Chinatown

Been uptown for the first time this year, and its the first time I've been round Chinatown for a few years, not since the start of the coof, when it was Chinese new year and there were lion dancers out.

All current new year celebrations are of course cancelled. No Lion dance this year and because of lockdown, none last year, either.

So decided to look around and play the slots, and visit a few record shops. No luck on the slots and such but have found out that Sounds of the Universe in Soho have a real nice doggo in their shop. Wondered who had their dog in the shop at first when I came in, and thought he was a service dog. Turns out he lives there, and only found out when he sneaked out the door and the owners had to get him back. 

Decided to head down Oxford street and take a look in Hamleys as I hadn't been in years. They have limited Peppa Pig, Pigs, i.e. in a coppers outfit. If that's your bag, they're limited edition.

Pig Pig

Finally heading down towards Bond Street, I saw a homeless guy with a black and white cat with him, don't know if he's a regular down that way but, kinda feel bad not dropping some change into his begging bowl now. A real nice cat as well.

See, a real nice cat.

Descent into madness

This is the sort of thing that has blown my mind recently. I did a bit on drugs a few years ago. Not actual drugs, but a post, the main plot point being, it may not make you a killer but it does fuck with your memory and shit. 

It took me watching History Debunked on Youtube to open my mind on a few things about drugs. Full disclosure, I don't really agree with him on most stuff, he reminds me of the rabbit from Forest Fr1ends and whatever hot take he normally pushes, the comment section is worse by a good magnitude.

And yet... 

There is a type of person who shouldn't smoke weed, double if you smoke skunk, and it's not who you think.

If you have a history of mental illness. Stay away. I know its non PC to say certain groups and races are more susceptible to schizophrenia. But if you are from a blame background, then really don't.

The genetic thing is interesting and such, but, I'll say it again if you have a history of mental illness in your family, don't bother.

Bexley small mall and comic shop.

 This was a part of my childhood that until recently, I'd entirely memory holed.  In Bexleyheath, there was a parade of shops going down from the clocktower. Sort of past Marks and that. 

What got me thinking about this was comics gate. The bring decent stories back to comics guys and the realization that in the UK, our comic progression basically went something like Beano* > 2000AD > Viz. Then when the 90's hit there was X-Men / Batman cartoon's on TV or the Defenders of the Earth that dumb show with Firestar from the 80s for older kids.

We knew who the Marvel / DC superheroes were, sort of, just not from comic books, but from  films and games. Superman was Christopher Reeve and the guy who could spot the damage smoking fags could do. Same with Michael Keatons Batman. At a pinch we'd know the popular ones but not who the franchise it belonged to.

So how is this relevant to local history. There was a comic shop there, off the broadway as you travelled down towards the small mall opposite the cop shop and council offices. I knew of no one who actually went there apart from an old boss, who was a comic nerd. It stuck in my mind as apart from this, I knew of no other places like it growing up. We got all our comics from the local newsagent, along with Panini football stickers and wham bars.

The small mall was also quite a nice place to visit, past the actual shopping centre, roughly starting where Poundland is now if you visit. The comic shop was opposite near enough, to give you an idea of location. 

They had a few shops in there selling things like discount sweets, I think DR Who stuff, and definitely console games,  I remember there being a copy of F91 Gundam for Super Famicom being there as well as Ballblazer as an American cart with appropriate middling review in Super Play. 

The discount sweet place definitely did Christmas stuff too, as we got boxed sweets and Turkish Delight when Xmas came around.

It was  redeveloped around the late 90's about the same time Safeway disappeared from the main centre. Its now part of the outside shopping area and car park along with a Poundland and Sainsburys. 

*Deep breath, You may not have started with a Beano. Depending on choice, it may be a Dandy, Whizzer and Chips, Beezer or Bunty and Mandy if you were a girl. Later you'd progress to Look-in or Smash Hits or some sort of game mag. 

Zzap 64 ,Your Sinclair or Amstrad Action if a computer guy or Mean Machines / CVG if you leaned more console wise.

Farewell blackberry

 Looks like time has finally caught up with the BBC Micro of phones. My first ever phone was this stupid touch screen only Blackberry that was worse than useless. Except for one thing, it let you transfer stuff to it without problems. Readily showed up in Windows Explorer, and let you pull stuff off it. 

A shame as everything else was so bad, and woefully supported, they literally dropped the ball and didn't think about opening it out into an app store experience.

If you don't know what I'm going on about, Rim, or whatever they're called now, have finally pensioned off the old Blackbastard phone and are no longer updating the OS. It means calls or internet connectivity cannot be guaranteed, let alone emergency numbers. 

