End of year Review 3 All the rest of the tat.

 You know the drill now, a round up of all the stuff that doesn't make the original first 2 posts and anything that we've forgotten from the past two posts.

Britney Spears and Elton John Tiny Cancer.

I know it should be tiny Dancer but this is the worst. Britney coming back from insanity hell with a rework of this old pile of nonsense. Possibly the only thing you'll probably enjoy from this is she's now posting nearly nude tat on Instaspam (you won't though).

Keith John Stack cartoons. 

Les + Brianne, two cartoon lesbians with a slight Beavis and Butthead overtone. It's pretty geeky TBH, but this is exactly what floats my boat. Whether its eating a load of pumpkins for halloween or just admiring the general filth of their New York flat, there is always something to admire. You can find him on twitter. but mostly on newgrounds and Masterdong the two bit commie social network. 

 Film  The Amazing Maurice and his educated Rodents.

Or just the amazing Maurice. Its a German made 3d animation of a Terry Pratchett Discworld book I've not read, which is a rarity in itself. I'm guessing set somewhere in Uberwald a sort of proto black forest / Transylvania, it stars a cat, a bunch of sentient rats and a plan to get rid of every rat from a small town somewhere out in Uberwald. I'll definitely look into reading the original.

Also it clears the nasty low budget version of the Watch made by the BBC out of my memory. You want representation, check Cheery Littlebottom isn't in Guards Guards nor is Angua, neither do they have much of a role in The Nightwatch which its both based on. Vetinari a woman, check, run a stick through my own wheels Dibbler disablist version, check. Weird non binary Cheery (original was a beardless female dwarf.) Worst sin of all omitting Nobby Nobbs and Fred Colon although that would require them to own up to all the other sins committed in this trash fire of a series. 

Gaming.

Neverwinton Nights,

Finally playing Neverwinter via an old PC, its pretty good you don't get visuals in cut scenes on Win 7 but everything else is, chef's kiss. The Switch version could do with them adding in touch screen controls as the interface is far too convoluted to work via buttons alone. 

Dragon Quest builders 2

Nice tribute to Minecraft, which I've never played, and only have the soundtrack to. Can see how building shit can be a massive time sink. Also gotta love the actual English localisation done on this, a Yorkshire worm, eeh, ah'll go to the foot of ah stairs.

Yoku's Island Express.

A nifty little platformer built with pinball mechanics and a lot of charm. Team 17 of course, and reminds me of old PS2 oddity Flipnic. Which is no bad thing.

End of year round up. Television.

Hello, its boxing day already and although Monday, I'm convinced that it's still Sunday. Thanks to Twitter I've found that there was a lo fi version of Last Christmas used in Sega UFO Catchers. Oh and that changing the lyrics to Gay penis is making me hard, totally fits. 

Today though is all about Television, the good and the bad. So with no further ceremony we'll get on with our year review.

Good

Green Planet.

David Attenborough documentary on plants. With a focus on specific areas, this includes the short lived Balsa wood tree, a look at Lithops in South Africa, and the usual this planet is fucked, heavy climate change guilt trip these programmes always have.

Martin Clunes Pacific

Doc Martin goes to the south seas. Looking at various island cultures, whether its Fiji, Tonga or Vanuatu, its a joy to watch him island hop and encounter different races. Oh and the Xmas special of Doc Martin reunites him with Caroline Quentin, which is basically half of Men Behaving Badly.

CSI Vegas.

I know its a multi culti cast, and that Gil and Sara don't come back for season 2 (Wed 28th 9pm Alibi). But Pauline Newlove is boss as the new CSI Lead. Season 1 was just to get Hodges off a rap of sabotaging the CSI cases he worked on. 

Arirang TV Korean TV trad music special.

This should have been on the music round up, but I got so bored one time I watched this whole traditional Korean music concert, a sort of shamanic music with guitar and traditional instruments. About as far away from KPop as you can get. They had three bands, which I didn't get the name of,

but were cool.

Bad

 

Craig Charles UFO Conspiracies.

Mr Lister from Red Dwarf, with a half baked Aliens show. Of course it has Nick Pope in it, it has to have Nick Pope in it. Its fuck awful.

Alexander Armstrong South Korea.

For some reason this rubbed me up the wrong way. Weird make over to make him look like a corpse, then an actual stay in a coffin where a Korean priest conducts his own funeral. A focus on KPop  and a focus on Mukbang, aka stuff your fat face with enough food to choke a horse. 

We also had the misfortune to see actual Korean TV on holiday and it seems to be dull drama and the kind of half witted prank / KSI shit from the Youtube home page, you get when you accept Google cookies. No one needs to see Mr Beast's leering grin 50 times over or SS Sniper wolf.

 

Review of the year 2022 Music

 This is going to be a really short effort this year. Waking up to learn that you lost both Maxi Jazz from Faithless and  veteran coder Archer Maclean both on Xmas day has been a blow for you. 

The worst of it all is not that there has been a lot that stands out or that is objectively worse, but just so much stuff that falls into filler category. Neither objectively bad but not good either.

Good.

Ben Hemsley Love, Peace and Happiness.

The sort of piano overdriven happy hardcore / old rave that will put a smile on your face. A joy.

Bum a boy, Burna Boy Last Last.

My tolerance for Afrobeats is pretty low, but this is catchy enough to get me through, its not Ye which with the right house track can be devastating, but will do in a pinch.

Drake. That mixtape album thing where he does house, sort of. (Honestly, Nevermind)

Its good you are making this sort of thing, but shouldn't your vocal actually enhance a track rather than detract?

Beyonce. Break My Soul

You can break break my soul. Part old Stonebridge edit of Robin S Show me luv and part shitty rap, Terry Hunter's remix is probably the best of this.

BAD

Stormzy. Hide and Seek

He's done slow ass songs before (Blinded by your grace) but this is such a slog to get through.

Aitch and Ed Sheerness coach. My G

Or Margie, a song dedicated to his disabled sister. Sung by the retarded, for the retarded.

Firebird Rockets.

 So the final normal post of the year before its Miranda awards and best of annual round ups.

The Firebird Rocket is one of the canon books that make up the original corpus of works. The first 57 books. Its not a bad little tale this. The Hardys go to Australia to look into who is sabotaging a rocket launch and find a missing senators son.

You get Sydney, Port Augusta, Adelaide and Alice Springs, as places and an incongruous recruitment at a "soccer" match, given the Aussies track record in the "beautiful game" surely they could have edited this to be a cricket match or rugby game, but no our missing senators son is picked up at the footy. 

Chet Morton has one of his temporary hobbies, this time launching rockets, which is enough to win the science fair and get him to Oz with our boys. 

It starts off with a lab mishap and a call from Fenton Hardy for the boys to go to Princeton, where the Firebird Rocket is being developed, before leads lead them to Australia.

The UK version has some amendments to the text, with it expanded in places and cut in others. Also all references to Abo's are altered to aborigines, here, as I guess it was deemed beyond the pale here in 90's Britain. Also there are a lot of US slang dropped from this. No gumshoes here, nor are the boys called punk kids.  

All in all it is not a bad read, not terrible, but not going to set the world on fire.

If you want to read it, you can read it here.

Kitsune

 Ever had one of those days? I don't  mean one of those days where everything goes wrong or such. I mean

one of those days where it has an over arching theme. This basically happened on Wednesday just gone. We was clearing snow and ice from a road on the estate and noticed a group of preschool kids and their Child minders / teachers. We have a square of grass out in front of the road and at this time we had a fox show up. 

The little guy stayed for a good ten minutes and started capering about, sitting in the snow, scratching (he was a fleabag fox.) Before wandering off. Some of the kids tried to approach him but he kept his distance.

The last we saw was on the estate road further down. This is not the end btw, going back home and saying about watching the fox, my mum says that there was a dead fox out in the garden down at the bottom. It's not the same guy of cause but I thought it was strange enough to warrant an entry. 

