Category: Thoughts

Spring is here

Uk. It’s early April and spring is in evidence all around. My favourite time of the year as I have previously discussed. The garden is starting to awaken and is gradually starting to show all its beauty that it has been hiding throughout the winter months.

The birds are vocal and we are very fortunate to have a large community of them around our small garden on the outskirts of the dirty old city. Blackbirds with their beautiful song, the small but lovely sound of the blue tits and robins, and then the raucous 40 cigarette a day sound of the “Chav” of the avian world the Magpie. Not to mention pigeons who’s soul purpose in this world is to sit upon any structure and have a good shit. 💩

It’s nice in a structurally unsound way.

Weather has been behaving itself during the day, it’s been lovely sunshine up to about 16 degrees Celsius only to fall to freezing overnight. The swing in temperatures has been immense for us, as the central heating is not yet dormant.

I’m saying this is spring but as usual it could just as well be summer here in the UK, we could well have had our quota of sun for the year for all I know.

Even the postman is confused. Normally the shorts he wears only come out for summer, and that used to be a good indication of the weather about to turn for us. Now he wears shorts all year round in all weathers so we can no longer use him as an indication of better weather approaching, it’s confused us equally.

It’s that time of year when your brain kicks into “Things you forgot about, but now need to attend to” mode. And for some unknown and unexpected reason I’m now very aware of a maelstrom of things that need my attention. It doesn’t help that the wife’s brain has done the same thing and she has now doubled my workload with the things she now wants me to do.

Did I say this is my favourite time of the year?

Yeah, it is and I love all this activity, it’s as if we humans are doing the same as the humble hedgehog and about to wake up from our hibernation, shake ourselves down and crack on with the summer. (Oh and I am awaiting the arrival of our first hedgehog 🦔 friends, who should be arriving anytime now)

Who wouldn’t love the world awakening.

Have a great day.

Allergies and sacrifice

Allergic reactions have been an affliction that have been part of my entire life, and still are. Fortunately my allergies are not as threatening as many that are present in society, saying that one actually is, but I’ve managed it well so far.

Hay-fever: has been a pain in the ass since childhood, the nice weather comes and my eyes stream and the snot flows (Not a pleasant sight and i apologise for being blunt in my description) I always think i have it under control and then it hits, usually after i have omitted to take the days dosage of medicine, so thats entirely my fault.

Asthma: this is the dangerous one and has to be monitored and treated seriously. Again I’ve had this right from Childhood, fortunately I’ve never had to be hospitalised for it, i have a good regime to treat it and medications are taken without fail and are always on my person should i ever have an emergency.

That’s my allergies and now i will get onto the reason i titled this post so. If someone told you to sacrifice something most dear to you to relieve or eliminate an allergy completely, would you?

Well it appears that after my most recent Asthma review i do have an allergy to pet fur. This both surprises me, and in hind sight, doesn’t really surprise me if you get my drift. We’ve had pet dogs for the last 35 years and only last year our last dog Alfie passed away. We have been pet free apart from the feral feline that resides in our garden now for about 8 months. My review shows that my breathing and management of the condition has improved immensely in this short period and compared to previous reviews this is the best i have been for almost 15 years.

Our dogs were the Bichon frise breed. Anyone who knows the breed will know that they are about as hypo allergenic as you can get in a dog as they just don’t moult. There are never any issues when they jump on the furniture as they don’t leave a trail of dog hair as many other breeds do, its one of the reasons we obtained this breed all those years ago when we did our research on them.

But the latest results from my doctor do make some sense. Alf suffered from a nasty condition called Sebacious Adenitis, basically an immune condition where his own body was trying to kill his skin. He was on drugs that are given to humans to prevent organ rejection and he had to be bathed regularly every two days, and i did this without question or complaint for the last 2 years of his life. I did notice that when i dried and brushed him, for a few hours after i would become very itchy on my hands and very reliant on my Asthma inhalers. The signs were there but I didn’t really make the connection.

My question is then, would you sacrifice something that you love so much and that gives you so much pleasure to relieve the discomfort of an allergy?

There are probably two answers here, and i fully understand both. If the allergy is life threatening then its a no brainer, the animals would have to go, it’s a sad choice but you have to preserve your quality of life.

For the person like me where it’s more of an inconvenience rather than a life threatening situation, i’d happily relive that time all over again.

