CSI Worlds End

This is the last post from this decade from me, I know I've been busy over the past few days, so it's time to relax and add a few more I missed out on over the past year and such.

Sigala Strings of Life.

I knew why I blocked this out so much as I knew it would not do it justice. Its an OK remake of a storming techno track. Stick to that Jackson 5 re edit thing he did that was better.

Aphex Twin Live London / Mancland.

Still working my way through Manchester but damn. these are two brilliant sets. The visuals make this alone with trippy RDJ faces and strobes to trigger an epileptic fit in all but the most hardy of viewers. The music is bang on too a mix of old school and live edits of some new shit, I can hear Abundance from Collapse EP there. Well worth it.

Feature presentation.

This is one of the episodes where Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) is boss, and centers on a kid found dead in a storm drain in the height of a storm.   He was excluded from school for being a racist and all round edgelord and pretty much despised by his whole year.

As the case goes on it becomes more and more clear that he is leaving the far right and striking up a friendship with the school caretaker a Rwandan refugee who teaches him about good and evil.  Until the final act pans out that the janitor dude was responsible for a massacre of Tutsi rebels back in 90's and fled to the states to take up asylum. 

It always struck me as a cool story this, there is not much on TV that shows someone as racist getting a non bad guy role. Let alone a redemption arc from the story, which this is.  They are either stupid or evil and it seems that everything in the current year seemed to have a rise of the black shirts, whether it was time travelling Fash in doctor who trying to stop Rosa Parks, to the bastard peaky blinders siding with Oswald Moseley.

There is a good and long talk on Youtube from Literature Devil from this sort of thing. It's called can a hero be racist and puts out the flaws. Looking at the episode itself, it seems that the character himself read a shedload of philosophy books and such like. Kinda like a Sargon does, though I don't see Locke for him to read. There are works by Jung and Heidegger and such like. 

Also with a general move toward non violent actions and such he was leaving the violent world of the Far Right behind. This remains one of my favourite episodes along with anything Lady Heather is in.

This would be Ray Langston's last season and I've still not seen the last episode he was in before handing over to Ted Danson as DB Russell.  Final note here Willows daughter, Lindsay, is really hot, as the school is putting on a show version of Crabaret (Cabaret).

The usual flipped and skipped edition.

This is my all of the other stuff and apart from Sunday, will be my last blog of the year.

Books.

First up have gotten into the whole Alphabet detective novel series, by the late Sue Grafton.  Kinsey Millhone is the Santa Teresa private eye, and main character of the series.

I, for some reason, always pictured her being played by Kate Quilton of food unwrapped fame, they have the same short hair and style in clothes. If they ever did a series based on the books it would be her I choose to play her.

Non TV media.

You want to know what I've been watching the past few months why transcribing books and shit. A shed load of the "alt right" pipeline. I.E. centrists like Tim Pool, and Vee and the Britisher.  I've gone off of Sargon and such, as he's become a hearth and home Trad Con. Metokur another favourite has gone to Bitchute to die a death in ignonimity. 

Any way non controversial stuff is the journey to the microcosmos channel. When life under a microscope is put under a microscope, with relaxing radiophonic music.  Relaxing.

Still enjoying ASMR as, even though I don't get tingles, I do enjoy ambient music and helps me concentrate and zone out.  Visual Sounds 1 pisstake on the whole genre, as well as being ASMR is also really funny, and well worth watching.

Finally as Cassetteboy are a bunch of lefties who won't criticize Corbyn, you'll want something that sounds like the old CDs they put out on Barry's bootlegs but on Youtube. Wavy News  by Noisepuppet is your saviour in this respect. Cut ups from the voice of America news cast and Tommy McMommy presenting wavy news.

Finally a few missed and flipped stuff from the past two posts.

We have NHKWorld back thanks to SKY Q upgrade and while a few favourites have gone, turning it on, on Xmas eve, we were treated to a Hayao Miyazaki documentary.

Thanks to a big breakcore mix we have a palatable Clean Bandit remix its the quack quack quack, woof woof woof one from last year but now it says fuck along with clown noises.

Missed off Arabia with Levinson Wood, from the TV round up which is a shame as its fucking ace. A tour through the Arabian peninsula with a foray into Somalia due to Yemen being bombed out of existence by the Saudis. Absolute mad lad.

Finally, don't normally do ads, but there is a Martin Bell charity ad that has him talking about disadvantaged kids in the Congo and then talking about the DLC. I guess paying two quid ain't enough, maybe they'll bung in some horse armour.

Traditional Boxing Day Music round up.

I haven't been keeping up at all with current pop, and so far anything good I've heard on the radio can be dismissed, by failing memory and such.

The good.

Marshall Jefferson Move Your Body passable remix on Ultra Records.

I've long passed the target age of Kiss FM listenership target audience.  So was surprised to see this getting a rework. They've removed the old house beats for more lamer beats and added the target whooshy bits behind it so it screams modern. But props for getting this shown on Kiss even if its a target 1 play in a blue moon.

Pearl River Sound.

Any of their tracks basically, but thanks to I love acid, they are my new favourite group of the year.

Bananarama Record day mixes

Made the mistake of going up town on record shop day, where everything is invite only for the usual tracks to get repressed. Picked this up about 2 months later. Its got the only version of Venus I like on here and mixes by Ewan Pearson and Tom Middleton so you know its going to be good.

A Certain Ratio.

Its rare that guitar stuff will grip me, but this is live from the ballroom was a highlight for me. Lots of really nice guitar stuff.  From a trip up to Streatham.

Creepy music from Dungeon Siege 3. 

Don't know if its a legit OST from this but there a two tracks or rather ambiances from both the Stonewild caves and the ghost mansion nearby that are perfect encapsulations of the dark ambient
aesthetic. 

Dj Python.

Seriously, this is really good. If you like IDM and hate Reggaeton, this is the culmination of both and its really good. Up there with Squarepusher's pisstaking of jungle.  Also, on Squarepusher, new vic acid stuff out.

From nursery to misery.

From a big Legowelt mix, had to look through their tapes added to youtube. A lot of really weird DIY bedroom stuff. Really worth a look for synthpop and outsider artist fans.

The bad.

BIllie Eyelash (Eilish) 90's bonus game music.

I saw her being promoted by ads on the tube and at first didn't mind her kooky shtick. But the more I listen to this track whatever it is she did, I can't get out of my head a bonus round from a middling 90's belt scroller or home console platformer from  a middle tier euro publisher.

Ellie Goulding feat Juice WRLD Rape Me.

Its not so horrible, this, it's just that, A. Ellie |Goulding got married and  B. Juice snuffed it thanks to an overdose.   She ended up entangled in a m way smash and Juice died (of falling over on pills).

I guess that I take prescriptions track should be up on the good pile also.

Sunshower Post Malone.

Or is it Sunflower by Nami Shimada. I really should re-edit both together. Also props for being on the cover of Fifa 19. Its not everyday a piss poor rapper  gets to be on a football game.

In a German Car.

This is rap here. This is why kids are killing themselves, with knives and shit. Its wank. Really wank.
Its bearable at x2 speed, like most of these Drake type beats and such. Which reminds me to add DJ Python to the good list.

Merry Christmas

This is the one where we talk about good and bad television of the year. Come back tomorrow for best music and the day after for anything I've forgotten which is suspect is everything.

We will start with the traditional good shows.

Ed Stafford Man, Wife, Child.

