Gadget Guru’s magic box

It was one of GaGu’s three yearly birthdays this month and, as is tradition, he made out like a bandit with the presents. Rising to the top of Guru’s official friend ranking is the chap who bought him an Otamatone, the oh-so-Japanese musical instrument (around £25) in the shape of a cutesy musical note. It consists of a touch-strip stem that makes various honking noises emerge from an internal speaker, and a squishy notehead that shapes the sounds as they emerge. It’s silly and brilliant and Guru’s cats (and wife) absolutely hate it.

Second on the gift ranking, Mrs Guru’s begrudging contribution was a massive mouse mat – the Cmhoo XXL 90x40, £10 from Amazon – for GaGu’s desk. It has a classy monochrome world map on it, which is useful for planning one’s escape while professionally procrastinating, and a desk-wide pad makes a surprising difference to the grippiness of Guru’s longsuffering keyboard. No longer does it try to flee from the heavyweight hammering of his fingers.

On the subject, Guru is eyeing up a new PC. He snuck into the T3 office for a play with the outrageously pricey Razer Blade Pro (£3,799 plus your left arm and/or first born), and it really is quite the machine. But ol’ GaGu fancies a go with the Big Boy Lego of building his own PC. There are plenty of problems with this idea, Guru’s Tesla coil-esque static buildup notwithstanding. Mainly, he hasn’t constructed a box by himself since the original Pentiums were a thing, and has no idea what to buy. So readers, over to you – does Guru go Ryzen or Core? GeForce or Vega? Red or white? Is there any way to make the process any less baffling? Let GaGu know at the usual email.