Clearing out my cupboard.

Been as the title says clearing out my cupboard, rearranging deckchairs as you will, stuff found includes a long forgotten and hilariously Engrishy pron mag, some old coursework books that are bound for recycling and more magazines than you can shake a stick at.

Most of the mags apart from the pron were either Fortean Times going way back to the 90's, Edge including a few early ones, Retrogamer and Carriers Kitchen featuring camp chef Robert Carrier.

I remember collecting these back in the day and have most of them either (not kidding IIRC its only some issues in the 50's and 60's that I'm missing).  They were a special occasion cookery partwork from the 1980's and a product of their time, devoting areas to certain ingredients, regions and wine and other booze. Nowadays, partworks are all about building a replica Yamamoto battleship or Winston Churchill out of pasta in 108 weekly installments.

The first installment is always at a special price of £1.99 and comes with churchills cigar / or a bit of keel, regular issues are of course much much more, but by the time you've built anything substantial it will of course long since disappeared.  They're normally done by De Agostini but back in the day Marshall Cavendish were the kings of the partwork.

There were a few that I keep seeing over the years including Input (a 1980s series for computer users), Supercook a culinary encyclopedia and range of sugarcraft items, and How To Fix it, a partwork based on DIY.  None of these were ever completed by anyone and remaining parts and stuff clogged up cupboards, lofts, garages and under the bed before being sold off at a bootsale, charity shop or binned.

Cyber Patrol.

This is a sort of round up, I've spent the best part of an hour updating an old PC with Windows updates. As you can tell it runs XP and was a refugee from work.  It was pretty much infected with a pretty nasty piece of malware called CyberPatrol a net monitoring software on serious drugs.  When I first had it you couldn't really do anything with the PC as it was part of the start up sequence and blocked nearly all internet access and install of stuff. We managed to get administrator access and install a few programs including Revo Uninstaller which manage to banish most of it, though when I did go online it still blocked updates.

For those unaware of this program, its a sort of net nanny on drugs, if you really don't want your kids seeing something they shouldn't, I'm sure there are better products that do not block Windows updates, Antivirus updates and pages related to both of those topics as well as stuff to remove it by default.

We were lucky in that I added Linux Mint as a dual boot and could use that to surf the net with (windows programs do not bother linux) and look for solutions.  This is the most comprehensive uninstall instructions I've found so far.  Indeed when I did look at my registry there was stuff left behind including stubborn Norton antivirus traces and a few bits and pieces of Cyber Patrol lurking in HKEY  Software.  I don't know if it worked or not as its not connected up to my router since I made it automatically update windows, but if its free of that pox then I'll chalk that up as a success.

Finally I'll leave you with this grabbed from useless phones camera as its the first flower of the new year.

Aloinopsis Schoonesii

Edit It wasn't it still blocks certain things like windows update and the likes good job I have Linux Mint and its an old machine.  I'm guessing reinstalling windows might do some good here so back up (I have nothing) and bite the bullet.

Bodge Job.

Not a great week to be honest and I'll tell you why in just a minute, but for now I'll link a to a nice little cross platform music player.  Clementine is something I'd heard of before mainly in a whats a decent alternative to I Tunes kinda way, but never really gave it much thought as I happily use Foobar 2000 for music needs.  Until that is I required it to do one specific job, to stream radio.  I suspect you can do it via Foobar 2000 but to be honest I used VLC to play that particular need, except it will not accept the feed from Intergalactic FM.

Clementine happily will play stuff like that as well as import a whole folder full of gear and play that too (which if I'm honest I don't really like, I play stuff from real media most of the time as well as well as the odd file format).  To do that you need to click on playlist and add stream and copy and paste your URL of stuff, it works and handles it very well.  If I only use that bit and import stuff from my Blackbastard   I'll consider it well made.  You can get Clementine Here oh and if you do install it please click on the extras to add kittens and the almighty hypnotoad to your player.

What a day.

We have added a new keyboard to my old PC.  Its an nice wireless model which replaces a Pakard Bell activeboard that came from a PC I had for over 10 years and is now toast.  Its nice and all but what I really wanted was something I found thrown out at work.  Its a QSenn Keyboard that is both Chinese and "Enlish" and was sadly knackered.  We had the idea to take my perfectly working keyboard apart and transfer the keys across making a sort of hybrid engrish / Chinese keyboard.

It'll be easy just pry off all the keys and put them on the active board...

Problem one, both keyboards are different sizes and certain keys do not fit.  Well I'll just add certain keys, no problemo...  It looked the part, all black with splashes of grey sort of like an old soviet computer, but the keys were wobbly and didn't stay together well.

Problem two, putting it back together. Happy with my hybrid monster, I decided to put it back together and add the various bits of circuit back together, oh dear we really should have taken photos, first of all we ignored all the special keys and circuit and when it was put it back, it didn't work.  Going back and adding the special bits was a right bastard and in the end it wasn't worth it as it got stopped at the bios screen moaning that you should add a keyboard to proceed.  In conclusion I say it was a total bust even, if it looked nice with its gloriously wobbly keys.

New Year Round Up

Hello everyone, and welcome to a brand new year.  Its a bit of a round up this time as I have a few bits of info and no overall theme.

People who often annoy us.

Do you watch Celebrity Big Brother the equivalent of pond dipping the z list talent pool, they have a line up that is semi interesting as it has both Liz Jones and Dappy in it this year.  Liz Jones is the archetypal cat lady / militant vegan, think Kathleen Turner in The War of the Roses for mentalness and you'll not go far wrong.  Dappy is the little cunt who was in N Dubz, his only claim to fame is getting kicked in the head by a horse and suffering no mental damage at all.

Like Celebrity Jungle with Steve Davis I'm not going to put myself out to watch this as you know its dull as fuck but until I saw a brief bit of news online I thought this was some sort of wind up.

Further looking into this has a few more celebs such as Jim Nick Nick Davidson, Evander Holyfield, Lionel Blair and Sam Faiers from TOWIE.  Its on channel 5 if you really care enough to watch this shit but I'll be there a month or two later when CSI Vegas is back.

Identity Thief.

Possibly the worst film  I've seen in a long while, normally I don't do film but this is a comedy and so decided to watch it.  I really wish I didn't, its a modern comedy so there aren't really any good jokes in it just humiliation and swearing so you're distracted from the fact that it isn't funny.   At all.

Short precis, bloke has his Identity stolen by one of the fat slags, he decides to track her down after his card is declined and bring her to justice.  There is a bounty hunter guy and some drug dealers (X Files I Want To Believe's Amanda Peet and T.I (Texas Instruments)) but they're not troubling the plot any and in the end it all gets a bit syrupy as she's sent down and the guy gets back with his family, and is fucking awful every single minute.  I like my comedies like Airplane, hilarious, this didn't even make me laugh, once.  Its not the swearing, hell, for some folk thats just punctuation, but its not comedy its just laziness.  It means you can't write for shit and are relying on the gross out humour and swears to carry it.