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.

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.  

Round up again.

 Not a lot going on here at the moment. Saw the lights up town yesterday and managed to dodge the antivax cucks that have swallowed up the right as of late. As a bonus finally managed to get secret Santa done. Which as a mindless, soulless robot, hate with a vengeance. 

Also have my third jab to sort out which is going to be problematic, as I normally take a day off to do this but seeing as its Christmas, will have to wangle some after work appointment, which means another dead arm and aches for a few days.

Apart from that its fine.

Review of 2020 continues.

 Yesterday I put up our annual review of the year. 2020 which of course sucked. So you'll be wanting a lot of television to take away your pain and... well that was knacked as well.

SARS2 did in a lot of live stuff and on a positive note killed off Eastenders for a while before coming back, much as it was. 

If you want our Miranda awards they're at the bottom of the page under the good TV.

Good TV

Perry Mason. Sky Atlantic

I sincerely hope that this is getting a regular season or at least an update to this. As, fucking hell, it's good. It details his transition from a two bit private eye, to unorthodox public defender via depression era America. So think old cars, segregation, police corruption and revival churches. This centers on a child abduction and murder, kinda like the Charles Lindbergh case. One to catch on DVD. HBO, SKY Atlantic.

Hubble. BBC2

A humble documentary about the troubled star scope. Its just an excuse to see a billion good things that had been discovered by the venerable telescope. Includes galaxies and star clusters. Proving that the BBC can put out a good show if it has to.

White House Farm ITV.

A similar form to Perry Mason. This focuses on the Jeremy Bamber murder case back in the 1980's in which he killed members of his extended family and his subsequent police case and capture. It has that authentic 80's jank that only those that were there will understand. Hangovers of 70's fashion and design with kitsch and earlier heirlooms. Well worth watching.

Tutankhamun in Colour

Final BBC entry here. This is a monumental colorizing job on old photos and film from the Howard Carter / Lord Caernavon expedition to Egypt, where they rediscovered king Tuts tomb. It brings it all to life with some excellent photo editing work. Also Carter was a bit of a hero, giving full props to his native workers and that, when most back then wouldn't.

The Miranda Awards for televisual ineptitude. Worst of 2020.

Twilight Zone. Reboot.

The worst of the worst. A woke reworking of the classic Ron Serling show. Do you want all cops kill minorities no matter what you do story. Of course you don't. Want a meteor storm that turns all men into rapey monsters. Apart from a few low T soy boys and a queer kid. Its depressing and woke, worse of all its fuck all fun. 

Eastenders.

For once they managed to kill it off thanks to SARS2. They ran out of episodes and had to air the glory years such as Dirty Den and Angie and Arfur Fowler stealing the xmas club money. Apart from that, though it sucked. A Marchioness disaster rip off in which Denny dies (yay) and that whole episode from the perspective of mental Ben. Which, apart from sounding like Merzbow in places due to him being deaf, is ruined by it being depressing as usual. 

The final bit is the whole Ian Beale getting assassinated and no one, ever calling it Kill |Beale. Which is a missed opportunity.

Hounslow Junk Tour

Decided to go on another junk tour and this is one that I've wanted to do for some years now.

In a similar vein to my trip to Peckham this is another trip back to my childhood but this time its on my mum's side of the family as my granddad lived there for most his life. 

I can remember getting the train down with mum and dad and getting off  and going down piggy alley (probably not its real name) and head toward Cromwell Road. They built a massive hindu temple there in the mid 90's about the same time my granddad passed on.

Anyway this didn't actually turn out to be a trip to Hounslow itself to begin with. I wanted to go to Ealing but seeing as I had a choice of Richmond or waiting for the Ealing train, decided I'd visit there and have a look around. Their charity shop choices are limited and coming out to rain and seeing a bus for Hounslow decided I have fuck all to lose by getting on board and heading off there.

They still have a few places I remember as I came in. The bus station and the Treaty Centre which I remember opening as we got balloons, to take home. There is also a Blenheim Centre too which houses an Asda, a Bum (B+M) and a Barnardos. I could have gotten a CD dedicated to Gurbani Fonts which I guess is to do with Sikhism. Pity there wasn't 9 other CD's I wanted for a £1 as I'd have whacked it up on Archive.org for everyone.

Still raining as I came out and found my way to the main drag. Found the Cex where my cousin's kid worked. They have some communist little cunt out by the main entrance to the centre with a sign saying how wonderful Cuba is as a socialist paradise (It's not.) And came across the worlds grimmest game shop with an entire top row of DS games dedicated to 42 board games and brain training.

Working down we bought a ton of techno in the Princess Alice to make up for it and decided to call it a day and seemingly took the longest route back home which sucked.

Round up.

We haven't had one of these in awhile so here goes.

Coro Coro Comic update.

Been looking into the few manga that are suitably bizarre to warrant this blog.  No, not the Bomberman  4 Koma. but Himitsu Keisatsu Holmes (aka Secret Agent Holmes)a sort of kid detective that investigates murders and such, and harukanaru Koshien Kakero! Ozora, a baseball manga who's hero seems to be a reporter and such.  Thought it was about a deaf school team that he was leading, but that turned out to be by a different author.  Be cool if  it was though.

BTW, when has it been acceptable that kids can be a hard boiled detective and poke around in corpses and such. See also Detective Conan and the like, there are quite a few murder mystery manga for kids that really to my western eyes, pull no punches.

Succulent News.

Had a brief look for Trichodiademia a shrubby mesemb species, that has a few cactus like spines at the end of its leaves, and we stumbled across Howstuffworks.com. Needless to say they need the talk about what is succulent and what is cactus. Although they seem to be fine on some stuff, lets put it this way not everything with spines is a cactus.  Especially not Asparagus Ferns which despite some pretty thick roots. It's not a fern either as it has flowers and seeds too, which you can see on that wiki link.

Finally a big shout out to Cambridge University Botanic Garden for flowering their Agave, after 57 years. It'll flower and die, but not without it doing this if you're lucky.

Not Cambridge but Cyprus, but you get the idea.

That's also a pretty good article explaining Agaves to the non cactus / succulent growers out there. So once again good luck and hope you finally find out what you have there.

Edit It's flowered now and is apparently narrowed down to Agave Vivipara but are waiting till it sets seed or does what the picture above is doing and throws out offsets.  Further info here, and yes it's still an excellent article of information on Agave.

Missed and Flipped, Cactus edition

Can't think of any shows I had missed out on this year that I didn't cover except the usual ones, Endeavour and The Durrells which is my pick every year. Likewise music which I get to hear less and less commercial stuff each year.  Awful Kiss stuff aside, Dua Lipa or Jax Jones Instruction or whatever they call themselves, total bollocks by the way.

No my missed and flipped bit this year is a follow up to the Mail's Cactus article with a bit about Topshop, as they had a stall with some cacti for sale in their Oxford St branch.  This was due to me not having a mooch uptown to verify what they were on about then.

It's Barry the Cactus for those who are curious about what it's all in aid of.  A small stall halfway in the ground floor of Top Shop, Oxford Street.  There is said to be a counterpart in Selfridges, as well but as this comes from their main site its unconfirmed if it's real or not.

So what do you get.

A few basic species in fancy pots for £10, to be fair mind, if you are after some designery pieces for interiors or a modern flat, and you don't mind a pot without a whole in the base, then its not bad.  Bear in mind that the site itself uses old names like Vatricana and Notocactus, but this is far from bad.

They also do keychains with tiny, doomed seedlings in and a small bottle of Cactus food for about £5 each, I would steer clear of these and get some tomato fertilizer from your local garden centre which is much cheaper and comes in a bigger bottle, 

I got a small Mammilaria with the last of a gift card and some cash.  I know how to grow cacti already, but picked up their tip card after all.

Here are my general cactus tips if you wish to grow along with me.

Give em a lot of light, they come from a really sunny areas, so a south facing window sill is best or if you have a greenhouse, conservatory.  Bottom line, find the brightest spot and stick them there.

Watering. If its Spring and Summer, water weekly and feed monthly. If its autumn ease off watering at the end of  September. If its Winter don't, for further information please re read.

Heat.  A good half of the species will tolerate 5 F provided they are kept dry,  this increases to 3/4 if you can guarantee 10F.

Substrate.  You'll need a gritty soil that is free draining, if you'll be potting on.  You want a pot the next size up and a loop of newspaper to fix around the plant to pull it out and generally handle.

Use John Innes compost with extra grit.  We sometimes use Cat Litter (the non clumping type) for really water intolerant species.

And that is it.

Last of Last Christmas

Its been an odd year for Music in general, boxing day being the traditional day we hold our autopsy on all things good, bad and ugly music wise.

We cover stuff new this year as well as things new to us, so lets get on with the good.

Chris Carter Chemistry Lessons 1.

