You got a loicense for that grot?

 So you all know what I'm going to talk about, and I'm pretty sure the puritans at Google are going to put this behind a 18+ filter, so here goes.

The week before, the UK finally put up its pr0n block under the pretence of think of the children and predictably it's broken everything internet related.Reddit, Wikipedia, Spotify and Twitter (still not calling it X) has been affected and a few mainstream porn sites have caved and added it. You can find out more why this is a monumentally stupid law here.

Xhamster for one and I'll tell you a hack around for this later. The only place I've been asked to clarify I'm an old git is Bluesky which needed face verification, but apart from that everywhere else has been trouble free. Oh yeah and that includes the pron. 

Laughing pub bore Nigel Farage has come out on the side of repealing it in a rare W for him and a Labour MP Peter Fyle has called him a Jimmy Savile nonce apologist for opposing it on authoritarian grounds.

Lets face it, its not about blocking porn, it's about neutering the web, and turning it into a western version of the great firewall of China. X rated stuff is an easy wedge for governments and  payment providers to crack down on the behalf of Christshaggers and Radfems. Just look at the ongoing Mastercard clusterfuck on steam and the Tea app controversy which held a lot of private data in an unsecure area was doxxed and leaked to 4chan. 

This is why I won't add my face / payment option to any porn site, it can and will be leaked, for those with long memories the whole Ashley Madison farce comes to mind. Which is exactly why I won't do it.

Oh and some advice for those who are looking at paying for VPN's and stuff, get Brave browser instead, not only do they block ads but their incognito mode uses TOR, which means you can still look at smut from the major sites without putting in info. 

Skull mountain

 I really thought I was done buying Hardy boys books from eBay, turns out I was wrong. This is the last of the originals that was incompetently scanned from an old book and as my guessing game is off ordered an original version of The Secret Of Skull Mountain. Apart from the scan being terrible it also missed out a few things such as a graphic box when the boys go to the harbourside. Its not, miss half a chapter bad, as it was in Broken Blade. But its bad enough.

As the books go this is one of those that is halfway between a small edit and a complete rewrite of the original. It's still a story about water shortages and sabotage to a reservoir, but there are a few crucial differences in the original than the remake.

For starters there is just a skeleton crew on the mountain rather than a whole team prospecting. The mineral the crooks are after was Bauxite and is now "Cesium" I guess the old version really liked their tin cans as its used to produce Aluminium. Caesium as it properly should be is an absolute nightmare around water (it explodes in contact) can remember an old Thunderf00t vid where he was exploring alkali metals such as this before he went off the deep end into full on Musk derangement syndrome.

The last final difference in the original is that Chief Collig is not a pal of there's, he's jealous of their success and along with Con Riley are an active thorn in their sides. If you're used to the new versions of them being close, then this is quite the eye opener. Oh and Callie gets a job as a clerk to help the boys out. Which was nice.

 Finally you would never get away with treating human remains like that nowadays, a full archaeological survey would  be carried out on the Indian remains up on the hill and the Hermits pranks would be seen as disrespectful. But its the 1940's so what can you do. 

Anyway you can read the original and the remake here. Seeing as I've given away so little of the plot.

On yer bike son.

 So the good weather has given away to storms and rain for the next few days. We were mercifully spared any thunderstorm action here it did get awfully close over the past few days, enough for me to think about not hanging round at work and think about getting off early. 

The upshot of this was borrowing a Lime Bike I found dumped out (a common occurrence) to speed on to and off site, only to find that this was actually some dudes daily driver, he'd bought! Literally didn't know you could own one and thought they were rental only*.  Most of the time its marshalling them to a main road for pick up or using to get around if I'm pushed for time. 

My storm phobia goes back to being caught in a storm in Greenwich park with my mum as a kid and probably goes into autism stuff as well as I also hate fireworks too. So me driving round on a Ebike so I can avoid a storm is peak me. 

