29 years ago I was 12 and this solemn hymn found it's way into my brain forever, by way of a cassette on Scout Camp
As I was walking down the street one day,
I saw a house on fire.
There was a man,
Shoutin' and wavin' at an upper story window,
To the crowd that was gathered there below,
For he was sore afraid.
Jump!
You fucker, jump!
Jump into this here blankit,
wot we are 'oldin,
and you will be all right!
He jumped...
Hit the deck...
Broke 'is fuckin' neck!
There wa-as no-oo blanket.
Laugh?
We nearly shat!
We 'ad not larfed so much since Grandma died,
Or Aunty Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle.
We are miserable sinners,
Fi-ii-ilthy fuckers.
Aaaaaarrrrseholesssssssss!
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 18:12, 6 replies)

My memory for Blackadder quotes
"Forgive me if i don't do cartwheels of joy, Baldrick, but your record in the cunning plan department is about as impressive as Stumpy "O'legs" McNoleg's personal best in the Market Harbour marathon"

"This is the stickiest situation since Sticky the Stick Insect got stuck on a sticky bun."

...and many, many more....

Oh, and 381 would unlock my first combination lock, for my Raliegh Grifter.
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 18:04, 12 replies)

I can remember all of Michael jackson's Thriller Album word perfectly.
"I want to be starting something, I need to be starting something"

"I told you Michael, I'm not a fighter, I'm a lover"

"It's nearly midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark'.

"They told me don't you ever go around there"

"Billy Jean, you're not my girl"

"Why, Why, I said that it's human nature"

"I need to hold you, Pretty Fun Thing"
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 17:12, 8 replies)

Maps
I can still read a map, which increasingly these days seems a rare skill. I say this because in my work I regularly come across professionals who are required to do so daily and yet seem completely incapable and with our satnav reliant society people seem to be less and less aware of how to properly use a map.

Ok I'm going to go off on one a bit here but what the hell, it seems this weeks question is more a compilation of cheats for old games anyway, what's one more guy nerding out gonna do?

Maps are bloody fantastic things. With a compilation of different data, overlays etc. you can learn everything you ever need to know about a place. As an undergraduate geologist I spent hours pouring over them every single week working out exactly what features I could follow in the field. As a boy scout I carried one with me as I led troops of kids not much younger than myself on epic hikes (or at least they seemed so at the time). I've traveled all over the place using road maps to work out the best routes and sensible diversion (a definite one up on on satnavs) and as I sit at my desk (not working but boring you lot) I have 2 seperate mapping programns open which tell me all kinds of information about land uses, legal notices, development projects and floodplains. I don't even live in this area and most of these places I haven't been to, but if you told me you lived there I'd probably be able to work out exactly what your street looks like in a number of seconds. With next to no effort at all. It's really not that difficult. You can teach kids to do it at school and make it fun and it's not a bad skill to have.

And yet yesterday while walking my Dogs I saw a man driving along an old (heavily) rutted farm track in a vauxhall zafira with 3 children in the back. He had already pulled off a significant amount of body work from his car and as he passed about 100m up the track from me he threw his expensive* TomTom satnav out the window.
Like I say, probably should have looked at a map.

*might have been free, they do seem to give this shite away.
(Monkeyofspong, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 16:59, 5 replies)

I can write fantasy fiction
that isn't 500 pages long and about moody vampires.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 16:44, 12 replies)

I can still read
which, in a world where YouTube comments exist, is not just obsolete but an active handicap.
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 16:41, 6 replies)

Stuff:
I can strip down and clean the SA-80 combat rifle. It's a proper piece of crap and I'm astonished anyone managed to shoot anything with it.

I can take a '1 pint bath'. Proper rank that is.

I can skin, clean and prepare a rabbit and cook it and usually (dependant on size of rabbit) also end up with some nice fingerless mittens. Or a rabbit glove puppet to entertain the kids with...

I know how to use an axe properly as well.

However, I'm now a director in a major investment/management firm. In the event I have to use all of these skills at the same time you had better be more concerned about the downfall of society as we know it...
( Razor What the fuck - a sig?, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 16:18, 25 replies)

Random snippets of junk
It's what you think you saw you did not see,
Now don' (break?) me, go up the stairs, pull on black suit with the black ray bans on, walk in shadow, groove in silence, start against extra-terrestrial filings, cos we ain't on no government list...something something no names and no fingerprints, somefin strange please watch your back cos you never quite know where the MIB's is at. uh eh...

And then there's...

Do you no longer harbour any loyalty to our emperor? Defecting to the rebel criminals shall be your undoing Kazan. A pity to lose such a fine officer, but the weak will die off to make room for the strong. Farewell, little rodent.
(gaj26, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 16:02, 2 replies)

Beanie Baby poems
Remember Beanie Babies?
Little stuffed animals with beans in them, that was all the rage in the mid to late 90s?
One of the dogs was called Bones. I remember the poem in his tag:
Bones is a dog that loves to chew,
Chairs and tables and a smelly old shoe,
Youre so destructive, all would shout
But that all stopped when his teeth fell out.

I also remember the login password to my dad's first work laptop (some old Apple black-and-white with a ball instead of a trackpad.
(tyrellsOwl, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 15:58, 6 replies)

Mental Arithmetic
I used to pride myself on my mental artithmetic abilities. I'd do things in my head quicker than I could by calculator. When I worked on the tills in a Newsagents at 18, I'd have the cost of whatever people were buying worked out in my head before I had it rung up on the till.

I'd be able to divide the cost of a meal with friends out evenly while they were still reading the bill. Work out the fine on my library books before the librarian had even noticed they were late back.

I just used a calculator to work out 70 divided by 10.

I made it 7.1

And I typed that into a spreadsheet without even noticing it was wrong.

