Pub Quiz Machine

I remember back at Uni when I, amongst other students, was watching someone play a pub quiz machine. He just could simply answer all the questions, or almost all of them. I couldn't answer any of them! Not one . . Until for the jackpot it asked what fianchetto pertains to. It gave 4 options. Well I knew it was chess, which was one of the options. I spoke up. He ignored me. He thought I was completely thick I think. I spoke more loudly and he pressed chess. And he got it right and won £50. He looked around at me with some surprise and said I'd managed to win him £50. He should have bought me a bloody pint!

Name a country

Despite my appalling geography, this seems ridiculously easy. Just point to good ol' England! (extreme left). Novel way of displaying a world map though.

Can you name any country???? pic.twitter.com/73gewiekKH

— Physics & Astronomy Zone (@ZonePhysics) May 2, 2019

My Energy Bill

First of all I live in the UK and npower supply both my electricity and gas. From the 24/4/18 to 25/4/19 i.e 1 year and 1 day, my total energy bill i.e both electricity and gas, came to £952.29. That was for 3,475 Kwh's electricity and 10,744 Kwh's gas. I was paying by direct debit £80 per calendar month.

However, now the tariffs have finished I'm been switched back to the default tariffs, and my projected cost for the next year will be £1,296! But, what if I opt for the cheapest tariffs npower have to offer? Using the same amount of energy it will cost me £101 per month or around 1,212 per year. An increase from £952.29 to £1,212 using the exact same energy and using the cheapest tariffs available on npower. That's a 27.3% increase in price in the space of a year. Inflation rate is 1.9% That's a significant difference!

I think it's time to switch energy suppliers. "Which" informs me that Avro is cheapest at £985.76 assuming the same energy I used last year. Significantly cheaper than npowers cheapest at £1,212. However, it's still more expensive than what I actually paid npower for the previous year i.e £952.29. So even if I switch to the cheapest energy company I will be paying £985.76 - £952.29 = £33.47 extra. But what choice do I have?

Update (about 30 mins later). The monthly payment of £101 for the cheapest tariff was based on the figure that an npower person gave me, namely if I am to use 3,855 kwh's electricity (he never provided the details for gas). However, over the past year (I summed up the amount in each bill), I've only used 3,475 kwh's. Furthermore, the "which" site is saying the cheapest npower tariff for my energy use will only be £94 a month. So this 27% increase will be incorrect, it'll be less than that. Apparently it'll be 12 * £94 = £1,128. That's still too much though since I paid £952.29 last year.

If I do nothing it'll be going up to £107 a month.  Presumably that's a projection of how much I'll need to pay given my energy use over the past year.  12 * £107 = £1,284


These energy suppliers appear to go out of the way to try and confuse people as much as possible!

Older and Older

But Jobs will be lost?

Why higher taxes on the rich can actually be good for the economy. pic.twitter.com/2TdQGyQ6Kv

— Rutger Bregman (@rcbregman) April 24, 2019

More on autonomous cars

I do not believe that level 5 autonomous cars i.e cars that can drive anywhere and don't even have a steering wheel, will be possible if they share the roads with human driven cars. They'll need their own roads, or at least their own lanes. Even then they won't make an appearance for many years yet.

Level 4 cars that are restricted to certain areas and are not suitable for inclement weather conditions will be vastly easier to achieve. But, even here, sharing roads with human drivers is perhaps an insurmountable challenge.

Every one of us will be forgotten

A 100 years from now in 2119 I will have been long dead. No-one will remember me. Nothing I wrote will have survived. It'll be as if I never existed. It'll be the same for nearly all of us. Indeed, eventually time renders us all anonymous.

Exploring the Future

Wouldn't it be great if for the rest of one's life, one could travel forward in time 100 years every week. So I go forward in time to 2119, spend a week enjoying the sights, then get whisked forward another 100 years to 2219 and spend another week there, and so on. It would be very interesting.

I'd end up dying around the year 4,000 . .well . .probably before then if the Earth become uninhabitable, or I annoy the natives by disregarding social rules and norms.

Prosecuted, not executed!

I remember once back when I was around 8 years old walking with my mam (mum/mom) back home from somewhere. My mam wanted to take a short cut across the school field. The school being Holy Trinity in Hartburn, Stockton-on-Tees, which was the school I was attending at the time. I said something like "we can't because there's a notice somewhere saying people will be umm . .I can't remember . .something like people will be executed" (the word I was trying to remember was prosecuted!). Anyway, my mother found that extremely amusing. Thankfully we never took the short cut, so here I am, still alive.

Poor penguin chicks

Penguin chicks rescued by unlikely hero.

Thank heavens for the adult adelie. He did better than the useless cameraman!