Hiding Place

Finally I found the hiding place of the tree frog.
Just under the fish tank.

Playing Video Games is an Addiction worse than Alcohol

Playing Video Games is an Addiction worse than Alcohol

 

Video Games is a double edge sword.

One end of the spectrum is fun.

The other end is addition.

It cannot be honed in by assessing the number of hours somebody play.

I will deal with the physiology in brief later.

The game console developers know how to entice a guy or girl.

Their objective is to make money out of this misery, the addiction.

It is all about enchepheline stimulation.

They brain's enchephelin production is static but the individual variation is slight.

Ultimate goal is Ecstacy and I put this into some categories in an order of frequency.

1. Number one is games or sports.

The addiction has two modes

Players and the Spectators.

Good example is UK after the loss to Italy.

One end or misery lasts more than 90 minutes of play.

The ecstasy of win is also temporary and lasts until the eventual loss.

They game managers have methods like in general elections.

Qualifying games and tournament final every four years.

Olympics is a good example.

2. Number two is politics and elections.
There are very few winners and 99.99 losers.

I will stop at that.

3. Number three is this elite (the delusion within the game players themselves) group called meditators.

Their illusive goal is also very transient Ecstacy.

In Buddha's terminology less than nanoseconds until attaining Arhathship.


4. Number four is the research professor on any field trying to hold onto his or her mis-contrused concept.

A good example is bat woman in China.

5. Number 5 is a confabulating alcoholic.

His goal is also Ecstacy.

I will leave you to decide which one is good for you.

I have deliberately excluded some religious practises and hard drugs in my discussion, religion due to its inherent sensitivity and drugs due to lack of my knowledge of street drugs escalating numbers.


Regarding console games I never thought that game played at wrong frame rate can burn a newly installed GPU.

Of one set the frame rate above 60 for visual effects, it is more than likely the rate of input data does not match the handling capacity of the GPU and before on set of data is sent out (output data) other set coming in jams the sorting capacity of the GPU.

Heating ensures and these circuits are closely  wrapped in wafers in small compact  unit or area without heat sinking capability.

A fan help to a limited level but not any more of the sustained heating while playing a fast game.

Steam Deck should look in to this problem in depth before mass production of its units.


Coming to game physiology and how the console makers let an individual player to believe in stepwise manner that he/she can beat the machine.

Human  can never beat the machine he has built.

So to overcome this inadequacy in feelings he builds games of increasing difficulty to entice the owner of the console.

The Stream Machine has 50,000 games and the Linux repository has over 60,000 applications (not games, that one can use for creativity).

Our nervous system has a big lapse in response to pure electrical.stimulation.

The brain has developed an ingenious strategy to overcome this lag phase.

The brain records this experience embedded in the neural system (how this is done is a mystery and I believe it various from person to  person) as a FALSE memory and retrieve it forwards to the retina.

In other words retina is made to believe it as a true event of NOW not a past event (but in reality it is a past event replayed).

In psychiatric terminology it is an illusion.

The reality is a concept created by man.

So we live in constant illusion and delusion cycles or strategy to overcome over neural deficiency or lag phase.

Coming to analogue devices like a TV or Camera or Cellphone that records all physical events and when delivered to us filter about 95% of the input and display to us about 5% which our retina can (understand ) convert to electrical impulses as true events (series of images cramped into about 36 out of 10,000 or more).

The game box manufacturers know this and they only manipulate frame rate of different events (it is called rendering and rasterization in digital photography in printing for example) and drive the player to Ecstacy level gradually in increasing steps of difficulty.

What the computer does is to filter unnecessary analogue details so that the CPU is not overloaded with unnecessary information.

So buying these fancy New Graphic carda elevated in price is an entry to the grand *Delusion Mode* of industry hype.

If you have  working computer do not throw it away.

If you have lot of  money, then buy a new one with graphics improved (do not buy a graphic card and toil looking for other parts to assemble) and keep your head just above water, since the next version will be advertised soon as next or better option with minor modification to the older one's manufacturing defects.

This is a money game, too.

In other words a grand illusion.

To leave psychiatrists some leeway, I won't use delusion and reserve it for their use.

Mind you psychiatric dictionary has more words (to confuse us all) than combined physics, mathematics and science (pathology has much less) that I calculated once, before writing an article (putative) on memory many moons ago.

Thank you Gold FM and How I became Creative During Pandemic Lockdown

This is about Radios and WiFi Music.

The pandemic has made us neurotic, psychotic and selfish.

If not for the Radio and Beautiful Gold FM music I would have gone bonkers.

Mind you our TV, CNN and Fox are NOT very useful to get concise news in less than five (5) minutes.

I turn in Gold FM and get my daily news brief and news update quickly.

No Coronavirus Overload in Gold FM.

The Gold FM is probably the best in South Asia.

Unlike Indian broadcasters they do not murder the Queen's Language.

Thank you to all the Gold FM listeners for their feedback to the comperes of Gold FM constantly.

It is Ceylonese at best.

I wish instead of putting out boring Pirith Recitals, they have a Sinhala and Tamil broadcasts devoid of political and advertisement interruptions.

Broadcast music they love (Sinhala and Tamil) and brief news update and weather  so that a farmer working in plot bordering the jungle or a distant tea planter walking through his estate could be kept informed and entertained.

TV and Multimedia won't penetrate distant places without electricity.

A Radio with rechargeable batteries consume less electricity.

The point here is radio with rechargeable batteries (not normal lead batteries are going out of stock in Ceylon due to import restrictions).

Unfortunately countries like UK cutting foreign aids and not investing on Worldwide Broadcasts and Education Projects  we need to invest in Radio (Ceylon) Public and Private (Channels) seriously for instant communication.

Energy saving is of paramount importance with TV and Multimedia are energy suckers.

Radio with a rechargeable battery  costs very little and its running cost are very  low and lasts over 24 hours on one charge.

They are combined with LED torch.and SD card and USB inputs.

The SD card can hold large number of songs and educational stuff in addition to music.

We will never be able provide every child with a laptop which can be substituted by a much cheaper cellphone that would supplement the radio programs.

The problem with cellphone is carriers that provide WiFi is costly and may not reach the distant villages.

Current video programs only supplement kids who already overloaded with information not education.

TV education programs are actually a lesson in a classroom recorded and dished out.

I am not saying stop them but improve them with a radio signal included for transmitting to remote villages.

The current old education minister will take an year to understand what I say here.

Bypass him and take a lead to innovate Radio Programs.

I will list how I used radio for my upward mobility.

I was born after Second World War.

We were the only house which had a large Philip Radio which needed a large horizontal ariel mounted horizontally across above  our garden we played.

It provided up to date brief news.

Radio Ceylon provided very good children.and adult programs.

I was clever enough not to need them and  was I ahead of time.