Marooned on a tropical island (Merak island, Indonesia). Ed has to provide for his wife and his child, this involves killing a pig, and leaping off a cliff. His wife is hot and does the same sort of thing he did, leading a trip down the Orinoco river.

Rise of the Nazis.

BBC2 tour de force explaining the roots of the Nazi party and how thanks to one man promoting them, to essentially own the libs, let in one of the worst regimes of the 20th century.  We learned that Hermann Goering owned a Lion, that the notorious camps were set up for political prisoners first (sorry far right cunts, but they were Jewish political prisoners mainly.)

A great many pale. male and stale experts here to give it the necessary gravitas, and sadly Ash Sarkar as well, delivering one of the greatest lines in this. They killed Communists, now read that with a whiny inflection to your voice.  Class.

His Dark Materials (Northern Lights)

Big Sunday night drama from the BBC here. Never read the books and heard it was pretty good and gives god a right kicking. There are armoured polar bears, daemons and the inquisition killing kids for prevent original sin.  It all hinges on dust in the frozen north and some kid from this world.

Tasmania.

A documentary that I can't really remember much about, but according to notes we have a swaggering platypus in this and massive river lobsters too.

Viking Burial Channel 4

This is focused on Repton in Derbyshire, where a mass grave and tentative settlement had been uncovered.  Radiocarbon dates were screwed up to due to their habit of eating large amounts of fish. If you ever see it around, please take a look, its a good show.


Miranda awards for televisual excressence.

Just as there was brilliant shows there must be absolute bollocks for this to carry on.

The God Code.

A thoroughly horrible documentary. One of the history channel's favourites I'm afraid. It involves looking through more and more ancient Torah's to see patterns for things that may not come true. It opines that the Ark of the Covenant if found will hold the worlds most perfect Torah, if found and a weird Tabula Rasa based on Michael Drosnin's research (not him though.)

The Mary Rose.

Adding woke trash to the uncovering of the titular galleon, raised from the Solent back in the 1980's.  With some weird race based take on the skeletons hauled up from the depths. Apparently two of them were North Africans and a few were Europeans rather than British. 

It ignores the fact that, A. It's a ship and can sail anywhere along the European coast, and B. that London and the other southern port towns were actually quite cosmopolitan back then.

7 Continents

Sad to put an Attenborough down here but, this is a dystopian look at man and his effect on the planet. For every look at a rare and threatened creature we see (Iberian Lynx, Whales resurgent and freezing albatross chicks) there is a sledgehammer of guilt on how we as human's have fucked up. 

If extinction rebellion did documentaries, this is the sort of thing I suspect it would come up with. I guess there are no real answers here, more environmentally friendly power generating sources from renewable supplies, eating bugs and never procreating. Ever.

Honourable mentions.

The music in Killing Eve, Simmons getting pissed in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and the worlds oldest mummified cunt on channel 4's Egypt documentary triptych.

Christmas is coming.

Still recovering from the works party where I threw my leg out dancing around and stuff. Still aches a bit, and got to dance with someone nice as well as my boss and line manager.  

It still haunts me a bit and such, its an Aspergers thing, where you focus on what you fucked up most instead of all the time you ruled. I still don't know how anyone talks in pubs, especially when they're rammed for the traditional hell Friday drinksfest.  

Anyway got to see a bird with dreads and her mate, and my boss in a horrible teacher jacket combo with leather patches on the elbows, No bottle green cords mind which is a blessing.

The usual useless stuff is coming, I made a note of TV for the most part but music of the year is entirely winged, which means there is a lot I'll miss out on. Also it may be three days as my employer has graciously given us the 27th off. So expect 3 days of this bollocks.

Doggo Time.

Not great at the moment, dealing with a bastard cold that has done the rounds of my family and finally ended up with me.

As the title suggests, there will be doggo's as well as puppers, too. We took a day midweek to take down some presents to my Aunty on the other side of town. It seems to be once a year we meet up now but used to be so much more years ago, when my granddad was alive.

She has a few rabbits and now a rescue dog, from Battersea and is mostly looked after by my cousins kids.  We didn't see them as they were at work and the buns were outside in the garden in a rabbit run. Wisely well away from my aunts dog, who it seems is another howl for rabbits.  Howl of course was my other aunts dog and a noted rabbit killer, but  I digress.

My aunt told us that her dog didn't really like guys and she did spend a few minutes barking at my dad and such, but she soon calmed down and sat on my lap and spent most of her time being stroked, licking my face and ears or ripping apart one of her toys, a pink ball.

Being a borkmeister.

Notes here for all doggo fans. She is called Bella, she is about 4 or so and is a Patterdale Terrier. Although you can think of her as more of a Black Jack Russell as she's the same size as a Jack Russell bur nearly all black apart from a white patch on her chest.

All in all came away slightly sad, from this, my cousin has boyfriend now (looks a lot like Moriarty from Sherlock. Real nice guy apparently.)  And was just left with things that life has passed me by, thanks to bastard autism.  I'll never have what the normies have TBH, and that makes me sad. I know they say don't let it define you, but I've never seen any pluses from being autistic. It's just a wall of sad, being human with out humanity.

Anyway enough self  reflection, we did find a way to get to Hounslow by tube so it doesn't take forever getting home. Which is a silver lining.

  

Captain Marvel

Never really read comics as a kid, not the sort you'd turn into a movie franchise. With the exception of X-files magazine my comic readership like a lot of Brit kids from the 80's was limited to the Dandy and the Beano.  So the whole american comics such as Spiderman and the X-men were limited to Cartoons we saw on TV. Such as that one with Iceman and Fivestar Firestar or video games such as Marvel Vs Capcom. Even now I wonder why Tony Stark never had his massive fuck off proton cannon like in the titular 1vs1 fighter from 2000.

I don't mind the whole Marvel MCU series of movies, and the original Deadpool remains a fave even though, I never read anything about them back in the day.  So despite having found a pirate DVD of Captain Marvel, we finally settled down to watch it on Sky on Thursday.  It didn't help matters that I watched a ton of content from the anti diversity crowd that Captain Marvel was a garbage movie, and that she was an overpowered Mary Sue, and its not for me.

Turns out that they were half right. There's spoilers below so go ahead if you want it ruined for you.

Brie Larson

Its an average movie, not helped by the fact that I wasn't playing attention for the first part. I started taking notice when Nick Fury broke into Cheyenne Mountain from Stargate SG1, I know its supposed to be a secret base, the sort Mulder's Dad stowed things away in, in the first season of the X files but damn, looks like they broke into Stargate Command,

Brie Larson (is that even right?) can fire energy bolts from her hands and has a suppressor on the back of her neck. Which she uses to kill an defenceless Streetfighter II turbo arcade cab in some backwoods pub. When toward the end and she is aboard the Kree ship cloaked in orbit there is a Centipede cab and a Space Invaders Pin table by Bally along with some Skrull illegals, she gets it taken off in a fight with the bad dudes.

This means she can turn into a punk and fly and not worry about the effects of re-entry. Oh and shoot energy bolts from her hands like Tony Starks super from Marvel Vs Capcom.

Joking aside there are some good bits such as a younger Phil Coulson with hair starting out in S.H.I.E.L.D. a cat called Goose, and a horrible old scientist who looks like Hilary Clinton who dies in a plane crash.

