Uptown.

A final post for 2025, and we decided to go up town to see if Japan centre were still doing their free Gyoza.  Turns out no, but did get canned coffee instead which was nice. 

Got some cheap CDs in the sale which includes the sublime Oneohtrix point never release on Editions Mego and a double pack with Kevin Saunderson (mixes and remixes) along with a Decius promo which looks like its essentially benders acid. 

Also went to Hamleys for the first time in absolutely ages and there is Harry Potter stuff in the basement so if you want to see a big Lego Hagrid and also some weird zombie witch thing (Wicked, also Lego).

But mostly they had Gundam Gunpla figures, which were cool.

I'll wrap it up by saying there was some chick dressed as a pirate singing out the front and leave you with some photos. 

I wIlL eAt yOuR SoUl

Nice

Year review 3 everything else

 This is more like what I've missed this year and what I've learned. 

Films / Gaming and stuff.

Been working through Elite Dangerous, and its a great game but I've also come to realize this from the XBOX Platform. Its just an unpopular PC wearing a console as a skin suit. This could be Windows XP or even Vista. Hell its the Vista of  home consoles. Anyway back to Elite. It's a nice thing, really good and welcomes a good in depth, hands on of learning the controls, sadly combat is still impossible and no autopilot hack from Frontier to make it bearable. 

Films... Forget it I've seen nothing great this year.

Everything else.

Finally got to see a mantis for the first time in years, thanks to a late night sortie out of the block. Along with the Gecko and a close up view of a Shag on the rocks. This was a great holiday. 

I still don't know what that crab I saw was which is galling and am still kicking myself for not taking the shot of the oil beetle. But this is me always with the regrets and not the wins. I still have to see if that channel of him putting up Kommisar / Inspector Rex subs is still up. 

This year I finally got Renoise. Not as in actually bought, but for some reason it just clicked and am working with it. I'll still use Psycle and such but it seems that as a program that's still being worked on. Its a good replacement. 

EDIT. Lastly and this is definitely not an afterthought, this was the year the Labour party decided to censor the entire internet here with their anti wanking laws. It seems that Brave and its private tor window is the only thing keeping the net bearable now.

Year review pt2

 Since we junked Kiss FM last year I've had nothing really bad to listen to all year. We have Heart on at work which is actually duller. Wallpaper radio, just filler audio and the same bad tracks over and over again.

Worst was finding out Ed Sheeran has a new track out that isn't bejaisus Oirish but Indian inspired instead. Oh yeah its awful.

The new Xmas number one from Kylie Minogue isn't too bad, not a banger just adequate and if it keeps that celebs for Palestine track off number one (which it did) I'll be grateful. 

Good stuff was hard to find this year. Polygon Window Surfing on Sine Waves got reissued this year with the bonus single  tracks added. Squarepusher Whooski was also rereleased which was total left field. I guess it was released under another name which means that it went over everyone's head back then. Sold pretty poorly if his notes on this are correct.

I'm sure I've forgotten so much more which I liked or at least was worth the money made. 

Final shout out to me for rescuing some water damaged vinyl from the last boot sale of the season. We finally got a version of Promised Land by Joe Smooth and The Night Writers Let The Music Use You.

Year review pt1

 Year review time. The traditional round up of what was good on the telly and music wise that I've seen this year.  We'll start with television. 

A few good things this year. 

Unforgotten giving us the best Autistic character rep in Marty Baines, and despite a weak ending, one of the true must see television spectacles of the year. 

An end to Vera where instead of killing her off, just let her retire with grace and such. I'm never sure which of Ann Cleeves books are based on her and which are Shetland stories but it was nice to see an actual good end for once. Also there's a nice folk song the Magpie used in this. 

Cooper and Fry.

Another northern detective show, this time on Channel 5. A mix of folklore and local era detective work.

