Month: February 2023

Our Bizarre Lego Family

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn Children, Parents

I want to talk about Lego. Why? Lego is very popular with our family. My wife, UMC1 and UMC2 are great fans of the Danish construction blocks. My wife has her Harry Potter, Hobbit and Star Wars sets proudly on display, while the boys have a small tub of their Lego sets, which can only be described as utter carnage.

Over 75% of their sets have taken apart, cannablised and repurposed. Do you remember Sid Phillips from Toy Story, and his creepy toys? Picture them in your mind’s eye, but now I need you to change them from mashed up hybrid toys to mashed up hybrid Lego, and that would be UMC1 and UMC2’s Lego collection.

If you think that is scary, I can go one better; their Lego is slowly colonising the house. First it was the tub, then the Lego moved to their shared bedside cabinet, then the drawers, the bookshelves, the wooden games box, the kitchen table, and finally, they have started colonising our bedroom.

Our Lego family

Like I said before, the three of them love Lego and take pride in their creations. As for me, I don’t own any Lego. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Recently, UMC1’s school held a fundraising event centred around Lego. There were many different activities you could do, however the one I’m going to mention was Build Your Own Figure.

Upon learning about the event, we decided that we would think about going. When we discovered that you could build your own Lego figure, my family suddenly started channelling Emperor Palpatine; because they quickly told me that we were 100% going now, followed by three different maniacal forms of laughter. The idea was that when we played with Lego together, we could also use our new Lego figures.

I didn’t own any Lego, so I thought it could be satisfying to build my own Lego figure. Now this was my mistake; I assumed we would be making a Lego figure of our own choosing. However, what I discovered was that 50% of our family were going to make a Lego figure of themselves, while the other 50% were going to make something original and crazy.

Unknown to myself, my wife and UMC1 had spent the time leading up to the event, thinking about what their Lego figure was going to look like. This meant mentally cataloging different Lego body parts, that they could possibly use to construct a Lego version of themselves. They donated hours and hours thinking and planning about their possible creations.

I call this, The Batman Syndrome, because of the amount of designs and back-up plans they both had. The funny thing is that my wife and UMC1, both did not discuss their plans with each other or anybody else.

If you’ve been following my blog for some time, you’ll realise I would not drop a Batman reference without a special reason; and you would be correct. If my wife and UMC1 were Team Batman…well, UMC2 and I were Team Joker. We had the Joker Syndrome, because we were both looking forward to building our Lego figure, but unlike the other two, UMC2 and myself spent no time thinking about possible combinations or designs. I seriously only started thinking about the figure’s design, when we were lining for it.

You were allowed to have: 1 x head, 1 x torso (with arms) 1 x set of legs, 1 x some sort of head wear like a hat, helmet or hair, and 1 x accessory. While waiting in line, my wife and UMC1 were going over the selections they could now see and were busy redesigning their Lego figures in their mind. UMC2 and myself on the other hand, were not doing that.

Eventually it was our turn to build. I searched through the heads, thinking there had to be something cool and I was right; I chose a head that looked like it was wearing a Saiyan scouter. The face did look quite feminine, but I didn’t care, I wanted that Saiyan scouter! For the torso, I selected some type of red ninja armour, on the basis that it was easily different from the others. As for the legs, it was just pure dumb luck that I selected the set that matched the torso.

My Lego figure

For the head wear, I selected an Irish cap, because….why not? It looked amazing and this Lego figure was ready for some craic. The last part was the accessory, so I went for a blaster that had three settings on the top of it. My blaster could fire ice cream, spaghetti and custard. I did this, because I knew UMC2 would find it funny.

It was at this point that my wife asked me what I was doing. I thought this was a strange question, considering everything; however my Spidey-Sense was going off, so I knew something was wrong.

It was at this point that the truth was shown to me. My wife’s Lego figure had blue trousers and a green torso. Her favourite colour is green, plus she wears a blue necklace, just like her Lego figure. She also found some black hair to match her own; as well as a happy face and a coffee cup. My wife needs and survives on coffee. She was extremely proud of her Lego figure.

