Shattered Helmets

 What happens if you mix lost media, a Greek exchange student and some dangerous criminals. You get the Shattered Helmet.

The main meat of this story is the search for an old Mycenaean Helmet used in a silent movie, The Persian Glory, and the Hardys and Chet Morton taking a course on film making at a community college and the arrival of a pen pal from Greece, Evangelos Papandropolous. Fenton has his own case trying to put away a crook by the name of Filbert Francisco "Twister" Gerrold.  These cases of course, intersect. Add into the mix a campy and arrogant fellow student Leon Saffel and you have what amounts to a pretty decent adventure. 

The nature of old nitrate film stock is of course explained (it's basically a fire hazard) and the search for the silent movie, the helm was used in of course has parallels to modern lost media searches for songs used such as Geronimo or the most mysterious song on the internet. 

Finally as they have a Greek pen-pal, their search ends up on the Greek mainland with a further trip to Corfu, which is known as the childhood home of Gerald Durrell. We also went there for a holiday some time the the late 90's. You want a groan from us tell us how we walked miles to reach Paleokastritsa after going once on a coach trip. We also had to take a trip back on a small boat, like the one the Hardy's used.

Differences.

Not many and its mostly spelling. One thing not changed or picked up on is Rabbitbrush, which is a shrub in the Asteraceae family. Like a bushy version of Senecio or some of the New Zealand Daisy bushes.

You can read both the US and UK version here.

Racist plants.

 This article turned up in the paper on Wednesday, via the Beeb's Gardeners World magazine. Its a pretty poor version of the one as it gives six plants that are supposedly racist. Mostly that they were found by people who at one time owned slaves. 

That's it, the only people with the funds to explore in the nineteenth century, were also the ones bringing back plants to the UK and Europe. Stuff like Camellias and Wisteria, which are the epitome of suburban gardens round here. 

The other thing is things called Hottentot. Which is supposedly a racist name for a certain race of San Bushman. So it's not things like the actual Hottentot Fig Carpobrotus Edulis, an invasive succulent naturalized in many areas around the world, but something not actually flagged up. The Jade Necklace plant which I never knew as anything but Crassula Jade Necklace. Crassula Rupestris X Marneriana to give its proper Latin binomial.

They also don't mention Mother In Laws Tongue now sadly retconned to Snake Plant or Mother In Laws Cushion (Kroenleinia Grusonii) which we know now to be a weird Ferocactus / Echinocactus hybrid. Which is weird, but understandable, as it comes under sexism / Les Dawson jokes.

Free Mobile Games (non Gacha)

Hah loser.

 This isn't some scam post, or telling you how to get free games. It's more like ripping the ass out of them.

I play freeware games on mobile. Jelly Quest, Merge Hexa and an actual rarity, an ad free Solitaire game.

Motorola actually gives you some optional software when it has system updates and almost always its bastard awful. 

ADS

First of all apart from rare games, nothing is ad free. It may have some sort of banner ad and an unskippable ad for more awful games or crypto or dating, but at its worst it'll have multiple ads. I got rid of an old mainstay for putting unskippable audio ads in a level when I have the sound off. Also I've seen plenty of strange ads, one had weird lesbian shit in this (weird lesbian succubus shit at that) and they all routinely lie to you about the gameplay. 

Point two with the ads they are always with some sort of pseudoscience, brain training or boosting IQ, even though as one user found when hex editing, it routinely cheats. Finally point three, it immediately assumes you are a grandma in this and have never ever played any sort of video game in your entire life. 

99% OF YOU WILL NEVER BEAT THIS.

And its true. You'll delete it long before the game ends.

Part 2. Reused assets.

I wonder what amount of these merge clickers, word webs and candy kings, use the same stock assets, I don't know as  I can't program, but it seems that everything uses stock bits and pieces to put games together in Unity or some such. Maybe piracy could be a thing for this and rather than making virus in games, just put out a crack or trainer that gets rid of the ads for good.

Part 3.We lost the arcade.

I can remember about a good ten years ago. that Rev Flat Top aka Stuart Campbell, had a site up reviewing games for iPhone that were ad free. He called it the new arcade. The thing is, it feels like we lost the arcade. Nothing is proper hard, thanks to RNG and cheating, there is no skill in mobile (maybe pathos, but that's nethack and will own you.) everything is super easy and anodyne. No endless mode which I've always wanted for candy crush. No try again loser, and no lives or such. Its all easy. 

Junk Tour and boot sale

This isn't the first junk tour of the year but its the first that I've had based on what I've seen from Twitter of all places. 

I follow some of the Viz writers and watching a trip up to Victoria station, it seems that there is a gachapon place there. With a few banks of capsule vending machines, but I never found the place, we did find a place that sold rubber ducks. So its not all bad. 

The house of Mr Jammy

We did our usual trip along Wilton Road to the shopping place there. The shops didn't have much and we got root beer, which was nice but didn't see the shop cat which I saw before. Picked up a Marimba CD and a few twelves.

Today.

We was late at the bootsale due to the bus being late. So we had to make do looking around the discarded piles Picked up a wet floor sign and managed to buy a back to basics CD in a metal tin. Which was nice. Also stuck with two trash CDs including Migos Trap and Nick Harper for what I wanted (late 80's German house from a bunch that would go on to do much better things).

EDIT. 7/7

So a random trip to Ealing Broadway and we finally find there is a gacha place here. £10 for 5 tokens card only, but it'll net you some premium anime goodness. There is quite a bank of machines to try out and a lot of anime tie ins so if you like your Indonesian basket weaving films this is heaven. 

Got some weird sauna frog and a cat from some kind of cat beat em up thing.

Laws of life.

 This is some nonsense that you can ignore. It may not even be correct at all, but I've been watching creationist stuff, about the universe needing a creator and also about how the universe seems to have some laws on how it works over every discipline of science. Relax I'm not going full retard here and saying that there is a god. Far from it. It's just that I've been thinking about how it could work.

A few things such as Answers in Megadrive putting up a short on Fractals, and saying that there must be a god, because maths. Then looking at the laws of thermodynamics and such, saying that energy cannot be created from nothing. There has to be something. And lastly, all the laws of chemistry and biology. In other words, what if these laws are part of a larger whole. What if that is god.

If the supreme deity is just some great overall superscript that when run creates things with a set of defined rules that allows a universe to run with minimal input. You really wouldn't need man made  religions and stuff, superscript cares little for humanity, its just a byproduct of these instructions. If life progresses, then it could be anything here. There is no salvation, because life is not guaranteed and if it is, is largely down to chance that it makes it to an advanced level. 

There are laws governing how life progresses but whether it progresses to anything resembling intelligence is another matter entirely.  

In other words you have a god, but it cares naught for you. it cannot be worshipped or acknowledge prayers, it cannot save you from yourself. You are alone in this universe. Only You.