Cabin Island

 This is basically the Hardy Boys at Christmas. A trip out to the deserted Cabin Island by way of a gift from Elroy Jefferson, thanks to them recovering his car in the Shore Road Mystery.

As this is the UK and that was 16 books previously rather than a subsequent issue its a rather belated gift. Anyway it's not a bad book, they camp out on the island and have to deal with ghosts and look for not only Elroy's grandson Johnny but also a bunch of medals stolen by a former employee John Sparewell.

The main gimmick this time is ice-yachts, a flat beamed craft used for skimming over the ice of a frozen bay. Which begs to differ, how cold does Bayport get. Is it Midwest states cold I.E. 30 below C in winter or more like New York which I gather is more minus 5 or so.

You'll get two versions this time. The original is a PDF file culled from archive.org, so its a bit bigger than the usual small plain text PDF scan you are used to.   Ignore this we have sourced and scanned our own copy and its a normal sized PDF.

The UK text was hand typed as for most of the time my scanner refused to work, due to it requiring new ink. Yes that is a thing.

There are few differences between the two texts, in the original the boys are give rifles for Christmas with the explicit instructions to not shoot too many rabbits. I'm pretty sure it was mackinaw shirts and boots in the remake.

Also Chet is outed as someone who is all mouth and no trousers (he didn't worry against squaring off against bigger lads as long as someone was with him), as the boys face off against Ike & Tad, a pair of delinquent youths and owners of the Hawk, a rival ice yacht to the Hardy's Seagull.

UK remake here. Proper original here.

Edit. Those rifles they got for Xmas, basically are used for signalling and killing foxes. 

It's coming home

 Without any trophies, save for a runners up medal and or a participation badge.

I did, for my sins watch the second half and extra time and penalties, that is only because there was nothing of any use to watch apart from football.

I will say though it wasn't bad and we got a hell of a lot further than what we usually do. Also we have a new Gareth Southgate in Marcus Rashford who joins a long line of England players who've hit the post whilst taking penalties. Maybe they'll be an update of the old Pizza Hut advert with Sancho and Saka rubbing it in. Though its probably going to be a cold day in hell as we can't do humour now, and will be classed as racist.

There was a minority of racist comments, some, even from the UK, due to them missing the penalties, which provoked an absolute storm of anti racist activity. This included the mural of Rashford being defaced with slogans and then being defaced with more outpourings of love and support. I always thought it was weird, that I never saw what was written on it to begin with, 

And the only photo's I've seen, either blurred it out or just contain the after shots with the hearts and flowers. I can sort of see what it said, but I would like to see what it said.

Like I say there was an absolute swarm of anti racist types, as if you poked an ants nest and they all came out angry with them saying racism bad (it is) and taking the knee (which I don't agree with, though that is due to me hating all political point scoring.) You never really heard anyone take the mick or that, and apart from the few racist bits which were fucking minor compared to the anti stuff. 

Even at work among those who cared about football and Monday teatime was an absolute postmortem on the game. The consensus is we did well and have nothing to be ashamed about, 'cept that dude with the flare up his jacksy.

As for me, my message to the team is that of Young Mr Grace from Are You Being Served? and that is. 

You've all done very well.

VIking Symbols

So the Viking Symbol Mystery then. Or the Hardys trip to Great Slave Lake area in order to track down a Viking rune stone.

The stone in question is called the Horkel stone, and was brought by Leif the Viking on his one and only trip across Northern Canada. Along with a longboat and looted booty from Viking raids. The Great Slave lake is his final resting place... except Leif never existed. The closest they came was L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. 

It only exists in the story as the great McGuffin that everyone wants along with a book on Runes written by an English professor from the London Museum (which one is never specified, although we secretly hope its the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill). 

You get the whole gang tagging along this time, not just Chet Morton, but Biff Hooper and Tony Prito. Also Mr Hardy, too, takes to the great north in order to track down the crims.

There is also a French Canadien called Pierre Caron, who mainly tags along to settle his feud with Albert Dulac. Mostly says bon tonnerre. Its not a bad mystery and the boys get to learn how to pilot a float plane so they can land on the lakes around the area. 

The UK edition brings a few minor edits and expands (or mostly explains) the text in a few places. The next book is called the Missing Chums, where, we know it as the Missing Friends.

You can read it here.

Necrolog: Near

 Did a brief updating to my old whatever happened to Byuu, blog post last week, before I really knew what happened and that.

For those of you late to the party, Near as he was known took his own life last week thanks to an online hate via an old lolcow post up on Kiwifarms. 

Whether you think they are all a bunch empathy free cunts or class them as far right trolls these are the facts of the matter. Personally I like my humour edgy but even I draw the line here.

My own dealings with him are via Twitter, where he would post emulator updates on Ares, Higan and occasionally the meds he was on, oh and black metal, but no one is perfect.

I put up the whatever happened to Byuu post due to his last hiatus, and it seemed that all was well after he returned. Then after a few weeks of emu news, more radio silence and finally the awful news last Sunday.

I never really knew him personally, only through works. Emulation stuff, such as MSU1 expansion for SNES, BSNES emulator and its multi system offshoots, Higan and Ares.  Beat patching, and the whole, rescan the Super Nintendo Cart catalogue for accuracy sake. I wonder if people will still bother him for that one Pachinko revision that he dumped.

There is a longer and better written post with proper pronouns and that doing the rounds, though I can't find at the moment, we have a thread at RHDN if you'd like more.