My wife in Lego form

UMC1’s favourite colour is red, so he dressed his Lego figure with red legs and a red torso. He also found some brown hair to match his own, and a four scooped ice cream, because….yes, he likes ice cream.

UMC1 in Lego form

As for UMC2, his favourite colour is yellow, hence why his Lego figure is yellow. However, he chose green hair, because he said it looked liked the Joker’s hair and he is all about supervillains currently. His Lego figure has a blank face, because he explained that he didn’t want anybody knowing what his Lego figure was looking at. 4 year old logic, it’s the best in the world! UMC2 also added a phone to his figure. The reason was because he didn’t have a phone in his apocalyptic collection, and he wanted one.

UMC2’s Lego figure

So there you have it. Two of us took the activity very seriously and based their Lego figures on themselves, while the other two just made crazy creations. A psychologist would find this very fascinating!

Team Batman
Team Joker

The hilarious thing is that UMC2 has claimed my Lego figure, because he wanted our two Lego figures to be together.

And that’s it for this week. I need to watch Last Week Tonight, so I’m out of here! Thanks for reading, walk your dog, stay away from Sour Cream and Chives, and I’ll see you next week.

Tour of the Solar System: The Sun

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn Science

Hi, welcome to my tour of the Solar System. The first chapter of the tour was last month, which woefully described why the tour is taking place and where we would go. But hey, the tickets are free, even though the tour guide is not officially affiliated with any tour group.

For our first expanded stop on the tour, we’re starting with the main attraction: The Sun. It’s always there, very dependable, just like an ideal boyfriend/girlfriend; but what do we really know? Short of Facebook stalking, we actually know quite a bit about the Sun. Let’s start with covering some information about everybody’s favourite natural fusion reactor.

The Sun is crucial to developing and maintaining life on our little ball of happiness. The Earth receives light and heat from the Sun; but it also powers photosynthesis in plants, the climate, weather, and ocean currents. Without the Sun, life on Earth would be like Frankenstein’s monster, without Frankenstein; because Frankenstein and the Sun both bring life. Except I don’t think the Sun has ever had one of its creations, sneak into a bedroom and strangle a bride on her wedding night. Yet.

I’ve said this before, but the Sun is actually a star. It’s like the trick question you get asked, “What’s the closest star to Earth?” So your answer could be, “Proxima Centauri.” If it was, you would be wrong…because, say it with me, the Sun is a star!

If you’re on a first or second date, you might suggest a walk together in starlight. Your date will probably correct you, by replying it’s daylight outside and the stars are not visible. You can then calmly mention that the sunlight that we are experiencing is produced by the Sun; the Sun is a star; stars produce starlight; so therefore, we are walking in starlight. Your coolness and hotness factors will increase exponentially; like a geek.

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

The Sun is known as a yellow dwarf G-type main sequence star. Scientists are extremely clever and innovative people, but sometimes they can come up with some pretty bizarre names for things. If you saw that name on a Tinder profile, I’m sure you would be swiping left, but let’s look at the name and what it means.

Spoiler alert, but names tell you exactly what things actually are and what they do. Just like a green toaster, is a machine that’s green and toasts bread, or a book called, Pride and Prejudice, features two main characters that experience both pride and prejudice, or a man that dresses like a bat is called Batman, or a Horseshoe crab that…wait a minute.

There are many ways to describe main sequence stars in far better scientific terminology, than from a man that describes Azure, Royal Blue and Navy Blue, as Light Blue, Blue and Dark Blue, respectably.

A main sequence star is a star that crushes hydrogen atoms together, to form helium atoms in the star’s core. This is known as nuclear fusion, because it involves the fusion of atoms. It’s this process that releases the energy to make the star stable. This energy is pushing outwards, and it counteracts the force of gravity, which is trying to collapse the star. The Sun finds equilibrium through this, allowing it to continue to fuse atoms and release energy.

Let’s look at the G-type part now. Stars can be graded based on various factors using Stellar classification. These factors can include spectral characteristics, temperature, mass, luminosity and absolute magnitude. This puts our burning ball of hydrogen near the centre of the classification system; which is a G-type star. Not too hot, not too cool, it’s just right.