Also based on a book that I've never seen.  A nice redemption for Mandip Gill who was in Doctor Who with Jodie Whittaker. She played the new detective Diane Fry down from Leeds and settling in Edendale, Derbyshire. Like I say it's one of those series I'll have to keep an eye out for, but never seemed to be on my radar. 

Miranda awards.

This goes to Watson an incredibly generic and dull medical drama in the vein of House and other shows of its ilk. 

In the style of Lucy Liu, make Doctor Watson a minority (in this case a black dude) and erase any personality he may have. I lasted all of ten minutes and gave up, it was that dull. #

EDIT.

The war between the land and sea or whatever they're calling it. A five part Sunday night snoozefest. It's by Russell T Davies so be grateful it didn't turn out like this. You wish that it ended with every Aqua homo killed off with the virus, but it didn't. It was preachy anti climate nonsense, with a side of boring. 

Pentagon Spies

Rather appropriate seeing as the heavily redacted Epstein files have been released we get a story all about shenanigans at the Pentagon in Washington.  

Or is it about someone stealing weathervanes in Amish country in Pennsylvania. Because this is what this story is mainly about. The boys are tasked with trying to protect a weathervane out in the Pennsylvania Deutsch country from a gang of thieves. They of course fail and follow it all the way to Chesapeake Crossing out in the bay. Of course there is an intelligence option their dad is following, someone stealing Pentagon secrets and a missing man who is supposedly the spy.  Could the two cases be linked.

As this is a later edition there are no changes to the script between the US and UK editions, even though for some places this would actually be welcome (tag sale = garage sale for one), and I'm not sure if this was in a hardback rather than a paperback which most of the books were. 

You can pick what edition you want here or here. 

VHS Mess: The Dying of the Light

 Get all thoughts of Nicolas Cage scenery chewing out of your mind its not that Dying of the Light. Though given the extreme afterlife VHS had I wouldn't put it past someone taping this of Sky or some sort.

No the one you want is a bio pic based on the life of aid worker and teacher Sean Devereaux. And a caveat here I've not seen the whole film as some cunt taped the Princess Di confessional Panorama episode with Martin Bashir, over the beginning so what you have left is the last hour and twenty minutes of this before the tape runs out. 

I'd dismissed this as another worthy programme put out by the BBC (though as there are ad breaks in this Channel 4 is my go to for actually airing this) and wanted to zip through this  as quick as possible. Then the killing starts and my interest piqued settled down to watch through  the rest.

It took to the end credits (cut off after main names) to get a head start on who starred in this and what this was called. 

It follows Sean's career from a Liberia still under the cosh of Charles Taylor. To his ultimate demise through a lone gunman in Kismayo Somalia. There is an Australian guy (Todd Boyce) in this and what I take to be his girlfriend (Maggie O'Neill from Gorilla's in the Mist) also part of the aid team.

It also couldn't be made today. It's not racist but at the same time nearly every African on screen is shown to be either corrupt or just plain murderous. Talking to child soldiers, having their grain stolen at checkpoints and using the Bible for justify murdering whole swathes of people. He's repeatedly shown to be roughed up and thrown in jail for the crime of wanting to give one young lad a chance of a better life not being part of Taylor's child soldier corps. 

This is cut with bits of him at home with his parents in Yateley, Hampshire and later on writing out an elegy in Kenya.  

All in all its a good film and was Bafta nominated for an award in 1995. As for home media the page at IMDB alludes to a French dub of this with its cover, but so far I've yet to see any home release of this emerge so I'm lucky to cap what I can. Of course I'll put it up on archive.org once I've done capping the tape but this is a keeper. Shame someone put that Diana interview over the top of it. 

Romford

 A trip out to Romford for buying presents both for myself and for others, and a place I haven't been to in ages. I've never really done well there when it comes to junk hunting and this is no exception. Took my mum and dad along via Crossrail, and I got new slippers and the latest Reacher novel for xmas. 

Managed to pick up a top for mum and the latest Richard Osman novel for Dad. Which means my Xmas shopping is almost done.

