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.
The online home of Bear or Bust.
Sunday, 29 September 2019
Sunday, 22 September 2019
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.
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.
Sunday, 15 September 2019
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.
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.
Sunday, 8 September 2019
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.
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.
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.
Sunday, 1 September 2019
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.
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.
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