Fucking hell.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 15:46, 8 replies)

A simple "back back forward"
On the Megadrive's controller when playing Raiden in Mortal Kombat (dunno which one).

It would make the character keep charging forward with some kind of horizontal headbutt.

Once you got the first one in, you'd be able to keep knocking the other opponent down every time they got to their feet. Since I didn't want to play in the first place and couldn't be bothered to learn any other button bashing combos, I did just that when playing against my brother. He used to get maaaaaaaaad.

Poor guy used to get up so early on weekend mornings to practice all the cheats he'd learnt.
( awayfromthenumbers, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 14:54, 3 replies)

It didn't work then, it doesn't work now.
I can still perform the Holger Neilson and Sylvester Brosch methods of resuscitation.
(Pugwash, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 14:52, 3 replies)

Obsolete
I'm incredibly talented at timing pressing "record" on the cassette tape button just right at the beginning and end of the Top 40 songs to miss out the bits the Disc Jockey talks over.
(DBS, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 14:27, 4 replies)

I remember the first cell phone number I ever had, from 1999.
Mind you, it's still exactly the same...
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 14:14, 1 reply)

The art of
Trolling. Pointless skill, and filling my nappy was how I trolled my parents as a mere babe.

I can still do it.
( Yo 'Ho of Charlie mass-market saucetrepreneur, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 14:14, 7 replies)

I know how to tie shoes
yet I haven't worn a shoe with laces in years.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 14:06, 2 replies)

I can still remember the exact order
Of the letters in my grandad's name, and he's been dead 30 years.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 13:33, 4 replies)

I'm very good at pub quizzes.
Without using Google.
(The Luggage is haunted..., Mon 4 Jul 2011, 13:13, Reply)

rubbbbbbbbish question.
rubbbbbbbbish answers.

My dad's car number plates from various estate cars that smelt slightly of fishing bait and stale pond water.

The cheat at the start of Robocod: James Pond. C H E A T spells cheat. what a game.

I also remember how oxbow lakes are formed.
(Pat_Gash, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 13:09, 1 reply)

All of the words to
Alien and Aliens.
(Deskbound You insignificant speck of dust, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 13:04, 4 replies)

Bio-defrag
If my brain was like a hard drive I could look though all the directories and delete folders like "Lyrics to Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell Album", "Monty Python films/sketches" and have a good old defrag and free up a bit of space. Maybe then I could remember "what I went upstairs for" and "a shopping list with more than 6 items on it"
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 13:00, 3 replies)

wanking
i did it once when i was a nipper, and have never forgotten how.
(fushundchups taste better with vinegar, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 12:41, 1 reply)

The ability to code in x86 assembly, which might have been a useful skill 30 years ago.
ProgStart:
   MOV AX, 0B800H
   MOV DS, AX
   MOV BX, 0

ProgLoop:
   MOV WORD PTR DS:[BX], 0C6CH
   ADD BX, 2
   MOV WORD PTR DS:[BX], 0E6FH
   ADD BX, 2
   MOV WORD PTR DS:[BX], 0A6CH
   ADD BX, 2
   MOV WORD PTR DS:[BX], 0720H
   ADD BX, 2
   CMP BX, 4000
   JL ProgLoop

ProgEnd:
   MOV AX, 4C00H
   INT 21H
   END ProgStart

As it's a less than transparent language, I have provided a screen shot of what this does.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 12:14, 3 replies)

Phone numbers
I used to have an uncanny memory for phone numbers, In fact I can still recall the mobile number for my boss from 11 years ago. By chance he still has the same number.

However I've been getting lazy and now rely on my mobile to know phone numbers and most of the time can't even remember my own number.

Same goes for directions to places. The Sat nav has gone from being a luxury to a necessity just to get from A to B.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:56, Reply)

WORM on the RM Nimbus
Working in DOS on the old RM Nimbus I got so good at playing "WORM" that I could fill the entire screen with the tail until you ended up having to eat the tail. I could do this repeatedly for hours clocking up a score so high that it eventually exceeded the programmers maximum theorhetical score (8 digits) and would cause a fatal error thus crashing the OS.

As leet skills go, DOS based game playing isn't really up there on my CV.
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:48, Reply)

Letraset text in a straight line, with it perfectly spaced - all without a ruler or guide lines.
Utterly fucking useless now. No wonder I'm skint. Gezzajob.
(beaverwastemanagement a real company. I want to work for them!, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:46, 1 reply)

I see a lack of this skill in the people I meet nowadays...
I am still able to to determine my arse from my elbow, and locate said arse with both hands.

I reckon I could even stretch to organising a piss-up in a brewery if needs be.....
( Kovacs Slogan free since 2003, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:19, 15 replies)

What bastard voted for this topic

(McChinaman banned, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:16, 7 replies)

I remember
learning some old useless bogus mind programming techniques which they say are meant to click people into doing something subconsciously. I like the idea. But this is nonsense and I even payed for my pal to take a course with me. which is one way to lose all your money . if it was true think how good it would make you feel to do this.now

do it now
( Clay hopes this bit is long enough to promote my websi, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:08, 12 replies)

I can...
Wire a three-pin plug

Change the oil filter, air filter and spark plugs on a V6 Capri

Recite many, many 8 and 16 bit console game cheats

Navigate my way around MS-DOS

Understand binary and hexidecimal

Recite the phonetic alphabet

Load, fire and unload a bren gun

Tell you the range, strangth and armour modifier for a bolter, circa Rogue Trader

Add, subtract and divide feet and inches

Sing the first line of the school song for Liverpool College, which is in Latin

Work out which way north is, using my watch

Sing all the lyrics to every song on Suicidal Tendencies' "Art Of Rebellion"


None of this shit is useful now.
(ScousersPet, Mon 4 Jul 2011, 11:03, Reply)