One final  thing, the last thing I noticed before going to bed was that there is an ad for Old Speckled Hen Ale on TV, which of course stars an urbane cartoon fox trying new things. Anyone else had such a strange themed day. 

This is the guy.

Finally I'll leave you with a shot of Foxy himself. Next time It'll be review of the year.

Homeless.

 No I'm not homeless, but this week I've had to deal with someone who was. 

We have a couple of people sleeping rough in the blocks, one Romanian guy who's been moved on a few times and a woman, about my age, who we've taken on to get a place. If you don't know its been cold as hell these past few days and as a collective we decided to intervene.  I got to wake her up with the good news that we somehow found her a place to stay. Don't know how she got on as its not my doing, but my boss. But I hope she gets back on her feet soon.

Edit. She came back on Tuesday as the current place fell through, due to her threatening people. Jesus fuck man, I'm not helping anyone ever again. 

The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew meet Dracula

 Not sure if this one is going to be made into a PDF yet, but its not half bad.

The premise is that Fenton Hardy has gone to Transylvania  to catch some museum crooks but instead gets whacked when looking through Dracula's Castle. The Hardy's turn up in France along with Nancy Drew, who's looking for Fenton also. 

There is a band called Circus which the boys join, to travel to a gig in Transylvania. Nancy and Bess go along with them. 

Oh and did I say it's based on a TV show of the same name from the 70's. I should really watch it as Nancy posed for Playboy, back when it was at it's heights. For the ladies there is Shaun Cassidy and in this Elton John's producer, Bernie Taupin, which means there's going to be a terrible English accent. They've already tried to convince me that Eau De Cologne is rhyming slang for Phone. So will have to see if any more crimes against the English language are committed here.

Edit: Yes it did get made into a PDF. But time for some more elaboration.

There are two other stories here. The Hardy's going to an Amityville house of horrors repurposed as a diner and disco to track down a kid, whilst Fenton Hardy visits a graveyard.  And the last story has the boys help a rockstar Tony Bird, to find his missing sound recordist. 

They're not bad stories, and for once we actually know who wrote them. A few out of character arcs here. I never knew Joe had the appetite of Chet Morton here in the haunted house story but there you go. Also Callie Shaw seems to be the P.A. to Fenton Hardy in this rather than Frank's sometime girlfriend. I wonder if the old man is knocking her off as well as Frank, just  a thought. 

Anyway for reading averse people the Dracula story is here on Youtube. The other stories are probably there also, if I can be arsed to look.

Secret Panel

 Looking down the past few posts on here and it seems I've spelled out TMNT in the titles. Total accident, but made me chuckle for a bit. One for the turtles fans.

Anyway back to the main topic, we have a new book for you all typed up for you. It's The Secret Panel one of those that have a condensed version as a revised edition. Which means every other sentence is altered to within an inch of its life. We still have work to do on this edition but the original is already done. Both will be up when they're done.

The plot to this is that the boys have picked up a man calling himself John Mead, who has a strange mansion out of town with concealed locks. A bunch of crooks have settled on using the place as a hideout and when one of their crew gets shot, they kidnap an old friend of Laura Hardy to take care of him.

Depending on the story, these crooks are targeting museums (original) or electrical warehouses (remake) and bypassing all locks and alarms in the building.

Chet is sold a lemon of a boat that was festering away in the Mead mansion boathouse. As a subplot and in the original book there is interest in a mini sub which feels more like it should be in the remakes rather than the original.

Lastly there is a locksmith robbing his victims while installing new locks on their property. The original has a lame premise about rare locks but the remake nails it with some antiquities and Mr. Hardy's list of fingerprints on the case.

All in all the original stands up and the remake, though condensed actually has a few areas where it improves on the original. Chet actually has a girlfriend of sorts in the remake, she's called Helen Osbourne and, in the original is more of a pity date, out of convenience, whereas in the remake, she goes to the cinema and a strange chemist shop / diner for sandwiches along with his sister, Iola and Callie Shaw.

Original and remake can be found here  and here. 

Twatter

 I know the world and his dog has an opinion on this, but, Twitter has been unbearable for ages now.

I get it, as a fellow robot with a thin skin , I know what Elon's doing as a fit of pique and that. I also know that him falling into the soft right / mid ground political side of things is also where  I am.

For those in who have been in a hole for the past few weeks. Elon Musk has bought Twitter for $44 gorillion dollars, and has managed to piss of the verified blue check marks, the far left and a few of my mates who have decided to jump ship to Mastodon. As a final brilliant move, he's reinstated Donald Trump and am prepared when I log in next for an almost unparalleled amount of autistic screeching from the left.

The downside is some of the people I follow who post rare game stuff going away. And the fact the weird left wing types I follow for balance, posting Chicken little style, Twitter is falling, due to him laying off so many, malding leftie types.

That and posting on going to Mastodon daily. I've looked at Mastodon and it's OK for what it is. Never anything else. No poa.st no Gab or Parler, no minds or even good ol Facebook, just Mastodon.

Like one of my mutuals on there say, I'll be there till it burns down.

Malder's Gate

 Love that I can come up with a consecutive bad pun two weeks in a row. For your information mald is a contraction of mad and bald. Hence Malder's gate.

You'll need some info as to what I've been up to as well to get a bunch of godshagging malders after me. I'm on Instagram but rarely post, one of the people I follow is James Lindsay who you may  know from the Sokal hoax amongst other things. Me  I know him from posting cringe on Insta. 

His market seems to be a tide of bible belt bollocks believers. That trannies are proselytizing to your children and turning them gay. That the World Economic Foundation are the axis of evil and worst of all Covid lockdowns.

Where as I have no problem with a few of these things, I know little about the WEF, and its boss Klaus Schwab or globalization to care. But a few of these are about the promotion of god which as an atheist and liberal fence sitter really grind my gears. So I did a comment saying that god didn't exist and got a few godshagging malders saying that he definitely does exist and that a only a fool says that god doesn't exist.

I've a question for you. If you are buying into an afterlife sight unseen on the promise that believing in a guy with no shred of evidence ever existing, will grant you eternal life in a gilded cage just so that, someone else who doesn't believe all that, will suffer for eternity.

Then who's the fool?

Neverwinton Nights

Joke titles aside, I've been playing Neverwinter Nights both the original PC version and the Switch modern remake. 

First impressions on the PC version is that it works on the old laptop running Win 7 and that despite cut scenes not showing (no movie only audio.) It's not bad can't think why there is not a decent remake for Win 10 or at least a facelift / remake patch so it runs without error. 

The plot is rather up to date, seeing as there is a plague ravaging the city of Neverwinter and you've been tasked to hunt down some escaped critters that may have a bearing on a cure and that. 

The city is divided into the criminal run docks, the poor quarter with its whopping undead problem and the prison and noble quarters which I've yet to explore. 

The Switch version which is a modern remake for modern consoles and PC has its own issues, in that its reliance on doing everything by the shoulder buttons and control sticks makes it ten times more fiddly than it already is, And its already fiddly. Seemingly ignoring that the Switch has a touchscreen to deal with matters such as this. Its still a good game, just lesser than it should be.

Talking of Dale Winton (our title reference, yo.) I wonder if Beamdog are going to cover the Icewind Dale games.

Toxic revenge

Not much doing this week. Found another Hardy Boys book in the wild, it's Toxic Revenge which can only be described as the Hardys do Extinction Rebellion, but with the focus on Recycling instead of Climate Change. I'm only a chapter in so far and for some reason it's given us the heights of Frank and Joe Hardy. Frank 6'1 and Joe 6 foot, now all they'll need is a six pack and a well paying job and they can join the 666 club on dating apps.

Picked this up in Barking along with a Jim O'Rourke single (Halfway to a Threesome) which ain't bad. Ignore the numbering and covers in the link above, this is the weird 2000's reissue when Simon and Schuster decided to reprint a bunch of the casefile books seemingly at random. This is the sort of thing you should be getting.

