This communication follows Odd in a view of what’s going on with my website. This isn’t an interesting place, as I wrote on the home page nine years ago it is just a place for my ego and my thoughts which mostly aren’t pretty! I have found that trying to construct arguments for this site has helped me elucidate my reasoning where my “in head” arguments tend to be more: well, that seems the right thing to do. Why someone would try to login to my website is beyond me, maybe they want control to direct all my readers to spam or to be able to inject some ransomware? Who knows.
139.5.242.87
This IP address has tried to enter the control area of this website 21 times in the last week. It’s interesting, but I don’t know why. Maybe I’m in the wrong business? This is all I know about them using my limited resources. No doubt there’s much more out there somewhere and if I could be bothered.
City: Delhi Region name: Delhi Country name: India ◉ Latitude: 28.650406 ◎ Longitude: 77.23721 org: Excitel isp: Excitel
87.119.178.66
I wonder where this one comes from? City: Tallinn Region name: Harjumaa Country name: Estonia ◉ Latitude: 59.433 ◎ Longitude: 24.7323 org: Elisa Eesti isp: Elisa Eesti
47.75.186.204
This one tried to login 19 times in a two minute window sometime last week.
IP address: 47.75.186.204 City: Ningbo Region name: Zhejiang Country name: China ◉ Latitude: 29.878204 ◎ Longitude: 121.5495 org: Alibaba isp: Alibaba
It would appear that these bots try to login using common login names a few times and when they get refused they move on to another poor soul who runs WordPress. I do wonder if I’ll get properly hacked soon. Time to run some back up software.
The last few times I’ve been to the Amazon homepage there’s been an image by the Launchpad section that intrigued me as I didn’t know what the object was and it looked as though it was cool tech. I was initially quite excited when the launchpad started because it seemed a good thing – plenty of tech solutions to mundane problems – but now it just seems to be an area of the store for products which don’t really do anything different to the items elsewhere. The early excitement left me pretty quickly as the Launchpad filled with the mundane.
What Is It?
Clicking on this image just took me to the Launchpad homepage which I then browsed but found nothing interesting. Maybe that is the purpose of the image. Getting people like me to browse new areas of the website so that I end up buying something. It’s been about a week of seeing this image and so I have finally given a little more effort into browsing to see what it is.
It turns out this thing is a sleep aid device. I will try and avoid using brand names but I will link to the product website once. According to the Amazon information this device has a metronome light that will help you fall asleep naturally 2.5 times faster than normal [average]. Apparently lots of people use it. Other information on the product description has science words with a photograph of a doctor and a description that you align your breathing with the light emitted and this will bring your body into a natural sleep condition. My interest was piqued. My default mode is scepticism and while I’m not dismissing their claims I am going to cover some of the red flags. I hope that towards the end of this article I will find evidence that the product works well.
Problematic Claims
Listing the claims made on their website with comment.
76% positive reviews – those who thought this product worked bothered to let the company know that this product worked in their opinion.
2.5 x faster – people claim that the time taken to fall asleep has dropped by 61%. People are terrible judges at what really happens. That’s why we have developed the scientific method. I will look for a published peer reviewed paper to see if the claims can be backed up.
100 days money back guarantee – This, may at first, seem like an honest option for a company to offer. If this doesn’t work then send it back. In reality this is using a human memory trick to appear honest but people forget that they bought something or have the chance to send it back. This is common among devices that don’t work. How often have you bought a TV and Sony say, hey if you don’t like it return it after three months and we’ll refund you.
Testimonials – user testimonials are a problem, especially for medical / health devices. People don’t know what works. We need a scientific method to investigate these things. Just think how many people you know who use acupuncture / chiropractic / osteopathy when all the science evidence is none of them work. User testimonials are a problem.
Already in excess of 500,000 users – this is an appeal to popularity. If we’ve sold this many then it must work. This is not true. If you remember Mr Blobby was the Christmas number one a while ago and that song was utter shit.
Scary Graphic
This is an amazing graphic. Look at all the details. Sleeping pills cause death. Yoga costs money. Therapy is good but expensive. This product is the best, natural and cheap, doesn’t take much time and green which is definitely the best. Also, the number of stars increases to the best product which is the breathing light. This is amazing. Such balls to design this.
The whole front page of their website is full of lovely modern graphics with plenty of advice and explanation. Whether this is true or works is something I will investigate but it’s worth noting that so far nothing I have seen really strikes me as anything other than “all the comments on our website are this works”.
Who Is This For?
The page on the website which covers who can use the device mentions almost everyone. Therefore everyone is free to buy this product with the knowledge that it will help to improve their sleep patterns. The list is:
Chronic insomnia
Night awakenings
Stressful life
Thoughts running through your head
Daily or one-off troubles
Insomnia and pregnancy
Noisy environment
So, as you see. It works for everyone. We all have times when sleeping is difficult. We all have lives that seem stressful. We all struggle at times. In part, that is the human condition. So, this product could help everyone.
Science Stuff
The science page is pretty well written compared to many such sites I have seen. They make claims along the way. At the beginning the company explains that sleep deprivation can be caused by autonomic nervous system disorders and there’s a link to a published academic paper. This study was performed on 11 insomniacs, not a great number of people. There was a control group which is a good thing. The outcome of this is that to help insomniacs there should be an aim to reduce emotional arousal along with methods for improving sleep. Nothing about how to do that yet.
The next linked study performed on just 8 people seems to suggest the same thing: “These results support the aetiological hypothesis of physiological hyperarousal underlying primary insomnia.” So far these two studies don’t really say anything about this product. All they say is that being stressed/emotional could lead to insomnia. There are three more studies link on the “why” section of the science page and my favourite is the last one which tries to link acupuncture as a treatment for insomnia: “Our review indicates the necessity for further research in the relationship between the effects of acupuncture on insomnia and autonomic regulation, which might guide better selective use of this treatment modality for insomnia.” What this study doesn’t do is say it works. What the study says is that more study is needed. This is precisely the method used by TCM proponents when they find no link in their results. They just say that more study is needed.
