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.

Excerpts:

…consider the growing number of middle-class young women in places like the UK and Japan who are reportedly paying their way through college by doing sex work. Most people would agree that there is a qualitative difference between that and the lot of a crack-addicted street hooker.

…

However, astonishingly, there are sympathetic voices to be found, and in mainstream publications too. Try it yourself, do a search for “female sexual tourism” and prepare for some Olympic-class mental gymnastics.

…

The hypocrisy of this double standard is aggravated by the fact that the group that write the articles, feminist journalists, typically espouse a disparaging and zero tolerance view of prostitution.

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

Even if I didn’t have an article in this issue, I’d have to say it looks like a good one. I’m particularly interested in looking at the SID (Commodore 64 music) article and the Peter Molyneux and Jeff Minter interviews. Personally, I would have made the Playstation feature the cover feature as I’m not much of a fan of Afterburner.

If you do see the mag, note the photos of my boxed copy of Elite+ and my Soundblaster Pro 2 and Gravis Ultrasound sound cards. The cards were in the bottom of a drawer in anti-static bags as I don’t currently have a vintage PC to put them in.

Also, if you’re in the US and baulk at the high cost of the mag, search around the RetroGamer site for a deal on subscriptions that they’re running at the moment.

More updates when I have a copy myself…

*for fellow language nerds, check out Thom Holwerda’s article on camel case in technology proper nouns on OS News.

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]

This week’s Micro Mart (Issue #1075, two pounds as usual) features my 6 page overview of Ubuntu Studio. Hats off to the layout guy as it’s another great looking article. Along with my assessment of the distribution itself and the included software, I get into some details about MIDI and Audio in general. Just in case you’ve not come across it before, Ubuntu Studio is a Linux distribution optimised for audio work. Can a simple free download, when burnt to a blank disk, turn your computer into a fully fledged home studio? Find out by reading the article.

The next article to appear in MM will feature one of Mike’s Brilliant Ideas!, much like the stuff that I got started with, back in the OS News days. It’s another six pager and full of radical and strange thoughts about a scheme that might just save the world.

Stay tuned for details.

This week’s Micro Mart (issue 1074) features my review of the Canon PIXMA iP2600 printer. It’s just a quicky, but I’ll have some more writing orientated announcements in the next couple of weeks.

In other news, I was sad to see the end of Drobe as a news source. I submitted the news to OS News. Thanks are due to Chris for all of his hard work over the years. In its day, Drobe was one of the best niche platform news sites around. Chris was also one of the first editors to link to one of my web articles on OS News, which really boosted by confidence when I first started. However, it must have been a huge amount of work, and like most people, I fully understand why he had to give it up now that the scene has started to slow down. I just hope that we can keep the old community together to some extent.

I was sorry not to be able to go to the Retro Reunited show. Unfortunately, time and money issues got in the way. Next time, I’ll try to move hell and high water to get there as it looked absolutely excellent.

Take care all.

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.

As you can imagine, as the article was for RetroGamer, I have focused on the Arc as a classic gaming platform, although I did manage to include some details about the hardware and the operating system. You might remember that I did a feature on the machine for Micro Mart in February, but that article didn’t dwell on the games as much as the history of the machine itself. Although Arcs weren’t that common, I was very lucky as I was able to attend a local Acorn computer club. I enjoy drawing attention to the legacy of the platform as I feel it is often overlooked. Hopefully, I’ve done my job and a few new people will be interested in the Arc. By the way, ArcEm, Arculator and RPCEmu are all good emulators and there are a few others.

When choosing the games, I tried to make a representative selection that balanced original games with conversions. Conversions had a special part to play on the Arc but I didn’t want to give the impression (or reinforce the myth) that we didn’t have many decent original games.

When covering the history of the machine, I fired off a few questions to Sophie Wilson, one of the designers of the Arc and the BBC Micro. She was very helpful but I had to cut some of her answers for space. Here is some of the cut content, for fellow Acorn obsessives:

Is it true that you first simulated the ARM chip in BBC BASIC?

Yes, the first simulator was written by Steve [Furber] in BBC BASIC – he implemented an event based simulator which modelled all the ARM’s datapaths.

I wrote an instruction set emulator of the ARM – once for the 6502, and again for the NS32016. We ran a lot of software on these until we had real ARM chips.

