I’m going travelling

I’m heading off on my annual bike ride tomorrow. You can follow what I get upto and what I will be going, on Neil’s Travel Blog.

HID Conversions

If you’re looking for a lighting upgrade to your vehicle I don’t recommend you bother looking (yet). Most search engines will waste your time offering you a thousand dealers offering to sell you an awesome deal on not for road use lighting kit. You’ll be mislead and waste either lots of time or money that will effectively render your vehicle illegal.

I’ve been looking for alternatives to the stock lighting on my DR-Z for a while now and seem to have been entering spirals of misinformed texts that encourage you to break the law with “a brighter car/bike is a safer car/bike” mentality, and that the self righteous rant of by being able to see (as the driver) better you’ll be safer.

The problem is that H.I.D. kits are retro-fitting kits to use your existing reflector and lens of you headlight. The problem arises due to the fact that the reflector and lens were specifically designed for a halogen bulb of a set wattage. The ribs in the lens allow the light to be distributed evenly and clearly across the road in such way that it doesn’t offend the oncoming traffic.  However, when you remove the halogen bulb which is of a set size and brightness with a specific fitting to sit in an exact position inside the reflector and replace it with a different size bulb of a much greater brightness it’s position inside the reflector is going to be different, the light distribution through the lens will come out not as it was intended, since the bulb position isn’t in the right place/distance from the lens and the light distribution will be shoddy and out of focus, and more often than not, distributing light higher (which offends people facing it).

However, reading up Department for Transportation it does say that unless e-marked:

The headlamp unit (outer lens, reflector, bulb) shall be type approved to ECE 98 and be “e-marked” to demonstrate this. That can only be done by the headlamp supplier – Hella, Valeo etc. who must test the headlamp in an independent laboratory.

Since e-marked H.I.D. kits (that include the lens and reflector) aren’t yet readily available (unless purchased from the manufacturer of your vehicle), anything you fit to your vehicle is effectively illegal, and not only that… it is also inconsiderate and dangerous to other road users. Being blinded by an offensive light from an on-coming car can temporarily impair your vision, dazzling  and making the road ahead harder to focus upon.

Be considerate, be legal.

Atheists cannot drive in England

I was just thinking about a technicality we have here in England where you cannot drive a vehicle on the road without at least 3rd party insurance and road tax; and you cannot get road tax without insurance.  You can’t get insurance without agreeing to a policy that states “acts of god” are not covered. For agreeing to that is agreeing to there being a god, which in itself is like asking anyone to surrender their entire belief system over something trivial.

Let’s put it this way, what if the policy stated this:

You may only drive your vehicle when its tyres are not making contact with the ground, or the day of the week you choose to drive does not end with the letter “Y”

You’d sign it regardless, because it’s daft and illogical, since all days of the week end in y and the vehicle would not be able to move without making contact with the road. So in order to get your car legal as an atheist, you have to lie. How corrupt is that?

Self Hypnosis

Sceptics out there will think this title is a joke. However, the book by Valerie Austin which is titled “(A Safe Self-Help Guide) Self Hypnosis” (ISBN: 0-7225-2924-4) will place a decent argument in favour of this practice. I was given the book in November and shrugged it off and hoped never to read it; it wasn’t until some boring day in January that I decided to pick it up to read and mock the preface. I was immediately drawn into it, I read the first 30 pages before putting the book down and in under a week (whenever I had the opportunity) I had read most of the book.

The book gives a decent introduction into the author’s history in order to give some precedent into understanding that hypnosis isn’t for just quirky artsy people who look for niche forms of therapy, medicine, to feel different from the norm. In fact, the book instantly began to make me feel better even without giving myself any of the self-hypnosis, just the confirmation that the human mind is like a vast computer operating system that we are just beginning to understand made me realize that it is quite an objective thing and does not rely on faith, good vibes or what moon you were born under.

Following having read this book I booked an appointment with a hypnotherapist to give this hypnosis thing a fair blast and surely enough it was amazing. I went for a session relating to confidence and self-esteem and optimistically hoped that everything would be dealt with in 1 session. Sure enough, I was mistaken but all the same: I was induced, I was regressed and sure enough I spoke like the child I had regressed to with the same vocabulary and same naive ways, I felt the confusion and upset and loneliness in the situation I was told to regressed to and then explained back to my younger self with my new matured understanding of such situations that the misconceptions I had developed and spent a lifetime misleading myself with were unfounded.