Not that it matters you can still play brickbreaker and wordmole as they are literally the only two games developed with it. I only wish someone would have ported protracker to the old keyboard phone as it seemed a bit of a no brainer. Anyway this isn't farewell more like a fuck off.

Oh and here is a time when we tried to port Android lollipop over with no little success.

A tibbets swiss army knife

 Have you ever seen those posts that go something like 10 software things 2022. Either genuine lists by reputable companies or badly written by Indians.

It's not remotely the same, but, here is Kingtibbets swiss army knife of software for doing stuff. 

I have a few provisos here for it. 

No online only shite,

FOSS if applicable freeware closed source if not.

No gay ass trialware, or subscriptions.

One of these I have actually paid for as the alternatives are too grim to mention.

The List

Office Suite. Libre Office

Do you want to know what all the Hardy boys PDFs are edited down from, they're cracked out to a format I can use in Calibre and exported here, 12pt Candara font. So know you know. It's a good free alternative to using old MS Office, Its also cross platform with Mac and Linux versions.

Audio Player. Foobar 2000

I hate playlists in audio players, gimme something that will import a bunch of mp3 from a source and play them or alternatively play a CD from your drive without much fuss. Can be skinned and if you have Discogs lets you download an addon to make tagging easier. Along with plugins for every format under the sun.

Scan. NAPS

If you have linux there is simple scan to let you do what this does but for windows users this is fine. Lets you scan stuff and export it with minimal fuss. Minimal editing allowed but that's what XNview is for.

Audio bothering. Goldwave.

This is the pay stuff, full disclosure here, I got a lifetime licence a good ten years back, that is how long I've used it. The main free version people keep bringing up is Audacity, which does one thing for me, rip Vinyl and export it to Goldwave. As the UI and everything else is a major brainfuck for me. There is no free ware version of Audition and all the DAWs I've tried I can't get on with

System monitoring and various exes of that sort.

Geek Uninstaller / BCuninstaller. For uninstalling.

Cpuid. For general CPU info.

Crystal Disk Info. Hard disk info thing.

Rufus. For creating bootable OS Images.

Process Xplorer Nice task manager replacement.

Teracopy. For copying

Rainmeter. Onscreen info thing.

Testdisk. For looking at old disks and recovery

Sumatra PDF. For PDF viewing 

Freac, Exact Audio Copy. For renaming and stripping CD stuff.

Deluge. For torrenting things. Barely upadated on windows though much more on Linux.

Last ever review of the year.

 Well, I thought I didn't do this, this year. Turns out I did do a preliminary best worst of 2021, and forgot about it halfway through the year. 

Oh and Happy new year, before I forget, and yes I've already put a placeholder best / worst 2022, already.

Best TV.

A Night at the Museum Channel 5.

Looking at my old stomping grounds of the Natural History Museum in South Ken. They preserve a giant squid, clean a dinosaur's bones and talk about the Humming bird exhibit. My favourite remains the Cassowary, which I always made a beeline for.

Delia Derbyshire The Myths and The Legendary Tapes.

You want a good documentary, looking into legendary sound engineer and pioneering Dance music artist. Delia Derbyshire. You want it played (and directed) by Doc Martin's wife from Doc Martin. Caroline Catz.

Seriously this is well thought out, overall. Down to giving Cosey Fanni Tutti from Chris and Cosey full props to remix and rework sounds from the collection. A definite thumbs up.

Worst TV.

Naughty Cats make you LOL. Channel 5.

Do you want click bait style lowest common denominator style garbage that would be considered low tier, even on Youtube. You want Jo Brand looking a bit like Harold Lloyd. You want unfunny commentary. Watch this. But please don't.

Olympics Japan 2020, BBC

The year when everyone stayed home and it was played behind closed doors due to a SARS2 electric boogaloo spike. The Beeb sent Claire Balding and some other bird to round up supposed funny bits to Mario Music. In other words a time to shout BAKAYAROU at the screen over and over till it goes away.

Music.

It seems all I had here then was bad shit from Kiss. but putting the olympic stuff up reminded me, due to rona exploding over there they couldn't do a live thing, that and Cornelius getting cancelled. They replaced it with a good amount of Vidya game themes, full list in that link previous.

Bad.

Commitment issuses Central Cee.

Yet more piss poor rap. I don't hate rap personally but these grime / drill guys aren't bringing their best, and irony of ironies Intergalactic is playing some smacked up Memphis style shit which will knock it out the park. Something about bri'ish rappers being shit.

Riton Friday

Yeah there's a good phone list of people on this but Jesus, remember when Riton used to be good, stuff on Kitsune, and Ed Banger. Looking on you want a version of Push The Feeling on slurred by a bunch of drunk people. There's nothing to redeem this. Nothing.

And I'm done, enjoy 2022.