I also got what must be the worst CD imaginable, some sort of holiday camp mascot sing along.

Reminding me a bit of Kanye West by the artwork, the tracks themselves are pure pub singer kiddy song fare, with Dream Squirrel being a kind of homage to Seasons in the Sun by Terry Nation  Jacks. Kinda wish Darryl Bullock was still alive from Worlds Worst Records. I'm sure he'd have lapped this up, it's that awful. 

On the other hand I managed to get the Meaning of Love / Oberkorn from Depeche Mode which I'd been after for ages as the only one I've seen was sleeve only at a bootsale. 

Finally a round up of nutters. Including a pensioner dressed as an elf which I'm sure was from the Santa's Grotto. A tramp necking a bottle of wine direct from a Sainsbury's bag, assorted God botherers and the Sally Army bloke who looked like the NAFO Dog in uniform.

The cream of the crop was some nutty bird on the train, who reckoned a woman was following her... in a nappy. The finisher, she had HIV. The best thing was, is that she was entirely alone. No one was following her, at all. 

Lucifer from Cinderella

EDIT. I also found this Disney Weedle. Which turns out to be a plush of Lucifer from Cinderella.  No me neither. 

Crayford

 When I'm feeling down and want a pick me up, we're blessed with an abundance of nature to lift my robot soul .

Had a feeling that today would be special and took my little scope out to look across the riverbank at Crayford. If you are lucky you can see seals on the mudflats but its not often. So more often or not you are looking out for sea birds and waders along with the usual ducks. 

Today was no exception, I didn't see any, but what I did see wasn't that bad either. A lot of ducks and small waders. A few Mallards (expected) along with Teal and Widgeon which I've seen before and couldn't place. What did surprise me and I saw them before in the summer, was a load of Lapwings. I know they've been having a hard time and thought they would migrate, but there were loads down by the river along with the Widgeon and a few waders I couldn't place (possibly Dunlin / Redshank).

If you want to follow in my footsteps, there are a few buses to get you to Erith, 99, 180 and 269 from my end but TFL will probably set you correct. Parking is easy, as Morrisons have a huge car park, just do a big loop and then either go inside for shopping or head home. Sadly there's no cafe anymore which was a highlight of the walk.

Four headed dragons

 Another book transcribed. This time its the intriguingly titled Four Headed Dragon

The boys have to deal with a mysterious mansion next door to Chet Morton's farmstead, where Chet himself, found a dazed and injured Sam Radley wandering. The mansion seems to be the hideout for a gang of crooks and an incoming hurricane forces the boys to shelter there when they rescue a girl out on the bay. There is also a subplot involving Fenton Hardy looking for a wanted criminal who attempted to sabotage the Alaskan oil pipeline. Gee, I wonder if they are connected in any way.

The mansion itself was owned by the Sayer family and is a riff on the Winchester mystery house with its many rooms dedicated to housing the souls of the restless dead. It comprises of a ruined west wing along with an extensive attic and clock tower. It is presided over by a caretaker called Emile Grubb. 

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

Wee willy Hitler

Been watching part one of They Sequenced Hitler's genome on Channel 4. A documentary where they indeed sequenced Hitlers genome from a bloodstain taken from the infamous bunker where Der Fuhrer permanently ventilated his skull back in 1945. 

They indeed got his DNA from a bloodstain on a couch one American GI took home after what was left of his loyal guard burnt his body. 

The real meat is next week's episode where they find that he really did have one ball (the other being in the Albert Hall) but for this week it delves into the psychological side of Adolf.

Ranging from a crap childhood and an indifferent war effort. It seems that he lost himself in Opera and had few friends. Coupled with the fact that he himself had no offspring thanks to being of genetically inferior stock, it seems he would have put himself into his own death camp if he wasn't already leader. A classic case of projection, there. 

One of the most decisive things that stood with me is his entry into extreme politics in the early 20's. We all know how he sided with the National Socialist party but he also could have joined  the Bolsheviks as well. So somewhere  out there, there's a world war 2 that is entirely done on the axis of the west vs communism, rather than what really happened.