Part of Chris and Cosey, which is in turn one half of Throbbing Gristle, I got this in September after an indifferent break away.  Its a good mix of modular sketches and sounds from long ago to present day.  Worth a listen for any synth head.

Aphex Twin. Collapse EP.

We saw the actual posters up on Elephant and Castle tube, and the EP while great, Is overshadowed by the whole pop up shop thing, where you could by the bears from Donkey Rhubarb and an umbrella styled on the ones in Windowlicker EP.  All very nice but the video to T69 Collapse is possibly the best thing all year and harks back to the old IDM days.

Ceephax Acid Krew.  Fossil Funk Piano Mix

Another great video this and a stellar track to go with it as well.  With his cat Byron spinning around on an office chair and shouts out high street shops, in other words the typical Ceephax style.

Ramz Barking.

A half track for me with the acapella showing up on Youtube, I normally hate grime, with a passion so its nice to see a track that isn't terrible or not entirely so.  True its not my thing, but its not terrible and you can alter the lyrics to say I'm Barking, She's Barking.

Billie Humphrey. Black and Blues.

70's jazz that sounds like it should have come out on Ninja Tune and the like back in the day, don't know if any of the tracks were played on Solid Steel but its definitely something that crowd would enjoy.

Fabric 100,

The final ever metal tin box edition of the track goes out with a 3 CD set from Craig Richards Terry Francis and Keith Reilly.  You know what to expect, techno and some deep house mixed well.
A fitting end.

Larry Heard Cerebral Hemispheres.

Mr Fingers himself returns to form with some brilliant acid a collaboration with Paul St Hilaire from Rhythm and Stealth's Dub Techno and a stunning 12 with mixes which are the dogs bollocks,  Most definitely my track of the year.

BAD STUFF.

My bad stuff is not so much this year with few terrible things, for once I'm not at work to hear Kiss Breakfast so that is in itself a blessing.

Maroon 5 Cardi Gan B

This is a half awful track, I hate Maroon 5 and Cardi B seems to be the Budgens Nicki Minaj, which  no one ever asked for.  The song isn't so bad and if you can get the instrumental version off of Youtube there is some not terrible guitar work which is saying something from me who usually hates guitar.  The worst thing is every time I've tried to edit it, I make it worse, want to make this stripped back as fuck, literally like the acoustic guitar clicking away and not much else.

Clean Bandit With Selena Gomez Woof Woof Woof or whatever its called.

Its garbage and I can't stop singing along to the chorus, woof woof woof indeed.

Reading List and an announcement.

Finally dug through the reading list at the side and updated a few links to things that aren't there no more. We had to remove *Kimimi's Blog which I found had closed down (seriously I'm a Jonah for good works) and have replaced it with Back Of the Cereal Box which is my kind of idiotic humour.

Furthermore, I've found some good stuff online to read about today so will present to you a reading list of things to well, read.

Like reading about big cats, have news of some strange feline hybrids here. Were talking about a Lion / Leopard / Jaguar hybrid baby.

There is a big interview with Derrick May which I've gotten to the halfway mark of, about the origins of techno and such.  Probably some nostalgia for Detroit people of a certain age too.

Oh and Cookout from Cruise Elroy that is super relevant to my announcement (see below). It looks like its made by Nintendo circa 1984 for one of their arcade games.  We found this on twitter of all places. EDIT now with video.

Announcement.

Next month I'm going to be blogging about Nintendo all month long.  Unless something good comes up then you'll probably get two blogs a week from me.  Its going to tie in to the very English idea of the Christmas biscuit assortment of the type Rover put out. Namely a selection of games based around a theme and done by indie devs for current gen consoles.
See you soon.

*thankfully not gone for good as she still has up her excellent twitter feed on Japanese curiosities and that.

Islington and Wimbledon

Vhs mess continues and this time Virtualdub is playing nicely with all the sound synced up ready to go.  Tried a few more programs before coming back to Virtualdub.  Its spat out a 4gb file for about 4 mins of footage, after encoding we've got it down to 400mb as a MP4 file.  Anyway on with the show.

Two trips to places I've been but once before.  First one was to Wimbledon home of the tennis and more importantly terminus of both the District line and the tram. Bit of a weird thing going on here as I seemed to pick up a lot of  DJ Sneak stuff including his Fabric live mix and a few albums, ended up with about 5 albums and mixes by the end which was cool.

The second is more important  than that. We were lured back to Angel, with the promise of free stuff out the front of Flashback Records. Of course it wasn't free, but was reasonably priced and got a few more good things, including Black Devil. Kid606 CDs and a few funk / Nitzer Ebb singles. 

