Games Watches

A family of retro gaming watches is currently being released by www.myplaywatch.com/. They're the same company that made the Atari watch with mini paddle controllers that I mentioned in the previous post. 

They lack connectivity; no WiFi or Bluetooth but they do have fitness tracking and they tell the time and have a selection of themed clock dials. At the time of this post there were three watches being released. I particularly like the space invaders one and Tetris. 

It is nice to have old computer games in a watch. 

Atari Watch

Atari is still around and now they're making smart  watches. You can buy an Atari watch with 4 popular Atari games on it. 

It also has a selection of retro gaming themed digital dials to chose from and all the other trimmings that come with a smart watch like fitness monitors and pulse metrics. 

I want one myself. I thought the four games on there like pong, super breakout, centipede and missile command are perfect for watches. I love super breakout. 

In the image above the wristband has a walnut finish just like the atari 2600. Very nice 👍 

New Hand Held Console

Evercade are releasing a new games console called the evercade nexus. What makes it special is it has eversync, a feature that lets you connect to another console and share the game on the cartridge through the air and play two players; only  one person needs to have the game cartridge, the console will send the game code to other console and let the other one play the same game as a second player. 

It also has lots of improved hardware features, wireless audio and improved sound output, better controls and a more crisp screen. It also has improved controller components. 

The evercade cartridges are the same ones that work on all the other Evercade consoles. 

WhatsApp Spontaneously Draws

Meta Ai can draw with commands prompts from inside from inside WhatsApp.

Everyone that has WhatsApp can now ask the meta Ai to draw an image and it will. In this example I asked it to draw a picture of cat playing scratch cards. 

I also like the default size of the image, 810 by 1140 pixels, it is a good size to share with other places and it's not too small in quality. 

Meta Ai was able to draw from the beginning of its creation but wouldn't take spontaneous drawing commands from inside WhatsApp until recently. 

Acid Injury

On December 2014 a man called David Phillips drove from Hastings to Truro in Cornwall (almost the width of England) to knock on the door of Adreas Christopheros and throw concentrated acid on his face because he thought he was the man that sexually assaulted someone close to him. It turns out he had got the wrong guy and his injuries were very serious. 

This is one reason why we shouldn't take the law into our own hands. 

The burning of the acid was so strong it instantly destroyed his shirt and left him with chronic pain for many years. He was also disfigured and blinded in one eye. 

The gasses from the acid even set off the fire alarms in the emergency room at the hospital. Plus there was a strong possibility he would pass away from infection. 

Sources 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-34478357

https://youtu.be/8RABNt4drq8?si=05_F4iaL7rEiA2fqh

Giant Bug

During the Devonian age there lived a giant arthropod called Jaekelopterus. They estimated it to be roughly the weight of two men, about 150 to 180 kg. It grew to be over 2 meters long. 

It lived in the water and belonged to the group euripterid, they were a group of arthropods that resembled scorpions but were more closely related to horse shoe crabs. 

It was a large creature that ate anything it could grab with it's claws but was the size of a panda, or a go cart. 

At the time more than 300 million years ago, there was a lot more oxygen in the air so creatures could grow a lot bigger and still move quite fast. 

Coal Makers

If you hold coal in your hands, you're looking at the remains of carboniferous period trees and plants. In the carboniferous period, the eco system didn't know how to break down tough plant fibers like wood. 

The trees that were around in the carboniferous period were nothing like the trees you see today, they were more like ferns. They wold look like ferns with tree sizes stumps. 

They were scaly prickly bizarre looking plants like Lepidodendron (scaly tree). They didn't embed their sperm in pollen like modern trees,  instead their sperm would swim along standing water on the ground just like animal sperm does today.  The trees were often male and female so one tree would make the seeds and the other would make the sperm. 

The trouble with these types of trees is they need damp environments to reproduce. 

After the carboniferous period in the Permian period, fungus and bacteria emerged that were able to break down tough plant fibers like wood so coal was no longer being created on a large scale. 

Taxi Vs Train Chilterns Railway

I gathered some prices for train tickets from high Wycombe to Marylebone (50km)  and compared it to Taxi tarrifs. 

Once again I found it was cheaper by train. It gets close when groups are considered. 

The results were a bit closer than the ones to Southend from Barking, the distance is the same (50 km). Barking to Southend report

In this model the ticket of the train drops dramatically when there are 3 or more adults. (This is without rail cards), just a group ticket. It drops down to £9.10. In this model only one way is considered. 

The cost per person also drops on Uber taxi as the passengers increase up to 6 passengers at  £15.33 per person. (You need UberX for more than 4 passengers) That is tarrif b on the chart. 

Six passenders by train pay £9.10 each. 

A group of 6 passengers  on a  Uber taxi pay roughly £6.10 more than if they went by train. If they had rail cards and a return tickets the gap would even get bigger. 

A group travelling 50 km on the Chiltern line pay roughly £3 more for the same distance on the c2c line. I'm not sure why; perhaps more of the C2c line is subsidised while it is in London. I also noticed lines that use diesel trains are slightly more expensive than electric ones. Perhaps the tracks needs to be replaced less often because the trains are lighter and the trains cost less to maintain because they use electric motors. 

It could also be that line itself has more passengers so it can charge less money and still break even with their costs. I can only speculate at this stage. 

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Half and Half

The worlds Tallest Mountain, mount Everest occupies two countries. The north side of mount Everest is in China in the region of Tibet. The South side of mount Everest is in Nepal in the Koshi Province. koshi means river in Nepal. 

The South side of Mount Everest in Nepal has the most frozen bodies: just in case you were wondering. 

If you ascend the western or eastern flank of the mountain, it is possible to climb a mountain in two countries at the same time. 

When you stand on the top of the mountain, you would be standing in china and Nepal if you feet were aligned with the border line. 

Build Virtual Circuits

Have you ever wondered if there is a website that lets you make your own circuits and virtually simulate a current flowing through them. There is one. 

https://www.withdiode.com/

On the site you get existing projects and you can modify them or you can make your own from scratch using a virtual breadboard and standard electronic parts. 

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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. 

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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. 

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. 

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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. 

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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. 

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. 

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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. 

New Encyclopedia

There is a new encyclopedia created that was written by artificial intelligence. It is called Grokipedia. It was created by Elon Musk's ai company xAI. 

You can visit the Grok ai now at https://grokipedia.com/

Grok ai does it's own research and searches for the truth. It is a machine, it isn't biased, it doesn't have opinions about things or people so it only wants to display the truth. 

I have already created a shortcut to it on my Android desktop. 

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has had issues with biased authors recently, politicians and activists being labelled as far right and statements about companies that aren't true. Even historical events being changed to suit the opinion of the editors. 

When I tried Grokipedia, it was dark like a dos prompt screen so I changed it to light mode. 

Roman Urine

In the Roman Empire, Urine was very useful. It was used to prepare leather, clean clothes and Brush teeth. 

It was so useful that it was taxed when used for commercial purposes. 

That takes the piss. 

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Most Toilets

The sports venue or building with the most toilets is wembley stadium. It has 2618 Toilets, more than any other stadium in the world. 

It also has one of the largest cantilever roofs in the world. This allows the spectators to view the pitch without being obstructed by the pillars.