The next few parts on the science page try to link breathing to emotional state, which seems fair. They then take the view that this will help sleep, which initially seems fair. There’s a link to a study which has around 40 participants, which is still pretty low, especially once you split them into different treatment wings. So, they asked people to breath at a rate of six breathes per minute and then recorded they blood pressure after five minutes. Would you believe it? After five minutes of being told to relax the participants were relaxed. Wow! How this links to a stressful life I’m not sure yet. All we’ve established is that slowing your breathing can help you feel relaxed. We’ve also established with some poor quality studies that being relaxed helps you sleep.
Next is a link to a study that says concentration can help you sleep. This study is from 1974. I’m not saying it’s wrong but when the last sleep/concentration study you can find is from nearly fifty years ago then maybe you need some more investigative work. Science has moved on since then and we have corrected a lot of the early work. There are a few more links to different studies through the last few paragraphs and there are some amazing charts but none of this so far has convinced me. The science page concludes:
Dodow tackles one of the main obstacles to achieving a sound sleep. It is easy to use, harmless, non-addictive, affordable at can be used at any time of night. Our goal is to democratize its use and create a solution referenced by physicians.
“Easy to use, harmless, non-addictive, affordable at can be used at any time of night” all these are red flags. These are warnings that it’s possible it doesn’t work. Do you know what sort of things have zero side effects? Things that don’t work. “Affordable” is relative. £50 seems like quite a bit of money to me. But if I was struggling to sleep then I would probably think it’s worth it. Sleep deprivation is a terrible thing. I was suffering from poor sleep last November. This device wouldn’t have helped because my sleep issues were caused by stress. I had to sort out the causes of the stress. This is not easy. A blue light to stare at seems easy.
The People
There are lots of other pages under the heading of “blog” which gives plenty of reasons why certain types of people should buy this product. I’m not going through all of them. But I did see the above graphic which tells us about the people who started this company. Greg is, apparently, rational and studied at Stamford. Nice appeal to authority of education there. Gui is into mystic shit and worked for a massive company and so must be ok. Pierre found that he had trouble sleeping because he was thinking too much, he’s emotionally invested in such a cure for sleep. Alex cured his insomnia with yoga, not this system. Look how “respectable” they appear – young, white, intelligent. There is a problem with society when you look at these people and think “oh, they must know what they are doing”.
The Doctor
Dr. David O’Hare has his picture on the science page and is apparently a specialist in cardiac coherence. Whether this doctor has any financial connections to this company I do not know. I tried to Google this person. There were only responses on the French Wikipedia page about cardiac coherence and so I looked at that. My French isn’t great and so thanks to a live web-page Google translate I was able to read this section. The very first paragraph on this web-page explains that this heart coherence technique is founded on poor studies and is considered pseudoscience. This means there isn’t really any good scientific evidence to back the claims that are made.
the effectiveness of cardiac coherence is not recognized: AFIS, which fights against scientific disinformation, considers it as a pseudo-science among others and denounces its promotion
So, it took a little digging. But we eventually got to the point where we know that the doctor recommending this product on their page promotes a modality considered pseudoscience and shouldn’t be promoted. There isn’t evidence to suggest his area of study is true. When your product is backed by someone who makes money from something that doesn’t work you have to question the validity of all the claims on the website and about the product.
My Conclusion
In this communication I have investigated what looked like a pretty cool product for sale on Amazon launchpad. I wasn’t sure what it was at first but it looked cool, although a dust trap. This device is meant to help you sleep and all the claims it makes are plausible. They have lots of science words and diagrams and seem to be endorsed by a doctor. The content of their claims had red flags, the sort of thing that is common with lots of products that don’t really work. So, I investigated this product. I looked at the red flags and the information on their website. I have concluded that it is unlikely that this device does what it claims. While it seems plausible all the evidence go to show that it is unlikely to do what it says. If I have problems sleeping in the future I won’t be heading to buy this device I will use one of the more proven methods for aiding sleep. These are harder and take more time but will have longer last real effects.
A side discussion would be whether Amazon should stock this product or have it on their website. My initial thought would be that they should not. A company should promote things which do not work. A quick search for homoeopathy on the site provides many results and homoeopathy is the most ridiculous of all bullshit non-medical treatments. Currently Amazon is a platform for people to sell their stuff. It’s almost like eBay in some cases and selling items with vague claims isn’t illegal. I mean there are loads of osteopathic practices around where I live. So, morally, I think Amazon should not have these products. But it is up to them I guess. It’s also impossible to police if they maintain their current model. Much like Twitter and Facebook could not possibly moderate every comment or post I reckon Amazon couldn’t do that without massively impacting their business model. Maybe that is where the problem lies ultimately, societies reliance on capitalism. I’ll leave that for another day.
A reasonable length of time ago I started to learn how to teach mathematics the year was 1995/6. During that academic year I received my second placement at a school in Kingston Upon Thames. I was living in Ealing at the time and my first school was The Featherstone High School in Southall and it was a couple of stops away by train. However, to get from Ealing to Kingston was not the easiest of journeys and meant about an hour on public transport. So, I decided to get a motorbike. That teacher training year was a surprise to me for two main reasons:
I discovered that I really loved teaching and decided to stay in that profession. My plans up to then had been to join the RAF as an educational officer.
I bought a motorbike, which I consider instant death traps, and I loved it.
So, I took my motorbike test in 1996 I think. I couldn’t remember the braking distances for different speeds and so one of my my flatmates, Greg, came up with the formula:
Braking distances formula where x is speed in MPH and result is braking distance in feet
Using this formula gives you the braking distance in feet when x is in miles per hour. Effectively it splits into two parts; the x is the thinking distance which is roughly one foot for each mile per hour and the x^2 is essentially the kinetic energy factor. I actually used this formula to work out the answer to the question in my motorbike driving test and got it correct although the tester was somewhat surprised I was using feet rather than metres even though both were acceptable in those days.
This distance is an estimate and cars nowadays will be able to stop in much shorter distances. The more you pay for your car the shorter the distance to stop [ish]]. Basically it’s one hundred metres to stop from 70 mph. That’s quite a distance and would probably surprise most people to see it laid out. It’s the length of a running track straight. When I try to visualise distances in the hundreds of metres I visualise a running track opening out to a straight line and then going across the school field. Humans are generally rubbish at estimating distances because it’s not something we do that often. Distance estimation is important in application of fire when shooting and you need to estimate distances quickly using visual clues to make sure you aim at the correct stop to hit the target. Bullets fall down to Earth, accelerating at 1g.