I know I should do a big serious review but this wasn't bastard awful (Will Ferrell as Sherlock Holmes level garbage.)  It just wasn't good. Bree Lawnchair in a Nine Inch Nails top, Brie Lawson montage being told she will never amount to anything before coming back from a pasting with the Kree.  I guess it captures America Mid 90's but to me that whole scene really required Tubthumping by Chumbawumba to set it off. 

Further audio delights include TLC, Gwen Stefani and Courtney Loves Hole as an outro track. All  I wanted was a bit of FSOL on the sound track or Prodigy.  I guess if Captain Britain ever did a sort of equivalent in the UK. Or cap Marvel U.K. edition, where she lives in a squat and goes on a criminal Justice bill march, or heads out to an illegal rave in the countryside. That I would fucking watch.

In the end its merely sub par, rather than terribad, even if Fury loses his eye to a right hook from a tentacle beast cat.

Decade.

Not really sure how to celebrate this, but the blog has been up and running for 10 years now. Officially since December 2009, every Sunday I've been putting up a piece whether I've wanted to or not. I outlined most of this a month back so if you really want to rehash, you can read it here.

I guess you can have another free Hardy Boys book to read while the next 10 years come around.
This is the UK version of The Shore Road Mystery, Expect the original sometime about christmas.

And right on cue, here's the original text on Christmas day in the morning.

hadei boisu

One of the things of being a Hardy Boys fan is finding out that they translated the boys adventures into many different languages.  I've seen bits up on the wiki of them translated into Hebrew and of Norwegian versions of the books. I never realised that one of those languages would be Japanese until I was looking for old books on Ebay.

house on the cliff

Looks like there was 10 books in all and I've attempted to translate the titles into English. So I've decided to put my dog level Japanese skills to good use and translate what I could for the curious.  Incidentally I don't know who the illustrator is, but the quality of artwork is rather good throughout.

great airport mystery

I now know how many were actually translated for the Japanese market, but not what revision of the text was used to translate from. but I know now that the translator was called John G McCaleb a translator for NHK Radio and a book on colloquial English, with help from Hitoshi Moroki or Isshi Matagi (name Kanji are bastards to do btw.)  The publisher was Yomiuri Shimbun who are known mainly for newspaper publishing.The Charles Tuttle Institute brought the rights to Japan in the mid 60's so I'm guessing its using the revised texts. Though the page counts are quite high so maybe its the original version after all.

anybody want to correct my dog level japanese here.

A partial series list is detailed below as well as a few shots more from Namacha Panda's ebay listings.

(it totals about £50 for each book with p+p btw) though there are some books available on Amazon Jp too but they are also pricey.

Book list

1. House on the cliff  ﾊｰﾃﾞｲ 誘拐事件 Hardy Abduction Case*
2. The Secret of the Old Mill 水車小屋の秘密 The Water-Mills secret
3. The Missing Chums 消えた仲間たち Vanishing Company
4. The Great Airport Mystery 姿なきパイロット The Formless pilot**
5. The Short Wave Mystery 剥製動物の謎 The Stuffed Animal Riddle ****
6. While The Clock Ticked 黒いリムジン Black Limousine ***
7. Secret Warning  黄金のファラオ The Golden Pharaoh
8. The Sinister Signpost 不吉な標識 The Sinister Sign
9. What Happened At Midnight 深夜の訪問者 The Late-night Caller/ visitor
10. The Secret Panel 秘密の壁　The Secret Panel

*Not a bad translation actually as House on the cliff is as much to do with Fenton Hardy getting kidnapped as it does with Snackley / Snattman running a smuggling ring from the old house.

** I'll ask on RHDN's script and language board about this as its probably wrong,

*** NB had to look this up as its been ages since I've read the original. A guess from the cover art, and a look on wiki for the synopsis. This is also the only time Hurd Applegate appears here as there is no Tower Treasure as the canonical origin mystery. Or Aztec Warrior if you're a British reader.

**** This is also rather a more accurate description of the mystery as well, about half the book is dedicated to taxidermy specimens used to hide stuff in. As well as short wave radio.

So there you have it, all the information I could find about the Japanese series. Looks like John McCaleb also translated the Nancy Drew mysteries as well. The titles are on the wikipedia page linked above. Sorry I had to update this on a Monday of all days, but this couldn't really wait.

Streatham Junk Tour

We did a visit to Streatham, South London, on Saturday. Unlike previous posts, which have some familial connection, Streatham, despite being South London where my dad's side of my family come from, has precious little of all to do with us.

Its uncharted territory and is ripe for a good junk tour. We didn't know what to expect, only that the high street is long and has a few charity shops including a few book and music dedicated Oxfams.

We got off to a really good start as we got a Venetian Snares single in Balham and a few mix CD's including Kevin Saunderson mix on Defective. 

The bus to Streatham is right outside the tube station, which is convenient, (it's also the only bus that goes from that stop so you can't miss it) and after a while we got to where we wanted to go.

They had quite a load of shops and we ended up taking a punt on A Certain Ratio Graveyard and Ballroom CD as Discogs app was being cunty. Its really good new wave rock / dance and for one makes which I didn't hate guitar stuff with a passion.

Also picked up a few promo CDs which ranged from The Orb with Lee Scratch Perry (good) Eyeballs  Invisible Castle(drone) and French For Cartridge (bleurgh Indie Kids.)

Final pick up was a solo release of Xaviera Gold's Mucho Man a nice slice of dark house from 1989 and one of those that never got played out nor got any attention back in the day. Its really good and seems criminally overlooked.

Having enough of that we decided to get the bus back to Balham and go home. Pro tip the stop you want is behind the station, and there is a choice of buses too. One goes to Stockwell and the other Balham. Easy to pick up the northern line to reach across the river or reach central London for other places.

So in hindsight Streatham is the Walthmastow of the south.

Hounslow Junk Tour

Decided to go on another junk tour and this is one that I've wanted to do for some years now.

In a similar vein to my trip to Peckham this is another trip back to my childhood but this time its on my mum's side of the family as my granddad lived there for most his life. 

I can remember getting the train down with mum and dad and getting off  and going down piggy alley (probably not its real name) and head toward Cromwell Road. They built a massive hindu temple there in the mid 90's about the same time my granddad passed on.

Anyway this didn't actually turn out to be a trip to Hounslow itself to begin with. I wanted to go to Ealing but seeing as I had a choice of Richmond or waiting for the Ealing train, decided I'd visit there and have a look around. Their charity shop choices are limited and coming out to rain and seeing a bus for Hounslow decided I have fuck all to lose by getting on board and heading off there.

They still have a few places I remember as I came in. The bus station and the Treaty Centre which I remember opening as we got balloons, to take home. There is also a Blenheim Centre too which houses an Asda, a Bum (B+M) and a Barnardos. I could have gotten a CD dedicated to Gurbani Fonts which I guess is to do with Sikhism. Pity there wasn't 9 other CD's I wanted for a £1 as I'd have whacked it up on Archive.org for everyone.

Still raining as I came out and found my way to the main drag. Found the Cex where my cousin's kid worked. They have some communist little cunt out by the main entrance to the centre with a sign saying how wonderful Cuba is as a socialist paradise (It's not.) And came across the worlds grimmest game shop with an entire top row of DS games dedicated to 42 board games and brain training.

Working down we bought a ton of techno in the Princess Alice to make up for it and decided to call it a day and seemingly took the longest route back home which sucked.

10th Anniversary.

At the beginning of December it shall be 10 years since I started writing this blog. 

