Invented Word 4 - Box-ticking Plot

Box-ticking Plot (noun) - A story plot deliberately written to tick boxes in some form of checklist. Such check lists can be from a focus group or the demands of fans of a franchise. Such plots can feel "forced" upon the writing of a piece of media and the reader/viewer can notice it.

The term came to me when I saw Anime America's review of the 19th Pokemon movie - Hoopa and the Clash of Ages. I have seen the movie before seeing this review, so I had an idea what Robyn was going to say about it.

(I tried to find the video in question, but I suspect Anime America has been struck by another copyright troll (again!).)

FOUND IT!!!!

My New Project - What Makes Computers Tick

During the lock-out I began work on a project I had in my mind for a few years - a book about how computers work aimed at everyone.

I started sketches for this illustrated book back in May and by now (August) I have done a lot of sketches and research in the intricate inner workings of computers. I have even designed a cover for it...

Prototype cover of What Makes Computers Tick

The idea of this cover came from a memory of seeing a book cover like this back in High School. It was an old book, I admit, but I wanted to make my book feel that it could have been made some time ago. I wanted to give it a sort of timelessness. (An near-impossible fete, considering the nature of the computer industry.) A timelessness achieved through nostalgia. 

So why am I doing this?

My answer can found in the introduction I have already written for it.

Introduction 

The Miracles and Our Alarming Ignorance About Them

At the time of this book’s publication (the first half of the 21st century) we happen to live in a world full of incredible technology. If someone from centuries ago would somehow see our time (and see all our wonderful abilities in action) that person would think we all become sorcerers. We have been able to build artificial organisms and sent them to other planets. We also made them take us across the Earth and make things for us. We have become able to capture light and sound and send it across vast distances, to allow others to experience the same things we have. We have the means to gather and bring up any piece of our vast collective knowledge wherever we are and at any time, and no matter how obscure it is, it can be found before you can say “googolplex.” And with these means we have been able to map more planets outside our solar system and other things, including our genes. Also, we have been able to make more accurate predictions with things like the weather and the state of the marketplace (with increasing success over time). And, if we find the real world boring, we can create new exciting worlds to play in … or test ideas out before implementing them for real. And thanks to such “simulations” we have been able to build things that would have been considered impossible just decades earlier.

Worded like this, it sounds like we’re living in a world full of magic. But this is our world in the 21st century. None of this is an exaggeration. Between the time of that ancestor and now we have developed a lot of new tools and technology that has made this world possible. Technology you would have trouble describing to that ancestor (If you happen to end up in the ancestor’s time with no examples to demonstrate. It could happen someday.). You could probably list ten of them right now in an instant.

Trains, cars, aeroplanes, telephones, cameras, microwaves, record players, plastic, TV, fridges, you can go on….

But, I bet when it comes to one particular one, many of you may not think of it instantly. You may have thought of it after thinking of others first. It’s not a surprise that is case, because most of the time we don’t think about them… mostly because many of them are invisible in daily life (except the very obvious ones you probably use at work or leisure). I know that some of you will have thought of this thing first, as you may be very aware of how many they are and what they do. As you are reading this many of these things are tracking stock in stores, transferring money from bank account to bank account, sending bills and statements to customers, spotting suspects in CCTV, making things to a design with very high precision, predicting the weather tomorrow, generating alternate worlds for pleasure, mapping the genes of individuals to detect “defects,” and giving life to and guiding those artificial organisms I talked about earlier (you know them better as “robots”).

It can be easily argued that of all the “miracles” we have developed since the days people were burnt to the stake as “witches,” this particular one has made the biggest impact. Without it, we will be back to life before World War II. A time when thousands of people were employed just to crunch numbers for various reasons, from managing a company’s finances to calculating the stress forces on Zeppelins.

These people were once given a name. A name that was later adopted to name the “miracles” that replaced them. A name that became so linked to these machines that soon people forgot it was once used to describe people – computers.

From large machines used in academia and data centres containing “the cloud” to devices on your desk or in your pocket (or inside you), computers are everywhere and come in many forms. They have even embedded themselves in other things, such as cars and kitchen appliances. So even if you try to go “offline” you will interact with at least one computer without knowing it.

