Pool blogging

 We are one of those people, who now live post stuff. Relax it's not going to be tedious, we'll give a few bits of info on our hotel and check out, as quite frankly this sounds like work.

So far the bad, we're in room 444, which if you read last week's post, isn't good. You have a view of one block and a small pool. 

On the plus side, we got good food so far with a decent amount of grub. Though the main parts of our dining area have caught jokeyitis, with a liberal amount of piss poor slogans and rip on the Lady and the Tramp but with humans.

Our hotel manual is a QR code with a good run down of channels and a pitiful amount in English.

Oh and fair props to whoever is doing the music, so far I've heard Westchester lady, and the beat goes on and I come from a land down under. An ace selection if ever I heard it.

888 Number Special

Felt sure that this would be blog post number 888, but it was last Sunday's post instead. 

If you are wondering why I'm going all out on all the eights and such, well, its my lucky number. Ever since I was small, 8 has been my lucky number and 4 my unlucky number. I know its more commoner in Japan and China to have these views but as a westerner 7 should be my lucky number not 8.

I was going to go all out on a big blog post on my deepest lore but, the truth is, I can't be arsed. So I'll just give you a quick way of working out my luck day by day.

I have six dice that I roll, I add up the top faces and then when I get the total amount I then add these number together. This is one half.

I then add the numbers up from the side facing me, and do the same. I then add the two together to give an overall luck. 

Say I roll 21. The number for this days half would be 3. 2+1 this is pontoon or special luck, normally 3 is bad. Looking at the side I work out my number and it comes to 18. 8+1 is nine which is very good luck.

I then add the 3 and 9 together to make 12, 1+2=3 which is bad luck.  So over all I should have a mix of great and poor luck for today. 

I have a few other things involving numbers which of course I'll add. I like, whenever I travel by bus which gives you a proper ticket, to add up all the numbers on it and work out my luck along those lines. Though you don't get a printed ticket on London buses now, if I get one abroad, I work out my luck from there. 

Finally a trick with sudoku. I like, when working out the regular 9x9 grids to put completed numbers on the corners  and a x between the top row so the last number multiplies the overall result.

Example. This is how a completed grid looks when I'm done with it. 

12        x 9     78

34                 56

I then add up the numbers 

12

34

56

78

-----

180

-----

x9 this is the number to multiply it with. So 9x180...

Leaving you with 1620 as your result. I'm no mathematician but wouldn't mind knowing what is the actual highest and lowest amounts you can actually get. I figure the lowest would be having 1 as a multiplier and 23 45 67 89 as your corner amounts, I would love to see if this is an actual thing or just more junk. 

Jungle Pyramids

Or as I like to call this, a wild gold chase. The boys have been tasked to find some gold bars, stolen from the Wakefield Mint in an audacious heist. The guards hypnotized and a trail that leads out to Switzerland and then on to Mexico before heading home to Bayport.

The Jungle Pyramid itself is a place called Palango down near Chichen Itza in the Yucatan ( and always humorously corrupted to It's a chicken, by me), which serves as a base for an American archaeology group and prey for a looter called Rumble Murphy and his pilot, who they manage to catch in the act. 

It's not a bad one and introduces some Scythian gold that was stolen too along with the Mints ingots. In fact this is what gets the boys to Switzerland and when that pans out, to Mexico, hunting a mysterious Mr Zemog.

Its an OK book and won't reveal why I call this a wild gold chase. Incidentally, copy of the text in the Weebly archive seems to be the UK edition which of course I already have, so whatever differences in text (if any) are not going to be shown for obvious reasons. 

You can read both here and here and as there's no difference between them, the choice is yours.  

Cats and kittens

Been reading in the Mail about a bunch of sickos making videos about torturing cats, and no you won't get any links to this. It wasn't the first I heard about it, it was a bit on BBC Breakfast, that and for some reason the remote wouldn't shut off*the TV, so for about a minute we had to watch someone go on about watching this stuff and me flicking the button like a mad man.

You may not know it from my header here, but, I've owned cats most of my life. This has been the longest without one around and can't contemplate harming one hair on their head let alone watching someone do this. Of course its China doing this and nuking West Taiwan from orbit would improve the whole world. 

The article in the Mail of course is a rambling piece of trash, as its not the paper it was, drawing in bits from all sorts of animal abuse cases, and even saying it was being distributed on the normie web. I can guarantee its Telegram and darkweb with maybe a few edgelords putting it up. It goes on in weasel words how the think of the children bill will prevent this happening, with no awareness that most stuff like this isn't on the regular web. 

Personally, I would love to see a like for like punishment for those taking part. You kill an animal for fun we kill you for sport, same methods, no compromises. 

* Can only relate the horror of this when we cleared out my aunties place and watching her TV found that the batteries in the remote had died just as Mrs Browns Boys had come on. After five grim, laugh free minutes, we switched it off from the wall.

Wanna watch?

 We have a smartwatch now. Well found a smartwatch, its not the best and leaves something to be desired but can now trigger the camera on my phone remotely like some kind of pervert, which is a bonus of sorts.

It has a companion app which has the worst watch face collection in existence and wondered what would it be like if I was going to do it. Looking into it, it seems you can use a Raspberry pi as a watch for anyone techy enough to fiddle around and solder stuff. 

I always thought there would be a market place or at least an archive up on archive.org for all the watch-faces people made over the years, but I was wrong and its of course a fucking subscription.  

So its got me thinking, what would my perfect smartwatch be. Let's cut to the chase here and say that what it needs to be is generic and repairable. Its got to have a USB c charger interface because I don't trust those magnet chargers, make it a wireless charger. Maybe an e Ink display so it can be permanently on and I won't have to push the button to display the time.  I wouldn't mind some sort of phone integration through android itself rather than an app, but if we're going the app route then open source all the way. Oh and decent battery life.

I'd like it to disable several things in settings menu, such as most of the fitness / period tracking which do not appeal or are usable by me. I'd also like it to load 3rd party watch faces from archive.org if it ever gets them, in a regular open format. I'd also like full integration with OpenCamera or at least your system camera and have volume control for the shutter.

