Category Archives: Tech

A Terrible Beauty

Posted on April 8, 2010 by Alex

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

My Year in Books, 2009

Posted on January 10, 2010 by Alex

Previously: 2006 – 25 books, 28% non-fiction, and my book of the year was Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. 2007 – 24 books, 33% non-fiction, far fewer contemporary novels, and my pick of the year was Crime and Punishment. … Continue reading →

Posted in Books and reading, Tech | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Stop Safari always opening new tabs

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Alex

I’ve moved away from using FireFox as my browser – it’s too slow to start, too fond of updating – and now have Google Chrome on my PCs. It’s not properly available for the Mac yet, so I’ve switched to … Continue reading →

Posted in Tech, Web | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Virtual reality, then and now

Posted on April 25, 2009 by Alex

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

Ebooks are inevitable

Posted on February 7, 2009 by Alex

Three Ebooks links: 1. ArsTechnica posted an excellent article on ‘the once and future Ebook‘ that’s worth reading start to finish. Suffers perhaps from some Apple fanboyism (I’m not 100% convinced as it claims, that the iPhone/iPod have such huge … Continue reading →

Posted in Books and reading, Tech, iPhone | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Talking about Windows 7

Posted on November 8, 2008 by Alex

Warning! Awkward geekery ahead. Here’s me on the BBC website, talking about Windows 7. In short: it looks a lot like Vista, especially at this early stage – much of the stuff previewed by MS (and covered on the PC … Continue reading →

Posted in Articles, Custom PC and Bit-Tech, Tech | 2 Comments

Of course

Posted on October 27, 2008 by Alex

In my previous post, which began as an excuse to post some pictures of autumn, and then changed to become a ramble on seasonal rigidity here in Japan, I mentioned how the large number of rules governing Japanese society – … Continue reading →

Posted in Japanorama, Tech | 2 Comments

On the quality of the iPhone’s camera

Posted on October 11, 2008 by Alex

Autumn in the shire Originally uploaded by Sifter I’d been weighing up getting an iPhone for a while, ever since the new and improved 3G one launched. My existing contract with Orange featured rapacious data costs and distinctly rubbish data … Continue reading →

Posted in Photography, Tech, iPhone | 1 Comment

Moving pictures and sound: Yes, that’s me in the corner, on TV, on your computer

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Alex

We’ve run a couple of video pieces on the Custom PC site this year, but so far, I’ve not presented any pieces myself. It’s something I was keen to try though, so when my friend Wil, ex Editor of Bit-Tech, … Continue reading →

Posted in Tech | 2 Comments

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

Posted on July 12, 2007 by Alex

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