John Walker's Electronic House

Nick’s going to kill me.

In Rum Doings Episode 52, where we don’t discuss why oh why the Russians have stolen our football, Nick and John weren’t able to meet up. Due to interventions by the weather, illness, and her royal majesty the Queen, this week’s episode was record in two separate locations, on our own. Because Skype is awful, and everyone should stop suggesting it.

So we begin with Nick’s monologue, in which he discusses colds, Kickstarter, and ideas for revolutionising the distribution of classical music. He postulates on how billionaires should be spending their money for the better good, and what is a word? You can read the essay he mentions here.

Then it’s John’s turn. He discusses Rum Doings fans, Batman, science, outlandish racism, and the coexistence of dinosaurs and man. Learn how dinosaurs were vegetarians, who loves Nick, and which famous people were lucky enough to meet John yesterday. (And sorry to my friends who listen, whom I have remembered since.)

Let’s see how cross Nick gets.

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Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e52.mp3]

The week’s weather at 7.15pm on Monday 29th November:

The week’s weather at 7.55pm on Monday 29th November:

JUST SHUTTING SHUT UP, YOU SHUTS.

Rum Doings Episode 51 (episode 50 is in the same place as episode 40) begins with the subject that we’re not discussing: what has happened to the good old fashioned British bread bin?

But instead John goes through Nick’s DVDs. Which he brought into the studio for some reason. We reminisce about John’s radio days, getting caught for lying, Nick starts lying, and musicals. The film John couldn’t remember the name of was Guy And Madeline On A Park Bench.

We discuss mega-churches, the modern pop music of the young people of today, and Cloud Cult. Then Michael Buerk, and David Starkey.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, you wretched child, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e51.mp3]

Tonight a number of RPS readers have announced that my opinions are no longer worthwhile, and that they shall be ignoring me from now onward. This is because of two crimes in the last week. I wrote about the 1993 adventure “game”, Myst, and Telltale’s new release, Poker Night At The Inventory.

The latter caught me far more by surprise than the former. The game is, beyond a very nice gimmick (four popular game characters playing poker with you), pretty weak. It offers a horrible poker game, made briefly entertaining by some funny comments from the cast. Once they start repeating, which is early on, it becomes about struggling through an awful card game, and clicking through much repeated dialogue, to try to hear a new gag. What really threw me was not that people complained that they enjoyed the game and so I was wrong (a standard response to a negative review), but rather that people were furious – I mean absolutely livid – that I’d reviewed it as a poker game.

Even more so, to do so as someone who knows how to play poker. It’s not for people who know how to play poker, I’ve been repeatedly told. I’m not allowed to play the game because of mistakes I’ve made in the past. That stupid, ignorant mistake of having learned the rules to the game.

This was only compounding my fall, following my piece on Myst written for Eurogamer’s Sunday retrospective slot.

(continue reading…)

Very welcome are you to Episode 49 of Rum Doings, during which we absolutely don’t discuss whether it’s time that PC local councils stopped trying to ban Christmas.

Instead we discuss which bits are best in Private Eye, the cream tea emergency that is the Easy-Boy Armchair, and what shops will be gone in ten years time. Then we lament books. And Star Wars. And SCUBA diving! Nick invents Abuse Therapy, and John is fat. And of course gay videogame characters.

Re Nick’s suggestion, here are the links to Bastard Of The Old Republic, parts one, two, and three.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, you wretched child, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e49.mp3]

Wow, just had the weirdest cold call in a long time. I get a lot of these, normally one or two a day. There’s various ways of dealing with them, depending upon my mood and how busy I am. Often the telltale pause before they’ll speak is enough for me to hang up, and generally start screaming in frustration that I was interrupted in mid-flow for no reason. But when I’m feeling more patient I like to have a little chat.

This morning I received one from someone from “the government” (presumably an outsourced department located somewhere in India) offering me the chance to consolidate all my debt into one loan. I appealed to him, asking him why he would try to scam people. He became very defensive, and then went straight back to trying to sell me his offer. Those are the ones that make me sad.

Then there’s the technique my friend Stu uses, which is to interrupt them apologetically, and say, “Sorry, can you hang on, there’s someone at the door,” and then put the phone receiver down somewhere and get on with my day. They’ll wait an amazing time.

Or sometimes, along with my housemate Craig, we like to see how silly we can make it. When asked our annual income we’ll tell them, “40p” and insist it’s true. Or when asked about our debts offer numbers like £5 million. On one superb occasion, Craig managed to get the caller to tell him all the private information he’d been trying to pry from Craig – his age, car make, annual income.

I always try to remain polite, because blimey it must be a crappy job. But at the same time, they’re cold calling me to attempt to scam me (I spent a good fifteen minutes with someone who was trying to trick me into installing malware on my PC, which was one of my favourites), so it doesn’t seem unfair to have a little fun.