An anecdote about the power requirements that I hadn’t heard before…

[...]the biggest surprise on ARM1 was when we tried to measure the power it took and discovered it wasn’t taking any at all… (the PCB didn’t connect the power pins, it was running entirely through the power coming in from its I/O pins via the protection diodes)

A few tidbits about ARX…

Of course we wished we had different things – the operating system project to produce ARX hadn’t given us anything saleable, so causing us to rush out an interim OS (since the hardware was certainly ready). The system really only became what we had desired with the release of RISC OS 2 (arguably with the release of RISC OS 3 when the applications support was much better). And it took until the RiscPC with VIDC20 before the basic display capability was what I’d wanted…

Thanks also go to Chris of Drobe for answering some of my questions. Hope you enjoy the article. If you have any questions feel free to contact me or post to the RetroGamer forums.

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.

Getting the old machine out of storage to photograph it evoked waves of nostalgia. After a quick hoover, the machine powered up. I don’t have a monitor for it these days, but it made the familiar beeping sound. The fan was very noisy, but for most of its life, I ran it with the fan disconnected anyway. In addition, it made the characteristic “Acorn squeal” through the built in speaker. I wonder how many hours I sat at that machine as a geeky teenager, mucking about with PD disks, games and ARM programming?

For the screen shots, I used Arculator. For the GUI shots, I pushed it up to Mode 21, to increase the quality. Freelance writing is hard, thankless work and I had to play Twin World through to completion (for the first time in more than a decade and a half) just to fully immerse myself. In fact, I don’t think that I was completely successful, so a play through of Mad Professor Mariarty may now be necessary.

I feel that the platform, and its importance, is sometimes overlooked in retrospective computer features. It’s particularly annoying when it receives only scant mention in computer history features on British outlets such as the BBC. I’m keeping an eye out for further opportunities to write about the platform.

It’s in issue 1043, and unfortunately, Micro Mart doesn’t mirror its content on the web. 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.

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.

Update: I now have a copy. It’s a shame that MM don’t mirror their content online.

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.

As a test, I sent off for a proof copy from Lulu.com. It looks great and I’m happy with it, although I wont be using Lulu for the main print run. I might go for a more exciting cover for the finished copy. However, I think that trying to do too much is the common mistake of the amateur. An online buddy of mine, Darryl Sloan, did quite an elaborate cover for his self-published novel Chion. However, he has the benefits of an artistic background to begin with, and I don’t.

All of the articles are available for free on the web. For people who have already read the articles, there is some value in the book as these are slightly improved versions. In addition, many of the articles were very long and will probably work better as a chapter in a printed book than they did as an article on a website. By investing in a ISBN number and by dealing with a print-on-demand printer directly, I’m hoping that I’m going to be able to offer it at a really low price. I’m not intending to directly make any money out of the project. It might bring in some other work and it has been a useful learning experience for me.

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”.

At the moment I’m working on a little side project. It’s a not-for-profit, print-on-demand book that re-bundles some of my old technology articles. I plan to use the book as a promotional device for my skills as a writer. For that reason, I’m editing the the articles to bring them up to my current standard. The working title for the book is Tech Book 1. Although it’s turning out to be a time consuming job, it has also been a great learning experience. It should be finished and ready in a couple of weeks.

All of the content is available on the Internet (see links on side menu) but these are slightly updated versions.

Please note, I’ll add a bit of older gender politics material from my other site but this isn’t the Gender Equivalence book that I have been working on for the last two and a half years. Work on that book is still in progress. Apart from anything else, the new project will serve as a dry run for the GE book as might still be doing that as a self-published project.

For a bit of fun, I popped a spoof article onto the UK news satire site, The Spoof. I added it to the “magazine” section of the site as it’s not really a news piece. Click here to read it.

It’s not a paying gig, but as well as being a neat writing exercise, it’s a chance to get some comedy writing out in front of an audience. The standard of the contributions to that site is very high, but if my article gets a good reception, I might have a go at another one.

I hope that I’ve not made the mistake of making it too dry for a spoof news site, but that’s what satire is, a balance of seriousness with comedy. It’s also going to be a hard sell due to its length, but I think it’s worth it to properly spoof the genre while giving the ideas full expression.

I hope you enjoy the article.

Free Software Magazine have published my DOSBox review. DOSBox is an PC emulator that is optimsed for accurately running vintage games. From the article:

“Let’s be clear: not every old game is worth revisiting. As a general rule, about eighty percent of everything, in all media, is rubbish. If not actually rubbish, entertainment media can be so tied to the time in which it was made that it cannot survive the transition into a later era.

