John Walker's Electronic House

Things that are bad: Ken Campbell’s dying. Thanks to Tony Ellis dragging a group of us to see a man I only faintly knew from glimpses on television, I was fortunate enough to see him live last year. He was truly magnificent – a tremendous force of humour and intelligence. It is a great shame his voice shall no longer be barked at crowds.

Things that are good: I’m off to America tomorrow. I found out yesterday. Such are the peculiarities of my job, that one day I can be standing in my kitchen contemplating the possibilities of selling my Eee (anyone want a perfect condition Asus Eee 701, white, with a second, super-length battery?) in order to upgrade to an Aspire One based on the knowledge that I wasn’t going out the country for the foreseeable future, and the next packing my bags.

These trips sound so very luxurious. Whisked away to the Americas on someone else’s budget, in order to visit gaming companies and play their games, inevitably staying in lovely hotels and eating delicious food. The romance of it all does somewhat fall apart when you learn these trips last, on average, two nights. So that’s fly in, go to bed, get up, go to the company’s offices all day, eat dinner, go to bed, get up, fly home. Except in this case all the gaps those commas take up will be spent attempting to write the many pages of magazine required almost immediately.

I’m not complaining at all. It’s a joyful and utterly ridiculous job, and I’m luckier than I could ever deserve to be. But this one’s going to be busy, followed by a packed weekend that allows no room for jetlag. I predict that Monday will be spent dying, probably with a miserable cold brought on by the weaknesses inherent in rapid time travel. Or perhaps I shall be mighty and strong, sailing through, maybe even (and here I become delirious) sleeping on the plane! As if.

Instead I’m loading my – for the moment – precious Eee with things to watch when BA’s inevitably poor in-flight entertainment lets me down. Oh, why can’t everyone else mimic Virgin’s astonishingly good system, available to all? As I write absolutely torrential rains rush down from the sky, ensuring that after Saturday’s cruel teasing, August’s remarkable run of miserable weather is to continue through into September, and I really can’t wait to go somewhere with the potential of sunshine. Even for two days. Spent indoors.

Today contained my first trip to the gym. (Which I shall spell “gymn” as I think that is much better, and one should never abandon an “mn” when it is available). I was apprehensive, as you’d probably imagine, being that I am a slovenly and rotund individual, and it is not my natural habitat at all. But I was also resolute that I would go today, so much so that I got up early (that’s the sort of “early” that freelancers would gasp at, and the rest of the working population would spit at me for) to finish a review for PC Gamer, to make sure I wouldn’t fritter the day away and then declare it too late to go. By mid-afternoon I had no excuses, and walked into town.

It is the YMCA gymn, which at least separates it from the worst sorts of rich, high priced ridiculoemporums that I imagine are filled with overly muscular individuals, glaring menacingly at you as they pump their biceps and angle their threatening trouser-bulges in your direction. Men too. But I was surprised quite how modern the equipment was, the large screens mounted on many machines offering television images with the controls super-imposed. It was all daunting, and I supposed the sensible thing to do was to ask a member of staff for some guidance. I figured that I was going to be the clueless fatty whatever happened, so I might as well embrace the role with gusto. Fortunately the man who created me my membership card did not look like the threatening sort (although many other members of staff certainly did). In fact his thick, powerful glasses gave him a distinctly nerdy look.

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I’m 31 in just under a couple of months. That’s awfully old. Not many people have lived that long before, which means it’s all new territory, with few guidelines for how one survives day-to-day life at such an age.

I want to have a few things done by the time I’m 31. I’m stating them here so people can have a go at me about them when it becomes increasingly obvious I’m failing.

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Today I got hiccups for the first time in what I think might be 15 years. It’s definitely more than 10. This sadly means that my previously held belief that I’ve evolved beyond mortal humans has taken a knock. My extraordinarily strange teeth (inside the gums – they look quite normal to the non-xray-vision-eye) still give me some conviction, but it is now confirmed that I haven’t risen above involuntary spasms of my diaphragm. Pretty good run though.

There have been the odd occasions when I’ve thought I had hiccups, where perhaps two hiccup-like anomalies have occurred in a row, but these have more likely been rogue burps. Today it was unmistakably hiccups, that stayed with me for a good few minutes. They timed themselves cleverly, such that they were released whenever I walked past someone in the street, startling them. Then, when I over the initial intrigue, I took a deep breath and insisted they stop. I really don’t understand the fuss – everyone else should stop having them too.

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Today was spent visiting my family in Guildford. My new niece is six weeks old, but today was the first day I’d met her (my sister, her husband and their two kids live in the unreachable wilds of France). She’s remarkably advanced for her early age, holding up her head herself, sitting comfortably with support, and even putting some convincing strength into her legs when stood up. Despite feeling like she weighs about 3lb. All this is ideal for ‘walking’ her across tables as Babyzilla, destroying buildings and passersby.

It was also nephew Wil’s 2nd birthday on Wednesday, which marks that important moment when parents stop this ridiculous nonsense of aging their children in months. That’s fine up to the first year. Then they’re one, then “one and a bit”. “Nearly two” is a lot more practical a description than the confusing, “22 months”. Parents, stop it. Or carry it through. As of Wednesday I’m 370 months old.