We’ve decided that we will be having no more pets. This decision was already made by us simply because we believe the three beautiful dogs that have accompanied us through our lives, were in our eyes the best three dogs ever. They cannot be replaced and i would never want to get a pet to attempt to fill that role. However now, even meeting other dogs in our family circle my eyes swell and i get all stuffy, so the issue was always there, but it has taken the passing of a much loved pet to realise the scale of the problem in the first place.

No more pets for us then. It’s hard to say my life has improved since his passing, it seems such a wrong thing to say. But i must admit health wise i have improved greatly.

But I would sacrifice this well being at the drop of a hat for a little discomfort and more time in their presence.

Stay safe.

Disappointment and football

First day off in a while recently. It was a lovely day and it was entirely spent with the wife. A lovely day but she had to put the mockers on it.

“Do you fancy going to football tonight?” She said, I stood looking at her in shock, what a way to ruin a lovely day.

Let me add some substance here, in that we are both season ticket holders at Leicester city. Anyone who follows football will now realise my predicament. We are not a football team really, we are a collection of eleven blokes who just don’t know what the hell they are doing on the pitch, however tonight we broke another record, the first team ever to fail to score a goal in eight consecutive home games. We really are the bad. We are dire. And we have a manger who is like a little rabbit caught in the headlights. He’s out of his depth, bless him.

Anyway I don’t want to bore non football fans as you don’t really deserve that.

Anyway I quite reluctantly agreed to go, so attired in the team colours off we trudged.

Game starts.

45 minutes later at half time we are leaving the stadium, we are 3 goals down, we have played awful, and the only fun and laughs we have had is listening to the away fans taking the mickey out of us all, they were very good at this.

It was disappointing to say the least, but do you know what neither of us were surprised or affected, we just realised that we had made a poor decision and went home and had a drink to laugh at it all.

And there is my question. When does feeling disappointed become acceptable and normal?

This is what the internet says;

Disappointment becomes “normal” when it’s a frequent, yet manageable part of life, rather than a persistent source of distress. It’s about learning to accept that not everything goes as planned and finding ways to cope with setbacks, rather than avoiding them altogether.

Google

And that’s what being a football supporter (At least at our club) is, in a nutshell.

Being so bad has taken us beyond being a persistent source of distress to becoming a frequent more manageable part of our life. And we just have to accept we are really that bad and take it just like a friendly slap on the back. Something is wrong at the KP and needs attending to.

Good I’m glad I’ve cleared that up then.

Have a wonderful day, be happy.

Knee Mail

Whilst out walking today, I passed a local church and couldn’t help but smile at the sign outside.

I love the way some of the churches use a play on words. Very clever. 😂

Have a great day.

Blog block

Do you ever just sit there thinking, “What the heck can I write about?” I’m doing it a lot lately and today is no different. I sign up to the prompts that WP offers but everyday it appears, it states that I have already answered the question, so I presume I’ve answered all that WP offers in prompt form. That surprises me in this day and age of technology, why are new prompts not refreshed on a regular basis?

I need help

I’m calling it Blog Block.

I know creative writers suffer with writers block, and that creates big issues for them. I guess it’s the same as being a craftsman and having your most productive tools taken away from you. Not very convenient or productive.

I’m not a creator in anyway, let’s clear that up.

My problem is that I believe I lead quite a mundane and everyday existence and there is absolutely no interest in what I do or have to say in that case. Millions if not billions of people lead the same life and just get on with the day. However occasionally there are little peaks and troughs in day to day life that are worthy of a few words, but that is all. It amazes me how many people I follow on this platform have such a wide and varied, and consistent supply of good content. This is where I struggle.

The prompts helped me I must admit, and now I’m just like an engine without that spark plug, and the prompts were that spark I needed to get the motor going.

How does everyone else overcome this malaise in creativity? Because to be honest I’m struggling at the moment.

I’m probably just going to fill my pages with drivel like this until my productivity engine kicks into life.

It could be a long and tiresome journey. Bring plenty of refreshments and maybe a pillow.

Have a wonderful day and stay safe….and productive 👍

Bye bye moon

One of the finest documentaries I have watched in recent years was by the British space scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock. It was called Do we really need the moon?

Do we really need the moon?

I like Maggie, she’s one of those tutors you wish you’d had at school, she’s just so good at getting you to understand a subject, and is just so good at making you feel at ease through her enthusiasm and energy. As well as being the Chancellor of our local university in Leicester, she can also be seen on the popular BBC space programme “The Sky at night”

This documentary was released about 12 years ago but is not available on BBC platforms at this moment. I have however included the link to YouTube where you can watch the programme in its entirety.

