Google Engineer Lives in the Parking Lot

Hi ya. How are you doing today? Ready for the hallowe'en onslaught tonight? We are. Got a big bowl of candy sitting by the door and I'll light the candles in the pumpkins soon as it starts to get dark. Pour yourself a big mug of coffee and grab a virtual pumpkin muffin to munch on while I tell you about someone who will not have any ghosts or goblins visiting his abode tonight...

In a bid to save money, Google employee Brandon S. has made the company’s vast parking lot his home. The 23-year-old software engineer lives out of a box truck parked near the search engine giant’s campus in Mountain View, California.

Brandon started work at Google as a summer intern in 2014 – he rented a two-bedroom apartment with three roommates at the time. It cost him about $65 a night, or roughly $2,000 a month, to live there. “I realised I was paying an exorbitant amount of money for the apartment I was staying in – and I was almost never home,” he told Business Insider.

So when he signed on as a full-time employee, he decided to opt out of spending on sky-high rents in the Bay Area. Inspired by the story of software programmer Ben Discoe, who lived for 13 months out of a conversion van in the Google parking lot, he bought a $10,000 used Ford E350 and started living in it. It’s now less of a home and more like a place to sleep and store his stuff – he showers, bathes, charges his gadgets, and eats all his meals in the Google buildings. All he spends is $121 a month on insurance for the truck.

Brandon spends most nights out with friends or working on personal projects after work, so he gets back to the truck rather late. “I do have a 24-hour key card access to any building on the campus that I work at,” he said. “I try not to eat or drink anything after about 7.30 pm and I wash up and go to the bathroom right before I head out to the truck at night. The whole point of this experience is that a bed was the only part of a house that I needed, so if I was in here all of the time, I’d be doing it wrong.”

“I don’t actually own anything that needs to be plugged in,” he wrote on his blog, where he documents his experience of living on a truck. “The truck has a few built-in overhead lights, and I have a motion-sensitive, battery-powered lamp I use at night. I have a small battery pack that I charge up at work every few days, and I use that to charge my headphones and cell phone at night. My work laptop will last the night on a charge, and then I charge it at work. The main things I have are a bed, a dresser, and I built a coat rack to hang up my clothes. Besides that, and a few stuffed animals, there’s pretty much nothing in there.” The only challenge he’s faced with the truck so far is rodents, so he has a strict ‘no-food’ rule to keep pests away.

As per Brandon’s calculations, he broke even on his spending and saving last week. So as opposed to paying about $2,000 on rent, he’s added $325 to his savings since last Friday and the figure is increasing by the hour. He expects to pay off his student loans within the next six months. His frugality and ability to creatively use the resources available to him have been praised extensively, especially in a city where affordable housing is almost non-existent.

But many have pointed out that Brandon is privileged to have access to so many facilities at one of the world’s most profitable companies. Not many people in the Bay Area can get such services for free, and some of them have had to turn to different solutions like living out of boats and shipping containers to save money. The rest are left homeless. And Brandon agrees that his situation is unique, and has received a lot more attention that he expected. “Real homelessness is a systemic issue that doesn’t get exposure because it’s a decidedly uncomfortable topic,” he wrote on his blog. “People barely scraping by working minimum wage jobs and living out of their cars isn’t a news story, or particularly glamorous.”

So Brandon is using his time in the limelight to encourage people to get involved with fighting homelessness. “I felt it reasonable to dedicate a little section (of the blog) to addressing something far larger than the myopia surrounding my situation,” he said.

“I’ve been continually surprised at how receptive people are to the whole concept of living in a car,” he added. “The way I pursue, and find happiness, is by going to sleep a better person than I was when I woke up.”

“I’m young, I’m flexible, and I don’t have to worry about this decision affecting anyone else in my life,” Brandon concluded.

Good for you, Brandon. Keep on truckin'...

See ya, eh!