Like I say I'm only a chapter in at present and as I'm not transcribing the Casefiles series, there's no DL link for you this time. We'll be up and running next week with The Secret Panel as our chosen target.

Junk

 Not a junk tour but a tour on a junk

This is the 34th Hardy boys story and the boys have pitched in to buy a Chinese Junk to ferry people across the summer season. It seems that Jim Foy a Chinese pal of theirs has a lead on a cheap ship to buy and with a load of interest from various parties. You just know there is going to be a mystery attached to it.

This is the one that makes up to the Chinese community at large, for the way they were depicted in the original Footsteps Under the Window. No funny accents and no dragging up of a hapless Chinese here. The representation seems pretty good for the time, and it seems that this is the only book Jim was in. 

The gang is all here, Biff Hooper, Tony Prito (who's the same age as Frank here, 18) Chet Morton with a caving hobby that you know will be used in the mystery. Also Callie Shaw and Iola Morton get a look in, too. 

The junk they've bought is of course stolen and several parties want it back, Add in a mysterious doctor who's been robbing people, while passed out, this includes their aunt Gertrude, who can normally spot a wrong'un from several yards away. You have the making of a pretty good mystery. 

You can read it here.

Crap Rules Everything Around Me.

As I mentioned last week, we got a magazine at the bootsale that is the sort of also ran trash we used to see all the time, when Viz made it big back in the early 90's.

The sort of knock off comics like Oink, Zit and Smut comics, that sprang up around that time but never seemed to have the lasting power of Viz. Also, holy shit, after reading that wiki article, Oink had some decent contributors there. I can remember a strip in one of them called Tourettes of Duty, and I think Reeders wife, after the amateur porn trope Reader's Wives.

This bastard, I have no recollection of. It's sort of like a crap photo love comic strip, crossed between the sort of lad culture that was big around that time and the aforementioned knock off Viz style comic. Is it funny, not really it has its moments, but it's not going to set the world on fire. A quick Jammy search, brings up a companies house search with the former MD here, and seeing as its based out of Harrow, North London, kinda rings true. 

The style, reminds me of the kind of cheap softcore porn mag you'd find ripped up under the hedge near your school. A Parade or Cheap Thrills type rather than the expected Mayfair. Fiesta or Razzle. 

I'd list all that was in it but, I've taken the liberty to scan it and put it up on archive.org. 

You can read and indeed download, Cream issue 2 here. 

Incidentally that implies there is an issue one out there and indeed any more after that, I'm guessing looking at companies house look up that there was at least one more issue put out.

M vs CU

Here is a thing, I was supposed to talk about something entirely different today. What if the Marvel VS Capcom Universe was an SRPG played for laughs like Disgaea but more Super Robot Wars level of inclusion. If you're an MCU fan, think that bit Deadpool 2 with all the shitty super heroes, that level of irrelevance, and treated with the same reverence. 

More importantly its because I was reading about this guy at work (looking for variant Spiderman) and wondered what kind of redemption this would need to put it in a game as either main bad guy or playable character. Oh and finally having Ryu from Breath Of Fire being remembered for something other than Breath Of Fire.

Yeah, in other news I picked up a crappy photo love magazine / Viz knock off from the early 90's that reeks of soft core porn and is totally cringe but maybe next week I'll talk on that.

Eye check

Took a day off last week to have my first post SARS 2 electric boogaloo eye check.  Registering with Boots, as they let you book online without having to call up first. as I hate talking over the phone.

Our nearest Boots optician is next to our bank and for some reason thought it was part of the regular Boots store which is down by Primark. Funny as I was stressing about reaching this on time, but when I found it was next to my bank I saw the funny side.

Less funny is that I have to shell out for new specs and such which are long overdue. And have a doctors appointment as one of my pupils has turned inward. I'm not going to google this as it'll only depress me and would rather have an actual expert look at it.

EDIT. Its a squint. I finally got my referral letter and booked up in June, so maybe It'll be sorted by then.

More fun is that due to strikes / Marathon I had my junk tour on a Thursday instead of the weekend. We went to Bethnal Green and wanted to look at Hackney but ended up going down to Dalston via Haggerston, as I decided to take the main road past the charity shops instead of doubling back as usual.

There are an awful lot of poncey stores and start ups this end and a few chicks with feminist Killjoy stickers on, like a bug having bright colours so you know its poisonous AF. But apart from that, it wasn't all bad. We found a new museum, the museum of the home and a place called, I think, Woof which had a Corgi going wild in a ball pit, so I guess its a dog play park.

Dalston has a well nice charity shop which sold things for cheap and I got Chicken lips and a Dr. Octagon CD for a quid, and shades of the long gone Crest in Walthamstow still had VHS for sale.

On to the Oxfam which had a sealed Nobukazu Takemura EP for sale and a Baby Ford Fabric mix cd. which was boss.

Decided to take a long walk back and get crossrail home at Liverpool street, which has to be said feels like the city proper, and the most hipster free imaginable.

Excellent Shiba Inu carrier

Apology accepted

Clock ticked.

 New book scan for you, this one is While The Clock ticked and it's one of those with both an original and a revised text.

Original

The boys are given a case by the banker Mr. Dalrymple. Apparently someone has been sending threatening messages into, what is essentially a panic room, he's been using as an office. The notes appear when the time lock is on and appear in the middle of the room with no other means of entry. The ex Purdy mansion, has been derelict for a while before he decided to buy up the place. 

There is a subplot of harbour thieves using the mansion as a base to store loot and furthermore strange screams can be heard at night, warning people away. Finally Hurd Applegate reappears from his introduction in The Tower Treasure, as somebody as stolen his precious stamp collection.

Remake

The boat thieves plotline is much more outlined in the remake, with the Sleuth being taken and used to ferry goods without the boys knowledge, and the docks playing much more of a role than in the original. Hurd Applegate has his Jade taken rather than his stamps in this version, and their chums are fully in on the deal instead of being peripheral characters.

Conclusion.

The original is the better story here, but not by much. A few things that I thought would have been in the original are not, such as the dock scenes for one. Also this is the part in the UK versions where the Sleuth is introduced as is Hurd Applegate. Both their official unveilings are in much later books, The Shore Road Mystery 17 and The Tower Treasure 31 respectively. Both are worth your time.

Anyway original here remake here. 

Yass Queen 2 Electric Boogaloo

As my last post confirmed, we do indeed get a bank holiday out of this. Though not for King Chucks coronation. We have a massive shut down while the country reboots, and Chazza is installed.

Think of it as a Royal equivalent of windows updates. There is even a big fuck off queue going down from Southwark to Westminster abbey. I'm not joking it's 18 hours of your life you're not getting back. So what do I do. I decide to go down and have a look at the said queue, not pay my respects mind, but just have a look and see what its all about.

Got off at Westminster and walked along the river, I did see them on the bridge, queueing, so at least I can say I saw them, but there was so much more out there that was interesting.

For one there was a big Socialist Wanker Party presence there. Tried real hard to get a pic of someone holding a Hoes sign (it should've said homes but the angle cut the M out of it). But had to content myself with a nice shot of the London Eye. 

What you don't see up there is the amount of police and security detail out there. This is one place you

do not want to fuck around and find out. We had a look in Whitehall gardens with their statues and walked down to Trafalgar Square, which is closed off. 

Finally got down to Soho and had a look around at the record shops as the arcade was closed for a function. We got to see the owners dog at Sounds of The Universe, which was rather empty. Finally on the tube back to the suburbs we saw a golden retriever on the floor with two ladies. It's their first tube trip, and they are 2. Thoroughly nice dog.  

Yass Queen

You can't have failed to notice that the queen is no more.  We are now into the shit playlist era of radio, all the slow, kill yourself tracks, not even some decent dance like when Diana pegged it. If your idea of hell is Coldplay on a loop then this is it.

