Update

 Been doing some DIY to my bedroom so forgive the short post here.  Its a long overdue updating, as it was last done about 15 years ago. Its gone from a green room to a nice grey minimalist overtone look.

In related news I have all my books piled up in the computer room like some mad hoarder. I've tried to separate them into stuff to go and stuff that remains and will need to get to the last lot in the cupboard now I can get there. Hopefully a few will be able to go in and the charity shops will start taking them now.

Staying in.

Here's another boring update. Been self isolating and not that is not a euphemism. Not been out since Friday. Having to look for stuff to do around the house, to keep busy as this is definitely not my regular schedule.  

Took a look online at my DVD / Video combo that I got from my aunties place, and what I thought was a good project (seeing if its a DVD recorder) failed when I had a read through of the manual archived online.  It can copy DVDs to VHS but not vice versa.  

Will have to use Obs and  my capture card to rip stuff from videos that I have.  It's not the best idea but will like to archive the stuff I have so I can fill up some space for more junk.

More stuff to come includes some Vietnamese tapes (mostly UK stuff and junked what looks like a lot of  Karaoke tat.)  Maybe even the Pron tape which is 2 thirds Channel 4 stuff, including a episode of Quincy. Have the last of my mandatory use it or lose it leave days to take before the new tax year kicks in. So will give it a go tomorrow.

Great Airports and that.

Would you like a new old book to read? The Great Airport Mystery 1930 version is done so you can go here to download the PDF.

Its a PDF proof edit I got from a big bunch of files from the net, so will be clearer and make sense in places.

A pissed up pilot, a daring theft and the Hardy's framed for a crime they didn't commit. Will they ever solve The Great Airport Mystery.

A few notes on this, there is some strange terminology here.  At one point Frank says that they are mighty white, meaning a stand up guy or a decent bloke.  It comes from the supposed decency of the white race (or Huite race if you've seen certain youtube videos).  From what I can gather its to do with decency and fair play, though nowadays that distinction is pretty much moot.  We're all degenerates now.

Also a good chunk of the end chapters mention Auto Robes as a means to keep out the elements.  These were a sort of  blanket to protect against the elements and cold in an open top roadster. An excellent source of this as well as some examples are here.

There is some trivia for geeks too, Frank was held back a year due to suffering some undisclosed illness in the winter, which is why he and Joe are in the same year.  We learn Joe's weight 126 lb) (which is 9 stone or around 66kg for europeans) and shoe size (a size 6) which puts his build into the thin, wiry guy category.  They do not mention his height but I'm  guessing he is small too.

Finally I've started work on transcribing The Tower Treasure and  reading its revised version for fun.  Currently a few chapters in on the original and up to Hurd Applegate posting the $1000 reward in the revised versions.  So far there isn't much of a difference, Chet's pranks as usual have got the chop and Oscar Smuff is now a detective and not part of the Bayport Police force.  But apart from the Hardy's doing more detecting (this is book 31 in the UK) and being a year older (15 and 16 in the original) its remarkably close to the original.

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.

Crooks, cheats and liars.

Sorry for no post last week and that was all set to regale you about how I brought back a PS3 from the brink but instead got scammed by some cunt pretending to be a cop on the phone.

If you don't know how it goes down its like this.

Scammer phones up pretending to be a cop, gives warrant number and lies out his ass by saying that have caught some people buying expensive shit on your card can you phone the number on the back of your bank card to confirm. 

Scammer doesn't put the phone down but passes it to an associate who tells you your card is blocked, so when you call the bank it goes through right away.  Your bank will never respond that quickly in fact time spent trying to get through the maze of options to the lone woman on customer service, while you listen  to the four seasons for 10 minutes straight should be a warning to you that they are fake.

The third stage with me was some bogus sting operation, with me running around London like Anneka Fucking Rice, handing over my own cash and card fake courier, because fraud operation.  But it could be trying to get your card details either way its not good.

The bank were really helpful, and put us through to the fraud team who are dealing with this.  The police not so much they just gave us a letter from action fraud and no crime number.  I spent a good 20 minutes on the phone trying to speak to a human, though when I did get through, they sorted it out  and gave us a reference number and pass to keep them updated.

It compromised my phone thanks to them calling so I had to switch sims from 1 pay as you go to another, which I still have to sort out.  I don't care about my calls or texts fire bomb the lot and give us a new number and more crucially internet.

In conclusion, your bank or anyone else will *NEVER cold call you about your card being stolen or account being compromised, or ask for your account or pin number.  These people are actually cunts.

(*they will however send a letter offering you to call them instead)

Lamb Update

We've been going through a load of old magazines hoping to see what can be thrown away and what can be scanned for posterity. As well as mags we've also taken to task a few old cassette decks too including a nice Hitachi that simply won't play tapes and in fact chewed up our lamb tape a few times before being dumped.

