Today I’m writing this while in the subway I’m just giving it a try on mi PPC. I’m not used to write a lot this way, but maybe I’ll get used to it and will end up writing faster. I have a kind of “long way to work”. My actual way to work takes me around one hour, depending on how lucky I am with the train schedule. I said “a kind of”, because as everything is relative to what you compare it to, my way to work could be very short if it takes you 4 hours, or extremely long if it takes you one minute.
Maybe you are reading this while you travel by subway too… Maybe you are sitting by my side while I write some other post and I won’t know that you are reading what I wrote and you won’t know that I’m writing what you will read
PPC option may be not the most comfortable to write, but it is the most discreet. I thought about buying a Bluetooth pocket keyboard but it is not going to be very comfortable (two hands to write and… Who would hold my phone?) I would need a pair of discreet monitor glasses that probably I won’t be able to connect to my PPC and probably are not as discreet as I would like them to be. Anyway I would look as if I was some kind of crazy freaky, typing with both hands on a keyboard not connected to anything and a pair of what look like sunglasses. Some people could think that I’m practicing my typing skills I also thought about the voice recognition software solution, but I could look crazier than with the keyboard, so by now, I’ll keep writing on my PDA whenever I need to
A new week once again. Monday again, but today I’m specially happy. My web is On and it starts getting shape. I’m excited about it. I have a lot of projects and just a life to make them… Probably there won’t be enough time to start them all, but I’ll do my best
Well… I have arrived to my station. Time went too fast. I wasn’t writing all the way. Next time I should start writing a little bit before
Hmmm… I have arrived at work, but didn’t realize that I have to boot up my computer. It is a more than seven years old computer. My company doesn’t provide me a new one. It is half my fault and half my company. Half my company because as I’m subcontracted to another company, they never asked me if I needed a new computer, and half my fault, because I have everything configured and don’t want to start from scratch with a new installation and as this computer does the work and doesn’t fail, there’s no need to replace it. It just takes a little bit longer to do some things, but as we are never in a rush at work, this is not a big issue. After my Monday boot, I never shut it down until the end of the week
Time Traveling is not as easy as we think. We always see in films that anyone can travel on Earth as many years as they want (forward or backwards) But as someone said: “It isn’t like dusting crops, boy“.
The basic idea is that you are somewhere and then you “time travel” and appear a the same exact location but some hours/years/seconds after or before your initial “time/Date” but there are some issues we should take in consideration.
If for example you were traveling by plane, and you “time traveled” you would appear at a location without plane, so you would fall down to the ground and die (unless you have a parachute, of course
Someone could say “oh, no, you are wrong, if you are inside the plane, you would appear inside the plane again”. Ok, let’s say that this could happen like this and let’s analyze it. If you are traveling in a plane that goes at a speed of 800km/h and you travel to one hour after (let’s say that it takes you one second to travel this hour) you should also travel a distance of 800 km, that in one second would be an acceleration of 800 km/s. And when arrived to the destination you should from 2,880,000 km/h to 800 km/h Your body wouldn’t be able to stand this force and you would probably die. Also you would need to see the future to point to the exact position where the plane would be one hour later and introduce it in the time machine.
Do you think this plane idea is complicated? Should we discard time traveling while we are traveling by plane? Well, let’s do it Is it safer to travel while we are with out feet on Earth? Definitely not. Earth is also traveling though space at a speed of 30,000 km/second, so what would happen if you try to travel when standing at your home? Depending on the time you travel to and the direction of the earth with respect to you, the results could be: you in the middle of the space, you in the middle of the the air falling down again or even in the core of the Earth.
