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Monday 27 May 2013

Don't have Nightmares.

Or Nick Ross and the spectacular rape meltdown as it should be known. 

The rape chapter was serialised in the Mail on Sunday along with a few other bits and pieces on crime and punishment the previous week that were less controversial.  Some of it I buy into namely the logistics of the whole spiked drinks and drug rape (testing showed just booze in all cases rather than anything else) and most of the domestic violence stuff which gives some much needed equality to the issue, rather than trot out the same line that men are the perpetrators all the time. 

(In fact its this along with the Lee Rigby murder that proves humanity is infintely inventive when it comes to being complete cunts to one another.)

This is the offending quote, for those unaware or simply don't care.

"‘Half of all women who have had penetrative sex unwillingly do not think they were raped and this proportion rises strongly when the assault involves a boyfriend, or if the woman is drunk or high on drugs: they led him on, they went too far, it wasn’t forcible, they didn’t make themselves clear. . . "

Surely rape is rape whether the woman (and its always a woman) was either too drunk, out of it or doesn't make consent clear.  I'm hardly the worlds expert on human emotions but if for whatever reason you can't consent then thats rape pure and simple.  If you're both too drunk to consent then that is the more interesting scenario on who gives consent, but most cases I'm pretty sure sex where consent is not given or is just dubious to begin with its rape.

(I'd also like to think that feminist professor Sarah Green countering against that was the same Sarah Green who did Going Live back in 1980s but I'm pretty sure she had an extra E at the end of her name).

As for me I'm with Alex from Mansfield on this from the Mail Onlines Comments.
" I don't really agree with him but questions like this need to be asked. As usual though , reactionary idiots and self appointed moral guardians, who can't see past a headline, are quick to be offended and stop reasonable debate on a very serious subject."


The Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

Its been quite a run on crazy sex related tales what with Gay marriage being sort of legalised here (to be honest I don't care, legalise it they're the only ones who care about it these days) and Amanda Platell going on a bent ref hunt in Saturdays mail.  Link here if you can stomach it.

Apparently shes appointed herself paedofinder general and written a load of words in how you can find massive amounts of CP stuff by typing in certain phrases and adding the word porn after it (or if we're malicious here typing all grown up in the MailOnline search box).  To be honest I'm not going to do that, as A. I already look like a chimney bottler and B. she only used Google for re(search) purposes and for slagging them off (agenda much).  If anyone wants to type this into Ask or Bing or any other search engine to see what you get then fine go ahead, leave me out of it, i'm sure its out there and not on some anonymous Tor portal a million miles away from regular users. 
A lot of that stuff reading again and again doesn't ring true.  That cute pussies tale has a massive ring of urban myth about it, and reminds me of a story about an old man who looking for a crossword clue about oriental donkeys typed Asian Ass into google and got nothing but pron. That is because the only people who call cats, pussies these days are Mrs Slocombe and my mum.  Incidentally they must have had safe search off because repeating this with it on gives you nothing but cats in image search.

The other stuff is various discredited studies on the porn viewing habits of a wide spec of children and young adults, that has been widely debunked as being too broad in scope.  If you want a balanced view about it and have an open mind on such stuff the Sex Myth by Dr Brooke Magnanti is an excellent read on this and for cheapskates there is a blog as well, which is also worth reading.

In summary don't have nightmares.

Sunday 26 May 2013

Romford Junk tour.

You'll get two for one today. This is a short junk trip to Romford done yesterday.  Its tone really doesn't fit in with the previous post being more light hearted than the other and rather than flick between the two I've decided to split these up.

Taking the docklands was rather more surreal than usual, thanks to Comic Con at Excel. They had some germans dressed up as anime characters, some kid with dyed grey hair and her pal in a pink apron that I could'nt place the anime.  Getting off at Canning town they had a Pikachu, Luffy D Monkey and a Riddler as well as supergirl, best of all was some guy dressed as Kiba Inuzuka complete with dog puppet very cool.