Now we get to the main point of this communication. In my experience over the last two months people are either:
Stupid
Unable to estimate distances
Unable to understand risk
Unable to follow instructions
Think they are indestructible
None of those things is mutually exclusive so maybe it’s all of them. My evidence is purely anecdotal and comes from my experiences of going to the supermarket. I have been to work thrice since the UK lockdown started and the few people there have been good at keeping their distances. My place of work is still open to the children of key workers and there have been some in allowing sections of this country to still function. The only other place I have mixed with the public is at the supermarket. I haven’t really ever had food shopping delivered and decided I wouldn’t start now and take a slot from someone else who needed it. Going to the supermarket is something I normally enjoy. I don’t know why but I like seeing the shop. If you think that is strange then I really love supermarkets abroad, I think they are such an insight into the people and I will happily walk up and down every aisle to see what’s there.
My normal supermarket is a Sainsbury’s nearby. In fact I’ve been using them for a while since my Nectar points balance went negative due to their errors. I’m not sure of the economic implications of a negative Nectar balance but I decided to shop there for a while. The first time I went to the supermarket they had set up a queuing system with lines on the floor where people could stand. I am not convinced these lines are two metres apart because two metres is probably further than you think but they are apart and so I’m not going there to measure them. That first time queuing someone was chatting to the person behind me and had to be asked to move away. I mean, I thought the instructions were pretty clear. Two metres is two metres. It’s more than the height of a standard house door. If you stand there with your arms outstretched you shouldn’t be able to tough another person’s hands with their arms outstretched.
Inside the store my experience was mostly positive. People seemed to be mostly keeping their distance. Most aisles are around two metres in width and so if you go down the sides you are probably a good distance away. I did find that some people weren’t following the instructions and while I waited at “pinch points” other people would go between me and the person I was waiting for. This, I think, is mostly to do with people not having patience or any altruism. I tried to do the right thing by keeping my distance but some people weren’t doing their best. This was a little frustrating. Mostly I found the experience OK and I don’t think I was too worried by the other shoppers, by and large it was OK.
A few weeks into the lockdown in the UK I went to a local Tesco store because I needed to buy some clothes. The Tesco has a larger selection of clothing and I honestly didn’t want to go to the Asda at the top of the hill because I was being snobbish. The queuing system outside the Tesco worked well but once inside I found there were problems. Tesco have placed arrows on the floor to try and make their customers move in the same direction and allow more people to browse particular products. That seems perfectly sensible but when a good proportion of the customers decided NOT to follow the one way system – WHICH IS THERE FOR THEIR SAFETY AND HEALTH – then the system fails. I was a good boy and followed the rules in place. That evening I found that a lot of customers either didn’t see the arrows or just ignored them. Too many people passed too close to me. My observances are:
People wearing face masks and gloves seem more likely to pass close.
Younger adults don’t give a shit.
Tesco don’t enforce the system – but how could they?
Kids don’t know better so that’s fine – don’t take kids shopping unless your situation requires it.
I hated the time I spent in this supermarket. It was frustrating and increased my stress levels to very high. I just wanted to get my stuff and get out. I really don’t understand why people won’t follow guidelines in place to keep them safe. I’m pretty sure they haven’t understood the risk assessment of these activities. Let’s look at these problems I saw:
Face masks and gloves – the evidence is that face masks don’t protect you from the virus. What face masks do is reduce the chance of you passing on the virus if you have it. Now, if you have symptoms you shouldn’t be outside at all. But, you could be asymptomatic, or you could be at the infectious stage just before you get symptoms. Wearing a face mask gives you a false sense of security and so you put yourself into more risky situations. I saw this is Tesco, I saw people wearing rushing around and getting close to people and they were the ones wearing face masks. Gloves won’t do shit. Gloves, again, give you a false sense of security and make it more likely that you will touch stuff. The best thing you can do is wash your hands before you go out and then wash your hands as soon as you get back. Do your best to not touch your face in the times inbetween.
Younger people – they have that sense of invulnerability that I once felt and I get it. They are going to do the things they want to do. But it could be that they are a massive vector for the virus because they are more likely to be asymptomatic. In a recent exercise walk around a lake I saw a group of around twenty youths all together. I understand and no one is really going to be able to tell them what to do.
Tesco decided to implement a one way system. I have spent a while thinking about this and my stress levels at Sainsbury’s are less because they don’t have a one way system. Therefore there isn’t a system for people to follow and so I don’t get annoyed when they don’t follow it. I still get annoyed by people passing too close but there isn’t the added issue of those people also blatantly ignoring the safety arrows of directionality.
I haven’t seen many young kids when I’ve been out and about. I understand that there are family situations that would make it hard for people to leave kids at home and I am sympathetic to them. You can only tell youngsters to do so much. This, of all the transgressions, seems the one that’s OK.
I go to Tesco rarely. This is to minimise my annoyance at people not following the system. I don’t wear a mask and I don’t wear gloves. In my head I model the water suspended droplets flowing around people as they move around and I try to avoid those areas. I hold my breath at certain times and I try to minimise the risk to myself. I don’t know if I’ve had the disease and I don’t know if I would be immune. I hope I have had it. I would like to be in the position to know that I don’t have to worry about getting it. I would like to be able to do my work and help others knowing it is unlikely I can pass it on and also unlikely I can catch it again. These are all things I do not know. The most important thing for people to do now is to reduce their own risk of getting the disease or passing it on. Until there is a vaccine available everyone is likely to get this at some point. Everyone is going to get ill and there are going to me many more deaths. What we need to do is minimise the risks to all and keep the health services going by spreading out the infection rate.
A couple more things to mention; the virus is called SARS-CoV-2, that’s the official name, the disease you get from the virus is called COVID-19. The virus belongs to the common cold virus family and not the flu virus family – they are very different shapes. The R value that the media are going on about is really the R0 value. That’s pronounced R Nought or R Zero. I think the media have been a little lazy on this one but that could be just me. There are other R values and it’s important to talk about the one you mean. This one is the only one being talked about in the media so maybe I should be softer on this issue.
