Whale Tattoo

The secret of the whale tattoo review, then, when I should be wishing you a happy new year and putting myself to bed. 

The boys are helping out at a local carnival hoping to catch pickpockets on behalf of a MR Solo. Fenton has a case where a man, calling himself Black Right, has a missing ivory idol for sale,  that was looted a few years back. Those two cases couldn't possibly be connected... could they?

Indeed they are and when a stuffed blue whale is uncovered on a building site owned by Tony Prito's dad then it seems that some one wants to  stop them from putting two and two together and finding out who the gang on robbers with whale tattoos are. 

The action takes place in Bayport and Mystic Connecticut. There is a nice throw in to cryptozoology too, as the whale was washed up in Montauk where a mystery beast was also found in 2008. The whale, now owned by Tony Prito and Biff Hooper, gets stolen and the boys head out to capture it.

It's not a bad story overall, the Tattoo angle is strange for the point of view these days as the world and their dog seems to have some sort of body art. Back when it was written this was quite different, as only certain types had tatts. 

There is no real differences between the UK and US editions either. All references to carnies and such are gone. It's not as if we don't have these travelling fairs either. And the ending where Cousin Elmer (a long lost cousin and some sort of sailor) comes to stay is changed. But that is it.

You can find the original and the UK versions here. and here.

Year round up missed flipped skipped edition 2023

 It's the  time of year where we see all the things we forgot about over the past few days. It also includes vidya books and YTP and Youtuber stuff so without further ado lets check in.

Music. 

Coi Leray Girls are players too.

A.K.A. Girls are fit as fuck (which is what I sing along to it,) A.K.A. That track that ripped off the Message Grandmaster Flash but ended up sucking balls.

Theo Parrish. DJ Kicks.

Some top drawer Jazzy House and indeed Housey Jazz style tracks here. Forgot all about this and really wish I didn't.

TV.

All creatures great and small.

Used to watch this back in the day, and will say that this is a good version of proper modernization. Previous series had Jim Moir (Vic Reeves) on a break from drawing. This season Rio Ferdinand with a Ferret.

Books. 

The coming plague.

A thick old book looking at emerging diseases. It ended around 1995 and covered Ebola, Antibiotic resistance and the emergence of HIV / AIDS. Whereas the "Gay plague" as it was dubbed in the west did indeed rip through the gay communities of America. I was surprised to know that it was war and chronic needle shortage leading to reuse of syringes that lay the foundations of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. That and regular prostitution. It doesn't cover SARS or COVID as those were this centuries diseases, but the same rules apply. I'm pretty sure that SARS will have a natural origin along with the general shoddiness of Chinese safety protocols, that will be what caused the pandemic.

Youtube.

A few good things, such as Miles Power's demolition of Holocaust Denial. Including weirdo guy half naked in a kiddies playground. 

No if you want the best of the best, its a Ya Boy Zack vid on the whole trans autistic lesbians write inferior comic books vid. My thoughts on trans BTW is that you need genuine dysmorphia to be trans, its not a feeling or that I can't handle being a pretty girl so I'll be a boy instead.  Sorry doesn't work, you need to grow up feeling that my body is not the one I'm supposed to be in. 

Movies.

Finally saw the Mario film yesterday and it was a genuine joy laughing at all the little in jokes. Such as the Gamecube start up music on Luigi's phone, and Bowsers Ludwig von Koopa piano he sings along to.

Games.

Both Metroid Dread and Labyrinth of Refrain: Covenant of Dread are occupying my time. Absolute top notch, with ironically both a female lead in each game. The the latter  has lesbian nuns in it. Plus Madam Dronya is one laconic bitch. 

 

A tale of two kitties.

 This is the place where we'd usually expand on what music I'd thought was cool / sucked this year but seeing as we switched from Kiss FM to Heart at work then it basically boils down to the new Andre 3000 flute jazz album as the absolute best and Commercial  Cee Sprinter as the total nadir of the year. 

No I'd rather spend my time writing about cats or rather a tale of two kitties. Tabby McTat for the BBC and Mog on Channel 4. Both are set in London and whereas Mog is a full on nostalgia fest set in what looks like the 70's. Tabby McTat is a full on modern day, Multi-cultural London. As a result it feels weirdly off. Modern day things for a modern day audience.

Tabby, stars a busker and his singing cat, who thanks to a crook nicking his hat full of takings ends up in A&E while his cat wanders off to live with the weird lesbians and their cat Sock, a Black cat with a white paw. I thought one of them was trans at first until I clicked its supposed to be Islington and they're leftie weirdo types. One of the best things I can fully cheer them for is Weedle representation as one of Sock's kittens is a Weedle type. 

Weedle and Xmas 80x or so.

Anyway the two are reunited and busker bloke gets a place and takes on Tabby's son Spratt.

Mog on the other hand is a real gem. Based on the books by Judith Kerr, this is a real nostalgia bait for those of a certain age. It just screams family and cosyness. It has mum, dad, a daughter and son and Mog, trying to deal with change at Xmas. Dad gets a spanking great tree for his kids, and Mog is booted out. If you are an Autistic weirdo like me you'll see parallels to the autism experience of change and stuff. Mog decamps to the roof while this is going on. 

Meanwhile they have family over, a cheerful uncle and two aunties one dozy and one quite sane. You can imagine them living together as two spinsters or you can imply they're not. Anyway it just hangs together as a family unit. Mog does decide to come down via the chimney and runs amok,  before being captured and bathed. 

I will say its beautiful, and of a period of London long lost. The only non white is a Jamaica lady who's evil chimp child of a son likes Mog. Tabby McTat is the full on modern London with modern values, but this is for the old heads who grew up here and see it decline full time. 

You can see it here. Tabby McTat is on iPlayer which is not free and therefore doesn't get a link.

Round up year end edition. PT1

Apologies for this but I really should have kept a better tally of what I saw, listened to and played this year. But I didn't. So here is a few things that were actually pretty boss before we head off  for the annual Miranda awards.

Best.

CSI Vegas season 2. An episode called the promise was the best bit, a cold case of  child dumped in a lake 40 years ago and revealed as the water levels dropped, also we finally get Greg (Eric Szmanda) back as a visiting professor to help out the Crime lab.

Endeavour.  Final episode of the Inspector Morse spin off. One of those where you wonder what will happen to either Fred Thursday or his daughter Joan, both main characters and both never made it into the regular Inspector Morse show.

Lidl's Xmas advert.

Because you can excuse a poor year for everything with a festive raccoon. 

Rolf Harris making of a monster.

Proving that an entertaining wrong' un is still a wrong' un. 

Miranda awards, for televisual train wrecks. 

Unforgotten. 

We got a new case this year along with a new bird in charge. Its grim as it  involves a body buried in the wall of a house in south London. It also remains largely watchable with Sanjeev Bhaskar being an excellent actor. So why is it here. For fucking activism. Wokery and other bullshit politics. You know when the old Tory MP was a suspect you just knew he ended up doing it. (He didn't mind you but was fitted up for it. Because Tories evil).

 The Centerfold Murders

 A largely boring reconstruction of a murdered playboy bunny in the 1970's. Bailed out after 15 minutes and later found she posed for old softcore mags (NSFW) back in the 1970's. 

Caught on Dashcam.