But here’s a thought…. How many of us know how they work? I don’t mean stuff like you need to press control+alt+delete to get the menu that allows to get Task Manager or to change your password on your Windows PC. I mean their nuts and bolts. What makes them tick. I’m sure a lot of you have at least once thought about this question. With them everywhere and you using them almost every day it would be odd not to have thought of asking “how computers work?” But how many of us managed to find a satisfactory answer to that question?

This is what has been bugging me (and made me make this book) – attempts to explain how computers work to people (children and adults) with almost no scientific or technical knowledge to begin with have been …. terrible. In many attempts to explain how computers work the writers have been too simplistic or wrote too long a passage and filled it with jargon, causing confusion and alienation. A lot just point out the parts of a computer and say this does this and that does that. This is what I experienced for years. It wasn’t until I was in higher education (studying multimedia in college and computer animation in university) that I finally worked out how computers really work. Thanks to some hands-on experience making interactive media and learning how computers model virtual worlds, I gained my mental picture of how all the components of a computer interact with each other. And in doing so learned why I didn’t get “it” until then. I have been an avid reader on the subject of how things work and got high grades for physics. Surely I could have worked it out before then, but I didn’t. All the text I have read didn’t do a good job explaining it. Why?

They are two basic problems that come to finding out how computers work for yourself (and writing about it). First off, if you get hold of a computer and open it up to take a look inside you are confronted with a selection of wires, chips and circuit boards. Unlike a mechanical clock, they are no gears or wheels to see moving. No single tangible indicator to help build up a picture of how it ticks. Second of, computers are no all-in-one boxes. They are made of several component systems that work together. It’s like a car. Cars are made up of several systems that work together – transmission, brake, steering, suspension, electrics and so on. It would be ridiculous (in trying to explain how cars work) to sum them all up in a single paragraph. But many have done just that when trying to work out or explain how computers work. With no obvious moving parts (except disk drives and cooling fans – or robot limbs) and a multisystem construction, it’s no wonder many have failed the task of explaining how computers work to non-nerds. It’s no wonder (like cars) computers entered the domain of nerds.*

*I don’t see a difference between guys who talk about the differences between Fords and Chevys for hours and guys who talk about the differences between Android and Apple devices for the same amount of time. It’s the same mentality all fans have. If you love something so passionately to bother to learn everything about them (from football to that singer everyone’s talking about now) you are (technically) a nerd of that subject.

So what? Some of you ask? I don’t need to know how it works. As long as it does what I want it to do, I’m happy. Okay, continue been ignorant. But what if your computer (or any computer) does something you didn’t want it to do? What if it crashes and you loss all your data you worked hard creating? What if your processor or internet connection begins to slow down? What if someone stole your password and messed about your accounts? What if your bank sent you something not meant for you because you shared a name and date-of-birth of someone else? What if your sat-nav directs you the wrong way up a one-way street? Surely when incidents like these happen to you or in the news you want to know how such faults are possible. This is when (I think) you need to be taught how computers work. If you have this knowledge you may be able to understand how such errors happen and be able avoid such problems yourself in the future.

As more computers come into existence and more of us actively login I think there is a need for this book more than ever before. Without an accurate easy-to-understand description to work with, many people have gained a lot of wrong ideas about computers and what they are able to do. This happens to all new technology. When a new gizmo appears, the average Joe has no idea what makes it tick. And when some people get some experience with them they spread rumours and misconceptions about them due to their lack of understanding of the science behind them or false correlations between it and something unrelated (usually something medical). This is how we get ideas like, cameras taking people’s souls, people on TV been able to see you as you watch them, putting metal cutlery in a microwave will make it explode, or that high use of cellphones cause brain tumors.