Lastly I'd like to call someone like in the old Dick Tracy cartoons. Though that is one thing I think you can already do.

EDIT.

Poking more with the camera controls its just shutter and the usual switch of front / back facing camera angles. You can't switch from video to camera settings and you can't zoom in via watch or app. I'd love to have something that could be used as a remote camera set up but for various reasons probably illegal that it won't do that. Or disable shutter sound. 

You got a loicense for that grot?

 So you all know what I'm going to talk about, and I'm pretty sure the puritans at Google are going to put this behind a 18+ filter, so here goes.

The week before, the UK finally put up its pr0n block under the pretence of think of the children and predictably it's broken everything internet related.Reddit, Wikipedia, Spotify and Twitter (still not calling it X) has been affected and a few mainstream porn sites have caved and added it. You can find out more why this is a monumentally stupid law here.

Xhamster for one and I'll tell you a hack around for this later. The only place I've been asked to clarify I'm an old git is Bluesky which needed face verification, but apart from that everywhere else has been trouble free. Oh yeah and that includes the pron. 

Laughing pub bore Nigel Farage has come out on the side of repealing it in a rare W for him and a Labour MP Peter Fyle has called him a Jimmy Savile nonce apologist for opposing it on authoritarian grounds.

Lets face it, its not about blocking porn, it's about neutering the web, and turning it into a western version of the great firewall of China. X rated stuff is an easy wedge for governments and  payment providers to crack down on the behalf of Christshaggers and Radfems. Just look at the ongoing Mastercard clusterfuck on steam and the Tea app controversy which held a lot of private data in an unsecure area was doxxed and leaked to 4chan. 

This is why I won't add my face / payment option to any porn site, it can and will be leaked, for those with long memories the whole Ashley Madison farce comes to mind. Which is exactly why I won't do it.

Oh and some advice for those who are looking at paying for VPN's and stuff, get Brave browser instead, not only do they block ads but their incognito mode uses TOR, which means you can still look at smut from the major sites without putting in info. 

Edit. Apparently even NVIDIA Shaders are not immune to this. 

Skull mountain

 I really thought I was done buying Hardy boys books from eBay, turns out I was wrong. This is the last of the originals that was incompetently scanned from an old book and as my guessing game is off ordered an original version of The Secret Of Skull Mountain. Apart from the scan being terrible it also missed out a few things such as a graphic box when the boys go to the harbourside. Its not, miss half a chapter bad, as it was in Broken Blade. But its bad enough.

As the books go this is one of those that is halfway between a small edit and a complete rewrite of the original. It's still a story about water shortages and sabotage to a reservoir, but there are a few crucial differences in the original than the remake.

For starters there is just a skeleton crew on the mountain rather than a whole team prospecting. The mineral the crooks are after was Bauxite and is now "Cesium" I guess the old version really liked their tin cans as its used to produce Aluminium. Caesium as it properly should be is an absolute nightmare around water (it explodes in contact) can remember an old Thunderf00t vid where he was exploring alkali metals such as this before he went off the deep end into full on Musk derangement syndrome.

The last final difference in the original is that Chief Collig is not a pal of there's, he's jealous of their success and along with Con Riley are an active thorn in their sides. If you're used to the new versions of them being close, then this is quite the eye opener. Oh and Callie gets a job as a clerk to help the boys out. Which was nice.

 Finally you would never get away with treating human remains like that nowadays, a full archaeological survey would  be carried out on the Indian remains up on the hill and the Hermits pranks would be seen as disrespectful. But its the 1940's so what can you do. 

Anyway you can read the original and the remake here. Seeing as I've given away so little of the plot.

On yer bike son.

 So the good weather has given away to storms and rain for the next few days. We were mercifully spared any thunderstorm action here it did get awfully close over the past few days, enough for me to think about not hanging round at work and think about getting off early. 

The upshot of this was borrowing a Lime Bike I found dumped out (a common occurrence) to speed on to and off site, only to find that this was actually some dudes daily driver, he'd bought! Literally didn't know you could own one and thought they were rental only*.  Most of the time its marshalling them to a main road for pick up or using to get around if I'm pushed for time. 

My storm phobia goes back to being caught in a storm in Greenwich park with my mum as a kid and probably goes into autism stuff as well as I also hate fireworks too. So me driving round on a Ebike so I can avoid a storm is peak me. 

* So it turns out you can't actually buy one and just rent it to get around, in fact this all you can do with this which makes me feel much better. Sorry not sorry. 

Google Lensman

 Been having a good time at the boot sale. Picked up a few things that required Google Lens to look over it. A tape by Mostafa Mdawi aka Mustafa Modawi a Sudanese Keyboardist and Singer. Titled Al Soudaneia Agmal Al Aganie or Al Fanane if you look on the spine, its a few synthy Arab language tracks on tape. I have no way of adding Arabic script so it won't be on Discogs anytime soon but I'll scan the J card and put it up here if anyone wants to translate properly. 

With Google Lens installed I did the Persian singer tape I found a while back and found its Googoosh. Not done the whole tape yet and she has a sort of bob cut in one song that makes her look a bit like an Iranian Victoria Wood. They're mostly ballads and love songs and can remember having an upbeat disco track of hers downloaded from Youtube a while back.

Finally for scanning is a portable modem from 1989, it has a floppy and a parallel port for adding to what ever computer you choose. My guessing Amiga / ST or more likely PC. 

 

Left most in that pic but kept the Manual, it'll be up on Archive.org when I have time. But in the meantime have a better shot courtesy of the Science museum.

Nolina at Lullingstone

 So via the BCSS eNews letter we only learned about this on Tuesday when July's newsletter was emailed out. 

Tom Hart Dyke's World Garden, has the first flowering of Nolina hibernica  A big non spiky relative of Agave, along with Dasylirion (more later) makes up most of the succulent flora of Mexico and the Southern US states.

Donated by Paul Spracklin (who, not mentioned in the article, has his own cactus garden in Essex) it was collected from the mountains of Mexico. And as the hot weekend in September falls when we're away next, is most definitely worthy of a field trip.

