uptown

 For the first time in ages, I'm uptown. Stopping off at Holborn and the beauty of getting lost in the back streets. 

The official  reason I'm visiting London proper is to get the "new" Squarepusher album, the unofficial reason is that I haven't visited the west end in absolutely ages, not properly any way.  

Used up the last of my McNopoly promotions in McDonalds and sat out in the square in Soho just off Oxford street. The best of all, walking round looking at all the mom and pop stores like pig and hen or that place near the British Museum with the bulldog statue outside. 

Heading past it all with a few CD's grabbed, saw a massive queue looking in at one of the Korean beauty shops and they had a meet and greet with some K pop idol. Can't remember the shop or who it was (Korea is just Temu Japan to me) but do remember going into Seoul plaza and picking up an Mogu Mogu drink*, before heading home.

*Incidentally this and Jones Soda are some of the best stuff I've had not in a can. Mogu mogu stuff can be had from the bigger corner shops and Japan / Asian supermarkets, Jones Soda never appears and to date have only had it from one shop opposite the commie bookshop on Bloomsbury St. Oh and before I forget there is a normal Oxfam books / record place almost opposite, where I found Christ. 

Mysterious Caravans and Mc Donalds

 Been burning through my McDonald's Monopoly wins and have reached the stage where I'm down to basically chips. I've an apple pie to redeem and some stuff that involves money off that I'll never pay enough to actually use. But chips I can do. So when I do redeem it all they had were "carrot sticks". Getting these for a laugh,  I find that its a small bag of baby carrots that you can get frozen and have had many times. Does anyone sane get these? I mean its you regular frozen baby carrots you can get in a big bag, raw, not cooked. and the worse, having to eat these within two hours of defrosting.

Anyway your scheduled book is the Mysterious Caravan or the Hardys in Morocco, a nice little mystery about them on holiday in Jamaica and them suffering in a storm which turns up a mysterious mask from a shipwreck. A nice sop to diversity is William, a Jamaican guy who likes his roots and culture and is learning Swahili. 

A few lines were changed in this for the UK but not much else. Like I say its not a bad story and whoever wrote it, definitely liked their big words. 

You can read the UK version here and the US original here. 

Pokemon Clover

 We now have this for MGBA on 3DS. After seeing comments on this about humour on Bluesky, thought it would be fun to run through this and see how it compares to a regular Pokemon game.

And, uh... Yeah this rules. 

Never really been to V/ and my only 4chan visit was to B/ which was like having a migraine, some 10 years back. But, god, I've been exposed to so much meme culture and green  texts over the years on twitter, I feel like I've some veteran by osmosis. 

You start out with getting your pokedex and starter from Professor Stump an old cunt with a pegleg. Choosing from Ejacsam, Grasshole or Arabomb. We of course chose Arabomb, and gradually assembled a team from there. Highlights so far:

Getting Goatse man from trading. Hilarious and of course entirely on point.

The Jews running the whole Pokemart enterprise when of course it should be just jeets. 

Darude Sandstorm playing through my first gym leader badge fight.

Oh and the names. Squirrap and Mennopaws have to be my favourites so far. But seeing as there is a Mount Moot and a nice reference to pool's closed there too, I wonder what else I'm gonna find.

Oh and if you want to know, my character is named Anon.  

A Fool

 Been musing over the line from Spam LS (Psalms) the fool says in his heart that there is no god. It makes me wonder who the fool actually is, here. Because isn't it the height of foolishness to believe in something that has no basis of existence, and continue to believe in its existence in the hope that when you die you will go to the good place and not the bad place. 

Looking on Wiki about the line it seems that the fool is someone who disagrees with god, and therefore can do no right. Maybe so, but I think it a trifle foolish that accepting at ones word of a good afterlife based on one mans sacrifice alone. No matter what you have done in life, blameless or evil. Accept Jesus and you're in, regardless of whether you're an axe murderer or paragon of virtue. 

When it comes to religion I would rather be a fool than a sheep.

 

Program(me) for Destruction

 85th book in the series and I have some serious questions to put to whoever wrote this. 