Computers are no different. You may have heard (and believe) some misconceptions about them, such as the idea that they are some form of artificial brain that becoming increasingly intelligent. An increasing intelligence that might one day surpass the collective intelligence of all humans … and when that moment comes they’ll think that they don’t need us anymore and kill us off by activating the world’s nuclear missiles by playing tune down a phone line. That last bit is based on a lie a law enforcement officer may have said to convince American federal judge Marianna Pfaelzer to convict high-profile computer hacker Kevin Mitnick in 1999 …. which she believed, making her rule that after serving 46 months in jail he was banned from touching a single computer or dial-tone telephone for three years.
The fact that a judge (a presumingly highly-educated person) bought such a lie highlights how far this ignorance has become. And with computers doing a lot of things in society that is a worry. We have had false ideas that computers are “brains” and that a robot uprising is coming to cloud our judgements about everything related to computers. These are ideas that first came about when computers were new to the world and only the guys in white coats operating these early colossuses knew the truth about them – computers are stupid. They are not “brains,” they are just piles of wired up switches designed to do math very quickly. They are like trained animals following master’s commands. But that image was dull, so journalists and science-fiction writers filled our ignorance gap with metaphors and B-movie plot devices to make them sound interesting.
Although computers have changed shape and have been made of different stuff since those early “monsters,” the way they tick is exactly the same. And no matter what they do, from composing music to identifying species of moth, what they all doing is the same thing – mathematics done very quickly.

It’s no surprise if you take a look at their history and origins. When science historians write about the history of computers they also tend to link it with the history of calculators, because they have the same origins – devices designed to aid the adding up of numbers. Devices we began to need after we began to count beyond our ten fingers and toes.

To begin to understand what makes computers tick this is a good starting point – how do you make a machine add up? Curious? Want to know more? Don’t want to feel alienated by a selection of microchips in a box …. again?

Let’s us begin with their heart ….. the processor

(and find out how you make a machine add up).

[Enough Said]

Some words of mine got published!!!

One thing that happened to me during the lock-out was that some words of mine got published in a national newspaper.

In May 2016 I was interviewed for The Scotsman newspaper. It was about  me taking part in a group that was assessing Specsavers opticians for the sake of them getting an award for "Autism Friendliness." Its a scheme to make businesses and establishments more aware about the condition and the sensory overload that can cause trouble for people on the spectrum. 

I was asked a couple of questions by e-mail. I replied. The answers were edited into the final article you can read here. It was very well-received. It even got a Letter To The Editor.

The final article was published in June and you can read it by clicking.....

HERE

Acts of Cultural Vandalism - Pluto - 10 years of lower status?

On 24th August 2006 the International Astronomical Union (after deciding on a new definition on what can be considered a "planet") reclassified Pluto to a "minor planet". 

Why, you ask? 

It will take some time for me to explain why, so save time typing out a long explanation, here's a video from CGP Grey that helpfully explains everything you need to know.

Is Pluto a Planet? (2012)

Pluto is an odd-ball of a planet in our traditional model of our Solar System. While every planet beyond Mars is a giant ball of gas, Pluto is a small solid round rock, like a moon. Also, its orbit is at an extreme angle, compared to the other planets....

This scan from Ultimate Visual Dictionary 2001 (2000) 

clearly shows Pluto's extreme angle of orbit

And it doesn't help that Pluto is so far away from us. So far away that until last year the best pictures we had of Pluto were blurry blobs at best (as seen in the scan above). It's the celestial equivalent of a poor orphan child.

No wonder many got mad with the decision to reclassify it. Many saw the IAU as a bunch of privileged bullies. It was ugly. How could something so academical as a object reclassification cause so much outrage?

Maybe it is down to the fact that it was discovered in America by an American (a double-whammy for American patriots). Maybe because the idea of calling it after the Roman God of the underworld (because the other planets were named after the other Roman Gods) came from an 11-year-old girl from England (stirring much of the English-speaking world). But I think its mostly because when we were first taught about the Solar System as children some of us to attached to "Lonely Pluto." As recent history shows if you mess with something that is beloved by many people when they were kids you will hear about it.

One man learnt this the hard way. Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, became the public face of the "controversy" when he removed Pluto from the Planetarium's model of the Solar System. And since then people still pester him about it. But he didn't take part in the IAU's decisions. 