As you may infer from the above, I'm not much of a royalist, I'm not a republican by any means, its just that now her Maj has gone, there really isn't anyone left among the royals I can give much of a damn for. We are now, very much in the King Chuck timeline. Talking to plants and royal carbuncles and the like.

After he goes its either Wills and Kate, or Harry and Megan as king and queen, maybe Harry could be crowned in his Nazi uniform, though he has to at least outlast all of Williams sprogs to stand a chance. 

The downside of this not caring, is actually caring when the weirdo left and the IRAtards moaning on about colonization and shit pile in to piss on her still warm corpse, when her reign was basically one long resignation letter from the Commonweatlh by most of Africa and the Caribbean. Still when has facts ever gotten in the way of feelings, eh, leftoids.

Will she be missed, yeah without a doubt, 70 fucking years on the throne does that, she was an institution after all, and will leave a long shadow. I guess they could put a corgi on the throne until King Chazzer gets his coronation, which, I hear we'll get a bank holiday for. So every cloud, huh.

A walk.

 There's another bait article up in todays Mail about women watching pron and the so called harm, and I can't be bothered to respond.

Instead I went for a walk down by the river, instead. To tell the truth, its been about 4 months or so since I've been down there, It's a small stretch of the Thames from Firepower down towards Thamesmead, with options to walk past Crossness power station down towards Erith for the adventurous. 

There is quite a lot to watch along the way, if the tide is out you can see a variety of gulls such as Black Headed gulls, Herring Bull (aka Chip thief or Bully Gull) and the occasional Black backed gull. You may get some Mallards in the wooded bit as well as Shelduck and Teal. Today we saw some Mute Swans but I've also seen Cormorant, especially along by the Jetty at Erith.

There's quite a bit of cover even though a grass fire had ripped through a swathe of the river front, it still has quite a stand of Hawthorn and other small trees. There is some Sea Aster in flower as its getting on for autumn now, and we managed to disturb a Ring Neck Parakeet from the bush.

For once we managed to pick the right exit so we came out near the bus stop by the baths for the bus home.

brushfire damage.

 

BBC Prons

There is a credible news story that did the rounds on Monday that was basically a thinly disguised trail for BBC Panorama (and not it not that *BBC sadly.) It boils down to people posting nude pics of their wives / girlfriends on notable spaz aggregator. Reddit. Obviously without consent.  

As an actual porn fan of this sort of shit, I knew it was a bullshit programme long before I knew it was from a subreddit. As a noted tight fist, I wouldn't share anything, but it got me thinking. If this sort of thing is outlawed and trust me it will, what actually, will become of it. I guess some sort of Onlyfans style site where women post nudes themselves would do... but I see a ton of A.I generated content, mainly on Twitter and thinking how Chriddof uses a computer generated woman as an avatar.

What if we were to cut out the middle woman entirely, and just get A.I to generate nudes.

Just train it at Pornhub or some other large dataset of images and such and just get them to create all the porn you need, risk free, with no comebacks. 

It would eliminate consent entirely, if your model isn't real and entirely of age, then there should be no comebacks. I don't know if anyone is doing that now, but lets face it, porn is the innovator, online, so it wouldn't surprise me if they were.

Oh and about that reddit, you know some other subreddit is going to pop up later and all. I know the BBC are slapping their backs and such, but we all know its not going to stop them.

* Gee, I should have just linked to blacked dot com, let's face it, it's what you all thing BBC means outside the UK.

Chormebork

 We finally found one of these low powered PC's, in a fly tip of all places, and while predictably it was fucked (didn't turn on) it had a nice aesthetic about it.

I guess I just love low powered form factor PC's. I've written before about a weird TV PC we've found and this is going to be no exception. I guess I did the only logical thing one does with busted hardware. Tear it down.

Chromebork guts.

It's from 2014 so its long passed its use by date, but looking at that, what you don't see is a good half of that is battery, like a laptop battery. The rest seems to be a tablet motherboard style, with ram built in (2GB) a NAND chip working as your storage, and a few connectors for expansion, SD Card, HDMI and a two USB ports one USB 3.0. 

If I was designing it I would either put in a low capacity SSD or use a Micro SD card that you could upgrade as its main HD. RAM would be double that maybe even 8GB, and dropping the SD reader and upping the USB port counts to 4, all USB3.  My idiot brain wants a SATA port at the back for HD integration and no I've no idea if that is feasible, I just liked the callback to old computers such as the Amiga. Also, a laptop battery seems fine for this but yet again my idiot mind wants to run this from a iPhone battery.

I hate mostly online stuff and Chromebork seems to be all online with I think a few sops to running android. I know there are a few android as main OS, such as Android Remix and apart from one incredibly busted laptop never got it working on anything else. So this or inevitable linux port or  Raspberry pi desktop OS. 

 

Hampstead

For the first time in absolutely ages, we decided to go to Dog town or Hampstead as it's better known. And yeah, hot as fuck out and people still walking their doggos about. See a couple of Labs being walked, and one had his little lipstick poking out. Obviously enjoying the sun.

Anyway we decided to get off a few stops earlier and walk up from Swiss Cottage, as I knew there would be a few shops there, got a Clan of Xymox CD which isn't bad at all from the Hate Foundation (Heart Foundation) and then got a drink from the Turkish grocers to carry on. Tip always see if there is a Turkish grocers whenever you are in London, they're wild, lots of obscure snacks and drinks.

Almost made it reckoning by bus stop maps but turns out that where I was going right I thought I was going wrong. I ended up outside the Tavistock Clinic minus my balls and looking at the map on my phone, to see where I went wrong. 

Retracing my steps we finally made it Hampstead and had a look round there is a nice Oxfam there and a few other places. Picked up a white label house track and Sir Mix-A-Lot One Time's Got No Case as we have Baby's Got Back ages ago.

After quite a few bottles of water we decided to go home, mission accomplished.

Break my soul a review of sorts.

 So it's out, a new Beyonce album and a decent single from said album. No its not the one that is a retread of Anti Vax knob jockeys, Right Said Fred's I'm too sexy. (Seriously America what the fuck is wrong with you, most Brits in the 90's though they were cringe) But it's the one that is part shitty rap (Bounce) and part Robin S Show Me Love retread (Stonebridge remix.)

If people had any balls this is the Image they'd use.

It helps that Beyonce has a golden voice, and that only a ill guided rap part in the middle lets it down, otherwise the Acapella and original mix are the ones to go for, where Bounce and not Robin S are the glue that holds together that wonderful voice. Cull it and you get the mess that is the Instrumental. The bounce bits do not work on their own and the interpretation of Stonebridges Show Me Love rework are few and far between.

There is a bunch of mixes to go with it as well. Including what I thought was a mash up or a joke but is 100% official. The Queens Mix with Akhenaton faced whore, Madonna.  I got 1 min in before switching it off. 

There is a Will.I.Am mix which is adequate to a point but there is one sound that puts me off.

The Honey Dijon remix isn't half bad, quite a big drum build up and still haven't heard it all the way through to see if they'll do anything with it.

Nita Aviance does a good job with a stripped down house version that still has the rap sadly.

Full props must go to Terry Hunter for creating something that sounds like it should've been released on Strictly Rhythm back in 1994. It really feels like that area of Garage house, like Morels Groove. 

Still has the rap line in it.

Me I've been playing an edited acapella over DHS House of God Jack Dangers mix.

EDIT.

As a postscript to this, a few things stood out for me. First of all no one does anything like this any more. And by this I mean totally fuck with the vocal track. Check out Ron Hardy's Ghost, or Car Crash both chew up Let No Man Put Asunder and spits it out in strange ways.  No one rips up tracks any more.

Second, I've seen a number of shill writers wibble on about Black and Queer  Gay culture, when what you really mean to write is that era from the mid 80's when House was being threshed out of Italo and Disco in Gay clubs in NYC and Chicago. It still doesn't matter, that Korg piano house era was ten years later, in 92 -95, and Stonebridge's mix, on which this is based off of, is a Swede.