Wish I'd have known it was flowering from May as when I visited it was past it's prime, still impressive but would love to see it in all its glory. 

A few things I'd mention before getting to the point, there is a new footpath leading down from Shoreham road via the farm ending up at the Roman Villa. It cuts off the need to go down the increasingly busy road and cut through the woods. The other thing is the main Cafe at county park seems to be gone now. Unless I'm being blind and stupid as usual, your only chance for a cuppa is in Lullingstone castle grounds.

Hogweed along the river.

Anyway it doesn't matter that the Nolina had flowered, there was much better stuff to make up for it. Looking around the church at the tombs and memorials, I notice that the Elizabethan equivalent of the current owner was also a well travelled man. Would like to know more about Sir George Hart Knight, but find no info online. 

Sir George Hart Knight

The main World garden is of course well worth a visit along with the Hot and Spiky greenhouse. Where as I've mentioned several times that the Nolina had flowered it seemed that several things adjacent to it were also in bloom. This includes a Cylindropuntia and Dasylirion berlandieri which is coming into bloom. 

 

As for the Nolina well after talking about it judge for yourself.  

Still impressive though. 

We had a look around the hot and spiky greenhouse before catching the train back home. All in all well worth it. 

Steel coloured Eryngo 

A superbike and some romz.

Hello everyone I've got two topics today. Firstly a new book transcribed The Mystery of the Silver Star and the last bit of holiday road testing an R4 with a 3DS, with a few roms added.  

We'll get the book out the way first as its not that important. Number 84 one of the last Hardy boys books released here, is the Mystery of the Silver Star. A book revolving around the sabotage of a new carbon fibre wonder bike, but of course is much more involved. The guy riding, Keith Holland can be thought as a prototypical Chris Boardman or Victoria Pendleton for those who like to bang on about women in everything. But much more Chris Boardman. His rival Gregg Angelotti can be though of as a bad boy of competitive cycling. A pre smack Lance Armstrong, if you will. 

The story itself isn't bad, its not awful by any stretch and its localization is hit and miss. Words like neighbours get their u's but other words like tires are not properly localized. 

You can of course read both books here and here.

Two ROM talks.

We took the R4 from the bootsale on holiday, we reinstalled CFW on it after the original SD card got borked, and we have to say it performed OK. Playing a fan translation of SaGa 3 and Golden Sun via MGBA, works well alongside playing Pokemon Picross again because the crash wiped out all your progress. 

These however are not the two rom talks, though. First up is Golden Nugget Casino. A perfectly serviceable casino sim, that is basically ruined by being clunky. It's OK for what it does but its not horrible, just dull. 

The last one however, is Rainbow Islands Revolution. A fuck awful incarnation of a beloved platformer, that seems to rely on touch screen antics for everything. You control Bub in a bubble via the touch screen and also draw on the touch screen to create rainbows to block / kill enemies. If that sounds clunky and unwieldy then you'd be absolutely correct. There is no non touch screen controls to make it any less clunky and I can't be bothered to go back and see if they have the proper Somewhere Over The Rainbow theme. 

Part of Taito's disastrous updating of its old IP for DS era. I've heard that Bubble Bobble Revolutions isn't bad apart from its Myxomatosis suffering Bub n Bob boxart. Arkanoid DS is boring as hell and I actually own that on physical (£1.49 paid and still feel cheated) much to my dismay. Can remember an old Rev Flattop review of it saying how dull it was and that only after much work does it offer a secret, much better mode.

In fact it took until Bubble Bobble Neo for Xbox 360 and Wii for it to improve and the Switch version (4 Friends) while taking a lot of directions from mobile games, is still playable, says how much the brand wasn't harmed. by the DS / PSP era games. 

EDIT.

Oh and finally, saw this today and RPG nut as I am, wonder why we don't have a golden age of sail / pirate JRPG. Can think of nothing else but upgrading your ship, treasure maps and dungeons and carving out trading routes for a stylized 16th century earth, all European powers sailing to Zipang and Cathay down to the new world and Caribbean. Now that would be worth playing.  

Ibiza All the rest

 We're back and have been for a few days now. Last week was TV based nonsense and as I hardly had it on, is an easy write up. This is all the rest.

Animals.

Saw quite a lot of lizards that we didn't see the last time we were here. Helps that we were staying on the west coast around San Antonio, which seems to be a stronghold. Not many cats  though there were a few strays and such, what I saw most were dogs. Good bois of all sizes and shapes including  one with dreads and a sad boi with wheels. Most fun was watching this lab scrounge up a football and race around with it with many "Ven aqui's" to get him to behave. 

Venus Ven Aqui 

Quite a lot of crabs on this side too, with your Marmorata crab being the crab of choice clinging to rocks and in pools. Though the other type I saw had nice tortoiseshell brown legs with white knees and a white stripe across its carapace and eyes. Not sure what this was and couldn't get a photo of it, but if I strike it lucky searching, you'll be updated. Oh and before I forget quite a lot of sea bream and of quite massive sizes too, they will come along with you when you swim, been calling them the supreme sea bream team. Which is nice.

Marbled Crab

Area.

We stayed at the Azuline Bergantin hotel.  A really nice place outside of San Antonio, good food and I'd recommend it in a heartbeat. Does get overrun with 18-30 type crowds so if you don't like seeing young women with barely much on around the pool (or young blokes come to think of it if that floats your boat) then I don't know what's wrong with you. 

There are some good beaches and that and its worth walking round past the popular beaches to stop at the ones further along as the small bay is silty opposite where we stayed. Reggae reggae has some rocks and I spent a few days near there relaxing and just watching the wildlife. A patch of sea lavender was quite a draw and I've got an unknown blue butterfly photo of it relaxing there. 

Prices have gone up and its over run with Africans selling knock offs but these do not detract too much, the apples have always been there. But you can still shop around and get stuff as there is a Spar on nearly every corner. San Antonio is worth a trip out to, as its the nearest big town, San Joseph not so much as its a one horse town, stop here for a drink if you are stuck here though, its really chilled and friendly. 