Bob

“Tree of Life” in Kalaloch Is a Monument to Resilience

Well there you are! I was beginning to think you weren't coming by...though I knew better. Glad you could make it...and just in time for a mug of coffee and a virtual doughnut with all of the calories removed. Got an interesting story for you today of a tree that is really clinging to life...

Located on an eroded, partially caved in cliff on Kalaloch beach, within Olympic National Park in Washington, the Tree of Life is stubbornly hanging on to the eroding soil with just a few of its roots. Some call it magical, others immortal, I just think it’s resilient. 

The roots in the middle are exposed and spread out, making it look like the tree is hanging on for dear life. And what’s truly surprising is that it has managed to survive this way for years, sprouting fresh green leaves despite its roots having very little contact with soil. It hasn’t toppled over, not even during the worst of storms that regularly hit the coast. While many other healthy trees in the area have succumbed to the unpredictable weather, the Tree of Life manages to survive, year after year.

The peculiar tree is a Sitka spruce, but it doesn’t have an official name. So people have given it their own names like ‘the tree of life’ and ‘the runaway tree’. The hollow space right beneath the tree is aptly named ‘the tree root cave’, with a roof made entirely of roots.

According to various reports, the cave was formed because of a small stream that flows into the ocean – it slowly washed out the soil from under the tree over several decades. No one knows exactly how long the tree has been holding up this way, or the secret behind its everlasting mojo. It truly is a mystery worth witnessing in person!

So there you have it. Resilience personified. Hang in there, Snoopy, whatever the problem may be! I think I am going to have one of these pictures blown up, framed and put up on my wall.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Seattle Preschool Doubles as Elderly Nursing Home

Hey there! Good to see you. WASSUP? Help yourself to a rousingly refreshing mug of arabica bean juice and a virtual muffin while I tell you about an amazing intergenerational school and old folks home. Yes...you heard me right!

A facility in Seattle has come up with an innovative way of catering to both the very young and the old.  They’ve paired up a preschool with an elderly nursing home, so that the children and the 400-odd residents at the home have an amazing time with each other. 

The preschool, called the Intergenerational Learning Center, is located within Providence Mount St. Vincent senior care center in West Seattle. For five days a week, the kids interact with the residents in fun activities like dancing, art, music, lunch, storytelling, or sometimes just visiting. 

According to Evan Briggs, a filmmaker and adjunct professor at Seattle University, who is planning to make a film about the unique center, the elders undergo a “complete transformation in the presence of the children.” She noticed that just moments before the kids came in, some of them seemed half alive. “It was a depressing scene. As soon as the kids walked in for art or music or making sandwiches for the homeless or whatever the project that day was, the residents came alive.”

And the kids, she said, were quite happy too, and surprisingly patient and understanding. Like when a young boy named Max met an elderly resident, John. John had to ask Max to repeat his name several times, but still couldn’t get it right, calling him Mack, Matt, and Match. “But Max was just so patient, he just kept repeating his name over and over,” Briggs said. She described the moments between the kids and the residents as “sweet, some awkward, some funny – all of them poignant and heartbreakingly real.” 

Briggs has chosen to name the film Present Perfect, which is a reference to the contrast between the lives of the preschoolers – with almost no past and a lot of future ahead – and the elderly – with a rich past but very little future. The present is the only realm they get to share. “It’s also about being in the present moment, something so many adults struggle with,” she added.

And although most of the kids’ parents didn’t particularly choose this preschool for its senior interaction program, they eventually realised the positive impact it has had on their kids. “It’s got a great reputation and great teachers,” Briggs explained. “One father told me that he especially sees it now that his own parents are aging.” 

Briggs ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for her film. “Shooting this film and embedding myself in the nursing home environment also allowed me to see with new eyes just how generationally segregated we’ve become as a society,” she wrote on the campaign page. “And getting to know so many of the amazing residents of the Mount really highlighted the tremendous loss this is for us all.”

Mixing the old and the young. What a great idea!

See ya, eh!