Anyway our trip out managed to snag some nice things, a picture disc of Vic Reeves Born free along with an Alter Ego Album (Acid Junkies) and a very nice Harthouse compilation.

On the way home we saw a fat blonde Totoro and a few of the others from before, all in all a nice day out.  

All hell breaking loose.

I was going to be writing about something different for this post, but if you've seen the news you'll know what I'll be talking about.  Maybe tomorrow as its bank holiday, clue it involves love and marriage and that, oh and Nick "don't have nightmares" Ross.

Hopefully he'll be killed in jail.
If you didn't guess its the callous murder of a soldier down in Rectory Lane, by two Islamic extremists.  I didn't pay much attention to this story when I heard it first on the radio as they were vague and said south London, its only when the papers and rolling news got into it that what they actually meant was Woolwich.

I've spent most of my life here and this is the first time anything like this has happened here.  True there have been some horrible shit such as the Stephen Lawrence Murder and a bomb attempt by the IRA but nothing like this.  

There was a march by the loony right wing EDL afterwards on the night and later a sponsored walk today (warning Nutter alert).  Culminating in Boris and Hamfaced dillweed David Cameron coming here to talk about it.

To be fair watching the rolling news of this I found Russia Today to have the best recap of it  even though they weren't local.  I'm trying to find footage of either Barack Obama talking about Woolwich or the CNN report according to a mate where they mispronouced Woolwich (I've given up on them mispronouncing Greenwich, its Grinidge not Grenitch).  The BBC had a outside broadcast from the mosque on Plumstead High Street and basically just spouted what a diverse area it was in a patronising voice (it was then I switched over before I kicked a hole in the TV).  Its diverse, i'll give you that with a few muslims and that but its largely african christians or Gurkhas, some of the Indians and Pakistanis I grew up with are still around but are fewer in number now.

We have yet to see the site where it happened but would imagine it to be a sea of tributes, they hold the Meridian bootsale up at the back of the hospital site and during the games cut through past the barracks, and come down that way to reach home, so I'm not unfamiliar with the area at all.  Would go up there but decided to hold off as a mark of respect.

Sunday 19 May 2013

Come on Black 'Wizerd'

Just thought I'd leave that with you, as its the only story bit in Spin pair and its the insane final battle against the black 'Wizerd'.

Our first story is to do with Nintendo coming all copyright cunt with longplayers and such on Youtube.  Our main bearorbust channel on has its fair share of problems including a strike against us for going too far with TOWIE, and we got a third party claim from the Big N on a ROM corruption video involving Mario so I'm no stranger to copyright cunts.  Lets face it if you repurpose found media for what ever purpose, you'll get these claims (unless you use PD stuff of course or ask permission if its a person rather than a corporation). 

To be honest I don't care about lets play or stuff like that and Nintendo are being rather gracious in letting the videos remain, I remember Sega being really cunty over Shining Force Feather blocking channels and the like so count yourself lucky.  In fact if ads on Youtube bother you that much grab adblock or any of its forks and you won't see any ads on Youtube or elsewhere for that matter (some porn sites moan but hey if they do they are not worth your time).

The second thing and this is related is that I'm working on a graphic hack of Donkey Kong Math (and no there's no room for an S at the end either).  Repurposed to use the characters from PG Tips it involves Monkey and Al solving maths problems while in the jungle.  Most of the graphics are done, Monkey being an absolute bastard as he has a couple of frames of animation and we've still to convert Kong into Al.  Originally we were going to use either an old 8bit bootleg as inspiration then 80s kids book heroes Bangers and Mash, but this idea only took of when doing the title screen.   

There is so little space and without extensive hacking (like division I don't get code at all) the tiles used would need something short, so it would not be awful at all.  Hence I give you PG Sums.

An old clip things look much better now

Pure sum mode still old though.


