watch tHe skies

I’ve added some links under “chat“ on to the right hand side of the site that will guide you to the places I frequent on the interweb. These are the forums that I hang around and make snide comments on. So come along, look for “matt hat” or similar and say hello. (more…)

So now I have mastered the HTML nightmare that is myspace, and given that The Hoff still hasn’t accepted me as his friend, I’ve signed up with another social networking site, Face Book.

So head over, say hello and let’s be friends…

Ghosts, psychic phenomena, deja vu, dreams… are they all linked? The further I delve in to understanding the unconscious mind the more I wonder what it is capable of.

The common metaphor for the human mind is that of the iceberg. That is, the conscious mind is the part of the mind that you can see floating above the water. However, lurking below is a colossal mass that dwarfs the conscious, visible part… the unconscious mind. Capable of billions of concurrent operations, scientists have only begun to fathom its capabilities, and given the limitations of the conscious mind, perhaps we cannot ever consciously comprehend the capabilities of the unconscious. (more…)

I read this article on the BBC website today regarding the announcement that Currys will shortly stop selling equipment with cassette decks. Frankly I’m amazed that they still sell them - where on earth can you get a cassette to put in one anyway?

Of course I have to remind myself that not everyone is in to bleeding edge technology. There must be many people for whom the eternal bluray vs HD-DVD discussion is simply double dutch. And perhaps this is a good thing - for one it is certainly cheaper to be ignorant of the latest technologies, and perhaps it doesn’t actually have that much effect on productivity - I would hate to estimate the time I have spent trying to pair bluetooth devices reliably, let alone find a handsfree set that actually survives long enough for the warranty to expire. Even my trusty Xbox360 only lasted six months before dying a painful death, whereas the good old Sega Megadrive is probably still running quietly and reliably attached to the old black and white TV in the spare bedroom.

It’s a pity that nostalgia can only be felt for past events and scenarios. I don’t feel too much of it for anything in the past as I’m a current \ future focused person. However the death of the cassette deck does indeed remind me of many evenings spent compiling mixtapes. Back then compilations could only be compiled at slightly slower than real time. That is, to compile a mixtape once you had decided on a tracklist, would take slightly longer than the 90 minutes that the good old TDK tape would run for. Longer if your compilation order didn’t split comfortably in to two 45 minute segments. I wonder how many mixtapes I did and how much time I spent lovingly crafting them for people. And the nice thing was that people appreciated the effort that went in to a mixtape. I would always listen to them when given one… because there was a little bit of who that person was recorded in to every single one of them. (more…)

So saturday saw the arrival of the day of reckoning. The sphering experience bought for me by my Mum and Sister arrived, and off Andy and I, with Kate, Jenny, Mum and a snotty Ben, to a hill near Ratcliffe on Soar power station, where we got in a big ball and rolled all the way down.

After being strapped in, the guy explained to us how to “ride the ball”, which was a waste of time…you just basically hold on and hope that the pile of earth at the bottom is enough to slow you down so you don’t roll off in to the next county.

It’s a very disorienting experience, but was a lot of fun. Having watched us roll down on video, small external bounces feel like you’ve left orbit, and the lack of any reference means you just have to hang on and enjoy it. It only really lasted 30 seconds or so, but it seemed an awful lot longer, and was great fun. I’m not sure I would have done it again straight after, in an effort to retain my lunch, but I’d do it again if given the opportunity!

Thanks to Mum and Katy for buying it for me, and to Andy for being a sport and coming in with me!

You can see our adventure over on youtube or by clicking the picture beneath. Finally I got the Youtube plugin working, hurrah!.

I was talking with a friend today who was getting married. She’s in a bit of a pickle because she is trying to decide who to invite to her wedding breakfast. The challenge being that it’s an expensive business AND the number of guests is limited by room size. She was stressed because it seemed to her that she HAS to invite a bunch of people that she doesn’t really want to come (we all have them), which means some people that she does want to come might not get invited.