This I've largely forgotten, apparently Andy Nyman narrates this, thought it was Jamie Theakston of Heart breakfast fame. What this needed was a Beavis and Butthead style laughing at accidents style. 

Finally Sainsburys Christmas advert. I care little what Father Christmas has for dinner. Though I've just seen this years Digitizer mans Daddy jokes so I'm guessing it's Roast Reindeer. 

Baphomet and Youtube

 It seems that America is having a normal one again. For my sins I follow a few culture war posters on X and it seems that they are  toppling statues in America again. Some literal baldy man version of the Chad meme guy has beheaded a statue of Baphomet, put up in Des Moines, Iowa. 

The overwhelming part of this thinks its a good thing, and focuses on the Christcuck right's obsession with guns, god and finding a place to start a family. As someone who's a autistic loner by trade and admission I'm in no position to own my own arsenal or plot of land let alone a bird to call my own. 

Besides as an atheist we really do use Satan to mock you, because church and state should be separate not tied together, so tight you cannot pull  them apart. That abortion should be a right and not contraception. 

In other news, I got another strike from Youtube, as the greatest moments in porn, (entirely nudity free but found fucking hilarious) got pulled for being spammy. No the real reason is that I stick to the 2010 Youtube rules if its funny I post and would never, ever link to or accept any monetization of my channel or paid sponsorship. You pulled it be you couldn't get an ad sponsor of it. We are not the same. 

That's why mum's go to Iceland

 We started reading through the Arctic Patrol mystery just as reports were coming through that Iceland was  experiencing a major volcanic event. That would have been last month when that big crack in the earth split open Grindevik.

Anyway Arctic Patrol mystery, serendipity aside, is the second Hardy boys book here. You may have got House on the Cliff in America. For us its the Hardy's trip to the cold north. The boys, Chet Morton and Biff Hooper travel  to Iceland to find one Rex Mar and say he's inherited $50,000 from someone who saved him back then. There is of course another mystery of a missing Astronaut training in  the harsh lava landscape of  Iceland's countryside. Gee  I wonder if the two cases are related.

There seems to be quite a good bit on Iceland here. Some language and last name customs along with talk on cuisine and the ever present elves. You don't get much difference between the two editions. We get the term sod hut replaced which sounds like a step up from the naughty step, and a few UK spellings of words, but compared to the later books which have bugger all done to it, this seems like a veritable litany of changes. Finally thanks to my printer dying you were supposed to get a copy of the map of Iceland printed in the front of the book. Also another cat I drew in biro back in the day (he's called Leo).

Anyway you know the drill UK version here US version here.

Who is this for.

Noticed an ad in the Sunday supplement in the week for one of those realistic babies, and it got me thinking... Who are these aimed at. I know there are sex dolls for those who, for some reason lack a partner (cough) or just have a fetish for silicone dolls. But I don't see this being the market at all. What I'm describing is a realistic baby often a newborn or so rendered in silicone. 

Something like this and I just don't get the appeal. I remember there being a baby Orangutan version as well, if you want your own lifelike librarian from the Unseen University. 

A few other things as well cross this area of appeal, the whole kids pageant thing and why you never became a dancer type programmes on TV. You know they used to have this on TLC where they followed a bunch of kids dancing. Never quite sure of the audience with this. If you're a paedo then there are far too many shots of the parents for you know "those" purposes. I guess its for women who did ballet / dance training as a kid and failed. 

Two stores One old one new.

 For some reason I've been wanting to go up town for ages, but seeing all the Paleswine shills marching and such, have been put off. But seeing on the news that HMV has reopened, made me bite the bullet and actually go. 

They got some woman who has never set foot in a record store, to record it but at least she says records and not vinyls which to me is a capital offence. 

We were off to a good start as we saw a small cockermutt on the tube going down and while looking for either a Tom Carruthers new album or that Andre 3000 flute jazz thing (New Blue Sun) on CD, struck out, did well enough at Reckless Records to pick up several things from some pretty diligent bargain bin hunting. (Oh saw some pretty rare acid stuff for big bucks too, I need a Friend Farley and Love For Sale PDC which was new for me).

Won £5 and spotted this error message in the wild from the slots. 

More importantly this looks like this sort of machine is running under some sort of Windows configuration looks like 7 from the error message. Sorry for it being janky as they really don't like you taking photos in the slot halls here.

So the upshot of this is was HMV OK. Well it was mid, dance thing is small and its not the main store up on Oxford street where I saw Kawasu launch FF12 here and what looked like Axl Rose in a large moogle suit. Nor the Kinect thing where the bloke yelled at  the crowd to keep back every few seconds or so.  Its  the other one by Bond street tube. 

Finally we saw an antiwoke march which you won't hear about on the news. Seriously though, you won't there was only about 30 or so of them and they were well behaved.  Kind of blotted their copy books with some bonkers Piers Corbyn anti climate change bullshit, proving either brother is a fucktard.

Finally here is a stray memory does anyone remember a shop up town in the 80s off oxford street that had a load of mechanical legs in the window going it. This sort of thing but unclothed. Have this strong memory of it being in the shop window. 

 

 

Xmas adverts 2o23

 Its come to that time of year when the Xmas ads are upon us. Halloween is over and black Friday is now a thing seeing as we don't do fucksgiving here yet. So it all boils down to what the John Lewis ad is this year (Little Shop of Horrors rip off with Andrea Bocelli apparently.)

I'll give you a take on the ones I've seen so far. 

Good.

Lidls Raccoon saves Christmas. Pretty much what it says. A bin panda rescues a a stuffed toy and brings it home for  child. Contains doggo and a link to a stuffed toy for kids charity. 

Aldi. A homage to Charlie and his Chocolate factory. It seems the budget supermarkets are knocking it out of the park this year. This one is run by a Conker, and yes all the other veg do get their comeuppance like in the original.

Indifferent

Morrisons. A load of singing oven gloves and their more reasons to stroke a manovus* jingle. It should be cool but for some reason falls flat. 

Marks and Sparks Food. The main one I haven't seen, but this is more gloves, talking mittens and Dawn French as the fairy again. 

Edit. Now I have and it's just a bunch of people being selfish bastards.

Bad

Sainsburys. What does Santa have for dinner, which is bastard awful, I've seen this more times than I can think of. I think its two disprin and a kip for the next 364 days.

Revenge of the Desert Phantom Review

This is an odd one. The Hardys have a missing persons task, to track down a dead warlord's daughter and return her home. It means we get a trip to central Africa and the made up country of Zebwa bordering Kenya which they fly into. Seeing as the made up country is part desert wilderness and part Rainforest, I'm guessing its half Uganda and half South Sudan. As is typical in Africa the country suffered from civil war and  corruption. 

Also for some reason they've made a tsundere ginger Iola Morton. I repeat Dark haired sister of Chet, ginger. The back story here is that she is entering a beauty pageant to win a scholarship. Joe can't help as much as the case takes him to France. He does get a simp called Jim Gunther who she picks to help.

The winner is the girl they are tasked to find. The trip back lets them pilot some Metal Slug style mega tank and gas light us about the Hardys never firing a gun, forgetting the original House on The Cliff and Fox hunting bit in the Original Cabin island. Gunner Chet Morton is pretty fun as well.

All in all its not a bad story if you can overlook ginger Iola Morton, It feels like a prototype version of a casefiles story from 3 years later. Although Iola is killed by a car bomb in that time line. 

