Keston, West end and Ealing.

This is going to be a long post so buckle up. In the first part you will get two brief bits of news before we crack on with the main body. Grab a cup of tea, or other beverage and sit down.

Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei Fan Translation Released.

DDS has been working on this for over 4 years and after a few beta niggles is finally out now.  Its the Snes remake of the two Nes Megami Tensei Games by Namcot (with a T back then remember) collected into one handy anthology.  I can't tell you how or what they play like except that they seem to be some old school dungeon crawlers, but the patch is up on RHDN so go there and download if yer curious, K.

Children's Channel turns up again.

This is an odd one, the Chriddof Archive, Fizzymilk 1989 has added his take on some Telecat audio which I may have talked about at some point. Its here if you want to see. However that's not why I'm here scouting round the sidebar I came across some rare footage from Roustabout.  Shot at the Dorset steam fair and featuring presenter Mick Robertson talking to the show promoter, its yet another piece preserved from the early years.  Now to see if there are any Stories Without Words clips.

Keston (Feature presentation)

Cactus club night was quite an adventure this month, my friend Jim didn't want to go, but I did, so this prompted me to find out what was the quickest way from home to Keston, by bus. Its 3 buses if you're curious.  My dad dropped me off there and after a nice talk about northern Mexico decided to go home.  This is where the fun starts, there's a choice of two buses and they both run hourly at that time in proper country fashion and its a case of miss one miss both.  I had 25 minutes to kill so decided to walk down to Hayes and see what the other choices were.  By the time I reached Hayes station picking my way through the pitch dark lane it had taken 20 minutes and was time for the bus to come, I saw it pass me by but the lady driver was kind enough to wait so a big thanks to her.  Apart from that when it dropped me off in Bromley town there was a trivial wait for the bus to take me to Lewisham and then home.

London Trip.

A few obscure bits and pieces from yesterdays trip to the West end.  I had to change up some cash and decided to walk in.  Part of the way a calico cat decided to follow me along the road and after much stroking and dissuading left her at the roadside before carrying on.

After much poking around the back streets of Soho came across a Retro Magazine store somewhere in the gay area.  After literally laughing my bollocks off at some outrageously sweary cards up on the top floor, decided to look downstairs.  They have a lot of NME's and old Escort porn mags and a few more old society and porn magazines too.  They didn't have any old gaming mags or Fortean Times but they probably did somewhere.

Decided to look around Ealing and when by tube so I didn't get lost this time.  Pro tip: if you wish to know which road to take back to Ealing Broadway tube station look for Nat West bank on the corner and take that road.  You can't miss it its in an old converted church.  Apart from picking up an Indian disco record and checking out Oxfams Japanese culture window display, there wasn't much there.

Zoe Quinn

Hello If you've come here because of the promise of cat island / Tashirojima clips then this one is the best I've seen.  Shot before the Sendai Quake struck, I don't know if they can sense it but they don't much like what is happening and its pretty unnerving to here them call out.  In fact all this caterwaulin' is the best intro for our main topic today.

Zoe Quinn stuff.

This is currently getting my blood boiling, and not in a good way. For those who don't know who she is shes a female game developer who did Depression Quest and is an active Feminist. So far so good, however its stops there.  A good starting place for this will be Internet Aristocrats Youtube channel.  He'll explain it far more than I can ever could {they're called Quinnspiracy Theory if you want to know}. Another good place is this, the Zoepost written by an ex boyfriend and explains all the infidelity on her part.

Its not that a, She cheated on her boyfriend, that gets me worked up. Its not the fact that she slept her way  through whats considered to be the best of Internet Journalism..  (which to say is its a joke, there ain't no Stuart Campbell or Kieron Gillen, as they all do other stuff now). Its this.

She calls herself a feminist and moans that there are no games by women and when someone actually does something about it she shuts them down in favour of her own currently not in production rebelgame jam (non) even.

I play games, true its generally internet shite, emulation stuff and previous gen bits on Handheld, but I actually do like gaming.  I like to see what other groups make of gaming, I'm pretty damned sure if  more women programmed they would come up with something better than the majority of games that were aimed at women and girls.  Especially on DS, every fourth game seems to be about poking a horse / Dog / baby and then dressing it up in clothes and parading it around.

Bratz Diamondz Slightly Corrupted

So if you try to close something that's actually trying to get more people into gaming that makes you a bad person.  I don't care about if you think its sexist or any of your social justice junk, I do care about you trying to hold back someone with good ideas and could actually make a difference.  

To finish up with here is an article about how 4chan (yes 4chan) are the main contributors to the above fundraiser with a video about text adventure legend Roberta Williams, who quite frankly knocks Quinn into a cocked hat.

Bank Holiday Round Up.

Hello and welcome, the more observant of you may have seen a new hero added to the sidebar. It is the Chris Lyons Video Cassette AKA Chriddof who does those Daz 3D animations of stuff.  He's know for deleting stuff wholesale due to ''teh anxiety'' so how long this will be up is anyone's guess so enjoy while it lasts.

Syro. Bonkers.

Its largely all over the net now and really should be up on Robots Nunca Vista my sadly neglected side blog, but there is a new Aphex Twin album coming soon.  Its called Syro and I learned this through a Dark net link via his official Richard David James page on Facebook.

Fucking A

The link itself is a strange one, its apparently gives you a tracklisting if you use TOR and nothing but a rundown of your plugins, processes and location if you use a normal browser.  This can be limited if you use No Scripts but its still pretty worrying.

There is now information up for preordering at bleep.com and a full tracklisting and a massive array of download options and physical media for idiots like myself including an ultra limited edition version of 200 for £250 (*w*) as well as a more sane £9.99 for a CD edition.  Its out on the 22/9/2014 so I will definitely be booking the day. 