The last thing is the most interesting, the latter half of the show was devoted to his psychological make up, he scored in the upper reaches for ADHD and Psychopathic behaviour. And the top percentile for ASD / Autism. So canonically, Hitler is one of us, though with some caveats. Most of us have never wanted to genocide a whole race of people nor invade Poland. It's still miles more interesting than Greta bloody Thunberg, and will make the Autism is my superpower lot shut up, seeing as one of us lead a nation for years.

This is so cool, its like an old PC text adventure title screen.

EDIT.

This is a follow up seeing as I've seen the second half of this, now. No thanks to Sky who decided to unsync the sky box just when we were hoping to see the Kallman syndrome part. Which meant I had to set up the VM Box (my dad pays for SKY, I pay for internet via VM if you're wondering) just to see the final part.  It seems that not only is Hitler's autism score in the top percentile he also was a Bipolar bear and Schizophrenic too, though it seems he was spared any actual schizo behaviour. This means if he really did hear voices, and that couldn't have done half of the things he did do.  

The bipolar thing is interesting too, not only because the doctor he had prescribed him meth basically, and that is apparently the last thing you need when you are Manic.

Oh and if you're wondering he really did have only one ball and possibly a tiny cock. And there doesn't seem to be a proper version of that up on Youtube, either. I find their lack of his other bollock residing in the Albert Hall triggering. 

So in conclusion, when White Supremacists bang on about race and repopulation, Why not take a leaf out of der Fuhrer's book and never have kids.  

Uptown 2 Electric Boogaloo

 A few things brought us back uptown for the second week running. The first being a store of all things, a Nintendo pop-up shop in Westfield, Shepherds Bush. The second is a McFlurry recommendation from my boss. 

First of all I've been to Shepherd's Bush before once or twice, and these big malls have nothing there for me. The shop itself isn't all that so if you want plushies of Toad and some Amibo you'll most certainly be in luck, so long as you have a *ticket to enter, and there was quite a queue to get in. Like I say you ain't missing much. Its opposite the Lego store or just down from WHSmiths (now alas W G Jones) on the other side. Runs to the 16th of Nov, so get in quick if its your bag. 

The other thing isn't that bad, its also limited edition and is part of the McDonalds world range of snacks, its the weird pretzel McFlurry from Malaysia  My boss reckons its the best McFlurry there is and I'd have to say its close, but no cigar. That would be the apple McFlurry from their Minecraft promo back in the summer, but I will say that the caramel one isn't half bad. Weird but nice.

We finished off with a walk down to Hammersmith and found that they had nerfed their Crisis shop to being a drop shop, which means that they don't do CDs or records much, which is a shame as they normally have a great selection. 

*Only the first week, now its queue only.

uptown

 For the first time in ages, I'm uptown. Stopping off at Holborn and the beauty of getting lost in the back streets. 

The official  reason I'm visiting London proper is to get the "new" Squarepusher album, the unofficial reason is that I haven't visited the west end in absolutely ages, not properly any way.  

Used up the last of my McNopoly promotions in McDonalds and sat out in the square in Soho just off Oxford street. The best of all, walking round looking at all the mom and pop stores like pig and hen or that place near the British Museum with the bulldog statue outside. 

Heading past it all with a few CD's grabbed, saw a massive queue looking in at one of the Korean beauty shops and they had a meet and greet with some K pop idol. Can't remember the shop or who it was (Korea is just Temu Japan to me) but do remember going into Seoul plaza and picking up an Mogu Mogu drink*, before heading home.

*Incidentally this and Jones Soda are some of the best stuff I've had not in a can. Mogu mogu stuff can be had from the bigger corner shops and Japan / Asian supermarkets, Jones Soda never appears and to date have only had it from one shop opposite the commie bookshop on Bloomsbury St. Oh and before I forget there is a normal Oxfam books / record place almost opposite, where I found Christ. 