An old game might employ a gameplay style that has no modern equivalent, or a much-loved old game might have a nostalgic attachment for a gamer. Sometimes, the gamer wishes to try out a game that they passed over at the time of release. Finally, some old games are simply great games and are worth playing in their own right.”

Click here to go the article on the FSM website.

I’ve just finished another article for OS News. This one is entitled “I’m glad that IBM declined to release the OS/2 source”. I’m just calling things as I see them but I’m going to end up with a reputation as a miserable git with the OS News readership I’m just the doctor, I didn’t make the needle sharp. I’ll link to it on the side bar when it’s posted. [update click here to read it online]

I should have some more announcements about a couple of other completed writing assignments for Linux.com and Free Software Magazine. I’ve hit a bit of lull at the moment as I need to wait until some more of my finished assignments are live before I can start pitching again. Not to worry, I’ve got some other irons in the fire that should soon bear fruit, to mix a metaphor.

I’ve taken advantage of the extra time to concentrate on progressing the Gender Equivalence book. In addition, I’m toying with the idea of collating and extending some of my old articles into a rather geeky, self-published book. If nothing else, it would serve as a dry run for the proper book.

The pilot episode of my sitcom project, The University Of Life has finally been submitted. People who’ve been following the project will know that I’ve been working on it, on and off, since 2005. Since then it’s been through a number of revisions. At one point I was going to attempt to produce it myself, podcast style.

I have sent it to the BBC Writers Room, and apparently, I can expect to get a confirmation of receipt within a month. Beyond that, if my script is one of the better of the 10,000 (really) other scripts that they receive each year, I may get some commentary back from an experienced script reader. Bear in mind that I’m not hoping for them to develop that particular script idea but I am sending it for criticism and as a calling card for my writing style.

Depending on the type of feedback I receive, I’ll make a decision about whether I should rewrite the script or start a completely new script later this year.

I’ve finished an article for Linux.com called “Moving my mother over to Linux“. This is the first article that I have had professionally edited, and it’s a weird experience, having someone alter my words. Not to worry, the editor, Lee Schlesinger, seems to know what he’s doing

It’s a bit brief at 1,700 words but better concise than flabby.

Breezy 1000 word article about the iPhone. I’ve sent it to OSNews.com and if they want it, I’ll add add it here as usual. [Published now. Click here to read it online]

Stylistically, it’s a bit of departure for me: short, conversational tone, and not very techy. To keep things streamlined, I forced myself to be brutal at the editing stage. It finished up at just over 1,500 words and I managed to cut it down to about 1,000. The result is closer to the type of writing style that you would see in a newspaper. I’ll leave it for the reader to judge whether or not I have gone too far and cut out too much.

In other news, I may have got a lead into some possible paying writing work. I’m going to spend the rest of this year pitching articles as a freelance I’ll let you know when something develops.

BTW, I’m afraid that I had to delete the comments to the previous posts as I got spammed. I have now installed a new comments system and you can comment with confidence once more.

I’m formatting and putting the finishing touches on a tech article before sending it off to OS News. I’d been away from it for a while, but I hope to get back into monthly article writing. I’ve got lots of other ideas in the pipeline.

Rather than the usual lumbering, five or six thousand word essay I’ve kept the length down to around 2,000 words. Click here to read it.

The first half of the article explores some of the issues surrounding thin clients in general and then, for the second half, I focus on a specific thin client solution called the Ndiyo . My interest in the Nivo was sparked when I met one of the developers in a RISC OS IRC channel while thin clients and third world IT issues have been issues that have interested me for a while.

Another month, another tech article. Actually, I think that I missed last month’s. I’ll try and run off another quick article in order to maintain the one article per month goal. I’m about to submit this one to OSNews.com and when (if) it’s published, I’ll link to it in the side menu.

Here is the teaser paragraph:

In this article, I’m going to explore the idea that the 8 bit home computer not only had a great deal to offer the prehistoric early-humans of 1985 but that it may also have a place in the modern world; perhaps, there is something that we can learn from it. Having identified the laudable, worthwhile elements of this class of machine, I’m going to make some suggestions towards a scheme that would embody these characteristics in the form of a machine that would have a place within the modern world.

I’ve created another tech article. The article is an overview of LyX, the text processor that I use for my of my writing. Hopefully, the article will be carried by OSNews.com soon. [Update click here to read it]

The article is about 3,500 words in length. I wrote it in a day and that represents something of a breakthrough for me. It’s not the most entertaining article ever written but the subject matter of a review doesn’t particularly lend itself to much humour or insight.