Bob

Israeli Restaurant Gives 50% Discount to Jews and Arabs Who Share a Table

Shalom! Marhabaan! How are you doing today? Pull up a chair... pour yourself a mugful of Arabian coffee and dip your virtual doughnut into a bowl of hummus. Yup, you hear me right...hummus. Read on...

32-year-old Kobi Tzafrir has come up with the perfect peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – bonding over hummus! He’s offering a 50 percent discount to Arabs and Jews who choose to share the universally popular middle-eastern dish at his Tel Aviv restaurant, ‘Hummus Bar’. 

“Afraid of Arabs? Afraid of Jews?” his Hebrew poster on Facebook reads. “We don’t have Arabs here, we don’t have any Jews either… BUT we have humans here! And we have excellent real Arabic hummus! And fine Jewish falafel!” He’s also offering “free refills for all hummus dishes, whether you’re “Arab, Jewish, Christian, Indian, etc.” 

Kobi revealed that lots of Arabs and Jewish people have stopped by his restaurant ever since he rolled out the chick-‘peace’ offer last Tuesday. “If there’s anything that can bring together these peoples, it’s hummus,” he said. But he admitted that his patrons were more supportive of what the promotion stood for, rather than the discount itself. He told Al Jazeera that he wants to show the world not all Arabs and Jews support violence in the region.

“I hear many bad things in the media, and wanted to do something good. I want to represent the good side of my beautiful country. Israel is a wonderful country and much better than is shown in the media. We are people who support peace and justice.” His proudest moment, he said, was when a Muslim and a Jewish officer came in to eat together.

Although he knows more needs to happen to achieve peace between Arabs and Jews, Kobi Tzafrir says sharing food is a start. “Eat hummus! It’s delicious and make you feel happy and peaceful,“ he advises. 

I agree. Hummus is tasty. You have eaten it, right? No? Almost any supermarket carries it. Give it a try...c'mon, it's for world peace. Well, chick-peace, anyway! Breaking bread together is a good start.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Another Way to Get a Good Night's Sleep

Hello there! Hope you slept well last night and are ready for a nice steaming mug of coffee like I am. Help yourself and don't forget one or two of our gluten-free, calorie-free virtual doughnuts. If you're still concerned, just eat the hole! Hey...speaking of sleeping, I know I just did a post on 'believing' you got a good night's sleep. Well I just got an email from Dr Al about how you can be sure you DO get a good night's rest. Read on...

Dear Bob,

Lately I'm finding that more and more of my patients are complaining about a lack of sleep.

After a long day they collapse into bed and drift off… only to wake up a few hours later, tossing and turning the rest of the night.

Without any deep, restful sleep, they wake the next day feeling tired, groggy and one step behind their peers. But that's not the worst of it…

Sleepless nights can wreak havoc with your telomeres, the tiny caps on the end of your chromosomes that control how fast you age. Each time your cells divide, your telomeres get a little shorter. Shorter telomeres equal a shorter, less healthy life.

A Harvard University study showed that those who slept six hours or less per night had a 12% decrease in telomere length. That was equivalent to a stunning nine years of accelerated biological aging.

A good night's sleep also helps fight the chronic diseases of aging by boosting your immune system.

Researchers at the San Diego Veterans Affairs Medical Center found that healthy patients kept awake between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m. had substantially reduced white blood cell activity, particularly natural killer (NK) cells. These are the most vital cells in protecting the body from viruses and cancer.

Most doctors treat insomnia by prescribing a number of Big Pharma "sleep aids" like Ambien and Lunesta. But those drugs have a long list of nasty side effects, such as dizziness, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, memory loss, and hallucinations. 

I don't prescribe those dangerous drugs. Instead, I help my patients get a good night's sleep safely and naturally by boosting their melatonin levels.

Melatonin is known as the "sleep hormone" because it's the hormone your body uses to regulate sleep. 

As day turns to night, your body starts to withdraw daytime hormones like serotonin, adrenaline and cortisol. And under normal circumstances, your body releases melatonin at the end of the day when you're ready for bed.

