Category: Things I found on the internet

Avatar Ouroboros DVD review

Huh.

Have you ever read something that made so little sense you skipped over it, only for your brain to react much later with an almighty, “you what?” that left you mildly stupified?

I know, that’s a very niche situation. Let me try and explain.

I was reading some reviews of films on CEX. I do this on a regular basis because they’re rarely about the quality of the film itself and contain such poor punctuation and grammar it makes me feel slightly better about my own poor grasp of the English language.

I saw the review above a few days ago and had to come back to it to try and work out the logic (if there is any).

Did he buy it and then get it again? Does he mean that he bought it digitally but because it had such a profound effect on him, because it was such a wonderful and thought-provoking work of art that he purchased a physical version to enjoy forever? Perhaps it’s supposed to be a story about time travel:

“I bought this dvd (present), because i liked it (past), and thought it was brilliant (still past) so I got it (back to the present).”

Who’s to say? You could go round and round and never fully understand the true meaning. I guess we’ll never know what *checks* stewardle was talking about. If only I’d gotten to him earlier. Ten years is too long.

Avatar Memory Flash: celebrities

When you were watching television as a kid did you ever notice a person or persons who seemed to be everywhere? I watched a lot of TV when I was young. I drank it all up at all times of the day. I would watch kid’s programmes very early on, mundane game shows and special interest programmes during the day and films that were definitely not for my age group late at night.

Those interest programs and gameshows though, they were something else. You’d be watching something like ‘Noel’s House Party’ and a particular someone would be there, and then they’d also be on ‘Blankety Blank’, and then you’d see them later on in the week on ‘Crosswits’. This person would always be there, no matter what you were watching on what channel. They still flash into my mind every now and then and the majority of them I have no idea why they’re famous. I thought it best to therefore look into the CVs of a select group so that we can all remember why

Lionel Blair

Lionel Blair was an actor, dance, choreographer, tap-dancer (I remember this about him the most, don’t ask me why) and television presenter. When he father died when he was thirteen, he became the breadwinner for the family and took to the stage to earn money. He briefly took on a career as an actor before deciding dancing was for him. His dance troupe appeared on a number of TV programmes in the 1960’s. He also appeared in the Beatles film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ and was one of the team captains on the game show ‘Give us a Clue’ from 1979 until the early 1990s. Later on in his years, he earned up to £100,000 for a six-week run doing pantomimes. This is but a brief insight into what must have been a very illustrious career.

The Krankies

This was a husband and wife duo, Ian and Jannette respectively, where the latter dressed as a schoolboy called Wee Jimmy and the former was their umm paternal figure. Unusual setup aside, they began their comedy career performing on the circuit during the 1970s and were given a big break with a spot on the Royal Variety Performance. They released a series of pop singles and an album, they had roles on several television shows including Crackerjack (?) and the Joke Machine (??). In 2003, Wee Jimmy Krankie was voted ‘the most Scottish person in the world’ by readers of the Glasgow Herald. The most interesting aspect of all of this me looking at Wikipedia is that in 2009 they were invited onto the Paul O’Grady show for the pantomime special of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ in which Janette played a hooker and Ian played a rampant camel. Yes, you read that right. I’m sure that’s not the strangest part of their careers but hey ho.

Gary Wilmot (who?)

Wor Gazza needs no introduction. Already adept at singing and performing, his big break came in 1978 when he featured as part of a comedy double act with Judy McPhee (?) on ‘New Faces’. This then led to numerous appearances on ‘Copy Cats’, ‘Knees Ups, Cue Gary’ (??) and ‘The Keith Harris Show’ (???). In addition to co-presenting the kid’s quiz show ‘So You Want To Be Top’ (I’ve never heard of any of these things), he hosted something called ‘Showstoppers’ where wor Gaz would sing songs from musicals with special guests, although the main point of the show was for celebrities to learn and perform a song in ten days. Nobody cared about that mind. Gary was so popular that his original sixty dates taking the performance on tour had to be increased to one hundred and sixty due to phenomenal demand.

We all know his marvellous music career including such classic albums as Double Standards, The Album and, of course, Love Situation.

