Kew and the Titan

 Don't know if I've posted this but, its been an exceptional year for plants, here, especially at Kew, where they've had not one but two Titan Arums flower. 

I've seen both but came too early for the first, as I could only get the day off a few days before it opened, but a Facebook notification got me to see the second bloom, as they posted on a Friday and said it'll be open for the next 24-36 hours. 

So we decided to head on down to West London and have a look. A disclosure for those, I also wanted to have a butchers at their Agave montana which was also going to flower, but am far too early for that, its in the same general area but outside near the alpine house. 

Love that this is marked as the Agave Death bloom

There's another Agave in bloom this one is marked as X Leopoldii and Wiki has it as a hybrid between filifera and schidigera. You can see that outside the front of the Princess of Wales conservatory.

x leopoldii in bloom

The Titan itself is of course inside the tropical zone and while over now, is huge. I'm guessing at most 3m / 10ft 5 tall but can see it easily over 2.5m 8ft. I couldn't determine a smell but supposedly its bad, and the typical rotten meat stench to bring in the pollinators. More on that below. 

Amorphophallus titanum 

You can't go all this way and not check out the arid zone, especially if your a cactus nut like myself. A few mesembs are out including a Lithops and one of the shrubby Cephalophyllums but the two I'm singling out are the popular starfish flowered Stapelia grandiflora and the unknown Pyrenacantha malviflora.

Couldn't smell this one either, but you get the idea.

I'm guessing this is what was going on inside the titan arum, but made more clearer to see from this Asclepiad (and on a much smaller scale). The flower attracts flies to pollinate it and while it doesn't have the size advantage of the titan or broadcast range, this will still bring them in the dry South African desert. 

Not to be confused with Pyracantha or firethorn

This Pyrenacantha was also flowering, but this weird caudiciform hasn't got much in the way of flowers, those long catkins are what passes for its bloom. You can see the fruit form in the corner and from what I've read could be viable. It may need a male and or female or its flowers could be Bisexual (having male and female blooms on the same plant) its not clear.

With the main halls done, I had a look outside before taking the long bus ride home back to the suburbs. 

Jackdaw, not common in London

Some Mario's for you

 For some reason there is a Sega Master system version of Mario now, as part of the SMSPower's summer of Homebrew, the original Super Mario Bros has been ported over in either enhanced mode or original flavour. 

While not being quite the insane port that the C64 version was, this is still quite the feat, and it means that the humble SMS gets a quality platformer to join Wonderboy 3 and Psycho Fox.

Oh and if you're wondering about the other direction, there's also an Amiga version of Sonic in the works as well as Somari for the NES. The latter had a thread on RHDN where they were slowly turning it back into an actual Sonic game for the NES.

World 2-1 SMB SMS.

I'll leave you with a screenshot of it running in Ares.

Croyd- gone

 Took a trip down to Croydon yesterday for the first time in ages, and damn if it isn't a ghost town now. 

I can understand the antisocial behaviour and vast amounts of immigrants and that which made it look like it was Africa with trams, but I've never seen it so empty before.

Going through the Whitgift centre and noticing that half the shops are boarded up and closed down. I know the rain kept most people of the streets apart from the Hare Krishna lot who gamely set up a drum circle to preach. But this used to be busier, we had Kangz before along with ever flavour of weirdo Christian and Ispamist. The only nice thing I've seen was a mural of birds you'll never see, including a Shrike, Dartford Warbler and Goldcrest, along with the more attainable Grey Wagtail and Ring Necked Parakeet. 

Full birb mural for you.

Left there empty handed and didn't even check Beckenham because of the rain. 

This is a Saturday it should be packed.

The thing is, back in the day it used to be amazing, posh and upmarket. Went to see Father Christmas in Allders back in the day and in the 90's was a place to buy stuff in the sales. You could get there from Woolwich with either a 54 or 75 both services are much shortened now. I can't understand why this is not on par with Bromley as a hot location in South London. 

Voodoo Plots

 This one must have slipped my net. The Voodoo Plot is basically Hardys go Jazz, as a series of thefts from antiques boutiques lead them down to New Orleans. 

It's a bit more involved than that. The Voodoo comes from a sub plot where a friend of the boys, Peter Walker, has his grandpa threatened so he won't play on their basketball team. It seems that his Grandad is also quite a renowned jazz player with his own club. And of course the two cases are involved when it turns out that the voodoo gang threatening him are also in league with the thieves.

This is also the first time I'd ever come across the no step on snek / Gadsden flag as the American revolution was never covered here in detail. And, yes, there are elements of this in this story too, as someone is dressed up as the Swamp Fox and another as George III. 

Anyway you can read both the UK and US versions here and here. Though there are no differences between them. 

Happy 80th

 As the net is fucked yet again, I'm having to do this as if I'd on holiday, via the phone. 

I will give a big shout to my mum who turned 80 yesterday. Thanks for all you did for me, may there be many more years to come.

Some arcade hangovers

 We have had a nightmare journey to Folkestone today took two hours and stuck in traffic, next to a lorry going and some stop start bits down the M20 going home. It was OK there (Never been) but, fuck this am not waiting in traffic again. 

As an aside. this is a quick update. Mostly for two games I've seen back in Mallorca and never really noticed anywhere else. 

A Whack-a-Mole called Ghost Hunter, seems to be Spanish in origin. Some Engrish, but apart from that, crickets online.

Ghost Hunter

Next is a Japan cab called Dino Land 3. 

Some googling on Jim Breen's Japan Page, gets a Chinese translation of the Kanji / Hanzi on above coin part as Lottery Ticket Outlet. So this I'm guessing is some sort of ticket redemption machine where you win tickets and redeem them for prizes

A bit more searching gets you a ticket redemption mech by Yenox on BeGay. And a search for redemption game gets you Dino land a ball shooting game for kids. Not by Yenox who seem to do parts instead. 

Zombie Trax

 The Track of the Zombie or the Hardys join the circus. It's half right as they are hired to look into the case of a zombie of a Hessian soldier setting fires close to an old house in Burlington, Vermont.

The circus case is one of sabotage, and has almost the entire retinue of Hardy chums working on this. It's also a coincidence that said circus is rolling into Burlington itself. 

Its not a bad case either, not a stand out nor Witchmaster's key bad. It does rely a bit on a detectives kit the boys have but not as much as Trapped at Sea. 

Oh and the only difference is now sic is put in the UK version. You can read both here and here.