Theydon Bois.

Took a trip out today to the end of the Central line, as its bank holiday monday.  Its not the real end of course, that would have been Ongar but that closed sometime in the nineties, but for arguments sake this means Epping and its forest. 

We got off on the central line at Theydon Bois, (pronounced Boys) a place along with Upminster that I've always wanted to see, and to be honest it didn't disappoint.

Theydon Bois in its near entirety.

I used to think Hornchurch was the first signs that this was the country rather than London, Theydon trumps that.  And then some.  Its a small village transported that feels like its fallen out of middle of Essex and dumped onto the borders of London, and is a real culture shock, as there is nothing much like it on the Kent side (though to be fair they've never extended the tube that far, the bunch of sissies).  There's a Tesco express and a few shops but apart from that its like the country has reclaimed its own. 

Epping forest itself is really nice and busy, I saw plenty of cyclists and dog walkers along with a few picnicers such as ourselves. There was a lot of downed trees mainly Beech but with a fair few Silver Birch as well, also as my mum said a lot of temporary pools too. 

Pool Closed.

We stopped for lunch and I decided to take a few pictures of stuff, they had a Scarce Cardinal Beetle on one of the logs which is about 2cm long.

Pyrochroa Coccinea.

After lunch we made our way out of the woods and headed into Epping, which is a much bigger town it feels a bit like Ealing but much more rural.  They had a market on with various stalls selling stuff and one of the stall owners was lugging round a brown poodle which was endearing (sadly no photo).  They have a nice old church and another building which could be a former church but is now a Ford dealership.

Is that a satellite dish?

Looking around town and we decided to make our way back, and out to the not very well signposted tube station, which like Hornchurch is some way out of town. They had one of those Cancer you Cunt* posters as race for life was coming to the North Weald, and then home.

*Part of the shouty confrontational British Cancer Research campaign to beat cancer.  I.E. you run a bit for cancer research but only if you are a woman.  Seriously I've never seen one for Testicular or Prostrate cancer or for Movember, its as if women only get cancer.

Abusing Android for fun and profit.

As I'm an idiot and am sure I've done something like this before, I've always wondered how far Android can be taken and what other stuff I'd love to see improved.  It all started with a report that some Samsung cameras now run Android, and its gotten me thinking what else could you cobble together to run Android with. First of all....

A Camera.

Link above aside, I would really love this to be used on a serious camera, with all that entails such as additional lenses and the added function of something like Photoshop built in.  Add generic ports for PC out and massive battery life and this could be a winner.

A Smart Phone.

My idea of a smart phone is perhaps a lot more different than yours.  For starters I did a whole post on these a few years back, essentially it had a DS clamshell design with physical controls, and a seamless emulation of every system going. So far only the new Blackberrys really measure up to that with their sideloading of Android apps because their own appstore resembles a tumbleweed strewn graveyard compared to the main players.

My revised take on this is still a DS clamshell design but with one side as a dedicated keyboard and the other as the main phone screen, sort of like an updated PDA.

A Tablet.

Yeah I know these are "highly original", but these do have a twist with them.  For some unknown reason, I would love a tablet that incorporates two unorthodox ideas.  The first is a Graphene battery, for massive power reduction and to free up space as it'll be the size of a wafer.  I see the guys at work constantly charging their phones most of the day, and would think that if they could get this to run equal to the battery life of the old green screen Gameboy it would be excellent.
The final thing I'd love to see added would be a solid state drive, those ultrathin and fast drives you add to PC in order to speed up loading. I've a neat idea where you don't get any removable storage slots, just a SSD which loads pre partitioned with Android and places to put stuff.

A Console of sorts.

My Final twist on this is probably the most contentious of all. A lot of people seem to have done this, whether its OUYA via Kickstarter or some of the big companies, my idea is just a pure pirate device.  Taking my cue from the limitless supplies of  Famiclones out there, I would love to see an Android set top box recorder, along the lines of  the Sky + or Tivo that doubles as a console.  Unlike most of these android devices, it wouldn't be an online smart TV (there's plenty of those), but would allow you to record TV instead, dump it out onto memory stick or memory card for upload to PC in a variety of formats, or simply store it to its internal Hard Drive.

