Easter with the Barkley's

Happy Easter. As you can't quite tell we are down at my aunts place and have to slum it on an old laptop which is far from ideal.  Hope that you all have a nice day and have plenty of chocolate eggs and stuff as its the one day God throws down a Phoenix Down to revive his misbegotten son from the grave. 

I don't do religion so have spent it walking along the pier and looking at dogs.  Honestly there are hundreds of dogs here, including a few designer mongrels and the customary Labrador too.

Thanks to the Everton football scandal I've been reminded of an old cartoon show on TCC called the Barkleys. 
A sort of dog sitcom cartoon thing that was probably based on an old US sitcom (that they stole from us).  Wiki says all in the family which is Til Death Us Do Part and now I really want to see an animated Alf Garnett. To be honest I kinda rememeber the Theme tune in at odd times that Arnie Barkley is the head of the Barkley House.  But apart from that nothing much else, I guess the licence was cheap along with Groovie Goulies? and whatever else Sky put out on a weekday morning (they had an Anime version of the Little Prince / Le Petit Prince too).

First of the season.

Thanks to some glorious weather here today I've taken the advantage to visit the boot sale for my first visit of the season.  Thanks to our dear mayor Eatadick Khan we can take advantage getting two buses for the price of one, to lessen our costs. 

All in all we had a great day out, some great records bought all at one stall including some classic house and techno and a few bits and bobs including a new laundry bag.  Its a cracker of a day and we did see some stunning sights including a woman in a white dress and a thong underneath plus a really nice arse too, and a few other views in a similar vein.

Other birds included what I hoped were skylarks hopping about the scrub and on the verges some Orange Tip butterflies which I guess are quite early for the year.  Quite a productive season.


Also before I forget Sye Ten Atheist has been banned from Youtube due to vids and such you can read how and why here.  Its sad to see him go as Flinging a Faggot Off a Roof kept me going through the dark times and that and let me know that Tom Lehrer was still alive.

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)

Cortana

From today Microsoft are issuing an early patch Tuesday update for Windows 10 that will replace Cortana in all Win 10 builds with Tay.

An unnamed spokesperson for Microsoft has said that this should be an alternative choice to those who have used Cortana before.  

Aqualung

Well this is quite the thing, have you ever seen a business card CD? Sometimes I would come across them on Discogs and such but never thought I'd find one in the wild.

As the title suggests this is a business card promo DVD of Aqualungs Still Life Album that I found for sale at a charity shop up town. I don't like rock and roll let alone fey indie rock much but this is an oddity I had to have and as its going cheap £1 decided to see what all the fuss is about. 

First of all, I'd like to say that it doesn't really work on windows 10 but what you should see is a Macromedia flash front end that will play certain short clips from the album of the same name.  You can access these by looking at all files on the DVD instead of booting up the flash front end.

You get 1min clips of Easier to Lie and Brighter than Sunshine and a loop of some other song I don't care about.

I do like the concept though, as its so small and compact you could easily put a single out on this. 50MB will easily hold about 6 songs at 320K can't really imagine why it didn't take off as such though the weird shape is probably off putting and that.

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.

Micro Mart.

Decided not to go back for those two records after all as to be honest I didn't put any money down to reserve them and its the other side of town.  Still pretty regressive of them not to sell them to me priced seeing as I could probably get a fair deal on them for now.  Anyway on with today's sermon.

There's been quite a few things that have come to the end that I quite enjoyed reading, such as Micro Mart for one.    A British computer magazine that for once  covered the whole range of PCs, from a monthly 8 bit column to articles on Linux, Mac and PC itself via Amiga stuff.   I didn't get every issue but after stumbling across it I did get it when it had an interesting cover and that.  And now its gone as of the new year its finished thanks to falling sales and print media dying off.  A shame as it was always a good read. 

In a related vein Computer Music Magazine has stopped their trackers and Demo scene column due to lack of interest as well.  As someone who cannot get on with Fruity Loops style interface and such its a shame that its gone too (but understanding if its not popular) as it gave quite a bit of info regarding new tracker releases.  Its still worth it for free plug in round up and the back page classic hardware look back and what soft synth recreates this (or what effect if its a filter or reverb).