Islington itself still is a  massive lefty ponce hole, we spotted one cunt with a man bun and assorted pricks in a pub so its come as a shock to find that we found a new arcade.

Opposite Angel tube station.

Almost walked past this, only seeing the words Tekken out the corner of my eye forced me to stop and then seeing a pool table almost made me walk on.  Persevere though and you'll come to the good stuff.  A warning there is no shmups at present but there is a few good things there to tempt you.

They have a list here for the impatient but I can say it leans heavily on the dancing genre with only a SF4 for the beat em up crowd. 

The interesting stuff is of course the visual Pinball cab they have displaying some sort of Frankenstein pin table. Looking around there were a few more cabs to choose from but I hope they were better quality than that.

Which brings us to the two puzzle games, Puzzle Bobble which is always a blast, and Tetris Grandmaster the Terror Instinct. 

Yeah that one,  even easy is no picnic, and this guy's playing on master.  Not pictured, but definitely included is a Sakura mode where you clear glowing gems by making lines.  I wonder if the Homebrew DS version is still around.

Legolas's Cock

They can see my what!!!!!

The world's seemingly going crazy for Legolas cock, or at least Orlando Voorn's Bloom's as he was papped paddle boarding with Katy Perry.  If you haven't seen it yet, its everywhere and everyone is commenting on this, giving a sort of insight into the kind of minds that if it were a women would easily be called a sexist misogynist at worst. 

Decided to dive in and have a butchers at the first link there was and as its that fucking rag the Daily Mirror decided to keep some booze at handy to blot out any socialism that appears. 
As I'm A, a straight white male it did fuck all for me to be honest and clicked to the comments to see what kind of hell I'd fallen into.

Turns out there were pretty few that thought like me.

I'm curious, did this publication directly make the nude pictures of Kate Middleton and
Jennifer Lawrence available as Orlando's are right now?

Because its believed men don't deserve any privacy

Are just some of the quotes that aren't from jealous guys having their own online dick size contest.

(also pro tip if you want to quote from a page that does not let you copy and paste quoted pages from  it first hand just copy and paste it to notepad, and then copy and paste that direct to text)

Its weird that there should be such double standards when it comes to male celebrities where as for women (unlike the hideous break the internet, non paparazzi plastinated Kim Cardassian pics)
 with similar images its all a little seedy.  Either stuff like this and the fappening releases is  acceptable or its not there is no middle ground.

I'm curious, did this publication directly make the nude pictures of Kate Middleton and Jennifer Lawrence available as Orlando's are right now?

I'm curious, did this publication directly make the nude pictures of Kate Middleton and Jennifer Lawrence available as Orlando's are right now?

I'm curious, did this publication directly make the nude pictures of Kate Middleton and Jennifer Lawrence available as Orlando's are right now?

I'm curious, did this publication directly make the nude pictures of Kate Middleton and Jennifer Lawrence available as Orlando's are right now?

Round Up Again.

A few bits and pieces before an obligatory hiatus comes this way, including a shout out to one of my favourite places to keep you going.

Crest Charity Shop. Walthamstow

I've made no bones that I quite like Walthamstow despite it being stuffed full of leftie weirdos and Christians. Its essentially a massive street market complete with shops off to the side. One of these is Crest Charity shop.  Whereas most Charity shops are resolutely corporate in their pricing and outlook this looks like a mix of junk shop and the craziest bazaar ever.  Most charity shops do no look like some mad hoarders back room filled with random piles of junk now, however this does.  Its always worth a look just in case you need to pick up a Slovenian - English dictionary or cables for obscure outlet points.

One of the most odd things I've found there is a small A5 magazine called Home and Freezer Digest from 1980, a mix of old ads, recipes and articles for women that doesn't really exist anymore. I check out Take a Break and Now! in Smiths but they seem to have an uneasy fascination for Paedos, Psychos and Celebs that Whitehouse would be proud of.  So I kinda pine for the old days of women's mags where hearth and home were always fore front and you always got a serial (story) and never a serial killer.  I know its probably sexist (everything is nowadays) but it seems more wholesome than the endless my boyfriend is Ian Brady / Chanelle Hayes loses / gains weight drama.

Face Exercises.

Really should have ponied up the pittance they wanted for this just to get a better shot / scan of the article above.  Part of a facial exercise regime featuring some weird androgynous child woman thing (that nowadays would have its own Tumblr blog complete with 6 made up personal pronouns and genders) that totally does not look like a blow up doll.   They had a good few vintage ads in there for Kotex jam rags and American Burgers as well as fridges and food ideas.

