It’s that time again. This month’s Retro Gamer contains my six page feature on Teque/Krisalis Software. It’s my fifth article for the publication. Between 1987 and 2001, working as both a developer of original games and conversions power house, Krisalis produced hundreds of games. As ever, putting the feature together was fun but a lot of hard work.
This time around, I was able to contact and interview quite a few of the people who were originally involved in the company. Krisalis was particularly close to my heart because they converted a lot of mainstream hits to the Acorn Archimedes series of computers, which was the system that I ran as a teenager. As ever, it was great to interact with people whose names I’d seen come up on the screen so often over the years. I doubt I could have imagined this sort of contact when I was a spotty teen, admiring their efforts. Thanks go to Shaun Hollingworth, Tony Kavanagh, Neil Adamson, Keith Birkett, Nigel Little and Matt Furniss for all of their help.
I don’t have my copy of the magazine yet, but you can watch the editor of the magazine, Darran Jones, flicking through the latest issue on YouTube. There is a feedback thread for the issue on the Retro Gamer forum.
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with Acorn Archimedes, games, Krisalis Software, print article, retro computing, Teque.
By mike
– October 13, 2011
Issue 98 of Linux User and Developer (March 2011) features my four page article on productivity applications for Linux. It’s basically a collection of tips and application recommendations. There are more details about the issue as a whole on the LU&D website. There should be a distro review from me in next month’s issue, and hopefully, you’ll see more from in the mag in the future. [Update: Actually, Russel has posted up the review, of Tiny Core Linux, in advance. Update #2: The mag, issue 99 has now been released.]
Recently, 
I did another guest post on my other main writing interest, gender politics. This article appears on A Voice For Men, the website of Paul Elam. The article is called OMG – Our Gender Is Being Oppressed By Language!, and it’s an attack on a technique that is commonly used in text books. It’s a good one for people interested in language, gender politics and/or men’s rights. Continued…
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with freelancing, gender politics, Linux, Linux User And Developer, music, print article, technology writing.
By mike
– March 22, 2011
Subscribers are starting to get hold of issue #86 of RetroGamer as I write this. This month features my six page article on 3D arcade adventure games. The article has an emphasis on early pioneers in open world gaming.
I managed to cover one of my favourite genres and talk to some of the desingers. The games mentioned include Cholo, Damocles, Midwinter, Hunter, Cybercon III and loads of other utter classics. I just hope that the readers enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.
There is a feedback thread for the issue here. Continued…
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with print article, retro computing, RetroGamer.
By mike
– February 1, 2011
Issue 79 of Retro Gamer magazine contains my six page feature on Superior Software, the most prolific BBC Micro games company back in the 80s and 90s. The company is still in business today selling remakes of the classic back catalogue and can apparently even supply original copies of BBC Micro games.
I don’t have my copy yet but you can watch Darran, the editor of Retro Gamer flicking through the issue on Youtube. As you may know, this is my third feature for this magazine. If you read it, I hope you enjoy it, and I hope I’ve done justice to such a great company. There is a feedback thread for the issue on the RG website.
[Update: I've got it and it looks great. I forgot to add my name to the introduction and I'm not credited elsewhere, but I did write it, I promise!]
Thanks are due to Richard Hanson, Peter Irvin, Tony Oakden and Gary Partis for allowing me to interview them.
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with Acorn Archimedes, Acorn Computers, BBC Micro, games, retro, Retro Gamer.
By mike
– July 19, 2010
This month’s Linux User & Developer magazine, Issue #88, features my four page tutorial on performing unattended Ubuntu installations. [Update: It's now mirrored on the website, minus the images and boxouts.]I cover creating a modified installation CDROM and installing over the network. I enjoyed doing it, but it ended up being a LOT of work as things started to get quite technical towards the. It didn’t help that most of the the online information turned out to be out-of-date or incorrect in some way. Continued…
Posted in Published articles.