Along with my investigation of the SARS-COV 2 Virus and how it infects humans I also need to understand how the current detection tests work. Let’s get a few things straight first though. The current [early May] testing regime in the UK is pathetic and nowhere near enough to be able to track where this virus is going. Also, let’s be clear about this, Covid-19 is not a mild cold or flu. Some people won’t suffer very much with it but others are dying. I read a tweet from a 30-ish year old person saying that it felt like they couldn’t breathe for three days. I don’t want to experience that.
There are two main types of test that can be done for the virus. At the moment, in the UK these are done when you first show symptoms. That way, if you have CV-19 you can isolate and if you haven’t then you can go about your business. This is a method for reducing the transmission of this killer disease.
The first test detects the virus itself. This can be done by taking material from easy to reach places on the human body. For this test to work you need to have been infected for a few days already and for the virus to multiply in your body to get to the nose or throat. As the infection continues this test becomes less effective because the virus stays largely in the lungs and reduces elsewhere. As this virus is RNA only and the test can only detect DNA there is some chemistry magic to be done first to convert the RNA and then all DNA in the sample is copied. Finally more chemistry is done to detect the DNA version of the RNA of the virus. This can take two hours to two days. All it tests if whether you have the virus in your nose or throat at that time. It doesn’t mean you are clear. There can be errors.
The second type of test detects the body’s response to the infection. It detects the cells in our blood that fight the virus. By definition this test needs to be done once the infection is being fought. There are two main types of antibody that can be detected and the amounts of those in the blood vary over time. I found this lovely graphic on Wikipedia:
It’s quite hard in these times to find decent correct information on the web about what is going on. I’ve been avoiding newspapers and other traditional media and mainly sticking with podcasts where the presenter / interviewee is qualified or Wikipedia. The World Health Organisation website is brilliant too and has the level of detail I wanted.
Yesterday I took the plunge and decided to do something that had taken me around two years to get to. I think the time was mostly because it was going to cost me money and the benefits weren’t that obvious to me. Back in January I migrated this site to a server somewhere and started paying a hosting company for the privilege. Yesterday I paid to get a secure certificate for this site.
I am now the registered owner of this domain and that is proven with this security certificate. So you can see up in the address bar one of those padlock symbols. This means that anything you enter to this website from your computer can’t be read by anyone else. Not that should really have a need to enter anything on this site, unless you search for something. Also, when I’m editing this site it now uses a secure connection which means my password is encrypted.
Down at the bottom there’s a little picture tag showing the authority that approves my owning a certificate allowing me to run the secure server. All sorted.
I have been playing around with the modules on screen in my Magic Mirror display and so far I have settled on this layout:
Nice MagicMirror Set Up
On the left there are “things happening now”. On the right is my list of local aircraft and the Sonos display although that’s not visible here. In the centre I have news at the bottom and a Game Of Life simulation at the top. It means the picture animates at 1 frame per second and once it reaches an alternating state it restarts.
I think I’m going to look into having the modules rotate through a sequence in each area. This will mean a more changing display and maybe some moon-phase and tide modules!
I’ve spent some time in the last week getting a Raspberry Pi running on my new “spare” TV. I put a new Philips TV into the lounge last week and wrote about that in this communication. I’m coming up to personal isolation day 13. This means I’ve kinda had time to program another Raspberry Pi and get it displaying information on the spare TV. I wanted to have a map of the aircraft in the sky near me and I might eventually look into writing a script that will automatically reload a webpage with password every ten minutes and put it in full screen.
I already have a Raspberry Pi in the loft. It is receiving aircraft ADS-B signals and decoding them. It then feeds the results to 360 Radar, an aggregator website that then publishes all the positions. I wrote about that quite a bit. Just use the search function and find ADS-B.
This time I was working with a program called Magic Mirror. It should be used with silvered glass to create a display mirror but I just want it for the display. The initial program was easy to load and get working. The trickier thing was getting custom modules loaded and then get their parameters working correctly. I had to edit js files all the time and so I found that irritating but rewarding. It’s all about the syntax, which I got eventually.
Magic Mirror Display
Basically the elements are:
Top_Left – Current date and time.
Top_Center – Two calendars of upcoming things.
Bottom_Center – Three RSS news feeds. One from each of the BBC, Defence Blog and The Guardian. These change at different rates depending on how much there is to read.
Top_Right – Current weather. The temperature is measured in Kelvin – because why would you measure it in anything else? Also, this updates every ten minutes or so.
Top_Right – A weather forecast of the next six days of weather. Again, temperatures in Kelvin.
Center_Right – A feed displaying what is playing on the home SONOS system and in which rooms.
Bottom_Right – which lights are on in the house. I mean I could just look around my house because it’s that small but why would you when you can have the information displayed on a screen.
Bottom_Left – My proudest part of this display. A section devoted to which aircraft are closest to my house and [now] where they are. It takes a feed from the Raspberry Pi in the loft which is decoding ADS-B signals. So, not all aircraft will be shown here but most interesting ones will be. Given that there’s so little flying at the moment the top ten closest aircraft are going out to 180km. Once the world returns to normal it will interesting to see how far out this goes. About 50km I reckon.
Black Mirror Display
The picture above has the added details of how far the aircraft are from my house and in which direction.
This project has taken about ten hours of putting together and playing with the software. I think it is mostly finished. There are a couple of small things and I’m investigating them over time. At the moment the Pi starts in the wrong resolution if the TV isn’t turned on before the Pi. I have looked at this and it seems to be all levels of wrong so I don’t know how to fix it. I have googled like an expert and pretty much figured out what it isn’t. I’d really like the Pi to turn on at a particular time and turn the TV on at the same time. I think this is possible but will take much work.
I currently have the Pi plugged into a Philips Hue smart plug that means I can turn it on and off from anywhere. This is a helpful feature. The TV is then set to turn off after a short while without receiving a signal.
I do feel quite smug at the moment. Also as the TV showed up two RAF aircraft earlier. They must have had their ADS-B signals on and so were cargo/passenger planes. All in all I’m a happy chap.
This communication was drafted in May 2016. I have left it so long to carry on writing this that the website is gone, it is no more. There is nothing there. But, thank goodness for the Internet Archive we can see what this website looked like. It is all amazing.
