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.