But one guy who was responsible for the decision (and should have been the public face of the debate) is astronomer Michael E. Brown. Mike Brown isn't ashamed about his role. In 2010 he wrote a book called How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. Even though it was him who did the deed, poor Tyson (thanks to his celebrity status since then) still gets the cultural stabs.

But most people who were vocal about the change were people who thought that everything has been turned upside down. You know, those people who thought too much has changed in the world for them to cope. People responsible for scenes like this...

Form episode "Raising Gazorpazorp" 

Rick and Morty (2014)

The reclassification of Pluto became a short-cut reference to mark how the "facts" in science can change faster than the average Joe can learn of the changes. I remember it been used in the movie Frankenweenie when the townspeople confront the science teacher Mr. Rzykruski after an incident in the school. 

Despite the high amount of protest the IAU's decision of calling Pluto a "minor planet" has stuck.

But last year something happened that could change Pluto's fortunes around.

In July 2015 the New Horizons probe became the first spacecraft from Earth to reach Pluto

and on 13th July it took this now iconic picture....

Pluto, taken by the New Horizons probe (13th July 2015)

This was the first close-up image ever taken of Pluto. It was no blurry blob anymore. And we discovered that it had an interesting feature - the Tombaugh Regio, better known as "The Heart."

Could this have been a ploy by native Plutoians to attract us to Pluto, like Mount Rushmore attracts people to visit South Dakota? Maybe. But what is true is that it didn't take long for the Internet to fall in love with Pluto's heart.

The reclassification issue became a hot topic again soon afterword. Not only did it trigger the debate again culturally, the new data the New Horizons probe sent to NASA has given scientists a lot to chew over .... including the idea that Pluto's reclassifcation may have been a mistake. A mistake bought on due to lack of accurate data at the time.

I don't think this debate will end anytime soon (in 2016). But the fact that this debate became so culturally interesting outside the field of astronomy can be seen as something more significant... Space has become a sexy topic. Not since the days of Carl Sagan we have seen this high interest in space. In the 2010s we are seeing space becoming more accessible to us mortals that ever before.Tech companies (like SpaceX) are developing new spacecraft designed to take fee-paying passengers. Individuals (with some assistance) are sending up balloons to take pictures of the Earth for fun. You can even build your own satellite! At the same time astronomers are discovering more and more exoplanets and (spurred on by this) some serious scientists are pondering the possibilities of life existing outside Earth. What a time to be an astronomer.

And as for Pluto. It'll still be there (unless something happens to it). Whether the debate will continue to the time humans walk on it, we don't know.....

But I can imagine one day sometime in the future,
when interplanetary space travel becomes affordable,
this will happen on Pluto.....

And your not the first person ever to have such an honour Neil.

THE 100TH POST CHALLENGE!!!!!

You have read right. 

What you are reading now is actually the 100th post ever published on this blog.

So what do I have planned for this milestone?

Nothing. 

I only just noticed this fact when I returned after the four-month lock-out this year.

I didn't have anything planned.

But I do have something to show you....

I made this after seeing a video on YouTube that made me think back in July.

(during the lock-out)

Can you work out the meaning of this collage?

It may look like a random selection of images, but there is a structure. 

It comes in the form of a piece of audio. 

Want to know what it is? 

Here's a clue... Anakin. 

That's all I'm giving... until the day of the release of Pokemon Sun and Moon in November.

GOOD LUCK!

My thoughts about the Live Action Pokemon Movie

This is a post I made on Facebook exactly one month ago, regarding plans to make a Live-action Pokemon movie. (Just before I left to go on holiday.)

Before I leave the internet for a while here's a long post concerning recent developments in popular culture.

