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Eurosong Fever 2026!

Ah yes, here it is again. Eurovision 2026! The annual political bunfight set around a song contect. I look forward to it every year. Well, except for last year. things weren’t going to well for me this time last year, so I decided to take a break. Over the course of the next three days, I intend to double my post total on here for the entire year, with the semi-finals and final on Saturday. I’ll probably watch them all, type my feelings towards them then burn myself completely and vow to never do this again until next year.

Now, unfortunately, I’ve been a bit busy tonight, so I’m a bit behind and watching it on catchup, so if you’re reading this in realtime, then I’ll be typing about things that happenmed 30/35 minutes ago. I’m sure that’s all tradition too. Anyhoo.

So it’s starting off with Vicky Leandross. Apparently she won it.

Moldova: Satoshi / Viva, Moldova!

Oooh, flutey, and that drum beat… the Amen riff, or something? Moldova is on duty… Not a bad start, actually. I quite like this one. A good start.

Sweden: FELICIA / My System

Apparently, this is going to be one of the favourites. She’s never appeared without her mask… Oooooh, dancy. This has never been known. two songs in and I actually like both of them.

Croatia: LELEK / Andromeda

Well, this one;s starting slowly. And it didn’t get better. I knew we couldn’t go three for three. Mind you, it did get a bit better towards the end. It’ll get through.

Greece: Akylas / Ferto

Why… why is he dressed up like a tiger?. You need to see this one to believe it. Retro graphics. I’m getting sick of seeing those new. they’re overused. Worst song, but I ended up quite liking the staging. No chance of coming close.

Portugal: Bandidos do Cante / Rosa

It’s taken… is that 5 or 6 sonds before they’ve got to the sloppy ones. Absolutely nothing to this one, and considering it’s in Portuguese, I have no idea what’s being sung. Not even much of a backing track to like… I think it’ll do well.

Georgia: Bzikebi / On Replay

Lots of lalalalalalalala, in this one. One of the female singers sounded a bit of tune on this one. Not one of my favourites so far, but perfect Eurovision fodder.

Oh, here’s a bonus one. Italy. they’re already through so they weren’t on the website’s list.

Finland: Linda Lampenius x Pete Parkkonen / Liekinheitin

Apparently this is one of the favourites to win. Didn’t know that live instruments are to be played on stage, apparently, ‘Linda’ had special dispensation to play the violin. Oooh, I can see why this is is one of the favourites. Oh, great, now the set’s on fire. Yeah, that’s definitely going through.

Montenegro: Tamara Živkovic / Nova Zora

This one’s the closest to metal so far. Normally there’s a few in there, but…. er, so rry, I got slightly distracted by some lovely bottoms there. Cough. I expected to see some vampire fangs or something there. It’ll go through

Estonia: Vanilla Ninja / Too Epic To Be True

Apparently they’re called that because they make ice cream. No, seriously. YES! this is what I watch Eurovision for. Guitars. this belongs in the 90s, and it’s my favourite by far. Sounds like it’s fallen out of 1991.

Israel: Noam Bettan / Michelle

Ah, here we go. this is where all of the politics are going. Wouldn’t be surprised if we see a protest here. Well, you can hear someone shouting in the background. the song isn’t that great if I’m completely honest.

And now Germany. there are already through so I’ll leave my opinion to the final.

Belgium: ESSYLA / Dancing on the Ice

My god. I’m not quite sure what this one is supposed to be. No sir, don’t like it. Seems to be the same line repeated over and over. I might count next time it’s on how matimes she sings “keep dancing on the ice”.

Lithuania: Lion Ceccah / Sólo Quiero Más
Oh. Silver paint. Now that’s a gimmick. Apparently he’s had the silver make-up on all day. the song itself appears to be very forgettable. Certainly one I’ll not remember in 10 minutes time. It’ll probably go through.

San Marino: SENHIT / Superstar

Featuring Boy George. No, really. the song itself is very generic, I don’t even think Mr. O’Dowd can save this one. I was right, but even more Eurovisiony than the rest of them.

Poland: ALICJA / Pray

Wow. I’m glad this is nearly over. Only one mopre song, and they’ve seemingly been getting worse as the last few songs have been chronic. Apparently she swore in that song too. Never noticed.

Serbia: LAVINA / Kraj Mene

Oooh, a metal song. This one might be good. Ah yes. there’s the pointy leather outfits. And yep, it’s certainly metal. Phew. This one’s saved the last few songs. It’s even got a bit shouty.

And that’s your lot. the only thing left is the voting. I think I can fast forward most of this, might even be able to catch up.

Apparently, there’s a musical act in the middle. “Zurcaroh – Welcome To The Funfar”. Lots of acrobats. Aaaand I’m bored of it.

I’ve also caught up now so I’m watching this live…

Greece. The tiger bloke is through.
Finland. Yeah, they were guarartneed to go through anyway.
Belgium.
Sweden. Liked that one. Glad it went through.
Moldova. Ha. That was a weird one. Had a feeling it’d go through.
Israel. Oh. Saturday night’s going to be fun, then.
Serbia. Yaaay. A bit of metal.
Croatia. Oh, that was the folky one. Wasn’t sure if that’d go through.
Lithuania. Silver paint guy. Can’t remember anything about the song.
Poland. Didn’t like that one.

Right, well, that’s that, then. I get to do this all again on Thursday!