I can’t remember how I found out about this website. It might have been part of Bullshit Saturday, I’m not sure. I’ve decided to blank out the name on this site as that seemed the right thing to do.
Look at the gloriousness, Angel Practitioner, Heal Yourself, Blocks in your Mind, Listen To The Whispers. Every part of this is amazing. I mean it’s all wrong but it is amazing. I can assure you the last thing you want me or many people to do is listen to the whispers.
Let’s get some things sorted straight away. Reiki is bullshit level 2. It’s utter rubbish and doesn’t do anything. I would describe it as “touching someone”. That’s all it is. I could even be that the masters of reiki don’t even touch because they can channel their energy flow so well. what crap. If I didn’t have morals then maybe I would become a practitioner and charge people plenty of money for my services. It’s pretty easy to do.
So, I remember that looking through this website it turns out there are different levels of Angelic Reiki and this got me excited. I mean, it must mean there are exams or tests or practicals? There must be some way of measuring this mode of healing that mean you can progress from one level to another. I desperately want to know more. I looked at the links on the website:
Angelic Reiki Levels 1 & 2
2.5 days GBP252
A complete Karma Cutting and Angelic Clearing prior to initiation.
Angelic Reiki Levels 1 and 2 attunements to the Angelic Kingdom of Light through Archangel Metatron and The Sarim. This includes an attunement given by 30 Archangels, the chief Celestial Angel Princes.
Allocation of a Healing Angel or Angels to work with you on a permanent basis
Practical ‘hands on’ experience in the healing methodology involving healing as a channel, healing with intention, healing with an Ascended master, Galactic Healers and the first steps in multi-dimensional Healing.
Working with Chakras, Colours, Crystals and Flower remedies.
Attuning the tools of your trade.
A Master Crystal to hold the divine Angelic Healing Codes.
An Angelic Reiki Practitioner Certificate
A detailed Manual and much more
So, for GBP 100 a day I can attend this course and learn about the THIRTY Archangels. Did you know there are 30 of them? I didn’t. I must be very lacking in my angel lore. I should really start at the top of the list shouldn’t I? Karma Cutting and Angelic Cleaning – sounds like taking drugs and a colonic irrigation. I’d be quite tempted with this. I wonder what this involves? I’m so curious and yet I think I would die laughing if I actually attended this course. Angelic Kingdom of Light – I really want to know what this is about. I think it might be time for a deep rabbit hole dive on the internet but I’m slightly afraid I would forget to have lunch. Allocation of a healing angel – I doubt very much that angels are happy to be allocated, told what to do. I’m be interested to see if I get that grumpy angel who is just sarcastic and doesn’t really want to be there. Ascended master, Galactic Healers, multi-dimensional healing – this is glorious. I mean they are words and those words do mean things but I doubt that they mean what these angel groupies think. If this all works and is legitimate [it’s not] then all these people should be rushing to help cure all those people dying of Covid 19 at this moment. The Excel arena in London should be full of fucking alternative medicine people to help this world. But it doesn’t work does it? It’s all bullshit and deep down these people know that. That’s why they aren’t visible right now because they know the stuff they peddle to the unknowing doesn’t fucking work.
Chakras, Colours, Crystals and Flower remedies – all bullshit. All peddled by people who either are liars or deluded. This sort of stuff is gobbled up by those wanting the easy answer. People who use this stuff and spend real money on this usually think that a bad illness can be cured with a cup of tea. They struggle with the real world and the fact that it’s all so hard. Hoping that rubbing your foot will cure your liver illness is easy isn’t it. It means there’s an obvious cure or even an obvious cause. It makes things understandable. It possible stops things being so scary. But it’s also bullshit and that’s why it’s dangerous. Much like everything in life we seek simple answers for complicated issues and it means it’s easier for us to comprehend. It’s also why incompetent leaders get elected because they seek approval from our basic desires of simple answers.
A Master Crystal to hold the divine Angelic Healing Codes – I want one. I really want to know what this is and how do you tell a Master Crystal from a lower ranked Crystal? Amazing. You’d also get a manual and a certificate for your time. I wonder how this course is assessed? I wonder how you know you can do this? It’s amazing. Not only that but there are more levels:
Angelic Reiki Master Workshop – Levels 3 & 4
3 days GBP450.
Revisiting healing techniques learnt in the 1 & 2 workshops. Opportunities to share healing experiences
Healing through 3rd eye contact used in Atlantis
Healing with soul group energies
Healing with energies of the Divine presence & the Divine Blessing
During this workshop all participants will move into the area of healing that will become paramount on this planet during the next few years
13 symbols are given in this workshop, which are a gateway to the multidimensional healing. The symbols given will be activated to Angelic level through the 7 levels of form and divine form by Archangel Metatron.
Full Attunement to Angelic Reiki 3rd Degree Level
Full Attunement to Angelic Reiki 4th Degree Level
Gifts of Higher knowledge given by The Sarim, The Angelic princes of the Angelic Kingdom
Healing Practice sessions
Advice how to teach Angelic Reiki Workshops and how to carry out Angelic Reiki Attunements
A Comprehensive Master Teacher Manual
A Certificate of Training achievement to 3rd & 4th Degree in Angelic Reiki
I guess this course starts off correctly with a revision session. Then we get this gloriousness: Healing through 3rd eye contact used in Atlantis – I have no words for this. I know what I think the 3rd eye is but I don’t think that’s correct. I wonder if I don’t know enough about this stuff to be able to judge now? Is this mental healing? I don’t know, but it sounds amazing.
Soul group energies, Divine presence & the Divine Blessing – they should just teach this in the first place. If you just need to have a chat with someone else to improve your healing then why don’t you jump straight to that?
13 symbols are given in this workshop, which are a gateway to the multidimensional healing. The symbols given will be activated to Angelic level through the 7 levels of form and divine form by Archangel Metatron – I am fucking dying right now. This is so beautiful! I’ve looked up Metatron and it turns out that they are the greatest of angels. This angel is so great that it’s not mentioned in the Pentateuch and only briefly mentioned in the Talmud. It’s almost as if they were just making shit up back then.
Higher knowledge given by The Sarim, The Angelic princes of the Angelic Kingdom – this is another one I’m going to have to look up. I clearly don’t know enough about angelic lore to attend these courses. It’s so wonderful! I’ve just googled this and it would appear that there’s “confusion” about what the Sarim are. They might be goat-demons or they might be part of a twelve winged seraphim. What utter shit. It’s so good it’s amazing.