All in all one of my all time great vacations. 

Ibiza part1 the TV

 This will be a nice short post, as apart from a few occasions, I've yet to switch it on. 

True I have seen all the bits, they normally have, Wheel of Fortune, Doraemon etc. But if I'm honest nothing that stands out. It doesn't help that the only English is Channel 5 and it's few variants.

So I'll say the best thing I saw was in the dead of night on Telecinco, where they offer airtime over to amateur bands. Miramusica, 9/6/25, Miguel Gil & Moises Preto a drone piece for what looks like guitar and Ableton live, I only flicked halfway through so I don't know the title. Let's just say la musica es mejor.

Oh and Richard Vaughn is still punting English for the Spanish on TVE2. Somethings never change.

Ibiza 25

 Just a short one here, you all know how I hate mobile for stuff like this. 

We're in Ibiza at the mo so expect a longer less placeholder version of this when we return.

Origami Productions 2

 So you'll be wondering what that big wall of text means at the base of last weeks post is. Well all I can say is that after a long time wrestling with Jim Breens online Kanji Guide I can say that this is sort of what it means. I'm nowhere near fluent (base Kana and a few stray Kanji learnt) so take this with a severe pinch of salt. I'll happily supply a better scan of the back sleeve, but be warned tiny black Kanji printed on what can only be described as the envelope paper you get bills sent to you on are not conducive to good identification.  

2006. The Shibuya Scene. Yoshi Tsushima drawn to the genreless Jam session community, leaves his job at Victor Entertainment and in 2007 joined the session scene group Jamnuts (comprising one of the 30 or so members). They released a smash album,  from which many of them would go on to be solo artists in their own right. From these roots it seems that he had quite a following. 

From such a wide musicianship, drawing on a variety of black music* through to live improv, inevitably generates such strong performances, following this up with a best selling artbook / CD**. These unconventional artists with their rebellious styles, gain support from those artists affiliated to the Fuji rock festival, and were regulars of both these media. 

Indie artists both from inside Japan and those underground artists further afield provided mixes to this making it the smash hit it  is. 

* You can listen to them cover Outkast's Hey Ya here. 

** A cursory search comes up nothing, unless I've mistranslated (and that's a distinct possibility) then its not on line. But here is a small something that you browser will auto translate, here. 

Origami productions comp

 This is what I was hinting at yesterday. A real mystery of dance, and such. 

Origami productions is a Japanese lablel that is for downtempo / lo-fi hip hop beats to study.  From listening to this obscure comp, I feel as half of these would fit a good teen slice of life anime. Most of these sound like the opening titles theme especially the last few tracks, which are hip-hop. 

So what is it.

This is a 13 track compilation of songs from the Origami Productions back catalogue, its housed in an Origami paper sleeve and has some info in Japanese on the back. There is a QR code linking to a Spotify playlist if you really want to listen on the go. The music is mostly downtempo with some classical and lo-fi hip hop thrown in. It really has no title and is split between three different entities, Origami productions, Fragment inc. and Big Turtle (Recording) studios.

Looking on discogs, the latest song released is 2018 (Ovall Winter Lights) but apart from that has no date, title or indeed information of any kind in English. I'll see if I can do a translate from dictionary (not AI) though its been a while. I'll also throw up some scans here if anyone wants a playlist, I'll not share any songs here (let's face it there's a track list and most if not alll will be on Youtube if you want to dl) but I may have to be brave and ask on the forums there how to add this, as its not straight forward. 

 Also found something else while doing an image search for this. Not sure what this is and is also obscure AF. Origami Amarades.

Infinity

 Might do two posts this week, as I have a genuine mystery as well as a new book transcribed. 

The Infinity clue is the 68th book in the series here and the boys are having to face a strange plot involving nuclear power, earthquakes and a bomb threat. Oh and an albino  terrorist thrown in for good measure.

There are no differences  as its part of that era where we got hardback versions with identical texts and that means no localization. 

The boys are visiting Biff Hooper's uncle at Bayridge nuclear powerplant, where he works,  when an earthquake goes off jepordaizing it's security. The area has no history of quakes or of being on a fault line presents the boys with a challenge. 

There are a few nice touches such as a trip to the Smithsonian museum and a mysterious geologist group. Also thrown into the mix is the theft of a cursed diamond owned by missing racehorse magnate, Arthur Rutlidge. A theft of which the Hardys and Chet Morton are accused of. 

A nice touch is Chapel Island a place where 18th century English is still spoken, which the boys visit over the course of the mystery, and could be based on this place.

Anyway you can read them here and here. 

Is Aloe Vera, Vera?

 I'm asking this weird question because, well is what we grow as Aloe Vera, really Aloe Vera. Because I've seen pretty much a variety of leaf styles on what purports to be Aloe Vera.

It all began in the week when someone threw out a perfectly good Aloe along with a totally unsuitable ceramic planter complete with zero drainage holes. Took all the soil off it and repotted it at home, but before I did so I gave it a virtual I.D. in an app I use, and it says its Aloe Vera, when I can tell that the former is true, the latter wasn't. 

To me Aloe Vera is a plant that is medium sized with no maculation on the leaves, a uniform grey colour with either orange or yellow flowers.

Some pics I've seen here has it with saw edged leaves (surely Arborescens) or maculate and green in colour with orange flowers. 

Or if you want a link to what I mean, this is a great example. I have a sneaking suspicion that this could be a juvenile form as the spots in this seem to be on smaller plants. I could well be wrong, though.

I've still drawn a blank on what it my Aloe may be, AI doesn't help and a look through society books and journals will be of some use. I'm pretty sure it's not a Haworthia, though the real acid test will be if it flowers. If its has a typical Aloe flower (large stem, straight, either yellow, orange, pink or red) I know its not a Haworthia (small stem, green and white striped flower). To me it seems too large a plant for it to be a Haworthia. I will add a photo and see it either Google image or Tineye will know. Failing that I'll have to ask at club if any of the old heads will know what it is. 