I set it up to basically have an output, online and act as an archive to things that I would have forgotten about over the years. Stuff like British Cable TV, Polish cartoons, Hardy Boys detective novels.  A love for the PSP and PS Vita consoles, and some Rom hacks that I've played and liked.

I have at times written reaction pieces to bad reporting on cacti and have received at least 1 comment that wasn't spam over the years. 

Looking at my earliest posts I really wanted it to be called Lobster Egg, in part derived from Roger Irrelavent in the Viz and essentially Davey Jones strips which speaks to my level of stupid. But it turned out that the name was taken by a food blog, which was a bummer.

I still don't know 100% where Tibbet, as in my name for a cat, came from. Pretty sure its Mrs. Kitten from the classic Smoke and Fluff but of course intensely corrupted. See also Mrs Nibble / Mrs Cobble from Blackberry Farm tales for the rabbit equivalent. 

It also seemed that I was a bit haphazard in my posting, putting pages up rather than every Sunday, like I do now.  

I was a proper hammer on feminism then, which would take Darkness Savior on Tumblr of all places to turn me on to the whole MRA / Skeptic community. I still like the news critic stuff like Tim Pool, Short Fat Otaku, Vee, The Britisher and even Sargon and Thunderf00t when they're not too cringy.

I added a twatter profile some two years ago and its brought me daily dogs, cats, game knowledge and left wing cunts galore to laugh at. 

Its bittersweet to look back at how the time has gone and that, and for once decided to do what every other cunt does when it advances in years. Adds a shitty retrospective post.

 

Houses on cliffs again.

Been working hard on this for the past few days. A new David Attenborough on TV, is the impetus what made me bust a gut and get it finally done.

I've made a version for the UK, which most certainly would not have been released here in under the Armada imprint. Also I think I've caught all the Americanisms that were in the revised text.

And I've added a fresh PDF of the original text. So far I've got about 9 more to buy to add in which should, dog willing take me through 2020.

Also we're coming up to this blogs tenth anniversary which is nice, though we have fuck all planned for this home coming celebration.

Anyway here is both the original text and the UK rewrite that would have been put out back then,

Uptown trip.

Not a bad trip uptown to be honest, just a lot more convoluted than it should be, due to rail improvements on the DLR and parts of the District line being closed.

In fact we saw quite a few people out, whinging about a second brexit vote. Overhelmingly middle class, middle aged home counties types with their E.U. flags and pithy worded plackards. They even had a cute doggo that was called Euro dog there on the tube. And you never see dogs on the tube as a rule.

Euro doggo seems to be some sort of howl (spaniel) / poodle crossbreed, a cockermutt*, if you will. Would love to have gotten a photo but train was packed and they would have gotten the manager. (Yes they were those sorts of people.)

The other doggo on the tube, (yes, there was two,) was much more easier to pin down, a nice medium sized husky. He had to be carried down the escalator as is customary, and while on the train was befriended by a small girl.

Had a look around Notting hill and did the usual record shops taking advantage of the bargain bin to pick up some overlooked house for the channel.  Walked down to Kensington and was gouged £2.49 for a can of U.S soda. Rather good too, ranking behind Jone's soda for a good American soda taste and sugar free too, which is a miracle as only Bepis do sugar free right. Kind of reminds me of Sargon brewing up a batch of liberalism for the kiddies there.

Had to go to Sloane Square because of the shut down for repairs and that and was reminded that getting the regular train is also bastard expensive and that £3.10 to London Bridge and their nicely renovated station from Woolwich Arsenal. As they say a total rip off. No wonder that climate cunt was pissed off at Canning town.

We also grabbed a leaflet stuck in the tube from anal rebellion. No doubt they are light on resources as it seemed to be stuck on with the worlds smallest amount of masking tape.  Can imagine doing a bad photo shop of this in paint.  If I get the time.

*edit, as its citation has gone awry, imagine if you would the dog in the link but with the traditional brown Springer Spaniel colouring.

Mini PC continued

This is just a short version update, on the mini PC. So far I've had no luck in removing the bios password. Oh, there's guides but they mainly involve taking it apart and either shorting out the battery (yeah right like I'm gonna cause a house fire) or dismantelling it to remove the saturn battery in it (the big button cell type, I know it as the battery back up from Sega's Saturn console.) so it goes to BIOS.

Apart from that have a new game. Resonance Of Fate for PS3. It doesn't explain itself well and there are a few things a good faq will sort out, but it seems to be quite good so far. Can see echoes in the town scape of Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria another Tri Ace game. Too ages to work out how to save a game while the mini PC ran through diagnostics.

Cambodia PC

We finally found a really small netbook PC thrown out. It's one of the small Acer Aspire series of netbooks from I guess 2010 - 2012.  It runs a starter edition of Windows 7 and is quite nifty in a way.

It's not the fastest as it packs an Intel Atom processor, and I've upgraded it to 2GB of ram from the 1Gb stick it did have.  It does the internet, but really slowly and I've finally added the printer to it.

The downsides are the BIOS is password protected and will need to be unlocked before I can switch boot order and see if a Linux will run. It has no CD so maybe a puppy linux live  usb with the HD removed, as it can run in ram,  will do the trick.

So the original owner was on some sort of scholarship to Cambodia as part of a gap year / sixth form work.  They had dropbox and a few other storage solutions there as well as an expired Graham Norton antivirus.

Mostly videos of a few places, but largely mates and dorm rooms and such. Pretty normie stuff, and a typical bird behaviour. If you like no landscape shots and plenty of mates posing in front of things, including a few clips of them round the pool, then this your thing. No pron and the owner is pretty homely looking to boot.

I've been adding programs to it, to get it into shape including looking for a non adobe PDF reader as my go to favourite, fails to install.  Will I use it for much? god knows, its small enough to not have any CD drive built in so will need an external drive to take advantage of anything. Definitely do have the drives to take advantage though. So there is that.

All in all, its not bad but hardly essential. Hopefully it will linux ok.

Old Mill Update

Just a few lines to say that my original upload of the Secret Of The Old Mill has been updated with a new edit of the text and to add the UK version for the first time. Everything should at least have question marks now instead of exclamation marks, thanks to Applewood press using a nebulous punctuation system.

Remember that this is typed in from original books, or using them as a source to check and amend if there is an existing PDF available.

Original here and UK version there as always.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D Review

Recently got hold of this RPG from Monolith soft, exclusively for new 3DS.  I was sort of aware its a remake of sorts from a late era Wii game along with Last Remnant, and maybe something else I've forgotten, Essentially its a hardcore RPG for a system that mainly has horse poking simulators and mini game selections.  But this time is been ported to New 3DS

One of the nicest things about this is that its entirely voiced in English. That is proper English accents, no yanks here to ruin it.  Some of the voices, mind, are a little strange if you're a native. They vary from stage school kids trying to sound tough, to pure council accents. Seriously there is one NPC bird earlier on that I swear, could be from work, she's that common.

Other times its more like Harry Potter kids doing the lines, so a bit of Daniel Radcliffe or maybe someone who sounds a lot like him. I shouldn't nitpick mind as they really are the good bits here.
It's just that you continually add bits to the dialogue, MST3K style.

Combat is a little weird, no continual attack and you have to target everything manually before going in  and beating the shit out of it. It works if there is a bunch of you, but not so well, solo.

Which brings us to the graphics on this. Can see why this needs the extra grunt of the New 3DS as the whole game with its open world layout and draw distance reminds me of PSP games, cough Zill Oll cough. With pretty good frame rates as well.

