Category Archives: On Journalism and Media

A Terrible Beauty

Published in 2000, A Terrible Beauty is defiantly a pre-internet book(1). In under 850 pages (under 775 if you discount the index), it gives the reader a history of the twentieth century’s defining ideas, from Marxism to Nazism, from Feminism to … Continue reading

Posted in Books and reading, On Journalism and Media, Tech | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

You will be surprised how easy it is

The cover of a magazine called Home Farmer, which I spotted while out and about at the weekend. I spend quite a lot of time looking at other magazine’s covers, and this one was quite something – brilliant use of … Continue reading

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International Times

The Guardian has a blog post up today reflecting on the radical/hippy/underground 60s newspaper The International Times, as an archive devoted to IT has just launched (although said archive appears to be down at the moment). Anyway, the Guardian blog … Continue reading

Posted in Ephemera and links, On Journalism and Media, The Sixties | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Virtual reality, then and now

In the 1980s and 1990s, the term ‘virtual reality’ was understood to mean the creation of reality inside the computer – and thus we would need to experience it using complex imaging and interaction systems (3D googles, cursors mapped to … Continue reading

Posted in Creativity, Ephemera and links, Music, On Journalism and Media, Tech, Web | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Too much Photoshop

When is too much in Photoshop? This article (translated from Danish) tells the story of a photographer who entered a competition, and was then asked to send unedited samples of his images. The article reproduces the pictures – before and … Continue reading

Posted in On Journalism and Media, Photography | Tagged , | 3 Comments

Digg and the art of the headline

[The entry has been cross posted from my work blog] When it comes to the web, there really aren’t many ways in which to gain readers for your site. Not that many practical and legal ones, anyway – sure, I … Continue reading

Posted in Custom PC and Bit-Tech, On Journalism and Media | 1 Comment

It’s finally here: the new CustomPC.co.uk

And I am so relieved. For the past 18 months or so, helping create a new website for Custom PC has been something of an obsession for me. I’ve talked endlessly about it on flights, in bars, in many, many … Continue reading

Posted in In My Life, On Journalism and Media, Tech, Web | 2 Comments

An old school journalist does new media

As I mentioned in my previous post about heading off to Computex with a bag weighed down with AV kit, at work, we’re really pushing on with expanding what we, technically a bunch of magazine journalists, do. When I joined, … Continue reading

Posted in On Journalism and Media, Tech | 1 Comment

Computex 2007: Every bag tells a story

Tomorrow I’m off to Taiwan for the Computex trade show; while Spring’s Cebit is physically bigger and CES is shinier, Computex is the one that really matters for Custom PC; its main focus is on PC components, and it’s in … Continue reading

Posted in In My Life, On Journalism and Media | 1 Comment

Barry Miles and International Times: ‘The invisible insurrection of a million minds’

Last week I went to a panel discussion on magazines; although I took notes on all three speakers, I ended up with loads from the talk by Barry Miles, co-founder of 60s underground paper International Times (Wikipedia). He talked at … Continue reading

Posted in Creativity, On Journalism and Media, The Sixties | 3 Comments