Super L(oop)

 Remember last week I told you that the SL2 goes from North Woolwich to Walthamstow, well abandon all hope all ye who enter here. I really hope you like sitting in traffic either on the Ilford part or when it goes through South Woodford, Cos that is what you'll be doing mostly. 

 As a service the Superloop has its ups and downs, but our side its mostly speedy and an express service Thamesmead to Bromley. I would say don't do the whole route but come in from somewhere like Gants Hill or Ilford and then pick it up if the DLR or Central line is down.

Walthamstow is still a weird town more foreign than English with a large market and various shops. Saw a big tabby outside a phone shop there and picked up a load of house from Oxfam. Back home saw a smack head in the road begging and dodging traffic at Gants Hill before finding out the Central line is closed.

Good to know if you're Islamic and want to eat ass.

A trip through Valentines park and you can pick up the crossrail from Ilford, with some shenanigans gets you back on the right side of the river.

Ilford home of Hispanic hate Pizza

Oh and thanks to this running in Firefox, we now have pictures for you.
 

Ferry cross the... Thames.

Yesterday we took a trip out to Africa (Brixton) a godforsaken place in south London that is full of pro Palestine nut jobs, Africans, Jesus freaks and the homeless.  A strange day in all, not least is that I saw the most amounts of good boys on the tube and DLR. Including a dead ringer for Pepsi dog and a brown rug Jet. 

Brixton maybe the home of music but for thrift shopping apart from the big Banardos, has nothing, you are better off going to Peckham, which at least has a Crisis the Harrods of Charity Shops.

Coming home we got almost to Woolwich Arsenal DLR before being shunted back to King George V dock as a train had broken down on the station.

George V station is a strange place, its got no gate across only a voluntary Oyster tap out, you could theoretically go from here to Stratford international (not Stratford, the one at the end of the line) for free as that has the same set up. I guess its the North Woolwich equivalent of Woolwich Dockyard station on the trains. For those that know. I wouldn't myself as I had the ticket inspector come along. 

I hadn't been there for about 40 years and as its North Woolwich, it means I can take the ferry to my side of the river. Can remember it being rather bleak and there was an escaped budgie the last time we visited. And it hasn't really changed much, a few local shops before we hit the road to the ferry, and it must be said fuck all else. 

A fun hack, it's serviced by the Superloop express bus network, if you don't fancy taking the DLR or Crossrail (switch at Whitechapel) to Stratford to go to Walthamstow. You can bypass Woolwich and get the Ferry then the SL2 all the way once you're on the other side. 

The ferry is actually quite nice, with a few fellow travellers and some seating arrangements meaning you can look out over the side as you cross into civilization. Once there its just a case of going up Thomas Street and looking in where Omni's once stood. A bastion of alternate lifestyle its now part of the British Hate (Heart) foundations furniture shop. The Cashies played Waiting in vain when I looked in which was probably the highlight of the day. 

The annual stay out of South London Day

 Or the London Marathon as it's known to sane people. Thought I'd be safe and go up town on Saturday but got off a stop early (Westminster) and had to shlep through St James' Park. 

Big mistake.

There is a mini half marathon for the kiddies going on and as a  result the park now resembles a rat maze with various bits shifted around so you can barely find your way out. I did in fact manage to leave the park only for you to be routed round back in the park and out towards Buck house. 

I have on occasion gone down to see them run past the old Coronet cinema / New Wine Church as a kid, but even with your primary school caretaker running, it isn't all that. It doesn't help that these bits weren't really shown on television then and are sort of glossed over now. Remember that bit in the Simpsons where they went to bumtown. This is us but instead of a thinly veiled Disney reference its the Marathon.

There's a hierarchy to racing, which is a long wait before the wheelchair racers come in then the pro runners and finally the unsung. The regular Joes, and the fun runners in costumes and stuff. When they finally go, you shuffle off back home and hope the buses are back up and running before doing it all again next year. 

Hissing Serpents

 Still not feeling especially lucky, mind, but finally, this is now done. 

Do you like ballooning and chess, then this is possibly for you. A Hardy boys mystery that combines both and with the bonus of going to China (Hong Kong as it was then) in the dying final 4th quarter of the book. 

Two mysteries for you here, one being a shady jewellery business scam with a side line in tailored Hong Kong suits, and a life-sized chess piece called the Ruby King, which is not only life-sized (as mentioned) but cursed to boot. 

This is currently owned by an Albert Krassner a local business tycoon along with his Chinese wife (who is never named in the entire book) and is the grand prize in a grand chess tournament. The local champ is Conrad Greene who was being bugged by unscrupulous Chinese gamblers who want to rig the contest so their preferred candidate wins.

Chet not only suffers in this (breaks his arm in a stake out) but also has the unlikely hobby of hot air ballooning as well as learning Cantonese to help with the case. 

Differences are pretty thin here, but do exist, Tony Prito doesn't say mama Mia or cross himself when Joe takes him on a disastrous flight, and there is the usual UK English spellings from the American equivalents. Also my copy has both Joe and Tony on the front cover one of the only times I've seen Tony Prito drawn.

What you see of Hong Kong isn't bad, there are a few Armchair Graves and bone jars (Gam Ta) containing the remains of long dead Chinese ancestors, and Tai Pak floating restaurant (now closed) off Aberdeen harbour gets a look in as the mystery comes to a climax.   

You can read the UK and US versions here. 

Mostly L's

 I know this should be an emperors birthday post, where I give you a present because its my birthday (hint it's not my birthday today, it was earlier in the week), but I've been going through a rough patch. I know people will have it harder than me, but that is neither here or there. It always seems to happen around this time, can't really remember a birthday that wasn't awful. 

This week my mum fell over on the way back from the clinic and have had internet issues over payment (Walrus boat people say it couldn't be taken, bank says otherwise). I know these aren't hardcore problems but every little thing adds up. 

On the other hand you'll have a new book uploaded to enjoy. It'll be Hissing Serpent if nothing else goes wrong. 

Oranges and lemons

Going through a low point and thought a walk would kick us out of the funk. A walk through the east end of London, which may remember from the old nursery rhyme, Oranges and Lemons. Whitechapel from Fenchurch Street to Bow church. As a godless monster even I can appreciate good architecture but even this can't disguise the fact that this isn't my London any more. 