* So it turns out you can't actually buy one and just rent it to get around, in fact this all you can do with this which makes me feel much better. Sorry not sorry. 

Google Lensman

 Been having a good time at the boot sale. Picked up a few things that required Google Lens to look over it. A tape by Mostafa Mdawi aka Mustafa Modawi a Sudanese Keyboardist and Singer. Titled Al Soudaneia Agmal Al Aganie or Al Fanane if you look on the spine, its a few synthy Arab language tracks on tape. I have no way of adding Arabic script so it won't be on Discogs anytime soon but I'll scan the J card and put it up here if anyone wants to translate properly. 

With Google Lens installed I did the Persian singer tape I found a while back and found its Googoosh. Not done the whole tape yet and she has a sort of bob cut in one song that makes her look a bit like an Iranian Victoria Wood. They're mostly ballads and love songs and can remember having an upbeat disco track of hers downloaded from Youtube a while back.

Finally for scanning is a portable modem from 1989, it has a floppy and a parallel port for adding to what ever computer you choose. My guessing Amiga / ST or more likely PC. 

 

Left most in that pic but kept the Manual, it'll be up on Archive.org when I have time. But in the meantime have a better shot courtesy of the Science museum.

Nolina at Lullingstone

 So via the BCSS eNews letter we only learned about this on Tuesday when July's newsletter was emailed out. 

Tom Hart Dyke's World Garden, has the first flowering of Nolina hibernica  A big non spiky relative of Agave, along with Dasylirion (more later) makes up most of the succulent flora of Mexico and the Southern US states.

Donated by Paul Spracklin (who, not mentioned in the article, has his own cactus garden in Essex) it was collected from the mountains of Mexico. And as the hot weekend in September falls when we're away next, is most definitely worthy of a field trip.

Wish I'd have known it was flowering from May as when I visited it was past it's prime, still impressive but would love to see it in all its glory. 

A few things I'd mention before getting to the point, there is a new footpath leading down from Shoreham road via the farm ending up at the Roman Villa. It cuts off the need to go down the increasingly busy road and cut through the woods. The other thing is the main Cafe at county park seems to be gone now. Unless I'm being blind and stupid as usual, your only chance for a cuppa is in Lullingstone castle grounds.

Hogweed along the river.

Anyway it doesn't matter that the Nolina had flowered, there was much better stuff to make up for it. Looking around the church at the tombs and memorials, I notice that the Elizabethan equivalent of the current owner was also a well travelled man. Would like to know more about Sir George Hart Knight, but find no info online. 

Sir George Hart Knight

The main World garden is of course well worth a visit along with the Hot and Spiky greenhouse. Where as I've mentioned several times that the Nolina had flowered it seemed that several things adjacent to it were also in bloom. This includes a Cylindropuntia and Dasylirion berlandieri which is coming into bloom. 

 

As for the Nolina well after talking about it judge for yourself.  

Still impressive though. 

We had a look around the hot and spiky greenhouse before catching the train back home. All in all well worth it. 

Steel coloured Eryngo 

A superbike and some romz.

Hello everyone I've got two topics today. Firstly a new book transcribed The Mystery of the Silver Star and the last bit of holiday road testing an R4 with a 3DS, with a few roms added.  

We'll get the book out the way first as its not that important. Number 84 one of the last Hardy boys books released here, is the Mystery of the Silver Star. A book revolving around the sabotage of a new carbon fibre wonder bike, but of course is much more involved. The guy riding, Keith Holland can be thought as a prototypical Chris Boardman or Victoria Pendleton for those who like to bang on about women in everything. But much more Chris Boardman. His rival Gregg Angelotti can be though of as a bad boy of competitive cycling. A pre smack Lance Armstrong, if you will. 

The story itself isn't bad, its not awful by any stretch and its localization is hit and miss. Words like neighbours get their u's but other words like tires are not properly localized. 

You can of course read both books here and here.

Two ROM talks.

