Marie Antoinette World

I was watching the film Marie Antoinette on TV. Hmmm rather suspect movie. Nice visuals though. Marie danced and played and lived in a world of her own while the nation disolved into anarchy and met an untimely end. Then I watched David Attenborough's State of the Planet. Earth can hardly sustain 6 billion people. It will 11 billion in 5 years. The connection is rather simple. We are all living, at least in the west, in Marie Atoinette World. I hope, when it comes, the revolution will be gentle.

The Little Robot

Cartoon of "The Little Robot" circa 1996. Designed for ease of animation. Way before I considered that the Segway would and could make it reality.

Segway in Palma

My friends Paul and Tess have just been on Holiday in Palma and took a Segway tour. They came across the tour centre by accident - it was down a side street and seemingly not doing great business. The tour operators did seem pleased to see them. So Paul and Tess - their first time on a Segway - did an hour's tour and found it very tiring towards the end. This included familarising themselves with the balancing and the controls. Pretty good going, I think! They also had one of the Mark 1 Segways with the twist grip to turn rather than the Segway i2 where you lean to turn. I do heartily recommend the i2s rather than the Mark 1s - more fun, less chance of crashing into people and cars (which is very much less fun!)

Segway Offroad Outing

So, Segway Tours UK, run by the charming Mike Reeves, gave me a 1-2-1 lesson on offroad Segwaying. I think "Segwaying" will be in 2020s used in the same way that we currently say "skiing" or "scuba-diving". Yes I think it will be a big leisure pursuit. While skiing and scuba-diving is done by relatively fit, able and "young" (Yes, I know not always the case), Segways are for a great form of transport for just about anybody that can stand up!!!

Mike Reeves believes that they will be a school of Segwaying: Bronze, Silver, Gold, whatever, in the same way that there are ski schools. The differnce being that going from Bronze to Gold will be somewhat quicker and achieved with less effort than a ski-school or the scuba-diving PADI open water qualifications.

Bronze: basic skills and tortoise speed settings
Silver: off-road and faster speed settings (Maximum of 12mph)
Gold: Confidence on both off-road, fast speeds, nighttime, golfclub carrying and ability to train others!

You heard it here first!

Space Madness

Space Madness has an entry into wkipedia! I guess I must learn how to update wikipedia! :-)

In the meantime, the madness on planet Earth is centred in our household on the Wii :-)

BBC Horizon "My Pet Dinosaur"

BBC2 Horizon programme "My Pet Dinosaur" discusses the evolution of dinosaurs to an intelligent, walk-upright creature just like the creatures within Sauria. My kids once asked me where did the Saurian Reptiles come from? And I have to explain about how it was the humans that travelled to planet Sauria; the reptiles were there, evolved from dinosaurs (just as postulated in the TV programme). Sauria is a bigger planet than Earth and any impact from asteroids in early planetary history did not completely wipe the dinosaurs out as happened on Earth. Assuming otherwise parallel evolutionary development paths, this allowed the intelligent reptiles to eventually dominant the planet. At least, until those pesky humans turned up! Anyway, this was not explained in the book just alluded to, since it was obvious to the (fictional) central character of the book and a first person account! Perhaps I should add that to a revision of the book... Anyway the TV programme has an image of a humanoid-like reptilian not dis-similar to the creatures inhabiting Sauria. Interesting!

Space Madness

As predicted in Sauria: Space Madness! Mind you all sort of strange things are happening at NASA... if some writer wrote sci-fi about that love triangle nobody would ever believe it.