Smash Hits Keyboard

This doesn't really merit a Sunday Update so here is a few bits and pieces we've found out about this table hooter.

I'm pretty sure from looking online (and in the Argos catalogue) that this is a rebadged version of an Acoustic Solution synth. Specifically the mid range version

Boasting 100 instruments and rhythms but in reality has only 29 instruments, the others double and triple up for other instruments.  I doubt this could be due to mine being found rather than bought as it seems to be present on all of them.  Its a little sketchy when playing either vibrato or sustain and has a nice range of drums with it. 

Sounds.
Not too bad, there is  a few favourites on here such as a nice chiptunesque Square Wave, a string ensemble and a shamisen.  I'm not into circuit bending so I couldn't tell you what the insides look like or where to solder, but if you want to sample it there is an out port at the back, (we're using a usb audio grabber and it fits there).  We'll add some samples on our mediafire account when we have the whole lot done, and if we can work it out make a soundfont from them.
But so far don't hold your breath anytime soon.

4 Posts of Extreme Excellence.

The whole idea of this was to post over the 4 days of the Easter Holidays but as you can see this is Easter Sunday and you'll have to sit tight for a massive update.

Good Friday.
We took a trip to Polhill Garden centre.  on the promise that,  A. there would be animals and B. it would be a nice day out.   Animal wise they had sheep, assorted bunnies and chicken chicks.  Oh and a sheepdog that had to be hosed down due to the heat. 

Polhill isn't half bad, it does pretty much anything you want for a garden and as a bonus it has one heck of a farm shop.    They cover most of the usual stuff such as locally grown produce and cakes and also take in other stuff including for a teetotaller such as me, premium soft drinks.  They have a range of Fentimans drinks for about £1.50 (we had a Rose Lemonade which was unexpectedly nice), as well as other bespoke and artisan brands of food and drink.  They also had a range of cacti which wasn't entirely awful, mainly Eriosyce, Mammilaria, Gymnocalycium and what I ended up buying, a Parodia which I thought was Magnifica but with a pink stigma (Magnifica flowers are all yellow from the pics I've seen.) Turns out its Buiningii from the photos labelled.

St Georges day.

Our local pub actually had bunting out for celebrating St Georges day.  Entirely laudable in their aim we thought it was cool that they actually thought of the English for a change.  Big up everyone elses national day if you like but remember to defend your own with as much vigour, when it comes down to it.

Anyway this is one of two bootsales we went to, an overland trek to Charlton Meridian and one that never fails to shock with its mix of pirate and the knock off.   Worryingly we got a PS2 network adaptor and coupled with a few spare hard drives that we accumulated over the years we set about the task of getting it to work on our modded PS2.  (The one supplied didn't really fit but was an old 80GB miles larger than what I have) (17GB).  Coupled with Virgin Vinyl from some dude punting records out for 10p, we got Parents don't understand  Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff (remember when the DJ was an integral part of every rappers act) and Coming From Tha D a sampler from an Intuit-Solar CD collection (has Dopplereffekt so it comes home with us). 

Storm spoiled the rest of DR Who, but damn does that look like a corker. Also don't scare the Hare, a bastard mix of Portal 2 robot, gameshow and winners game from Shooting Stars, fronted by Richard O'Brien lookalike Jason Bradbury.  Was team 1 really called weegee the storm started so it fucked it all up.

Eggsta sunday.

Pedham place farm. A miles parking and not enough exits makes this good only.  It makes up for its parking issues by being massive in size. 

This wasn't our first choice but hell did it throw up some weird stuff.   Someone was punting a Size 16 S+M outfit with vibrating nipple clamps, along with wetsuits and other diving gear.  Yeah really, that has to be the most fucked up thing I've seen in ages.  Also being punted was some German VCS games in black labels, they had Snail against Squirrel , whose blurb here makes it sound the most perverse thing ever. 

Raum 102

We'll not lie to you this is going to be yet another round up of tat.  One in which we break the holy grail (mentioning work).

3DS.
A trip up town finally, got us a play on an actual 3DS.  All I can say is this, the 3D does work and yes there is a slider to make it more 3D or less.  To be honest all we played so far is Pilotwings in 3D, a nice little tech demo in which you use the flimsy Analogue stick to fly a plane around a town looking for rings to fly through.  The 3D bit makes it look like you are seeing right into the middle distance which is nice.  Other stuff noticed is that when you crash your pilot parachutes out of your compromised biplane.  Apart from that and the fact that the cunts have region locked it (inexcusable for any console let alone a handheld) its not a bad piece of kit.  Also my eyes did feel a bit funny afterwards though that could be due to an early start also.

Work features in an advert.

According to a workmate they have a new Virgin Holidays advert for Jamaica filmed around work.  Now don't get your hopes up, we do NOT work in Jamaica, the ad was filmed around here.  A guy came up to us while working and said that they were filming (we didn't ask what) and would his car be OK (yeah we have no clamping here.)  I haven't seen the ad but in true Amazon reviewer tradition its the most excellentist thing ever.

Emperors Birthday.

Today is my birthday and as a departure I have some gifts for you.

http://www.mediafire.com/?9ak6xpy6u69qbxg
This is an old Shining Force Strategy Mag from Game Players Magazine.  42MB download.
Giving the overview of the main characters and a walkthrough for maps 1-20.