You play as Shulk a tinkerer working at colony 9, you have a hero's sword called the Monardo blade and you have an ex veteran as a boss who looks a lot like Hulk Hogan - Shulk Hogan- and the swords original owner, who is now a bedridden cripple after being injured taking out a billion robot badguys, oh yes there is a war on.

You also get to play as a girl with twin knives (Fiora) too, she seems pretty handy too, though her jumping sound, makes her sound like she's being sick which is off putting.  ... and that is as far as I've got. I'm sure the story will carry on from us beating up rabbits and dragonflies outside of town, when Shulk Hogan goes on one of his foraging missions for the army.  Will have to write more once we've progressed the plot some.  But this is  a preliminary 88% so far.

Sky Q News

We finally upgraded to Sky Q, after what seemed like an eternity on Sky SD.  This means I can finally watch NHK world again after it went to HD back around 8 years ago. We may even get back Fox news even though it was nixed for even longer.  France24 will of course be back then and I'll no longer have to rely on scrolling through what was left on SD before eventually settling on al onion (Jazeera,)

If you want to know what that was like and a brief bit of the news and views of Qatars premier news outlet, read on.  But first the reason why we did, what we did and why we got rid of a near 20 year old sky box.

Not only did channels migrate to HD and their SD equivalents get shut down but, every time it updated it would either whistle (a high pitched tone don't know if it was interference or just aging hardware, it would whistle all the time until it rebooted) or go mute. It also started to crash and had to be rebooted in a similar fashion, i.e unplugged and plugged back in, the old turn it off and on again. 

EDIT, It is to do with Thomson boxes only which ours was. Our other box was an Amstrad and used to go silent when updating.

Finally back to the news, if you'd like to hear news with a slight middle eastern bent to @l Jizz isn't that bad.  Watching them cover Jamal Khashoggi or The Yemen crisis first hand as well as a few other bits and pieces from round the world and most crucially enough though precious little brexit news, which seems to infest twitter and other sources.

Mostly though on their scrolling news ticker they have a story about a journalist in an Egyptian jail for almost 1000 days. He appears nowhere else and isn't deemed news worthy by any other outlet.

This should occur sometime in the week if my calculations are correct. I wonder what will happen if he gets released.

Stella Creasy and the Golden Shower

God knows who this will bring in, for the curious, though, this is two different topics, none of them relate to any extreme sex acts.  TLDR we saw an MP and found some obscure indie in a charity shop that is all.

We went to Walthamstow, again for the first time after their devastating fire that damaged the mall. Indeed six weeks on and one side of shops has been completely damaged including WH Smiths, which has closed for good it seems.

We saw the local MP, Stella Creasy, holding an local surgery, in the place that's normally reserved for the stalls selling chinese toys and paintball experiences. I can only imagine that her regular meeting room was damaged by the fire.  It's quite a come down.

She reminded me a lot of an old boss of mine, also blonde, and she also came across as faintly wet and useless, too. I don't normally see "celebrities" apart from Girls Allowed at Oxford Street HMV, and Bill Oddie, that is the extent of my celeb meeting. My parents have seen Boris Johnson out the front of Wimbledon tube, kinda puts my influence into a cocked hat.

Anyway if you're here for the whole golden shower bit. We picked up a bunch of records from the Sue Ryder shop. Including this, weird record.

It's either T.G.S. the golden shower or that is both the name and the record label. It turns out its the sort of indie rock that sounds a little bit like the Farm or The Happy Mondays. Basically that whole era of guitar dance crossover from the early 90's that is long gone now. 

Spent a good deal of time trying to find out anything about it, all the searches I put in, came back as german porn (i.e. piss fetish stuff, not really my scene to be honest.) Same with Vibe Tribe management, and the ambiguous names created as well as Drive Fever / Freaks demo the names of the tracks.  Putting QPR won't help either as I'll just get results back for Queens Park Rangers football club.

Best I can do is put a draft up in discogs, and a video up on my alt channel on Youtube to see if anyone has any ideas.

555 Junk Tour

Went to Peckham Saturday, and instantly regretted it. Croydon is rightly thought of as the arsehole of south London but Peckham is this minus the trams. 

Can remember going there with my Nan for a good few years as an uncle lived up in the flats there. Can remember taking a dislike to the town hall clock as I remember it being remarkably ugly. Also I was possibly eating cold chips then as we had stopped off for fish and chips at another Aunts in Kennington.

As its been, what 30 odd years and there is a direct bus there, thought, well, lets see if  it's not absolutely awful.  Guess what, it's awful. 

I judge a place on whether it has:

A W H Smiths.

Or failing that any Charity shops. 

Peckham does not have a Smiths but does have a few charity shops. We picked up a few Reggae CD's which is kind of apt seeing its up there with Brixton for having a large and diverse community. Which is probably why it looks so run down, plenty of barbers, butcher shops,graffiti and fly posters everywhere. 

One redeeming feature is that after accepting a leaflet that I thought was from the Mormons but later found it to be Baptist shit and worse co opting anti SJW views to reel in the suckers. We found a poster hidden alluding to a record fair off Blenheim Road. Wondering where the hell it could be we found that by aimless wandering down the High street we had come to the exact street we needed.

Indeed the fair itself was under the arches and I nearly chickened out, but glad I stuck with it.  There is a few good things there including some disco Black Ark reissues for a tenner and a bunch of Dance records for around £8. We grabbed a bootleg of an old Reese track and a Jared Wilson stuff on Dixon Avenue Basement Jams. 

To top it off we were stuck with some fidgeting little black kids and their mum, visiting dad in jail at Belmarsh, so stuck with them for the remainder of the ride back home. 

Adam and Steve and the tree of knowledge.

I've never really thought about this until recently. Its about god and stuff and more specifically the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  More specifically Genesis and the whole forbidden tree of the garden of Eden (Genesis Beginning bits).

More specifically what is it and does it have to even be edible.

A quick skim of Genesis seems that god made everything to be both vegan and every vegetation wise, to be edible in some way, rather than to be useful such as for timber or medicine and that. 

There is a pretty good video I found from Darkmatter 2525  on the subject, but more likely a TMM video debunking original sin. Basically original sin seems to be Scrumping but with a snake egging you on to do it. Not something typically that gets you thrown out of heaven, normally a clip round the ear from a parent and maybe grounding if found out.

Also what if the tree of overall good and evil and life and death, wasn't an edible species but one of those trees that self seed everywhere such as an Ash tree or for tropical folks the Tree of Heaven.

Mostly it came from an idea I had walking around and thinking back to those old Darkmatter shorts, and thinking what if it was a species inedible to us or if anything else can eat from the tree of knowledge, in our stead.  Basic ecology would have it that, if the fruit was good to eat as Genesis says then really everything should have made a beeline for it to eat it. 

Look at rainforest figs when they are in season, they are a main draw to everything fruit eating, parrots, monkeys and other fruit eating animals and insects.  And seeing as everything was vegan then if the bible is right, then surely the tree of the fruits of the king of caractacus, instead of being forbidden to us, unless we were quick would have been stripped and spread around Eden as many small seedlings through pooping animals.

Some might say it has special requirements, and I can gather certain stuff does such as Proteaceae requiring bush / veldt fire to germinate, but those aren't edible to us and tend to be cones and the like.

So either god made it so we should have our own downfall. or if he really didn't want us to eat it, he should have made it a Maple (which kinda implies gods Canadian.)

