A Megablast from the past...

No, I can't quite believe it myself. The search, the sacred quest that I've been on for years, nay decades (-ish) is finally over. Yes, you all thought that I was just a nutter with an overactive imagination on top of a worrying fetish for ancient arcade shmups (as well as a selection of cute, furry animals but we won't go there) but I've finally cracked it. That bloody game that I told you about, the one with the uncredited rip-off of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu as part of the soundtrack. Okay, so it wasn't Thunder Cross after all, that doesn't matter (I'm 99% sure that both games were briefly in Electronic Experience together at one time). No, it was an old skool Taito belter called Megablast !!! And here's some footage (with lovely audio) to prove it...



Ah, the wonder of KLOV and an internet world chock full of sad, demented loonies interested in the same kind of obscure, ephemeral nonsense as the big fellow. YATA!!!

Made with the help of -

Autechre "Amber" - Lovely old skool experimental techno for a gnarly old skool gamer to drool over while rocking like it's 1991.

Mr Heli

Was most excited the other week to get a letter from the regimental commanding officer of the chaps in the TA building next door informing me that there would be a Royal Navy Sea King landing in the neighbouring car park (!) on the coming weekend as part of some routine training exercise. Iommi be praised, it must be Christmas again! A freebie air show from the comfort of my own back bedroom. Indeed, at the very least, what a bleedin' glorious racket to look forward to if nothing else...

Yes, there's nothing the big fellow likes better on a Saturday night than some big chopper (!) squeezing into his backyard (!!) to deposit its load of seamen (oh, matron, really !!!). Sadly, I was double booked last night, being out at the concert hall to listen to some old bastids hack up all the way through the RSNO playing Mahler's 4th (yes, I've fulminated over that kind of thing before) so I didn't get to see the initial landing... but I did catch the bleeder for posterity when it took off again at 11.00pm - timed brilliantly to coincide with the pundits talking their usual stock blandola p*sh on "Match of the Day" such that I didn't even miss any of the fitba highlights action - perfick! Shame the same can't be said about my shocking attempt a camera work...



Yes, I know, it's darker than the back of Ashy's neck (another one for the Hillhousians out there) but it was all kicking off at eleven o'clock at night, y'know. Funnily enough, at around the 0.12 mark, Lord Lucan belted across the car park out of the undergrowth heading towards the river riding Shergar but I couldn't quite film it properly in that bloody light either...

BTW, I was contemplating dubbing the music for one of my favourite old skool arcade / ST / Amstrad shooters over the vid but it would have been sacreligious - turn up thye volume and hear that wonderful roar. Marvellous... :-)

Cute little Flocke

Without wishing to turn this blog into an on-going soap called Uncle Mex's Polar Bear Sanctuary, I couldn't help but post a link to another wee eisbärbaby who's driving people knutty (ha, how droll!) over in Deutschland. Her name is Flocke (pronounce to rhyme with Fokker, a la Stan Boardman "but these Fokkers were Messerschmitts") which means "Snowflake" in German. And she has her own blog as well, naturally.



What a wee cracker! BTW, I think the sound you hear in the vid is snoring, not flatulence, so don't be getting all snippy with the wee yin over it.

You Say You Want a Resolution?

Hallo meine freunde (oops, still in frisky Fräulein stalker mode), the new year has finally reared its ugly head and it's now time for making known my plans for world domination once again. In the spirit of this article in the current Wired magazine, I thought that I would kick off the year by sharing some of my nerd-specific resolutions for the coming annus horribilis mirabilis.

1. I really gots ta get myself a Wii. Someone, somewhere will have the feckers in stock again at a reasonable price, at least by the spring... after which time the mighty Wii Fit will finally be available in the UK. Oh, yes. In fact, PDC World Championship Darts 2008 could just be getting a look in around that time as well... Hell, it's a public service helping Miyamoto-san and co beat back the brain dead 3D FPS HD acronym flogging hordes...
   
   
2. Must continue to keep the feck away from social networking sites. Enough already with asking the big man for links to his Facebook or MySpace pages. Fuck off. Am I prepared to suck on a meaty slice of the Gates / Murdoch corporate cock for the dubious privilege of getting relentlessly spammed by a million "friends" that I either don't know or never gave a flying fuck about in the first place? I really don't think so. Did I somehow get into this ole computer thang because I'm some ultra ebullient people person with some latent desire to buddy up with 101 random cunts? Fuck, no. Gimme some anti-social networking, I'd buy that for a dollar. Yessir, keeping out of the road of all that nonsense really won't be a problem for old Mexton. And you can take that one to the bank.
   
   
3. Yes, make 2008 the year of the Linux desktop! Well, okay, round at Uncle Mex's house, that is. Haven't had a proper Linux installation since I punted the old P133 a couple of years back. Will probably plump for an Ubuntu /Kubuntu partition and use that for my internet access, Python hacking, etc. I'll tell you this, XP is the last feckin' version of the beast of Redmond's piss awful operating system family that I'll be having as my main desktop platform. I think my next x86 will be a Mac, for starters...
   