I loved this site when I first saw it four years ago and it still makes me smile. If they, the reiki people, can give out certificates for levels then their skills should be measurable which then means we can, perversely, measure it. If we can measure it then we can know what it is and we can use it to heal and cure people in reality. But, you know what? It doesn’t work and so that’s why there are no reiki machines in hospitals.
[I found this draft from December 2016! So I thought it was the time to get this one published properly. There are a few other drafts on my site and maybe I’ll get them released over the next few weeks.]
Bullshit.
That’s clearly what this is. But I owe more of an explanation to you all.
Here are my thoughts:
The first 30 seconds were pretty good. I didn’t really hear anything wrong in there. All those words and meanings were correct.
“In addition, medicine often fails badly in resolving chronic conditions . . . . “, notice how they don’t say “cure”, notice how all those conditions are remarkably complex and there aren’t any single solutions to them. Also, cancer isn’t one disease, it’s thousands. These are the sorts of problems many people will live with and have to learn to manage those issues.
“Now, patients and practitioners in the UK are turning more and more to a complementary therapy . . ” firstly, numbers please. I don’t think that is the case. But they are selling things here so they will use persuasive language. “Complementary” also means DOESN’T WORK. Things that work in medicine are called MEDICINE and not any other bullshit.
“Safe and gentle solution . . . “, because they legally aren’t allowed to say CURE. When complementary therapists say “safe” and “free from side-effects” they also mean free from “effects”. Everything that you do or take has side-effects on your body. We all love paracetamol and ibuprofen but too much and you’ll fuck yourself over. Even the boring drugs have side-effects. Everything has side-effects. Want to know what doesn’t have side-effects? Something that does nothing.
“Widely used for over 50 years in Germany . . . ” is an appeal to authority and history. It doesn’t mean it works. Do you know what, if this German invention worked don’t you think they would be exporting it all over the world?
Look at the people in white lab coats trying to add authority to the video. Ha ha.
“Bioresonance” it might be a real thing but it is sciency sounding and so can’t possibly be made up. It’s exactly why all the Star Trek technical language really means things.
“Quantum physics and biophysics”, AMAZING! I hadn’t watch this video for four years and they’ve gone full Quantum. Don’t you just love it when this happens. Can’t wait to see what they say.
All cells and pathogens radiate electromagnetic waves in particular frequencies. Wow. I’m not sure they do. Sure, we can read brain waves because there is definitely electrical activity in the brain but I don’t think that’s true for all cells. Most cells communicate on a chemical level and so they can’t radiate EM waves or if they do the power output is so small that it’s far lower than any form of background EM and so unreadable. If we did radiate EM then we’d interfere with all the electrical devices in our houses. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen. They’ve been clever here because they are mixing stuff they hope people won’t understand to sound plausible. But it’s bullshit.
Bioresonance can figure out which frequencies belong to pathogens and bad things and neutralise them. How? Doesn’t say. What about “good” bacteria?
“55 countries worldwide . . . ” appeal to popularity.
“report remarkable improvements in their health and well being . . . ” self-reported outcomes are the worst. What about science trials? “Well being” doesn’t mean anything legally, it’s not defined in any particular way. You can say it and not get sued because it doesn’t mean a thing.
“non invasive, drug free, no known side effects . . . ” means it’s DOESN’T work. But it sounds nice doesn’t it. If you are desperate and you think the doctors are letting you down and someone has a, not-cure, a solution then you might be willing to spend your money.
“Safe for babies and vulnerable . . ” because it doesn’t work that’s why.
“Used in China . . . .” appeal to popularity and history etc. The whole Chinese alternative medicine thing is terrible. It stems from after the second world war when the government wrote a pamphlet for doctors which had things at the front that would work – drugs – and because of shortages it also listed things that wouldn’t work but would give the impression that doctors knew what they were doing – Chinese alternative medicine. It’s all based on lies.
“Increasingly popular with vets and equine specialists . . .” because selling just to people won’t make enough money.
Ann’s testimonial isn’t worth shit. Testimonials are the worst form of evidence. The plural of anecdotes isn’t evidence it’s just anecdotes. So I actually didn’t listen to anything she had to say. It’s not worth it.
And there we have it. Bulshit. So I headed over to their website to see what is going on. There is so much there I am going to have to save it for another day. I hope it doesn’t take me four years to get around to writing about it! Let’s see what happens.
Our society wasn’t set up to cope with a massive short term change to the way it operates. By short term I mean in the order of months. We aren’t even months in and it feels as though the world is ending. There’s panic in the supermarkets and many many businesses are going to go bust. People won’t get paid and it’s not going to be pleasant.
If only our society hadn’t been chronically underfunded over the last ten years. If only the “gig-economy” wasn’t a thing. If only companies weren’t driven by responsibilities to shareholders but rather to a social responsibility that means they would look after their employees and make sure everyone had a decent standard of living.
We SHOULD be paying for goods and expecting everyone involved in those process to make them to be paid a FAIR wage. It is utterly immoral that they don’t.
This was meant to be the start of something big but I think I’ll have to leave it for a while. I might keep my ramblings short while we go through this.
This headline from the BBC is amazing. I don’t even know what sort of spin they are trying to place on the news. I’ve been trying to spend less time BBC bashing when there is plenty more shit out there but this one needs a bit more explaining and it covers one of my favourite topics: the survival of the planet. It’s easy to go to the Daily Bullshit Mail and rip it apart. It’s easy to look at so many news articles and explain why they are wrong but it’s depressing when it’s the BBc that do it. As I’ve said many times within these communications the BBC is the best news gathering we have in this country and it’s going to be destroyed by the tories.
The use of quotations in headlines is terrible. It allows news organisations to drag you in with a juicy quote from a story without actually telling you anything about the story. Or, as in this case, it is misleading. The real news headline should have been:
Climate Change Report by Think Tank Released.