At Long Last... Lamb!

Remember how I found a tape all about Lamb and how to cook it, a few years ago. Also that  they taped over a portion of it to record Watchdog.

If you don't this post will jog your memory.

I managed to hook our tape deck up to a audio grabber we got from TV Quick and have managed to capture the whole thing. I shall be putting the audio bits on Youtube so look out for them there. If you are curious about lamb or Woman's Own magazine then I've added all the audio as one big wav file to Archive.org here.

In other news it seems my CD Drive is on its way out as its captured my Andreas Gehm CD. A weird promo of Black Pukee. Hopefully restarting windows will sort it. If not I'll look into getting an external CD Drive.

Edit now this is weird rebooting Windows let me gain control of the drive itself, and it seems fine but the overall disc isn't. The disc itself is a promo and doesn't play in anything I own. I can read it fine and it comes up with the overall time but does not play.

The only other disc I have like this is a promo mix from Death In Vegas which also is a cunt to play on anything. Hopefully I find something to drag this off with.

Round up.

We haven't had one of these in awhile so here goes.

Coro Coro Comic update.

Been looking into the few manga that are suitably bizarre to warrant this blog.  No, not the Bomberman  4 Koma. but Himitsu Keisatsu Holmes (aka Secret Agent Holmes)a sort of kid detective that investigates murders and such, and harukanaru Koshien Kakero! Ozora, a baseball manga who's hero seems to be a reporter and such.  Thought it was about a deaf school team that he was leading, but that turned out to be by a different author.  Be cool if  it was though.

BTW, when has it been acceptable that kids can be a hard boiled detective and poke around in corpses and such. See also Detective Conan and the like, there are quite a few murder mystery manga for kids that really to my western eyes, pull no punches.

Succulent News.

Had a brief look for Trichodiademia a shrubby mesemb species, that has a few cactus like spines at the end of its leaves, and we stumbled across Howstuffworks.com. Needless to say they need the talk about what is succulent and what is cactus. Although they seem to be fine on some stuff, lets put it this way not everything with spines is a cactus.  Especially not Asparagus Ferns which despite some pretty thick roots. It's not a fern either as it has flowers and seeds too, which you can see on that wiki link.

Finally a big shout out to Cambridge University Botanic Garden for flowering their Agave, after 57 years. It'll flower and die, but not without it doing this if you're lucky.

Not Cambridge but Cyprus, but you get the idea.

That's also a pretty good article explaining Agaves to the non cactus / succulent growers out there. So once again good luck and hope you finally find out what you have there.

Edit It's flowered now and is apparently narrowed down to Agave Vivipara but are waiting till it sets seed or does what the picture above is doing and throws out offsets.  Further info here, and yes it's still an excellent article of information on Agave.

House on the Cliff.

Here is an anomaly for all you Hardy boys fans. Not including the 100 or so books that came out after Armada folded, what two books didn't they pick up and release from the original print run, here in the UK?

The answer is, the Hidden Harbour mystery and the House on the Cliff, which is today's topic.

I've recently read through a reprint from Applewood books, picked up cheap from Ebay, of the original story, and I've dug out the hard-back I got from a boot sale at Southwold years back.

Americans of a certain age will be familiar with the iconic blue covers. the reprints came in, but to me, it was only later stories like The Apeman's secret and Cave In came in hard-back. Also as I knew number 2 was the Arctic Patrol Mystery here, I knew I had to get this.

Reading it then from a British perspective, with the NHS and such, it made no sense to have a smuggling plot dealing in rare drugs and such from a hidden base deep in the cliff under an abandoned house.  Even if they came from India, which was unlikely, it still made no sense to me.

Then we did some research online on what it was, which led to us grabbing the original text. And wow it was originally Opium, from China, along with silk too. Which makes a heck of a lot more sense.

The actual text doesn't really change much between the two stories, the titular abandoned house changes name from Polucca to Politt, and a lot of the violence is toned down which makes for a weaker ending in my eyes.

I'm also pretty sure the original riffs on a Yellow Peril plot line with its Chinese based plot and smuggling contact pushing dope to middle America. Its lessened in the remake with its generic rare drugs spin. Also in the remake, Frank Hardy loses his N Word pass, as his Nigger in the woodpile remark is of course excised completely.

As a bonus there was a sort of remake by Benjamin Hoff called the House on the Point, which I've not read, but is from the same guy who did the Tao Of Pooh and other train wrecks which doesn't bode well. In fact it's reminded me of this which was one of my favourite sites back when I first got internet. A collection of bad NES games and that Spartacus cartoon from SKY TV where the end credits never seemed to end.

Any way in short if you can read the original text and I might pop it up here when I get round to it, do so, its a much better read.

Final Fantasy for Potterheads.

What does that title even mean. and if you know what game its actually the byline to then give yourself ten points, because I don't think anyone would get it from that.

I've never read Harry Potter he always came over as an insufferable little prick in the films, I have played Final Fantasy. So if you immediately think of a JRPG stuffed full of insufferable 15 year old Bishonen twunts and anime waifus, you'd fail as this is actually describing Fire Emblem.Be glad that JK Rowling isn't doing this, as there'd be an after market patch that made every character trans, because that's how they were meant to be.

For those wondering about what Fire Emblem is, its a Wargame with permadeath that is well regarded in Japan but not so in the west despite the games themselves being great. That tag line is from the print edition of the Metro Newspaper. The online version is here and is still tainted with the Potter curse.

If we were going to sell the series, I'd say it was basically an anime Game of Thrones but a touch less grim. Your characters still die though, due to bad planning, over confidence and a gamble on outcomes that you can misjudge. Badly.

There's a rock paper scissors style to the combat, don't put any flying horses up against archers even though they have great range, likewise any one with close range weapons can decimate archers and mages. Later instalments brought romance options to your doomed troops, and of course the garbage people have been whinging for gay relationship options, just because well why not.

The series (by Advanced Wars developer Intelligent systems) has been running since NES days in Japan, and there's patches for the NES and SNES instalments over at RHDN, for the curious. It's a bit of a late system game too, 776 Thracia came out in 1999 well into the Playstation era.

For me, the GBA game Secret Stones with Lady Lyndis and Elwood was my introduction to the series, and can say that it doesn't disappoint, at all. There are of course more recent games to pick, and I'd say don't bother with Shadow Dragon for DS, and choose any of the 3DS incarnations to get you money's worth.

Edit now with screenshot.

Finally as I was up town for reasons last Friday, I will give a shout out to Dimes Juices as a blatant plug, especially their apple and sour cherry flavour. Really good Fruit Juices from turk e yay (Turkey)
and worth the 79p spent on it. Also the folks in the shop, I got it from, had a huge black and white cat (a shop Byron if you will.) sitting out so if I'm back that way, I'll be sure to go back.

Casio Cortez

Work has thrown up a few nice things of late. A pair of synths that are a cut above the normal you would expect to find.  My baseline is usually some cheapo Casio SA1 variant, or some no brand little kid synth complete with duck quacks and nursery rhyme demo tunes.

What I found is a pair of full size Casio and Yamaha GS Wavetable synths from sometime in mid 2000's. Replete with midi ports and a few learning modes they're really good beginner synths for those that have the room.

Oh, if that sounds familiar, Microsoft GS Wavetable is bundled with every version of Windows as the default on-board sounds for MIDI.