I also briefly touched on weird cables and shit above and I'm not kidding, I saw a VGA to HDMI connector last time I was there and decided to dig through the various gubbins they had spread through various baskets to see if its still there.  Lots of things for obsolete phones, quite a few PS/2 cables, Toner cartridges for Laser printers and what probably is a coup. a dock for a GP2X handheld console.  Looking like a USB hub on drugs, it packs a serial port as well as 4 USB ports for good measure into its form factor.  I'm not sure if it can be used outside of the console itself but its a strange thing to actually find seeing as the device itself is a obscure homebrew only device.

Quite strange.

Like I said its quite a place for weird and wonderful things and outdated PC hardware.  I picked up Knights of the Nine DLC expansion pack for Oblivion and have previously got a J Pop 3" CD there. If you are there come and visit as its worth a look.

Round up time.

After an unscheduled appearance yesterday telling you in plain English how to update your PS3's firmware for offline scum, here is a tedious round up of smaller stories.  Incidentally the first was supposed to be up last week.

Dragon's Heaven Neo Geo.

There's been quite a buzz about this early alpha fighting game.  Neo turfmasta managed  to buy some early sram dev karts on Yahoo! auctions.  Thanks to the battery still being viable in one of them he managed to extract most of what was there except for onscreen text, music and energy bars.  Those were held on the other two ram carts and as the battery died so did the data with it.   Further info surfaced (Japanese only) that it was being made by FACE and ex Techno's staff (as they had no real fighting game experience) based on the Gowcaizer engine.  As I've said before its  obviously an alpha, but the sprite work is actually quite good and there's an alignment mechanic going on reminiscent of D+D dependent on whether you are neutral, lawful and chaotic.  There's a bit more info here on the Neo Geo forums.

Romancing SaGa 2 getting an English release.

Its only for mobiles at the moment, but they are translating one of the last untranslated SaGa games into English. Japan gets a Vita port as well, but so far its only for Android and iPhone which is cool.  I really hope they do a good port of this I gave up on a free version of FF2 due to the crappy virtual pad they used and later Final Fantasy ports have been hamstrung with poor quality sprite work and rather substandard filtering added to that.  Gideon Zhi of AGTP has been working on the original Super Famicom game for a while now and reckons its an absolute bastard to work with.  So fingers crossed for a good port to phones.

Green screen PS3.

Half the problem with this I found out is using legacy bits and pieces, the TV I have is a large CRT which can support 60hz (America stuff works with it) and the SCART cable is from my old PS2 which  fits but is hardly ideal.  Remember running DVD's on PS2 where they would play in various shades of green, due to I guess, nonsense.  Will see if I have any other leads that will do it, can remember I think it came with component failing that I will have to get a flat screen and a run it through HDMI.

Raptors and Roundups.

Been a bit crazy this week, with a few trips out and some Vita news for all you rom botherers out there, 
oh and the Prime Minister allegedly sticking his knob in a dead pigs mouth as part of a university club initiation ceremony we have to grab our Lolz where we can get it.

Unexpected Find.!
First up some odd nature bits and pieces.  We took a trip down the Thames path at Woolwich today, the last time I did so I was sure I saw a Kingfisher in flight and didn't think anything would top this, or so I thought.  That is until halfway through my walk I saw this.

Peregrine Falcon.

Yeah that is a dead Peregrine Falcon, right there on the pathway leading down to Thamesmead, I didn't know that they were actually present in the area only that they are protected and rare in the UK. Looking on line there are reports of nests in Greenwich and Lewisham complete with chicks which is good to see. I initially thought it was a Sparrowhawk though my mind was screaming that this is a Peregrine.  It certainly made my trip out although really wished it had been alive rather than dead.

Vita Breakthrough.
Really enjoying this breakthrough on Wololo.net.  Seems some guys have been poking through some files dumped out via hacking into the Vita's Mail app.  Seems you can dump out files up to a certain size for analysing, you can only dump files lower than 2 Meg at the moment or go 7 Directories in but its a start and what has been found has been actually quite interesting. 

What has been found so far from this is:
* A whitelist of all games that run on Playstation TV.
* Switch PSN account.
* Read, write and delete from memory card (UX0)
* Cartridge dumping and back up installation.

As you can see its a major deal already, you can dump cards from the vita and put roms for back up whether this extends to PSN downloads is anyones guess so far but, like I said this is getting interesting.
Better explanation here, or if you wish to keep, fully up to date, follow Major_tom's twitter here.