Is it getting tricky? Well. Maybe the best way for Time Traveling is with a spaceship in the middle of the space. But have in mind that planets and stars are always in motion (Sun moves at an approximated speed of 220 km/second) so we should calculate very well their trajectory before traveling, and of course, galaxies also move…
Have in mind that for this issues we are always traveling forward and never backwards (forward is possibly the only time traveling option)
If we want to stay within the same place where we start our trip, we should be there every millisecond in between the starting date and the ending date, so we can be affected by all the accelerations and movements that our container do. So we would be affected for whatever could happen during our trip and everybody would be able to see us.
So… the only way to time travel forward and not getting older during the process, would be to slow down your physics (as in slow motion) or to pause them, and the only known method for doing this is by freezing matter, the best would be to get it to the absolute zero. This is what is called cryogenization and it is not a very safe way to time travel, because you are very vulnerable unless you are in a bunker buried very deep and you will always need the “time machine” systems to work for you during your trip because they will get older and would need to be maintained.
At our community we have a swimming pool, and as it is compulsory to have a lifeguard, we of course!, have one. We really have a contracted company that changes the lifeguard whenever there is need to. Lifeguards look pretty young, but as long as they do their work we have no problem with this.
The thing is that one morning, one of the lifeguards mixed chlorine with something else (some king of acid) in the water purifier room, she closed the door and went home. Without knowing it, she created a toxic cloud that started spreading out of the room.
The water purifier room is at the same level than the garage and there were three workers making some repairs there. When the spreading cloud reached them, their lungs were affected and someone called an ambulance to hospitalize them.
This day I arrived home at 16:00 hours and found the garage doors opened and, at the end of the tunnel, the emergency exit was also opened. I came in with the windows of my car completely down. I didn’t see any warning notices at all. Nobody was there to prevent us from entering the garage, so I drove to the end of the tunnel, closed the windows of my car and entered my home. I didn’t notice any strange smell (a neighbor told me that he came at 17:00 and there was like a strange smell to chlorine)
Fifteen days have passed since then, and sometimes I feel like bubbles in my lungs when I breathe… I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or it could have something to do with this toxic cloud… I hope it is just a “strange” cold I got by the strange summer we are having at Europe.
On my previous post about Roomba I said that it uses to get stuck at the edge of my stairs, because it doesn’t detect the step and one of its wheels comes out on the air.
I think that the problem is that as it has several sensors to detect floor continuity (like an optic mouse) and my first floor stairs have a window in front of them, joined to the fact that it’s a wooden varnished floor (steps are wooden too) this creates an specific light environment to Roomba sensors. To detect floor, the sensors emit light (infrared or whatever) to see if it is reflected (which would mean that there is still floor under it) but I think that the light coming in through the window is reflected by the varnish and gets to the sensor when there’s no floor under it, but Roomba thinks that the light coming in, is the light it emitted. The result is that Rommba continues moving forward and finishes with one wheel out of the step.
The first day I cleaned this area, Roomba didn’t fall down… Probably it was because I was standing on the steps in front of the window watching how it vacuumed and the light was not reflected on the floor… That’s why the first time I saw Roomba stuck with one wheel on the air (it was on it’s own), I thought that was broken or faulty.
¿How did I solve it?
Well… I put it to clean the stairs area when the sun has set, so it is dark and no light comes in through the window. It never got stuck again
This morning, my alarm clock didn’t ring. It was unusual, but as my wife has hers set 5 minutes after mine, I could wake up as everyday, had my shower, dressed up and everything looked normal. Just one strange thing happened… All crickets stopped singing at the same time. It looked very strange to me. “May there be someone in the garden?” I looked through the window but nobody was there. I told my wife “The crickets stopped singing. It is as if they have felt a strange presence”. But my wife said “Oh, don’t worry, crickets always stop singing in the morning”. And I thought “Yes, but the sun has not risen yet… Anyway. Who cares? It is just the crickets stopped singing. They may have a reason.”