You all be aware of the sudden reemerging of Pokémon in the general zeitgeist (as a result of the vast popularity of the Pokémon GO augmented reality game … and the chaos it’s causing). Some of you may have been aware of the news of a bidding war in Hollywood for the rights for a live-action movie adaptation of said franchise. It’s the latter I want to talk about.
A lot of the talk I have seen online about this has mostly been about who would win this bidding war (with Legendary Films been the bookie’s favourite). But I have seen little of something much more important…. Which storyline are the filmmakers going to choose?
For those unaware, the Pokémon franchise is a vast universe of possibilities (just look at the library of spin-off games alone and the various manga adaptations). But for most of us they are just two narratives -
1. The main game’s narrative, which involves Red (or later protagonists) trying to catch’em all for Professor Oak (or later tree species) for their Pokedex, who has a rival who is usually a bit ahead of him (or her, since Crystal) and (for a while) decides to compete in a league whose entry involves beating eight gym leaders in a region. Along the way he (or she) encounters a criminal organization doing bad and (somehow) defeats them single-handedly. (It’s been adapted before, as the Pokémon Adventures manga and the Pokémon Origins four-episode mini series).
2. The anime’s narrative, which is pretty much the same thing – except that the protagonist is the beloved never-aging, Goku lookalike that is Ash Ketchum and his Pikachu (which could all be just a coma fantasy, according to some fans).
I can imagine that (if this live action movie gets green-lit) there is going to be a lot of debate online in the next few years about which of these narratives the filmmakers are going to choose, who’s going to play Ash/Red, why he/she shouldn’t play that role, who’s directing, why should the lead character be a boy…. Blah blah blah lackedly-smichedy. So before all that really kicks off here are my thoughts about how this possible future film should be approached by whoever gets to make it.
First off it’s worth remembering that it’ll be a few years before we get to see this movie and that means that by the time of its release in cinemas it’ll be the end of the upcoming Gen VII era or the beginning of the next era of the franchise’s history. A while ago I shared a YouTube video here of a detailed fan theory that may prove that Pokémon may be due to a massive reboot after Gen VII. If proved true this film will have to reflect this. So whoever gets to make this film they will have to factor this timing of seismic change.
Because of this it may be a good idea to consider the vastness of the Pokémon universe (and its many possibilities for stories). There is no excuse here for bad storytelling. With that, my big idea about this film will be this – do something completely different. Don’t follow a pre-existing storyline. If you do, you’ll be very constrained (and have fans online complain about every little thing you do). But I know this will be wishful-thinking. Movie studios prefer tried-and-tested formulas (which is why our multiplexes are infested with sequels, prequels and remakes today). However, Nintendo is a big guy (and once took down Universal Studios in court over Donkey Kong in the 1980s), so there is a possibility that Nintendo will force who makes this film to do the “unthinkable” – give the director total free control!
But whatever happens politically inside the studio or how much freedom the director gets or what narrative they choose there is one thing thy have to get right – audience and property approach. This can easily go two ways.
1. The movie is made with great respect to fans and the intellectual property.
2. The property is messed with by the director or studio to make it appeal to a bigger audience just to make a lot of money (and to sell toys).
You all probably all get what I am talking about. But for those who still don’t, let me explain.
They are a lot of examples of the latter, films of big franchises where the studio/director messed with the original material for shocking reasons. But examples of the former are few. Fortunately, the best examples of both can be found in one series of films, which are from my childhood. What happened to this series of films (in hindsight) I can credit for me turning away from the superhero genre entirely. Since then my attitude to superheroes is “been there, done that” – and these films are the reason why. I am talking about the Batman films of the 1990s. The first two (directed by Tim Burton) were great (and, if they appear on TV, I am ok watching again). The director did a good job depicting the darkness that exists in the original stories (and was a huge step away from Adam West). But in the mid-1990s Warner Bros thought that Batman Returns (despite making a good profit) could have made more money. They concluded that the film was too dark for kids to stomach and the villains were too scary to be made into toys. So they got a new director (Joel Schumacher) and the results were two batman films that were more comic and colourful. They succeeded in been kid-friendly (leading to the making of many toys) but the true essence of Batman (as Tim Burton truly captured) was gone. Although they made a profit, the last film (Batman & Robin) is now seen as the worst superhero film ever made.