For those unaware, this mystery revolves around the boys taking a case from an Arthur Stockard, owner of the CompuCar company (a sort of proto Tesla) which has a futuristic Voice activated car which is the target of sabotage. They are gifted a car to test and it eventually turns out that it, and the CompuCar factory is the target of a computer virus attack rendering everything a mess

Maybe I've seen too many Danooct1 videos on classic viruses but I'm pretty sure that the main criminal live coding a virus in his own self contained area of CompuCars car factory, in order to infect some master disks linked to (I'm guessing) the net or more likely a series of bulletin boards is not so efficient.  You would have a virus riddled disk and then infect a PC in order to then infect those disks. Oh and did I say he's keeping both Hardy boys and Arthur under control with a revolver.

Another nice touch is the whole car OS being run from a floppy in the boot. Frank checks it out on their PC and finds the virus which is  pretty risky, I'm guess he's going to reinstall DOS if it all goes tits up. 

Apart from that the main difference is like this post in the title and that we used to spell floppies "discs".

I like that we used to spell a computer program as programme. Its got a nice dual edge to it like a timetable for destruction, whereas the US version is just program.

Anyway you can read both here and here.  

Back home 2 Animal Edition

 So I've been back a week, and this is my obligatory animal post. Quite a lot of beasties for you today as he had a few great, stand out moments. We'll get block stuff out of the way as there was a lot of interesting things in our own back yard.

The block I stayed in bordered onto woodland and after the first week was over, fell in that the emergency stairs are quite literally the closest thing and could harbour some interesting life. This quickly became the late night gecko patrol as there was quite a few to see either running up the walls or over the ceilings of the landings. The biggest of the lot I called El Rey as he was the king of the geckos.

The west coast has a lot more lizards and geckos I seem to find than the east, I wonder if this is their stronghold on the island.  

El Rey The king of the geckos

The last day we didn't see any and found that among the usual Shield bugs and Vestal moths was a ginormous African Mantis. I haven't seen one since I first went to Cyprus over 15 years ago so of course I took film and pictures. 

Look at the size of this lass.

At the beach I didn't see much the first week as the sea was rough and it was a chore just to stand amongst the waves without being knocked down. But it calmed down a lot the second week and aside from overhearing talk about cheese in the sea from a Spanish group (apparently 400 grams is enough to make a good meal) the wildlife returned culminating with a Shag on the cliffs. 

Oh did I say that it was on the cliffs, more like on the rocks a good 4 meters away from where I was swimming along with an Audoin's gull. Decided to keep quiet and watch him sit there for a good 10 minutes before he headed off. Kind of wish I had a waterproof phone to take photos with. 

Finally and I still kick myself for not snapping this, we saw an oil beetle on the beach along with a few cats. They were near two Spanish lads who belatedly noticed it with a cry of Bicho, a good minute or two since I spotted it. Though will console myself with seeing a Swallowtail in Ibiza town for good measure and a Hummingbird Hawk Moth over the Plumbago on the road to the beach. 

I'll leave you with a good man ginger to watch over you and keep you company, before he goes off hunting for lizard. 

A good lad.

 

Back home.

 I know I'm a day late, but to be fair, this is the only day where I've not felt knackered. I'll give you a run down of what the place was like. If you've read anything its a very much a place that has a curated playlist, and a jokey modern style. We didn't have a proper basin in our room and our shower was the most advanced I've seen in a hotel (dual shower heads FTW). I could also do with going back a good 10 years later when the palms and trees have gotten their maximum height so you can see it at its best.

We have various small blocks with long halls, I was in block 4 and looked out over the circle pool, which was the quiet pool. It bought all the little kids around with parents and you could sit out and read without being bothered. They had a large pool for swimming in which was nice and did most of the blogs from to be honest. 

But to be fair the thing that struck me most about this holiday was defeat from victory. Everything I wanted to look at or had an interest in was a broad case of curb your enthusiasm. Case in point, my room was 444, triple bad luck, we had to keep asking our regular black cat for some good luck and to be fair I've seen some good stuff but that only applies to wildlife. Other stuff was definitely not good.

Oh and before you wonder about the TV, I never had it on much. So my abiding memories are dubbed American Pickers, a new Italian version of Kommisar Rex and a central Lechera Asturiana advert that turns a mishap with cream into a something much worse.