But just now was the strangest, just because of the pure gall of it. I’d planned to keep going with it as long as I could, because I was so entertained by the irony of the whole thing. But then he gave me a feedline that could not be resisted. A feedline that when you read it doesn’t even make sense for him to have said, as if he were scripted by a lazy comedy writer. Oh, and they always ask for Mr Smith, and I never, ever say that I am him, and they always go right ahead and talk to me as if I were.

Him: Hello, can I speak to Mr Smith please?

Me: Who’s calling?

Him: Hello Mr Smith, I’m calling from Do Not Call…

Me: [laugh]

Him: I’m sorry sir?

Me: Did you say “Do Not Call”?

Him: Yes, Do Not Call. I’m calling today to help you to stop receiving cold calls, nuisance calls, marketing calls that you receive to your line.

Me: You mean like this one?

Him: Yes.

Me: You’re going to help stop me getting this call?

Him: How do you stop this call?

Me: I stop it like this. [click]

For episode 48 of Rum Doings we don’t discuss whether it’s time to ban fireworks to protect our children. But we do attempt to guess what the internet and technology will look like in 2020. And look at the sad state of John’s Kingdom of America. Then the best thing ever: 10,000 Dreams And Their Traditional Meanings. (Which turns out to be by Gustavus Hindman Miller.)

John learns some Latin, we talk about the fight for the rainbow, and what it’s like to watch a podcast being recorded. Nick then announces that Rock, Paper, Shotgun is not a blog. And then we discuss the lack of corruption in the industry.

Many apologies for the very strange blippy nature of the recording. We’ve deemed it perfectly listenable, if a tiny bit annoying. If anyone knows what might be causing it, let us know. We’re using a Logitech USB mic in a Win 7 HP Mini 311C, recording on Audacity. (If it helps, there seems to be a fictional 8 seconds at the end that doesn’t exist, which is presumably the total time stolen by the blips.)

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e48.mp3]

In a forty-seventh episode of Rum Doings, we take our lead from your Twittered suggestions. But we don’t discuss the fluoride conspiracy.

We begin by reminiscing over the last two weeks of events in exquisite detail, before diving into your suggestions. Oh, and after killing a cat, live on air.

What do centaurs do with their arms? Do our listeners hate Israel? A peculiarly placed review of Medal Of Honour. Nicknames. Do our listeners still hate Israel? How do we prefer to insulate our parcels? Premarital sex? Baseball! Prime numbers! What are our favourite most hated films? Hollywood musicals, and midi orchestras. That’s more than enough.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e47.mp3]

Episode 46 of Rum Doings begins with confusion over Ghostbusters cartoons. It turns out that Nick was talking about this, while John was talking about this.

Not being discussed this week: Staycations. But Nick does want to discuss synthesised theme tunes. After quite a long diversion into this week’s vile drink, John steers the conversation toward the Insane Clown Posse. This video being key:

This was inspired by a wonderful article by Jon Ronson, which you can read here.

Then it’s time for Nick’s polemic against Poetry, which gives John an excuse to rage about how much he dislikes Poetry Please.

And now here’s your homework. A full critical analysis, and what it means, sent to our email address. By Tuesday morning, please.

An ode to the tcp/ip protocols.

A war of ice but doomsday thaws beneath
A map of ink, once breached, a world unsaved;
A frigid winter beckons, deadly wreath
To words not launched, so bombs subsume the grave.
But missiles questing on their morbid route
Still need some tangled speech to guide them through
A chain of words in terminal pursuit
But wordly packets glitter forth like dew
They spread themselves betwixt the frosted blades
Fecundity of knowledge jumbled up
Re-formed at every end in liquid braids
Of speech now flowing into Man’s shared cup
For Cerf and allies thought it for the best
That flames be naught but datagrams of text

We consider if accents can be racist, ban “How are you?”, and complain about dreaming. Then Nick sings for us. And then completely ignores John’s attempt to sing back. There’s a teaser for a future discussion of CAP Alert, and then thoughts on Mary Poppins.

Tweet it, Facebook it, as strangers on Formspring about it. Do whatever it is that makes the internet work. And writing a review on iTunes makes us happy in our tummies.

If you want to email us, you can do that here. If you want to be a “fan” of ours on Facebook, sigh, you can do that here.

To get this episode directly, right click and save here. To subscribe to Rum Doings click here, or you can find it in iTunes here.

Or you can listen to it right here!

[audio: http://rumdoings.jellycast.com/files/audio/rumdoings_e46.mp3]

My sister pointed out that there’s a rude lack of pictures of my niece on this blog, when compared to pictures of my nephew. There’s no favouritism here, so to prove it, here’s Sarah: