Hypothetical Products:1 The PCTV.

 Children's Channel Watch.
Before we begin I'll just redirect you to some more located trailers and gubbins that I've found on Youtube, its some old continuity from the excellent Sid N's Youtube channel, who does a lot of that sort of thing.  In fact check it now, they have bits from Lifestyle TV including the Jokers Wild.

We will now begin with our feature presentation.

This idea all stems from an old Sony Vaio PC and TV combo that I've blogged about before.  Its a weird hybrid of early flat screen TV and desktop computer, shackled to a massively restrictive design that is a bastard to get into and no chance of adding any other OS apart from windows.  Its still a nightmare, the DVD drive takes nothing but CD's and the MS Pro port (for PSP cards) doesn't work.  Its not the oldest of these as Apple did a similar thing for an astronomical sum back in the 90's, grafted to a Sony TV of all things.

Indeed looking in the Argos catalogue today, I noticed that they still make them including this model from Lenovo complete with a strange amount of RAM.


How would I do it, something like this.

Numbers outlined Below.

I'm not going to lie to you, it will look an awful lot like an old CRT TV, that's been grafted to a Desktop PC.

Its not going to win any design awards but will be functional and unlike many of these beasts upgradeable.

Front display is a standard flatscreen monitor complete with on button 1.

Side display holds a Bluray/ DVD/CD combo (2) for all your media needs and there is a multi card reader and USB 3 slots x2 for all your data interface requirements.  

The Top Display holds a sliding panel (4) with effort allows the top and other side to slide off allowing you access to your internals for adding extra ram or bigger HD / Graphics cards and that.

The back display panel holds the important bits such as all of your networking and audio ports (5) more USB slots and some legacy slots (6) a PS2 slot for keyboards and old mice would be nice.  Finally the all important fan and PSU parts (7).

I haven't decided on what PC architecture the motherboard would house yet (them Skylakes look nice) or even decided on an OS (probably Win 10, but scalable back to Win7 or any flavour of Linux you like).  I'm sure it would be an accessible system that could do for years to come.  I do know it should have a decent sound card and WiFi networking alongside the customary Ethernet ports and regular outputs.

8 Legged Horses and lame ducks.

Hello everyone, I've been through a geeks hell this weekend and with precious little to cheer me up. My aunt had to go in for an operation so we were down at Suffolk for 4 days. She was fine but I had to fix up her old PC at the same time which wasn't.  For starters we brought down an old drive of mine thrown out at work different make but same capacity and of correct type.  Once I'd worked out that this needed to be the master and that installing wasn't such a pain its not as if its used every day just as a back up.  I also brought with me Linux Mint XFCE edition as my main OS as I could reinstall XP (which is what it originally came with) later.

For starters it all went smoothly until halfway through installation it decided to give up and abort. Doing some tests I found it was a crap CD rather than my formatted drive and we made an ISO of it re burnt it and took it out for round 2.  It installed OK and with a few moans worked really well, doing the ace thing Linux does and pick up hardware instantly, I think you know where we're going with this. Time for XP we'll have a dual boot set up like what my old PC has.  Download the correct version of Windows XP (32 Bit Home edition) and we'll install that. Except that it doesn't it would rather wipe my disk clean and install Windows like a cunt.  After a few reboots we have XP loaded in some horrible cramped  resolution because it doesn't recognise our flat screen monitor and is resorting to some generic monitor driver and despite trying to install a billion times through display and add hardware we did the decent  thing and set up Mint as a Dual boot.

I don't care if its outdated and being discontinued, we never got anything installed hardware wise so this copy of XP is not going online we will try and add Service Pack 3 next time I'm down as a fun project (i.e an exercise in torture) and update Mint of course.

8 Legged Horses.

We recently switched browsers as Firefox has become increasingly flaky due to accumulated browser add ons (think flashblock rather than bundled toolbar though we did once have Freecorder).  I've heard cool things about Palemoon a fork for Firefox but decided to use Sleipnir  instead. Its billed as having really beautiful text and it really does deliver on this as its awesome. As an added bonus its displaying my blogger page with its proper login and can use extensions from the Chrome store so I can add block and add on stuff.

Finally fans of Polish cartoons might like to see the Studio Miniatur Filmowich Youtube channel for eastern block cartoons they recently added some endearing Babushka doll cartoons (that one links to the fair episode) to their main channel.  You can sub with the link above if you're on Youtube.  I'm hoping that they'll have Hen A Pippa but I'm not holding my breath.

More Old TV discoveries.

I know some of you are waiting for this, but I had a good day yesterday marred by the fact that google wouldn't let us login or update.  So I've prepared a short statement beforehand and copypasted it so you all know the score.


Because Google is being cunty as usual I'm having to pre write this in Notepad
but let me assure you we have made a few major discoveries regarding a few
lost things.  Its not hen a pippa but it does involve old eastern bloc cartoons and
old cable memories.

Pomysłowy Dobromir

This was something I'd long forgotten aboutand involved a small ginger kid who dreamt up
stuff with his grandpa. A small ball would bounce on his head and he would sketch
up something to bail him out of a problem.  Now watching it I remember the little
green bird as well, in fact this is real cute I used to beg my mum to tell me
stories about that guy and his chickens.  Episode here.

Nickelodeon Pinwheel.

Like some horrible racial memory, this I think there was a badly made snail called
Silas. Indeed Wikipedia agrees and throws up the Admiral bird as well as a few other
characters (oh and this is probably where I remember Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings from). 
We never formally had a Nickelodeon channel till about 1993 and even then
it was shunted off in favour of the Family Channel.  This could have been part of
TCC's (now trouble) daytime line up.  In fact as soon as the theme tune played I knew
exactly what this was, something long buried and filled with janky puppets.

