The Steam Powered Duck, Dr Who and the Exploding Apples

It has been a very cold day today a day that saw the first day this year when the Steam Powered Duck has been unable to move due to ice. If you were to ask the Steam Powered Duck what it did today it would respond with ALMOST Entirely Nothing which surprisingly bearing in mind yesterdays diary entry is correct.

Mr F arrived very late yesterday evening and is spending the weekend with us, although he has just exploded two apples in the microwave as part of an experiment to make fruit look like brains in order to get Zombies to have a healthier diet. It appears that it has been proved scientifically that one of the reasons Zombies are so lethargic and slow is the lack of fruit and fibre in their food.

We also went off to the vineyard to drink coffee or in my case Hot Chocolate (they do a good Hot Chocolate) and talk about the age old problem of clockwise and anticlockwise bias in the human body, a subject I have previously discussed in my diary.

I have also used my new, well I say new as it is new to me although it has a previous owner, camera to photograph the Steam Powered Duck. What I have noticed is that because it is big and complex and full of buttons the battery runs flat. This happen to coincide with the farm opposite putting on a large firework display for their cows, as it helps their milk yield although the noise did frighten the local pheasants and several pigeons and a cat; but it does mean there are no photographs to prove the event took place.

As I write my diary everyone else is doing a jigsaw in the main living room and I may go and see if I can entice a few Zombies with exploded apples although I am not entirely convinced they will be fooled into thinking they are brains even if the exploded raspberries give them the oozing blood look of a fresh brain.

I have noticed much talk of Dr Who which is fifty years old now. I was rather amused that someone well known on the TV said the reason for its success was the fact he was a middle class eccentric fighting strange monsters in a world were almost anything could happen. . . . . . . . Oooo yes I can see how that is a winning formula, I wonder if it will work in cyberspace in a sort of daily diary format  . . . . . . . . . . . AAAAAaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuggggggHHHHHHH

My new Camera (secondhand)

AH mum has said IDIOT again.

OK time to go….. I knitted a really long scarf once a very very very very long time ago but left it on a train, I wonder what happened to that….. I might ask that Doctor bloke.  

Diaries and Jannugras the Micro God of Autumnal Events.

I have spent much of the day pottering about doing little jobs here and there, but nothing interesting or of any great devastating news. This happens from time to time or should I say quite a lot and is probably one of the main reasons why folk are not generally great at writing diaries. But I am a persistent chap which is why the very nice Mr Steven Spielberg took out the injunction to keep me away, all that talk of I have the wrong man and wearing a huge false nose and pretending to be a greengrocer in Potters Bar, he cant fool me with his cunning ways.

Now as I was saying it is not easy to write a daily diary if you are an ordinary sort of chap like myself, after all we are seldom attacked by Zombies, Mr Jones has not seen a Alien space craft in weeks, the creatures of the woods are preparing for winter and howling a bit. The pheasants are still oblivious of the fact folk will come and shot at them, despite me telling them and trying to stop them running up to humans, smiling and asking for some grain….. They are stupid birds that’s for sure.  Dad has dismantled the weather machine looking for a fault and the dog is still in the Vatican teaching maths and Latin to seabirds.

So what did I do today, well I made a special pointy stick designed to help remove apples from a rather large and very old (a really old as in seriously old) apple tree. It is a big apple tree so a special pointy stick sort of helps. OOOooooo yes a word of advice do not stand under the branch you are shaking with the pointy stick while you are actually shaking it. I bet that Isaac Newt-Man would have changed his ideas a bit if he was attacked by a large swarm of apples hell bent on causing harm to his head…

And as well as apples falling, so are the leaves so our effigy of Jannugras the Micro God of Autumnal events is in position and ready for his offerings, in fact we are off tomorrow to the big village feast to celebrate the arrival of Autumnal events and the Autumn Micro Gods…

Ooooo I heard a man shouting today, he may have thought a large chicken was a Zombie, it is easily done in the Autumn evening light. I have noticed Zombies do walk a bit like chickens.    

The Correct Date for the End of the World based on apples and science . . . . . .

After yesterday’s lesson on the wonders of the universe the Ghost Writer ruined everything by putting another apple on my apple tower to make it six apples high, all I can say is that it must predict the next possible End of the World.  It has been some time since we had a decent End of the World prediction date in fact the whole End of the World prediction business has sort of Ended.  I wonder if someone predicted the End of the Worlds, End of the World predict business, anyway I can start it up again now after the shock news of an apple tower taller than five apples. Even Isaac Newt-man stated that an apple will always fall at a fixed rate even if it was a largish apple up to a point (note the up to a point). You see he knew that if the apple was so large that the planet Earth was proportionally the size of an apple in comparison to the huge apple, then Earth would fall onto the apple with the same force as the small apple falls to Earth. However the small apple and Earth would both fall onto the surface of the hypothetically huge apple at the same speed, presenting the paradox that a six apple tower represents. Clearly predicting the End of the World.

So after telling everyone at school this morning that the End of the World was due in twenty five minutes it was decided that there was little point in having any maths homework. As it happens after recalculating the time and date of the End of the World, I had not thought about the diameter of the apple and its effect on Pi (HAH HAHAHH AHH AHhah ha hah ah ahha ha hahh hah ahah h hah ha) I have worked out it will now be the 1^st Feb 3456 approximately when Earth will be destroyed by terrible mutant Zombies who will look just like Granny Smith.

Zombies will call this their deliciously golden era although it too will eventually crumble…… 

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the Random Apple Tower experiment, the Universe and no Hamsters

As you all know I am a part-time student teacher and one of my specialist subjects is OIT Obscure Irrational Theories mainly the big ones relating to the universe, not small ones devoted to why hamsters run in small wheels. . . . . . AH as it happens that is one of the big ones but not today’s story, although the more science minded of you will see the link straight away.

Anyway today’s lesson was my first practical on OIT and I was trying to explain why galaxies spiral, much like water spirals down the plug hole. You see a spinning galaxy is in fact a huge gyroscope, and like a gyroscope, if you put it on top of a pointy stick at right angles rather than fall off the pointy stick the gravitational forces are moved to the pivot point and the gyroscope will start to rotate round the pivot. (OK I know some of you are saying WHAT?)  As you may guess some of my students got a bit confused, so I used the Random Apple Tower experiment to show them what was happening.  OK yes I know some of you have never done the Random Apple Tower Experiment (The RAT Experiment) have you (education these days it’s terrible… Hang on I’m a student teacher)

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Anyway what you need is a selection of random apples from an apple tree; say anything from ten to about fifty and you have to make a tower. It is a well known fact that after a maximum of five apples the tower will fall over, the interesting point is no matter which apples or which combination you choose the tower will never get higher than five apples. Well if you cheat by using super glue or small skewers or use modern GM apples then it will but in nature the universe is the universe and cheating is not an option.  After many hours the class tried and failed to improve on a tower of five apples until Esmeralda got bored and turned the whole lot into toffee apples and the class ate the universe.

However it proved the point I needed to make about why galaxies spiral although I must admit some of the class still looked a little perplexed, so I told them to try the experiment at home and get their parents to explain it.