So what's on the tape then.  Well its mostly recipes of Lamb as I've said before its a collab with Colmans Mustard and  there is a special treat too.  For some reason half of side A has been taped over with an old episode of Watchdog, you can tell its old as it has Lynn Faulds Wood and John Stapelton on it, no Anne Robinson here.  Mostly its concerning about a holiday scam set up as prizes but never going through.  The other bits are apologies concerning a sex line mix up and viewers in Scotland having to wait to the early hours to see the show itself (its pre iPlayer so you'll have to tape it instead).

Apart from Watchdog, it mainly contains well lamb and recipes of lamb and such.  There are a few musical interludes mainly generic Greek and Far Eastern library music for recipes on kebabs and pilaf rice but the rest is spoken word.  I can imagine this would be good for cut ups as well as lamb recipe fanatics too, there's quite a lot of talk about meat and such as well as slits and stuff. Will have to dump the audio when I'm done with records in general, though that may be in 2066.

Here is the entire inlay in case it rings any bells and such.

Also this is the last time I type Lamb for ages.

Short Update.

Sad news seems that That'z Entertainment in Romford is no more? They were a pretty decent game place and one of the few indies left in London. They used to do import games for PSP ( Picked up Jeanne D'arc as well as a few other obscure games too) as well as retro and card game stuff.  Went in the weekend and found that the small shop that they had had become a place selling sweets and drinks, sort of like a bespoke corner shop.  Don't know if they moved or what but they were cool.

Also finally got small laptop drive working in a shonky 2.5 external bay and had a browse through its contents.  Kinda know the guy who owned the laptop and feel really bad about rooting through a few bits to jailbreak an Iphone being the more interesting things there.  On the photo side there are a lot of pictures from Seaworld and a shot of a Grackle (we think) before linux started acting up.

Grackle Right?

Round Up time again

I'll not lie to you this post is largely updates from hell, and a bit on Children in Need.  At least my chest infection is finally beaten, Yay.


Looking through old gaming magazines we found an ad for a game shop in  Trading World. This is about the first confirmation in print that I've seen stuff from Trading world.

Now this is odd, I can't actually remember blogging about this, though I must have done so here is a recap for those who missed out.  For the uninitiated, Trading world was in the early to mid nineties, a small market stall place that dealt with all sorts of places.  There was a few game stalls that dealt with either computer stuff (we saw the Amiga Version of Giana Sisters running here) and possibly the place above that dealt with console stuff.  They had a few TVs running stuff, mainly Cyberlip for Neo-Geo and Super Ghouls 'n' Ghosts.  They really did only have a small stall but was packed with goodies.  Actually they had Marchen Maze running so its probably a part of  that entry.   After a while Trading World closed and became a Primark.

(We were right, looking through this, its part of the Marchen Maze Entry.  Oh as an added bonus they used to have NES games in a little wooden cabinet at the back too, they had Legend of Zelda in its Golden box). 

No need for Children in Need.

This is largely horrible, but we have a telethon here called Children in Need.  If you wonder why we have such venom about helping hapless kiddies its because its trailed for over a month before hand gathering steam before it kills all before it.  The whole non optional you must donate, rather than leave it up to you, rankles with me especially.  I have no interest in helping kiddies or donating to a charity that I have no interest in, and when  that is trailed endlessly or invade other programmes to ask celebrities to donate, well thats just evil.

For instance Terry Wogans show has a lot of middle class folk paying out a lot of cash for pointless bollocks, such as a trip to Downton Abbey or to live inside a shoebox.  These are not small sums either but £8-10 grand, just to simply to say we've done that and get one over your neighbours.  In fact you could level this at comic relief too, that goes on too long as well.   On the night it'll be hideous shit like the cast of  Eastenders doing minstrel songs or Newsreaders pretending to be Lady Gaga.  Sorry thats not entertainment that just makes my skin crawl.

I'm not some tight assed git who doesn't donate, if it involves puppies or kittens I'm liable to punt 10p toward them.  I buy music and books in charity shops, and spend my £15 annually to the BCSS and more for their seed list.  Its just that I despise the constant hard sell the BBC does, month long juggernauts of advertising, earn your spots, I'd rather it earned them a kick up the arse.

Sorry Lone Viewer again.

We had major problems trying to get online and it turns out not only was there a fault with the cable outside but, horror of horrors, it looks like an old cable TV installation we had upstairs was causing the problem thanks to the Virgin Media tech dude.  It was leeching power like some kind of energy vampire and to be blunt was causing half our problems.

Worse, catching up with the world at large we find out that Aaron Carl is dead from cancer.  For those not familiar with the guy, he released Down on Metroplex Records one of the best labels around, and something which I haven't heard in ages.  Its pretty sad as it appeared that he died shortly after diagnosis. 

Anyway normal service has resumed.