Anyway Original here UK version here. You aren't getting much different just Landrover spelt like that and a few French words added that may be in the original. 

 

New Beatles.

 Here is a weird thing, they've got a new Beatles track out (Now and Then) despite half of them being dead. It's part of the Free as a Bird thing which I have clear memory of being promoted on the Big Breakfast. With Chris Evans and I think news caster Phil Gayle or predecessor Peter Smith (just checked and its 95 so definitely Smith).

It apparently was part of this tape Lennon recorded before he died and was previously too degraded to be used. FFWD 25 years or so and thanks to AI there is a new Beatles track.

The  thing is, from a dance perspective, the Beatles did nothing for us. Radiophonic workshop did the whole experimentalism thing better and Kraftwerk would go on to be massively influential. There's only a few Macca tracks I like (Temporary Secretary and Check my Machine), 

Twisted Claws

Love this version, makes it look like a casefiles book

This is the 11th Hardy boys mystery. And one that is quite a bit strange. First of all its a smuggling ring based on a mysterious Caribbean island. The second it's all about pirates.

UK edition.

Quite what has changed here is anyone's guess. I have the original text file and a home scanned copy of the UK edition remake complete with cats drawn in the flyleaf. 

It has some similarities in common with the original, Pirate island / Smuggling ships called the Parrots, logs used for smuggling and a trip to Canada. But this is where it ends as this is a different story. Oh and an old book that details the Twisted Claw pirate lineage. 

Fenton Hardy tells the boys that he's onto an international smuggling ring targeting the De Graw collection in various museums. It seems that The Black Parrot, an old schooner is being used to transport it. The boys dress up as old salts and  try to blag their way onboard but none of the crew are friendly and end up in Canada. After many daring thefts they try to foil, they end up on the sister ship. Yellow Parrot winging their way to the Caribbean, paying a visit to the king of an unknown island that is the smuggler boss. 

Original

Frank loses his wallet complete with code book in. Pierre of the Black Parrot ship targets them to give them some papers from Fenton Hardy. When they fail to do so, he breaks in and scares Aunt Gertrude and their Bejayzus Oirish maid, Mary. When their mum comes back with a strange message they work out that their dad is kidnapped in Canada. Their trip there garners two of the Parrot gang captured and a daring rescue of their Dad from a forest fire. Later they get board on the Yellow Parrot schooner and manage to win over most of the crew. 

They reach Barracuda island home of the Twisted Claw smuggling empire. They sneak in and watch the strange meeting of the Parrot gangs .Back on board they get  the crew to mutiny when Pierre catches them and they send a last gasp SOS which rounds up the gang. 

Trivia.

Apparently the mystery island is 5 hours GMT behind where they live in Bayport..

You can read the original and UK version here and here.

AI Art

Elsa the undefeated

 We've been messing around with Bing A.I. putting in all sorts of stuff and seeing if the bastards in control will let us render it flesh. Its hit and miss our Pixar version of  the Chuckle Brothers was shot down and we had a few attempts to render Black Metal Nativity before hitting paydirt. But the only thing I've gotten a warning for is Drew Pickles being his swell self. It seems  they're onto him and his 308 mile long p-p-penis. 

 For those without a Microsoft account (had to reinstall windows without a serial, so yeah I have one.) there is also Craiyon which will produce some cosmic horrors and Stable Diffusion. 

Enough blather, you want to see cosmic horror. 

Edit It's given permission. Enjoy.

Tamest Aphex Twin

Vampire Savile

Bedtime Stories update or such.

 Just got done reading the Arctic Patrol mystery aka the Hardys in Iceland. And we have yet another cat this one is called Leo.  I'll add a photo of Leo when the printer isn't broken AF. But I'm drawing a blank on this as well. Guess it must tie in with the Uncle Weedle stories somehow, but I've long forgotten.

Tic Tac Terror

 Hello, book time again and a late era story UK wise. 

An espionage based one. A spy threatens to defect unless he gets an emerald from Colombia. That's the story and there is a slight sub tale of Chet Morton raising rabbits and white mice to sell to laboratories. 

It's not bad, but could do better, a lot better. The only saving grace is that you get  to see Biff Hooper in a rabbit suit, which he uses to troll Chet. In fact this seems to be the only time I've seen a picture of Biff, in any of the books. 

You'll want a better synopsis  then. 

OK seeing as the top paragraph is brief. The boys take on a  strange tale of a man coming back from Colombia with it seems no memory of why he was there, they find him in a coma in a run down block in New York city. There is also an agent called Igor who seems to be a master of disguise showing up in Joes camera. And to top it all a mysterious Government outfit called BOB. The Bureau of Bombs. Men In Black fans will be amused to know its being run by an Agent Smith. 

So this Tic tac toe thing...

Doesn't really come into it. The boys are run on a wild goose chase across NYC with them playing Noughts and Crosses against terrorists which is the limit of the Tic Tac Toe references.

I bet there are lots of differences, too, between  the US and UK edition.

No, there is a slight change to how the tic tac toe clues are read out but this could be the text file I'm working from. Apart from this all spellings that are normally corrected for us remain resolutely American.

You can get it from here. and here.

Necrolog John Pilbeam

 Sad to say we lost our branch founder early in September. I was on holiday and only found out about this now. 

He was a great writer and speaker, who travelled to many places in search of cacti. He had a place out in Chelsfield where he sold cacti and where I went for our first fish n chip supper. Most of all, he could write and his books were readily available for sale either at shows or at our meetings. 

I'll link to the only book I ever had of his as a beginner back in 198x or so.  But it wasn't just books for beginners, there were species specific guides for Stapeliads or some of the genera of  the Cactaceae.

 

Tape Rubbish

 We now have a cable capable of digitizing old cassette tapes, which means I get to dive into my stack of priceless Pirate radio rips along with a lot of old bollocks I've garnered along the way. 

I guess when I'm done I'll have much more space as there is a lot to throw out. So far we have a Boots tape that has been taken over by Methodists putting news up and promoting their book of discipline. 

We still have a bit left, including a hilarious bit where a guy considers buying a Casio Rapman. But most of what I have to  transcode is vaguely ethnic stuff, that'll either suck or go on far too long. 

Holiday full round up.

 Where before you'd have to wait to get home for me to round up my holiday, new big phone means you get live updates. But for old times sake, here's a final edit of holiday.

We spent an enjoyable two weeks in Ayia Napa,  Cyprus. Where thanks to a tenant coming on (and her spouse lurking in the background) I spent most of it thinking of her and how my autist ass could have handled her.. if he weren't around.

On the plus side thanks to everyone overlooking each other, I did see some people making out on their balcony even so far as going down on his bird, which is proper dedication in my eyes. They had towels up which was nice but failed to disguise the fact that being of a higher elevation you could watch all that went on. Sadly they left the second day we were there.

Wildlife.

There wasn't much variation in plants, as everything was dominated by Rock Samphire. If you are anywhere near the coast this is what you have to look out for. Inland they had Asphodel and Juniper in the Sculpture park and a load of Agave that had gone to seed. There are a few butterflies around including Short tailed blue and a Swallowtail. They also had their fair share of Dragonflies about which is nice.