As for the another part of the name, yellow dwarf, the Sun is neither. It’s not a dwarf, because the Sun is about 1,392,700 km (865,000 miles) in diameter; which is 109 times the size of the Earth. That also means about 1 million Earths would fit inside the Sun. As for the mass, the Sun is estimated to be 1.989 x 1030 kilograms. That’s a strange looking number, but what it means is that the Sun’s mass is 300,000 times that of Earth. There are other stars in the universe much larger than the Sun, but that is another story for another day.

Continuing with breaking your perception of our local star, the Sun is not yellow or orange. Yes, yes, I know yellow is in the name; but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Hey, Science, is a Horseshoe crab actually a crab? Hollywood and nearly every picture book have been lying to you, for your entire life. I’m very sorry, but the colour of the Sun is actually white.

So how do we know that the Sun is white? The Sun produces a lot of different light, which is a type of radiation; which in turn, is part of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Suns emits radio waves at different frequencies, as well as microwaves, infrared waves, visible light, ultraviolet waves, and X-rays; but not gamma rays. Gamma radiation is very different, just ask Bruce Banner.

One way to explain this, is that if you have ever played with a prism, witnessed a rainbow in the sky or seen The Dark Side of the Moon album cover by Pink Floyd, you’ll understand that visible light can be broken up into separate colours; violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. All of these colours have different wavelengths.

When visible light passes through a medium and changes direction, this is called refraction. When visible light is split into the colour spectrum, this is called dispersion. In nature, visible light is being emitted from the Sun; so visible light contains all of the colours of the rainbow. And this works in reverse, because just like Captain Planet, when you combine all of the colours of the rainbow, you make white light. And this is a key point: visible light is white light. Visible light is sunlight, which is created by the Sun. So if visible light is white light, and white light is created by the Sun…the colour of the Sun is white.

I’m sure someone a lot smarter than me could do a better job at explaining this concept, but I don’t get paid for this, so I can’t hire any scientists to write this for me. Are you impressed with the Sun yet? No? Alright, let’s do some more!

The Sun is about 150 million km (93 million miles) from the spinning sphere of delight known as Earth. This distance is actually known as an astronomical unit (AU), which is the mean distance between the centre of the Sun and the centre of the Earth. This doesn’t mean that it’s always that distance, because both the star and the planet are moving through spacetime.

The Sun is pretty jacked too. It makes up 99.8% of all the mass in the solar system! Because of this, it never misses leg day. It’s also made of gas and plasma; which is the fourth state of matter, after gas, liquid and solid.

You may have heard that the Sun is old. Not as old as Mr. Burns from The Simpsons, but still pretty old. The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old. Let that sit with you for a moment. 4.6 billion years old. That is mind crushing; but just to dial it up to 11, the Sun is only half way through its life span.

For the interior of the Sun, a visit there would be…unpleasant, if you could stay there for any length of time. The Sun’s mass is made up of 70.6% hydrogen, 27.4% helium and 2% heavy elements like oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, neon, iron and others.

The Sun also has six different layers, which include the corona, which stretches 8 million km (5 million miles) above the Sun’s surface; the chromosphere, which is 400 km (250 miles) and 2100 km (1300 miles) above the solar surface; the photosphere, which is from the surface to about 400 km (250 miles) above that; the convective zone, this zone extends from a depth of about 200,000 km right up to the visible surface; the radiative zone, which has a depth of 515,000 km to 200,000 km; and the core, which is 170,000–140,000 km in depth (106,000-87,000 miles).

As you would expect the temperatures; just like the prices at the corner shop for ice cream, vary a lot. The temperatures are between 6,000 °C (11,000 °F) to 4,000 °C (7,200 °F) in the chromosphere; about 5,500 °C (10,000 °F) in the photosphere; about 2 million °C (4 million degrees °F) in the convective zone; between 7 million °C (12 million degrees °F) to around 2 million °C (4 million degrees °F) in the radiative zone; with 15 million degrees °C (27 million degrees °F) in the core.

