John Walker's Electronic House

Charity has uploaded the excellent comic Something’s Wrong, drawn by Charity, and written by Kieron.

Something’s Wrong is the book that made me realise Kieron’s really actually quite good at comics. Careful writing means the minimum number of words carry the maximum volume of plot, offering apocalypse through the eyes of believable love. It also makes him a big girly-girl with no penis. (Sez the ‘man’ who draws bunny rabbits).

Part of rebuilding the site has involved playing around with new WordPress plugins and other such hideously geeky frippery. The most exciting part has been trying to find a statistics pack that will indulge the ego in every desired manner.

A doffed hat of respect to WP-ShortStat, for being extra-double-fun, and showing nearly everything one could ever want to know, all in one window. This has led to Jim’s, Kieron’s and my discovering that we’re actually far more popular than the evil lying liars at rubbish-don’t-ever-use-it Extreme Tracking had ever let us believe. We’re great. About three times as great as previously believed.

But I am greatest of us all, despite possessing only a fraction of their fame and popularity, because I hacked the php of the plugin to tell us even more fascinating information about how damned loved and handsome we really are. I’m enormously proud of this achievement, knowing absolutely nothing of php, nor indeed any programming language beyond how to make the border flash while stringing swearwords down the screen in Spectrum BASIC. Perhaps the so-called gifts of the Holy Spirit have finally caught up with the times, and rather than causing pointless, self-indulgent, incoherent babbling at the front of cold buildings, ‘tongues’ has allowed me to understand words of any programming language. Like a modern day Peter, I shall gather the crowds of oddly smelling programmers around me, and speak unto them words of truth in mySQL, PERL, C++, PHP and XML, and they will take my message to the massives. However it occurred, whether by divine intervention, or my own inherent awesomeness, I managed to get the thing to report unique hits in the weekly box, rather than non-unique. Yes, to your knees, mortals.

However, my own brilliance could not have been quite as utterly brilliant as it currently is, were it not for the help of some slightly less brilliant people. Richard Cobbett was his usual astonishingly patient and heroic self as I whinged and complained at him while he was working, calmly fixing things that I don’t begin or end to understand. And Martin Coxall was a statue of marvellousness, leaping in to rescue me from server-level damage, and rewriting the rest of the internet until it was compatible with my site.

To these men I raise a glass of orange squash, and toast their genius.

Rocketbilly Redcadillac.

People stop and look when a Cadillac goes past. It catches the eye. It’s a big old beast of a car, ridiculously greedy on the gas, but it still represents the authentic elegance of a bygone era.

Daftest game in a long while requires least daft review in a long while. If you’ll ignore the first bit.

Well here we are then.

Updating WordPress from 1.2 to 1.5 turned out to be a bit more of a haul than expected. It also demolished all that had gone before, including the fine Mr Richard Cobbett’s lovely CSS. Not having a clue how to get it back, I decided it was time for a change.

And in changing, I appear to have caught up with a number of things.

– First off, there’s now titles to entries. Not a huge deal, but it makes navigation much easier. I’ve only bothered to title the stuff that appears on the front page.

– Then there’s Categories. This means if you’re looking for, say, a review entry, it’ll be much easier to get hold of. I’ll go back through at some point and file the older posts.

– And after a few pesters recently, I believe I’m now RSSsy. Still no idea what this actually is, but I do seem capable of it.

Huge thanks to Martin for all the help and patience and fixing of mistakes this evening. Do let me know any comments or criticisms about the new look. I’m going to fix the “boring” – Kieron Gillen, 2005, banner soon too.

I have recently returned from an oh-so splendid holiday, spent in the tropical climes of somewhere between Exeter and Torquay. Yes, I know – I am so cool.

I went with the lovely Jo Dolby to stay in a friend’s… well, we thought it was a cottage. It turns out, the incredibly generous Stam family allowed us to use their five bedroom, three bathroom, palace.

So that was a flipping fantastic surprise. There were two big gardens, some stables, and a field. And best of all, a strange man who lived in the garage.