TV

Didn't really watch much TV, A lot was either Russian, Arabic (MBC Film) or Greek. But I did wake up in the middle of the night to some drunk dude on skates in this film (Greek only). Citruss TV had a dildiss that they were convinced was for your face despite it being knob shaped. Apart from that there was a nice dairy ad in Greek which was cool.

CATS

Finally in cats we have all your favourites such as Lizard King so named because it ate a lizard and a Mousebob a black tortoiseshell that was hunting mice. Oh and this dude who looked like he's made out of shadow material. 

It doesn't help that it's a fluffmeister so its edges are not that defined. 

Moar holiday

 We normally split this between nature and TV, but for some reason the Gogglebox has failed us. Apart from finding Munich New town hall boasts a really nice clock, the only nice add is Citrus TV,  an Arabic home shopping network going way out of it's way to show that this "body massager" they flog, really isn't dildo shaped, all the while it being cock and ball shape. Albeit in pastel.

No your best bet for nature is cats. Where I've seen my share of crickets and dragonflies over these two weeks. What I've seen most are cats. They're all wild guys here so they mill about mostly at night looking for food. We've seen them catch a few things, a mouse and a lizard but mostly rely on hand outs from tourists. I'll leave you with a photo or two for your pleasure 

Holiday 2 Electric Boogaloo

 It feels weird to do this, seeing as we normally wait till I'm home to post, but for once we have a new phone that is the size of a house, so you'll be getting an update whilst away.

We're in Ayia Napa under somewhat of a dark cloud, probably too much sugar bringing me down and not enough sleep. It's a good place an all helped by the fact that you can get a good look at everyone from the comfort of your balcony. I got to watch a young guy go down on his missus thanks to superior elevation, they left the next day though which is sad.

Nothing else has really topped this and I'll have to concede that my luck was indeed in.

Thanks to insomnia I now know that Munich New town hall boasts an excellent clock thanks to a BBC interview with the AFD Ponce. Some weird Greek film with a roller skating drunk is called Satraps, and people will sit out round the pool gone midnight.

We'll leave you with this guy, who lives in the shop next door.

Bedtime Stories.

 So we've just got done reading through the Twisted Claw* and I just had to include these bits I drew inside the covers from when I must have been 13 or so. 

We have no idea who Clawd is.

Niece and Nephews of Uncle Weedle.

The cats are from a bedtime story that my Mum and me made up back in the day. The three at the bottom are Taily, Waily and Tabatha, nephews of Uncle Weedle a sort of black and white cat version of Jacques Cousteau and champion fisherman. He ran a weird mix of an aquarium and fish raising bit on the coast. Totally drawn a blank at Clawd though, possibly a friend of the siblings.

The few world building bits I can remember is that this was a planet full of cats on a planet that had a runaway greenhouse effect. As a consequence the whole world was some giant tropical rainforest with a mix of hi-tech and primitive forest dwelling. There would be no roads as such as everything ran on teleportation. And that's all I can remember about it. I think they lived underground and the continent they lived on was definitely called Wederland .

Bark Brothers.

This is far more concrete set of tales I told. Imagine the Hardy Boys but dogs (really loved some non human protags in this). They solved mysteries and had access to a giant robot called Super Choop who lived in the mall in Barkington. It was a detective tale mixed with a Tokusatsu feel. They had catapaults and fired beans out to defeat the plans of C.H.I.C.K.E.N. the Central Headquarters of International Criminal Kind and Evil Notoriety. This lasted long enough for us to write up a mystery tale in Wordworth on the Amiga and submit it for a CU  Amiga coverdisk. There is also a big rambling tale written long hand about them coming to earth that mixed up drug trafficking and the Mayan transformer pseudoscience of Maurice Cotterell.  I know there is a few pictures and a rework in Blacks Editor text editor on Amiga that is about a quarter of the way done.  And no, I'm not resurrecting this.  

*Not the next book you'll get. That will be Tic-Tac Terror.

Skeleton Rocks

So the Ghost at Skeleton Rock. Or the Hardys do Puerto Rico. This is the first book I ever wrote up as a sort of review for English class at school. Not the first Hardy Boys story I  read (Melted Coins). But the first sort of review I did. Can remember Chet taking up ventriloquism as his hobby of the day. 

PLOT

Fenton Hardy gives them  a cryptic message about finding a Hugo purple turban, which just so coincides with Chet Morton picking up ventriloquism as a hobby. His doll from the toy shop is almost hijacked by thugs when he comes to collect it, and when they finally pick it up they find a coded message for Cabezona N in the Spanish instructions. 

A few more clues brings them to Puerto Rico, via the small island of Tropicale. The Cabezona clue largely brings them to the pineapple growing regions to the south as there is a Punta Cabezona there along with a sugar central (processing plant). They find that the plane leads due north, and as a hunch hire a boat and find that there is a small island being used by a Durling Hamilton leader of the bad guys as base. Although charming he tries to get the local Carib Indians to kill off the boys and when that fails sabotages his boat and then gets them to sail back to Puerto Rico for help and watches them sink.

So where actually is Skeleton Rock then, and what about that ghost? 

19 chapters in we finally find out that Skeleton Rock exists in the extreme north of Hamilton's island as a dread place of ritual for the Caribs. The ghost of a long dead Cacique actually a projection is being used to scare the Indians into compliance. 

Differences?

So far there are a few text edits to certain phrases and spellings in the English version, from the US original. But as it's based on the rewrite and the text file I have that purports to be original has fuck all differences between this and my UK copy, I'd like to get my hands on an original to see what edits were made (if any).

Edit. UK version Here and Original version here

Coffee time. With music

 A few odds n sods today. We got an anti poll tax record today (we have one already and it's shit) and a few tapes such as Summer Sounds Vol 2 Chartfile, a promo for Mobil Oil. And the sound track to Prospects an old Channel 4 show with Gary Olsen in. Hazel O'Connor sings in this and we have a few other things to put up on discogs once I get round to listening to them. 

Coffee break.

Don't know if anyone else has done this, but had the notion to put black pepper in my brew the other day. Was in McDonalds and they had the pepper packets on the side and thought... Wouldn't it be great if I could put pepper in this. Its sort of spicy and goes well with the  taste of the coffee which is already kinda bitter. 

The site I've linked to has some sort of health benefits with it but for me I just wanted to know what it would taste like. If I have any pepper packets around and get coffee, will definitely do it again. 

OBS

 We've finally reinstalled OBS as it didn't recognise our capture card (got picture no sound) and have a load of lottery type tapes and joy of joys some play your cards right with Brucie. 

One of the new tapes is causing some trouble. It won't play in OBS so far but does on the main TV with  the other VCR. It's some dubious health tape featuring Noni fruit aka Morinda citrifolia. Hopefully I'll have it capped soon and put on archive.org if it's not there already.

EDIT looks like my capture equipment can't handle commercial tapes. 

MTV Dragonball: a fuzzy memory

God knows why I'm remembering this now, or what triggered this, but, take what you see next with a pinch of salt. 

Mid 90's MTV, where they still showed Music videos and the heyday of Beavis and Butthead. For some reason I remember they showed a live action version of Dragonball once. Literally all I can remember is a clip of Master Roushi poncing about his island with, I think, a turtle with him. He may have had a sofa, too,  though that is not important.

I do remember it being around  the same time as the ident of the alien zapping his own weiner*, and I think Sifl and Olly show in the breaks. Though looking up that would put it at around 1998 or so. 