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I discovered podcasts this week. You probably won’t have heard of them, because they’re so very brand new and I’m astonishingly in touch and up-to-date, in a way you could never hope to keep up with. To try to explain them to your tiny brain, they’re like some radio, but in a box on the internet.

This isn’t strictly true – I listened to all the Ricky Gervais podcasts in one go a few months after they happened, a couple of years ago. Then I entirely forgot about the concept. Recently I rediscovered this magic via Housemate Craig’s linking me to the Collings & Herrin podcast, from the audiomouths of top comedian Richard Herring and top bloke Andrew Collins. This is all hosted on their handy website, available as mp3s. Lovely, easypeasy. That’s the sort of podcasting I am built to handle. Right click, save as, dump into Winamp or onto mp3 player. At no point in this entire endeavour does it need to pass through the evil, oily hands of Apple and their one-mouse-buttoned hegemony.

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Looking up at the same time, their eyes met. From one side of the coffee shop’s upper floor to the other, the gaze held. Certainly there was instant attraction, but this was something else – this was something more significant.

The gaze sustained, mutually accepted, kept abroad from simply staring. It was comfortable. It felt safe, and uplifting. They both offered warm smiles.

He gently leant his head forward, not breaking eye contact, and then twice tipped it to the side, beckoning her to join him. Her smile broadened. She glanced at the empty chair next to her, eyes then immediately returning to his, her head slightly inclined. He grinned, looked down at his laptop on the table, the mp3 player beside it, and his full drink, and then beckoned her with his head once more. Her eyes flicked to the bags of shopping surrounding her, the large, awkwardly shaped electrical appliance she had just purchased, and then once more she nodded toward the comfortable chair left empty beside her table.

Pulling a pretend grimace, he swept a hand at all his bits and pieces on his table, waggling his head comically to indicate quite how much he had to gather up and put away. She bowed her head in brief sympathy, then pointed toward all her shopping, and the awkward box, and pulled a face in response to it all. He gestured toward his laptop, then pointed at the wire plugging it into the wall, and leant to one side so she could see how his coat was neatly placed on the back of the chair behind him. He gave a roll of his eyes at the complexity of it all. She jauntily returned his eye roll, both arms spread out to declare the sheer volume of her bags, adding a significant stare at the book on the arm of her chair, and then, cocking her head amusingly to one side, shrugged her shoulders.

He glanced at his laptop screen for a moment, then picked up his coffee to take a sip before looking back. She too was drinking, from her mug of tea, her eyes glancing at the floor. His laptop bleeped to alert him to the arrival of a new email, and he checked to see who it was from. She picked up the upturned book from the arm of her chair and found her page.

Penn & Teller’s Showtime show, Bullshit! is an often very good (and occasionally poor) debunking programming, in which the two passionate skeptics pick a subject of some manner of flim-flammery, and then mock it. They also do useful things like get experts to provide evidence, and less useful things like tricking members of the public in scams, to demonstrate how much people are willing to unquestionably believe.

When it’s good, it’s great. (When it’s bad, it’s last week’s about climate change, where they sort of muddle through talking about the business that’s grown up around it based on using people’s guilt, which is a valid subject, but muddle themselves with the larger issue, tearing Al Gore to pieces (which I don’t exactly disapprove of) and then pointing out that they don’t know if climate change is real or a myth). They’re never better than when attacking alternative medicines, but this week’s, on “stranger danger”, was unexpectedly superb.

But one moment was jaw-dropping. To set up the clip, you need to know the way the show works. Penn & Teller are in their white studio, taking the piss out of things between recorded segments, narrated by Penn. These segments are comprised of interviews with conmen/women, experts, or members of the public, and films of either the snake oil salespeople at work, or their own, mostly pointless, pranks. Penn interrupts the interviews to shout obsenities in frustration, or to point out where people are most openly lying. But mostly to shout, “Fuck!” So this episode has been about over-protective parents in denial of the realities of danger for children. They’ve been over the statistics, they’ve had idiots make stupid statements, and experts state facts, and then the following happens:

I think she is one of the most remarkable woman I’ve ever heard of. She is extraordinary. I write all this to celebrate her. The praise P&T give her is unique in the programme’s five year history, and is deserved. As Penn Jillette says, it’s humbling. This is her foundation’s site.

Oh dear me, Brown’s a goner.

I’m delighted for Scotland. I was also hoping the SNP would win purely because it’s the more interesting result. A Labour win would be a nothing – a big let-down after all the build up. But turning around a 13,507 majority to win (by 365) is incredible, and also funny. It demonstrates how deeply hated Labour have become. Not just disapproved of, but loathed.

Of course, the counter to this is the terrifying fear I now have – a certainty that the Tories will win the next general election. It’s indicative of Labour’s hopelessness, and while I’m as angry with them as anyone with a brain, they’re still a far better option than the horror that is the Conservative party. That Labour have openly abandoned all left wing principles is disgusting and abhorrent. However, this doesn’t automagically make the Tories an alternative. It makes them the further extreme of where Labour have headed. But they will win, and this country will swerve violently to the right, in line with an increasing amount of Europe. I’m genuinely scared.

And all the while the US is looking increasingly likely to be voting in Obama, who despite his current centerist behaviour is clearly a massively left swing for the nation, with a socialist agenda. At that point, with Cameron in power here and Obama in power there, surely I can apply for asylum?