I’m pleased to announce the first ever Custom PC book, the Ultimate Guide To PC Gaming, out just in time for Christmas on the 4th of December. It’s everything you need to know about PC gaming in one 174-page book.

It went to press yesterday, so we’ll get copies in the office at the end of next week hopefully. A lot of work went into the book - and I’m really pleased with the design and writing in it. The internal design was inspired by the design of Factory Records sleeves, as I was recently given a book called FAC461 - Factory Records, The Complete Graphic Album, which features lots of the famous Manchester record label’s beautiful designs. We used a font very similar to the one found on the front of Joy Division’s Substance, and the bright colours and grids were developed from the look of some of New Order’s singles.

The writing’s aimed at a more mainstream audience than CPC is,the idea being that there’s a very strong line-up of PC games at the moment (WoW, Warhammer, Left 4 Dead, Crysis, Fallout 3 etc etc) but that people might be put off playing them because the PC is typically thought of as a difficult machine to use, especially in contrast to games consoles. Hopefully the book will succeed in demystifying PC gaming and showing what a rich, varied and involving experience it can be. It’s going to cost £7.99 and will be available from WH Smiths, Borders and Amazon.

Warning! Awkward geekery ahead. Here’s me on the BBC website, talking about Windows 7. In short: it looks a lot like Vista, especially at this early stage - much of the stuff previewed by MS (and covered on the PC Pro blog) doesn’t appear to be in the version we had to play with. But it’s fast to install, quick to load and seems a lot less annoying, a lot snappier. So far, so good. Issue 64 went to press yesterday, maybe next week I’ll have some time to run some proper benchmarks, see how it is for gaming…

Omaba OMG

I was with an American friend last night, and even at 11pm she didn’t dare believe it was going to happen.

It did though, it really did.

Writers with a firmer grasp on the issues, the times and the rhetoric you need for them have delivered the goods. And of course Obama himself did. His speech wasn’t as exuberant as it could have been, and it didn’t luxuriate in the achievement itself as an isolated moment of incredible success. Instead it was thoughtful and powerful. Touchingly, the language emphasises that this is bigger than one man. Bigger that one campaign, more important than one election and one choice. It echoes with repetition, it’s rich with patterns and has a solid structure which gives a sense that a chain of voices made this happen; that this moment is linked to many more and that what you do now matters to the future and that everything is connected:

“This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight is about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing – Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.

She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn’t vote for two reasons – because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.

And tonight, I think about all that she’s seen throughout her century in America – the heartache and the hope; the struggle and the progress; the times we were told that we can’t, and the people who pressed on with that American creed: Yes we can.

America, we have come so far. We have seen so much. But there is so much more to do. So tonight, let us ask ourselves – if our children should live to see the next century; if my daughters should be so lucky to live as long as Ann Nixon Cooper, what change will they see? What progress will we have made?

This is our chance to answer that call.”

And then there’s what George W. Bush had to say to Obama:

“What an awesome night for you, your family and your supporters. You are about to go on one of the great journeys of life. Congratulations and go enjoy yourself.”

Sounds more like what a parent says to someone who’s finished their A-Levels and is about to go on a gap year.

Picture via Waxy.

In my previous post, which began as an excuse to post some pictures of autumn, and then changed to become a ramble on seasonal rigidity here in Japan, I mentioned how the large number of rules governing Japanese society - and its perception of the world, gives:

“A sureness and certainty and a sense of organisation to things.”  

But ‘rules are made to be broken’ says the Western saying; they’re perecieved as bad, as limiting. Not always: the Jesteress has borrowed her brother’s keitai, but forgotten the charger and now it has run out of battery. Her mum asked me this morning if it was on the NTT DoCoMo network, like her phone.

“Yes,” I replied. She then got her phone’s charger and - even though it’s a completely different model - plugged it in to bro’s phone.

“All NTT phones have the same charger socket?” I asked, surprised. “Yes,” she replied. “Of course.”

A good example of how rigidity can create convenience. Fat chance of Orange enforcing this in the UK though.

So last week I got to see Autumn in Palau and this week I’m in Japan, visiting the Jesteress’ family and friends, and of course, enjoying Japanorama for myself. Like many Japanese, the Jesteress is fond of saying that one of the reasons Japan is so great is that it has four seasons. At first this seems a bizarre claim - fine, places so close to the equator such as Palau don’t have distinct seasons, but the UK certainly does… but when you’re here in Japan, you appreciate there is a very certain, very definite distinction between the seasons. Even though it’s been quite warm, the people on the trains are often swaddled in woollen jumpers, because it’s autumn. In restaurants we’ve been enthusiastically served mackrel (”an autumn fish”). There are posters advertising particularly scenic autumnal locations at the railway stations.