I have actually seen the show a few times and its not either Dragonball or Dragonball Z or even Super which was on when I was on holiday. No I'm pretty sure it was live action. May have been on before Ray Cokes show or after. This joins the pro grainen Parrot cereal ad for fuzzy memories via MTV.  

*You wish of course to know more 'bout the green alien clip. It was a clip of a green, grinning alien facing the camera waist height on some lunar scape. His unit pops up and he grins and shows its a cucumber,  which he zaps with his laser. Of course he actually gets an erection and then zaps that with his ray gun, much to his shock. 

Cave in

 So we're onto the hardbacks now. There is a few of these versions here in from I think the Apeman's Secret to Skyfire Puzzle, that are released in hard back originally. This if you haven't guessed is a short review of Cave in. 

The Hardys have a case where they are looking for a missing film star, one  Richard Chase. He has gone missing from a low budged horror movie being shot up at lake Tahoe in California  and the boys try and get extra slots in the film. They manage to grab a spot backstage and Chet Morton manages an extra spot on the account of him being fat. 

 So where's the cave in?

There is a feud going on between the ski centre boys and Oreville town dating back to a mining disaster some years back. The mine was dynamited and there are reports of ghostly noises in the old mine. The feud escalates with an accident on one of the ski center boys whilst a hot dogging competition is being shot for the film. It nearly ends in a mass brawl by the end of the book but its all a smokescreen put up by the film studio so the mine can be worked again. 

Its not a bad book this. There is a lot more on the mine and the feud and Rich's kidnapping is sidelined for most of the story. Oh and apart from a time and southsiders and northsiders being one word in the UK version, nothing has changed much. All the US spellings are left in and a few terms like the aforementioned hot-dogging is left unchanged. 

You can  both UK and the Original versions here. 

Hayes Farm

 Just a brief visit today. The place I normally visit has new owners which means a later start. It's still a heck load of buses to get there, but actually did some good today. Helping a old lady off in a wheelchair off the bus and on to Waterstones, before noting that this was actually a short cut to the other stop I wanted.  

Place was heaving for once and the later policy meant no one was packing up.  Picked up a Junior Reid / Coldcut single and a few CDs including an A Way Of Life mix cd which I'm really hoping is more the hardcore end instead of jungle. Looks like I'm going to have to research who it is that mixed these. 

X has fallen

 Getting tired of culture war shit. There seems to be no sensible center anymore, its either left wing screeching about rich people and trans rights. Or its right wingers saying all blacks are evil and we should just send them all back.

I'll repeat, that there is no center anymore. No sensible discussion on race or immigration and nothing balanced about Trans issues. Its just extremes. 

What did this for me is following an anti labour group on the Twatter, where I should have just vetted them first. They are the worst kind of small party UKIPper lite, and have the most fucked takes on race. 

Rarely for the UK they pretty much seem to be full on godshagger mode that I'd expect from the Christian homeschooler crowd. Where there are plenty on Muslims and that you sometimes get posts about burning churches and the like. This is from a culture that pretty much sums up church going as if you ain't getting married, buried or christened then fuck off. 

I've talked about the loony right here, but the loony left is no better. All placard cunts, immigrants welcome, kill TERFS and smash the Tories, And peak for this is Jeremy Corbyn would have been an excellent leader, despite being a commie weirdo and Hamas shill. 

The sensible middle for this goes something like this. And can be thought of as my ideals. 

Not everyone is welcome, Not everyone is a scrounger, face persecution that we can prove and you can stay, be a productive member of society and more importantly, integrate into your community. 

Be a criminal and you will be jailed in your country of origin. 

The  Trans shit is pretty easy too. I don't care. So long as you do not push it on children / autistics and transition with genuine dysphoria as an adult. All I ask is for you to pass, and not be an insufferable cunt. I consider it to be a third identity i.e. Trans as a gender in its own right rather than usurp the original sex. And if you do, don't change the language to something cringe like birthing person or call it a bonus hole (surely a ringpiece euphemism at best).  

Medic

 Two unavoidable medical bits this week. First of all I had a long overdue appointment with a squint clinic at the local hospital. For those wondering, it doesn't impact my life much, rare double vision and that. but after a battery of tests and some eyedrops. The upshot is it's not treatable, it rarely impacts my life but if it does come back, call.

The second is a root canal to save a tooth that my new dentist says couldn't be saved. It's still sore and worst of all it's the side I eat on, so will have to go slow these next few weeks. 

The one stand out good thing this week (Apart from Aphex Twin BB Life recorder 21F) is that a big Agave that is in someone's front garden for as long as I can remember is going to flower. We have of course snapped a cheeky pic, as I don't think they care much. If that was me, you would get  an update from the moment I noticed it was in bud. 

Screeching Owls

Not a bad story this. The boys and Chet Morton are on holiday in Pennsylvania checking up on a friend of their father's while Fenton himself is on a case involving truck hijackers. They reach his cabin to find him missing and dark talk about a witch that stalks the local area stealing dogs and screeching at night. 

The local geography makes it tough to follow, a large depression in the earth called Black Hollow overgrown and with a hidden shack supposedly used by abolitionists as part of the underground railroad funneling slaves out to a new life in the north. 

A few run ins with the Donner family and a mute boy called Simon who proves to be of immense help. Before the inevitable conclusion that the boys and their father are working on the same case from different angles. 

Quite a few nice bits to think over. The Screech owls, used as a signal here, are familiar to Americans whereas the Barn owl which was also used as a signal is also known in Europe. There is a nice nod to inclusion with the acceptance of Simon the mute boy. which is done well even.

Anyway UK version here and Original here.

Final note on this. The original US artwork has a nightmarish looking Barn Owl on the cover. Whereas the version I have in the UK looks to be a Great Grey Owl or a Puma.

Psycle Alpha a review of sorts.

 Been a fan of this for absolutely ages, after downloading and hating Buzz on dial up many years ago. I always thought it was a clone of this but seeing a Youtube vid on how to do it I was brought round. 

Anyway you'll want to know what this is exactly. It's a tracker program, the sort used to make music in the 90's but with more modern features such as VST instruments and effects along with a sample player. Like Buzz it works of generator's and effects, unlike Buzz its not a head fuck. 

It's  development was halted for a while now and I only noticed that work resumed on Sourceforge, when  I checked the code part. A few nominal updates with the option to compile it yourself like a geek. Then this week I looked at the files and there is an Alpha binary ready compiled for install. 

A few caveats, It seems stable but even the older betas are ropey so I'm fully expecting this to fall apart whenever a track nears completion. It's got a new dark layout which isn't bad. And all the preferences and are at the bottom now. No icons and saving's weird now. 

The main thing is that we have a sequencer interface as well from every other DAW in the past 20 odd years. It takes some getting used to and you can use  the tracker interface as well which helps. I'm currently rebuilding my plugin cache and rooting out which works and which causes a crash. But for those pondering if the Reaktor window resize bug is still there, its been fixed.

Current views on this are it's not bad, and if they ever implement VST3 functionality. I'll be staying on board. Oh before I go there is a language switch for English / Espanol. 

You can grab it here prebuilt for either Windows or Linux. 

