Michael Reed

This month’s RetroGamer (issue #65, with the shiny red cover) features my six page feature on the Acorn Archimedes, a computer system that I used to run when I was teenager. The article is split between the main feature and a “Perfect 10” summary of some of the classic games. I have the magazine now and the layout looks great.

Note that this content won’t be included in my future article compilation books as the Imagine Publishing contract does not allow it. The Arc A310 in the photograph is my very own well loved machine, and hopefully it’ll be back with me in the next few days. Oops, it seems that I forgot to put the drive eject button back in when I put the machine back together! The issue is being discussed on the RetroGamer forum here, and the comments about my article seem quite positive. Hopefully, I’ll do something else for the mag in the future.

Read on for some more about the article including some content that had to be cut for length. Read more…

The excellent site Self Publishing Review is now hosting my interview with self published author Darryl Sloan, a writer that I’ve been following for a couple of years. The article is entitled Chionophobia and Other Sticky Problems: The Darryl Sloan Interview. The focus of the interview is his current project, the post apocalyptic short novel Chion, but we get into all kinds of interesting stuff about both the author’s inspirations and views on life.

I only discovered SPR recently and I heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in self publishing or writing in general. I’m gradually working through the articles on subjects such as using merchandise for personal brand building and putting a DIY book tour.

This week, Micro Mart is carrying my feature about four brands that lived on beyond the demise of the companies that established them. The article is entitled “And the Brand Played On: Four brands that died… and then lived again.” I delve into the history and subsequent resurection of the Acorn Computers, Apricot, Atari and Commodore brands. Naturally, due to the subject matter it’s an article with a bit of a retro flavour. It’s in issue 1050, and I hope you enjoy it if you read it.

Checkout this week’s Micro Mart (issue 1048, bought today) for my review of the Iomega Prestige external Hard Drive. This is a drive that I actually bought for myself when I spotted it in Tesco!

MM have some more of my stuff in the pipeline and I’ll announce it here when I can.

I’m a bit late with the announcement, but this week’s Micro Mart contains my six page feature on the Arc. It’s in issue 1043. If you want a copy, you’ll have to hurry as it will be replaced by the latest issue on Thursday the 26th of Feb.

The article details the history of the machine with a buyers’ guide, a guide to emulators, and some other details about the platform. In addition, it’s accompanied by some near pornographic pictures of my beloved old Archimedes A310, inside and out. The focus of the article on the Arc as a retro platform rather than the current RISC OS scene.
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British weekly print magazine Micro Mart has accepted one of my operating system themed articles. The article is entitled “2009, Year of the independent OS?” and it should appear in the Thursday 15th of January issue. As the title suggests, the premise is that some of the less-known freely available OSes might achieve sufficient maturity to enter into relatively widespread use over the course of 2009. The operating systems that I evaluate are AROS, Syllable, Haiku, and ReactOS. It’s a three thousand word article, so I’ve been able to go into a quite a bit of detail on the relative approach and progress of each OS project.

If it sounds like your kind of thing, look out for it in the newsagents on Thursday 15th.

Read more…

Price £4.49 inc postage, see dedicated page for information on worldwide pricing. ISBN 978-0-9560813-1-5

Yay! After a very long wait, the hard copy of Tech Book 1 is now available. To buy a copy or for more information, click go to the book page. Update: Now available as a free e-book download.

For a cheap and cheerful side-project, this project certainly began to spiral out of control. Although it has taken months rather than weeks to complete, the experience wasn’t wasted as I’ve learnt a great deal at every stage. Hopefully, Tech Book 2, which I have already begun to compile, will be a much easier release.

Linux.com have published my latest article. It’s an overview of the latest version of LyX, the document editor that I use for most of my writing. As 1.6 is such a bumper release, I decided to focus on the new features, rather than introducing LyX. There are plenty of other articles that do that. Hope people enjoy it.

In other news, I’m just about to send off for the final proof copy of Tech Book 1. I’ll spend a week or so going over that with a pencil, and then it’s time to purchase the ISBN numbers and send it off to the printer.

A bit more Tech Book 1 news. Basically, it’s 90% finished and I’ve sent off for a proof copy. I’ve frozen the contents and anything that I write and retain the copyright on, from now on, will be added to Tech Book 2.

Tech Book 1 is a compilation of my published articles written in 2006, 2007 and the first half of 2008. It’s part vanity project, part promotional exercise and part self-publishing experiment. One of the downsides of being a freelancer is that it can be difficult to get the attention of commissioning editors. I’m hoping that a hard copy may work in situations in which email enquiries have proved ineffective. Read more…

Linux.com have published my current article. I hope the community find it an enjoyable read. I never know how people are going to take articles like this one. I said in my RISC OS article, “I hold the opinion that if you are truly a fan of something, you can accept criticism of it. You don’t have to be loyal to something that is genuinely good.” I wonder where platforms like Amiga and OS/2 would be now if a few more people had complained?

From the article:
These problems span the entire Ubuntu experience but they all have two things in common: they are all solvable and they are all serious enough to evoke the dreaded, “I tried Linux but it didn’t work”.