DJ Kat show and a doppleganger

Haven't had much to write about old cable stuff lately. Was reminded of Rod Hulls daughter Catrina Hylton Hull, from a twitter post and now can't remember if we ever wrote about the DJ Kat show.

I hate to be one of those people who keep repeating themselves but there is a good write up on IMDB for those wondering what it was.

Read that, good, here is a few more supplementary facts for you, though facts maybe just random memories and stuff.

Along with ITV they used to show the Super Mario Bros Super show here and quite a few obscure cartoon slots back in the day.  Think Mrs Pepperpot aka Spoon Obasan and the Sylvanian Families along with a few guest spots such as cookery with Lesley Waters.

Sadly as I never taped nothing back in the day, I have sketchy memories of this as well as a few clips on line from people such as Sid N's Youtube Channel (a nice bit of anime for you to prove we're not lying to you.)

Also another mystery has presented itself to me not related to this. I have a double playing acid on IFM live fest. Me with hardware, except its not me and of course didn't stick around to see who it was, have decided to keep tracks on their archive . org profile to see if they upload the set where not me is playing live.  

The Basic Game

Not many people had home computers as a kid and console shit was a rarity in 80's Britain, so our sole reference for video games was the arcade games in random places such as the chippy or the takeaway. So the rare people I knew with home micros were a revelation.

A mate had an old speccy computer, and a black and white TV. He had a few games for the system including a vertical scrolling football game (this would have been about 87 if anyone wants to try and track this down, It may have been called football fun but that seems highly unlikely, and scrolling through a list of speccy games on the worldofspectrum site nothing seems to ring a bell.


Apart from sketchy memories of old soccer games and playing Buckaroo. We played another game that he'd made up entirely. TBH the game I'm describing here is pretty much system agnostic and 'runs' on any computer system with basic. Hell if I give you the instructions you can run this in notepad.

I can only remember this as the basic game and works like this:

One person types out three lines of random numbers into basic and the other person, either turns away or shuts their eyes.  When the typing is over, you must designate a number that is the kill number, one that which must be avoided at all costs. You then call out to the person to make their move by saying top, middle or bottom and see if they can make it to the end of the line, one space at a time, without hitting the kill number.

I suppose you could, if you were good at programming, make this up in basic for any of the classic computers, print up a random string of numbers that fill 3 lines, blank the screen and then put a cursor onscreen with the prompt to move either top, middle or bottom, via arrow keys (or more likely w a s d).

In fact this is the sort of thing that would probably have been a basic type in back in the day complete with typos and a fantastical plot.

Battle Angel Alita

Finally got round to seeing this, as it was on Sky Movies, Friday, and all I can say is, wow.

Didn't realize it's a James Cameron film either, and after Titanic and Avatar which in my eyes are both abysmal films. This is a real revelation.

I won't spoil it and I've purposefully used the naming from the old Manga release we got here of the anime. It's something like Alita: Battle Angel (and GUMN in the original Japanese) but don't let that put you off. It's epic.

The plot, has her found mostly broken and tossed out on the scrap heap at the edge of town. Repaired by Dr Ido with the mech body that would have been his daughters replacement legs, she explores the world and learns that there is a big fuck off midgar style plate that serves as an upper city and that the world was plunged into a post apocalypse wasteland due to a war with Mars.

I will not spoil any more but will say this, it's miles better than Captain Marvel.  For one, when Alita fights, she gets knocked down, loses and picks herself up and fights again. She's flawed in a way that Captain Marvel isn't.

I know the MCU has its fans and that but I found the whole thing to be boring, she was a perfect superhuman and apart from smashing a blameless Streetfighter cab, largely a personality vacuum.

Alita isn't. She displays emotions, and acts just like a teenager would, which is cool and entirely in keeping with her character. I can't remember what emotions Captain Marvel did but I don't see her getting smacked around by the Kree and then coming back to wipe them all out. It just went on with her acting like a big space Karen, wanting to talk to the manager and that.

The only weak bit is Dua Lipa's track on the end credits, which although good doesn't really fit, would have preferred some sterling electro or synthpop maybe Luke Eargoggle or Analogous Doom as the outro, The main music is fine and is by Junkie XL which is cool he's done a lot of film work, think "Deadpoof" and you'll be halfway there as well as A Little Less Conversation by Elvis.

And yes before you as its set up for a sequel and you do get used to her big eyes in this.

Overall score. 9

Dumping carts and that.

Doing a couple of related things today. Looking into dumping out Vita game cards that I own, and cannot find a good guide that will allow me to.

I have it all set up and what I can see from looking at Persona 4 The Golden is that it seems to be an exfat file system and with a few folders. A lot of files in MP4 format and a folder with the file system in it. Can remember there was a thread on RHDN ages ago about hacking the PS2 original, but as I cannot code at all. This is beyond me.

All I really want is a tool that will let me hook up the Vita and dump the contents of the card via USB so I can run it on from my SD2 Vita. (Incidentally will need to set this up as well.)

Also been looking into doing the full Monty and getting the PS3 hacked. Every guide I see for this is either super detailed or written by a chimp. A chimp who's English is remedial at best.

Its either a full range of caveats in a forum post or a few vague instructions of downloading this shady shit from Mega and adding it to a USB drive.

I'm guess I'm spoiled by how the PSP went down and how easy it is to do that. But I'm seriously thinking of looking at shitty video guides on youtube written by gobshites with terrible taste in music and heavily accented English low in the mix.

Oh and anime avatars, not that there's nowt wrong with that, mind. Its just shitty hip hop instrumentals and mumbling.

VIta again

Finally got round to putting custom firmware on my Vita. As per this guide here.

As it went, it was pretty painless to do, once you figured out what went were. Largely written for FTP users in mind you can do this entirely via USB cable. Your vita is being treated as an external drive and will have its own folder put up on your system and you can follow the steps there.

Also another note, When doing the Modoru step, please remember it has its own sub folder in ux0:apps put your pspupdat file there otherwise you will get an error message. This stumped me for absolutely ages and only by random clicking did I discover this and get it downgraded in the end.

Also, final, final note. Vitashell is a really nice file manager, well put together and is worth doing it for this alone. Sad, I know.

Impressions now I've done it.

Not sure what to play now, though. I used to be really into emulation and stuff, but now am not. Will have to see if there is a final burn derivative for the system and have installed Aderanlin for PSP which adds custom firmware to the in built PSP emulator.  Have an SD to vita on  the way and will hope you can transfer across all my home dumped PSP ISO's and save files from the PSP.

Will also need to see if I can add back TXK by Jeff Minter which I lost prepping my system for this.

Short version, forgot my psn login and had to make a new i.d i(ts vital for the hack to work,) had to update from firmware 3.67 to 3.73, and formatted my memory card to make way for new stuff.

Plus point I'm now enjoying Persona 4 all over again. Will have to see if 0syscall and  whatever they call the game dumper, work as I have a few games that require a firmware +3.60, so fingers crossed.

Looking into 3ds hacks, which, if I'm honest, looks like a fucking nightmare.