So I suggested to her why not solve this with TWO wedding lists… for the people who she wants to come to the wedding, include with their invite a real wedding list. For the other people, include a wedding list from Harrods or somewhere, bristling with obscenely expensive gifts. This will mean that the unwanted people will be horrified by the thought of having to spend all of that money on a wedding gift and will make those excuses. Those not tricked by trap 1 will have concerns that they won’t “fit in” with the super rich people going to the wedding and will decide not to attend.

Personally I thought that this was not only funny but a stroke of genius. I welcome your comments if you can afford to leave one.

So Britney Spears, former child superstar turned bubblegum pop minx turned mum of two turned slightly skanky mum of two has shaved her hair, much to the amusement of Heat readers and the delight of paparazzi who can hear cash tills ringing.

And if that isn’t bad enough, the Hairdresser is selling her hair and the can of Red Bull that she was drinking. Let’s put aside the fact that instead of laughing at her that perhaps it was a cry for help. Anyway I’m not a psychotherapist, but this whole event did remind me of an excellent book by Chuck Palahniuk “Survivor”, a great read should you need a new book, and an interesting view of what it is to become a celebrity in modern times.

And finally I’d like to make the observation that all of these celebrities that go nuts seem to have one thing in common - Red Bull. I read somewhere that before being admitted in to rehab, Robbie Williams was drinking twenty cans a day. TWENTY? Given that each can of Red Bull has THREE times the caffeine of a can of coke, which itself has something like twice the caffeine of a cup of coffee, Robbie was consuming something like 120 cups of coffee a day, or 5 an hour, which you clearly can do 24-7 as with that much caffeine in your system sleep isn’t an option! This, combined with the taurine, a compound that is supposed to make you more alert, has the potential to (according to this site) “cause anxiety, irritability, high sensitivity to noise and self-mutilisation tendencies”! What did Britney do after shaving her hair? Get a tattoo! What does Robbie have? Lots of tattoos, possibly TWENTY times the tattoos that Britney has, because he drinks twenty times the Red Bull!

So there you have it, some might conclude that Red Bull is the cause of madness in these celebs. I am now off to do further statistical analysis of the correlation between madness, tattoos and obscenely dangerous energy drinks.

Today I am doing lots of driving. Despite leaving very early this morning in an effort to avoid the rush-hour traffic for my 9am meeting I got snarled on the M1, M40, M25 and M4. Although I never actually stopped, If I can get out and walk quicker I consider that stationary.

Anyway my mind wandered back to this week’s Top Gear. I know little about cars but as the show is mostly about fooling around, automotive knowledge is not a hurdle to enjoying it. James May talked about applying the Bernouilli Principle to motorway maintenance, and I found this very interesting. For those wondering what the Bernoulli Effect is, you are unlikely to gain startling scientific revelations here - go and google it, but from the depths of my residual A-level knowledge, it’s about how pressure is a constant in a system, and when a fluid passed through a smaller area, the speed has to increase to  maintain the constant. May then suggested that rather than slowing everyone down when there is a lane or two out on a motorway, that the speed should be increased in line with Bernouilli’s theory (which seems on first glance to make sense in relation to the flow of vehicles or other materials when considered from a macro perspective). This would mean than if one lane is out we need to travel at 140mph, rising to 210mph if there are two lanes out as is often the case in the evenings, or during rush hour on the M1. This of course presupposes that we all drive Bugatti Veyrons, but this aside I think that he has a good point.

This lead me to think about what motorway driving might look like in the future. Once autopilot is a reality (can’t be far away), cars could travel at much higher speeds and with less space in between, increasing the safe density of traffic. However to work effectively I guess the traffic in any area would need to develop a “hive mind” perhaps all connected wirelessly to a flow control processor for each traffic area. Cool! Imagine hurtling at 200mph around a city, without being in control of the car? It would be like taking Alton Tower’s Nemesis to work every day…:)