I made *one crystal radio* as a kid and picked science effortlessly.

Aim was to enter university one day which I did not tell anybody (my classmates used to ponder secretly that I would do that on the first attempt).

I am voicing this here to say there must be lot of kids much more capable than me in remote places that can be reached only by Radio Waves (not cellphone WiFi).

Do not let them vanish like a wild flower.

There is a beautiful song that lyrics give a musical rendition to the above phrase.

The song did not come on airways of Gold FM today but anybody from Good FM who reads  this play that song and follow up a ground level program to go with it.

Listening is a technique that has to be trained in kids.

TV image is a big distraction whereas radio message is not.

I am what I am tody due to the Radio Ceylon and we did not have TVs.

I used to listen to Cricket Broadcasts from UK and Australia (my father used to switch it off rudely).

I used to listen to BBC news and Panaroma 

That improved my English and  English pronunciation better than my father.

By the way, current BBC program are not as good as they used to be.

Probably they are not paid well and leave BBC to join American stations and programs.

Just pampering politicians is not the way.

During pandemic I did lot of creative things after a lapse of time.

1. Getting Android 11 into trim condition Updating  News (without TV) and looking round how technology advances around the world are a few of them.

2' Listening to Radio News and music especially Gold FM.

3. Getting the rooftop organized by removing 70% extras.

4. Going out aimlessly to Kandy city saying to bring food.

5. Perfected Bridge playing with cellphone and added few mote new games to my repertoire.

6. Got the Laptop and PC running latest Linux and kept a keen interest on the  development Steam Deck and Dock game Console.

7. Put on little weight.

8. Disconnected the land phone.

9. No meditation.

10. Good night sleepy (having killed all mosquitoes, less than 5 a day now) and up.guy 10 A.M.
All mosquito breeding sits destroyed and fish in the tanks do the rest.

Cellphone, Technology, Linux, Cryptocurrency, Politics and Global Warming

 17.07.2021

Cellphone, Technology, Linux, Cryptocurrency, Politics and Global Warming

This is not a gossip column like, Facebook, Twitter and Freedom Platform.
 

One might not see the connections, if one does not understand the basic physics.
If you do not understand how physics works in real world, do not read this beyond this point.

This is a scientific exegesis not a bizarre meditation session with delusion and illusion revisited.

First of all thanks to Donald Trump and his extreme Ultra Right Wing for using Freedom OS which is a derivative of Lineage OS.

I supported the Lineage OS, Linux Magazine and Linux Voice but stopped subscribing to the Magazine (reading scientific stuff is in my genes) due to poor supply of Dollars from abroad.

To dispense with money matters and currency first, I hate single currency of EU for a very good reason.

It comes from a small  city called (Equivalent of Singapore in Europe ) Belgium where the King plundered West Africa for centuries and was helpful in spreading AIDS (equivalent of bat fever or Coronavirus of mainland China) globally.

AIDS came from a tiny tree monkey in Africa whom they used for animal experimentation.

We have not discovered a treatment for AIDS or for that matter Malaria from which millions of Children still die every year in Africa.

The simple reason for objecting to single currency is:

It would dilute the stupidity of all our Finance Ministers after independence.

Mind you, British left us surplus of money in our coffers and the Air Ceylon to fly (for the politicians to plunder later).

This even Victor Ivan understands.
Mind you, I have a chapter on Victor in my book Politics Revisited at Amazon for young ones to read how we plundered money and freedom and we have now geared for a military government which is failing by the day.

I prudently, I stopped writing my Political Vision dead at 2010.

This Political  Vision, Ma Ra and Si Ra combination erased from our history.

Any opportunity for recovery in a sensible redirection was lost.

I think, "The Third Force"  can emerge from the proverbial ashes of Phoenix.

A victory path from the prison.

Mr. Ranjan Ramanayake should steer it from the prison cell provided a bright guy writes a book on his behalf and in his name (one should get ideas from him and put in legible Sinhala and not in Amu Sinhala or Kunu Harupa).

All good revolutions started from long incarceration, in the history of mankind.

Longer he stays in prison better for him because more and more blunders will accumulate like the way Coronavirus spreads, in spite of so called robust vaccination programs.

Mandela is a good example but White South Africans by covert design muted it.

Coming to Linux and cryptocurrency.

The Ultra Right is based in Austria where cryptocurrency has one of it's bases where illegal money is invested globally, with robust farm of computers.

These computers need graphic cards, the reason I do not understand but guess they use PDF photo-proof for blockchain transactions which are invisible to the banking systems.

I now know unlike the CPU, the Graphic Card layout which is in multiples can do trillions of calculations per second.

However they consume lot of energy and need a robust heat sink to cool the system.

PDF means portable document Format.

These computers consume large amounts of electricity which even Nuclear Energy cannot cope with.

Electricity does not come cheap.

All digital gadgets needs electricity and the rechargeable batteries need electricity for recharging.

They need compact circuits and every circuit including your cellphone contributes to the Global Warming which is the bottom line.

That is my bone of contention.

So only way to mitigate is to stop using Internet, me posting here (soon be terminated, could not keep that promise but would be soon) a blog post included and every email adds to the global warming and there is no end in sight.

You switching to C.F.L  Lights and LED won't mitigate it.

The game box or the cellphone off the hook running on batteries may not contribute to much heat but the uploading, downloading and playing games over the Internet, Yes the Internet is driving the  World to Global Warming.

With  3G and 4G upgraded to 5 G every living soul (including grannies and grand dads) playing video games, video conferencing and video on demand or virtual class rooms popping up everywhere  (due to Coronavirus) may encourage global warming as the final end product.

The photosynthesis converts only 1 to 3% of light energy to biological energy.

The plants leaves by transpiration cools the planet (this is kids science which the current president does not understand).

The trees contribute to cloud formation and rain.

The the Tank, the Dagaba (where the soil was mounted and there is no religious connotation here) and Forest were our ancient concepts of self preservation and not done by borrowed money from China.

China has to learn lot more from our history than us learning from them and they are the leaders in pollution and global warming.

India only comes second in contribution to global.warming, population dynamics and emerging economics of the world today.

We importing cheap cellphones and even rice in 1952 are classic examples of our impotence in real politics.

Coming to chip production I think Taiwan comes first not the mainland China.

1. Taiwan

2.  Korea

3.  Japan for old American and the new Apple type industry.

4. China fourth

India nowhere and Ceylon with (rubber industry in doldrums) all the rare metals and pure sand available, which China is mining secretly (in the camouflage hotel industry operation concept) in the East and in the West Coast of Ceylon.

We cannot make a simple chip or circuit here but import large discarded computers from the West which need Water Cooling Systems to run them in a 24/7 cycle.

We become suckers to Communist China and they started with only erecting a massive Auditorium in Colombo to utter empty rhetoric which "Nelum Pokuna" can never match in spite of its height or the elevation.

