This Halloween will be scary chez mr. nik

I was always captivated by theme parks as a child and always dreamed of building my own house with and a theme park out back. Of course as a child I didn't quite correlate how many millions of years of pocket money it would take to save up for quite such a project. Every once in a while I'd turn my bedroom into a "Haunted House" and scare the beejeesus out of my parents at how much string and sellotape an overactive child could destroy in an afternoon.

That dreamy inspiration has never left me though and every year I keep saying to myself I'm going to recreate that effect in minature at my current humble abode for Halloween night.

As some who loves sound and light and theatre, and knows a little bit about computers and electronics, I keep hatching a plan to put on a spooky outdoor experience for any would-be trick-or-treaters (in Scotland we called them 'Guisers') that dare to cross my boundary.

This year I really am going to try and get it done..

As I have my own recording studio, sound has not been too tricky to put together and I already have speakers in the garden concealed as rocks. From these will emanate wailing and gnashing and general moaning (sounds like a trip to Tesco), chains clanking and wind howling; so I just hope it's not too inclement on the night to drown it out.

Basic computer controlled lighting comes courtesy of my existing X10 home automation system - which allows remote control of 4 lighting circuits in the garden via a range of macros (e.g. to turn lights on and off in sequence). Lights can not only be switched on and off but dimmed, so I should be able to come up with some spooky lighting sequences. Some theatrical lighting gels allow me to colour some of the lights.

And of course a number of motion sensors can detect anyone creeping round the garden. I could, for example, detect the presence of a visitor as they enter the gate and trigger a spotlight on the dark secret buried under the decking. (Of course, I'm jesting. I don't actually have decking). Perhaps a skeleton scraping to get out of the garage door would do the trick.

Entrance to my gardenOfSensoryDelights would be through the underpass/carport at the side of the house. This is the perfect spot for a themed entrance. I can imagine an ominous sign here, warning visitors "Do not enter on fear of death" - assuming I can get it unstuck from my front door. The natural archway of the underpass is an obvious area to decorate with a few cans of 'spider web' - such that I can recreate that I'm-a-celebrity-get-me-out-of-this-pitch-black-tunnel effect. Once visitors make it past the cobwebs they'll be directed to turn and enter the GardenOfDoom at their peril.

The Ghost Train is still eluding me somewhat though - as it turned out Waitrose weren't too happy about me 'borrowing' a couple of shopping trolleys from their car park. Spoilsports! So, ideas on that front are welcome.

Boo!

Gentle response to @stephenfry 's "blackberry picking"

http://www.stephenfry.com/2009/10/05/digital-devicement-part-three-blackberry-picking-time/

Hi Stephen, you've beautifully captured the nuances of the blackberry as a device and the love-hate relationship of owning one (or should i say, having one thrust upon oneself by one's employer). The smackberry certainly wins in terms of battery life and with its auto on/off feature for overnight use can easily last a week while still delivering email into your hands near instantaneously.

However, I think one aspect you haven't covered, perhaps because it doesn't irritate you, is the user interface - and by this I mean not just the keyboard, but the whole application design and GUI.

The hackberry, I feel, suffers from the problem that the main community responsible for its rise to stardom - i.e. all those corporate purchasers - are not the main user community. There is a disconnect here and consequently the splatberry suffers from a tedious and outdated interface that frankly would be laughable and disastrous if it were launched from new today.

Simple matters such as menus that are too long to fit on one screen, the inability to see when someone called without sub-selecting "view history" of each call (on my model at least) result in a propensity for scrolling and twizzling that sees one's finger tips breaking the olympic record for distance travelled on a daily basis. These are basic basic UI errors that the slick swishness of other device UIs put to shame.

And as for the keyboard - surely no-one with fingers fatter than a five pence piece could describe it as anything other than tortuous?! Picking the blasted thing up to dial a number - a core feature surely - let's say in a travelling car, singlehanded (not as a driver of course, merely as a passenger) and getting the right digits required to dial in the right order is only modestly more successful than getting one's precious lottery numbers. And of course, if it's dark, forget it, some of the models are not even backlit. Maybe the tedious business of phone calls is not meant to be performed in the dark?

This is, of course, if the device isn't still "hourglassing" while you've just fired it up for the first time in a while; a feature that becomes rapidly frustrating in the business context when time is of the essence (usually 30 seconds before a conference call).

I suppose I could find a use for my spangly spackberry with all those jangly facebook and twitter and life enhancing 2.0 apps - if it were not for the fact my corporate IT department has decided to lock the device down to the point where it's only moderately more useful than a paperweight...! sigh...

I enjoyed your article, I delight in your opinions, but sadly, I hate *my* blackberry..