It's the lack of any major place of business that is the real killer here. No major town centre, just a never ending stream of flats, small shops and at Whitechapel a market. Monocultural multiculture. A vague ethnicity that is neither white nor brown, just grey. Whether it be Whitechapel tube sign written in Punjabi or the constant socialism, (saw many a two tier Kier sign) and veiled Zionist (read antisemitic) free Paleswine signs. 

If its any joy, I always rip them or try and peel them off to mis state what they say. Collage of stickers upon stickers. Same goes for any right wing and god stuff the former is rare to see and the latter is more than you'd realize.

We made it to Bromley by Bow which was enough to make me cross over and get the bus to Dalston which is at least a town with a McDonalds but sadly no Smiths (always my yardstick for what a proper town is) and then the train home.

F off Brand

 So, it can't have escaped your notice that Russell Brand, television irritant turned conspiraloon, has been arrested for historic rape charges, and the right have lost their fucking, collective nut. 

It doesn't help that he has done the rapper's conversion of becoming a twunt of the highest order (becoming a Christian) with a high profile river baptism last year. He always was a serial shagger and part of my animosity towards him is the whole Wossy and him phoning up Andrew Sach's and saying they shagged his granddaughter. I like Wossy, I do not like him.  He destroyed Radio 2 breakfast on Saturdays leading towards to it becoming a much more safer, milquetoast show. Graham Norton is not anyones idea of a fun morning in. Though we did get Mark Lamarr for a spell which was glorious.

No, I'll focus on the right here, as a lib. It's all a conspiracy, Lawfare, this is what they do to anti establishment voices, ignoring the fact that he was a serial shagger for a good 20 odd years and such, and this is basically his chickens coming home to roost. Oh and my favourite is muh Grooming Gangs, if he'd been a Muslim, he'd be off Scot free. Ignoring all the evidence of a life led pursuing pussy at every occasion. Like I say there is no smoke without fire.

See also Marine boy LePeen. It's not them having an agenda against the far right, she got caught with her hand in the till. Stop making excuses for criminals.

I don't like it

There is a few things more wrong than an antipron  defender. Be it Godshagger or Feminazi they trot out the same old tropes. That watching regular pron leads to the weirder and more degenerate stuff or turns you or your kids into a misogynist. Stuff like Adolescence on Netflix  doesn't help either as it always lays the blame at boys rather than take a general approach.

I don't know why but they always come out with the 2pin stuff  as the absolute end point of it all forgetting that the only people seeking this out will be the curious and the actual bent ref themselves. Most just want them strung up from the nearest lamppost. 

Its always this or violent pron, where they seem to think a  Max Hardcore film is normal for every single porno, if no one is getting slapped or choked out then it can't be real smut. Whereas I, a man of culture, just want a ban of ridiculous skin art. No I don't want to see someone who looks like the tattooed lady from the circus getting shagged, 30 years ago this was fetish only, lets make it that way again. 

 Case in point, I picked up some unlabelled VHS tapes from a boot-sale, a free pick up. Turns out its BDSM stuff, a genre that creeps me the fuck out at the best of times. I have no intention to watch some woman get degraded and FFWD to the end to see if any normal stuff comes on after it's over (Don't laugh I have Caroline Lucas and Nigel Farage's inauguration into the EU from the end of Trans stuff). In fact the the best thing I've gotten from this is a screen grab of a title card (British Pain if anyone wants it) which is exploitable and thanks to Americans online relatable.

Most of the other stuff I've seen don't really do much, they'll either gross you out or leave you cold. Oh and if its gay stuff and your straight it definitely won't do anything at all.  

 

Werewolf

Night of the Werewolf, was the first of the new era of Hardy Boys digest stories continuing on from the classic 56 stories in the UK (58 in the states as they include Hidden Harbour mystery and House on the Cliff). 

Mostly we got these as an Angus & Robertson hard back edition with the unrevised US text rather than a fully localized UK English version as before.  Which is exactly the edition I have.

The story is about a glowing werewolf appearing at a diner where the boys are dining and evolves from there as it involves a young man called John Tabor and his father, Karel. Karel is an architect, working on a skyscraper project in New York but also has a home in the Adirondacks and a project there called the Eagles Nest.

His son John is the focus, after spending time in a sanitarium out at Pine Creek for a while and the wolf attacks escalate when he came out. He is a distant descendant of a noted European werewolf of legend and this is what the boys have to deal with. 

Chet Morton's hobby this time is building a birch bark canoe and has a love interest in John's chubby sister Alena. He seems to be paired up with larger ladies maybe due to his size, but secretly I'm sure that's his fetish. 

Anyway as the first Angus & Robertson hardback edition both UK and US editions are identical.

You can read them here UK and here US.  

Boot-sale update

 For some reason this week we found 2 R4 flashcards thrown out at the boot sale this time. At the same time my New 3DS has given up the ghost as the CFW I added has seemingly failed. 

Will try and see if it can be resurrected but knowing my skills and that everything I touch seems to fall to pieces, I don't hold out much hope. 

Anyway I have enough bits to pair up 2 R4 cards and 2 SD card to USB stick readers, and more importantly my DSi is still operational (seriously its still got juice and I haven't powered it on in months) means I can add firmware and test these two guys out.   

EDIT. New 3DS is back up and running with updated CFW and a new SD card in it. I guess the old one gave up the ghost which is what caused the failure. Only one R4 works but what is there does a job. 

New video

 Not much to add this week, that we have a new VCR. It's a Hitachi with all the bells and whistles from the latter end of the 1990's. Think videoplus and NTSC playback, which is nice.

In related news some boring tape of mid 80's home movies has turned out to be quite the gold mine as when the shots of Devon cut we have a bit of Price is Right and the show Hokey Cokey which is clearly the inspiration for Don't You Start.

 

Edit further into that tape we have a nice episode of BBC Watch, an old schools program with puppetry from the Trumpton people.