I can’t really remember what order everything happened in, except that Sian and Rich joined us on Saturday as it was Sian’s birthday, so I know Saturday things happened then. There’s a day’s worth of pictures missing after I left my camera at the palace, so we’re waiting for the disposable camera pictures to come back. Tales of The Most Boring Castle In The World, and climbing Becky Falls in bare feet shall have to wait.

Despite appearances, I do like to be besides the seaside. (Which is conveniently located besides the sea).

Jo demonstrated a more impressive level of enthusiasm.

I shall wait until the other pictures are back to tell the tales. So meanwhile click on any of the pictures above to see the whole lot. And don’t go posting them on gaming forums this year, you weird stalking freaks.

However, what cannot wait is this picture of Richard Wand, naked, swimming in the amazing cove we found in Babbacombe Bay. I did no such thing – I have far too much dignity than to go swimming naked with Sian’s boyfriend at night time in the freezing sea in front of a scared looking fisherman. I kept my boxers on. And frankly, the world should be grateful. Stripped bare, I look like the bastard offspring of a woolly jumper and a binbag full of custard.

More soon.

I’m going through one of my 3WK phases again. It’s an internet underground radio station, that acts as my joint-leading source for discovering new music. (The other is Matthew George via ICQ. Kieron, you’ve slipped into a poor second place – tsk). The joy of the station is the constant necessity to task-switch from whatever I’m doing to see the name of the band currently playing, and make note of it in a permanently open Notepad window for future seekage. Today I have already listed:

decomposure / disconnect / at home and unaffected / unschooled

sufjan stevens / chicago / illinois / asthmatic kitty

And it’s only just gone 11am.

I hoover up new bands with an insatiable greed, and broad remit. 3WK is an excellent means to discover such newness (and also excellent people, fighting hard against the despicable DMCA rulings that make hosting such a station near-impossible – it’s only a meagre $10 a month for the pleasure of the high-bandwidth connection), broadcasting bands under the meaningless label of “indie”, which is a shorthand way of saying, “not playing the same old plastic-coated shit you hear everywhere else”. So in an hour you can discover eight new bands whose albums are now required if life is to remain liveable, and also that the new System of a Down stuff is quite extraordinary and actually does deserve to be on the station despite your initial “what on earth are they doing playing that“, while every Elliot Smith track you’ve ever heard is remarkable and it sucks that he’s dead and how come you only own Figure 8?

The other great pleasure is following the links to band’s sites. The air is so much fresher outside of the Big 4’s strongest influence. Wanting to learn more about the best girl-noise I’ve heard in forever, I discovered that Dixie Dirt are giving away their first album for free download. So pleased was I that I bought their new album for 8 pounds (anyone know why WordPress can’t cope with pound signs?) via their site. This is how it should and does work.

One of the musicians in this morning’s collection, Decomposure, has given me an extra treat – a term for describing the sorts of Christians who make me want to investigate genocide: “opposite-day Christianity”.

From the song ‘Disconnected’:

The Jesus i know had a nice home filled with stuff he worked hard to own
The Jesus i know saw those alone and sad and turned them out into the cold
The Jesus i know put business over spirit and soul – buy more, there’s no such thing as too much greed
The Jesus i know lobbied the government so his teachings could be enforced properly

i’ve got a line direct to heaven that sends me all i need
and there’s no disconnect, i’m always right because i’ve got god with me
your words have no effect, i’m better and it’s clear to see
you’ve got a twig stuck in your eye, the god i know is on my side
again.

In response to some reviewers’ accusations that the song is anti-Christian, he writes:

“I’m a Christian. i’m not going to say too much about the tenets of what i believe, or even attempt to justify to you why i believe it, but i do believe it, even the crazy stuff that might sound like unicorns and wizards. And no, believing one thing that seems irrational does not automatically make me talk to my toes or push a baby carriage full of soup cans and cheerily doff a dead cat to other nervous pedestrians. Like almost everything, it’s something with a lot of components that i’ll probably never figure out completely, never mind implement perfectly, and what i’ve got is hard to sum up in a couple sentences without overgeneralizing.”

I like that. More importantly, the music is experimental and interesting. And furthermore, in the post.

