Where's Wil?

So I hit Twit again this week, although somewhat belatedly - for some reason I missed the first 15 minutes of the show through a Skype muckup. However, we managed to nail another great show, if the comments are to be believed. Shame that Adam Curry didn't make it - we are holding our hopes out for next week.

However, in the meantime, I've been getting to grips with Guitar Hero II. I haven't played the first one, although I've always wanted to, just never gotten around to it. We got a review copy and a couple of axes in this week, so the bit-tech team has been furiously hammering away on the frets to write up our opinion of the game.

I absolutely love it - as a guitar player myself, it's still a lot of fun to play, especially with mates.

For the review we decided to have Ryan, Tim and myself all contribute opinions to the final thing, whilst pulling off a slightly stupid photoshoot to go alongside the article. Here's my best rocking out pose.

In his latest episode of Daily Source Code, Adam Curry spends the majority of the show ripping into the airtime that we gave him on TWiT last week.

What a hoot! The guy knows how to put together a slick podcast, and the interspersing of the TWiTcast with his own comments about our factual failings is hilarious.

He's really upset (or faux upset, I don't know him well enough) that I misrepresented his position on Digg and that I called his rose-tinted spectacles sunglasses.

Adam, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to mistake your rose-tinted spectacles for sunglasses. I also didn't mean to misrepresent your opinions on Digg. I'm not sure exactly what you did mean about the site, if you did not mean what I thought you meant, but if you'd like to email me or leave a comment here and let me know, I'd be delighted to clear up the misunderstanding on the next episode of TWiT.

In all seriousness, I thought Adam was a really cool guy - friendly, open, talkative - and I certainly didn't mean to aggravate him to the point of calling me a 'Stupid English journalist'. In fact, I was hoping I could work with Adam on a project I'm putting together right now. I even liked his pink jumper.

UPDATE: Adam is coming on TWiT with me this Monday. I guess he decided to take up our invitation! It'll be great to have his insight on the show.

I'm on This Week in Tech again this week, talking about a hotch-potch of different subjects: 64-bit processors, Microsoft and Linux, Vista... Leo said post-taping that he thought it was one of the best shows in a while. I certainly agree that, post cruise, the show is getting back on track. We may even see an appearance from Patrick next week!

I have spent the teeny amount of free time that I have had over the past couple of weeks playing Tony Hawk's Project 8 for the Xbox 360. It is the most awesome incarnation of the series, and easily beats out anything else. The new additions to the series really add something, and Neversoft has chucked out the crap that got added in through the Underground days. You can check out my full review at bit-tech.

As a side note, I actually met Tony Hawk at the Gumball Rally earlier on this year. What a top, top bloke - it's always inspiring to meet someone who is at the absolute pinnacle of their profession.

I went out to PodcastCon UK yesterday and had a great time - meeting some cool people (gorgeous Linda, funky Dean, shagtastic Em + Pete) and finding out some interesting stuff about the medium.

Apparently, one thing I wasn't aware of was the propensity for stealth discoing. This is, it appears, the art of sneaking up behind someone, then disco dancing with them without them ever being aware of your presence - good, old fashioned pranking.

And the bastards got me (YouTube link).

Pranksters!

(At least they got Adam Curry too).

I found a great excerpt from a podcast yesterday that had me in stitches - at poor Leo Laporte's expense.

Sex Is Fun is an educational podcast that I was pointed to by a friend at PodcastCon UK (more on that later), and the guys and gals making it headed out to the Portable Media Expo, where Leo was giving the keynote talk. These podcasters clearly have no idea who he is - a testament to the growth of podcasting over the past year from an insular community to worldwide phenomenon - and summarise Leo's keynote with fantastic flippancy.

I picked out the relevant segment from the show, which you can download here. It's well worth the listen!

"This guy is like the King Geek... he's who all the geeks want to be."

Couple of updates, since I'm on a bunch of podcasts this week.

First off the mark is the new TWiT, which features me, John, Molly Wood and newbie Brian Livingstone alongside Leo discussing, amongst other things, the Zune, quad core and the rest of the week's happenings. Good stuff, and a return to form for the show.

Hank Garner, the mogul from 7Stories.net, has interviewed me for his podcast. We cover the gestation of bit-tech, my background, and the background of my involvement with TWiT. Hank is a thoroughly nice chap, and it's great to see his podcast going so well.

The guys over at Warpath.tv also had me as a guest on their show. The guys - George Force, Michael Zucker and Ben Heckendorn - put on a decent show, discussing Zune, next-gen consoles and many other things. Getting to speak to Ben was personally very nice for me - I'm a massive fan of his work.

Today, I'm at the European Media Summit at the Landmark Hotel in London. The heads of some of the big media companies are here to talk about how to do business in the information age, and I'm going to see what I can learn.

I'm happy to report that the historically rainy city of Seattle failed to disappoint today. My walk around the place was a pretty wet one.

I've been in Bellevue for the past couple of days, visiting the guys at Valve Software. If you haven't heard of Valve, where have you been? They make the greatest FPS series on the PC, Half-Life. They were talking to me about the new multi-core improvements they've made to the Source engine, which I have duly written up here. The article has been widely linked and has attracted some really complimentary comments, which is very nice indeed.

While I was out here, I figured I'd make the effort to get out of my hotel room and get across to Seattle itself. I took the bus across the bridges - which was an interesting experience, since trying to find the right bus stop amongst the myriad of roads and interchanges is quite a challenge. Route 550 duly identified, the mass transit trip was a mere 25 minutes and five bucks return.

I headed down to the Space Needle, which is obviously the iconic Seattle landmark. It's pretty neat - jetting up to the top in the elevator gives a really nice view of the city. Looking out into the Pacific was rather soothing. The photo above is from the top of the Needle.

I also went to the Experience Music Project and Sci-Fi Museum. The Sci-Fi place was created by Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, and is absolutely frickin' awesome. I mean, man, the stuff they have in there! Number one, they have the ACTUAL DEATHSTAR. The model used in A New Hope. And it lights up! Absolutely awesome stuff. They also have the ACTUAL LIGHTSABERS used by Luke and Vader and made from the Graflex photo handles that have since gone down as the stuff of legend. Incredible. There's also some mind-blowing stuff in the Music Project - hand written lyrics on a scrap of paper by Kurt Cobain, and a bundle of guitars that have been used and smashed by Jimi Hendrix. Totally legendary stuff.

Many of the props in the Sci-Fi place looked really rubbish, and it struck me that the camera really does lie. In Star Trek, the phaser rifles look super-mean and really futuristic. Up close, the props used look like crappily-painted foamcore, not impressive at all. Likewise the awesome Bat'leth - looks like lethal metal, is really some dodgy plastic. Shattered dreams, eh?

All in all, Seattle is clearly a nice place, even if it does appear a little generic. It was great to see the Valve HQ, and I look forward to getting back out here sometime.