If you had any balls you'd base your track on this.

Phone.

 We are looking round for a cheap Android phone to replace a mid range phone we've been using since about 2014 / 2015, First as my main phone then as work phone as I phased out a found iPhone4. 

I think its time to put a bullet in it and send it to the mobile graveyard. It lags and frequently runs out of storage. Its an old first gen Moto G, that has seen me through about 3 holidays and about 2 years of work. Complete with beat up case, that looks like its been chewed. I'll be sad to see it go, just gotta get my moxie up and see what will be its replacement.

My requirements are pretty basic, It has to have a good camera and if it was a main phone, some decent storage. A headphone port would be nice, but seeing as I don't make calls much, except in emergencies, having it actually be a phone is low on my priorities. so long as I can receive calls, thats it.

My budget is pretty low, I'd love a RedMi, seeing as my main phone is a Xiaomi, but am tending toward either Oppo or another Motorola, with its gorillion variations.

Embers a review

Edit: all done now.

The Clue In the Embers review

This is not a bad book at all. If you like the Maya and want to see the boys travel to Guatemala in search of a lost temple complex, ala Indiana Jones then this is going to be one for you.

Tony Prito, has inherited a stack of curios from his antique dealer uncle, Roberto. This is not limited to, a bunch of swords, some shrunken heads, and a full sized skeleton.  Also hidden away with some of the other curios,  medals that make a map to the hidden temple of Texichapi. Thanks to some serious hassle from the mysterious Valez and a patriotic society, all clues lead to Guatemala.

While there the boys get to locate the missing temple, and Tony, who has his case go missing at the airport, has to drag up as an Indian shaman. They make a friend of a tribal chief called Tecum-Uman and when Texichapi is located there is a big showdown in the temple before being given a heroes welcome.

It's not bad and at times quite good. There are a few problems here, mainly its to do with the Maya and Tecum Uman. The treasure has quite a lot of gold artifacts, which is nice, but nary any mention of Jade pieces which is what all Maya kings and queens really prized above all else. 

Tecum Uman and his tribe, the Kulkuls do not seem to exist, Tecum himself is a folk hero and probable last ruler of the K'iche Maya, his tribe, though, does not seem to appear amongst the many tribes of Maya Indian peoples. Ladinos, however are widespread and are simply a mix of Maya peoples and later Spanish invaders.

Texichapi itself seems to refer to Tecum Uman, and not an actual place. would like to see how this breaks down in actual Mayan, or if the words exist. Anyway I guess its one of those long forgotten satellite kingdoms in Guatemala, rather than a big centre like Tikal.

The biggest red flag here is not that its super racist or anything (it's not,) or that one of the criminals is disguised as a woman, its that they call them Aztec, which as a people never left Mexico whereas the Maya reached down as far as Honduras and Belize.

The UK text has a few omissions, the boys sorting out the curios when home from the train, and Tony cooking spaghetti, along with a few bits toward the end at Texichapi, but mostly it keeps pretty faithful to the text, with some anglicizing of the text. 

The US rewrite is quite obviously based on the original, with a bit cut out to drop the page count. You lose a few bits and pieces, such as Jorge Almeida speeding, and the arrowhead not being in the campfire bomb at the Theme park. You also get a few bits and pieces added back from the original text, along with a lot of minor edits and not so minor edits as whole chapters are merged together in some cases.

Anyway, its up here and here and here for all three versions.

CSI Vegas

 This should probably go up at the end of the year with the best and worst, but it won't as Alibi finally have a new CSI, this is a reboot of Crime Scene Investigation AKA CSI Vegas.

Like every new show there is a United Nations of a cast which is really weird. They have a black woman in charge, but its OK she's cool, and the only white guy is pretty sketchy. New coroner is OK and there is a Chinese guy on the team (whatever happened to Archie Kao the film Tech) final member is some English Indian lady, as a Brit I know many of them are more English than the English so her accent throws me a bit.  Finally we get Jorja Fox and William Petersen return as Sara Sidle and Gil Grissom and no one else.

Willows has retired and what ever happened to Greg and Nick we never find out. Its been a few years there must be a few people there from the old show. But it seems to be an all new cast. We don't even get Lindsay Willows as a cop.

The case revolves around a cold case that could turn out to be potentially damaging for a lot of old cases, (Hodges keeping a lock up full of old case data that may or may not be a coverup.) Its not bad and we find out that Jim Brass the coppers cop has retired and has some visual degenerating disease. He also shoots dead some guy who tries to assault him, not bad for a half blind old guy. 

Hope they keep the quality up and don't go down the identity politics route or being total wank such as CSI Cyber. I saw the original ads for this while I was coming off of the Coof so, here's hoping it keeps up its quality.

EDIT. Current episode is based in gaming, women dev is killed and of course they namecheck gamergate.

8 years on and they still can't let it die.

Crossrail

Finally kicked Covid into touch on Thursday. Good enough to go back to work, where I find the text I sent explaining my absence didn't go through and now I have a letter moaning about being awol. :I

Seeing as my mum has finally gotten over Covid as well, its decided that we'd go down to Romford a place which we like. Its OK for junk touring nothing spectacular, mostly we go because there's a Pop-in cafe one of the best places around for food. 

As the Elizabeth line is finally up and running, (seriously any one local gonna call it that, Its Crossrail and always will be.) we decided to go that way and change at Liverpool St, If you're going to do it that way be aware its a long walk and you'll be charged for two journeys. Best to get the DLR to Stratford and then get Crossrail to Romford as you'll be charged for one journey.  

Anyway, they're good trains, nice and real long, so much so that the end carriages don't open and you'll need to shuffle down the train to exit at certain stations. Apart from that and the long walk, I'd give it 7/10.

Got SARS2 electric boogaloo

 Was going to end up the Limassol holiday posts with a few thanks and maybe some cat posting if I hadn't done so before then on Wednesday night, I get a fever.

It all started watching QI and laughing like I'm high to some lame joke one of the panel said, like I'm ripped to the tits on E's. Not a good sign as mostly the Toksvig era is normally high on the feminist and low on the jokes. Going up to bed, it all started going wrong. Body temp kicked up and down and got the aches and pains like when I had my jabs. 

Thought it was the flu at first, decided to walk uphill to work from home and that was a big mistake, made ten minutes before texting my line manager and the guys in suggesting I have Covid after its long passed.

Slept till lunch and took a test for about the third time ever, yeah, we have the coof and don't know how I got it. Lost my appetite, my energy but not my sense of smell or taste. Spent the next two days sleeping on and off. Trying my best to keep my distance from my parents who now have it. It's come to the point today that I still have it but now have no symptoms, still a little fatigued and tired. But not burning up or wanting to sleep all day like a cat.

Anyway you might as well have them thank you bits from holiday.

Thanks Harmony Bay for all the cats. You really look after them strays.

Thanks Yellow Cafe Limassol Harbour. For playing that one deep house track while I had my coffee, especially when the 303 kicked in. Along with all the odd reggae covers you played.

Finally thanks to Sigma bakeries. Though we thought you were a national chain of shops rather than the local bakers. Looks like the Cypriots take baking serious. You had really great rolls.

Limassol Part2

 Last time we really talked about television and stuff and nothing about our time there. So without further ado lets do this.

We stayed at Harmony Bay hotel at the edge of Limassol, its a nice place with good access to the beach and a heck of a lot of cats. If you think I'm exaggerating then there is at least 10 around the hotel complex and all are well cared for. There are all varieties of ginger, tabby, black cat if you want luck and of course my favourite the Weedle (black and white.)  

The local supermarket also had a range of cats outside including a tabby sort of like my old cat Zoe. They also had a range of canned coffee which is a favourite of mine. 

The local beach is blackish sand and is quite stony out in the bay, I did see a Sea Hare when I did venture into the water. Was about fist sized and didn't move much.

