Ingredients
Journalist Alex Watson, technology, books, reading, photography, the Far East, the iPhone, technology’s role in creativity, lots of caffeineMethods of consumption
Greatest Hits…
...Although none of these were ever Number 1s in Azerbaijan, Japan or on college radio.
* On visiting countries that have been the subject of airstrikes by allies of your home country
* Why it's important for The Beatles to make their songs available digitally
* A visit to Peleliu, home of some fascinating WW2 relics and origin of the phrase 'thousand yard stare'
* Five ways to beat writer's block and get words going
* On Holbein and Shakespeare
* Blights on the English language - most hateful words in techFrom which department?
This is the past
Category Archives: Tech
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 clay shirky, history, ideas, ipad, nick carr, progress
1 Comment
My Year in Books, 2009
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 cormac mccarthy, dan chaon, ebooks, haruki murakami
1 Comment
Stop Safari always opening new tabs
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
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 beyonce, viral video, virtual reality
1 Comment
Ebooks are inevitable
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
Talking about Windows 7
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
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
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
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
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