Finally our google fu managed to rustle up a name for an old hardcore record
I had that masqueraded as an Altern 8 white label.  Its Reel II reels MDA EP, and
was the dogs as usual. 

What we gonna do right here is go back.

Way back, back into time.  But first a round up and some sad news. 

One of my favourite authours has died.  Alan F Alford was an alternative historian who wrote on themes of ancient egypt and the near east religion (Assyrians) as well as cosmogenic destruction as a metaphor for those myths.  I came across his obituary in this months Fortean Times, and was saddened by his passing, his books made a lot of sense and thanks to positive reviews in FT, I actually bought some of his later works through Amazon.  For a new age / alternative thinker he was a rare person, that, actually admitted that what he believed was wrong (largely his theories on Zechariah Sitchin, tenth planet and all that) and amended his theories.  It lost him a lot of support but gained him a lot of integrity.

Way back.

What would you do if you could go back in your lifetime and potentially break it by talking to yourself or deliver yourself a present.  I don't have a Delorean nor Michael J Fox to drive us but as a hypothetical question, I'd take my old video and TV back to my childhood somewhere around 1986 - 88 and tape stories without words from The Childrens Channel, if only to prove that some of those old eastern bloc cartoons actually existed instead of being mere fever dreams.  Finally capturing Henapippa on tape, as well as something I think was called Backyard, and one with the ginger haired kid with the chickens and of course something we called the seven kind alarm clocks (a cartoon involving clocks we loved clocks as a kid).  We'd also get a bit of Chas the rabbit too, chas was a white rabbit with purple hair operated by some old weirdo, we thought he was funny, simply for posterity. 

My next trip would be taking the shedload of crap cassette tapes I've amassed through work and send them back to my younger self around 1990 to 1992, with a note on top simply saying Tape Pirate radio over these.  We've got a lot of Nigerian tapes either talking about god or singing about god, and would tell my younger self, to copy them when you listen, cos a lot of them shows don't exist. 

My final trip would be to my Grandads house out in Hounslow, back then with planes going over my head and a look round his green house at all his plants and stuff.  He had mainly Fuchsias and Pelargoniums but from an old relative he had cacti including a large cereus and a nice clump of Faucaria in a 4 1/2 inch pot, bits and pieces of the collection exist in my cactus collection as well as bits and pieces owned by relatives in my mums side of the family.  I would love to go back and see us it when it was in its prime (he had Epiphyllums so it would well worth looking at too).   We'll leave you with a few photos to gawp at, some we think a hold over from my aunt and some of my stuff.

Part of my Aunt Marions Greenhouse,

Our conservatory, this Cleistocactus was my neighbours and is around 50 years old.

Plastinot update.

Well a little digging on Youtube brings us this from the Plastinot front.

Presented by a German pederast called der sandmannen (possibly the sandman) he was absent from TCC's portrayal. Though looking at him he'd fit right in. Apparently part of German Sesame Street, hopefully never abbreviated over there, it actually looks like a genuinely great addition to the show.

We got Sesame Street on Channel 4 either as lunchtime fodder or early morning kids TV, but all other stuff has drawn a blank.

Don't you trouble, Trouble.

Does anyone remember the early days of British Cable TV when Trouble used to be called The Childrens Channel.

Thought not, nobody remembers cable back then. Our regular TV reception was shockingly poor, so forgive me if I wax lyrical / ramble on about half remembered stuff.

The Childrens Channel was ace and to be fair I was only small when this came out about 7-8 possibly the target demographic. I distinctly remember sitting through such crap like My little Pony and Care Bears to get to the good stuff (Gobots mainly). In fact the best stuff I remember is not the mainstream stuff they had but fucking obscure stuff like, You Can't Do That on Television, Kaboodle (Australian) Tomfoolery (had Groovy Ghoulies), The Barkleys (Dog Sitcom cartoon) and Roustabout with Mick Robertson.

Afternoons was dedicated to Jack in the box, with Playschools Carol Chell as host (If memory serves correct, It Probably wasn't) Kaboodle was part of this as well as another Aussie show that I've long forgotten the name of but was in essence pretty much like Thats Amazing from the Fast Show. They showed you how to make stuff and was presented by two blokes one I'm sure was called Dean. I remember odd bits such as them playing Tip Cat and a fruit that made everything sweet. Though, I think they called it Stevia, it showed a clip of Dean tucking into a Lemon much to the other guy's dismay.

Later they had an old guy with a big mouthed rabbit puppet called Chas. Chas was naughty and had purple hair, sadly thats all I and the Internet know about Chas.

Best of the lot was Stories without words, part of Jack in the Box, with an English and scandinavian intro titles, it was basically a showcase for various Polish and other eastern European cartoons. Beautiful stuff like The Bunny With the Chequered ears, Adventures of Rexy (Rexio), Teddy Dropear, Backyard and the Magic Pencil proves that there was magic in that thar eastern bloc. However the best of the lot are also the most obscure, these are Plasticine animation show, Plastinots, Hen a Pippa, and some cartoon involving alarm clocks ( true and yes I'd dearly love to see them again).

Hen a Pippa was my favourite, a mix of live action and of course a cartoon chicken mixed into the action, only bit I can remember is some folks playing skittles and having the ball switched with an egg, with the totally predictable results of yolk everywhere, nice.

Probably mouldering on some VHS tape back in some Lower Silesian state archives, we've yet to find any info about it on google, and the fact is Stories without words never used the Polish Names for any of the cartoons they showed so we only have their English translations to go on.