We went downstairs and I found there was just half ration of my usual breakfast plum-cake. This was normal because I didn’t go to the supermarket to buy more :), but was not the usual…
Then we went downstairs to the basement. Our garage is a communitarian garage but we can access it from our basement. We opened the door and saw that the emergency lights were on. So this means that there is no energy at all in the garage and the doors would not open eventually. I told my wife but as she is very optimistic, she said again “Don’t worry”, so I didn’t :). Just closed the door and got in the car. But the thing is that when we arrived to the doors they were dead. I pressed the button of the remote five times, but nothing happened the usual sound of the door opening wasn’t there.
Last time this happened we found a neighbor that stopped us on the way to the door and told us the door didn’t open and asked us if we knew how to open it. We didn’t know how to do it but while we where having a look to figure out how to open the door, we heard someone coming out from his home who started walking toward us. We were going to tell him that the door wasn’t working when we realized that he was carrying a monkey wrench. He got to the door, crouched and started removing a bolt. A woman came after him (it was his mother I think) and one more neighbor appeared there. This guy could remove the bolt, we opened the door, walked to the second door and tried to open it. There were not many options but a small nut… So I said “There is a nut here. Probably if we remove it the door will open”. The last neighbor that had a small monkey wrench removed the nut and we achieved to open the door.
This time nobody was there. “Did we wake up too soon today? Probably someone will be coming right now to open the door like the last time”. Meanwhile, I opened the car’s butt to get a wrench to remove the bolt. I took the biggest one, tried, but the wrench wasn’t big enough.
As we had nothing better to do than opening the door, we went back home to get a monkey wrench and I remembered that while I was closing our home door the first time before getting into the car, when we saw the emergency lights on, I thought it would be a good idea to carry the monkey wrench in the car, just in case we needed it again to open the door. So that was the situation right now.
When I came into the house I saw the light on. There was nothing wrong. Just we forgot to switch it off. This things can happen, it was a strange morning anyway.
I took the wrench, switched off the light, closed the door and jumped in the car again. Drove to the door and found that there was nobody still there, no neighbors, nobody coming out their homes (this was not the usual)
With the monkey wrench I removed the bolt in less than one minute. We went to the other door and found that the small nut was almost removed, so I removed it easily with my hand and opened the door. My wife took the car out and we left the door opened so our neighbors (if any) could get out without any problem.
My wife drove to the subway and a few meters before the before last roundabout, a car switched on its emergency lights and stopped on the edge of the roundabout (this looked to me also unusual) the rest of the way was very normal. The same man with the dog as everyday, the same cars in the subway parking, the same people waiting at the station, everything was the same. The train arrived and took us to the next station. At this station is where I say good bye to my wife, because she takes a train and I take another subway line.
There were not many people waiting at my subway line, so I could manage to sit down. As the train was going to start moving, a strange bumping mechanical sound started hitting under my seat, but as subway trains work with pressure, this sound could be a loose compressor making his job.
At the fourth station, I was kind of sleepy and very comfortable when I realized that people outside the wagon was kind of “running” to the left side of the platform while they were staring to the right side. I heard surprised people saying things and some others asking something like “what’s happening?”. Everyone at my wagon started exiting, so the prudence told me to do the same. When I got out, I looked to the right and saw a lot of smoke coming out from the wagon on the right. This smoke is a little bit disgusting, because it smells to burnt plastic mixed with oil, so I went to the most left side of the platform to breathe clean air. We were there for about ten minutes, the smoking train left through the tunnel and another more modern train arrived. Everybody got into the new train, but this time I could not find a spare seat.
So, if anytime you notice the crickets stop singing, open up your eyes and pay as much attention as you can, because you could be witnessing a lot of unusual things.
I’m just giving it a try on mi PPC. I’m not used to write a lot this way, but maybe I’ll get used to it and will end up writing faster. I have a kind of “long way to work”. My actual way to work takes me around one hour, depending on how lucky I am with the train schedule. I said “a kind of”, because as everything is relative to what you compare it to, my way to work could be very short if it takes you 4 hours, or extremely long if it takes you one minute.