Our aspirations have vanished to thin air.

But our debt is mounting.

What a paradox?

We do not have even Nalum Ala (the rhizome) with poisons in them to eat, now.

I will finish this with the  Steam OS.

Now all game boxes including Steam OS contribute directly and indirectly to Global Warming.

Linux was way behind the XBox of Microsoft in games.

Microsoft killed the innovations by enticing young with imaginary games in the trend of Star Wars and Visual Basics and no line of Code for creative work, while Linux has grown into 128 million lines in Code in current Linux 15 Kernel.

Steam OS probably has used this kernel for Steam Deck and Dock outsmarting Microsoft (would not win the never ending battle of Wits and Wisdom or even a rematch).

It is cheap and under $400/=.

ASUS Tablet with more punch is $3000/=

ACER is little below $1500/=

Mind you, this is a Standalone PC with a Game Pack.

Incredible price and I hope the RDNA GPU supplies come good by December, if not the ZEN CPU.

I would recommend  you to buy the next level of $500/= odd version for connectivity to NVMe external drives instead of SATA, SSD and eMMC disks.

SATA stands for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment which is relatively slow.

All serial as opposed to parallel devices are slow by nature and draw power from the computer (no power jack is necessary).

All my external devices which I paid a fortune including to Imation needed separate power supply.

Companies that produce them are:

1. Western Digital
2.  Seagate
3. Samsung
4. Toshiba
5. Adata
6. Sandisk
7. Imation (gone bust I believe)
8. Hitachi

All my hard disks are working (having used  many a times, to boot Linux and for Data and erased many a times in that process using Gparted of Linux) except one portable Sandisk which I paid a lot. Sandisk's internal connection to USB 3 broke. There was bad metal connection inside it (with all my portable data Lost), that connects to the USB 3 connection wire (and then to the PC).

I do not recommend it.

SSD stands for Solid Sate Device with no moving parts for flash memory.

NVMe stands for Non Volatile Memory Express only for PC with PCIe slot in the mother board.

I think MMe means multimedia multiplexing environment and not a hard disk type.

This slot in the motherboard is used in earlier designs of computers for graphic cards to support faster data transfer but now is used by NVMe.

In old computers the RAM was limited to 1 GB RAM (32 bit computers) and graphic was dedicated to a graphic cards to save RAM memory and did not heat up when running.

Please do not accept a 32 bit computer even, if it is given free.

They are Energy Vultures and consume lot of electricity.

GPU means Graphic Processing Unit.

In old computers only the CPU was running hot and needed a heat sink and fans running, all the time to cool the computer.

When I was running 13 computers (32 bit) in our home network, three of them caught fire when the temperature was hovering around 85 to 90 Fahrenheit.

Of course few of the Cathode Ray Tubes of TVs caught fire,too.

When these things happened, I started using thermometers for my pet fish tanks outside and they die at 84 Fahrenheit.

I stopped keeping fish in fish tanks altogether.

Wild fires in Canada and Australia are natural outcomes which Oil Ministers all over the globe ignored for over 70 years.

The new CPUs and GPUs are all integrated in thin wafer circuits all into one motherboard and they consume more energy than old PCs and without heat sinking measures, they are too hot to handle.

In cold countries with heating bills going up playing a game in a box is a quick way to go to sleep with warmth (heat) to cushion you.

My PC has only PCI slots.

eMMC means embedded Multi Media Card and the controller system.

All the gadgets in this world contribute to global warming from production line to the user base at home.

Blaming only cars and vehicles is barking at the wrong tree.

The vehicles at least deliver goods.

What is the contribution of computers to the alleviation of hunger and poverty in the Globe (that Coronavirus has exposed us)?

Coming to Steam Deck and Dock.

I have to make a few early observations to counteract, mostly negative remarks.

I played my first game with kids with Atari.

Coming from a generation where children's toys were baby dolls and motorized cars with hard to manipulate remote controllers, DOS video games were master stroke in history of children games.

I must say I and my adult friends played them more  than the kids.

For kids the games were passing stage of their childhood development.

But Disney Game on Lion King had a lasting impact.

Lion king was a classic film for kids and adults.

Playing golf was painful in Atari.

Myself a good snooker and billiard player playing a billiard game on cellphone is very painful to say the least.

One needs applied mathematics brain to workout the game strategy and lot of skill and practice to go with it, to pot a billiard ball (not pools).

I used to beat British guys in UK and they see this little guy from Ceylon humble them in billiards and snooker (mind you I did not play with professional guys or in clubs).

Actually I win my post (out of 60 odd candidates) in a selection interview by asking the interview board, is there a snooker table in the hospital.

If they ask why, my ready made answer is I could practice playing snooker while I wait for a patient to arrive from a distance or kill my time practicing alone till midnight.

Waking up from sleep to answer a call is very annoying and miserable thing.

But I was good at cat naps.

Watching TV or sipping beer was not my way and I never sip a drink when on call and absolute concentration is necessary in critical care.

With that background playing games with PlayStation with only two games with the first buy was sucking dollars and pounds from poor parents.

My son stop playing PlayStation in less than two months.

My daughter loved reading and that also fiction.

Me a reader in Science and Technology.

I cannot find four partners to play Bridge now but I play Bridge using a cellphone.

I try to improve my game.

Bottom line is boys love playing video games but only a few girls play video games.

The Coronavirus has made girls to join the Band Wagon of video games.

That is a good thing but ignore their comments about Steam Deck and Dock.

Mind you, these guys come from Windows and Apple background and does not know what is Linux.

The current Linux 15 Kernel can handle many graphic cards, if the O.E.M. guys volunteer their specifications to the Linux developers.

Equally they have some game boxes from childhood that they have Pathological Attachment (term pathology has disease connotation here) to those devices.    They are all biased in their opinions and they are not comparative or balanced.

I see Steam Deck 2 coming in the future since old guys like me have visual problems to counter and I prefer a very BIG Display.

Coronavirus has added lot of grannies and grand dads playing Steam Games.

The joystick and touch pads will improve coordination problems, especially after mild form of stroke and if, I am one of the directors of the hospital, I would order some Steam Deck and Dock items for both children and geriatric patients.

So if you are philanthropist please keep my above observation as a reference point.

Steam should focus the global nature of games.

If we can cut down on the pills and if Steam contributes to that goal, even a little childhood fancy game played by a sick  adult is a bonus to recovery.

It is very big thing!

Back to home for recuperation.

It has a relatively big display screen which is touch sensitive.

This display is not BIG enough for my age.

It has both touch pad and two joysticks.

It has SD card ports to upgrade capacity but playing with SD card is not an option.

SD card  slows the system.

It has Linux OS (Steam OS 3) and probably  latest  KDE plasma, I guess.

Mind you it is coming in December and book now.

