John Walker's Electronic House

Ok, listen.

I DO want to start Brian up again, as much of a pain in the arse as it is to make. But we have to sort a few things out.

Drawing Brian takes ages. Other cartoon sites that update multiple times a week make money from this, selling their infinite t-shirts, carrying adverts, etc. In other words, making Brian cuts into writing (money earning) time, and is fairly tough to fit two or three times into a week. So, er, that’s my lame excuse.

What I want is a new site. Nick has built some really excellent code that is the brains behind the operation – a fantastic little device that lets me upload them to the page without any effort on my part, and also automatically archives, etc. It’s superb. But it needs a better website around it. I’m *useless* at making websites. Disastrous. So I need someone to create a really sleek, really professional looking site for Brian to sit within. For, you know, free.

The second thing I want is to see if I can sell the odd t-shirt. I know people want them, and there’s been requests for other similar merchandisey things. I’m all up for that. It’s not as if Brian has a soul to sell… So advice on that, and suggestions are gratefully received. So there’s at least some sort of incentive on my part for spending all the time making it.

So if anyone is willing to dedicate time to making Brian a site, please email me. You’ll need some understanding of Proper Internet Things to co-operate with Nick’s script. If it’s you, then you are the best person of all time ever today.

So I went on two train journeys in the last two days, and nothing of note occurred.

Oh wow, I am The Internet’s Greatest Hero!

And not for just one reason, not three, not fifty, but TWO.

REASON NO. 1

If you score between 55 and 80% on the test posted below, you get the result:

“I imagine you’re the sort that while at school never fell for the “Would you like to join the Pen One Five Club?” joke. You know, after the first time someone did it to you.”

Which led to a moment of pure blissful wonderfulness, where the Internets’ Greatest Draws-er, Charity Larrison, asked me what the “PEN ONE FIVE” club was. Oh yes. YES!

REASON NO. 2

Blaming me directly in the comments below, Masked Dave has posted a Total Eclipse Of The Heart miming video! And as if to try and compete with the astonishing hotness of the girl from the other video, he seems a rather handsome fellow, ladies and the gay.

Oh, if I were the sort to ever write OMG!!!, it would be right now.

EDIT: It seems to be working at random. Something’s up at OKC. If it doesn’t work, wait ten minutes and try again. Or indeed, do something else.

Scanning through the new release lists for the Nintendo DS, spying games I want to bagsie for review as early as possible, I was suddenly struck by…

Well, that’s fairly obvious.

And so a Test was born: The DS Game or Spam Subject Test

Answers are linked from the results pages.

Right, so I’m going to put as much effort into reviewing this as Atari/Sensory put into making it. It’s rubbish. Don’t bother with it.

I mentioned recently how the DS is so very wonderful because it causes developers to have to think. Well, I’m not wrong. But unfortunately sometimes what they think is, “Blimey, we can just stick any old crap on that and use the stylus like a mouse.”

Sigh.

Tim told Kieron, and Kieron told me.

The internet’s latest, and certainly greatest meme: Miming to Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.

There’s little question that this is what the internet was made for. And this one is definitely the best. And everyone’s in love with the girl.

I do want to make special mention of the scene in Bandits, where Cate Blanchett’s character does the very same thing in her kitchen, which doesn’t seem to be getting the credit it deserves for starting all this.

But then there’s this one:

Give it time – get past the boring bag-on-head scenes, and suddenly it’s WRIST SLASHING FALLING DOWN STAIRS excellence.

There’s a billion of these, and as Kieron points out, the brilliant bit is that it justifies listening to Steinman’s ridiculous rock opera over and over again.

And that eventually leads to this:

I don’t know who Hurra Torpedo are, but I do know this: ALL songs should be performed by smashing ovens with table legs.

It’s always peculiar when trying to install older software onto a modern computer.

Wanting to play Gabriel Knight (thirteen years old), I had a quick go at simply sticking the CD in the drive and seeing what happened. It had a good go at installing, even wrote stuff to the hard drive, but became very muddled by the surrounding technology.

Fortunately a wise man on the internets had encountered the same problem, and thought to create a new installer for putting the program on XP. Hooray for internet people. And so with that it installed itself nice and sensibly, and even pre-set the compatibility settings for the game to run properly.

Except of course it doesn’t. When trying to launch the game apologetically tells me that it needs a display driver capable of displaying 256 colours or more.

How do you break the news to it?

“I’m sorry, I know this must be hard, but you’ve been in stasis for over a decade.”

“Computers run at… look, sit down. They run 32 million colours now.”

“Yes, I know… No, I know. The human eye can only perceive 10 million colours. You’re not wrong. But look, that’s how it is… No, it doesn’t make sense.”