X files Mini Comic Trick Of The Light. 17.6 MB
http://www.mediafire.com/?pmmu8blb1xh7rdw

Dave Cole Spinning in his grave toward the Planets Core.

Oh and because we've been lax with scan of the week we'll give you Sony Imagesofts Make My Own Video.
With C+C Music Factory. Aren't you glad Sony aren't cunts anymore (Sarcasm Fail.)

20 'Century' XXX

As promised this is our 100th post and as a milestone we'll be taking a look at the claims of veteran reviewers Harry and Michael Medved, authors of trash film guide the Golden Turkey Awards an early 80's look at cinematic clunkers.

In fact we'll be delving into a single topic, and look away now if filth offends, its the Most Shamelessly (and Tastelessly) Derived Title For A Pornographic Film category.

Our list of nominees are as follows... IMDB links where possible.  One Million AC/DC is NSFW and ludicrous to boot.

My Bare Lady
Sex Family Robinson
One Million AC/DC *
Pray For Rosemary's Beaver **
Flesh Gordon
Lust Horizons ***
The Sexorcist
Naughty Network
The Pink Lagoon ****
Every Which Way She Can
The French Lieutenants Boys
Beyond the Valley Of The Ultra Milkmaids
On Golden Blonde
Fleshdance *****
Flashpants
First Times At Cherry High
Sperms Of Endearment *6
Sister Dearest *7
E.T The Extra Testicle
and last 'butt' not least Romancing The Bone.

As you can see from the list there are millions ranging from cheapjack Hardcore productions, guaranteed to pull in the dough on the blockbusters name alone, to Million Years AC/DC with its rubber monsters and daft premise, swinging cavemen.  The winner of the category is Beyond the Valley Of The Ultra Milkmaids, which the Medveds slated as:

The producers of BTVOTUM managed to to evoke echoes of all the films noted above, in an absolutely disgusting motion picture that had nothing to do with Russ Meyer, vixens, dolls, valleys, Jaqueline Susann, or Roger Ebert.

*In Eastman colour, complete with dude in a gorilla suit and a fat guy who looks like Pavarotti this actually looks like a hoot, mixing monster mash and softcore silliness.
** You'll notice theres no link, thats because it doesn't exist.  There's a reference to Roman Polanski seeing a sign for Rosemary's Beaver (tagline Pray for Rosemary's pussy) in downtown L.A. when his film Rosemary's Baby was on, and thats as far as it gets.
*** Another no show, a Lust Horizons was released but in 1992, far after the book was published.
**** Contains Ron Jeremy
***** Another released years later job, a Fleshdance was released in 2008 but is unlikely to be the same film. EDIT its not.  Its alternate name is Sexdance Fever and stars Ron Jeremy.
*6 We haven't found this one neither, its from 85.  There is of course a later pron version but that doesn't count.  We linked to bug girls blog simply cos of the insects man.
*7 Unlikely to ever be released uncut as Traci Lords was 16 when she made this. 

Make mine a 99

Can't believe this, but this marks our 99th post, the next you will see will be our hundredth missive.
If I can find and remember it we'll be looking into whether the list of derivative porn names provided by the excellent Golden Turkey Awards ever existed as films.

In fact we haven't had a scan of the week in ages nor some half remembered tat from my childhood. So here is two for the price of one.

WCCF Stattos dream come true.

As a child of the 80's we grew up with the era of the Panini football sticker.  Every year they would punt out a new set of stickers and an album to stuff them in.  We would rush out and buy them an furiously swap them in the playgrounds with cries of got, got, got, got, need.  We never managed to collect a whole set and despite coming close.  They were split into what would now be called the SPL and Premier league clubs, with occasional foil stickers of club badges that were bloody hard to get.  We wanted an Arsenal badge but no one would swap, in fact now I remember it, the Dunfermiline Athletic badge was hard to get hold off as well.

Panini did other stuff as well (we collected Beano and Dandy stickers as well as stuff from the Transformers cartoon), but all they were ever known for was football stickers.

What brought all this back was a booklet from an issue of Game Japan we got from the Japan centre sale.
Apart from some quite literally pornoriffic Queens Blade artwork, there's quite a line up of info for arcade games including World Club Champion Football 08-09 by Sega. 

A bastard mix of Panini sticker and Football game, that if the arcade hadn't coughed up blood and died sometime in the mid to late 90's could have been the saviour of the arcade in the UK.  I'm pretty sure there would be a market for this, as soccer is well known for attracting Statto style anoraks.  You get an IC card to register data and have a mix of cards to lay down on the screen to make your team.  Like the fantasy football leagues printed in the papers, certain cards are marked out as rare and cost more rather than your rank and file players.  You then assemble a team from the cards you have and play football.

Of course this being Japan there's a strong Engrish prescence here, located in the various skill descriptions.

Rather than bore you with all the normal ones we'll put up some of the most outlandish descriptions in a small list here (clubs they play for in brackets).

Samir Nasri.  The Brew Master (Arsenal)
Francesc 'Cesc' Fabregas 4-Dimensional Through-balls (Arsenal)
Adriano The Power Horse (InterMilan)
Stevie G Terrifying Right Foot (Liverpool) Actually you could picture Motty saying this in a pinch.
Karim Benzema The Trench Mortar (Lyon)
Nordin Amrabat Sturdy Penetration (PSV Eindhoven)
David Villa The Wedge Buster (Valencia)

With that we will leave you for another week.