John Walker's Electronic House

This weekend I took the opportunity to escape the hectic hustle and bustle of the Bath metropolis, and get myself out to a distant, confusing land, almost untouched by humans. Devon.

Which means, of course, staying in a B&B. The Great British bed and breakfast can be a mixed fare, but my previous experience was superb. Staying near Malvern, at the Severnside B&B. An amazingly friendly place, great room, and remarkable breakfasts, it was so pleasant as to have me forget the normal nature of staying away in the UK. As the name implies, it’s right on the bank of the Severn, an extremely pretty place, and not very expensive at all. So hopes and expectations were high for our visit to Woolacombe’s… well, let’s call it Ploppytops to avoid Google results.

Ploppytops looks more like a motel from the outside than a B&B. It’s very wheelchair friendly, but unfortunately is also very dog friendly. Meaning that stupid yappy creatures can appear at any moment.

(continue reading…)

Welcome to Rum Doings 34, what must be the most interrupted podcast of all the podcasts that we have podcasted. This week we’re not talking about whether CCTV cameras have made our lives safer.

Imbibed is a black cherry soda, which we risk drinking without protective goggles. And then within mere minutes the first phonecall arrives. And a cat.

We attempt to explain BP’s real crime, and then the phone rings yet again. Listen in to Nick’s conversations! Be slightly bemused by what’s going on! Don’t call John’s mum!

A period of no interruptions features chat about Richard Herring, ordering wine, and ketchup. And then there’s a knock at the front door.

We then sniff a baby. Who becomes our very special guest, chattering away into the microphone, so quietly we couldn’t hear it ourselves at first.

There’s some actual content when we talk about DVDs, piracy, and DRM. And why some businesses insist on telling their shareholders how badly they’re doing.

Propel us into international fame. Tweet it, Facebook it, do whatever it is you young people do. And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal.

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.

I’ve been discussing the nature of affirmation and defamation with a few people recently, talking about where we get it from, and how it affects us. And one thing I’ve mentioned, to people who don’t make their living by having their words scrutinised and commented upon by the bustling internet, is comment threads under articles. And I was reminded to write about it by the most brilliantly awful comment that appeared on RPS today. Which is below.

Clearly I’m aware of the irony of a critic talking about the criticisms of their critiques, but as much as this may be, it’s still interesting to think about whether comments can affect me.

(I want to add that I’m mostly talking about comments on reviews, and the like. Comments threads on places like Rock, Paper, Shotgun tend to be much more about a regular community discussing the topic, rather than only people popping in to tell the site why the piece sucked/was great.)

I’ve flipped back and forth on reading comments. I’ve gone through times when I read none at all – I send the review to the editor, they’re happy with it, edit it, and it gets published – so as far as my job is concerned, I’ve done what I’m paid for. Then I go completely the other way and read all the comments, and respond to lots of them, sometimes getting involved in heated discussions. The latter I finally learned, years ago, is never worthwhile, and is something I’ve at last taught myself not to do. People who want to call you names are welcome to, and attempting to reason with them is almost never going to end in satisfaction. My compromise, currently, is to read them unless they’re boring, and to respond to genuine enquiries.

(continue reading…)

During a recent afternoon trip to the 1970s world of Chew Magna Lake, my friends and I found ourselves attempting to create the Unphonetic Alphabet. The motivation being, a complete set of 26 words to use to bemuse people on the phone who ask for spelling. “No, that’s John. J for jalapeño.”

It’s ten short, which is where you come in. Can we complete this?

I’m sure many have done it before. There’s probably a website devoted to the subject, and someone else writing slash fiction about the letters involved. But rather than search for that and crib, it’s more fun to do it ourselves. So any suggestions for the missing letters are gratefully received. As are suggestions for better words. L and Y are particularly unsatisfying at the moment. Non-English words are perfectly good, so long as they’re in common English usage.

I’ll edit this post as suggestions come in. When it’s finished, we’ll all win a magic prize.

A: aether
B: bee / bdellium
C: ctenophore
D: djembe
E: eye
F:
G: gnat
H: honour
I:
J: jalapeño
K: knee
L: Llanelli
M: mnemonic
N: Nguyen
O: oestrogen
P: pneumatic
Q: qi
R: Rzeznik
S: sgraffitto
T: tsunami
U: Uighur
V:
W: write
X: xylophone
Y: Yreka
Z: Zaragoza

Welcome to Episode 33 of Rum Doings, an episode with a lot of introduction. Not discussed is whether Andy Murray has given up his hope to be the golden boy of British tennis.

Our slightly room temperature root beers come from a fridge that later investigation revealed to in fact be on 3. Put your fridges to 4, everybody.

We then attempt nostalgia comedy of the present, before drinking our illegal beverage. Nick does a splendid impression of a loud noise you’ll have just heard, and then we talk Thatcher.