Both work, although the lowest black key C# doesn't work in the Yamaha. It's not a deal-breaker as it has XG lite over the Casio's GS Wavetable only selection.  It also uses standard AA batteries whereas the Casio has the D Cells which I had to cannibalize from my original Yamaha PSR 200.

Below, I'll give you a way to connect the Casio via MIDI so you can use it in your DAW, it's not ideal mind, as when it goes into stand by mode it will reset and you'll need to follow these steps again.

Warning 1:

The Yamaha at present is untested. Don't ask how to connect.

Warning 2:

My DAW is pretty obscure, and I never got it  to work with LMMS, my other Music production suite.
With this in mind let's begin.

You'll need to connect your MIDI cables right, as you will get no output at all if you get it wrong.

Input goes to output and output goes to input.

You can use MIDI OX to test your inputs on windows. Mac Users can use Snoize (not that I have a Mac mind.)

On your Casio you need to press the transpose / MIDI button and scroll through to find these parameters. Use the + and - keys to turn them off.

GM Mode =  On
Local Mode = Off This turns off the sound and lets you use your DAW's soft synths as the main keyboard Sounds.

You can skip this bit as it relates to Psycle Tracker.  But in the main menu go to settings > Configuration then MIDI and select USB synth from the drop down box. Load up a synth and connect it and it should play. You'll see volume outputs and hear sound if it works.

For other DAWS you'll probably need to find where your MIDI settings are for each one.  As I final note I have a USB to MIDI cable that I use to connect. Its quite useful, and can be gotten from EBAY for around £3 or $4 for the yanks out there.

Coro Coro Comic

For those that know, Coro Coro Comic is a phone book sized monthly manga, that is known for putting out the Pokemon manga amongst others. I have two issues, September 1996 and an issue from 20 years or so later. I got the 90's issue from the long defunct Lewisham bootsale for the sum of 75p, and while it's tatty round the edges now, it came with a few Pokemon pencil case games, and other bits and pieces.

Recently been scanning in bits and pieces from this brick sized comic and trying to see if there's a scan of the obscure Mole Mania manga, which features in it. 

Looking through there are ads for Popolocrois, Bubblicious gum, and lots of Hudson Soft games, Bomberman and it's B-Daman spin off, which I remember there being an anime for a long time back, the manga is featured in there of course, along with Bomberman Yonkoma.

 My favourite is of course Class King Yamazaki and blue sky ozora. A gag manga and roughneck baseball manga respectively. There is of course a few Nintendo manga in there. Pokemon, as mentioned, but there is Kirby Manga and expand dong (Donkey Kong) also feature, too. 

Finally to cap it off there is some Doraemon stuff, which is probably translated into Spanish as they love the little guy. It revolves around cavemen and Colonel Sanders, along with the regular crew of Nobita and Doraemon.

Names on a postcard please.

I'll leave you with some scans I've already done. The J league stuff is interesting. I think the ginger guy is Alexei Lalas. Whereas the guy with the fish is this guy Looks like a bad pun on Maguro / Magrao.  Finally I'll add the odd Shiren the Wanderer maze which I'm sure I've added before but can definitely be added again.

Can you make it to the exit.

Wouldn't Even Explain you.

Forgive me for being late to this particular party. but here is my take on a few things basically Sargon related. In particular its the supposed joke / comeback to MP Jess Phillips that I need to address and matters arising from such.

Cards on the table first. I have been a subscriber to Sargon's Channel since gamergate, the popular uprising against corrupt game journalists, along with Thunderf00t and Mr Metokur/ Internet Aristocrat.  Possibly two of his biggest detractors.  My politics are centre right. Think the 2011 election in the UK lib dem power sharing but with acutal likeable people in charge, that's basically my politics, in a nutshell.

The joke?

I kinda like the actual joke, even if it's not funny in the first place.  The context is that Sargon hates Jess Phillips because of her laughing at Male Suicide numbers in a parliamentary debate. The wouldn't even rape you remark is part of a twitter spat between the two, which this culminated in him being kicked off Twitter for good (and previously banned for posting interracial gay pr0n on an exchange with the alt right.)

Its a pretty savage comeback and it ranks as one of the better insults I've heard, if not particularly funny.  My take on it, is this. I read this as an act beneath him to do. As a woman he wouldn't rape her because she wasn't worth it. She's so utterly below him as a person, that he wouldn't carry it out. And apparently I'm wrong. Sorta.

Its more like, I wouldn't rape you because its abhorrent, (and rape is, if you're wondering.) and that although if the opportunity arose, then he still wouldn't.  Maybe it's both, maybe it's neither I just wanted to do my take on this joke. 

Fallout.

Of course when the whole UKIP MEP candidacy arose, the press had a field day, dragging up these tweets and bringing it into the open and totally misrepresenting his word, by calling them rape threats. They're not, by the way. It's a statement of  disintent rather than intent. And proves my point that modern news publishing is a joke. And it went full circle with him adding that he would consider it, but there wasn't enough beer in world for him to contemplate it.

The final evolution of the whole thing is a spot on Have I Got News For you a previously funny show, that I gave up watching a few years back. With the never funny Jo Brand as guest host, and Jess Phillips as a contestant, calling him a neckbeard and laughing at him getting milkshaked by left wing incels at a  UJKIP rally. 

Summary

I still don't find it funny, most internet drama isn't, and while I rate it as a top drawer insult and comeback, it's not really humorous as such. Those describing it as a joke or as comedy then please don't, Sargon: A. isn't a comedian and B, its an insult, an aside, a come back and should be treated as such.

Sculpture Park Ayia Napa

This will be the last holiday post from me, with a trip to the Sculpture park on the outskirts of Ayia Napa.

It seems that wherever I go, cactus stuff seems to find me. We saw signs to this up at the crossroads in Ayia Napa, near the harbour and looking at my phone back at the hotel it seems its some way outside of town. And could be walked to, if you wanted a long walk. 

Big mistake, its quite a way outside town and if you are situated at the Nissi Beach end its quite a walk. If you are based in Ayia Napa itself and are slightly outside town, then this is quite doable.

We got about halfway and my map lead us to the Tourist information office so we popped in to get directions. The upshot of this was, get the bus by the big I heart Ayia Napa sculpture in town and then go a few stops to get there.

Is it worth going?.

In a word, yes. And if you don't like cacti its still worth going as that bit is across the bridge, so you can skip it if you wish..

There is quite a few sculptures dotted around this dry and quite arid landscape, they are mostly modern art in style but are also many well done. The bridge in particular is a fine example with its metal gods (I clocked a Herakles, Athene with owl and Poseidon) and numerous photo ops.  But also be on the lookout for a cheeky Minotaur, Large owl and Athene and a Trojan Horse. There are some hippos too, for you to look out for.  And finally there are a few you can climb on to take your photo.

Seems Legit

Cactus Park Portion

The latter half past the bridge is a cactus garden. Mainly showing plenty of the larger species that are too big for pot culture outside larger gardens.

You may think it'll be non stop tall Agave and Opuntia and you'd be sort of right as they are well represented here. You may think they'd have the larger cactiform Euphoriba's that you can see on the main drag and you'd be wrong, as the main Euphorbia is the native Greek Spiny Spurge, Euphorbia Acanthothamnos which acts like a small hedge in places growing between the rocks.

Mostly though it is Opuntia, with an even split between prickly pear types and Cholla. This includes the most evil spined species of all, Cylindropuntia Tunicata, and its rather nice pinkish flowers.

Polaskia and attendant ant.