It seems that Limassol itself is attracting quite the rich crowd, lots of fancy cars and water front apartment complexes which they are calling flats. Which is pretty based, we'd call them apartments. A lot of Indians on scooters doing Deliveroo work and Wolt / Volt food service.

Also you still need masks on buses here. Also pretty frequent service, which can only be commended.

Some photos.

The Icon Limassol

Pinch the Hedgehog

Sigma Bakery a fine selection

A big thanks to Sigma Bakery for rolls and cakes, Pokka for the canned coffee. A few places with pirate DS games and whatever this is below. It rings a bell, but have no room to take it home with me.

Anybody, This shop had god cartoons as well.

Limassol

 Glad to be back, first real holiday abroad for 3 years and as it's now Monday you'll get a post as I'm past vomiting and that feeling tired. Got in at 7am Sunday, no thanks to the cucks running EasyJet's baggage reclaim.

We'll start with television as its a nice easy segue into the rest of the holiday. Greek TV is still nothing to write home about, a lot of This Morning but Greek style rubbish and a lot of stuff subtitled in Greek but, actually English. Been watching Kris Marshall era Death In Paradise, which isn't bad and there was some weird, shadow black cartoon character show. Oh and an accurate dub of CGI Garfield, one where Jon visits his dad on the farm.

Non Greek stuff is limited to TVirus again, Rossiya and a few hold outs with 7D7 having a QR code permanently onscreen for Ukraine. This is also the place to see the X-Files at 5am, A nice dub of Scully BTW, Mulder they never get right. 

A few weird things that never came on, Italian Fishing TV, some Car channel and Euronews Hungary.

A few things that did come on, but had no sound. Both Fashion TV channels aka Fascism TV aka pointless clothes show.

The Arabic channels were well respected with Bahrain TV, BBC Arabic another waste of your license fee, and Manoto TV which showed stuff like Food Unwrapped and that show Nicola Walker was in for the BBC (Not Unforgotten sadly).

To cap it off there was a Korean TV channel called KBS, which showed piss poor TV Drama, shitty Youtube style pranks and some bastard awful K Pop. 

Finally one of the Russian channels had a version of Kommisar Rex, not the weirdly cucked Canadian version, but some sort of remake.

Oh and if you wanted to know was in English, Bloomberg news, BBC World service, Euronews and Gay porno (France 24 along with its French version).

Hiatus returns.

 Will be away for a few weeks, so no posts for the foreseeable future. That's all.

Subs Please Check

 We have Crossrail officially open here, now, and a bus that used to go to Lewisham is now permanently re-routed to the Dome. On the plus side we have a few more choices from North Greenwich now, the downside its two buses to get to Lewisham, which sucks.

Anyway, The Submarine caper, a story where the Hardys search for lost artwork from WW2 in Germany, while guests of Gerhard Stolz, a German friend of Fenton Hardy. Written in German and translated by the Stratemeyer book series editor (there is a link on James Keelines site that says who wrote what, but mostly its 404'd now).

I kinda like this version of the Hardys here, Frank and Joe wisecracking and playing off one another. Whilst bombing around the German countryside in Fenton's mate's Porsche. Also its seems the places are real for once, note Bad Waldsee actually exists and is not just a made up place. 

The sub in this case is a minisub that is being built by a small company that has its plans stolen and later on actually stolen and used to search for the missing paintings. Also weirdly enough the boys drink cider in a cafe, out in the sticks. Pretty sure they're not supposed to as it is alcohol.  

Anyway you can read this version Here

Losing my Identity

 This is going to be hard to write, but, I really think as English people, we're losing our identity. 

This isn't going to be one of those things were better in the olden days, cos they weren't really. Its about stuff I grew up with, I don't see anymore. Kids playing out, kids having fun, kids finding porn under a hedge, and yeah that last one did happen, there was always a scan mag around, normally in bits.

Normally it's blamed on computer games and vidya in general, which is bollocks, there were a shed load from the mid 80's onward either a home micro or arcade, hell in some places the NES was even popular ,we had a borrowing system set up that ended in tears from about the 1990 onward. 

No its about losing who we are. We used to do a few things as kids that could be seen as typically British. From about the end of September till about October it was Conker season, you'd thread up a bootlace and get someone to skewer the seed of a conker (Horse Chestnut) and thread it on. Then you'd tie it off and find someone else who'd done the same thing and then hit it till the nut shattered.

Later on up until actual bonfire night you'd have fireworks, or rather the world war 2 from early October all through Halloween (which no one gave a fuck about btw) till bonfire night proper. As a side effect of this you'd get a Guy, an old coat with a football or bag for a head and you'd get kids doing penny for the guy.  It's seems to have died out now. That and a thankful crackdown on fireworks.

But the point is we make a bigger deal of Halloween now than Fireworks night. 

We never got a black Monday preferring to wait until Boxing day for our sales, on the day after Xmas. You know Xmas was fucked when you'd see ads for Texas Homebase, partworks and the Harrods Sale.

Finally, its prom. No English kid I knew ever had a prom growing up, now it's a rite of passage.

And that's it, we seem to be getting more American with stuff. Losing our old ways and generally becoming homogenous, and I can't think of anyway to counter act this.

Dead or Alive

 Here is an ambiguous title for you, this was just going to be about the recent updates to the PS3 and Vita, but going through a bunch of videos today we found that we have an ad for Tecmo's Lady fighting game Dead or Alive 4.

PS3 and Vita bit

Sony have pushed out another firmware upgrade for the PS3 and more rarely for the Vita, which removes most of the management features on the Playstore and bars new accounts on PSN. Its been nearly 3 years since an update for the Vita but much sooner for the PS3. Makes a change for all those supposed security and stability updates, we're used to seeing on PS3.

DOA 4

This is an odd one, we have some videos from around 2006, found at work of course, which mostly contain, Sky Living (the last season of Charmed with Kaley Cuocco,) and some bits and pieces of sport, mostly boxing and football. 

We're not through the whole tape yet, and its fucking awful in places, jumping around, so this ad break floored me. We have an old bagel ad from McDonalds (probably discontinued.) and this from Dead Or Alive 4, which is based on a beauty contest that becomes a brawl. Will have to upload this to a few places, just in case my old channel bites the dust. 

Justified and Ancient.

 I have spent a good time updating the sinister signpost blog post, so this week I'll just link to a cool think that popped up on my timeline. I've seen it before here and didn't realize it was from these two.

If you ever watched MTV back in the 90's and loved dance music, then the name Simone Angel will be no stranger to you. This is a Youtube channel and indeed podcast, where Simone and her old producer from Partyzone, talk about old guests and indeed with old guests. There's Ray from 2 Unlimited and Marc Archer from Altern8 along with some other clips from her place out in Aruba.

Official channel, here.

Sinister signposts

 Recently got done with transcribing this as the OCR I made of this is an epic fail. Going through 160ish pages of text and finding its rendered out 40 or so with the rest either missing or gibberish is not cool. 

I've still got to finish up formatting the original text so everything is aligned properly and proof read, but from what I've read so far its not bad. Expect an edit next week, when its all over.

Original

The original concerns the theft of the race horse Topnotch, thanks to a strange signpost leading off from the tracks and a weird tricked out mansion owing to Vilnoff, a strange, Middle European guy, who is definitely not the main bad guy.  To be fair there is a weird tree rigged up for signaling and a service station that is used by the crooks as a type of meeting place as well. Haven't gotten to the end yet, but, this isn't a bad story.  

Edit. So Vilnoff is definitely the main bad guy, and is clinically insane. He has a scheme from a cabin in the woods where there is the titular signpost, and a shed load of explosives to blow up Bayport, because his wife died in a fire there. He literally gives the boys 20 minutes to get out before rigging the whole place to blow. I don't think many kids books these days will let a main villain top themselves to evade justice. The horse theft is still incidental as is Aunt Gertrude being gifted a stable through a legacy.