With the corona, the temperatures range from 1 to 2 million °C (1.8 million to 3.6 million °F). This is interesting, because it means the upper atmosphere of the Sun, is actually 500 times hotter than the surface. Scientists are still trying to figure this out, along with why a Saiyan’s hair is always so perfect.

On a more serious note, I want to talk about the sheer power of the Sun and what it can actually do. We know that in the Sun’s core, the pressure and temperature is so high, it can fuse atoms together. When this happens, it releases a huge amount of energy.

To understand this, every second, of every single day, the Sun’s core fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium, which converts 4 million tons of matter into energy. This nuclear reaction is the energy equivalent of about 10 billion hydrogen bombs each second. Every second of every day.

That is 2 billion times more powerful, than the Tsar Bomba, the world’s largest nuclear bomb. Every second of every day.

The Sun produces enough energy every second, for almost 500,000 years of the world’s current energy needs. Every second of every day.

The energy that is released in the core, takes the form of a photon; and this is the source of the Sun’s light and heat. Photons are trapped in the core anywhere between 10,000 and 170,000 years, before they can escape. Once a photon makes to the surface of the Sun, it will only take eight minutes to travel from the Sun to reach Earth and you. Science is so cool.

And would you like to know what’s crazier? I haven’t even discussed the other things the Sun creates like sunspots, solar flares, the solar winds, coronal mass ejections, magnetic fields and neutrinos, or the gravitational influence it has on the rest of the Solar System, to name a few.

The Sun is glorious, beautiful, powerful, and yet it’s still terrifying. We have learnt so much already about our stellar neighbour, but with many new discoveries to come.

I hope the first stop on our tour has made sense. Please let me know if it does. And with that, I’m done. There are so many bags under my eyes, I could use them for shopping; so I need to go to bed. Thanks for reading, following and subscribing to Some Geek Told Me. This project keeps me off the streets, and prevents me from dealing comic books in dark alleys at midnight. I’ll see you next week.

 

How do we help Türkiye and Syria?

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn Geography, Politics

I’m sorry, but I had another post lined up for the blog. Because of what’s happened, I’ve posted a different one for obvious reasons and it has serious tones. Again, I’m very sorry.

I want to talk about Türkiye and Syria. Why? Well you don’t have to be a torpedo technician, to figure this out. On 6th February, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck the neighbouring countries of Türkiye and Syria, across various regions. At the time of writing, the earthquake had killed 34,870 people, with 94,770 injuries and over 1.3 million people have been displaced.

Images by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay.

You’ve probably seen the photos and read about the devastation across the countries, and it’s heartbreaking. Families are broken, lives have been lost and homes destroyed. There’s also the historic and cultural impacts to consider, like the 2,000 year old Gaziantep Castle, the Yeni Mosque and the Latin Catholic Church in Türkiye, as well as Syria’s Aleppo citadel being damaged and ruined.

People are scared and fearful. Their loved ones are dead, missing or trapped; their homes and schools are gone; while food, shelter and water are in short supply. Aftershocks, hunger, disease, and the cold, will be stalking the survivors; but also the thousands of people working to help. Another heartbreaking thing to think of, are the thousands of pets like cats and dogs, that are now homeless and ownerless.

I’ve said this before, but watching and reading about a disaster such as this, can give people the impression that there’s nothing they can do to help. That’s a lie. Even witnessing this catastrophe from different places around the world, you can still actually help and make a difference. I promise you that you can.

Right now, the fastest way to help the people of Türkiye and Syria is to donate. Yes, I know times are tough with the economy and inflation. We’re an one income family, so I get it. But please consider what money can do in the modern world: you can buy a PS5, the latest phone, season tickets to your favourite team or maybe Twitter Blue. Money is great and we all would like some, but it can also save lives.

A donation of any amount, can go towards buying blankets, first aid kits, torches, food, water, clothes, medicine, shelter, books or even toys. Whatever the amount of money you can spare, it will make a huge difference to the people of Türkiye and Syria. Case in point, and although we’re a small country, the New Zealand government has donated $1.5 million in humanitarian aid.