IP
What happened was a report was released. The headline the BBC used misses an important part of the report which said that the UK can’t go carbon neutral without changes to behaviour. That last bit swaps the whole style of the narrative around and makes the report more positive. It explains the headline. But most grumpy fuckers will read the headline, nod wisely as it agrees with their preconceptions, and then move on without actually learning anything. This headline gives the excuse that there’s no point changing behaviour because we can’t be carbon neutral by 2050. It’s an excuse to let people do what they are currently doing. It’s dangerous.
The UK cannot go climate neutral much before 2050 unless people stop flying and eating red meat almost completely, a report says. But it warns that the British public do not look ready to take such steps and substantially change their lifestyle.
From the BBC article
No one wants to change their behaviour because we don’t like change. But we MUST change and change soon. It is obvious we have destroyed this planet for the next ten generations and massive changes are required NOW to make sure that we minimise the terror. Currently we are breaking every possible system the planet has and we are going to make this place a horror movie in one hundred years or maybe even earlier. I guess we have to thank short-termism politics and the general selfishness of those who seek power and then want to maintain that power. It’s hard to imagine people who push their way to power actually wanting to help people. They do exist but are rare and seen as the odd ones.
I do sometimes think that maybe the best thing to happen to this planet is the extinction of our species. The planet will take a while to recover but it will eventually be a glorious place of life and death and the struggle to survive without our influence.
The weight of this world should be on all our shoulders. But I fear it is held by a few.
Recently I’ve been trying to exercise more and failing. My excuse the other night, when I had a clear two hours to get out, was that it was raining. It is a fair excuse but I could have jumper on the rower at home and done some exercise on that but I was sidetracked by computers and driving games. I recently ran five or so miles and my standard route takes me along a section of road that gets wet easily. It’s easy to avoid the puddles by running on the raised ground at the edge of the field. Sometimes, when it has rained a lot a large pond is formed and stays for a long time.
A Lot Of Rain
As you can see the temporary pond to the left and the road to the right. I was run-walking along the raised pathway but it’s quite disconcerting because of how slippy it is and the thought of falling into the pond.
I’ve written about this before and I am sorry for not doing enough but these weather events and wet winters are only going to get worse. All caused by anthropogenic global climate change. Sorry younger people, I am convinced life is going to be particularly hard for you.
This brings me to another, slightly related, thing. Humans have an amazing ability to ignore the evidence and only concentrate on the things that they as individuals think will make them better. I’m thinking at the moment of people wearing face masks to avoid getting the current coronavirus which causes Covid-19. Face masks won’t protect you numbskulls. They don’t do what you think they are doing. Stop buying them and leave the stock for people who genuinely need them. I spoke with someone at the weekend who mixes and makes chemotherapy for different individuals. They said that they have to re-use disposable face masks while mixing the drugs because they have run out of stock and stupid people are buying up all the facemasks in society.
Another organisation I am aware of is ignoring all the evidence and making people work through particular practices even though there is no chance that any of it will work. We see this all the time with governments and humans. There is an attitude of doing something [even if it doesn’t work] is better than doing nothing because we can then say that we did something [even if it wasn’t going to work]. What an utter waste of human time and resources.
Want to avoid getting the latest fad-virus? Wash your hands properly. If you do get the virus, don’t sneeze over anyone and follow the government advice on using tissues.
I wrote recently about a damn good gig that I went to, Aesthetic Perfection, at the Lounge 666 or whatever it’s called. Because technology is so wonderful and lovely I can now show you a graph of my heart rate throughout that day.
Gig Heart Rate
There are three main aspects to this graph to chat about. The first is that low bit at the beginning. It’s me asleep. I’d have to compare it to my REM patterns to know what the little blips are in that section. Then, there’s me waking up at the little alarm clock symbol. The running man symbol is where I went for a run and the break in the graph is where I took my watch off for a shower. The low level preceding the first grey man is me driving my car into London for the show. The peak at the first grey man is me walking from where I parked the car to the venue. The next big dip is me eating food and so sitting down. Then, the bouncy bit is me bouncing at the concert.
The second grey man is me walking back to the car from the concert and then my watch thought I had fallen asleep because there’s a “Zzz” symbol. In reality that we me driving home from London and my heartrate stabilised because I wasn’t doing much. You can see that this resting heart rate is still higher than my normal sleeping rate. Finally the small peak just before the end is me walking from where I had to park the car in my village to my house.
This level of detail is pretty cool but I do wonder if it’s worth knowing? All that extra data I have about everything I do but does it change my life? I don’t know.
I’ve been thinking recently about creating a time lapse film of the view outside the back of my house. I think it would be nice. It’s a big open space and the weather and seasons changing would make it interesting. I quite like the challenge of figuring out the tech to do it. I’m going to investigate a small 1080p camera and then see if I can write some script [or steal it] to capture a still from it every hour or so. That would make a six minute video for a year’s worth of photos. Once it’s created I’ll write a communication on here and let you know.
It’s a shame that many people don’t seem to accept the horror we face. Over the last forty years there has been regular news about how we are fucking the planet. Every news article I have read which tries to explain the science and evidence behind what we have done to Earth implies that we don’t understand the positive feedback mechanisms but we know they are happening. The climate has entered a phase of accelerated warming and the time to stop our emissions was twenty years ago.
Even if we stop now there’s been enough damage caused that will mean the changes will go on for years. Basically it’s fucked. It was fucked ten years ago and possibly even twenty years ago. This globe is dying through the lack of action of those in power who could change things.
It’s nice to collect whole sets of things. It completes the series, finishes the story. A long term aim of mine is to bag all the Wainwrights in the Lake District. It’s going to take a while as I live in the exact opposite corner of the country and it pretty much takes a day to get there. I’m trying to complete Gran Turismo Sport but I don’t think I’ll ever do it or if I do it will be after they bring out the edition for the PS5 [which I’ll buy obviously].
A recent trip to the Science Museum in London to meet up with the Fulham 5 meant another chance to see one of the Apollo Command Modules. There are twelve command modules around the world [USA + London]. I’ve seen three of them and I doubt I’ll ever get to see more than another two or three of them but it’s worth a try to see them all.
I’ve seen the Apollo 11 Command Module in Washington DC. The Apollo 10 Command Module in London and the Apollo 14 Module at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. I reckon there’s a chance I’ll see a couple more of them.