We reveal why John’s girlfriend has had to be put down, the Nazi origins of John’s new car, and Nick explains why fried chicken is best. Christianity is renamed, houses are purchased through staring, and incredibly, John is doing some exercise.

Nick dies, John’s hirsute nature is discussed, we ponder those who swim, and we laugh at butterfly stroke. Some Martin Coxall anecdotes are shared, and then Nick reviews Red Dead Redemption. Then all of gaming.

And what do you think about people who read paperback books on the tube? And what if it’s by Jackie Collings?

Sing operas of us to the world. Tweet it, Facebook it, do whatever it is you young people do. And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal. Cool people do it. You want to be in the cool gang.

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.

I’m a lucky man that I’m often given amazing freedom to write as I want in various publications. Obvious Rock, Paper, Shotgun affords me tremendous freedom – but in a way having no rules at all is more restrictive than having rules to break. Clearly RPS gives me space to blather on my own nonsense, and that’s a great treat. But sometimes it can be more fun to get away with it elsewhere. PC Gamer has let me have a lot of fun with They’re Back for over ten years now (eek), and over the last year Eurogamer have given me an enormous amount of room when writing retrospectives a couple of Sundays a month. These are rapidly becoming my favourite things to write – there’s an extraordinary freedom in writing a retro piece. Reviews require you to Get It Right, with the weight of responsibility, and the anchor of a score at the end. But a retrospective lets you, well, write stuff about a game. (Have I blogged about this before? Well, never mind.) Which has let me play with ideas, experiment with form, and most of all, be a bit silly. And my passion in writing is to be a bit silly.

And I think I’ve not been more pleased with one of these pieces than the most recent, about International Superstar Soccer 64, an N64 game. The idea of my writing about football is comical enough. The idea of writing it during the World Cup, and go up on the day of England’s crashing defeat, seems ridiculous. It gave me an opportunity to have a lot of fun, and to hopefully write a few funny jokes. It begins like this:

“Football! Eh? Don’t we all love football! The way they kick it with their feet, the lovely round shape of the ball, the haircuts. It’s a game of at least two halves. And have you seen when they score a goal? Gosh, everyone gets so excited about that. What a time.

OK, look, I have to admit something. That first paragraph – that’s not really me. That was the result of hours researching the subject in an attempt to pass myself off as a connoisseur of the sport. But as convincing as it may have been, I can’t keep it up. I know about as much about foot-to-ball as a gnat comprehends of string theory. Which is something I have in common with International Superstar Soccer 64.

Some of you may have noticed that the World Cup is taking place at the moment. Perhaps you’ll have heard it mentioned on the television, read an article about it in a newspaper, or been outside with your eyes open.

As the entire county drapes itself in the brutal flag of the English crusades, apparently in the belief that this peculiar display of faux-patriotism in their cul-de-sac will have a significant impact upon the success of a team of players on another continent, this sporting event dominates all senses. (Yes, things even smell of the World Cup.)

For those of us who don’t suddenly develop an interest in a sport that we otherwise find tedious, just because it’s played on an international scale, there is no escape. It is omnipresent, and not to care is to be a pariah, hounded from towns like a paedophile wolf.”

I do eventually talk about the game. You can read it all here.

PS. My favourite comment on the article:

“Don’t we all love football!”

Question mark, not an exclamation mark.

Found large chunks of this piece very condescending and patronising.

Here’s a couple of examples of people being brilliant at what they do.

First of all, there’s comic Dan Telfer doing stand up in Chicago last month. Audience interaction can be some stand ups greatest strength, and others complete downfall. Richard Herring, for instance, does not cope well with it. While he had notable success with a heckler a while back, it still reveals how reliant he is on getting through his script when performing, and his stand up almost never includes deliberate interaction with the crowd, unless it’s entirely one way. Whereas someone like Phil Kay would be lost without distractions, almost never sticking to a planned routine, allowing events to direct him. Many comedians existing in the space within will attempt to deliberately involve the audience, which if it’s to be funny relies on knowing your material and rapport. I’m not sure I’ve seen a better example of this than Dan Telfer. In the clip below he invites people from the audience to name their favourite dinosaurs, and then, no matter the name given, angrily mocks them for their choice with precise detail. It’s not only an impressive/autistic knowledge of dinosaurs, but also extremely funny too. This is a man who is just very good at his job:

Secondly, while you’ve inevitably heard about the extraordinary 70-68 fifth set score at Wimbledon this year, you might not have read Xan Brooks’ live blogging of the match on the Guardian website. It is phenomenally funny. I recommend starting from 4pm onward, and then read through to the end of the day. His job is to keep readers up to date on scores and events, and to do it in a fun, interesting way. And this is exactly what he’s done, better than you could hope. It’s so extraordinarily funny. Here are some highlights, but there are so very, very many more excellent moments:

4.05pm: On and on they go. Soon they will sprout beards and their hair will grow down their backs, and their tennis whites will yellow and then rot off their bodies. And still they will stand out there on Court 18, belting aces and listening as the umpire calls the score. Finally, I suppose, one of them will die.