Kew

This day has sucked balls. Supposed to go on  trip out to Kew via our local Cactus club. Meet up 10:30 outside the gate. Decide to get up in time leave house at 9 walk into town get the DLR and jump a  few tube trains and make it in time.

Reality is this. We pass 2 Jehovah's witness stalls which is instant bad luck and not only miss my slot but come in late and miss the tour (back ends of Kew) which suck. I get trains cancelled and bus drivers changing. And worse of all realize I could have just gone on cross rail and exited at Ealing to get a bus there, instead of the mad dash I had to do just to get there 15 minutes late.

The upside of this is I saw a few good things such as a prickly pear in flower and the Ghost Orchid from Florida, thanks to glare though no photos.

Edit. OK have this air plant instead.

Holiday pt2 Beasts and plants

 Last weeks blog was all about the stuff I watched on television. From Crimen in Parasio (Death In Paradise) to an insincere robot on This Morning. This week, fauna.

That area around Alcudia, Santa Margalida, is known for its wildlife and area's of natural beauty. From the public farmlands of Finca Son Real,(ES) to the pinewoods and bird sanctuary at s'Albufera. You are pretty much spoiled when it comes to nature here. Some pretty dramatic weather meant we couldn't really go swimming in the sea, but we did manage to go hiking about, which more than made up for it. 

Weather wise, it wasn't all that, typical English summer, with a few nice days, a storm and a few overcast and windy days. The best of the weather was when we went home. Which is always the way. Put it this way Burgos got snow for the first time ever. Granted its Northern Spain, but its still strange and unseasonal weather. 

Anyway, what did  I see. Along with the small river, with its ducks and coot. There was a small egret and cormorants by the see along with an Audoins gull with its call that sounded like Geoff. A few nice bugs including a Mole cricket, a regular cricket and a tortoise. Also a really long millipede. 

A weird one here. We saw a Two Tailed Pasha Charaxes jasius butterfly drinking the cuckoo spit from a froghopper nest. If anyone knows quite what it's gaining from this I'd love to know. 

Plants

Thanks to the near alpine like conditions on the sea front there is quite a range of plants. Mostly dominated by Felty Germander and Helichrysum but there are a few other species there as well. Sea Holly, Long Horned Poppy and four types of Rockrose. Up in the hills I saw a Gladiolus in bloom for  the first time and a  few other things I can't place, including a nice Speedwell type down by the river.

Holiday 23 pt1 TV

 OK, so I'm back from a well earned break, and it has to be said, some highly disappointing weather. We went to Son Baulo in Ca'n Picafort, up on the North East coast of Mallorca. Been before, but mostly in June when the weather is warmer and getting into the low 30's This time its like an English summer, overcast and cloudy with occasional bright spots and the odd storm to spoil it. In fact looking at the weather there and on the mainland it seems to be storms and hail with the odd reports of snow in places. 

My hotel room was basic with a view of a shop and bar.

Whereas my parents got a sea view. If you don't know the area, its known for its outstanding natural beauty and being close to Alcudia, down the coast from the old castle town. There are a few buses running into either Palma or Alcudia and its worth taking time to visit either. 

Anyway two paragraphs in and what you want to know is what's on the box there. Spanish TV is pretty much what you'd expect a few telenovelas and a lot of imported shows from the states. Including a version of Bones and the worst CSI: Miami. English TV extends to either ITV (we saw a bit of this including an awkward interview with a robot on This Morning before they ousted Schofe for bumming a twink.) And the BBC which is largely dire.

German stuff is largely of the RTL / Sat1 style programming with a few other quirks thrown in. Big props to BR Fernsehen Sud, for consistently showing odd programs throughout the day, and night when the insomnia kicked in. Seriously if you are a techno head you have to watch Space Night, a mix of NASA clips and the more trackier drum style of techno / house, you won't be disappointed. 

They also do a pets show called Anna und Die Haustiere.(German) But its more of an excuse to perv over Annika Preil. If I knew German I bet I'd get more out of it.

Catalan I still don't rate and its more local interest with some election nonsense thrown in, which should be concluding today. I'll add a note on who won what if I remember. The other thing was Firo, which celebrates the Mallorquins successfully holding off a siege from the Moors and is a big costumed ball out on the West coast.

Finally we come to the main show. A few English / Spanish shows I've rated. 

Pop / Tiny pop has consistently the best cartoons with Dragonball Super and some weird Post Apocalyptic Pokemon with Team Rocket as a News Crew. 

A version of Vera where its pronounced Bera. Which is my new favourite thing. I never found out if Brenda Blethyn was dubbed in this or just left as is. Props if it was, we can't understand Geordies at the best of times. 

Mein Freundin Conni on ZDF

Based on an old German kids book, I just love the look of this. It's like if they got Ark System Works to make a kids show in the style of Blazblue, not cosmic horror but that sort of 3D style. I still don't understand German but I bet it's proper wholesome as well. YT Clip here.

Finally a duck at an ice rink with that Felix the Housecat mix of Sinnerman over the top.

EDIT. The PeePee party won. Breakdown here  Catalan.

Hiatus

 We'll be doing nothing much for a couple of weeks, as it's holiday season for me. Rest assured this place will be up and running in 2 weeks time. Peace.

Desert Giant

The Mystery of the Desert Giant or the Hardys in California. 

This is not a bad story either in it's original form or in its UK remake. The boys are tasked with finding a missing industrialists son. One Willard Grafton. He and a friend were last seen in southern California, and their plane found in Blythe out in the desert near the desert giants.  

A trip out to Cali with Chet Morton finds that there is a ring running counterfeit cheques out of Mexico and that somehow Grafton is mixed up in this. Chet's latest hobby, Infra Red Photography, is also part of the story, and yes, he does get to use it out in the desert. With a photo of the crooks and such. 

The most notable thing about this is that most of the geography is actually based on real places. The giants exist and are something of a mystery of ancient American folk art. As well as most of the towns and villages stateside being real places, it includes the places for their brief foray into Chihuahua state when pursuing Grafton into Mexico. 

You can read both versions here and here. 

Bootsale round up.

 First of all a sad farewell to those at the Forest of Illusion game preservation group, it just goes to show how shallow it all is. Cost of living and precious little time to work on preservation was the final nail in this coffin.  News story here. 

In a bizarre twist to this, we went to the boot sale today, no stick with it. Along with a Dell keyboard for £3, (super nice) and a windows 7 back up along with a few other things. I've hit the motherlode of old paper ephemera. 

Chucked out near the bin in one of the green garden waste bags was a load of paper from various computer fairs and things ripped from magazines. I  guess whoever it was that owned them before was really into early 3D. So there are bits and pieces from TV Paint and Lightwave 3D, various rendering leaflets from long dead companies and some glossy brochure from Rare, which is the highlight. I'm guessing its circa 1996 because it has an Ultra 64 logo instead of the released N64. It shows a rendered Diddy and Dixie Kong along with Sabrewulf from Sabrewulf (Killer Instinct), and plugs their Rareware 3D platform. 

Also some weird internet road map that has to have come from a computer show. And yes it's an actual map. 

Jumbo milestone

 I've got nothing really worthwhile to say this week only that this is post 757. I know we should have put up something when we hit 747 posts. But seeing as its a plane milestone have a picture of an old jumbo jet my Granddad took*.

An East African airways jet 1970's

*He lived near Heathrow so has an excuse.

Bubble Bobble 4 Friends review.