Remake.

This is a weird one, its split into two stories. The original race horse theft is still there, but is relegated to the background, by a strange tale of sinister signposts and experimental race cars. This is the main story now, Alden motors target of some foreign twins Vilno and (el)  Barto, and their range of weird windscreen crazing signposts. Add in Alden's son Roger, a stuck up prick, and the sidelining of poor ol' Topnotch, and you have the making's of a seriously confused story. Aunt Gertrude is left a stable in the will of an obscure relative, which is how Topnotch is brought in to the tale.

 
Original here Remake here.

Wrong wing

 Are the right in their right mind. I say this as a soft right, old liberal guy, as the right hasn't been itself since SARS 2 Electric Boogaloo hit. 

Most of the damage was done over facemasks and not following the science, even though you follow said science over gender stuff. I personally hate the narcissist Self ID pricks and forced diversity which seems to be the totality of modern TV, and don't get me started on Nonbies and calling everything queer. But it seems that the right, post Covid have fucking lost their mind.

The whole Groomers thing is especially cringe, and though I don't want sex talk pushed to primary school kids, secondary school should be fine, if only to say that some people are x and that's OK, and that trans is not a lifestyle choice, nor a shortcut to solving all your problems. 

It helps that I'm an atheist, and that I don't have to deal with god or whatever made up fiction your deity uses, that the US right, in general bank rolls. If I hate Islam, its because of religion rather than a subset of people. The same way I hate Christianity.

Also, while pro Brexit, and Scots indy stuff, (if you're big enough to go alone then do so.) I'm not going to bang on about globalism and the death of nationalism. I'm proud of where I'm from and as a rapacious capitalist all about the money. Thanks to the internet and the modern hyper connected world, we should be able to take those willing to work from wherever and at the same time kick out the criminals who have no place in the UK. 

And no, I doubt that Rwanda plan will work of Priti Patel's. Though when it comes to immigration, I have no problems with people coming, lawfully and legally and kicking out those that are criminals.

Easter

 Happy dead Jesus day my dudes.

I spent mine at the boot sale and came away with a shed load of videos and CDS, including some weird South African thing for Archive.org.

Looks to be dental related and is a bunch of quicktime clips to run in WIN95, WIN 3.1 and long dead x68 MACS. There's a program to run them possibly, but looking at the folders on PC, I can see a bunch of MOV. files and will have to make an ISO in IMGBurn. 

Incidentally last weeks post was reverted to draft somehow so I've posted that as well as a late birthday present to you all.

Edit. It's up in Archive.org now, and while I haven't got it working in any computer I own, I've seen the clips which seem to be root canal and dental work narrated in German. I guess the program adds subtitles for those who do not speak German. But that is just conjecture.

Sky Sabotage

 Another one down, and this has to be the lowest effort localization ever. Whereas before you'd have terms like prowl car and various Americanisms and spellings and such Anglicized for the UK market, now its just the same story but with a typo on still as sill as the only change I can see. Maybe subs were asleep on this one.

But enough whining, what you want is a full review before the inevitable download afterward. 

Tale of two halves, this, as it concerns a space satellite going missing and the theft of valuable sea creatures from not Sea World and private citizens.

Joe Hardy overhears two guys plotting to bring down a satellite, whilst waiting for Chet Morton to finish summer school. It quickly moves to Florida where they apprehend a dude with a surface to air missile attempting to carry out this threat, only for the satellite to disappear in orbit, and Joe to be singled out for elimination, as he's the star witness, by a corrupt corporation.

You can tell its set in Florida as there is a guy keeping stolen electric eels in his shack to shock people, a stunning and brave tribute to the ranks of Florida Man.

Apparently the satellite stuff had help from a Douglas D Lloyd ,who I can find no leads on. There's quite a bit on old computing stuff in this, so if you're fans of mainframes and loading stuff from tape, its not a bad read. A special mention must be made of the hardware Emulator used to load the dummy program in, as whilst stuff like MAME is commonplace now, I believe this is one of the earliest mentions of it in print I've seen so far.

Anyway Sky Sabotage #77 can be read here.

The 700 club

Forgive me if I'm banging on about this again, but there is nothing FOSS to explore phone stuff in 2022. 

No file grabbers, no unlockers, nothing to explore the system with. All you get is the usual Indian shill stuff and the buy our program bollocks. 

I've found yet another old phone, this time one identical to mine, but password locked, and have decided to see what there is, in 2022, to unlock for free...

And the answer is, nothing. It's basically ransomware type stuff that does nothing without payment, or you get to piss around with the factory reset settings. Either way the data you have on there is wiped, which is no fun at all.

In an unrelated story, I also scratched my ATM card, because it was in my work jacket, so I had to pop into the bank to sort it out and get a new one. Not fun this week. At all.

In Hiding

 The next entry will be my 700th, not that there's going to be anything planned like. Just thought I'd mention it, before moving on.

Anyway, the Figure in Hiding, one of my favourites from my childhood and one of the Hardy mysteries along with Hissing Serpent and Sting of the Scorpion which were held off for "contractual reasons" I.E. owned by someone else at the time. 

The revised edition is a wonderfully strange story about false eyes with Morse transmitters inside, evil eye folklore and a gang using a health spa as a hideout whilst getting facial surgery to evade the law. There isn't really any one figure that's in hiding and that goes for the original too, but its such a weird story that I have to add it. 

Also for some reason, looking online about Tony Prito and such. I guess he's a Sicilian Italian or at least that heritage, thanks to all the folklore here, oh and his boat being called the Napoli and all. 

Anyway the original is much darker and it seems more unfocussed as a result. A gang of crims lead by Doc Grafton (not a real doctor), is running home eye surgery as a scam for vulnerable people and taking the cash and feign surgery. That is not the real kicker though. That would be Virginia Sinder supposed daughter to one of the crooks and later turns out, just adopted.

She is really rather well written, too, a genuine basket case, with major daddy issues, who tries to drive into the Willow River to end it all and later on, hides out in a village to stop her "dad" taking her back, but through dumb luck ends up in Grafton's hide out in the woods.

 Anyway remake revision here. Original here.

Confuzed.

 Had an amazing run out at the bootsale today. A lot of people dumping stuff so my haul was literally, two bags full today.

Got a lot of new records to scan and upload, but highlights of this has to be Powell Fizz, Florian Kupfer Evolva, and a few obscure tracks on the Supertronics label. Finish it off with a box set of NCIS (season 1) and a fuck load of books, Martin Lewis Supertips dumped out and Celebrity cats. With crime writer Ruth Rendell holding a grey Weedle type, is my favourite obscure  cross over.

 Also been thinking about long forgotten ads and stuff, my current favourite is the one that says what is a man but sadly doesn't go into Dracula's quote from Symphony of the Night. 

What I was really remembering was an old Confused. com sponsorship post for early evening ITV2, back in like 2010, that used music from SaGa Frontier 2, I think its this which is map screen music. I should really do a video on The Children's Channel stuff, like Jack in the Box or Stories without words. But I'd have to get a robot to narrate as I hate the sound of my own voice.

Grave of the Fur flies

 Apologies for the bad pun in the title, though I guess it is kind of apt. Have been wading through a ton of spam in my inbox (the usual suspects here, and for some reason Norton which I've not used for over a decade) and reading books.

Sky Sabotage, which you'll probably get, soon, Private Eye's SARS 2 electric boogaloo casebook, about what should have happened when the coof arrived. And Meeting in Japan, Fosco Maraini, which the heading pertains to.

August time, so I'm guessing O-bon festival, it talks about Buddhist remembrance festivals for the fish taken and something about cats and Hachiko the Dog, bravely waiting for its master down at Shibuya.  Can remember bits from The World Ends With You where its implied he only stayed there because people gave him tidbits to eat.