6pm: The score stands at 34-34. In order to stay upright and keep their strength, John Isner and Nicolas Mahut have now started eating members of the audience. They trudge back to the baseline, gnawing on thigh-bones and sucking intestines. They have decided that they will stay on Court 18 until every spectator is eaten. Only then, they say, will they consider ending their contest.

6.25pm: I’m wondering if maybe an angel will come and set them free. Is this too much to ask? Just one slender angel, with white wings and a wise smile, to tell them that’s it’s all right, they have suffered enough and that they are now being recalled. The angel could hug them and kiss their brows and invite them to lay their rackets gently on the grass. And then they could all ascend to heaven together. John Isner, Nicolas Mahut and the kind angel that saved them.

7.45pm: What happens if we steal their rackets? If we steal their rackets, the zombies can no longer hit their aces and thump their backhands and keep us all prisoner on Court 18. I’m shocked that this is only occurring to me now. Will nobody run onto the court and steal their rackets? Are they all too scared of the zombies’ clutching claws and gore-stained teeth? Steal their rackets and we can all go home. Who’s with me? Steal their rackets and then run for the tube.

8.40pm: It’s 56 games all and darkness is falling. This, needless to say, is not a good development, because everybody knows that zombies like the dark. So far in this match they’ve been comparatively puny and manageable, only eating a few of the spectators in between bashing their serves.

But come night-fall the world is their oyster. They will play on, play on, right through until dawn. Perhaps they will even leave the court during the change-overs to munch on other people. Has Roger Federer left the grounds? Perhaps they will munch on him, hounding him down as he runs for his car, disembowelling him in the parking lot and leaving Wimbledon without its reigning champion. Maybe they will even eat the trophy too.

Growing darker, darker all the while.

9.25pm: Still, if you’re going to watch a pair of zombies go at each other for eleventy-billion hours, far into the night, it might as well be these zombies. They were incredible, astonishing, indefatigable. They fell over frequently but they never stayed down. My hat goes off to these zombies. Possibly my head goes off to them too.

Please do read the rest, because there’s so much greatness in there.

In our 32nd podcast, with Nick fully recovered from last week’s cold, we don’t discuss EEEEEEEERRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN.

We cover all bases when discussing football, ponder Trident, and wonder if cream teas work abroad. Then via coming out stories we discuss the James Randi Educational Foundation million dollar prize, dowsing, and how cold reading works. Then there’s memories of some of the funniest moments of Magician Uri Geller looking like a fraud and a fool. Unfortunately the programme On Holiday With The Gellers is not on 4oD. But please do enjoy his being exposed by James Randi on Johnny Carson’s show:

Sadly we cannot link to the clip from Leverage, due to the pathetic stupidity of TNT demanding that the free promotion of the programme be removed from YouTube. But we do discuss a number of television programmes that have professed to demonstrate paranormal powers, and some that have set out to do the opposite. We consider the complexity of stochasticity, the uncomfortable nature of pranks, and we wonder at the wisdom of the NHS’s “Wake Up To Rape” campaign.

Meet John’s sock puppet boss. And then there’s a few words on the budget. Which you’ll not be surprised to learn end up being more about the Matrix and how we annoy our friends.

Trumpet the excitement of us to the world. Tweet it, Facebook it, do whatever it is you young people do. And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal. Cool people do it. You want to be in the cool gang.

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.

It’s hard to find words to express the horrific duplicity of Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrat party. So to comment on today’s budget, and the announcement from the Coalition Government that VAT would be raised to 20%, I’m instead going to use some words Nick Clegg said on the 8th April:

Nick Clegg reveals Tories’ £13bn VAT bombshell

“Liberal Democrats have costed, in full, our proposals for tax cuts. We can tell you, penny for penny, pound for pound, who pays for them.

So if you’re on an ordinary income, you have a choice. If you want your taxes to rise: vote Labour or Conservative. If you want your taxes to fall: choose the Liberal Democrats.”

In an unprecedented 31st episode of Rum Doings we don’t discuss whether we are dissatisfied with the results of the Liberal Tory coalition.

Instead we attempt to muster some sense of interest in the football, but far more quickly find rounders and six year old cricket more interesting. There’s thoughts on how Americans are much better at spelling than the British, potential new reality shows, and Biker Grove facts.

Can you own slippers without a pipe? Who is the best audience for easy comedy? And how tidy should your desktop be? And we explore new territory in removing the funny from comedy.

We recall our most dangerous teachers, and most criminal teachers, and plans to help gym teachers. Court-based naughty steps, short-cuts in French, and idling on runways. Then some clear rules about speaking on public transport.

Trumpet the excitement of us to the world. Tweet it, Facebook it, do whatever it is you young people do. And writing a review on iTunes helps us a great deal. Cool people do it. You want to be in the cool gang.

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.