Mysterious Caravans and Mc Donalds

 Been burning through my McDonald's Monopoly wins and have reached the stage where I'm down to basically chips. I've an apple pie to redeem and some stuff that involves money off that I'll never pay enough to actually use. But chips I can do. So when I do redeem it all they had were "carrot sticks". Getting these for a laugh,  I find that its a small bag of baby carrots that you can get frozen and have had many times. Does anyone sane get these? I mean its you regular frozen baby carrots you can get in a big bag, raw, not cooked. and the worse, having to eat these within two hours of defrosting.

Anyway your scheduled book is the Mysterious Caravan or the Hardys in Morocco, a nice little mystery about them on holiday in Jamaica and them suffering in a storm which turns up a mysterious mask from a shipwreck. A nice sop to diversity is William, a Jamaican guy who likes his roots and culture and is learning Swahili. 

A few lines were changed in this for the UK but not much else. Like I say its not a bad story and whoever wrote it, definitely liked their big words. 

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

Pokemon Clover

 We now have this for MGBA on 3DS. After seeing comments on this about humour on Bluesky, thought it would be fun to run through this and see how it compares to a regular Pokemon game.

And, uh... Yeah this rules. 

Never really been to V/ and my only 4chan visit was to B/ which was like having a migraine, some 10 years back. But, god, I've been exposed to so much meme culture and green  texts over the years on twitter, I feel like I've some veteran by osmosis. 

You start out with getting your pokedex and starter from Professor Stump an old cunt with a pegleg. Choosing from Ejacsam, Grasshole or Arabomb. We of course chose Arabomb, and gradually assembled a team from there. Highlights so far:

Getting Goatse man from trading. Hilarious and of course entirely on point.

The Jews running the whole Pokemart enterprise when of course it should be just jeets. 

Darude Sandstorm playing through my first gym leader badge fight.

Oh and the names. Squirrap and Mennopaws have to be my favourites so far. But seeing as there is a Mount Moot and a nice reference to pool's closed there too, I wonder what else I'm gonna find.

Oh and if you want to know, my character is named Anon.  

A Fool

 Been musing over the line from Spam LS (Psalms) the fool says in his heart that there is no god. It makes me wonder who the fool actually is, here. Because isn't it the height of foolishness to believe in something that has no basis of existence, and continue to believe in its existence in the hope that when you die you will go to the good place and not the bad place. 

Looking on Wiki about the line it seems that the fool is someone who disagrees with god, and therefore can do no right. Maybe so, but I think it a trifle foolish that accepting at ones word of a good afterlife based on one mans sacrifice alone. No matter what you have done in life, blameless or evil. Accept Jesus and you're in, regardless of whether you're an axe murderer or paragon of virtue. 

When it comes to religion I would rather be a fool than a sheep.

 

Program(me) for Destruction

 85th book in the series and I have some serious questions to put to whoever wrote this. 

For those unaware, this mystery revolves around the boys taking a case from an Arthur Stockard, owner of the CompuCar company (a sort of proto Tesla) which has a futuristic Voice activated car which is the target of sabotage. They are gifted a car to test and it eventually turns out that it, and the CompuCar factory is the target of a computer virus attack rendering everything a mess

Maybe I've seen too many Danooct1 videos on classic viruses but I'm pretty sure that the main criminal live coding a virus in his own self contained area of CompuCars car factory, in order to infect some master disks linked to (I'm guessing) the net or more likely a series of bulletin boards is not so efficient.  You would have a virus riddled disk and then infect a PC in order to then infect those disks. Oh and did I say he's keeping both Hardy boys and Arthur under control with a revolver.

Another nice touch is the whole car OS being run from a floppy in the boot. Frank checks it out on their PC and finds the virus which is  pretty risky, I'm guess he's going to reinstall DOS if it all goes tits up. 

Apart from that the main difference is like this post in the title and that we used to spell floppies "discs".