Finally do you want to see a Japanese island populated just by cats, its called Tashirojima and is located off the coast of Sendai, which you may remember from 2011's devastating Tohoku quake.  There is a shrine called Nekojinja at its heart which sounds like Neko Ginger in English (a breed of cat). I'll try and dig up some videos tomorrow.

EDIT was going to do something about Ferguson but it just seems to be the London riots of 2011 with bonus racism and disinformation thrown in.

Robin Wiliams R.I.P

Sad to hear about Robin Williams dying, depression can be a right cunt sometimes and we all remember him from better days, either from stand up or the numerous film and TV shows he was in.  My favourite film of his, has to Jumanji, but Mrs Doubtfire and the voice of the genie in Aladdin also get an an honourable nod as his finest hour. R.I.P dude you'll be missed.

Avery Hill.

As part of the Greenwich University campus Avery Hill is a park right at the edge of Eltham comprising of several open spaces, a garden, the winter gardens and a cafe.  Royal Greenwich calls it as such.

This large, open parkland with many splendid trees, is notable for its winter garden (a magnificent hothouse), containing tropical trees and plants from around the world. There is also a rose garden, affording a pleasant place to sit and relax."

I'd been past when they where renovating the winter gardens back in 2012 and hadn't been back since.  Its easy enough to get to from my end a 51 bus to Blackfen and a longish walk down toward Eltham which will get you to the park without much fuss. 

Its true that there are a lot of nice specimen trees and such in the park and they had a Rowan with berries as well as a nice Eucalyptus with scaly bark.  But I'm a cactus man at heart so its off to the winter gardens which were at last open.  This is where it went majorly wrong, for some reason the "magnificent hothouse" had morphed into a tired old place with a few disappointing mislabeled species of cacti and succulents and a few other specimens that were not much better.  They had a guardhouse separating off the statue of Galatea they have there and another ante room with a selection of wildlife photographs and a few other plants in pots including what appeared to be a 10 foot Espostoa in an 8inch pot.

Other stuff was hilariously mislabeled including what looked to be an Echinopsis that they had down as an Aporocactus. A Cephalocereus Senilis that looked a lot like an Oreocereus Celsianus and an Agave Victoria Reginae that I had to relabel there and then, due to it being several feet away on something else.

On the other they did have a few gems including a nice set of Haworthias including Truncata and a big clump of Gasteria Verrucosa which could be all one plant. They had Jersey Lillies and Pokeweed too, and pigeons flying in and out of a massive palm so it wasn't all bad.
After that I decided to go home through the rose garden (nice) and walk into Eltham (not far) to get the bus home.

Pokeweed

This was as good as it got.

Not the nicest Gasteria

Palm. very impressive

EucalyptusBranch

Beccles Junk Tour

Been down to my aunts place in Suffolk and apart from the usual updating of computer stuff and shuffling around town we had a trip out to Beccles. Kinda like Beccles, its a nice little town full of small shops that actually complement the local area rather than the upmarket clothes and candle shops run by Sloanes and borderline hippies in Southwold.

There is also another perfectly good reason to have a look through as they have quite a lot of Charity shops, and weird ones at that.  I'll get to the more interesting one later but didn't get an awful lot out mainly vinyl and sweets my double addictions.  As well as the usual Cancer research and Hate Foundation (British Heart Foundation I know its my own corruption) stores they have stuff like the British Legion which deals with ex servicemen and old soldiers and a cancer charity which had a Jack Russell in a Hutch outside in the back of a pick up truck.  

No the oddest charity shop I've seen is for Aspergers East Anglia mainly for its design and mainly because its the first ever shop I've seen that deals with my people so to speak.  It has a massive Ronseal like appeal to me (its sign just says A Shop white on black with Aspergers East Anglia in a much smaller font) in that it does what it says on the tin.  In fact it was the only place I actually got something says something and am currently staring at my receipt which helpfully says A receipt.  I would be put out that it its so dull (I like a bit of colour) but it fits in so well with the Autist ideal of no bright colours, and everything the same that its actually totally genius in its execution.

What did I actually get, records of course including Love Reaction by React (Boyd Jarvis of course so it had to come home with me) and Peuterdeutjes which I thought was from some old Dutch TV show but turns out isn't but is nursery rhymes instead.

Finally went out via Tescos and found out they are holding a duck race down by the riverside complete with a stall with rubber ducks on them which was nice.

Jug Mon.

This is a weird one and no mistake.  We updated Final Burn Alpha, and heard in the comments that the SH3 series of Cave Arcade games maybe playable soon, and as Casino Leisure had reopened as a miserable slot hall would be a good way to reacquaint myself with Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu and Mushihimesama.

On a whim I checked out Cave's Wikipedia file and it had some intriguing bits under the mobile setting.  Previously they've ported their bullet hell shmups to IPhone mainly with a few going to Android, so seeing a few new entries for stuff like Don Paccin and "Jagura x Monster" piqued the old interest.

Don Paccin I found easily, it seems to be, from the clips on Youtube,  some sort of episodic shmup, that reminds me a bit of Muchi Muchi Pork but half as interesting.  "Jagura x Monster" well that's anyone's guess and decided to flip to the Japanese Cave page to see how it was rendered in Kana.  Turns out its Juggler vs Monster part of Kitai Corp's long running Pachi slot series and is some sort of RPG.  If its known for anything its the secret mode from the Juggler DS games where you had to swipe a load of rhinoceroses with your stylus in a set time, so to see that its now a Japanese only slot machine based RPG is mental and possibly only available on phone.

Maybe if this ever gets funded I'll have to download this to see what all the fuss is about, but so far I'll have to make do with some Youtube vids.