Bad Aids 40

Before I begin  I will point out that popular teletext weasel Mr Biffo has got a brand new Digitiser site up and running (well blog).  I'm quietly confident that Rapping Shoe will make an appearance as well as Mr T and his bins so if the following makes no sense to you click on Brown Trumpet on the sidebar where I've added the lynx maaan.

Band Aid.

Sodding Band Aid, one of the most predictable things at Christmas time is the trotting out of the same old songs. Whether its Slade or Wizzard or Paul McCartney singing about Golden Labradors come down from the sky (he doesn't of course its Wonderful Christmas time) certain songs have to be played in my eyes so that everyone knows its Christmas.   This track used to be about famine relief in Africa but now it isn't, I could point out all the inaccuracies that it holds (one, if nothing ever grows then why is there a big fuck off rainforest belt across the whole central half of Africa) but instead I'll fashionably whale on it because its bastard terrible.

This year its being released to coincide with Ebola relief, a good 9 months after the horrendous outbreak in West Africa and subsequent cases occurring in the western world.  Incidentally its not the first time this digital Ebola has broken out,  they had Dido on the 20th anniversary version and complete with a terrible rap too if memory serves correct.  Also they've changed the lyrics so it isn't thank god its them instead of us anymore.  Now its ten times more patronising.

So who is in this years line up: I'll summarise below if you're too lazy to click the link

1,2,4,6. Bastille. Fucking terrible electro house group, did that rework of Rhythm of the Night / Rhythm is a Dancer song that was all over Kiss FM.

3.  Bloke from Elbow.  Don't really care about Elbow but there you go.

5. Chris Martin from Coldplay.  I suppose it pays the bills now he's split from Gwynneth Paltrow, but I've never liked Coldplay, ever and am not going to start now.

7. Seal.  Fact fans my first record I can remember buying was Adamski Killer on which he did vocals. So  he's a legend.

8. Bob Fecking Geldof.  Who's beginning to resemble Jimmy Saville with his massive grey locks.

9. Karl Hyde From Underworld.  Why in all gods name are you here, you should be re releasing Dark and Long on Junior Boys Own not pissing about on a charity single.

10. Roger Taylor from Queen. Fair enough, Queen were ace shame that Freddie Mercury never made it on the original that would have rocked.

11,12,25. Various Youtube Vermin. They are supposedly big among "the yoot" but hardly household names or singers, nor have I ever seen Google promote them in the sidebar like Shane Fucking Dawson or Pewdiepie. Would have preferred MrSimon, McMangos and Ashens with his Engrish Violin, cos lets face it it could do with some livening up and at least I respect those guys.

14,15 Arse Bandit sorry Clean Bandit. More Electro House, here and another confession I really don't like Rather Be and its convoluted twiddly fiddle bits. You may know from that M+S Ad with the food in.

16-19 One Dimension. Because you really aren't getting enough Jailbait to buy your record as it is. Incidentally, Harry Styles face always looks like they've blow dried a King Charles Spaniel and its stuck.

20. Olly Murs. Heart favourite and Xfactor runner up.  Sad to say but I like Olly, his songs ain't bad at all.

21. Sinead O'Connor. An odd choice, but at least she can sing you may know her from Nothing Compares To U.

22. Ellie Goulding. Another good choice if only because her album Halcyon sounds like an old Orbital single.

23. Jessie Ware.  Not a fucking clue.

24. Ed Sheeran. He did Drunk which is boss and a lot of other stuff that isn't.

26. Angelique Kidjo. Because its all too white and middle class, we need some African stars in there, but mainly because Wombo Lombo (Junior Vasquez Mix) was the bomb.

27. Emeli Sande. Fucking hell although she has at least came out and monstered the song itself, but damn she is everything as is.

28.  Paloma Faith. Left wing Amy Winehouse clone.

29 and 30. Is Midge Ure from Ultravox and That's U2's Bono Vox.
Theres a few more but you get the drift.

Hyper Japan Again

Before I crack into the Winter Market version of  Hyper Japan there is a brief update to the 419 letter I got, apparently Havering Police are warning about a scam letter with nigh on identical wording from a different chinese guy.  As I said before its a scam, there is no inheritance and they will ask you for a substantial fee up front and all you'll get is Jack Shit in return.

Hyper Japan Christmas Market.