If you would like to donate, here are some international NGOs and charities that are working on earthquake relief in Türkiye and Syria:

ActionAid

Disaster Emergency Committee

Doctors Without Borders

International Committee of the Red Cross

International Rescue Committee

Oxfam International

Save the Children

UNICEF

UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)

World Vision

I really don’t know what else to say about this, except the regions are decimated; but just like everything, there is always hope. Hope that people can be found and rescued, houses and schools can be rebuilt, and families will be reunited. If you think you can donate, any amount would be amazing. And speaking of amazing, let’s give it up for the thousands of rescue and first aid workers from Türkiye and Syria; but also from around the world, working to help the people Türkiye and Syria.

And with that, I’m done. I’m back next week with the first stop on our Tour of the Solar System, which will be The Sun. It should be blazing. Look after yourselves and I’ll see you next week.

My dog’s eating habits are getting strange: Update

On By somegeektoldme@gmail.comIn Animals

Last July, I wrote a post about the eating habits of my dog. If you have not already read the first installment, here are the key points, compressed down like a spinning black hole:

  • My dog’s name is Indy and he’s 11 years old this month.
  • I noticed Indy was eating figuratively and literally, half of his food in his bowl.
  • I decided to study how he was eating the food, by recording it on the calendar; every day for a year.
  • It was always the same type of dog food in his bowl.
  • After the first six months (January-June 2022), I presented the results in the form of some graphs and data.
  • I’m strange, which to be honest, explains a lot about Indy.

The main takeaway from the first six months of the experiment, was that Indy was slightly favouring eating from the left side of his bowl. The percentages were:

Left: 45.88%  Right: 40.88%  Top: 6.63%  Bottom: 3.31%  Centre: 0.55%  All: 2.21%  Hour Glass: 0.55%

If you want a better understanding of this ridiculous experiment, please read the post here.

Anyway, this post is about the second six months (July-December 2022) of the experiment.

These are the results:

The percentages work out to be:

Left: 32.24% Right: 26.22%  Top: 14.20%  Bottom: 13.66%  Centre: 1.09% 

All: 7.10%  Hour Glass: 0.54% Did not eat: 5.46%

So what does this all mean?

1.) Indy is still odd, so nothing has changed there.

2.) Indy is still favouring the left side of the bowl with 59 days to the nearest rival; the right side with 48 days. The interesting thing here is that during the July-December period, Indy actually decreased eating on the left and right hand side of the bowl, compared to the January-June period.

3.) Just like the first six months, Indy’s eating habits have become more diverse, especially the increase of All of the food and Did not eat. These two categories can be explained though, because they are connected. During the second six months, when Indy did not eat his food, it was because of three reasons; it was too hot, he was sick and a surprise one.

Trying to decipher dog logic is difficult at the best of times, but I believe that when the temperature was hitting 25°C or higher, Indy was simply feeling too hot to actually eat, so he didn’t. As for the illness, Indy would sometimes eat some random food while he was having a walk, which would make him sick and put him off food for several days. No surprise there.

There is also the third reason, which was when he was on holiday. On the very few times we actually went somewhere for a holiday, Indy would stay with my father-in-law, so he could be looked after. Indy loves him, however he would refuse to eat the food from his bowl, because my father-in-law would feed him lots of different things, that he really shouldn’t be eating. Indy is treated like royalty, every time he goes there. So basically, we had to record it as Did not eat, several times, purely because he did not eat from his bowl.

With Indy eating all of his food in one session, this would usually occur after a day that he did not eat, because he was so hungry. Not every time, but near enough.

4.) With being diverse, Indy had four months with six different options, which is quite progressive for a 10 year old dog.

And with that, I’ll present the entire results of 2022 next month; though to be fair, it’s pretty obvious what Indy prefers.

That’s it for this week and thanks for reading, following and subscribing to Some Geek Told Me. Go walk your dog, read a banned book, watch the Six Nations Championship and I’ll see you next week.