I like that we used to spell a computer program as programme. Its got a nice dual edge to it like a timetable for destruction, whereas the US version is just program.

Anyway you can read both here and here.  

Back home 2 Animal Edition

 So I've been back a week, and this is my obligatory animal post. Quite a lot of beasties for you today as he had a few great, stand out moments. We'll get block stuff out of the way as there was a lot of interesting things in our own back yard.

The block I stayed in bordered onto woodland and after the first week was over, fell in that the emergency stairs are quite literally the closest thing and could harbour some interesting life. This quickly became the late night gecko patrol as there was quite a few to see either running up the walls or over the ceilings of the landings. The biggest of the lot I called El Rey as he was the king of the geckos.

The west coast has a lot more lizards and geckos I seem to find than the east, I wonder if this is their stronghold on the island.  

El Rey The king of the geckos

The last day we didn't see any and found that among the usual Shield bugs and Vestal moths was a ginormous African Mantis. I haven't seen one since I first went to Cyprus over 15 years ago so of course I took film and pictures. 

Look at the size of this lass.

At the beach I didn't see much the first week as the sea was rough and it was a chore just to stand amongst the waves without being knocked down. But it calmed down a lot the second week and aside from overhearing talk about cheese in the sea from a Spanish group (apparently 400 grams is enough to make a good meal) the wildlife returned culminating with a Shag on the cliffs. 

Oh did I say that it was on the cliffs, more like on the rocks a good 4 meters away from where I was swimming along with an Audoin's gull. Decided to keep quiet and watch him sit there for a good 10 minutes before he headed off. Kind of wish I had a waterproof phone to take photos with. 

Finally and I still kick myself for not snapping this, we saw an oil beetle on the beach along with a few cats. They were near two Spanish lads who belatedly noticed it with a cry of Bicho, a good minute or two since I spotted it. Though will console myself with seeing a Swallowtail in Ibiza town for good measure and a Hummingbird Hawk Moth over the Plumbago on the road to the beach. 

I'll leave you with a good man ginger to watch over you and keep you company, before he goes off hunting for lizard. 

A good lad.

 

Back home.

 I know I'm a day late, but to be fair, this is the only day where I've not felt knackered. I'll give you a run down of what the place was like. If you've read anything its a very much a place that has a curated playlist, and a jokey modern style. We didn't have a proper basin in our room and our shower was the most advanced I've seen in a hotel (dual shower heads FTW). I could also do with going back a good 10 years later when the palms and trees have gotten their maximum height so you can see it at its best.

We have various small blocks with long halls, I was in block 4 and looked out over the circle pool, which was the quiet pool. It bought all the little kids around with parents and you could sit out and read without being bothered. They had a large pool for swimming in which was nice and did most of the blogs from to be honest. 

But to be fair the thing that struck me most about this holiday was defeat from victory. Everything I wanted to look at or had an interest in was a broad case of curb your enthusiasm. Case in point, my room was 444, triple bad luck, we had to keep asking our regular black cat for some good luck and to be fair I've seen some good stuff but that only applies to wildlife. Other stuff was definitely not good.

Oh and before you wonder about the TV, I never had it on much. So my abiding memories are dubbed American Pickers, a new Italian version of Kommisar Rex and a central Lechera Asturiana advert that turns a mishap with cream into a something much worse.

Pool blogging2

 So, decided to do this again. This basically a short post about nothing much, a few oh moments with various Huckleberry friends (i.e fucked) I've spotted.

First up is a woman brushing her teeth at the pool with an electric toothbrush. Shades of that Merzbow clip and a case of why.

My second is watching all the beach hawker Africans get off the morning bus and one white woman with a Straight outta Compton shirt. I guess N.W.A. now stands for N199a's with articles.

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 pasta scene 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.

Edit. Pool selector let us down a few times but redeemed themselves with a latin version of Big Fun by Inner City.

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. 

Double Edit. The BEEX forum I visit daily has now gone invite only thanks to this.  Luckily I know my username and password.

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.