This is the situation the proposed Pokémon film could face. This is a project that can easily become another Batman & Robin style cultural disaster. Can it be prevented? I think it can. They are two recent examples of great franchise films made in the past few years, which people can learn from - The Lego Movie and The Muppets.
It’s hard to believe today, but from 1992-2004 Lego was in decline, reporting financial losses from 1998. But this trend ended after a shake-up in 2004-5 and became the strong toy brand it is now. The Lego Movie can be seen as a triumphant return from grace for Lego, with a story that explores the toy’s core concept – you can build anything you want (and no Mr Business can force you to do otherwise). The proposed Pokémon movie could do something similar – a protagonist that explores the world to catch creatures to battle others. But that isn’t the true core concept. The catching and battling are just game mechanics that have been used multiple times before. The real core theme of Pokémon is something more thought-provoking – our relationship with nature. Think about it. Companionship, domestication, work animals, breeding centres, genetic manipulation, poaching, conservation, pollution, extinction, fossils, the debate of animal intelligence, etc. They are all there in the games and anime. It’s a lot there to inspire the filmmakers.
I choose the The Muppets movie from 2011 as another example because it did its franchise justice… and helped revive The Muppets fortunes. Before 2011 The Muppets were in a chain of TV movies and specials. There previous feature film was made in 1999. So The Muppets weren’t exactly “hot” for a while. Then came Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller – two 80s kids who had made a splash in comedy in the 2000s. They pitched the idea and wrote the script. With James Bobin as director (another 80s kid who had made a splash in comedy in the 2000s) the resulting movie was an incredible pan-generational comedy reminiscent of the original Muppet movies. That movie (and the sequel) revived The Muppets in our culture (they got a TV series again). Pokémon can follow this example by hiring filmmakers and writers with a comedic bent who were kids in the 90s (and ben a fan of the franchise helps too). If they do the resulting film could be a film that’ll appeal not only to kids and fans, but everyone who likes comedy and has a vague knowledge of Pokémon.
And on that last note, it’s worth noting that jokes can work on two levels. They are jokes that pretty much everyone gets (such as Jigglypuff’s squibbing on everyone’s face after hearing her sing) and they are jokes that only a few targeted people find funny, such as uber fans who know absolutely everything about Pokémon (such as Hot Skitty on Wailord Action (DON’T LOOK THIS UP!! For the sake of saving you from picturing a horrific sight when you find out what this meme is (especially if you are a regular viewer of IQ).)). Futurama is full of many examples of the latter type of joke (many of its writers have degrees in mathematics, so they are a lot of math jokes in the show that’ll tickle the funny bone of people who know math).
With The Lego Movie and the The Muppets as good examples to follow (if the filmmakers choose to follow their example) the resulting film will be very good. From I can work out from my own research about creator Satoshi Tajari, I think he’ll want this film to be like that – an adventure story (with a healthy dose of jokes for the fans) that explores our relationship with nature for a pan-generational audience.
So that’s what I think the film in general should be. But what about specifics? What would I like to see exactly in this proposed film? Epic battles? A plot that involving legendries? N? Something to please the various “shippers” in the fan-fiction forums? No. To be honest, I don’t care. As long as they do something interesting with it, I don’t care if the protagonist (Ash, Red, or whoever (a female, perhaps?)) kisses Misty, Leaf, Serena or whoever in this future film. They might even cross dimensions to our world if they wanted too (like Emmitt did in The Lego Movie).
I know that some of you will have thought of a list of things yourself, but the idea of a list of “things to put in this movie” sounds restrictive. It reeks of “focus group.” I honestly don’t like the test marketing of movies before they are released. That is responsible for many films in the past few decades changing their ending (Fatal Attraction and Deep Blue Sea are two examples I can think of right now). Their input may “improve” a film, but do they or do they change it to conform with the audience’s expectations? Should a director have the right to challenge the notion of the “Hollywood happy ending?” I think so, and so does Terry Gillian (Look up the making of Brazil). What I’m saying is I don’t want a “box ticking” plot - a plot that loosely allows the featuring of various things viewers want to see.
I think that’s everything I want to say. Wait! One last thing. If I was pushed to think of one thing I want this film to have in it, it’ll be this – if the film features a professor character (Oak or any other tree) that character should be played by a great improve comedian – as a tribute to Robin Williams. I heard that if a live-action film was going to be made Tajari wanted Robin to play Professor Oak. I know, finding someone who’ll do justice to fill his flubber-soled clown shoes will be hard, but if they manage to find someone who can do that, it’ll make my day … if this film gets made that this.