It would gain updates via the internet either through the phone line or memory card via its internal card reader. Finally it would play android games downloaded via  the net as APK. files and would soft patch in external controls for any controller added to it via USB.

Acid Day Round up.

You'll get three, yes three postings over the bank holiday period so hold on tight as I'll take you on a trip up town and have a few round up of smaller news too.

PS2 to get unofficial Sixaxis support.

I never did actually grade up to PS3, what with the rise of online consoles, online updates, RROD / YLOD and the fact that the TV I used for gaming before fucking off to the darkside of portable gaming, was basically a tiny CRT portable, means that I don't know if those new dualshocks for PS3 and PS4 was backwardly compatible with the humble PS2 (hint they aren't).  

Ginger and TV for comparison.

However it looks like someone is finally getting their act together and hacking back support for those newer Dualshocks.  Looking at his Cheeky Github it seems there is also a library there for Wii as well so as long as you have a means to read homebrew on either Wii or PS2 then it seems that its worth a punt.  For me I don't have a PS3 or PS4 Dualshock to test out so no go here.

ACID Day.  (: ) )   
A trip up town today to see if they have this in stock, and came home disappointed (well sort of). I didn't get it as I crucially forgot its name but came up trumps in other regards. 

First of all a trip to Phonica as they are boss, and looking in there they have the new Luke Vibert album, Ridmik, if you liked Ace Of Clubs on FirstCask records then this is right up your alley, its acid all the way with Proper Gander being my highlight and track of the year.  They also had Interfunks off shoot Fatjack on his own label Acidicted with the superior Acidflash and  passed up on a promo version of Karim Sahraoui on Transmat (with bonus Strings Of Life). 

We thought we would look into Sounds of the Universe on the corner of Wardour Street and see if they had it.  They always have weird stuff so if you want that old afrofunk album its the place to look as they are boss.
Still couldn't think what it was on but looking through their stacks of house they had Paranoid London Paris Dub 2 which was one of my tracks of last year.  Massive old school acid monster and I'm having that.  We decided to veer off onto to the gay bit and see if an old arcade is still around, yup and  had a few pinballs for play but they were fucked.  Metallica pinball wouldn't even give us a game and lost about a quid on Pacman ball.

All in all a good trip out.

Printer and round up

Here is a brief round up of stuff that I've found useful this week before I'll drop a brand new hardware review on you.

Millions of unsold copies of ET Found in a New Mexico landfill.

I didn't actually get Pacman or E.T for the VCS back in the day so the worst I ever played was their dull conversion of  Space Invaders, though not actually bad enough  to bury in the desert like ET was.  I heard the tales that they were buried and thought oh well, we'll never see those again.  30 years later and it looks like some of those rubbish E T carts came to light thanks to a new documentary and a dig at the tip.

MVS Tracker.

As someone who has pissed around with trackers for ages now I'm always amazed how they always seem to crop up for the weirdest of systems.  This is a combined  tracker that will let you compose music for the Sega Megadrive and NeoGeo consoles.  Its PC only at the moment but hasn't really been updated in 8 years, so if you're holding out for a port then you're out of luck.  Its not a bad thing to be honest but if you are serious about wanting  that Megadrive sound and use a daw that can handle VST instruments then VOPM is a pretty good replacement (if a little quiet I find).

Printer Epson SX215

Found this chucked out at work and couldn't quite work out why it was junked.  For starters, I had to replace some inks in it and for once didn't have to spend an arm and a leg to do so.  My realization came when all inks was firmly in and it was time to print something.  All the test pages I printed (two) where horribly chewed up.  I'm pretty sure that's why it was thrown out as the scanner works perfectly. 

 Its a nice printer with an LCD screen and a few slots to take memory cards, so you can print from camera cards to photo paper if you have it.  You'll also need to know that to perform any type of maintenance on it you'll need to press Index sheet and scan together.  Knowing that and that the inks aren't that badly priced (£12 for black and around £!0 for colours with recons going for slightly less), I can recommend this, (so long as I can find out whats causing it to jam).