Other species include some of the bigger Aloes such as Ferox, an old man cactus, and a few of the more obscure species including  Polaskia Chichipe with its yellowy green flowers.

Finally the last part is a Mediterranean garden collecting together the wild flowers that grow in the region. Although I fully suspect this is just a wild and untamed area.  Look out for Agama lizards here, and butterflies. We saw a Bath White as well as Swallowtail, along with a few Painted Ladies.

Info.

Sculpture Park Ayia Napa. Free admission. Buses: From Nissi Beach, 101. From Protaras, 102.

Ayia Napa resort and wildlife

So Ayia Napa then. A UK Garage hot spot back in the late 90's and such its branded as one of those party towns, and place that we visited for a day some ten years later.  Our hotel was the Tasia Maris Sands a small and friendly place overshadowed by massive building works going on in the vicinity. 

The staff were very nice bar one miserable cow on reception, but we'll let that slide.  There was a buffet style diner, with a limited but good stock of stuff to eat.  I miss having sausage rolls for breakfast as they were replaced with olive rolls which weren't that nice. Also really liked the Apple Baklava they served as well as spinach pie and dolmades (stuffed vine leaves, which always taste of lemon). As you can guess I go fully native when I'm abroad.

Cool Dude

Quite a nice area actually, despite it being Ayia Napa, there is no UKG now, replaced by Elevator Dance Music its bland equivalent.  If you like the main drag, and innumerable cunts on quad bikes and motorised scooters then be my guest Ayia is great. Me I'll be down on the wasteland with the plants.  As you can tell I'm no fan of Fuck off, Fuck off, Ayia Napa.

The harbour area is better and there are some good places but mostly its bars and clubs and the attendant pricks they bring. Also a metric fuckton of russians.  

Highlights of this being some little dude with a smaller version of the troll guy shirt I was wearing. His mum was hot and also a Slav.

I also regret not snapping the strip club with a Costa coffee next door. I guess there is a market for combined lapdance / coffee bar. You could call it Starfucks.

Waiting 3 hours for your main to arrive.

Also, look out around 8 pm in the evening in certain spots for wild cats. They hang around to get fed and are adorable. My favourite must be a man ginger clone who is often on his own but if you offer food then a load will rush out of the bushes to meet you.  Cyprus has capitalised on this and you can buy cards, and other tat with strays on.  

Those not prepared to wait can go down the beach and look under the trees for a glimpse of several shoe persons asleep and awake. Includes a small Morgana type black and white with one eye. 

Plants. and other stuff.

Black Chamaleon Cardiopatium Corymbosum

The good people of Nissi Beach are spreading awareness of local and endemic plants by planting out, or more likely, conserving what dune and wasteland habitat is left. As a result there are boards up and tags put in to describe what flora can be seen. So if you've a yen to see the Sea Daffodil or Beach Morning Glory its well worth taking a walk along the wasteland down to Ayia Napa and cutting back when you get to the harbour.

Also take a look around to see the bird life, here a few of the places have Swallow nests, including the bike shop and next door to Pow the Shop. Mostly its sparrows here, so get used to them hopping around, dust bathing and begging for crumbs. Be warned they get quite close.  

Also have a look out for lizards especially the Agama lizard, which is one of the larger European lizards, or the smaller snake eyed lizard.

Snorkelling has it own rewards and you can be sure to spot some Ornate Wrasse as well as mullet and Gilthead. As well as attendant puffer fish, refugees from the Red Sea (and beyond.) Invertebrates include, round the rocks some shrimp, and a mass of snails including the feared Cone Shell as well as less feared mussels and ceriths. We were lucky to see a weed covered crab and on one occasion out on the rocks, an orange nudibranch. (NB is Chromodoris now invalid as a name, everywhere I've seen this, has it as Goniobranchus.)

On land we saw a rose chafer and in our final week quite a few Painted Lady butterfly. All in all quite a nice trip out.

Broken

A brief diversion before the main post.

The Clue of the Broken Blade is going to take a while as both books will need to be typed out. I have a password protected PDF of the original text, that I cannot edit into some semblance of order, so I will have to type both out. Your patience is of course requested as it'll be about 2 months to do this right.

Edit Done in the week, my estimate was right for once. Original, UK Edition.

Incidentally from this lot of 3 I got from Ebay, Broken Sword, Shortwave Mystery and Lost tunnel.

Broken Sword required the most editing, due to aforementioned password protection.

Shortwave Mystery needed the end of a chapter added to the PDF I had so it was complete.

The Secret of The Lost tunnel only required a few words to be added and extensive reformatting and proof reading. For added LOLS, it seems to call Chet, Diet, which is funny. This is along with Prank (Frank) and Poe (Joe) as the most common misprints, due to the OCR reading the text wrong.

Ayia napa

Back home now, and still feel under the weather.  Cyprus is hella nice, but coming back in at 12 midnight is hell. Especially trying to sleep on the plane and being moaned at by some waste of tits, because you're too tall for the seats and you keep knocking the back of her seat.

Anyway we'll do TV this week because its easier and Greek television is piss poor.  First time I've actually had to watch it as last time we didn't have a television until the last day, and all I can remember of that was Mr Magoo and the watchword from the previous hotel that Greek telly sucks.

PIK 1+2 are your main channels. Dull news programmes with bits of Euronews plugged in in Greek. There is a few other bits such as Sigma and Extra which seems to show only old Greek shows from the sixties and that, like a Greek Talking Pictures TV.  Also ANT1 which seems to have Greek wheel of fortune and nothing else memorable.

Russia had the bulk of the channels with T virus returning and a few others that we couldn't get such as whatever Service 65534 was and TV Coran which turned out to be a Muslim Channel.

In fact with Russia Toady Docs, including a Russian Blaire White look alike (a trans bloke called Dmitry) and something which seemed to be nothing but stand up.

My favourite had to be a weird children's sketch show on CTC / STS  called Yeralash which I took to be of Soviet Vintage (apparently was) until I clocked that one of the kids was wearing a Turtles T Shirt. 

I will detail some of the sketches I saw below.

A variation of the old who calls their parrot Jesus joke as two kids break into a house and help themselves to grub (another clue that this is not soviet era.) only to confront the parrot who calls for a dog to chase them out.

Two kids fake a bomb threat at the school, and clear everyone out. Feeling their joke has gone too far they say its a joke but their fake bomb turns out to be a real bomb and they get blown up. The Hardy boys did a variation of this to keep Chief Collig away in the original Tower Treasure.

A kid hides out in a jewellers shop and bothers the owner. Yeah not sure what went on here.

Finally my favourite is one where a kid bothers a pretty teacher. She goes to the park where he turns into a cuckoo.

The last strand is Arabic stuff on MBC. This is kind of like Film 4 but with obscure films subbed into Arabic.  So if you want Need for Speed or The Iron Lady at weird hours or more main stream the Tim Burton Alice films this is your go to place.

MBC 2 seems to show nothing but bastard Friends subbed in Arabic which is hell and MBC 3 is your kids show with what looks like Hodja from street racing as its branding. We saw some of that Yugioh! on bikes and around 3 am. Not the most easiest time to watch something dubbed in arabic you have a passing knowledge of.

Finally there is some bollywood stuff and a few home shopping channels that seem to only have weight loss and a lame looking tip o magic style floor sweeper.

Edit updated with a few infos and photos and added Prime Tel which seems to show nothing but football (mostly La Liga) as well as being a mobile and internet provider.