That is all from me for a while. If you want to comment, don’t expect a response from me as I’ll by away from the internet for a while. Good bye internet. I’ll be back soon to see the continuing carnage you have made.

UPDATE

Since I posted this Legendary Entertainment won the rights make the movie and we found out that the movie will follow the plot of the Great Detective Pikachu game and will be written by Nicole Perlman and Alex Hirsch. This promises to be a good movie alright. Please not screw it up. Read my words.

I'M BACK !!!!

On Wednesday 20th April 2016 I was locked out of my Google Account due to "suspicious activity."

I believe it was caused by me accidentally using my mother's debit card to pay for something in the Google App Store, and my mother thinking my payments were fraud, which made her cancel those payments.

This problem was solved back in May, but I didn't want to rush trying to re-access it again. So sorry it took until August to finally start posting on this blog again. If you are not aware Google owns Blogger (as well as YouTube. If I wanted to I couldn't upload any videos to my channel.), so without access to my Google Account I was not able to post on this blog.

But I have my reasons for this delay. I had been busy and stressful, mostly because of what happened to my mother in June. She is not exactly in great health most of the time. I could do a whole blog post about her condition, but don't want to because it makes dull reading. But during a routine test in Glasgow Royal Infirmary she took a very bad reaction to a drug used in the test, which led to her been in hospital for 12 days. Because of what happened she requires assistance when walking long distances (int he form of a wheelchair) and can only be allowed to drive cars with automatic transmission. The family ordered such a car (with hand control and wheelchair winch mods) in July ... but it hasn't arrived let. Because of this I have been her driver for the past month.

The family planned a holiday to Haggerston Castle Holiday Park outside Berrick-Upon-Tweed in late-July. But what happened to mother complicated things. The holiday itself was fine, except for the day or two of heavy rain and us been placed in a caravan that was not in the location she asked for initially. 

The stress of ferrying everyone about when the new car should have been doing took a spike when a few weeks ago I backed my new car (my ten-year-old Aygo's wheel bearings were in such bad shape when it was inspected for its MOT that it will have cost me over £1,000 to fix) into an illegally parked car outside a leisure centre where my nephew is part of a swimming club. My rear bumper was a bit deformed and a plastic clip attaching ti to the car broke so last week it was been sent to be fixed while I was given a Smart ForFour as a courtesy car.  It was a bit difficult to get use to, with its dimensions and controls and boot too small for a wheelchair. But it got worse ... when I accidentally damaged it while trying to park it. I just got my car back today and because of the front bumper I damaged, I am paying double for my excess. All because of a car that should have arrived over two weeks ago. If that car had been delivered at the expected I never would have been the one ferrying my nephew and mother that evening to that leisure centre and I never would have encountered that illegally-parked car behind me.

So, yeah. I was a bit stressed until a few hours ago.... and in that moment of calm I noticed that my BBC Radio App on my Android tablet won't work unless I updated it (something I couldn't do because of my been locked out of Google). So finally I tackled this problem.... and WON. So now I am back.

What made this experience worse was that the timing of it. I had originally planned to finish "Part 1" of my Pokemon special for the end of April. But when the lock-out began it was on the morning of a string of five days of nothing I could have used to finish it.

But this lock-out wasn't all bad. If I hadn't been locked out my Pokemon special would have been completed before the Pokemon Go app was launched and my discovery of this theory about Gen 7. Thanks of this delay, "Part 3" will be much more richer and more informed about the final moments of Gen 6. 

Also, I began work on a new project - a book about how computers work. I'll say more later. But, for now I'm just happy I am able to show my work and share my detailed thought s online again. And I hope this NEVER HAPPENS AGAIN. Otherwise, I might consider moving to another platform. 

Any suggestions readers?