There is no crowd sourcing and it has got capital from Steam Machine sales in the years gone by.

Steam Valve is the operating company.

It is a standalone PC for a work desk.

Since it is a PC one can install

1. Windows 10 or 11 with Steam running on top of Windows.

2. It can run on any Linux distribution that supports Steam (since Steam is Linux almost all Linux distributions support it but one has to purchase Steam games).

3. Why not run on its own Steam OS 3 and enjoy 50,000 games you will never finish in a life time?

It has Photon which is modified Wine that runs Windows games on Linux box.

It is a Three In One Game Box.

It has AMD CPU  Zen and AMD RDNA GPU.

What a nice combination to beat Intel architecture owned by Lenova in China.

It beats, IBM based of Lenova in China  by a big margin.

It has ports in the dock for all the connectivity and WiFi connection off the dock.

No need of PS5 of Sony and XBox of Microsoft.

Linux is the winner after all.

The best buy in the market today.

I have a Console  of a Cheap Chinese made Copycat in which I could  not play a single game. I paid a big sum in Rupees.

It's keyboard could not type my 18 digit alpha numeric password for WiFi connectivity to download new games.

I tried even in French Keyboard but failed.

So do not buy cheap Chinese stuff.

Chinese alphabet is a graphic design not alphanumeric like the English Keyboard.

Luckily the computer software and hardware are based on the English keyboard for instructions.

It can be hacked but not easily duplicated in China.

That is why they are developing Kline OP in China.

The Chinese are very bad in typing  English and  Linux Code.

If not for American's base in Taiwan and British in Honk Kong Chinese ambition to go to Mars bypassing the Van Allen Belt is only a daydream.

They are number one Copycats on this planet.

Mud Dabber Homes

I thought of ending my two year nature surveillance today and watch TV for a change.

Look.what I have found.

I bought a TV for WiFi connectivity.

What is called a smart TV.

It was shop soiled Samsung on a discount price and returned it back, the day after.

It did not have a stand.

Gentle breeze from the veranda toppled it over.

I.got a Sony to replace it full price with a stand.

I covered it with one of my sarongs which I did not wear.

I hate wearing sarongs and my wife too, hates sarong and it was a bit of a tease for her.

She put another quality cover over it and like modern.day girl's squirt, it was 6 inches short.

For added protection, I put the sarong over it.

Some time back, I noticed a hut of a mud dabber on the sarong and the insect never came out.

And there was another mud hut and that insect's malt was empty.

I did not bargain that my sarong was the living.quarters for a few years for the mud dabber.

Only today, when I looked at the opposite site of the sarong, I noticed that there was a bigger living conduit (for my nature pursuits) under my sarong.

Incidentally, the mud dabber used to make huts on the coconut railing but I noticed they had not visited for some years.

They probably are attracted by the smart TV advertisements.

I think the magnetic field of the TV has caused navigational problems and they have used, the non magnetic fabric part a safe dwelling.

How to entice Children to Gardening by Mini Garden Concept

I must start with saying, that I never practice what I preach here in day to day clinical practice.

I mean mini garden concept.

I was too busy.

They were too sick, it is often, a life and death scenario and every minute, every  hour counts.

We were the generation that developed continuous monitoring systems and CPAP technology, and talked about the value of surface tension reducing molecules which keep the alveoli open for ventilation.

We did not talk about nano molecules and nanotechnology then but we knew only 15 to 20 nano molecules can reach the tertiary bronchioles.

That is the the size of the Coronavirus and they can reach there with only a light sneeze and a facemask never protects such tiny viruses entering the terminal.bronchioses which collapse leading to atelectasis (due to lack of surface tension reducing tiny mucous secretary molecules).

These molecular production pathways are inhibited by cigarettes and that is why I stopped my chain smoking at the age of 34 (an hour before boarding a plane to London.via Switzerland).

The age of onset of old age was believed to be 35 but now it has come down to 30, in current cell cycle terminology.

We were the generation that introduced vapour and nebulizers to suit the alveolar physiology of the lung which is an incredible organ of evolution.

The above is to shut the mouth of pompous medical men of today who totally depend on technology and without common sense.

By the way, the physiologists and clinicians who gave expert evidence in police officers conviction are classic examples, not practising what they teach.

Oxygen is a poison above 23 to 28% and initiate free radical and interleukin production that damage the lung.

Sorry for the medical diversion and this is my last piece here for a long long time.

I thought the mini garden concept would fit or foot the bill to end the grand confabulations.

Thanks Google for your support.

I embraced mini garden concept to minimize the clutter in the rooftop garden.

The trays used for making crepe rubber from rubber latex is my tiny dimension.

The Buddha Sasana (used for offering milk rice Dhana to Buddha) pots are too small and fragile.

When kids were small, I made an elaborate mini garden with a bowl of water (Israel technology in a mini version) at a higher elevation, connected with a saline tube- hidden under the soil-feeding the mini tray with assortment of plants. 

Getting the right chemistry and microflora was difficult (the concept of fish urine technology of my current lilies plant cultivation was not developed then) but after a trial and error period,, it worked.

With children growing up and me getting in Linux and Computer Technology, I gave it up at that level.

Now, that I discarded my computers and retired I have gone back to that concept again.

Most of the steps in out back access is relatively a mini garden,now.

They rainy weather has its own contribution.

The tiny plants I tried to grow with much struggle are on most of the footsteps.

The crepe rubber tray without much a do and me doing nothing at all, have gathered its own community of plants.

My only contribution is chlorine free water from the spare water tank reserved for fish tanks.

My obsession was ferns growing on the tray which was unsuccessful.

There are a number of exotic ferns growing on their own without any support.

Nature has its own ways to entice you.

Now I have graduated to raise orchid's (the most difficult) under the shade of two tiny cocoa plants.

Few moons ago returning from Colombo our way back at Mawanella I found a tiny rotten cocoa pod.

Out of about 30 seeds only two plants have grown successfully,  keeping the natures principle (only 1% germinate).

I do not think it will ever bear fruits.

The trunk is very thin but it supports my tiny collection of orchids, growing in the wild (no chemical support), as it were.

Only seed I.have not tried is rubber seed but we have an India rubber tree right in front of our house growing in a wild corner.

My final attempt is to induce the Vanilla (a giant orchid) and the Wesak orchid to bloom one day (without artificial.chemicals I hate).

Nature willing of course.

Kandyan Dancers are about to bloom.

Another orchid had a tiny bunch of flowers (I bought from a street vendor who sells the plants with big flowers, chemically treated of course).

Indian Jesmine Plant and its Flower

First of all it is not a plant but a vine.

It is the most difficult to propagate.

Over 15  years I have managed to get one sapling and it has only two leaves and no flowers.

I have managed to get two sprouts but they failed after replanting.

Mind you, I have 38 years of experience and I leaned the tricks from my mother.