Finally got this at a good price (£22 for those that have to know.) And, if the absolute low bar is the execrable PSP version, this ranks somewhere in the middle.

In fact, if anything, it can be summed up with one word, Mid. 

It takes place in some unknown child's bedroom with a toy version of Bub and Hyper Drunk. That come to life, and the various levels seem to be based around the room they are in. The privileged little fucker seems to have a Bubble Bobble arcade cab in his room, and a quick blast confirms that this is still fun . Though how the fuck you get the special ending on Switch lite, when it's only one player is a mystery to me. 

Less fun are the new levels that you have to play with. Gone are the iconic enemies and in their stead are weird little tanks and Lego blocks. A new version of Zen-chan would have been nice as well as Stoner and Beluga. Though the bouncing due on the second level rivals this for sheer cunt levels.  Oh and the first boss is a piece of piss to beat, just stand on the blocks above him and wait till he rams himself into the wall and bubble him till he's fully encased. 

Bubble Trouble.

Which brings us to another thing blocks and scoring. There is no special drug in which to cull off bosses nor do you get any of the regular powerups in a level. The only thing you  get are Extend bubbles which don't give you a 1up but extend the use of powerups you get for beating a boss. 

They're triggered by the shoulder buttons and you can't bubble while crouching. Your basic shot is just a short range attack that is serviceable but not to be fully relied upon. So far I've seen no way to fall through the floor nor trigger element bubbles that were part of the original.  Oh and did I mention that apart from the weird glass floor, you cannot jump through platforms.

Boring scoring.

We finally come to the meat of the problem and it has to be said, its redemption, too. Bubble Bobble 4 Friends is pitched more like a score attack game than the old game. With all special power ups stripped out, and a guaranteed bonus at the end of level (no matching digits here.) Your overall bonus is dependent on the biggest amount of enemies you've bubbled up. Plus the mobilesque end of level bonus with its three star rating and EXTEND bubble log, you are immediately looking for ways to exploit the levels for bigger bonuses. 

Overall. Unless we get a port of Bubble Bobble Neo from the Wii / XBOX 360 or Bubble Memories as an Arcade Archive. This is about the best you can do for the modern era. It's far from perfect but at the same time not a total abomination.

Final score 60%

Um, Forgotten

 Warning this heavily spoils the current series of Unforgotten. 

You all know what this is, its a British cold case television show on ITV with Sanjeev Bhaksar playing a cop Sunny Khan with Nicola Walker as his boss. But she got killed off last season and now there is this unlikeable blond in it.

The case revolves around a woman's body discovered in a house undergoing renovations. There is the usual suspects, I can't be bothered to name them properly.

Tory MP 

Last name is Hume and has terminal cancer. Oh and as soon as they mention Tory in these sort of things you tend to think he did it. (Sort of,) Labour MPs get a free ride in these sort of shows. Anyway his wife is Hayley Mills. 

Ebellie

Co owner of a restaurant and a husband beater. It turns out by some trick of fate that Tory MP raped her mum in the 1960's. Her daughter is the one walled up in the house. And no she never faces any consequences for being a husband beater either. 

Smackhead cunt. 

A smackhead cunt living with his girlfriend, also a smackhead, in a squat. Essentially  fits up the Tory MP for the murder of what turns out to be his mum. 

Tiny Hat Tribe Jowski

A polish Jew, who worked as a social worker for the walled up girl, he moved to France and now works for Amazon. A thief and an upskirter. 

There are your protags and of course it gets much worse. It's still bearable, it was an excellent show at heart but it lays on the politics pretty heavily. Dim witted brexit jabs, check, cuts to funding, check and fuck witted "reparashons and slavery days bollocks" double check.

The theme still remains excellent though and you get to see Heads and Tails Derek Griffiths as a security guard. Shame they had to bring politics into this, as its given cancer to such a good show. 

Devils Paw

 A.K.A. Frank and Joe in the cold north. You know the drill by now, a short review and a couple of DLs to the original texts so you can read along at home.

This is the Hardys in Alaska, hence the tagline. Summoned up by telegram to help Tony Prito's summer job as a ranger on the Kooniak river. They run into poachers and worse a foreign power looking for a fallen rocket. With the help of Ted Sewell, a wildlife tracker looking for his dad and Fleetfoot, a Haida youth, the boys take on these creepy crooks. Oh and Chet comes along as well. 

The first thing you'll note, doing some research on this  is that most of the places and things detailed in this are real things.

The Devil's Paw is a mountain that is on the border of British Columbia and Alaska and looks suitably bleak.

Kotzebue where an Inuit woman comes from, and where the boys gatecrash her wedding when they visit Fleetfoot. is an actual city in the far north of the country. The blanket toss, which sees a hapless Frank propelled high in the air. is also real, and forms part of the Inuit Olympics.

 The part where the gang loot from Indian Grave houses is kind of true. Its just in one spot in Alaska, and it seems to be a refuge for the deceased persons soul rather than house artefacts from their life. 

The Kooniak river doesn't exist, though its probably based on the Kodiak river which does. Do not hold me to that, I can't find any info on it.

Anyway, the original and UK edition are mostly the same. The UK gets some continuity edits, a line about Wildcat swamp is cut as the book has yet to occur in our timeline, and some unfamiliar terms and Americanisms are cut. 

The rewrite tones down Fleetfoot so he doesn't sound like a heap big stereotypcial Native American. It also performs some edits for space and clarity. 

You can find the original here and UK version here. 

Edit. With this all done I'd like to say whoever did this put in the research. Pioneer trading talk, proper place names for most of the area and a revised edit that isn't too bad for once. 

Rewrite version is available here.

Soccer Match Analogy.

There is a subset of Evangelist trash leaflet, that doesn't really work as a metaphor. Want a quick example, its this sort of leaflet, that gives you an example. (in this case a football match) and ties it into the binary accept Jesus good don't accept Jesus bad.

 It doesn't explain that most domestic football matches the score can go either three ways, a win a lose or a draw (score or otherwise).  And for most of the season the outcome doesn't matter much. In a non league game such as UEFA or FA Cup it does matter so I'm guessing this is the analogy used, but even then I will give you an example where it doesn't matter.

Say in this all important win / lose match you are either red carded and sent off before you win or are substituted off without accepting Jesus and you subsequently win and yes this is the analogy used, accept him and win or don't and lose. Do you end up with an afterlife. Given it's out of your control, do you still win. 

What if you go to penalties and lose because you're English and can't take penalties, do you still win. Like I say it all boils down that heaven is something special (it's not) or that you'll get eternal punishment just because of ignorance / that god sucks. And its why stuff like this doesn't work as evangelism. 

Lithops mix

 Was going to do a few things as a round up today, but as its mothers day today, we went to a garden center for the first time in ages. More importantly, they had a selection of cacti and succulents for sale.

Don't know if this is available in every shop but we'll give props to Polhill for not being so bad and the fact that their farm shop is the absolute bomb, we came away with a Fentiman's Dandelion and Burdock and a half price pot of Lithops seedlings, seeing as most of them were dead.

Back home I did the usual transplant. Which is knock them out, weed out the dead one's and then repot into 2"/ 5cm pots. 

I know I've done this before on this blog, but for those who've bought one of these, and feel like pricking out 100 seedlings into individual pots. Here is my list. 