One of the fascinating facts, and one that had me questioning whether it was a contributor to global issues is that the moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters (1.49 inches) per year. This might not seem like a lot, but over billions of years, it sure adds up. Since the Apollo 11 landing on the moon on July 20th 1969 the moon has moved away from us by approximately 209 centimetres or 6.85 ft. That’s in just 55 years. The moon invariably has an effect on a number of factors here on earth, with the major one being its effect on the tides.

The moon’s gravitational pull is the primary driver of the tides on Earth. As the moon moves further away from Earth, its gravitational pull weakens, which in turn affects the tides.

Effects on Tides

  1. Weaker tidal forces: With the moon moving away, its gravitational pull on Earth’s oceans decreases, resulting in weaker tidal forces.
  2. Lower high tides: As the tidal forces weaken, the high tides will be lower than they would be if the moon were closer.
  3. Higher low tides: Conversely, the low tides will be higher than they would be if the moon were closer.
  4. Reduced tidal range: The tidal range, which is the difference between the high and low tides, will decrease as the moon moves further away.

Don’t panic though as these changes will occur gradually over an extremely long period. It’s estimated that the tidal range will decrease by about 1-2% over the next 100 million years.

These distances between earth and the moon are calculated quite accurately by a piece of space hardware placed on the moon by the crew of Apollo 15 in 1971. It’s called a retro reflector unit. When a high intensity laser is fired towards it from earth, the time it takes to reach the reflector and then be beamed back to earth is measured, and from this measurement they can give an extremely accurate reading of the current distance. This system is still in use to this day. It also features in the documentary.

I’m fascinated by everything lunar related as I was brought up during the space race and was very much around when all of this occurred. I’ve witnessed a space shuttle launch (STS-79) and long to head back and witness one of the many launches taking place now in this revival of space travel.

My favourite ever quote was the one that went so:

“Don’t believe the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon”

Adventure, exploration, breaking barriers and exceeding limits. Everything that the human race is capable and very good at doing.

And some people are just fantastic scholars at teaching the subject.

Maggie is one of those special individuals.

Stay safe. Shine.

How many days have passed since the first photograph was taken?

I was intrigued to know just how many days ago that the first photograph was taken.

There are a few things to consider before we make such a calculation, first a little history.

The first photograph was taken by Nicéphore Niépce in 1826, using a process called heliography. This process involved coating a pewter plate with a light-sensitive substance called bitumen, which hardened when exposed to light. The image, titled “View from the Window at Le Gras,” shows the view from Niépce’s window and took about eight hours to expose.

To calculate how many days ago the first photograph was taken, we can subtract the date of that photograph (1826) from the current year (2025).

2025 – 1826 = 199 years

Since there are 365 days in a year, give or take the occasional leap year, we can then multiply the number of years by 365 to get the total number of days.

199 years x 365 days/year = 72,635 days

So, the first photograph was taken approximately 72,635 days ago. (Give or take a few days)

Wow

That doesn’t seem as great a number in my mind compared to the 199 years, maybe because we relate to a day being considerably shorter than a year (Obviously 🤦‍♂️). It sounds as if you could have even been around when the photo was taken, obviously you couldn’t have been and this is just me having an early morning ramble. So the next question is how many pictures have been taken since then?

Considering the usage of mobile technology I’d suspect that the answer is unobtainable due to the sheer volume of pictures now taken on a daily basis.

But I have put this question to one of those A.I apps available on my phone, to see what it says, and here is the answer that it has given, I asked:

“How many pictures have been taken since that first one in 1826?”

Estimating the Number of Pictures Taken

Using historical data and trends, we can estimate the number of pictures taken since 1826:

  • Pre-digital era (1826-1970s): Assuming an average of 1 million photographs taken per year (a rough estimate), we get approximately 150 million photographs taken during this period.
  • Digital era (1970s-2007): With the advent of digital cameras, the number of pictures taken increased significantly. Let’s assume an average of 100 million photographs taken per year during this period, resulting in approximately 3.5 billion photographs taken.
  • Smartphone era (2007-present): With the widespread adoption of smartphones, the number of pictures taken has grown exponentially. According to a report by InfoTrends, over 1 trillion photographs were taken in 2015 alone. Assuming an average of 1.5 trillion photographs taken per year since 2007, we get approximately 23.5 trillion photographs taken during this period.