Going back to the beginning when we were building our house (I have no understanding  of house construction but good at making cement fish tanks), I decided to grow some flowering plants.

Our great great granny in her eighties needed flowers for her daily offerings to Buddha and she used to scatter the flowers seeds all over.and making a bit of a mess in the little garden (in fact it was a rocky garden which had a jute plant. It flowered after 100 years of existence and died naturally and I did not replant the hundred of offshoots for posterity. I had no idea and the thorns I hated -with growing children around).

I hate Dahas Peththia (flower with 1000 sepals or petals but which did not have even 100 and it leaves an unpleasant smell in your fingers when teased to spread the long narrow seeds).

So I did some looking around and found a similar colour flower with about  8 sepals and I gave her some and she did not mind.

Any flower would do and she told me we need 10 varieties of flowers in the garden when children.are around.

I took heart to her very broad sense of understanding of nature and she probably grew around a beautiful garden with flowers and that is why she lived up to her 80s with good health.

Another point about her to remember was we had 22 odd fish tanks around (tried a pond but failed) and the fish tank for display was in the living room (with an air compressor pumping stream of air bubbles from behind: brought from UK and not available then in Ceylon and I hate the cheap Chinese substitutes that do not last even 6 months) and I was obsessed with its upkeep.

One evening when I returned from work, I found two slices of bread in it.

I was bit annoyed but when I realized Great Granny had done it, I calmed down and after having my evening tea,. I asked her why she did it.

The fish are hungry and you come late.

I quietly explained to her while removing the slices carefully with pair of prongs, told her, that in fact, fish do not like bread but I feed the fish with fish food with tiny pellets.

I was expecting a wise saying from her and she never did it again, having got a sense of my subdued anger.

Mind you we did not have tap water and I had to go and fetch water from a nearby well.

That well and the guppy fish have gone.

I noticed today they have dug up a big pit (which fills up rapidly with water from the underground spring) and a drain to get a new water connection to a new house in our neighbourhood and a New Cesspit with it, that encourages mosquito breeding.

Coming back to 10 flowers in our garden.

We have failed her.

Only two flowering plants for hummingbirds.

A new and a bigger pair with a lovely velvet neck (male bird) has come (more about the pair later).

I got a sapling of the top variety of jasmine from my mother and planted in the place where children used play (hanging to an Araliya Branch-for flower offerings to Buddha).

It was well cared for and one day when I was admiring its first few flowers and I accidentally touched the belly of a Ahatulla (a relatively less,poisonous snake wrapped around the jasmine).

I immediately uprooted the jasmine plant and gave up caring for jasmine for over 30 years.

I have four varieties now and the Gata Piiccha is almost a weedy vine.

Normal jasmine variety,, of course the Indian variety and top jasmine variety.

I have mastered the propagation of saman or the top variety and when I have  extras I give away.

It needs lots and lots of water and dry up in dry weather unless you water it daily.

I have at least two sprouting currently but not the Indian variety.

I am experimenting with it and may succeed this season.

The way I do is to tilt the vine to a bucket with water plants and tease it by dipping it deep under water.

The pressure I apply makes the branch to lengthen (that come yearly when the old one is drying up to become firewood like) and remove the bark underneath with my nails and leave for the roots to come.

Once in a way I lift it up and see if the rooting is progressing well.

This way I do not need to water them daily.

I use the Pizza Hut clips to anchor the spot I have teased.

That works.

More reliable method is to dip the branch (having teased the bark underneath)of sufficient length to a pot with rapidly growing little flower plants (which become manure for the jasmine sapling later) so that the microflora that nourishes the jasmine have time to recuperate.

It takes about one year for the vine to become independent and flowering.

Tea, Coffee or Coriander

I go for coriander or Kootha Malli.

More about it later.

For the record I do not watch.cricket at all.

I slept through the semifinals of football and won't watch.the final to see penalty kicks at the end which is boring.

Watching Brazil and Argentina playing soccer is a real treat.

I was reading an.article by a British journalist who probably is an alcoholic (all journalists are and a good local example is our own Victor Ivan) and is writing about coffee addiction and trying to hide his true addiction, which is alcohol.

More about it later in a book form, which is probably going to be my last book.

A good journalist should not write about his experiences even, if he is short of ideas to write.

He becomes a laughing stock when he makes a big journalistic blunder (like the British PM) by his own comrades.

He could have assumed a fictitious character and add more spices into his story.

He is citing a neurologist (neuroscience is a pseudo-science which is in vogue currently) as an accreditation in a vague sense and tried to put a scientific notion.

Currently our understanding of working of the brain is limited to the cortical part of the brain and what is beneath is ill understood especially the neural networks, the  memory and the effect of tea, coffee, nicotine (smoking) and alcohol on the limbic system and eccrine, apocrine, paracrine and endocrine pathways.

I was a relative addict in my life but my greatest was gambling which can ruin a family.

My last gambling episode was when I left New Zealand for good.

I had very little saving and kept a few dollars for the taxi fee to the airport.

I decided to do some gambling since I arrived at the airport very early and the connection flight was hours away.

Now all airports in this world want to swindle your last dollars and pounds before you leave the particular country you visited and there are lot of gambling decks to entice.

I did a little survey and found one I could make a few bucks.

Had a tentative bid which I lost and with in a few strokes I made three times for the taxi and stopped.

The trick here is that the machines are programmed in the first few strokes for you to win and if you go beyond 10 strokes  you are a loser.

I used my mathematical brain to stop with the last big win.

Coming to caffeine adduction, the Chinese are the world's drug addicts and gambling addicts (of the world) until MaO SeTung decimated 3 to 5 millions (he was partially successful but he used his knowledge to spread, casinos, massage parlours.drugs and prostitution as export commodities, Ceylon is its latest victim).

Real double standards by Chinese.

I did a bit of search of Chinese addictive drugs a few moons ago and that piece is here on this bog site.

There only good contribution is Gotu Kola (Ginkola biloba).

The rest are all addictive concoctions.

By the way, Coriander is not their discovery and originated in.the Arabian peninsula, many centuries ago.

Currently I promote coriander as the only safe drink that is not addictive but a drink that helps to prevent Interleukin Effect by default by insidious infections including Coronavirus.

It has the property of arresting allergic reactions.

That is the reason the coriander has gone up in.price in Ceylon and in short supply like saffron.

Now five things that save my life benzathine penicillin injections, immunization including BCG and three ingradients from my mother her milk (including cow's milk), coriander and saffron in her curries.

The coffee and tea were not part of her beverages for us as kids.

Ginger beer was the only other drink allowed occasionally.

Now I add ginger beer to.coriander to make it sparkle.

Coming.back to alcohol after 10 years of careful planning I am out of alcohol and rice totally.

For the Russians and French fighting on sparkling wine, I won't suggest coriander but our local Kassippu is stronger than Vodka.