You'll want some: 

Small pots 

Soil based compost. Not peat or coir. We use John Innes 3 here in the UK. It's probably called something else, elsewhere in the world.

Small gravel. About 1mm in size. Fish tank grit is ideal. 

Small pots. 2" / 5cm are ideal. 

Labels. If you know what Lithops you have.

You'll need about a handful of compost and a handful of grit and mix together. You can add more grit if it doesn't seem open enough. Then fill all pots, make a small hole in the soil and put your Lithops in. Finally add more grit as top dressing and then you can if dry enough, water. 

These instructions also work if you've grown your own mesemb seed either MSG or another society seed and are potting on from the initial pot. 

Billion Dollar censorship.

 There's been a lot in the papers recently about books getting an unsympathetic update thanks to sensitivity readers. Ian Fleming's Bond stories and the Works of Roald Dahl being the one, with a few nods back to the Famous Five stories, which the Mail fails to point out, were modernized in the nineties. Whether you think this is a good thing or not is beside the point. these are period books we're dealing with Especially Dahls work, which is a cornerstone of children's literature.

So what about the Hardy Boys books, were they ever updated for a more modern audience. Yes the were revised for a more modern audience back in the 1960's. Some examples are:

You don't get African Americans working in the service industry anymore, nor them riding to the rescue in a Model T Ford in Hunting For Hidden Gold. Less flippantly you don't get absolute clusterfucks like Footprints under the window throwing every Chinese cliche at you nor gangs of murderous blacks in The Hidden Harbour Mystery. 

More recently, the UK edition of the Firebird Rocket removes the word Abo, when talking about Aboriginal Australians and the revised edition of The Mystery of the Desert Giant has the Haida Indian's speak normally instead of sounding like a heap big stereotype. I suppose a more modern sensitivity reader will have a more positive role for Iola, Callie and Mrs Hardy. As well as possibly making Gertrude Hardy a feminist even if she is already an interesting character.

Anyway a new story dropped for you Billion Dollar Ransom. I'm not going to say who gets ransomed for a cool billion, It'll spoil the story, but the main one involving the boys is them providing security detail for a magic show and looking into strange goings on at the old Opera House.

You can read it here

 

History month

I know this is going to get all the idiots out of the woodwork. Especially those with low reading comprehension. But just hear me out. I don't think black history month should be a universal holiday.

I know what sparked this off in the first place, watching or rather listening to a video by Just Some Guy on Youtube. Covering the comic March, about the civil rights movement in America, essentially Black Americas long march from segregation and racism to acceptance via MLK, Rosa Parks and other Black leaders. It struck me, in the UK we don't have this baggage. It's not that there weren't racists growing up or that they didn't face bad stuff. We didn't segregate people or schools nor have Jim Crow laws or lynching people for spurious crimes.

Which brings me to the main point of it all, what I took away from this is. Our Black history is mostly post war with limited immigration of Africans (Sailors and Mercs mainly) in previous centuries. It didn't amount to many people, whereas we do have quite a large debt to the orient. East India companies exploring India, China, Hong Kong and Malaysia. The Raj and such, why do we need a black history month when they impacted on us so little, when South Asia and the Far east cast a long shadow on UK history.

Even worse is other countries adopting this, does a black history month make sense in Africa or where the reach of the Black diaspora hardly set foot, if at all. I still say its important for America to remember what they did and not repeat the same mistakes. But for the rest of us maybe its time to broaden that definition on who counts as black.

Non white history month anyone. 

Mathematica 2.

 One of those weeks where I've had to work hard, we had pigeons invade and nest on the top landing and after they've raised a family, brought what seems like family down to watch their youngsters fly off. The resultant bird crap from this means I had a few late lunches, after cleaning it up. 

So we watch NHKworld over lunch. If I'm home early enough, I'll get Ukiyo-e life, a look at a famous wood block print, or if not the main midday news. Today we got back late and we came across a delightful little kids show called Mathematica II. 

In tone its sort of like Playskool in that it has that feel of a classic kids show. In this episode I saw a bunch of kids were asked what was bigger, their new basement or the living room. The result was to measure it out with a baseball bat! Not kidding turned out their new basement was 4 and a half baseball bats across.

There were a few things to compare the size of stuff and there was a rock people skit where some cubes of stone wondered who was the biggest out of the three. 

Sadly I can find nothing but this clip shot on someone's phone. Which is basically opening credits and the like. 

To make up for it here's a link to A Cat's eye View of Japan which is also up on YT. Which I can heartily recommend you watch. 

Delisted

 Here's a weird thing, loaded in today and found out we have two things censored by the goolag Google Stasi. One has  gone behind a google content advisory wall (I'm guessing its the girls of Charmed post for boobie shots.) the other was delisted in its entirety, to vague guideline violations.

Looking through their list I could have gotten delisted for and then at the post I can't really see what I got it punted for. The post is me talking about Dungeon Travellers 2 for PS Vita one of the good RPGs for the system (and probably pricey as fuck now.) This along with Exp. Inc's Demon Gaze and Strangers of Sword Coast series of dungeon crawlers make up the god tier of Vita RPGs.

I'm guessing branding the shopkeeper bear, Ron Trent, in a caption was the straw that broke the donkey's back. We also self censored some bits where we mentioned that you could see some fan service style shots of the girls, once you defeat them in battle. Also glossed over the lolis in this too, It's for the best, poor lambs.

GPX2 Dock for no apparent reason

In other news I've found an old blog of mine that had been integrated under this one. Robots Nunca Vista, robots never seen in Spanish, was a music blog of mine, putting out cool stuff I found on Youtube and the net. I haven't updated in 7 years, as I lost interest, only by clicking around to see what the pendejos at Goolag got me delisted for did I find it again. 

Edit. seems to be a moral panic piece from the Mail on teh pr0n. with no photo's. 

Double Edit. There was a few that goolag emailed me about, that had at the time perfectly normal links but now link to somewhere shady. After some re editing we're good to go. 

Tower Treasures

 This is one of those that I could have sworn I uploaded ages ago, but as I can't remember and its customary for old folk to repeat themselves as they get older... have a new version of this.

This was my first ever Ebay purchase along with Missing Chums its follow up in the UK.

The story brings the two boys seeking approval from their dad as they attempt to solve Hurd Applegates missing jewels and bonds. He blames a pals father, Henry Robinson, who works as a caretaker to Hurd for the theft. But the real culprit is Red Jackley, a career criminal who dies in an accident on the railway. 

There are a few differences between the books. The original Chief Collig, is not their friend and along with Detective Oscar Smuff and Constable Riley prove the short arm of the law in the city of Bayport. 

Rocco, an Italian immigrant, is a lot less stereotypically jumpy and quick to anger in the remake, he also has a shop rather than a fruit stand (stall). Nor does is outwitted by the fake bomb the boys plant under his stand. 

All in all though its a nice origin story in the original and American version. The boys being sixteen, are still in school which you rarely see in the books, and in the original they graduate. The gang is all here too, with Chet Morton, Tony Prito, Allen Biff Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, Phil Cohen and their GF's Iola Morton and Callie Shaw. 

The UK version has a few lines missing here and there as well as Anglicized spelling and removal of US idioms which you don't always get. It's also not our origin story as that goes to The mystery of the Aztec Warrior. 

Read it here and here.