Marty Baines is my spirit animal.

 Or why Unforgotten gets autism sort of right. Spoilers ahead for the current season of Unforgotten, if you're watching along, be warned. 

So Unforgotten finished last Monday. A deeply unsatisfying end where the lecturer's daughter killed off her dad because he was a *wifebeater, the gaylord illegal stayed and the Irish bird resigned. Incidentally there is no way in the world the ungrateful SJW kids in her class would have accepted her apology IRL, I know how the left operate, and she would be persona non grata online and a pariah off, look at Graham Lineham and his stance on trans issues for massive bridge burning, psychopathic left wing rage. 

No what I'm really going to say here is that Marty Baines played by Maximilian Fairley is my quintessential good portrayal of Autism, I believe he, like me is a fellow Autist, Checks, yes he is and it's  a hell of a good debut, too. If he doesn't win awards for this I'll be sad.

We see him part of a right leaning Incel forum and  try to deal with social services ,who either don't care of massively overstretched. He gradually loses the plot, not helped by fact he has to care for his mum (Betty from Some Mothers do have 'em). Most shows seem to see us as savants or non verbal, so to see us as we truly are, broken, barely functional but still human. It's a rarity. I know how much I hate chipper sods like the guy from Big Bang theory. Or quirky, childlike personalities as in some movies. Here is someone who speaks for me.

He has unconventional ways, likes to break and enter, is scruffy and is very much isolated. He also has a love of planes and right wing politics. Including believing in absolute bollocks such as the WEF, and other conspiraloon theories. But I've never seen someone approach autism like this. The total no future, no guts no girl, no glory that this disability is. Also the awkwardness of it all, the amount of times I've screwed up in life is unreal, thanks to not being able to read a person. In the end to retreat and family are often your only friends. 

In the end, with his mum in hospital (wouldn't this be Bucklands as its set in Deal / Dover I had an aunty live and work for Bucklands.) and there is the brief carrot of some help on the horizon, social workers and perhaps a way off the pills he's prescribed. 

* I've never actually seen a show where its the woman who's the violent one for once or a mix of the two like my old neighbours were. Especially if alcohol is a major player in the relationship.  Kicking and yelling and beating lumps out of each other. I tell a lie Father Ted for the last one and they put on a front where Ted shows up and resume when he's out of shot. 

A Den of Demons

 So we're up to book 79 and The Demon's Den is quite a nice little read for you. And yes its going to get a little strange, as it covers an Apocalypse cult (red herring this) Paul Bunyan and Genetic Engineering. 

Or as someone who's clearly not read past the first few chapters in this says, 

"Pretty weird. Over the top. You know who doesn't need to be in a Hardy Boys book? Satan."

The doomsday cult in this gets the blame for the kidnapping of an athlete's son, the boys travel to Canada on the advice of their dad to see if someone was carrying a genetically modified virus from a secret group and find that its actually a programme to breed a race of super-athletes instead. 

This came out in 1984 and 40 years on with all the advances in genetics made,  (cough CRISPR and Genetic Engineering) we're still no nearer of doing what the guys are supposed to do in this. It's not completely whacked out (the Original Disappearing Floor is still the one to beat for this) but it's still not the best for science. Oh and there is no Satan in this, its actually Paul Bunyan's camp in Canada, named by the cult, instead. 

Anyway its a late era book, so no changes in between versions.  Choose either UK or US original.

A boring update.

This seems to have fixed all the posts that have been wrecked by it switching to HTML View. I know it isn't much, but I pride myself on having posts that at least have proper paragraphs and basic grammar.

In an unrelated note, I've been fact checked on X, a post on what is clearly Plumstead high street got a sure (OP had it as Lewisham). Now you're probably not local but it's just plain misinformation, to say a vid is from one area when to a local whose lived here all their life, it plainly isn't is taking the piss.  

Bus route.

We never got a direct bus route from Thamesmead to Eltham & I don't know why its ever been attempted, either? So of course in spare moments, I've been thinking how the route would actually work out as well. 

Those with long memories and lived in the area will remember the old 272 route which went to Thamesmead and was superseded by the 472 route. I think it would go something like this. 

You would have to start off at Morrisons / the Local pool in Thamesmead and would either have to follow its own route and maybe go along Alsike Road to reach Abbey wood or just take most of the 177 route through Abbey Wood. I'm pretty sure this would need a stop at Abbey Wood Station and from then on you would either cut along McCleod Road or my guess go up Knee Hill and cut down Bostall Hill. 

I don't want it to serve Plumstead High Street, so we'll have it cut up Wickham Lane and pretty much follow the 96 route up to Welling where we'll chuck a right, along Bellegrove Road.  We can then turn at Welling Station and follow the 51 Route* along the back roads before coming out at the Common. From then on its right all the way down Burrage Road to Woolwich and then round the corner to Tescos.

Our final leg is up the hill to the QE Hospital before cutting back to Well Hall and splitting left down and ending up at Eltham Bus Station. 

 Edit. * Been thinking a bit more about this you could have it double back along Wickham St. and either head towards Falconwood or Blackfen and come in to Eltham that way cutting out Woolwich altogether, true you'd miss out on the QE but you'll gain a few more stops and towns along the way.  

Snake Year

Went up  town yesterday for Chinese New Year. Always go every year. No fan of fireworks or noise but with the bustle there and drums it's OK. 

Managed to win my money back on slots but got Jewed out of 50p by the machine so all I got back was a fiver, and had a meltdown in Sounds of The Universe. A mix of Caffeine and various things, not good. But managed to hold it together enough to get out, shame really as they were playing classic dub reggae. 

Finally have been taking a look at old posts I've done and revising them so that they now have proper paragraphs and shit. I'll leave you with a nice shot of the dragon lion.

Outlaws Silver

I'm seriously going to look into a Wordpress incarnation of this site, as blogger has become unusable over the past few months. Stuff that has proper paragraphs just get lumped into one and there is the ever present Google censorship to contend with. Doing a feminish got ratioed before they found out it wasn't that bad. Anyway. The Outlaws Silver. The 65th Hardy boys book here and its basically a trip out to the pine woods of New Jersey for the brothers, but also Chet Morton, Biff Hooper and Tony Prito. The official reason they're out there is that Frank manages to get reverse pickpocketed a little Jersey Devil figure that leads them out looking for redcoat pirate treasure. 