Come.here on a holiday enjoy Arrack and follow it up with Coronavirus antidote, the  Coriander with ginger beer.

Mind you.ginger has lot of medical properties.

To my medical friends I am not only a naturalist but a herbalist in action.

My.attempt at growing coriander and saffron is total failure.

I love the aroma of coriander leaves and persevere with the next batch of seeds to grow it in earnest, on the rooftop garden.

By the way, home gardening is one of the most satisfying.

Looking at lillie flowers every morning is gratifying to say the least.

Now my love of birds originated from budgerigars we had as kids.

I used to get chesty as a kid and they thought,  it was asthma but it was all due to budgies and various citacosis strains they carry and infected me.

When we got rid of the bird cages I recovered fully.

One of my great diagnosis as a GP was a woman who.rared beautiful birds in Negambo.

She had bird fanciers disease and her presentation was hepatosplenomegaly and labelled as a case of  leukemia.

I saved her from chemotherapy and I did not do a bone marrow biopsy on her.

Citacossis is the technical name.

I had the rare previledge of doing a marrow biopsy on Sir John Kotalawala.

He did not grumble in his late 80s.

When JRJ was in death bed, I signed his death  report (not his death certificate) at Navaloka Hospital.

Navaloka Gihilla Paraloke Giya was the standard vocabulary in Ceylon.

It is a status symbol, the relatives bring their patients in their dying bed or moments and doctors there drag the life for a day at most (some stone dead attached to an antiquated facemask).

The special care unit non existent and with three other guys we formulated a required protocol and training.

We saved ONLY one young boy under 15 with Guilline Barre Syndrome during my.time.

I.provided the laboratory support and visited him twice daily in the first 10 days and one a week thereafter.

One of his uncles became a neighbour quite by accident a few years later.

All these big guys think they never kick the bucket.

Venerable Narada was the one who bent my mind to Dhamma and I hope to end my herbal Dhamma here now.

Grass Hopper

This RaJa clan friend who comes for corn.
I have no corn.plants but released it to the rooftop garden.

I have not seen.one for ages.

Copper Craftman

I am not referring to the human kind.

This is a fly that comes at four year intervals.

It must be coming from far away and may have had three stations of stay where copper crafting or copper ornaments are evident.

It lands on a hanging Indian ornament and builds a nest for less than 10 members.

They come indoors during rainy.season and  leave with sunny weather.

I thought they gone extinct.

Once they have finished there will be a photograph with new offspring.

I have a photograph of them as a front.cover of one of my.books.

Go to Amazon and browse.

You.have to.search for my name but I.remain.anonymous and no.AilBaba type advertisements here.

Next bunch of Paddy Grass

Name of this variety unknown.

Paddy Pod

Madathuwal Variety

Twitter Nest

Close up view of nest made of two leaves.

Paddy Harvest

This is my paddy waiting to be harvested.

My Failures and Successes on the Tiny Roof Top Garden

My failures are many but only a few success.

1. My attempt at raring Cherry Tomatoes is a total failure.

The nature works on standard principles.

Only one (1%) per cent of seeds germinate.

To make it 10% one needs enormous inputs and perseverance.

I will come to that later.

This tomato has a lovely smell.

I have succeeded in getting one plant but it is growing very slowly.

No flowers.

The one which managed to germinate in the train outside our house is big and has a few flowers.

It had no support and I did some work for it and trapped it with two AkkaPana plants for its support.

Mind you I put lot of seeds on this drain and only one plant come out successful.

2. The coriander is a big failure only two one small lasted few weeks and the other wilted away in three months.

3. The chillies after many attempts and lot of seeds but only one plant in the same pot came mid way after the coriander seed had germinated.

No flowers yet but with flowers it will wilt away if not supplemented by chemical inputs.

4. Bread Fruit or avocados no result.

This time a failure but I have few more seeds left.

It is a seasonal germinater I believe.

5. A big wild seed brought on by birds germinated on the ground.
Transferred it to a pot total failure.
I found three seeds on top of the fish tank in the open.

May have been brought on by birds who quench their thirst from the fish tank.

The magpie devour my fish daily.

6. Jam Pera only one plant after a few hundreds of seeds had fallen on the ground.

I think one pass through a bird's alimentary system is mandatory.

7. Potatoes a total failure.

8. Japanese Tomatoes a total failure.

9. Mangoes on pots a total failure.
No fruits.

10. Partial success of paddy seeds one cared for the other left to wilderness.

The one left to wilderness had three seeds in one plant and nothing on the other three.

The well cared bucket had seven plants with seeds out of many seeds.

The manure is from fish urine.

I feed the guppy with high protein diet.

They produce year round urea in ample stock.

The other variety I got by post from a veteran paddy cultivator who is 80% blind (I think the chemicals he used in his farming career has done it).

By the way his kidneys are good.

I put them to germinate few months after the first batch and four of them are coming good.

I got a batch of seed pods from a farmer who comes from Amparai to sell his ornamental wall hanging made of paddy pods saying it is a blessing to hang them on the wall.

I bought two for 500.

I tried all his seeds nothing germinated.

I expected one to grow on ground with lot of water.

There was one variety in out garden as a kid, called GodaWee.

I am looking for one for two decades now with no success.

The first batch is from a guy who is a fish vendor but a good farmer all the same.

He is a long time friend of mine due to my pet fish keeping habit not fish mongering the politicians do in this country.

The bottom line is that paddy cultivation needs not only lot of water but lot of inputs (liquid manure and sold manure) and is not economically viable in this country until we invest on high quality low yield varieties for export.

We had over 2000 varieties and only 50 is left at the moment.

Thank God by luck I became a medical man and not an agricultural man.

If I did agriculture by fate, I would have been under aristocratic  Panakokke or Ellawala clans who were involved in commercial enterprises.

These aristocratic clans were involved in Elephant trade, too and Molamure and Pana Murre Eth Raja comes to my mind instantly.

The commercial enterprises kill our agriculture.

That is why we are in Manioc Economics now.

My successes are on lilly plants and a few varieties of wild water plants (foreign from seeds) which grow like a carpet on top.

The Soursop plant was a success with a tiny fruit.

The water mellon was a success with a tiny fruit.

Pineapple was a success and only two beautiful flowers in15 years.

One is one growing well and am sure it will bloom.

It lives hundred years given to nature and there is no hurry at all.

Havari Nuga a total success with two broods of twitters in 15 years.

I do not try any new ornamental plants now.
The.most expensive one never lasted two seasons.

Do not buy them in sales.

They are highly cared before sale exhibition to lure ladies with passion but they do not last even a season.

I do not use artificial manure at all but only leaves that fall and the tea leaves I keep (no milk-will lead to plant rot) for the palm trees.

Regular hand washing with siso.and water and never with detergents.