   
4. Hi-Fi separate system, make it so! Next music system will be separates based, that is a cast iron certainty. I've had more than enough of the recent CD playback behaviour of recent micro systems where the player has somehow decided to take it upon itself to add in its own little gap between every track, regardless of how the original disc was mastered. Horrid stuff that really fucks up your listening experience of whatever Live Evil it is you are listening to. Wretched, awful (yet apparently wilful) negligence and stupidity, increasingly common at the lower end of the market with those players engineered to play MP3s straight off CD-R/RW discs. Balls to all that. ASAP the big man will be off down to Richer Sounds to get things sorted and circumvent this silliness.
   

Hmm, s'pose I'll have to check back here later on to see whether I have actually kept any of these promises, if I remember. Bugger.

Made with the help of -

Van Der Graf Generator "Pawn Hearts" - If I need reminding just what a glorious singer the mighty Peter Hamill is, I stick on a cold blast of this little beauty. A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers on yo ass.

Christmas Leftovers

Hey-ho, howzitgaun ? Hope everyone out there has had a most excellent year and been well rewarded for being such good boys and girls. Thought I'd end the year with a few random observations from the Christmas period. More of the usual odds-and-sods rubbidge that you've all come to know and love, why change a winning formula, et cetera...

1. I've really enjoyed watching Polar Bear Week with Nigel Marven (wow, what a bolt from the blue, eh?) but I couldn't help noticing something familiar about the main man...


Oh, you don't think so ? Well, it's all too easy to crit there siticizing... (sorry)

2. Went to see "I am Legend" at the flicks the other day and it was mostly bloody marvellous. Surprisingly thoughtful and restrained in tone for the first three quarters or so, intelligent and un-Hollywood like, and a good few divisions above the no-brainer shoot-'em-up b-movie fate that I feared it might have been heading for when reading of it's troubled development over the years. In fact, it turned out (mainly) to be less an action movie, more a meditation on the central character's desperate attempts to stay sane in the face of the starkest isolation possible... with the revelation of big Willie nailing his role down as easily as cracking open a can of cold beer. That lad is a proper actor, yet he can still somehow bring through his old Fresh Prince likeability and have it as just another string to his bow, not the credibility millstone it might have been. Yes, in fact, he was even better than Chuck in The Omega Man. High praise indeed from this particular seventies sci-fi nut, believe me...

The subtle CGI for the empty, overgrown New Yoik setting was astonishing, utterly convincing from the get-go, a prime example of the sfx field at its very apex - sadly the work done on the infected "zombies" when they eventually surfaced was the diametric opposite, rubbery, unreal, cut-and-paste baddies (who all shared exactly the same f***ing face, jeez, this is 2007 FFS!!!) which never once threatened to look like they were ever real, individual, human beings in the way the story demanded, putting the kibosh on any of the unsettling undercurrents that the audience is supposed to feel in this sub-genre (say, the "they're coming to get you Barbara" Johnny moment when he comes back near the end of "Night of the Living Dead"). In fact, the whole thing did finally head out of the door in the rush to the usual generic, action packed climax - we couldn't really expect a movie of this epic budget to hold back the barbarians of idiocy from the door for the whole duration. But, thankfully, they didn't fully sell out on the ending. It deserved that at least. I just wish that the old Johnny Depp as Ben Cortman rumour had been true. I'd certainly buy that for a dollar...

3. I didn't succumb and buy a Wii but the potential of the kind of thing shown below makes me hope the big N will continue to hand $ony and M$ their collective a$$e$ in 2008. I implore you to watch this, honestly. Bottled brilliance.



Anyhoo, folks, I'm off to watch "The Third Man" - all the best in 2008... Slàinte Mhath !!!

Love is a Many Splintered Thing...

Alternatively...

"Well, that clip certainly gives me wood"

or...

"Now, that's what I call a good, old fashioned varnishing"

or even...

"Super Noni, going like a bunny, with a lucky little ventiloquist's dummy!"



Thankyouverymuch :-)))))))

Year of the Bear

Fellow Knutians ! The wee man is one year old this very day so I thought that I'd change the furniture around a wee bit to celebrate.

I say "wee" man but that isn't quite accurate anymore, he's absolutely bloomin' enormous. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's him starring in that new movie that folk are talking about at the minute...


Actually, any reference to compasses, golden or otherwise, has for years made me think of the (hopefully apocryphal) urban legend about the overexcited onanist at the back of the class in a school biology lesson getting too excited at the sight of the naked female form in the film being shown and taking direct action with said drawing implement to prevent his, erm, imminent artexing of the underside of his desk (ewww, dear Lord, why ?????). Straight down the eye, apparently. Yup, a lovely image to leave you with.

Anyhoo, back on topic, happy birthday cutey Knuti !!!

Made with the help of -

The Guillemots "Little Bear" - Well, what else could you expect ???