It’s often said Japanese society is very ritualised and subject to many rules. This extends to the seasons and the observation of the seasons. Whereas in the UK you might say ‘oh, it feels very autumnal today’, or talk about an ‘indian summer’, in Japan, the date says it is autumn, so it is autumn. Although this is rigid, from such rigidty comes a sureness and certainty and a sense of organisation to things.   

Speaking of scenic autumn locations, we’re currently in Gunma where the Jesteress’ mother lives, and along with some friends we went to Lake Haruna this afternoon. I joined in with a horde of photographers comitting the fabulous foliage to memory.    

Palau. Well worth the 28 hours door to door to get here.

SE London to London Bridge.
London Bridge to Charing Cross.
Charing Cross to Paddington (Bakerloo)
Paddington to Heathrow (Heathrow Express)
Heathrow to Tokyo Narita
Narita to Haneda (Bus)
Haneda to Koror, capital of Palau

One thing I’m surprised I’ve not done more of this year is travel writing; this year I’ve been fortunate enough to go to places that, while within easy reach, are still somehow slightly out of reach, out of frame at the same time - Monaco, Syria, rural Ibiza, and in about two hours, Palau¹ and my third trip to Japan.

Thinking - and writing is often just thinking with a keyboard - about this is something I should do, because next year, I’m taking a sabbatical. Having worked for Dennis/Custom PC for 5 years (!), I’m eligible for 8 weeks extra holiday, which I can combine with 2 weeks of my usual leave for… 10 weeks, more than 2 months, away. Not sure where I will go yet, but I’d like to do some travelling in that time. I’ve never ‘done’ South America, have never been to to India to find myself and I’m not about to start now. But I do think about travel as a part of life; the difference between there and then and here and now; about how it can/should work as applied curiosity.

¹ Palau?!? Yeah, Palau. The CIA knows all about Palau. It’s a real country. In the middle of the pacific, about here.

Today I had to visit Harrods to buy some presents for relatives and friends I’ll soon be visiting overseas (don’t ask me why, but they all want Harrods tote bags); while there, I spotted this monstrosity - an oversized armchair made from minced up teddy bears.

Children walking past it were both fascinated and shocked. This is not surprising given that it looks like someone’s taken several armfuls of cuddly bears, chucked them in a rubbish compactor, mashed them up good and proper, and then stretched their furry little pelts over a threateningly large chair.

More pics of the monstrous Chair ‘O Bears after the jump.

Autumn in the shire
Originally uploaded by Sifter

I’d been weighing up getting an iPhone for a while, ever since the new and improved 3G one launched. My existing contract with Orange featured rapacious data costs and distinctly rubbish data speeds, so the iPhone/02 combo of Exchange email, a decent mobile web browser and all-you-can-eat 3G data was tempting.

A couple of things put me off:

1. The iPhone’s camera looked rubbish, and I’m a big fan of mobile phone cameras - I remember paying to upgrade my phone back in 2002 just to get one of the first phones in the UK with a camera.

2.Several people at work told me the iPhone’s call quality was poor.

3. Crappy battery life.

Points 2 & 3 were quickly rendered null by the fact I couldn’t believe anything would be worse at these than my dreadful Samsung Windows Mobile machine…

And point 1? Well, I got the iPhone a week or so ago, and it’s all up and running now, synced with Exchange, hooked up to my number that I’ve had since the late 90s and… well the camera’s ok.

On the downside:

* There are zero controls over it (no white balance or exposure comp) which is annoying - although Apple could, presumably, add these in a software update.
* No flash.
* No video (also could possibly be fixed in software).
* It’s only 2 megapixel.

On the plus side:

* It meshes really well with the rest of the iPhone - it’s easy to email photos, for instance.
* It performs reasonable well in daylight
* And best of all, the speed at which it freezes the video into a picture when you press the photo button means you can create some nice mindbending pics like this one.

My favourite piece of travel writing is short and to the point, but it questions everything about ‘here’ and calls to mind perfectly the change of ‘there’ that is its lure.

It is a description of people in an airport, and how easily they strike up conversation with each other. They are:

‘Strangers rendered open-hearted from jet lag’
(Pico Iyer, The Global Soul)

We travel to be operated on; by the sun, by the sights, by there, the place we want to get to, and most of all, by the miles of distance between there and here, by the separation itself.