They kill plants, insects, butterflies and fish.

If you do that butterflies will come in search of you if not dragon flies.

It is nice to see few butterflies but will eat some leaves that stimulate plant chemicals for growth.

The birds will control the excess caterpillars.

No sugar and drinking Mesnar Tea without sugar is invigorating.

Sandfly, Silverfish, Weevils and Termites

My interest in insects started with book worms or termites.

They destroyed a batch of books thankfully most of them were Buddhist books old and already ready for destruction by me anyway.

I have a large collection of them and if somebody throws a Bodu Bala Sena logic, I offer him or her (rarely a woman, they love fantasy books, not reality books),  a copy of Venerable Narada or Late Piyadhasdi Thera to shut them off in a few seconds.

Madihe Panjhasiha is out on first count.

If he she an intellectual I give the name of Bikku Bodhi who left this island having wrote a piece "Buddhism at Cross Roads" with the emergence of BBS.

He stated medical reasons but I guess he was ashamed to done a robe in Ceylon.

Would have been better in Thailand but never in Butma.

Renukane Chandawimal and his Sinhala books confuse me more.

Do not read his books on Abhidhamma, one would start hating Buddhism.

For the credit of Bikku Bodhi, he revived the BPS and unfortunately it is NOW run by a monk from Denmark (my guess) who is interested in making profits from book sales.

"Sabbha Dhanam Dhamma Dhanam Jinathi" is off the couch or window and the capitalism at work in full pace.

I will not burn Bikku Bodhi's books but I won't site the BPS again not even next birth.

The bookworms or booklice have got me to write a book "Living with Nature" which I delayed for one year and now two years gone by.

That time was not wasted I used my conservations to full use.

The sandfly is a misnomer.

But I prefer it since it gives natural sense but not a botanical genius working over time.

This classification guys like Buddhist monks destroy any inclination to study a new topic in simple (not in depth for god's
sake) way.

Now this sandfly has no relationship to dragonfly or damselfly at all.

It is our Walli Govvas mothers and fathers.

I loved the Walli Govvas as a kid.

Pick them up on your palm it dances backwards without probing it to do so.

Then place them back on sand and watch its engineering back at full pace until it bury itself waiting patiently for a prey like American bullish market guy (not bull market).

Now American sprayed the entire North America and their children never see a dragon fly or sandfly or even lady birds or ladybugs.

It is a little engineer that builts a pit that is deadly for ants.

I wish I can dig a pit like that for British (Conservatives) and Ceylonese (SLPP) politicians who are absolutely corrupt.

I wish good lick to Keith Starmer the Star of Wonder for British politics.

We do not have any like him emerging in Ceylon for another century.

We are stuck with a family hegemony for good.

Now there is a another strange thing about this newt or pupa of Walli Govva which I discover from Wikipedia (now the lack of anus is deleted by editors) two years ago.

It has no anus.

It devour for four years until the outer coat or the skin is close to burst and it goes into metamorphosis and the sand fly like creature is born.

I wish our future politicians are born without ani for them to naturally burst with corruption at the end of five years.

Now we did not have Walli Govvas when we built our house in a pit where termites and black ants live for centuries.

I got our cement bass to bring them and they were thriving where the overflow sand had collected and after 4 years or so they disappeared.

But I never thought they will come looking for us at a time where chemical killers are banned due to their price hike and my masterly inactivity principle interrupted by pouring water over ant holes which never worked.

Thanks sandflies but I pity for your offsprings without ani.

When we live with ants we have to wake up with ants.

When you do not have an anus it will burst one day.

Not with red ants with nasty sting.

I noticed these sand flies who come after four years near the big fish tank but never though they lay eggs on the sand holes turned out by nasty tiny red ants.

They have disappeared and lot of Walli Govvas with trap pits living there now.

I will have to watch them for four solid years till they disappear.

The nature has it's own ways to entice you and this piece will be a tiny chapter with more scientific details mixed with political satire (names deleted for safety of my children).

Humour and Mind

The word Human probably drives from those two words and the man has lost both mind and humour after they created coin, paper money and now crypto-currency.

Incredibly apt word crypto and how freak or counterfeit dollars are converted to power is really cryptic.

This crypto-mania most likely started from London and Washington to lure the Chinese who hoard money from global business activities.

Both London and Washington do not have adequate sovereign to print paper money but there is digital manipulation.

The  word crypto-currency was born.

This is to mitigate countries emerging economies like India where gambling is natural inclination.

Using computer farms set up in bunkers to analyse money transactions at nanosecond intervals globally and using techniques similar to betting to manipulate crypto currency dealings by absolutely rich people, bypassing the normal fiscal systems that are set in place to discourage manipulations surreptitiously.

Countries like ours, printing money without sovereign or corporate bonds to stand alone has no match to these manipulations.

I think Chinese are also in this game now.

Prices of food are going up.
There is a mismatch of supply and demand mainly due to Coronavirus Slowdown.

It cannot be mitigated by printing money.

The ground work has to be in place.

One cannot analyse, the cryptic ways, the bullish forces work in the money market.

The prices going on service commodities cannot be arrested by fiscal and artificial intelligence gut feelings.

The gadgets (cellphones, laptops and hard disks) that come out in tons due to lockdown will not find a market place except for formulating volatile algorithms.

To stabilise supply and demand imbalance global coordination is necessary.

Until that is done an average man is riddled with hand to mouth existence.

The role outs will vanish in no time to cover the debts leaving no money left for longterm investment plans, to get the system back to stability.

So my prediction that economy would  collapse (in spite of bullish predictions of the crypto men in London and New York) will stand true, with the year 2021 coming to an end.

Baby Elephant Trade in Ceylon

This piece is to correction to a piece here about baby elephants' plight in Ceylon.
I said that it is done by local mafia aided by politicians.

I am.wrong.

It is not the mafia but it now shows high ranking ARMY  officials who are doing it.

I am sure by the trend in Ceylon these officers will get more stars and a due promotion too.

When paedophiles are released from prison I think these officers get Dutch Courage and are encouraged to do bad things in broad day light soon like in Myanmar.

This is why I am dead against Kandy Esala festival or Perahara.

Read my book on Baby Elephant Walk on Amazon.

I have said that in poems and verses.

Baby should be with the mother and the mother is killed and foster mothers are chased.

This is a cruel country by the way.

This happened on the death anniversary of Diana the Princes.

TPM, UEFI, and Microsof Monopoly

Microsoft's strategy is to interfere with your freedom of choice.

Having failed with UEFI, Microsoft is bringing in another ploy to hoodwink gullible customers.

Do not get caught.

Within weeks I found a way to scuttle UEFI.

Simple.

Go to BIOS and activate It.

Better still use Gpt and use only Linux partitions and install Linux a d say Good Bye to Windows.

The latest ploy that will misfire is TPM.

