The first Audiosurgeon podcast has been released into the wild!

Audiosurgeon is the official podcast of Pixelsurgeon – it’s a mix of music, interviews and film and game chat – and, heck, it sounds pretty good! You can download it here, but you’ll be able to subscribe on iTunes later today.

Here’s us recording it last night (that’s (L to R) Jason, Rich and me in the picture). Jason did a great job of editing my more witless comments and generally tightening it all up – and also getting an interview with DJ Nu-Mark of Jurassic 5. And Sam Gilbey (who took the picture) lined up some great music.

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I walk past Pentonville Prison every day. It’s on the way to our boy’s nursery in the morning and then back from Caledonian Road and Barnsbury Station in the evening.

Its sits behind a squat white wall that runs along Caledonian Road. A row of severely pollarded lime trees inside the wall only recently showed any signs of green. Razor wire lends the impassive, white-painted classical entrance buildings a tawdry air. Behind lie taller brick buildings with barred windows that presumably hold the cells.

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I’ve finally gotten around to reading Rings of Saturn, W.G. Sebald’s remarkable stream of conciousness account of walking through Suffolk, and I’m loving it. He presents a refreshing alternative view of places I’m familar with, having grown up there.

For instance, Lowesoft for me was just a crappy, deprived coastal town I’d never consider visiting, but for Sebald it’s the jumping off point for a series of reflections about the effects of imperial power on people.

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This sounded super-interesting: a new version of the interactive fiction maker, Inform 7, is out.

As Mike Sugarbaker says, this new version is all about programming through natural language. A typical entry (this from my first try-out, an exciting scenario set in a bathroom) might be:

The bathroom is a room. The description of the bathroom is "The bathroom is lit with harsh white halogen bulbs. Far from being a restful and relaxing place, this bathroom is clinical and hard-edged. You glance at your reflection in the mirror. Every imperfection in your skin is obvious. You want to leave."

The chrome tap is in the bathroom. The description of the chrome tap is "The chrome tap shines in the bright light. But though it is otherwise flawless, the lever to control the flow of water has sheered off and is nowhere to be seen. It doesnt look like it will dispense any water." Instead of taking the chrome tap, say "It's firmly attached."

That’s all very simple – but even more complex stuff is very coherent, even to complete strangers to programming, like me.

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Its been a long time – not only since I last posted, but since I first played a Gran Turismo game. 1998 it was. Eight years ago. To celebrate the end of my university finals I scraped together all the cash I had left and bought a PlayStation along with Resident Evil 2 and Gran Turismo.

Back then it was stunning. Those shining bonnets; the way the wheels would ride the bumps… And the handling was like nothing I’d ever experienced. This was a time when new games could be revelations. Gran Turismo taught me about weight shifting and gear ratios, reactivating this weird fascination I had for cars when I was ten that manifested itself in six months of writing off to BMW and Porsche to ask for catalogues that I never really knew what to do with once they arrived. At least GT was more real – I loved the sensation of weaving a Dodge Viper through the tight, tricksy curves of tracks like Autumn Ring.

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icon 018 Not a huge amount to say about this one, other than that I’m quietly satisfied with the way it’s written and that it was my first cover story. Only took 18 issues…

EDIT: God - just re-read beyond the intro - it’s a lot more fawning than I remember it!

“Bloody gorgeous that hull,” says Jay Osgerby, one half of furniture and product designer BarberOsgerby. We’re flicking through a series of photos of things that inspire them; we’ve already admired aeroplane wings and, rather less obviously, motorway crash barriers.

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We took our son to our book club yesterday evening. We all met at a bar restaurant place under the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank, and we spent a glorious three hours talking about Rodinsky’s Room and uproariously deciding what book to read next.

And all the time, little eight month old Jack was there, playing with bits of paper, being bounced about, smiling at people and (eventually) sleeping in his pushchair – but, naturally, marginalised from the main activity.

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Goddamn it. Note to self: check that someone hasn’t already done a review of a game before embarking on writing one…

Two long years ago, Katamari Damacy was released in Japan. Frustratingly deemed too esoteric for Europe, this game was quickly celebrated as a rare gem of original creativity in a morass of safe, uninspired sequels.

Tantalising accounts of just how radically new it was surged over the Atlantic once it was released in America. They painted a picture of a startlingly imaginative game that tore up the rules with glorious simplicity. The object is to roll a sticky ball – a Katamari – around an environment, picking up stuff. You start with paperclips and bottle caps, and as the ball gets bigger and bigger you start collecting cats, chairs, people, cars, buildings, and, eventually, even continents.

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icon 022 This is one of the pieces I’m most proud of. Not so much because I think it’s definitive or hugely insightful, but because I think it was important to cover Tony Dunne and Fiona Raby, and because I really respect their work and got to know them. I’m also pleased that I (think) I managed to communicate the complexities of what they do in an accessible way.

“We don’t have happy endings. Things never work out. They’re grey and muddy and complex,” says Fiona Raby of design duo Dunne & Raby, snuffling into a hanky. “We’re living in this irresolvable, messy place …”

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I just saw François Truffaut’s 1966 film of Farenheit 451. It still feels very fresh, despite some faintly hammy performances (Julie Christie especially). I really liked the level of detail: the opening credits are spoken (since the written word is forbidden in this future distopia), and the production design is inspired.

This repressive world isn’t set in some 1984/Brazil densely-populated concrete-and-steel city. Its people live in modernist Span-style houses in tree-lined suburbs, tastefully furnished in mid-century modern chairs and ornaments. It even features a monorail. Truffaut’s characterisation of this world of ignorant comfort with utopian modernist design is perfect.

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