Apollo 14 Command Module
Above is the interior of the Apollo 14 Command Module. Just enough space for three humans to survive take off and re-entry. This conical cocoon sat atop the supply and Service Module that kept the astronauts alive. There was also the Lunar Module which they docked with in Earth orbit before performing a burn to take them out of the large gravity well.
If you think there’s not a lot of room in the CM then I suggest you go and take a look at one of the Soyuz capsules. They are much smaller and contain the same number of people. Those pesky Russians sure know how to make hard-working dependable technology!
Since early 2014 I have written communications on here detailing the kind of equipment I have in the house in terms of internet-networking-stuff. The first communication, January 2014, detailed the set up of the house. I then updated this in February 2017 with the expanded view of the network. There have been some changes. I go through phases of trying to simplify the equipment and getting it to work in the easiest method possible. This is needed every now and then as when items are first set up the quick method is used and this might not be the best. Changes happen over time.
Infrastructure 201912
The principle changes to the system are the addition of a smart lighting system and the network that runs on along with a wired connection to the lounge cluster running with a gigabit switch. The original 10/100 switch now runs clusters B, C and D. I will admit that the picture isn’t that pretty but given I’m not a graphic designer and I also don’t really care what you think I’ll leave it as it is. I will also admit that this is the second import of that picture because on the first one I forgot to add the AV amp [disaster!].
Other minor changes to the network are the removal of the freesat box and a complete reliance on streaming services, I wrote about that in this communication a year ago. I have no wireless television signals connected to the television, be that a satellite signal or via the television aerial on the chimney. I also now have home voice control via the Google boxes, it’s nice telling the house what lights to turn on. I have written about that but I can’t find it, see my explanations here.
The Clusters
A – The, so called, gigabit computing cluster. This is basically a PC which is now old and a NAS drive which stores all kinds of media and files. The wireless printer is in this cluster but it’s not really gigabit, you know what I mean.
B – The ADSB receiver. I send MLAT and ADSB data to 360Radar. I use a Raspberry Pi connected to a tuned aerial and decode the data before sending it to the cloud somewhere. When this system was wireless there were occasionally issues with the Pi connecting and so I now have it wired through an ethernet over power line connection. This connection runs greater than 100Mbps which is good enough.
C – The lights. I can control the lights in the house either by speaking, using the PC or via a connection from my phone. I can also control them when I am remote from the house. This is handy as I can get the lights on before I walk into the house. I could have this set using location settings but I’m not going to do that. Some lights come on at sunset and shortly before sunrise which is pretty neat. I also bought a light switch which is near the front door for the olds to use.
D – House sounds. The Sonos system is pretty impressive still and used everyday. The Sonos can read songs stored on the NAS or even stream podcasts and radio stations via the internet. While I haven’t set up voice control on this, I can but I don’t like the interface, I can control this system using the PC or phone.
E – The lounge cluster. Yesterday I wired this in using a network cable to which I attached RJ45s. I had to do this as the cable had to fit through a hole in the wall which is smaller that the connector. It was an interesting learning experience fitting my own cable. I also bought a gigabit switch for the lounge and now the devices in there can link to lumps in the computing cluster at high speed. I didn’t have any streaming issues but I just wanted to know that it was future-proof for a little while anyway. The lounge has a smart TV [it’s not that smart as I bought it before decent firmware], Blu-ray player, PS4, Amp and Nvidia Shield streaming device for watching stuff.
F – The wireless cluster. This is basically everything else. There’s a phone, an old tablet and also the Google home pieces. There is a normal Google home and two minis. These are placed strategically around the house to allow for voice control to work wherever you are.
I guess I’ll write another of these in a few years time when I consider the network to have changed significantly. Until then, happy buying of technology.
I guess it had to happen eventually. Over the summer I had to get some glasses. This is so I can see stuff that’s close to me. My eyes are getting old and I now need help to see stuff properly. It’s not that bad yet and sometimes I forget to wear them at work but for reading small text I definitely need them. It isn’t convenient to keep pushing them up and then down when transitioning from close to far stuff and most of my effort at work seems to be lifting the things onto my massive forehead whenever I look up from my computer.
I’m somewhat surprised by the folding mechanism on the glasses and I think this is some strange secret that you have to discover once you get glasses. Maybe most people don’t discover this because they are right handed? Maybe it’s only the lefties out there who have to deal with this strange asymmetry in glasses.
When I close my glasses I would naturally close the left arm first. This leads to the glasses not folding smoothly. It appears there’s a particular way you have to close glasses to do it correctly.
Glasses Right Over Left
See in the above picture how the right arm sticks up quite a bit when the glasses are closed left first. I might have to google this once I’m done writing as perhaps there is a design aspect of glasses of which I was unaware.
Glasses Left Over Right
When glasses are closed left first, or right over left, you can see that they fold nice and flat and will fit into most cases. I do think this is a classic case of the world not managing well with left handed people. I may be wrong but when you look at glasses there isn’t any obvious asymmetry and I am now going to get the ruler out and start measuring bits to see how it works. There’s a discussion thread from 2006 on this page.
Over the weekend I tried something out not because I wanted to but really just because I should have been able to do it. While I was at RAF Wittering I spent some time on the Playstation remote play feature just really checking that it would work. As I’d been feeling remote recently through stress and poor sleep I didn’t spend a great deal of time playing [in fact I practised some statistics] but I did confirm that I can play the Playstation when I have a wifi signal.
While on military bases I either use the wifi provided by BT on some bases or, on others, there is a private contractor service called Media Force. In my experience they provide excellent coverage [except in my room at Shawbury] and for £10 you can get a week’s worth of 24Mb/s connection.
The Media Force connection at Wittering was enough to get my PS4 working remotely via my laptop:
Remote Play
I only played a very arcade type game as I didn’t really have the time to get into a specific game. But, I proved the system worked. For the PC version you connect a Dualshock4 via a USB cable. This system worked well.
I then tested the system on my phone. It’s an Apple iPhone running iOS13+. I apologise for the crappy picture because I was using my laptop to take the photograph and both of its cameras point rearwards [towards the user].
Remote Play iOS 13 and Dualshock 4
In this setup the Dualshock4 is connected via BlueTooth which is pretty cool. You just have to re-pair the controller with your PS4 when you get home. I’ll definitely be using this system more in the future!
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/49493993/this-is-fine.0.jpg)