Trusted Program Module.

The P stands for PAY to PLAY.

If you have money pay by all means but if you're a pensioner stick with Windows till 2025 and kick the bucket thereafter.

Microsoft want only your money and not your wellbeing.

People are just recovering from the pandemic and money you saved should not be spent on a gadget to upgrade your computer with a hardware module and service charge to go with It, to get latest Windows 11.

It is not a brand new operating system but a glossy front end advertisement campaign.

If you have money go and buy Apple computer but if short of cash go for Lenova with Linux 15 kernel.

Even Google's Chromebook is expensive but it does not need TOM upgrade.

If you are lucky and your PC or Laptop supports it, go to BIOS and change to, TPM mode if you really want Windows.

Microsoft Windows is like an Uppish Aristocratic Woman dressed in a glamorous Sari

I forgot a few points that makes Linux stand out in space on zero gravity or one gravity on earth, is its scalability and it's different tool kits to suit the desktop environment.

The desktop can be heavy like in KDE plasma and is always limited by the RAM and hardware of the cellphone concerned.

The bloated desktop in Windows consume precious memory and little is left for functionality. That is why it's development is staggered till a new kit or new kid comes to town with new skates.

Mind you, old keyboard cellphones ran on Java.

Now that new hardware and chips are coming out thick and fast, Linux also can show its prowess and that is what Emmabsntus has done with xfs and lxtq (a brilliant upgrade to front end).

Linux has enough backend stuff unlike Windows (lot put to front end nothing left for backend and that also one has to buy the bloat ware).

Having said that Goggle series 11 is more than adequate for daily use and going for a new cellphone with version 12 and above is a waste.

My favourite of course is Nokia and my old flame GreenTel I have not tested for many years.

Now this 5G connectivity is not going to have any effect in Ceylon due to poor infrastructure development by All Services local and foreign.

We are cash struck for another 50 years and ban-omics is the order of the day and do not throw away your old gadgets.

I cannot think of a better description than the above comparison to a Sari.

Sari may look beautiful but the lady behind is still old without innovations.

Instead of writing about Windows, this piece is about Linux Kernel 15 and a bit of politics at the end.

The distribution used in explaining new stuff is Emmabantus.

After a long period of hibernation Emmanantus team from France had done a credible job.

Linux is 30 years old and I have been using it over 20 years and exclusively over the past 5 years or more.

I am more critical of Linux than Microsoft.

That is how Linux improves leaps and bounds.

A swipe at Windows is due to my satire dying a natural death which is coming to surface unhindered and nothing more.

I have no intention of converting a guy entangled in Windows, except saying God Bless them for using a weak element.

Humans are not infallible and let them be.

But I get annoyed by guys who have used Linux over a year during the pandemic and writing a glossy scathing overviews.

These guys come from Window's background and unable to master 10 Linux commands or had not read the Linux Bible or the very big "Linux in a Nutshell" book.

Yes Linux in a nutshell.is a very big reference book for developers.

Linux did not come into existence by chance.

It is a simple guy's challenge to his professor which the professor took it offensively and the young guy split his hairs (I mean professor's hairs) and went his own way without crowd funding to begin with but a bunch of community guys with similar interests, added market value to it's products globally.

I am not saying crowd funding is the best way.

It can fail and Ubuntu currently is an example.

But Linus Torvalds kept his kernel business as his priority and the distribution development is left to focus groups and Debian keeping the repositories updated and also depreciating some dysfunctional applications.

I use AbiWord for my work for a very long time and it is not in Debian Store but Ubuntu has it in it's symantic store.

In that scenario if Ubuntu is not there I have to go back to an old Puppy Linux to work on AbiWord.

With difficulty I got it installed in Ubuntu 20-4.

What I mean here, is one cannot satisfy everybody but that is the name of the game.

Coming to Emmabantus, it has AbiWord.

Besides it has LibreOffice 7 version.

As I said earlier its kernel is 15 and kernel 15 supports version 7 of LibreOffice and no AbiWord.

LibreOffice has a kid's version and Emmabantus has it.

Emmabantus has three boot up options.

1. One for kids.

2. Two for new comers to Linux.

3. The third, the classic for guys like me who wants all the packages including old ones.

The Gimp new version which I did not test is there for your photo editing.

VML is there for my videos.

It has MultiSystem Utilitu to make bootable USB with multiple portable Linux distributions with xfs (not with Debian with enormous packages to boot in one go) capability.

Having said that I now use Plasma KDE of Debian for my regular work.

Debian has 7 or 8 other desktops for my light work.

Emmabantus use only xfce and lxtq to prevent memory over surge.

No hard feelings, though.

Then Ubuntu is in a new mode to take Google face up with it's Web Development Kit.

I support it whole heartedly since Google is trying the "Microsoft Strategy" of putting glossy stuff to lure gullible customers, since Fdroid (? Is it Linear OS) guys or JinglyOS guys from China (is crowd funding for a new OS and gadgets).

The Coronavirus has made explosion of technology and airlines going bankrupt has made people having money in their hands for spending (not efficiency in governments like UK and EU but people realizing all governments are useless unless they spend money not for high rising compact buildings or 5S capability but  good solid infrastructure for hospitals and social welfare for the vulnerable).

My only problem is I have stopped traveling not due to Coronavirus but due to cash shortage but I had been economizing long before Coronavirus (Telecom bills, electricity bills but not on water bills to keep plants from wilting in dry weather), knowing very well the Ceylonese Government is in global debts will introduce ban-omics and ban even Western Digital new external hard disk to try kernel 15 stuff in my spare time.

I am now short of USBs and I will discard all my 32 bit Linux distributions on DVDs by burning them in spite of the environmental pollution it entails.

No option, I am short of space, too.

Books I will keep without burning since buying old books from JUNK book sales, I believe will contribute to spread of Coronavirus.

I do not go to book shops now and that also saves money.

There is a guy in Ceylon who runs a TV station built by transporting hospital refuse from Europe and dumping them in unsuspecting countries and I believe he is responsible for spreading Coronavirus in Ceylon.

Hospital mattresses from Europe wrapped in a new lining was one of his promotions not innovation.

A crafty guy whose brother was in prison for murder and dealing with illegal drugs.

There is another  guy who is a minister now murdered two university undergraduates, in my time as a young assistant lecturer (he became rich by similar drug dealings).

The Grama Niladhari tells me drugs are smuggled into the University through a small access road leading o the Engineering Faculty.

I am happy it is closed (not the road but the university) for a very long time and many of those future graduates would not find a job anyway due to economic downturn (our neighbourhood is free of drug peddlers but there are lot of exotic birds visiting).

Unfortunately stray dogs are finding it hard and some domesticated ones, too are chased out from homes due to food shortages and today I woke up with the noise of  a big Dog Fight in our neighbourhood.

That is how life is progressing.