STuffed – Atari ST Disk Magazine

Right, so I’m part way through converting the big box of floppies I got from ebay. From the looks of it, there’s not much of interest to me. There’s lots of public domain disks. I have a feeling that there’s probably a few “missing in action” disks there, so I’ll certainly go through them in greater detail, and upload them somewhere. One thing I did find, is that there was a disk magazine called “STuffed” by Floppysoft – I had a check, and couln’t find anything about it, except for a brief post a couple of years ago on an ST forum. The author, at the time, lived in Aberdeen, and now lives in Australia. As far as I can see, the disks have never been converted, so I bring to you, disks 1 and 2 of STuffed…

STuffed 1
STuffed 2

Day 4 – HariBoJo

Ugh. I’m really not liking this working from home lark. Fair enough, the sleep-ins are nice, and being able to get out of bed at 06:50 and be ready to sign on at 07:00 is a nice bonus. Of course, today didn’t work out like that, otherise I wouldn’t have mentioned. Cirtix required an update, and seeing as the laptop’s instruction manual was printed in Latin, it wasn’t going to be a quick procedure.

Eventually on it came, and the morning was pretty busy. I clearly can’t say much about what I did, that’s because I’ve forgotten most of it.

Lunchtime came, and instead of food, I thought an extra hour in bed would be ideal. A big mistake, and I woke up feeling worse. Food consisted of a frozen kebab in a pitta bread. Pretty disgusting, but it guarantees my daily intake of earholes, eyeholes and arseholes I suppose. Yum.

Later on in the afternoon, Daddykins went out to make sure the car was still functioning. It hadn’t left the leafy gravel driveway of Mercuryvapour Towers since Friday, especially since we had to sack the chauffeur thanks to social isolation. I joined him, because I wanted to see something other than the artexed walls of the kitchen. Technically this trip out is allowed, as I went into a shop in Blackhall to pick up some essentials. 8 cans of coke, a bag of Haribos, packet of beefy Space Raiders, and some apples to balance everything else out. The search for a fresh loaf of bread continues.

And this is where you see me now. I watched the local news. Lots of camera shots of deserted streets, and news reporters with extended microphones patronising the local residents. One woman was asked why herself and her husband were out. She said she didn’t know. Suppose if you don’t have a telly or the internet, you wouldn’t. And especially how we’ve been told to distance ourselves from other disgusting horrible filthy human beings.

Never fear, as the government have sent text messages to all of our phones. To be fair, if you’re out and about now, you’re not going to be taking any notice of this now, are you?

I don’t really have any need to leave the house at the moment anyway. The charity shops are closed, Maccy D’s has closed. I’ve let my Pokemon Go day streak lapse, so there’s not even any point of walking to any of the nearby pokestops.

So, tonight I’ve been playing records. And I’m quite aware that Days 3 and 4 have been posted within minutes of each other, but I doubt anyone is reading this tripe anyway. As you were!

Day 3 – there’s going to be a lot of days like this

You’ll probably find there’s some days where I don’t do updates. You can safely assume that the day is going to be a carbon copy of what today was.

Woke up early, went downstairs to work. Stayed there until my dinner at 11. I broke protocol by going down to the butchers, in the hope of finding something edible, and there were warm pork pies. Spot on. So, that was dinner. I got talking to the lovely lady behind the counter, and found that they did deliveries for anyone in dire need in the local area. She handed me their business card, and she would be the last person other than Daddykins I would see that day. They also took card payments, which I didn’t know. Hurrah for contactless. I returned home to pouch on my porcine pastry

That was pretty much it. Returned home, and completed my work shift. I finished work, and went straight to bed. I was that bored.

I was awoken by my tablets. I’ll leave it at that. It wasn’t pleasant.

I then went downstairs, and found that the country was on full lockdown. Oh, nice. Of course, this made Boris Johnson the first person to officially end the DFS sale.

Day 1 of lockdown. Kinky boots, anyone?

Let me say that this was almost an entire day of isolation. I left the house with someone who is also self isolating as the call for Maccy D and Pokestops was just too great. Don’t know if that counts.

But yeah, apart from that, yesterday was my first day under isolation. Friday was also pretty much self isolating now that I’m working from home, but I went to Lidl on my dinner break.

So, what did I do yesterday? Sleep, mostly. I didn’t bother getting out of bed until 11, as that’s when I went for the afore-mentioned fast food. We returned about 45 minutes later, and then it was time to decide what to do.

Now, as I mentioned, this Coronavirus thing has meant that I’m working from home, so we all got USB headsets to commect to the… Ahem… top-of-the-range laptops (honestly, these bloody things should have roman numerals on the number keys). And what do these headsets come in? A large cardboard box. Now, my eagle eyes spotted that this cardboard box would be exactly the right size for storing 7″ singles, so I asked if I could take them home, and that was my Saturday sorted.

That meant that from 2pm in the afternoon, to 2am this morning, I was able to give a location to 309 of my 7″ singles, which also involved checking all of the track listings, catalogue numbers and bar codes, and just all-round checking the data on them was correct. So, if you as me where my copy of “Kinky Boots” by Honor Blackman is located, I can tell you instantly.

There was plenty of sleep involved too, which is probably why I stayed up for so long. Went for a lie down at about 5, didn’t even flinch until about 9:30. Oops. I did end up binge-watching 5 episodes of “8 out of 10 cats”, which had been on the sky box since the start of the year at least.

Day 2 literally never happened. I left my bed for about an hour. Maybe Day 3 might be different. I doubt it. I’m “at work”