C@nt, Phlapps and Mutley

Happy Easter everyone, do hope you've been enjoying your day I've spent mine sodding about with Linux mint and getting it to recognise my dongle (fwoo fwoo) so I can use WiFi.  (Short answer, Once I'd found the WEP key underneath the router it went plain sailing  though I was so far away from said router its not really worth it, two bars at best.) I'm at my aunts place in suffolk and Mint is running from an old Dell desktop from about 10 years ago so getting closer isn't really an option, so I'm writing this from the horrible laptop instead

This isn't why I'm here of course, I'm here to tell you all about a kickstarter project that is close to my heart.
Apparentlyone of the test pressings of an abandoned Caustic Window LP have resurfaced in a sale post on Discogs. Its been removed now, but there is a kickstarter made to have it turned into digital files for backers of the kickstarter plan.  Currently if you pledge £10 or about $16.50 you will get a high quality set of digital tracks from the abandoned album. Popular IDM forum WATTM have managed to gain one off licensing rights from Rephlex records so everything is above board and legal.  I'm really tempted to go with this not only because they have upped the original limitation from 500 to unlimited, but the initial target has been reached 5 times over (at time of writing this) so is definitely on.

To be honest a couple of tracks have already popped up on compilations.  Cunt appeared on Trance Europe express 3 along with UZiq's Roy Castle and Phlapps was part of a anti Criminal Justice bill compilation. Like I say I don't have the comp to hand and the books were so shoddily put together that I can't confirm if it was mentioned as unreleased or not (pretty sure they don't mention this, or anything about Caustic Window at all), I don't have the comp that Phlapps came from so can't vouch for it, but Cunt is a pretty tough ass acid track.  Mutley seems to be only known from live sets at the moment (hope its on here) 

Finally xltronic used to have a load of fan mixes of aphex twin tracks about 2004, can remember listening to these via AOL and their shitty Real Audio player waiting for the bastards to buffer (was on dial up til 2009) only a few of these have been surfaced so far (The Celine version of Flim I have only because it was put up on Youtube, but there was mixes of IZUS as well in a similar vein).

A Eulogy for a hero. An Obituary for a nobody

There has been a lot of famous people dying recently some I've absolutely respected and some I've hated with a vengeance.  Here is a brief profile of  some of the recently deceased with varying amounts of deference shown.

Sue Townsend.

She was the authour of  the incredibly tedious Adrian Mole novels, about a kid going through adolescence in the 1980s and suffering an unrequited crush on his classmate Pandora, though he never got anywhere with her IIRC.
There was a much better tv show based on the novels but for most of the point along with William Shatners Tekwar and Steven Alterns Maya series are among the worst things I've ever read.

The BBC made a tv series out of it in the 1980's which you can see here if you really want to.  It has a nice signature tune and opening intro which I had forgotten all about until I'd clicked on it.  That's really all I wanted to say about it.

Peaches Geldof.

I can remember dad coming down to tell my mum that Peaches Geldof had snuffed it in strange circumstances.  She was famous for being someones daughter and if that sounds callous well it is.  I never really liked her all that much. She had a nice body, but ruined it with some crappy tattoos (that daisy chain in particular), and did the whole celebrity thing of giving her kids funny names.  I know I should care more but don't.

Ultimate Warrior.

To be honest, I thought he died a long time ago.  Playground rumour had it that he had aids back in the early 90's and when I heard about him shuffling this mortal coil I was really shocked.  Wrestling was a big deal here in the early 90's and although I've never given a damn about the sport I can remember him from stickers on my maths book.

Frankie Knuckles

Listening to pirate radio in the van when the dj says he will play a Frankie Knuckles track in tribute at the top of the hour. Jokingly I said what is he dead or something...  Turns out he was.  Of all the people here this is the one I was cut up about the most.  His was one of the first house tracks  I heard back when I was a kid in 1988 - 1989 (Baby wants to ride with Jamie Principle), along with Ron Hardy and Larry Levan who I would later learn about, they were where it all began, when house moved out of disco with re edits in gay clubs in the early 80's.

It comes to something when there wasn't any news on this from kiss fm which is semi permanent in the van and common room at work unless I change it to Magic or Heart.  Previously they've reported the death of another old house legend Armando back in 1997 but modern Kiss is all about the rap and the Euro trash, not the real house.  Incidentally none of the mainstream press reported this in their print editions either but we all know their bias towards dance music.

For the final word on this here is veteran DJ Leonard Remix Rroy's eloquent take on the whole thing .

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.