By mike
– June 13, 2010
A little bit of party politics (shudder) and gender politics in this article I’ve just written for Men’s News
Daily. I hope I didn’t make it too pro-Conservative as I’m not that big of a supporter. Maybe some positive comments (or constructive negative comments) will make me get on with the book.
Last week I finished off another article for a print magazine. I’ll let you know more when it’s closer to publication date.
Quite an amusing site that I keep an eye on these days is Cathy Relf’s subediting blog in its new location. One for fellow grammar nerds only though.
Posted in gender equivalence, Published articles.
Tagged with conservative party, gender equivalence, gender politics, labour party, politics.
By mike
– April 29, 2010
My first post for the website of Linux Journal magazine is an op-ed about the initially rocky history of KDE4.
[update: It's been posted around a bit on Redit, LXer, Raiden and Linux Today amongst others.]
[update #2: I'm not going to blog about every post that I make on the site now as it would quickly fill up the site and push other stories off the bottom. There is now a sidebar about my LJ posts. I'm my third month of working for them, and so far, everything's going great.] Continued…
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with freelancing, KDE, Linux, Linux Journal, web article.
By mike
– April 1, 2010
I’ve just had an article published over on Men’s News Daily. It’s a great publication for people interested in gender politics and the growing men’s rights movement. Some of you will know that I have been working on a book on gender politics (see the gender equivalence subsite site for more info)for the past few years. It’s also the first time that I’ve written for a website rather than a print mag in over a year, and it’s a funny feeling to get back into the fast paced dynamic of web publishing. I hope that I’ll be working with MND a lot in the future.
[update: a bit of discussion about the article here on the antimisandry.com]
The subject of the article is the rather unpleasant practice of rich middle aged women travelling to third world countries in order to have paid-for sex with young men. In case you’re wondering, yes, Haiti is a top destination for these women, or was until recently. The most infuriating aspect? Feminist writers have long condoned this in newspaper articles that spin things around so that the women are the victims in the situation.
Continued…
Posted in gender equivalence, Published articles.
Tagged with feminism, gender equivalence, gender politics, men's rights, web article.
By mike
– February 17, 2010
This month’s RetroGamer* magazine (issue #71) features my six page article on the history of DOS (PC) gaming, my second article for that magazine. Hopefully this is the beginning of a productive relationship between the mag and myself.
I don’t have a copy of the article myself as I don’t yet have a subscription to RetroGamer. Subscribers should have it by the weekend and it should be on the high street by the middle of next week. However, for an early look at the issue, check out Darren Jones’ Youtube video in which he flicks through it while giving some background info. My article appears at about 3:00. The feedback thread for the issue is here. Hopefully, by tomorrow night, there should be some feedback on my article. Why do I get the feeling that I’m going to get savaged over my choice of eight important DOS games?
In my research I found loads of interesting early games such as Atarisoft conversions of Defender and Digdug that they did back in 1983. I also managed to get a few words with the founders of SSI and Apogee in order to beef up the article. You never know what editors are going to cut out but it looks like they’ve inlcuded:
- Main essay: history of DOS gaming 1981 to around 1997
- Soundcards
- graphics standards (CGA, EGA, VGA)
- 8 important DOS games side feature
Continued…
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with DOS gaming, print article, retro computing, RetroGamer, video games.
By mike
– December 4, 2009
This week’s Micro Mart (issue #1079) features my latest op-ed article that asks if the UK needs its own official Linux distribution. It’s another six pager and fairly off the wall, but hopefully it will get people thinking.
The core idea behind having a national Linux distribution is that it would form part of a simultaneous push towards open source software in education, government offices and businesses. In my opinion, open source initiatives are bound to struggle unless they are carried out on every level of education and industry at the same time, and “UK Linux” would be a way of doing this. I also take a look at other national Linux distributions such as the Russian and Chinese ones. Available for the rest of the week.
[update: there's a bit of chat about the article on the forum]
Posted in Published articles.
Tagged with Linux, Micro Mart, operating systems, print article, Technology, Ubuntu.
By mike
– October 29, 2009
Michael Reed, specialist technology, gender, and geek culture freelance writer. Articles published in/on 
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