I reported on the summer version of this a few months back but this is less game orientated and much more to do with Japanese Culture overall, also its had a move from Earls Court to Olympia.  So you had guests by visual artists like Siro A and Jpop singers as well as all the geeks and fangirls cosplaying.  There were still a lot of food stands and places to grab a sake, including some traditional sweet stalls and a place selling iron teapots of all things.

Gaming this time was represented by Capcom which had a bank of flatscreen TV's playing Ultra Streetfighter 4 and Monster Hunter, as well as some ugly Minecraft style Ken and Ryu stands.

Ryu + Steroids not a pretty sight.

Square Enix didn't have any games at all just a shed load of merchandise set in display cases, you could grab a plush Cactuar and a Chocobo dressed as a white mage.  Or you could spunk your cash on an endless array of FF soundtrack CDs.  They also had stress balls too but they weren't actually that good.

I demand that this be an actual FF release

Upstairs they had a nice arcade area which housed some cool shit, including an American Snes with its horrible boxy outline and purple colour scheme playing Marioworld, or on the other side you had a Megadrive with Streets of Rage. There was no old guy hogging Ikaruga this time as there was no Ikaruga and the games were hogged by tiny kids in Karate Gis!. Persona 4 Ultimax Arena, the beat em up crossover with Arc System Works was on offer a shame that I never got to play on it.  Did however get to play on Final Fight which was cool and saw a mum with cat ears dancing with her young son on DDR.

There was a lot of merchandise for sale upstairs along with wall scrolls and swords were a shed load of toys from various manga and  games.  Was debating getting a Luigi Keyring for my cousin and me but decided to chance it with some Persona 4 the Animation blind bags.  Got the secret rare as well which is Margaret dressed as Marylin Monroe. Cue crap picture.

About life size here.

They also had the queen of British Anime Helen McCarthy which some of you may remember from the Anime Column in long defunct Snes Mag SuperPlay or from the big encyclopaedia of anime she did.  Sadly I didn't get a picture of her but she did look a lot like the chibi version but of course much older now.

Finally they had a lot of people cosplaying including many many gothic lolitas and Mario and Luigi sitting around which was nice. Don't know when the next one is on but will definitely be going.

Round up time.

Feeling better this week, last time I wasn't in a good place wishing death and misery on the ignorant and generally being a nasty bastard.  This week I have some round ups of something I've been wanting to do including a bit of Children's Channel news for those of you who are following (relax its nothing that exciting).

Scarfolk 2048.

If you've been living in a hole for the past 84 years you would know that  this is a thing sort of like Flappy Bird but without the inclusion of Super Mario's green pipes.  It is, at its heart, a sliding puzzle kinda like the ones where you have to put all the numbers in order but in this case it starts off empty and adds an extra tile when you move, when two tiles of the same type touch they morph into a higher number.  For instance if 2, 2 tiles touch, they will make a 4 tile.  The aim is to make 2048 and as a tile is added every time you move it becomes increasingly tricky.  When all the spaces are filled and you can't make any more numbers then the game is over.  Like Flappy bird I've already seen 8 bit ports of it including a Master System port a Spectrum version and of course a version for the trusty C64.

My high score is currently 7104. Can you do any better?

Air Assault.

One of the oddest things about reading about Mame development is that sometimes they throw up stuff that you've played but didn't realise was so rare.  Air Assault is a western conversion of  Fire Barrel, for ages it was housed in an egret cabinet in the Trocadero in Leicester Square, before it was shut down and everything sold off.  I can remember that this was a pretty tough game and that they wanted 50p a play when the norm was 30p a credit.  I also had no idea that it was so rare, that it was never dumped or included in mame, not until I read it on Haze's development blog.
Here is a system 16 link with more info and a warning about acid leakage on these types of boards (covers R Type Leo as well as a few others).

Telecat / Telechat.

Where as the previous two items are interesting this isn't so much fun.  Chriddof has posted a video containing audio from an old show from the Children's Channel, I can't place it but thanks to a link from some later posters, it looks familiar.  Especially the ostrich who had a right posh accent in English.

Oh god I remembered that this used to be on in the morning alongside Spoon Obasan and other bizarre anime on Sky.  They had a talking broom and a weedleish cat with his arm in a cast presenting a show.  I'm not sure if it had bizarre idents like False teeth from beyond the stars (it was the very excellent Round The Bend).  But I do have the idea that for some reason the broom caught alight one time making it fucking disturbing viewing, and the posh ostrich (Octavia) squawking away.  Relive your nightmares here in french.


Edit you were supposed to have an article about someones epic work on decapping the chips in a 3DS as a tribute to our lame Nintendogs April Fools but for some reason I just plum forgot about it.  Oh well have at thee with this.

