amazing, I managed to get my serializer service correctly working; perhaps after I add a bit more error handling I will consider publishing it on npm or something... it actually manages, in like a small-ass file do what  promises, but fails to deliver on
Still can't figure out how to connect up and properly use karma with my setup of requirejs on angular so I just settled for using my usual setup of chai and mocha instead. Still TDD, no fancy angular stuff built in, but at least better than nothing. As a consequence, I should probably consider ripping out the old junk with karma