Spooky Blog In Spooky Vision.

Happy Halloween loyal reader. Heres some google excellence, in which some meddling kids are unmasked by Scooby doo on the Google logo.. If for some reason you're late to the Halloween Party then they'll be here if you wanna look.

Though we don't really do scary movies and that, this pwned my dreams back when I was 6 or so.

We had a proper old school TV unit, basically a brown cabinet unit on wheels, (you may remember these from the Otis and Marvin bit from the Smell Of Reeves and Mortimer) and Dark towers was part of the schools programming on in the morning. They always had a butterfly testcard type thing preceding it and because I loved butterflies as a kid, classmates would ask me what species it was.

Of course Dark Towers main aim was to teach you Maths and English but to make it interesting they added the drama too, which is where the main problems started. It involved ghosts and one in particular the glowing ghost of a knight, boom voiced and accompanied by thunder scared me shitless and pwned my dreams for about 4 weeks later. Looking back it still gives me the creeps but now I can appreciate the sheer beauty of the Radiophonic Workshop score and chuckle that its really the guy who played Chewbacca in the knight costume. Also Derek (Heads and Tails) Griffiths sang the end theme which wasn't so bad.

We don't remember anything else about Dark Towers except the name which I thought was called Dark Tower for ages, and that there was another programme involving backwards writing spacemen.
But that wasn't scary so it doesn't count.

A good old song session.

Finally managed to track down that Nursery Rhyme Karaoke thing.  Its not by Sony of course (its for the Wii) and it seems that its done by Mindscape and involves quite a list of songs.  Sadly not featuring Bobby Shaftoe or the dirty version of Popeye the Sailorman we used to sing, its got quite a line up of songs including B.I.N.G.O. (and bingo was his name Oh!).

In fact we used to make up quite a few songs to sing when we were kids.   Man I used to know the entire intro song to Willy Fogg, thanks to Richard Farthing teaching me the words when I was 8.  You can probably see the intro on Youtube as well as check out the rest of the BRB International did here.  Actually thats a pretty awesome line up Dogtanian, Iron Kid and Willy Fogg all pretty cool.  With only the interminable David the Gnome series and inexplicable blind kid drama Nico to let the side down. 

Anyway not only did Rich teach me theme tunes he taught me this dirty rhyme too.  It involves one Mickey Mouse being bad and goes like this:

Mickey Mouse
In his house
Pulling down his trousers
Quick Mum
Smack his bum
Before he does another one.

It would be years later before I found out there was another one in a similar vein about Donald Duck written in a big book of playground slang.  For those interested this goes like this:

Donald Duck
Did some Muck
On the kitchen floor
Daisy Duck
Ate it up
Donald did some more.

Update Me Do.

Just a brief update before Sundays inevitable outpouring. 

Seems that nursery rhyme Singstar I alluded to actually exists.  Even worse there is something similar soon to be released for the Wii.  Man there are just no more new ideas.

Seems we have two more for the deathlog as we say goodbye to Mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot and Wos / BXs very own Rev Owen.

The Rev Owen we solely remember for bigging up the DS version of Fushigi no Dungeon Shiren the Wanderer when BX split from WOS.  He seemed quite a genuine guy and from photos looked spookily like my old Humanities teacher (another nice chap as well).

Mandelbrot of course is known for Fractals, the mathematical representation of an Acid trip  :).  Here is a video that proves this.

Finally the latest beta of PCSX2 finally plays Romancing SaGa Minstrel song, which with a few glitches and framerate drops is simply jaw dropping.  Of course its hard as hell (its Rom SaGa of course it PWNS) and some of the voice overs are questionable we like the woman hassled by a butterfly for some comic relief.
But damn it if the whole thing works.

Kernow PT2. The long and winding road

Hold tiiight because we have an awful lot to get through.

Heligan

Heligan.  Situated past St Austell, Heligan is a typical garden with many things to recommend it.  First is the grounds itself reclaimed from forest after the previous keepers died off in WW1.  Mainly hills with specimen trees and only a few open areas of traditional gardens, these drift into woodland proper, mixed with Rhododendrons and tree ferns just to give you the scale that something isn't quite right there.  There is a quiet kitchen garden area with a wide variety of crops including some pears trained up against  the wall and a pumpkin patch.  The best thing of course is the original glasshouses which hold melons and grapes, and a budding succulent collection including one of the biggest Pleiospilos Neli I've ever seen and a Monanthes up on the wall.
Also lurking around was more succulents including a big starfish flowered Stapelia and a big yucca. 
Further on was a lot of animals including ducks, geese, and a hide with various look outs to the outside.  The best of these had a female Pheasant in the bushes (we later saw a male but he was frightened off into the bushes by a clod hopping rambler).

So thats Heligan, near Mevagissey Cornwall.  £10 to get in.  Senior Citizens, kids and the less able considerably less.

Other Stuff. 

Looks like Pennywise has finally got round to finishing off Monty on The Run for FDS.  Full patch can be found here on RHDN.  This includes a review written by myself in my non UK guise as Monty Mole.

Excellent BX music / game thread here.
For those link phobic it asks you to come up with a genre of game and a setting and add 10 or so songs to it that you see fit.  We came up with a crap version of Singstar but with their mainstream hits replaced with absolute tat.   Coming up with this big old list we were struck by this.  Why is there never a nursery rhyme version of Singstar. 

I suspect that many of them are in the public domain, and would be cheap to licence so why hasn't there really been a sing along version for mums and dads to croon to their little ones.  Or get them to join in, with older members singing the words and that.  I know its not really cool but Singstar is basically drunken entertainment for hen parties, belting out old Hi Energy anthems and current chart hits, so why not do the same for little kids (minus the booze and Kylie). 

Other game idea.

This one also struck me as a no brainer.  A themed Nintendogs but instead of the dogs, allow you to raise Yoshi's instead.  They would look pretty cute as they bumble around and you could give them gifts of Goombas and Koopa Troopas and Watermelons too. 

Sorry Lone Viewer again.

We had major problems trying to get online and it turns out not only was there a fault with the cable outside but, horror of horrors, it looks like an old cable TV installation we had upstairs was causing the problem thanks to the Virgin Media tech dude.  It was leeching power like some kind of energy vampire and to be blunt was causing half our problems.

Worse, catching up with the world at large we find out that Aaron Carl is dead from cancer.  For those not familiar with the guy, he released Down on Metroplex Records one of the best labels around, and something which I haven't heard in ages.  Its pretty sad as it appeared that he died shortly after diagnosis. 

Anyway normal service has resumed.