The other reason is that a man, convicted of a crime he didn't commit comes into his inheritance along with a pardon for what he didn't do. Of course our boys track him down and the treasure but not without some trouble. It seems that he's a doctor in those parts now, and the people round there are fond of him and protect him. Wiki has a good resume of what a Piney is here,  but for the ignorant its a local name for a Pine Barrens resident.

Because the texts from 57 to at least the late 70's are the same there are no differences, between the two stories regardless of region. But , for the sake of completeness, both UK and US texts can be found here, and here.  

Edit, seems I was  using HTML view for the past two months. Oh and really wanted to talk about the recent sentencing of Axel Rudakubanana, but realized that this wouldn't get me censured, and that I had forgotten all about it until looking at the post list. 

Gang!

Our area's been in the news, no thanks to some kid getting killed on a bus. The thing is, living round here I've never seen it so bad. I wrote a piece ages ago about how if Stephen Lawrence was alive now, he would face more problems from gangs and Africans than the far right, which seems to have collapsed here, and got an angry comment saying how. Well this is how. I'll reiterate this for you, the only other reason it made news here apart from being an abhorrent racist attack is that it someone stabbed and killed wasn't an everyday thing. And no I know Ste Lawrence wasn't the only one killed. But it wasn't 20 knife attacks a year then, there wasn't a large west African community here in the 90's (Lewisham, Brixton or Peckham was much more likely, but still more West Indian than West African,) or people wanting to run with gangs and the live and die by the sword mentality they bring. 

We had a large Indian and Pakistani community that was no trouble at all. We finally kicked out the BNP some time in the late 90's and West Africa moved in. The bingo hall became a church as did the Coronet Cinema in Woolwich (not far from where this attack took place, fact fans.) And it seems that we lost our identity along with our security. I have no solutions to these problems and if you are going to blame Islam because of the mosque I'll say it again for those at the back, we've had Muslims here for ages and have had no problems, same with the Sikhs at the gurdwara at the back of what was Gateway (now a big building project). Its Christians and fucked up gang mentality that is the cause of the problems. Maybe an eye for an eye really does make everyone blind. It certainly won't change whilst Khan is in charge.

Frontiers

One of the joys of the Xbonio system is finding that stuff your old PC wasn't powerful for is now doable. And that is Elite: Dangerous. Did my first mining run today thanks to working out where the limpet drones are held. Advanced maintenance on stardocks, if you want 'em, they're about 100 CR each. And with fuel scoop and a basic refinery was able to harvest some silver and praseodymium Pro tip: get a better refinery set up. Otherwise you'll be seeing resources unallocated a lot, meaning you'll have to empty it, manually. 

I know there are guides out there which'll have you mining platinum and stuff, but its also fun just to rock up to a place with a hold full of limpets and see what you can blast out. Maybe take out a few pirates for combat practice, but they'll leave you alone if you holding nowt. Which leads me to this thought. 

Programmer Dave Lowe's music disks and programs that he worked on are being digitised on Archive.org which includes Frontier the predecessor of Elite: Dangerous. It struck me, looking at this how a 3DS port of this would be the ultimate version of this. 

Of course it would have touch screen inputs for the space station parts and revised combat so you don't have to do autopilot chicken with ships just to get a few hits in. But, as the New 3ds has dual analogue sticks you could use this for pitch and yaw along with shoulder buttons for thrusters. I know they used FFWD style controls to skip time. A predecessor of the Frame Shift Device in Dangerous, but the 3DS has enough buttons to make it halfway between Frontier and Dangerous. 

Finally, the only reason this is on 3DS is because you can view it in 3d thanks to the slider. I never put it on myself, but I can imagine this being quite cool. I'm pretty sure that due the 3DS being a weak follow up to the DS and coming at an awkward time in the industry, coupled with the fact that Frontier Developments still are a smallish company, that it was never considered. But I wouldn't mind seeing this as homebrew, nonetheless.

Edit. Now running a Cobra MKIII, decentish hold, and managed to find a place to mine Palladium like in the tutorial. Go for dinner, find out I'm being targeted by pirates and get killed. Respawn in Alpha somewhere and now have a barebones ship and no docking. But finally manage to land manually. Life can be a bitch sometimes.

XBOX Live! and Direct.

We now have an Xbox one and a new PC. Though if honest we've had the XBOX base unit for ages. We were looking for something on Begay (eBay) and saw a listing for a cheap Xbox One PSU. Coupled with Argos doing cheap wired pads and we now have a working XBOX One unit. 

If we're honest though it feels a lot like Windows XP era computing, everything that can run from disk needs a massive update to play and that eats into the finite amount of space on disk. Just grateful it runs stuff from disk still. 

 The computer I have from 2016 has finally succumbed to its many cuts. We lost trackpad support a year in, CDROM support a good few years later, along with patchy Wifi despite me being right next to the router. The final straw is losing all audio support. So we're now £550 poorer but now am back to a desktop. 

A lot has changed in the PC market since them, it seems I've got less for my cash. Everything is running from SSD now at either 256 or 512 GB. Where I had a 2tb rust spinner on the old set up. Memory seems to be set at 8gb with few going over into 16GB. I know processors are faster now but Windows 11 feels like a retard version of MacOS. No I don't want copilot or to set up a Windows Hello key. I certainly don't want bastard Cortana or half my tool bar to just be a weather app that when clicked on displays local news. I have a phone that does that, and better. 

Finally there doesn't seem to be much CFW / hacking activity going on with the XBonio or one. The Original XBOX was the goat for this and with some soldering knowledge you could do 360. Personally I'd love to decouple this from the M$ eco system. Let it run a version of Firefox instead of Edge. Let it get Foobar2000 instead of windows Media player. And most of all from the XP era let it get no CD cracks, so you can install it from disk to HD to run it.