A number of people have mentioned to me recently that they perceive a tone of intolerance on this blog. This concerns me deeply, as I am the most happiest, fun-loving person going, and that these morons could think something so astonishingly rude really does sadden me.

Anyway, that aside, today I wish to condemn all owners of umbrellas to eternal torment.

I don’t call them “umbrellas”. I call them “Nine Pointed Death Stars”. And I am now firmly of the belief that possessing one without first attaining a Nine Pointed Death Star Licence should be an imprisonable offense.

The moment the tiniest droplet of rain is titrated from a cloud, up swoosh these ridiculously huge, and hugely dangerous weapons, endangering anyone who has managed the self-awareness to recognise that they are waterproof. Dodging the genuinely harmful metal spikes that begin spinning down all sides of the streets is like something from a Tomb Raider game, except without the medpacks and calming slaughter of endangered species. If someone were weilding anything else of that size and lethality, they would be immediately arrested.

I’m not arguing for them to be banned. I’m a reasonable person. I’m arguing that everyone should have to attend lessons and complete an examination before being allowed to weild one.

However, golfing umbrellas are quite another matter. What on earth is going on with those? Fifty percent of the death stars on the streets of Bath are now these vast, marquee-like weapons of mass destruction. HOW WIDE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? I’ll tell you – it’s shoulder-width. You do not need a golfing umbrella. Guess what they’re for? There’s a clue in the title. Go on, see if you can.

Banned. Absolutely banned. The punishment for carrying on is to be dropped from roof height, legs apart, onto it, which will them be unceremonously opened.

Off on holiday for the rest of the week. Be happy.

The last couple of weeks have been a frenzied trek about the country for all manner of exciting adventures.

Things began, um, a while back with Nick’s “Pre Wedding Jaunt”, and not in any way, “Stag Do”. This took place in Edinburgh for the weekend, where ten of Britain’s loudest men gathered to bellow discussions at one another and the people of Scotland. While the majority of the time was quite civilised, a token nod to the wretchedness of stag culture appeared in the form of a surprise game of paintballing. Oh, what joy.

“Why? Because it really bloody hurts when they hit you, that’s why. It’s a stupid, mindless, ridiculous activity where idiotic men deliberately hurt one another in a miserable, muddy wood.”

“But it’s meant to hurt. That gives you the incentive to avoid being hit.”

“Yes, and the most effective way to avoid being hit is, TO NOT GO PAINTBALLING.”

It was, as expected, awful. Our desired plan of splitting into two teams of five – Team Jew, and Team Gentile – were immediately evaporated when lumped in with two other stag gatherings, each sharing a combined IQ of about 7, and fewer chromosomes. These sub-human primordial oozes ensured that at no point could anything approaching ‘fun’ be achieved, too achingly stupid to comprehend the simplest of instructions. “Hold you gun by the wire,” shouted the staff. “THE WIRE.” “NO! THE WIRE!” Until eventually the marshalls had to actually take the guns from their hands, turn them around, and then put them back into their primitive, barely prehensile hands wire first. This became far worse when it came to understanding the instruction, “Don’t shoot your gun after the game over.”

I was hit three times. Once in the back of my head, another time in the middle of my back (please note I was facing forward), and a final time in the shoulder, while walking back to the base, after the game over. Adam still bears the mark on his neck where he was hit post-game.

It’s hard to say whether all that was worth it to see this, but it was certainly close.

Then there was the college residential in Cheltenham. Two days of lying around in the sun with lovely people. Well earned.

Then the final weekend of youth work, already documented.

And Thursday, Nick and Victoria’s wedding. That’s no small statement. I take full credit for the whole relationship, for reasons that are too boring to chronicle again. But let it suffice to say, they owe me everything, including the 60 pounds for the supposedly free hotel room on Thursday night.

For the last 15 years, the words “topical television quiz show” might as well have been spelled Have I Got News for You.

If any further proof were needed, it comes from the sudden appearance of two new attempts to mimic the formula. Channel 4’s 8 Out of 10 Cats, and BBC 2’s Mock the Week, both attempt to validate their own conceits through the short time between their recording and broadcast. And hope that that’s enough.

Another piece on Off The Telly.