Sunday 12 May 2013

Spinpair Review

You would have thought that they would have exhausted the entire match 3 puzzle game by now.  Made popular by Columns and triggering off a million offshoots / PD remakes it took untill Bejewelled appeared later on that this aspect of the genre would take a back seat.

Spinpair is a PC engine game from Media Rings corporation.  It has a neat twist on the genre in that you get to drop pieces on the playfield and can only remove them by filling in their other halves directly on top of them.  Any other unmatched pieces of the same type are removed when this happens and is genuinely useful, clearing a space for other pieces.  Game over is when your pieces reach the top of the screen as in every Columns clone.

Controls
You can only rotate the blocks left or right, you cannot switch them vertically (which would be helpful) and the other button cycles through all the available halves so you can match more easily.  Down drops the pieces onto the play field.  Also if you match one side (say on a taller column) you can control the other block until it lands.

Modes.

There are a few modes here including:

Normal Mode.  You get to choose where you start and what handicap you have (amount of blocks not disability you sick fucks).  General one player mode.

Story Mode.  A weird one as there is no story.  I was expecting a nonsense plot in Japanese but there none, all you do is travel the world and match up pairs, you'll get more and more different blocks to match the further you go.

Battle Mode.


Battle mode. Haven't played as of yet.
Ninja Edit.  Battle mode requires two players to work even under emulation.  It also has the games only Japanese text only bits I can translate.  Link mode also has Japanese text and will link two PC Engine GTs together to play this.

Graphics.  Functional and cute. The shapes you fill in in the Story mode are all cute animals, birds sealife and vegetables, you get slightly less cute architecture for normal mode.

Music. Not too bad actually, reminds me of Dr Mario in that you get a choice of tunes and  the obligatory warning theme when your stack gets too high.

Playability. This is where it shines, its a great concept and no one seems to have copied it (this would work well on handhelds / mobile platforms)  the lack of switching your tiles vertically as they drop is the only thing  holding it back, apart from that its a great little game with no language barrier.  If you are looking for a quirky little puzzler and have a PC Engine this is worth recommending.

7/10

Post script. I get the nagging feeling that this could either be done on the NES for some unknown reason or make an excelllent arcade game. I guess Media Rings weren't big enough for this to happen.

Monday 6 May 2013

Brighthouse = dumbchoice

A few things before we get down to it, but snooker is hotting up, we've been watching more lately and hope Barry Hawkins does well in the final.  Also I've remembered a few more bits and pieces of old cable stuff, specifically that Sky used to show Cool Mc Cool, Krazy Kat and Cantiflas its not really a big long post as all were basically bargain basement filler on either in the holidays or before school.  It wasn't as briliant as Stay Tooned with Tony Robinson , especially that episode when they covered the censored eleven.

Any way Brighthouse.

For the uninitiated Brighthouse are like a high street based hire purchase scheme, you pay weekly (at 29.9%APR) for consumer electronics and sofas and the like.  We picked up a catalogue at the weekend and had a really good laugh, because the prices things go for there I guess you need a sense of humour just to get through the day.

For instance here are a few deals on a PS3 500 GB selection.

Currys £235
Game £200
CEX£170
Brighthouse £438.88

Don't like Sony but are a Microsoft Fanboy and want to know what the equivalent is for an XBOX 360 250GB Gears of war special edition.

Currys Basic 250GB model
Game £189.99  Not Gears of war related but with Forza and Skyrim.
CEX £152 Though its not Judgement edition
Brighthouse £506.48

Finally a nice WiiU for those Nintendo fanboys out there this one is the premium pack.

Currys £300
Game £289.00
CEX £240
Brighthouse £472.68

(CEX tends to be more down south than anything, if you have a northern highstreet equivalent version please substitutue it for that, they also only do second hand).
We haven't added any supermarkets into the mix or online auction sites or amazon or play dot com. Its general electronic retailers you'll find on the highstreet or retail park.

As you can see from this small console based sampling that Brighthouse is a big rip off, true you can pay weekly but is it really worth it as you always pay much more.