We took the R4 from the bootsale on holiday, we reinstalled CFW on it after the original SD card got borked, and we have to say it performed OK. Playing a fan translation of SaGa 3 and Golden Sun via MGBA, works well alongside playing Pokemon Picross again because the crash wiped out all your progress. 

These however are not the two rom talks, though. First up is Golden Nugget Casino. A perfectly serviceable casino sim, that is basically ruined by being clunky. It's OK for what it does but its not horrible, just dull. 

The last one however, is Rainbow Islands Revolution. A fuck awful incarnation of a beloved platformer, that seems to rely on touch screen antics for everything. You control Bub in a bubble via the touch screen and also draw on the touch screen to create rainbows to block / kill enemies. If that sounds clunky and unwieldy then you'd be absolutely correct. There is no non touch screen controls to make it any less clunky and I can't be bothered to go back and see if they have the proper Somewhere Over The Rainbow theme. 

Part of Taito's disastrous updating of its old IP for DS era. I've heard that Bubble Bobble Revolutions isn't bad apart from its Myxomatosis suffering Bub n Bob boxart. Arkanoid DS is boring as hell and I actually own that on physical (£1.49 paid and still feel cheated) much to my dismay. Can remember an old Rev Flattop review of it saying how dull it was and that only after much work does it offer a secret, much better mode.

In fact it took until Bubble Bobble Neo for Xbox 360 and Wii for it to improve and the Switch version (4 Friends) while taking a lot of directions from mobile games, is still playable, says how much the brand wasn't harmed. by the DS / PSP era games. 

EDIT.

Oh and finally, saw this today and RPG nut as I am, wonder why we don't have a golden age of sail / pirate JRPG. Can think of nothing else but upgrading your ship, treasure maps and dungeons and carving out trading routes for a stylized 16th century earth, all European powers sailing to Zipang and Cathay down to the new world and Caribbean. Now that would be worth playing.  

Ibiza All the rest

 We're back and have been for a few days now. Last week was TV based nonsense and as I hardly had it on, is an easy write up. This is all the rest.

Animals.

Saw quite a lot of lizards that we didn't see the last time we were here. Helps that we were staying on the west coast around San Antonio, which seems to be a stronghold. Not many cats  though there were a few strays and such, what I saw most were dogs. Good bois of all sizes and shapes including  one with dreads and a sad boi with wheels. Most fun was watching this lab scrounge up a football and race around with it with many "Ven aqui's" to get him to behave. 

Venus Ven Aqui 

Quite a lot of crabs on this side too, with your Marmorata crab being the crab of choice clinging to rocks and in pools. Though the other type I saw had nice tortoiseshell brown legs with white knees and a white stripe across its carapace and eyes. Not sure what this was and couldn't get a photo of it, but if I strike it lucky searching, you'll be updated. Oh and before I forget quite a lot of sea bream and of quite massive sizes too, they will come along with you when you swim, been calling them the supreme sea bream team. Which is nice.

Marbled Crab

Area.

We stayed at the Azuline Bergantin hotel.  A really nice place outside of San Antonio, good food and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat. Does get overrun with 18-30 type crowds so if you don't like seeing young women with barely much on around the pool (or young blokes come to think of it if that floats your boat) then I don't know what's wrong with you. 

There are some good beaches and that and its worth walking round past the popular beaches to stop at the ones further along as the small bay is silty opposite where we stayed. Reggae reggae has some rocks and I spent a few days near there relaxing and just watching the wildlife. A patch of sea lavender was quite a draw and I've got an unknown blue butterfly photo of it relaxing there. 

Prices have gone up and its over run with Africans selling knock offs but these do not detract too much, the apples have always been there. But you can still shop around and get stuff as there is a Spar on nearly every corner. San Antonio is worth a trip out to, as its the nearest big town, San Joseph not so much as its a one horse town, stop here for a drink if you are stuck here though, its really chilled and friendly. 

All in all one of my all time great vacations.