Melatonin then starts preparing you for sleep by doing things like reducing your blood pressure, body temperature, brain activity and heart rate.

As these changes happen, your body falls into a state of semi-consciousness and eventually you fall asleep. But when you don't have enough melatonin, these natural changes don't happen.

This is the start of a sleepless night. And when your melatonin levels stay low over time, you develop insomnia.

Low levels of melatonin are common — especially for older folks, because melatonin production declines with age. And it also drops when you take beta blockers, aspirin, or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

That's why I often recommend that patients take a melatonin supplement. Look for drops, or a sublingual that melts under your tongue. It's easier to absorb and works fast. Take it about 20 minutes before you want to go to sleep.

Dr Al Sears

Sounds good to me, Dr Al.

See ya, eh!

Bob

Golf Rules in Britain in 1940

Hey there! How's your day going? Looks as though you're ready for a mugful of coffee and a virtual English scone, slathered with butter and double clotted cream, what? Thanks to Anthony in Manchester for sharing these 1940 golfing rules. I was a mere glint in my dad's eye at the time, of course...Fore!

And, some of you thought you were tough weather golfers. The notice below was posted adjusting rules at a golf club in Britain. You have to admit --- these guys really had to like the game to play! 

German aircraft from Norway would fly on missions to attack northern England.  Because of the icy weather conditions, the barrels of their guns had a small dab of wax in the muzzle to protect them from clogging with ice. In addition to attacking industrial or other targets close to golf courses, as they crossed the coast, they would clear their guns by firing a few rounds at the golf courses. Golfers were urged to take cover.

In 1940, an English golf club wrote rules explaining proper conduct should Nazi bombs suddenly fall.

This is purely wonderful -- and says more than anything else I have ever seen about why Hitler lost the Battle of Britain !

See ya, eh!

Bob

=

This Guy Eats Over 5 Pounds of Chillies Every Day

YOW! That's hot! Oh, hi. Didn't see you there for a moment. How you doin'? Thanks for clicking by. I was just reading about a Chinese fellow named Li Yongzhi who is rather enamoured with chillies. Fill your coffee mug and grab a virtual muffin or doughnut to munch on while I tell you about him...

Li Yongzhi, 48, is fondly known as the ‘king of chilli’ in his home village of Shawoli,  Henan Province. He starts his day with a chilli mouthwash and continues to eat copious amounts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He recently told local media that he’s loved spicy food since childhood, and that chilli is his staple food – he could eat meals without meat or eggs, but never without a handful of chillies.

“Most people brush their teeth in the morning, I just eat chillies to freshen up my breath,” he proudly stated. “Without chillies, any meal is tasteless.” In fact, Li’s chilli needs are so great that he grows his own supply of eight different types of peppers in his backyard.

Li’s obsession with chillies began ten years ago. He liked them, but up until then he only consumed limited quantities. But then his son had an accident and Li was faced with medical bills worth tens of thousands of yuan. He barely had any money to spend on food and one day, he actually fainted from starvation while walking on the road. 

Passing out made the king of chillies realise that he’d have to take care of himself before he could properly care for his son. He went to a restaurant soon after to order a meal, but they were all out of food. That’s when he decided to eat two bowls of chilli powder along with a glass of tap water just to fill his stomach. He noticed that the heat didn’t bother him at all, that his tolerance of spicy food was way above that of the average person.

After noticing the chillies had a positive effect on his health, Li he started consuming a lot more of them. These days, he goes through around 5.5 lbs of chillies every single day, either eating them during his daily meals, or as snacks to pass the time. That’s more than most people eat in a month.

One time, his unusual taste for chillies got Li in trouble at a restaurant, as he was accused of stealing chilli flakes when the condiment bottle at his table was found empty. To prove that he hadn’t stolen the flakes, but actually consumed them, he ate an entire bowl of crushed chillies in front of the manager, shocking everyone present.