“Look, would you like some time by yourself for a bit?”

I was shuffling through some folders on my hard drive, trying to find a half-finished thing I’m writing for PC Gamer, when I stumbled upon the original doc for an It’s All Over I wrote… over six years ago. So old.

It’s still probably my favourite thing I’ve ever written in the magazine, and the only running gag I’ve ever initiated. So here is a scan of the printed version, as it’s almost as nothing without the drawings by the in-house team of Gamer in 2000. I’ve no idea to whom this copyright belongs. The text is MINE MINE MINE, but the rest is Future’s. But I don’t care, because they are evil.

A couple of explanatory notes: Back in Those Days, PC Gamer had a section called “Grand Designs”, where readers would send in their awful ideas for games and a developer would be asked to try and be polite in response. And all French games are insane. That’s all you need to know. (I’ve no idea why the stupid wobbly lines are all over it – I can’t make them go away).

From the website for Cornish adventure game, Barrow Hill:

“An impressive endeavor for a small group of first-time dev’s, with a shoestring budget…”

PC Gamer Magazine (UK) – Review by John Walker

From the review in PC Gamer Magazine (UK) by John Walker:

“An impressive endeavour for a small group of first-time devs with a shoestring budget, but as much as it feels like kicking puppies to say so, not a product worth your money. 51%”

I think I’m more offended by their decision to put an apostrophe in “devs”.

And Came Down A Fountain

Anxiety disorder is mean. It’s easy to forget quite how potent and controlling it can be during the peace of the downtimes. Back in a peak, and the brain madness steals sleep, calm and most of all, rationality. I’m so much better at cutting it off now, and while flappy, less its slave. The ideal behaviour in the moments of meaningless panic is comforting distractions, and what better than a thunderstorm?

The balcony on my flat provides the most extraordinary panorama for thunderstorm viewing. Offering about 160 degrees of landscape, the bowl in which Bath lays is all mine to view, surrounded by the thunder-capturing hills. Which means, of course, that the focus of a storm is always right on the edge of the field of vision, mostly concealed behind buildings and trees.

Tonight’s storm was too good to miss this way. One bolt that snuck around the corner was an inch thick in the sky, viciously purple, and threaded with cruel tendrils. The rest, while spectacular, were more in hiding.

Remembering my Adventure 200 yards behind my house, and the excellent wall on which I had sat at one point, providing an even more spectacular view of the city, as well as one of those brain-confusing 3ft drops on one side, and 20ft on the other (Bath is steep, people), I ventured out into the peculiarly clear air.

As I walked up, my back was to the storm. Efforts to walk backward were quickly abandoned, and at one point to great effect. The very brightest lightning of the night flashed from behind, and everything in front of me became suddenly ludicrously visible, my arms and legs lit up with a deeply eerie blue. I love lightning’s unique lighting. It’s daylight doubled, able to pick out detail and highlight the gaps.

The hill behind my house, as I might have mentioned, is steep. With the incentive of reaching the top before the sky ran out of electricity, I stomped up at a ridiculous pace, my lungs quickly burning, charged with providing the oxygen for powering a poorly composed body slopping around with less-than-manly muscles. Reaching the top, I had that horrid sicky feeling in my throat from sudden exercise, too much saliva, and a very dark sky.

I sat on the wall and looked toward the point of the activity’s hub, but nothing. A few gentle drips of rain fell, and the sky remained rudely blank. There were not even the after-flickers of its calming down. It had just ceased. Didn’t it realised I’d just walked really rather quickly up a really rather steep hill? Wasn’t it interested in the dedication I’d put in? I continued waiting, staring around in all directions looking for the flashes that had previously picked out portions of the clouds all over. Nothing. And then it rained.

Standing in a t-shirt and trousers, my cap in my hand, I realised that now it was time to get wet. It was the moment when you’re supposed to stand up, tip your head back, and just be rained on.

And it really did rain. It started off gently, then picked up to, “Oh, it’s tipping down outside.” Hefty plops of wet showered down, and it was excellent. More than anything, it was cold. How long is it since I felt cold? Then it started raining properly. The sort of rain where someone feels obliged to make the joke, “I’ll start building the boat, you gather two of every animal.”

It was the right time to just stand still, face up to the sky, and let it rain that on me. To be so wet that I couldn’t get any wetter.

Walking back down the hill (now a bit nervous of slipping and tumbling – it really is that steep, seriously), I walked past a man pushing his bicycle up the hill. He looked up at me, we both grinned, and he said, “This oueuaagghh!” I nodded in agreement, smiling, and thought triumphantly to myself, “I am wet on purpose, and you are not. I am the winner.”