Total Number of Pictures Taken

Adding up the estimates from each era, we get:

150 million (pre-digital) + 3.5 billion (digital) + 23.5 trillion (smartphone) ≈ 23.8 trillion photographs taken since 1826.

Keep in mind that this is a rough estimate and should be taken as a rough order of magnitude rather than an exact figure.

Meta A.I

Wow. Big numbers.

Amazing. Just like you. Have a great day.

Who are you? Peter Pan

The boy that never grew up. I guess that was intentional regression and not recreational regression on his behalf, however today in a supermarket whilst doing the weekly shop, my wife believed I was attempting to re enter my youth. I was accused of having a middle aged crisis!

No! You are not having highlights, are you having a middle aged crisis?

She was wrong, but I understand why she thought that way😂

Anyone who reads my posts will realise I have recently written about restoring old ABS plastic from the 80s back to life and removing the yellow hue that they acquire over time. Retrobrighting.

We were walking around the local supermarket doing the weekly shop, I asked where the hair care aisle was and she pointed me on the way. She did tell me that she already had my hair gel, but I said I was looking for something else. I could see the look of suspicion in her eyes.

When I returned from my little detour I asked her to scan the item in the picture above, a small bottle of 40vol 12% peroxide.

She looked at the bottle that says, “Blonde” and at this she’s instantly reverted back to when she first met me about 36 years ago, when I used to have highlights in my hair and changed its styling as often as the weather changed.

“No. You are not having highlights, are you having a middle age crisis or something?” This was her comment.

It took some skilful diplomacy to explain to her that it was required to complete a project I was working on. And I’m still not sure she quite believes me. I will have to show her what I will be doing for her to believe me.

Her parting comment before we moved into the washing powder aisle was, “Who are you? Peter Pan?” So I still don’t really believe she heard and understood my explanation.

I used to love those highlights though…..I wonder 🤔

Tweety pie is being noisy

First a little history. We live in a two bed semi that was built sometime around 1935. Yes it’s aging and has a lot of charm and character. Our neighbours on one side are quite vocal at times but that’s about it, in general life is quite peaceful. They have had a parrot in residence for a number of years who used to live in one of the loft rooms who you only heard occasionally when the loft window was open and you were in the garden. You’d be in the garden listening to all the small birds chattering, when the beauty of it all was broken by a parrot raucously squawking like a banshee with a sore throat above it all. However it was rare and totally acceptable if not strange to hear.

So innocent looking 😇

However things in the homestead next door have changed. The old fellah that used to be the head of the house passed away last year, bless him, and I don’t think he appreciated the birds presence, hence its indoctrination in to the loft space. Now he is no longer there, the daughter has placed the bird in the living room with a full view of everything at the front of the house, and he has a lot to squawk about.

This is not a major issue, please don’t judge me I’m not complaining, things could be an awful lot worse. It could be a dog constantly barking, it could be people constantly shouting, so we should really count ourselves lucky.

It’s just that the wife, even with her hearing problems will often comment, “That bloody bird” so in theory my biggest issue is keeping my wife under control and reassuring her that things could really be a lot worse.

I have personally on occasions been known to comment similarly. But I’m the only person who can control my thoughts and feelings (How very Stoic!) and I choose to remain generally unaffected by it all.

So why did I write this post?

I’ve answered all the daily prompts, and whilst I was thinking of what to post, all I could hear was Tweety pie.

I guess it was just to reiterate that sometimes you just need to accept what you have and embrace it all. The alternatives could be better, but they could also be a lot worse.

And to me there is nothing nicer than the sound of a bird even if it sounds like it has a 60 a day habit and a voice as rough as course sandpaper. 😂

Have a lovely day.

Latest Icelandic Volcano eruption

Whenever we go to Iceland one of the things I’ve always wanted to view is an active eruption. But they always happen just after we leave and stop just before we go.

Today an eruption has begun on the Reykjanes Peninsula, the eleventh in just over four years and the eighth since December 2023. The eruption appears to have occurred just southeast of Mt Þorbjörn.

And as quick as it arrives, it’ll disperse just as quick. So by the time you get to peruse this video, it may well be over. Sorry about that. That’s Mother Nature for you.

Live volcano cam

And we were there about five weeks ago. Missed it again….damn.

All joking aside, here’s praying everyone in the area stays safe.

Nature at its most violent.