“The doctors say I’m as normal as everybody else,” he said. “I don’t have any super powers. I just like eating and I can eat a lot.” In 2009, he was officially crowned the ‘king of chillies’ by the provincial government of Hunan, after winning a chilli eating contest.

From years of living in Thailand, I like spicy food and chillies and used to be able to eat as spicy as most Thais but lately chillies don't agree with my system so much. Instant heartburn. Dang!

See ya, eh!

Bob
 

A Strange Cure for Lack of Sleep

Hey there! How did you sleep last night? I got my usual 8 hours or close to it. So did Nong but as often happens she seldom says that she had a really good sleep. That is one reason I found this article of interest and I hope you do as well.  So, fill your mug with some freshly brewed coffee, nudge a couple of virtual treats onto your plate, (you're allowed an extra one today because it's Saturday) and read on. 

Why your perception of how you slept last night is so important...

Just believing that you’ve slept better than you really have is enough to boost cognitive performance the next day, a recent study finds.

The research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, divided 164 people into two groups (Draganich & Erdal, 2014).

Both were given a lecture on how important sleep quality is and that they would be given a new test of how well they had slept the previous night.

They were also told that the average amount of REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep that people get each night is 20%.

Their ‘brainwave frequency’ was then measured and they were shown formulas and spreadsheets.

Despite the measurements being a sham:

 - One group was told they’d got ‘above average’ sleep quality, spending 28.7% in REM sleep.
 - The other group was told they’d got ‘below average’ sleep, spending just 16.2% in REM sleep.
 - These numbers had no relationship to how they had actually slept and were just made up to try and convince one group they’d slept better than the other. 

 - Afterwards, all the participants were given a battery of cognitive tests.
 - Those told they’d slept better scored higher on tests of attention and memory than those told they’d slept poorly.

Interestingly, the researchers also collected self-reported data on how people thought they had slept the previous night.

There was no association between the self-report measures and how people did on the tests of attention and memory.

• Magic mindset

  This experiment is another great example of the placebo effect. It could also be entitled "The Power of Belief".
  See ya, eh!
  Bob
  Source: http://www.spring.org.uk/2014/08/a-quirky-cure-for-lack-of-sleep.php

Why do so many Canadians have Multiple Sclerosis?

Hi ya! Thanks for clicking by today. Always a treat to see you and speaking of treats, help yourself to a refreshing mug of coffee and a virtual doughnut, muffin or pastry. Y’know, I saw something on TV a while ago that bothered me to the point where I wanted to know more about it... the high incidence (some say the highest in the world) of MS...Multiple Sclerosis.

Could living in Canada be what is causing so many Canadians to develop multiple sclerosis? A campaign by the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada brands MS as “Canada’s disease” based on data that the country is home to the world’s highest incidence of the incurable degenerative condition.

 “Welcome to MS nation,” one billboard reads. “World leader in hockey, maple syrup and multiple sclerosis,” the EndMS.ca website claims. Some messaging appears designed to quash the country’s appeal as an immigration destination: “In Canada, you have a greater risk of developing MS than in any other country,” the campaign reports, noting risk jumps for those who immigrate. The whys of this dubious distinction remain unanswered: “Is it our climate? Our diet? A lack of vitamin D?” No answers are given. But, as with all advertising, hope is extended: “We’re getting close to understanding why.”

Fighting MS, like fighting terror, is waging war on an indeterminate enemy. Symptoms and disease progression vary so widely from person to person that it might seem logical to see MS as resulting from varying causes. But as Richard Swiderski, an American medical doctor with MS writes in his 1998 book, Multiple Sclerosis Through History and Human Life, medicine has always assumed that MS has one cause: “The cliché that multiple sclerosis is idiosyncratic and affects each person differently overlies an assumption that it has a single cause.”