Anyway, before I digress further, the cat bits and fishlore I've not heard before and as it was written in the late 50's (Italian Original) or early 60's (English Translation) maybe its the last gasp of old Japan, before the new Showa era wiped it out.

In August Buddhist monks and laymen go down the Sumida river in boats, both to say prayers for the drowned and to apologize to the fish of the river for having taken their lives with rod and line, spear, and net. At the Oizumi cemetery, and in many other places, impressive services are held for the souls of dead cats and dogs and other animals, sometimes including insects. On such occasions many people visit the graves of cats who became famous for saving their master's lives, often in highly dramatic circumstances; the celebrated Gokoku-ji and Eko-in cats, for instance. There is a bridge in Tokyo, the Nekomatabashi, dedicated to a cat which, with a somewhat under-developed sense of private property, tried to relieve the poverty of its sick mistress by stealing small gold objects from a neighbouring moneylender. 

The paragraph goes on to describe loyal doggo, Hachiko, waiting for his master's return.

Looking at English sources for this I've found very little about this gift giving cat, only that the bridge was in Koisihkawa ward in Tokyo (home of the Tokyo dome) and that the area is mostly unscathed from quakes, WW2 firebombing, and other disasters. It's also home to some impressive Tokugawa Shogunate graves too.

A monster cat lived there (Nekomata) and people were scared to cross it. There is also an Ukiyo-e print of a demon Weedle, from that area, too. I know it best from Megaten. 

There are plenty of tales of cats dragging stuff back to their owners, so maybe this is some postwar version from Japan. 

Edit. Found out what Eko-in is about, there's a shrine to cats and dogs there. Gokoku-ji is probably Gotokuji, as linked above (another cat shrine).

Figures in hiding.

 Here's a strange thing, been reading through and formatting A Figure In Hiding by Franklin W. Dixon, one of the original canon books that was extensively rewritten. 

The rewrite version of this is crazy, it involves the bad eye syndicate, a health farm and a big glass eye used as a shortwave transceiver. The original on the other hand...

Has someone attempt suicide. I'm not kidding, the boys are helping Fenton out by eavesdropping on some suspects in the hotel room. The daughter of the main suspect Rip Sinder, tells them to stop doing what they're doing, before its revealed that she's an orphan that Rip is looking after.

The next thing, she's running from the hotel and driving off toward the Willow River. The car goes over, but not before the boys pull her out and prevent her from topping herself, as she's nothing left to live for.

I've yet to find out what the gang is doing in that hotel room, or how it ties into a cinema robbery. The remake has Sinder saying very little, he's a big ex boxer who's taken a whack to the throat and cannot speak much more than grunts.

Secret Warning's

 Another set of books for you to be getting on with, this time it's The Secret Warning another Hardy boys mystery, and for once both the original, and rewrite are good stories.

The original has the Hardys track down Fenton Hardy's jacket, before getting to the main plot of helping out on a salvage gig off Reeds Landing. The boat is said to contain a fortune in gold and silver as well as a few other bits and pieces. They have access to a wonder camera in this that acts like a portable X-ray and primitive Go-pro all in one, Frank even sets it up as a kind of proto CCTV in order to catch a thief. 

All in all not a bad story at all.

The rewrite, keeps the salvage angle but this time, the ship holds a priceless Egyptian deathmask made of solid gold. There is also the business of Captiain 'Pearly' Early's cane and to top it all off Fenton Hardy is kidnapped.  Like I say, its not a bad rewrite, the mask is an enjoyable McGuffin in its own right and there is the couldn't happen today aspect in both stories (Joe Hardy blacking up as a disguise and Biff Hooper winning a Great Dane as a prize in a competition.) I'll let you work out which era of books those two appeared in.

Anyway Original here and rewrite here.

Wokezards of the Coast.

 I've never played a proper game of Dungeons and Dragons, I've played a few of the SSI games on Amiga, both Eye of the Beholders. And Shadows of Amn on PC, back in the day. But proper tabletop stuff, forget it. 

One of the consequences of this is, WH Smiths used to have issues of Dragon in along with Expert Gamer previously EGM2, and because I wanted to write fantasy on the off chance, got issues every month. Stopped only when Smiths stopped getting them in years back. So around 2003 then.

In fact, the modern game is rather shallow now. Its been taken over by the woke mob, who for instance, maintain that the orc is actually a metaphor for black people,* rather than a pig man hybrid. In a setting where you can heal serious disabilities, there are serious discussions about wheelchair accessible dungeons. Srsly I hope they have spack attack feats in5e so I can role play as Timmy from South Park.

So after some late night reading of all my old issues from way back then, we have a few letters from the dawn of the 3rd Edition, seemingly presaging the whole culture war. 

There is a letter from an Alexander F Simkin Ph.D. in reply to a previous letter. I don't know the contents and have probably binned that issue it was in. But its a long letter saying that political bias has crept in since 2E. I'll not print it in full, but if I remember, scan it and put it as an attachment. But the bullet points are incredible in this day and age.

"If you're not interested in D&D, no amount of appealing to your race, creed, sex, or sexual orientation is going to change that."

"Advocates for political correctness in D&D might argue that it doesn't do any harm and might do some good, so there's no reason to exclude it. They fail to consider or simply don't care that there might be a downside to it"

20 years later, with full Tumblr crowd pandering in effect we're now living in an age where dungeons are wheelchair accessible, and orcs are now perceived as being monsters of colour.

 

The Kids Are Alright.

 Here is something, I've been meaning to write about for ages now. I guess this falls into the whole lost media, rabbit hole thing, along with The Children's Channel Hennapippa (which I'm convinced was done in house now), and Geronimo by Axel F (not that Axel F)

For this you'll need to have read old dance magazines back in the day. Such as DJ Mag, Muzik, Generator or Mixmag. They would do a genre by genre breakdown of the new releases, and I'd scan through the house and techno bits looking for anything that caught my eye. 

One issue in the late 90's I came across, they had a release by a DJ paedofile called the Kids Are Alright. It was a purple sleeve with some ABC blocks on the cover. I was convinced it was an April fools joke, and thought no more about it. But over the years it would sneak back at random times, that was this, A. real and B. If so, was it ever released. 

I was convinced it was a mock up for ages. Then I decided the real acid test today, if it was a mock, to see if it has a Discogs listing. It does.

I also, for some reason, though it was a house track, but it seems to be breakcore. Which is a double bonus.

Edit, looking through the comments on the video there, and its got it's own bandcamp page. Well of course it does.

Pirates Hill

This is the first one of these of the year. And yes there is some irony that these pirate version's here are also "pirates".

The Secret of Pirate's Hill is one of those three way splits, in which the Original version is the best with a slightly edited down version for the UK and a much revised edit put out later on, when the books were updated in the mid 60's. 

It's not a bad story TBH. The boys are attacked whilst scuba diving off Pirates Hill, and when they get back to town, a geezer by the name of Bowden has a job for them. Looking for an old cannon, supposedly to form part of a parade down in Florida.

There are a lot about cannons in this book and you will get to hear the word demiculverin over and over by the time you're done. It's not just Bowden after the cannon, there is an ex con called Latsky who also wants it and another guy called Tim Gorman who also wants the cannon for his own ends.

There is a nice exchange up on the Napoli, Tony Prito's boat, where Frank and Joe's unconvincing girlfriends. Iola Morton and Callie Shaw, take a shine to Tim much to the boys chagrin.  This maybe cut for space in later editions. 

Also the boys actually do some sleuthing, making a plaster cast of a facial impression in the sand. It's not all dumb luck and such. 

Anyway you can read them here.

Original, UK, Revised.

Well here is an odd postscript. There is a TV show that is tangentially related to Pirates Hill. Watching Expedition Unknown over dinner, episode 6 from series 7, specifically, is about the search Jose Gaspar's treasure, and has details of the Gasparilla pirate parade mentioned in the books. Mostly correct, except it's down in Florida instead of off the coast of New Jersey.