Gaz has dabbled in theatre too playing numerous roles in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’, ‘Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’. I personally remember him being the guy man in ‘Chicago’ when it was showing in Leeds around maybe 2010. Not because I actually went to see it but because I saw the poster in Leeds train station and took a photo of it (and I still have it somewhere).

I also saw him recently on Richard Osman’s ‘House of Games’ which was only showing last week however I can’t remember if it was a repeat or not.

There you have it. A comprehensive insight into the world of people who were around when we were growing up. It’s not too much of a understatement to say that there’s a lot going on here (especially for Lionel Blair, who knew?) and I would thoroughly encourage everyone to go do their own research.

Also, what happened to Rowland Rivron?

Avatar Ba-na-nay-nay

I woke up on Thursday with a specific purpose. I didn’t know that purpose until I got to work later on that morning.

I was sat next to wor Geoff, who’s always got something interesting to say. We were chatting about interesting jobs and he mentioned bananas.

“Bananas? What do you mean?” I asked. It turns out that on his breaks wor Geoff likes to browse the Internet and goes down rabbit holes of various topics depending on how he’s feeling that day. He mentions that apparently there is a job called an authorised banana weigher. I scoff at such a prospect but a little Google later and I find the details on gov.uk website. There IS a job where you are a person who is officially authorised to weigh bananas. I excitedly scan through the page looking for the details on how to become one and reach a list. In order to become one you have to:

  • have no record of infringement or repeated infringements of customs and tax legislation
  • provide assurance that weighing operations will be performed correctly
  • have access to appropriate and maintained weighing equipment
  • maintain accurate records so customs can carry out controls
  • give customs advanced notice of all weighing operations

It’s beautiful. I can do all of this. All I need is some proper weighing scales and I am golden. I’m about to click on the link to fill the form in, well on my way to being an official banana weigher, and my eyes drift back over the list. I’ve missed one. There’s a fairly important one that I must have glazed over.

  • be involved in the import, carriage, storage or handling of fresh bananas

Boo! Booooo! How am I gonna start importing banana? I’ve got no contacts in the banana industry. I can’t fill in a form and start walking around in big shoes, I have to *actually* do something outside of my comfort zone.

Crestfallen, I close the page and return to my job. The excitement has gone. I will never be fully authorised to weigh my bananas, your bananas or anyone’s bloody bananas.

Avatar Trouble at the Winston

It’s finally happening. You know that venerable old videoconferencing system Microsoft has produced for years? You know the one that changed the world of video chat. No? The one EVERYONE used to use… right up until the point that the world went to shit and everyone needed to video call people? No not Zoom… Skype! Yes Skype, the underappreciated grand master of video calling. Well not for much longer…

As reported by ARS Technica skype is going to be put to sleep on 5th May after 21 years serving the VPC (Virtual Pub Community). Sad times.

It seems like we are going to be able to move to teams with personal accounts, which is nice, but what are we going to do without the incessant ‘tech titting’ or the random interjections of an animated prawn? I’ve tried it and I can sign in to Teams with my outlook.com account, although it hasn’t brought across any of the old chats, which the article suggested it should.

It truly will be the end of an era. How do you feel about the death of an icon (even if it is a pretty crappy one)?

Avatar It’s got CBA written all over it

There are times when we all have good intentions, when we’ve set out to do the best or the right thing only to fall at the first hurdle. “Yes, I intended to sit down and set up that subscription to support the homeless cats in Greece but there’s a repeat of ‘Changing Rooms’ on that I cannot miss.” Things like that.

Laziness is apparent in human beings more than all the positive traits we got going. It’s all too easy to wave off your obligations with a swift, “I can’t be bothered” because it’s Friday night or it’s Sunday morning or it’s three weeks to Kwanzaa and I still haven’t figured out what I’m wearing. We’ve all got excuses in spades.

Recently I was browsing the World of Books website to see what games they had in stock. It seems as though madness has taken over because their prices are even more laughable than the stuff on Ebay. I’m not sure who’s been doing their pricing but they need to calm the chuff down. What did make me do a double take though is contained in the image below:

Now, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know what bloody game this is. It looks to be Chinese or Japanese, beyond that I’m lost. Clearly the person doing the listing had the same problems because rather than translating the title or looking it up on Google, they chose to set it as the wonderfully-named ‘????????? 2’.

