. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

In the song, the heartbroken man would sit in a bar and drink Tequila Sunrise cocktails to forget about his lonely broken heart. 

Rotterdam or Anywhere Song meaning

According to Paul Heaton from the Band the Beautiful South, He wrote the song 'Rotterdam or Anywhere' when he went to a very unfriendly bar in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They didn't like him and were trying to make excuses to make him leave because he was dressed a bit scruffy and looked a bit drunk. 

He was pointing out that people are like pickles, dull and all the same. They have a khaki personality. People in most modern cities value superficial things like being well dressed and all behaving the same and don't like people that match up to their status. 

~image generated by artificial intelligence (ChatGPT)

When I was a young boy, I thought the song was about bricks and concrete. I'm not sure why, perhaps because bricks are used in every city and made all the buildings look the same. They played that song often in the '90s.  

Cashew Apple

Cashew nuts come from the Cashew tree with an accessory fruit attached to it. The fruit is commonly known as a cashew apple. 

~ image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

They're not exported to the north western countries because they don't last very long. 

People that eat them consider them to taste like a mixture of a pear and cucumber with lemon juice added. Cashew apples are often boiled in water to make them into a juice drink or Chutney. 

In the Air Tonight Lyrics

Phil Collins claims he wrote the song 'In the air tonight' as a response to the breakdown of his first marriage and divorce in 1980. 

2255~ Image generated by artificial intelligence (chatGPT) 

The song is filled with strong emotions and phrases. 

Hotel California

According to Don Fedler and Don Hendly, eagles band musicians, the Song 'Hotel California' is not about a hotel or the state of California. It is about transitioning from innocence to maturity in a materialistic society. 

The song is about the ups and downs of living the American lifestyle and is filled with metaphorical phrases. Some of the lyrics reflect the life experiences of the band members. 

The beauty of this song is that it is like a poem, people listening can add their own meaning to it. 

I recall wondering what they meant by "she's Tiffany-Twisted". Perhaps it means their partner is obsessed with expensive designer items. 

Scratch Card AI

I asked some AI systems to draw a cat playing a scratch card. These ai systems weren't originally designed to draw images, they are language models. 

Gemini (New Google Assistant) 

chatGPT (Open Ai ) It even gave the cat a coin to scratch with. 

Grok (X.ai) 

What do you think?