The map above indicates MS incidence has more than doubled in Canada in five years. The first MS atlas, published in 2008, ranked Canada fifth at 132.5 per 100,000, behind Hungary (176), Slovenia (150), Germany (149) and the U.S. (135). Why the number rose so steeply, compared with a 10 per cent rise in global MS incidence, is unclear.

The direct costs of caring for and treating Canadians with MS is estimated at $139 million annually, with drugs accounting for almost half of that. The high costs of MS drugs, which are priced on the assumption they delay disease progression and relapses, have come under fire. A study published in the journal Neurology in 2011 reported that the cost-benefit ratio of MS drugs was wildly out of whack and concluded there was urgent need for discussion on how to bring costs down.

MS has been a crisis in plain sight for decades. We’ve seen rising rates since the ’30s. We have a disease that costs a couple of million a lifetime; it’s gender-specific, with three times as many women being diagnosed. It should have been treated as a four-alarm fire. And as those diagnosed with MS know, that fire still rages.

Read the full story here:

http://www.macleans.ca/society/health/could-canada-cause-multiple-sclerosis/

This is a killer we need to treat as we would any other killer. Seek and stop ASAP!

See ya, eh!

Bob

C'mon in and make y'self t'home!

Hey there! How y'doing? Traffic heavy in cyberspace today? Well never mind... set y'self down a spell and pour y'self a great mug of coffee. Reach out and grasp hold of a virtual treat or two while yer at it, why don't'cha? Make y'self t'home...and speaking of which...
 

A Nova Scotia man is giving a ranch near Kamloops, B.C., rave reviews. This week, he told a B.C. court that as he drove by, he loved it so much he just turned off the highway and walked in.

Christopher Hiscock, 33, then fed the cats and the horses and made himself right at home.

The problem is, the owners of the ranch had no idea who he was and certainly didn't invite him to stay.
They recently arrived back at their property and found the Porters Lake man drinking coffee and watching television. They walked right back out and flagged a passing police cruiser.

In Kamloops provincial court on Monday, Hiscock pleaded guilty to possession of stolen property and being unlawfully in a dwelling house.

'A bit of a daydreamer'

CBC Nova Scotia's Mainstreet spoke with Tim Petruk, a court reporter for a publication called Kamloops This Week.

Petruk happened to be in provincial court when the case came up — it was by total chance that he heard the details of the case.

"I was just sitting there kind of randomly. I was just kind of hoping that a story would come up. And this one just fell into my lap," he said Wednesday.

"He basically made himself at home in this ranch just north of Kamloops after stealing a truck in Ontario and just heading west."

Petruk said Hiscock spoke with a thick Maritime accent and "seemed like a very normal person, who was maybe a bit of a daydreamer."

"Other than the fact that he was wearing a red jail jumpsuit, he looked like a completely normal guy," said Petruk.

Hiscock was sentenced to probation for both charges because had no prior convictions.

'It was weird'

The owners of the ranch found Hiscock on Sept. 20. He had made a fire in the fireplace and there was meat thawing on the counter, suggesting Hiscock was going to make a meal.

"The homeowners ended up going through their stuff and they found that this guy had done laundry, he'd fed the cats. He'd given hay to the horses. He'd shaved and showered and he wrote in their diary too," said Petruk.

The diary entry reads: "Day one. Today was my first full day at the ranch. I fed the cats and horses. So much I can do here I have to remind myself to just relax and take my time. I don't feel alone here. I guess with 2 cats and 3 horses it's kinda hard to be alone. Last night I had a fire in the house. I was so [peaceful]. I slept like a little baby. I saw a picture in the basement on the wall of a man holding and weighing fish on a boat. Looking at him, I realized we look a lot alike but I think I'm more handsome. :)"
Petruk isn't sure if Hiscock is still in the Kamloops area.

"In court, it was said that he wanted to be out here for work," he said. "I've been covering court for a while and I've never heard of a person breaking into a house to just kind of live there for a day. It was weird."

Petruk says Hiscock apologized for what he had done. 