Beautiful. Don’t change a thing.

This is a phoned-in job if ever I saw one. I only hope they get the first ‘?????????’ game donated in too so they can be sold together as a set.

Avatar Valerie

Being an irredeemable transport geek, I follow several blogs and social media accounts about both roads and public transport. 

One of them recently linked me to an article about a new scheme on the Washington DC Metro system, where indicator lights are being installed outside some stations that tell bus drivers to wait. The idea is that buses will wait when a train has just come in, so people can make the connection from a train to a bus instead of emerging from the station to see their bus already driving away. It seems like quite a nice idea. 

Anyway, I’m not writing this because I think you need to know about innovations in multimodal transport integration in the District of Colombia.

I’m writing this because the news article I was linked to is written by someone called Valerie Bonk.

That’s all. As you were.

Avatar You are such a monkey puncher

What would you think if I told you there was a video game called ‘Monkey Puncher’?

Would you think it was a simple game about twatting a monkey in the face over and over again? Perhaps it’s one of those free-to-play mobile games that you download, use once for a cheap laugh and then carry on with your life? Look at me now, neither of those options is correct.

‘Monkey Puncher’ is a game developed by Atelier Double and released for the Gameboy Color in the year 2000. I had never heard of this until a few days ago where it briefly appeared and then disappeared on the CEX website, no doubt snapped up by some lightning-fast robot desperate for his next gaming fix. The goal of the game is to train a monkey to fight in organised boxing matches in order to save the main character’s father and sibling. Then it gets stranger.

It sounds like a monster-collecting game but sprinkled with other elements. You train the monkey so he gets better at fighting then you *reads* send it out to the shops? It goes out and buys items for you. Huh. Then what happens?

“Sparring involves a normal match between the player’s monkey and a computer-controlled opponent, although without a clear winner or any reward beyond stat increases. All the monkey’s stats have a maximum limit. It is possible to date your monkeys either with each other or with a monkey from a friend or a dating shop within the game. After dating, the first monkey vanishes and is replaced with a new baby monkey.”

When I first read that paragraph I thought it said that you could date your own monkey which seems like a gross conflict of interest and not something that should be in a kid’s game. That said, none of what I’ve read should probably be in a kid’s game. You force the monkey to beat up other monkeys, you let it loose in the general public, you can whore it out to other monkeys to make better baby monkeys and this is all to save your family? I doubt Big Dave would approve of these methods to save his life.

There doesn’t appear to be a sequel, almost as if the world could not take and was not ready for an experience such as this. In a hundred years time when the alien overlords have taken over the world then possibly monkey punching will be a real thing. Given how prone the internet is to fads and everything extreme and extremist perhaps we may not have to wait so long before Twitch is chocked full of streams of trained monkeys beating up celebrities to raise money for charity. If I can make a prediction for the future within the next ten years, I would put money on that.

Avatar Personalised shopping recommendation

The internet is too clever. If you go over here to a website or something, and do a bit of searching around, you’ll suddenly find that other shopping sites and social media are offering you adverts for the thing you searched for. How do they know? How are they so effectively tracking me around the place? It’s crazy.

Sometimes the suggestions that come scrolling past your face are so uncannily pinpoint accurate that it’s scary. Other times you feel like maybe the algorithm didn’t have enough to go on and it’s making a wild stab in the dark.

Recently on Instagram (follow me if you like, I never post anything) I’ve been seeing the same advert coming up again and again, posted there by some robot working for Amazon who clearly doesn’t have a very firm grasp on what I want to buy. Its headline suggestion is this all-plastic portable bath with a lid. You can apparently poke your head out to look at something on a laptop, presumably while out and about. Perhaps it’s for people who have sudden irresistible urges to take an immediate bath while, I don’t know, in the car park at Sainsbury’s or half way up a hill in the Peak District.

If you then scroll right, the rest of the suggestions are a real mixed bag. There’s a green leather Chesterfield-style chair and a frog-shaped plantpot. However, there’s also a bed covered in Lego studs that you can build Lego models on, and it even has a display area for minifigures in the headboard. Now that’s something I really do want.