The session was over and I came back and felt great. Sure, the world didn’t change, I wasn’t a shiny new Neil with amazing new super-powers. I was the same old me really. Except now I just deal with situations that I had previously routed in that misconception. It isn’t the case that I block it out as I don’t, I think about it, but then that’s it. I don’t brew over it, I don’t let myself get beaten up. I digest, I progress and move on. In fact, I’ll go back for more treatment soon for confidence and other self-esteem issues. I’ve just not decided when. It is quite pricey.

I really recommend you to look into this, I can’t think of many people that couldn’t do with a little hypnosis. Get the book or a similar book and read up on it, decide if it’s for you.

God from Above, Satan from Below

So, it came up during a tutorial this week about looking at a model from above appears boring and out of context, and while looking at it from eye-level or below gives a model a sense of purpose and atmosphere.

As you will know, I am an atheist, and if you do not, you should do by this point.

However, I felt it important to point something that came to mind when the statement about looking from above came about. Traditionally, (Old Testament and all), God is “up” in the heavens, looking down at the world; whilst Satan, sits down in the “depth” of hell.

The point I’m trying to get at here, is the idea of perspectives. Sure, my university tutor made a simple point of saying that looking at a model from above is dull as it doesn’t engage the person with the purpose/meaning of the model. However, this triggered something off in my head to think about what the ancients must have been thinking when conjuring up their gods and devils and placing their juxtaposition in a vertical direction from where we stand in our everyday world.

If you haven’t read the fantastic book by Robert M. Pirsig: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you will probably be a stranger to the idea that since the Greeks, we’ve developed our (western) language and way of thinking around objectivity, which then leads to: is something a thing or is it not, and so on. The point is that, through hundreds of years of semantic evolution, we now living in a capitalist world where hedonism and consumerism rules.

Much like, when placing God “up” (in the heavens) and Satan “down” (in hell). It is therefore, a perverted act to want to look at something from below, and pure to look from above. It then leads me to wonder about the times we live in where everything is lead to make new rules and break old ones. How does this rebellion affect our psyche? Are we latently repressing some anger at our forefathers for something? Are we disappointed in the fact that there is no threshold not already covered?

Oh what a load of drivel! See what lazy Sundays do to people?! Do exercise and socialize more!

FWD: Petrol Prices

Regarding the forwarded emails going around suggesting that you do xyz to lower the fuel prices: Don’t bother.

Dear people of the world, when will you start to realize that our fuel resources are near depleted? The purposes of increasing the value of the fuel is to wean us (the consumer) off this scarce resource. To our knowledge, there is no marketing alternative to octane fuel which runs ~70% of domestic vehicles.  There are various estimates (varying from 3 years to 25) of how many years we have left  of these fuels but clearly as we reach an end, the price will be way past our grasps…. meaning no more driving for any of us.

My advice: STOP DRIVING …and get some exercise!!! It will cost you nothing, make you enjoy life more, and make you look better.

Think about it this way, if filling your tank 4 times equates to being able to buy a bicycle, you’re paying too much.

I’m no saint, I ride a motorcycle (for pleasure, which is my passion) and I know that one day I wont be able to any more, I take the fuel price on the chin and am ready to give it all up. So should you, as soon enough you will not have a choice.  Let it be on your terms.

Resolving Ideas

Currently ending my second year in architecture, and my project is a real problem to resolve.  Pragmatically, it isn’t about how a structure would fit or work in a space:- it’s more about whether the space if appropriate for the project.  Until I get this end tied down, I’m not going to be able to move on.  I wish I had a simple answer for it, or simplify the project that I created for myself.

She Loves me, She Loves me Not, She Loves me…

Recently, I’ve tried to be pro-active about my relationship status by talking to/dating girls. Now the following is nothing new, but it is very confusing, and I totally fail to understand why this is the case: availability = disinterest.

Read the rest of this entry »

Squeaky Surf Soap Suds S’up… Dude

As part of an effort to be proactive toward our house mate who neglects to do her dishes, a couple of us decided to make a fun video for her to get the message.

I hope you enjoy.

Boxhill Fun Run

I recently purchased a Triumph Tiger, and have been itching to take her out for a spin. Today, I got that opportunity and took her down into the Surrey hills, to feel some of the bending roads around Boxhill. To be honest, the ride wasn’t very well thought out, having had a very frustrating week, and it being only Tuesday, I felt I deserved an escape. By saying it wasn’t very well thought out would be a bit of an understatement, wearing a pair of hiking boots, jeans, a t-shirt and a casual jacket, and lets not forget the summer gloves I was a little under-dressed for this fine day in January. I guess I got use of the heated grips.

Anyhow, there really isn’t much to be said, except for here are some pictures I took whilst there.