"He talked about the ranch more in court and he said how beautiful it was and just gave it a glowing review."

The judge then asked Hiscock what he intends to do now. He told the court he has nowhere to go.
Petruk says Hiscock then said, "Maybe I'll go into the woods. There's lot of fish in there."

There's nothing like Canadian hospitality, is there?

See ya, eh!

Bob

 
Source:http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/porters-lake-man-kamloops-ranch-1.3250791 

Today is 'Back to the Future' Day!

Great Scott! Today is the day Michael J Fox's Marty McFly and Christopher Lloyd's Doc Brown travelled to in Back to the Future 2 in 1989 so jump on your hoverboard, grab a mug of coffee and a virtual treat and enjoy! You do remember the three great films, don't you? What? Didn't see them? Get them on Netflix or YouTube, why don't you?

As we reach October 21 2015 - the day Marty and Doc travel to in Back to the Future II - which of the film's predictions have come true?

4:29pm on October 21, 2015. That was the moment Marty, Doc and Jennifer travelled to from 1985 in Back to the Future II. 

The film's vision of the future wowed audiences when it was released in 1989, and over 25 years later, the forecasts have been more accurate than might have been expected. 

Here are eight predictions that happened to come true, as well as three that were way off.

1) Hoverboards

We don’t have Pitbulls or Mattel hoverboads yet, but Japanese car company Lexus recently unveiled a prototype for a real, rideable hoverboard. A company called Arx Pax in California is also working on its own version, with help from a Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately they both rely on

2) Wearable technology

In Back to the Future II, Marty’s future kids wear headsets at the dinner table to make and receive calls and watch TV. With the introduction of Google Glass in 2013, and gaming headsets like Oculus Rift in the works, virtual reality is not far off, and Microsoft's recently announced Hololens bears more then a passing resemblence to Junior's goggles. 

3) Video calls

Marty's video call with his co-worker Needles in Back to the Future II seemed like a futuristic dream, but with FaceTime and Skype now staples, the video call has evolved from a business medium to an essential of everyday life. 

4) Hands-free gaming

While we don’t see it in the film, kids at Cafe 80s mock Marty for having to use his hands to play an arcade game, implying that Xbox Kinect-style gaming is the norm in their 2015. And guess what, it is. 

5) Tablet computers

When Doc meets Marty by the clocktower, he is brandishing what looks like an iPad-style tablet computer. Today tablets are commonplace, with 233 million units expected to be sold in 2015, an 8 per cent increase from 2014. 

6) Self-tying shoes

Marty's self-tying trainers were one of the weirder inventions features in Back to the Future II. Now Nike designer Tinker Hatfield has confirmed he and his team are working on a consumer version of the shoes, complete with self-tying laces, and hopes to have them ready for sale by the end of 2015. 

7) Robot car fuelling

For the most part, filling a car up is still largely the same as it was in the 80s, but that could be about to change soon. Tesla recently unveiled a bizarre robot snake-like contraption for its electric cars to recharge them when in the garage. 

8) Fingerprint recognition

Most of us don't use it to get into our house, but fingerprint recognition is now a major part of many people's lives, being used on several smartphones to unlock them or pay for items. 

But what about the misses?

1) Flying cars

 We're not quite at the stage of seeing cars zip through the air - though a DeLorean could do wonders for the rush-hour commute. 

2) Power clothing 

Now this is one thing we wish 2015 had brought: jackets that dry themselves and shoes that lace themselves up. Look, no hands!  

The film went a little too heavy on its predictions for fax machines, which it imagined would be everywhere in 2015. Fortunately, they're not 

... And there's one key invention Back to the Future II missed out: smartphones - undeniably the most important technological breakthrough of the last decade. Apple didn't even get a look-in. 

Might have come in handy when Marty and the Doc wanted to escape the future and head back to 1985. 

See ya, eh!

Bob

Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/11699199/From-hoverboards-to-self-tying-shoes-6-predictions-that-Back-to-the-Future-II-got-right.html