End of the year show.

A few loose ends to clear up before we move into the new year. Mostly overlooked commercial stuff from Boxing Days uber review and a few reminiscences for you as well.

Our Award for best commercial house goes to a three way split, god knows how we managed to miss out on this last time, but step forward Disclosure for White Noise with Alunageorge, Duke Damont  and his Inner Cityish Need U 100%  and Breach Jack though not actually good enough to properly jack in my mind.

A brief apology to Smiley Virus as thanks to Mail ballyhoo I caught her song Adore You and its a really nice slow jam.  The video isn't bad and has a brief shot of her putting her hand in her panties (not masturbation) which brings up the whole pornification of pop all over again.  Its just a pity her skin is covered in rubbish porn tats, (see also Cara "monobrow" Delevigne whos underboob tats are so bad they look like she is going in for a pre op breast augmentation rather than body art) maybe you dig tattoos but to me they are just fucking shit.  To be honest you can see plenty of cam models / Amateur porn models (with or without tats) wank off online so the whole thing just relies a stunt, to sell, what is lets face it a track that could easily stand on its own without her "fingering" herself for the video not matter how brief.

They tried to get Ding Dong the Witch is Dead for when Thatch died, though to be honest I played that twice when Hugo Chavez popped his clogs back in January.

Finally Bastille Of the Night is an extremely weak pop cover of Rhythm of the night / Snaps rhythm is a dancer that is much more serious than cancer, and is so bad its actually more like contracting AIDS via your speaker.

Round up time of year.

Its that time of year when I break out the best of list for music and the Mirandas for television that has pissed me off, so this Sunday's little post is a small round up before we tuck into our Christmas meat.

Nigella Lawson.
This was big in the UK,thanks to the recent fraud case involving her aides and revelations about her taking cocaine as well as the break up of  her marriage to Charles Saatchi.  Do I care about any of that, no, its largely a throwaway comment in the Mail on Sunday about her being on Desert Island Disks.

The full line up is here at the beebs own page and makes for interesting reading.  Apparently she is a big fan of  Mory Kantes Ye Ke Ye Ke (Hardfloor mix) labelling it as a personal favourite, something I would never pegged her as a dance music fan especially a big storming acid rework of the original but there you go.

Bubble Bobble. Lost cave.
Didn't know this was up to version 1.2, but if you want to play a good hack of the original Bubble Bobble arcade game then this is available here.  I said it needed balancing to iron out the difficulty spikes and that is exactly what has been done. We would also recommend getting mameuifx as your main mame as it plays bootleg and rom hacks without much hassle.

More Christmas tat.

Went to Woolwich to drop off some donations to charity and had a look round didn't see many manic street preachers at first but that all changed as I reached the Mind shop.  They had a load of folk out from the New Wine church (now the Ebenezer Goode cathederal of god), they had the usual leaflets about jesus and some dude dressed up as Father Christmas behind a Yamaha Tyros2 keyboard of all things.  Its the first time I've ever seen a black santa, and this one had glasses as well.  In fact the Christmas stuff didn't end there as they had a mastiff with a tinsel collar at the bus stop near Primark, it looked rather ace actually as those dogs aren't really cute.  Coming back they had all came out of the wood work and there were millions of the buggers preaching outside smiths.  There is a letter in the Greenwich time moaning about the Chuggers and Preachers so can't be the only one to get pissed off by it.

FF7 NES

Well I'm starting to warm to the new logins google have set up, for those blogger users who want to know were everything is, it can be found under Dashboard and then blogs weirdly enough, you just have to login.  I still hate broken old Google+ though and they're right cunts google for forcing it on us, as its broken and horrible, I'd rather use the old fashioned way of engaging (or not) with my subscribers via comments rather than the broken system they have now.

Anyway this isn't another google rant but rather a nice announcement instead. Lugia 2009 finally released his epic rework of  Final Fantasy 7 for the NES.  Lindblum (and a few others) did the original translation and hack of the Chinese original but left many of the maps and sprite artwork untouched.  This is a massive revamp along with new sprite work and scenes as well as some difficulty rebalancing as well. 

Much more information here complete with link to patches but no ROMS. 

The original game was a homebrew remake of the original game for the NES by the company Shenzhen Nanjing.  Its pretty strange as both its cart and board are unique running on Mapper 162 from one rom bank.  Wikipedia has a pretty good write up here if want more. I had a look on Bootleg Wikia but they've just used what was already on Wiki already.