In other news, I need to get payment sent off to Darryl for his new book (sorry Darryl, I’m not very good at getting around to things like that). For anyone who might be interested, Darryl Sloan is an indi novel author who has just finished his second book. I’m happy to pay my £4.50 for the novel for two reasons. Firstly, the premise sounds both vaguely post-apocalyptic (my favourite sci-fi sub-genre) and genuinely intriguing and secondly, as I can write it off as a ‘research expense’ to get hold of a copy a ‘print on demand’ book to see what I think to the quality.

If this sounds like the sort of thing that you’re interested in check out his website.

I have now had three articles published on osnews.com. See sidebar menu for the direct links.

Re-reading them, I’d say that the most recent one (”What It Would Take To Make Me Consider RISCOS Again”) is probably the poorest of the three. I think that the first one (”My Dream OS”) was probably the best one and the second one (”A Very Critical Look At OS Recreation Projects”) was probably the most insightful.

If you’re interested in this sort of writing, read on for some more retrospective analysis and some conclusions.

The first one – “My Dream Operating System” (about 4000 words)

This was my first attempt at writing a tech article and in some respects, it was the most successful. The article was intended as an exercise in developing my ability to write in a less academic and more ‘chatty’ style. In those terms, it was reasonably succesful in eschewing the overly formal style that I was attempting to get away from. On the other hand, it could have been tighter and grammatically better without compromising the informal tone.

As with most of my writing, it suffers from a weak opening section. The first few paragraphs are particularly flawed and could should have been rewritten after the first draft was finished. Things aren’t quite as bad as I start to get into my stride towards the middle of the article.

Also, when I was writing it, I was determined not to get bogged down in grammar; in some of my other writing, I invest quite a lot of time examining the meaning of every word and phrase. In all fairness, when writing about a more ’serious’ subject it is more important to be assured of the precise meaning of what is being written. This was supposed to be a ‘fun’ article rather than a polemic treatise.

If nothing else, having written the first article, I discovered what the goal of the exercise actually is: to improve, but also form an agreement between, the technical and expressive sides of my writing. ‘Compromise’ is the key word here: readability and entertainment value are just as important as precise meaning. The use of imprecise language is perhaps an indication that the ideas are not very well defined but perhaps a good idea, well made, shouldn’t have rely upon strict grammar to succeed?

The article was written over the course of a couple of sessions and posted off without a proper honing stage. One of the reasons for this is that I was quite nervous about submitting it; given that I have a tendency to procrastinate rather than finish things off (oh, I’m famous for it!), I decided to get it sent off rather than allowing it to wilt and die on my HD.

In the article’s favour: The tone is about right, it’s grammatically not too awful, it has a good pace, it makes most of the points that I intended and I hope that it is successful in conveying my enthusiasm for the subject matter.

An extended honing period could have improved it as could have an extended planning stage.

The second one – “A Very Critical Look At OS Recreation Projects” (about 4000 words)

I spent a bit more time on this article than I did with the first. As with the first, I didn’t worry overly about emaculate use of language. In some respects, this article was more successful than the first because I found a greater number of ‘hooks’ for expositional analysis of the subject. I was able to actually utilise the methods of philosophy and even psychology. That is the area of the article that was the most successful.

The structure of this article was similar to the first: a first half that defines the principles of the investigation in question followed by a second half that applies those principles.

I enjoyed writing the first half of the article but by the second half, I was beginning to get bogged down with it. It also occurred to me that some parts of the article would require quite intensive research. To get around this, I made the decision to restrict the scope of the analysis in the second half to operating systems that I was already familiar with. If I focused upon operating systems that I was less familiar with, I could have got myself into a situation in which I would have to do two hours research for each few hundred words of article.

As with the first article, I didn’t do a very extensive rewrite, although, I seem to remember that I retouched the first half a little bit. As with the first article, having finished the first draft, I had to make a decision between either spending some more time on it or posting it. Spending more time on the article meant the possibility of allowing the project to linger and wilt as I endeavoured to make it ‘perfect’ or I simply got tired of it. By the end, I was a bit burned out with the project: I wrote it for free and it was taking time away from other projects. If it had been a piece of paid work, I could have justified the extra time for it.

As I said above, the article improves upon the first one as it contains a bit more analysis and formulation of thesis. I could feel myself applying what I have learnt, particular from my study of philosophy. For this reason, I hope that it’s an article that not just anyone could have written.

The finished article doesn’t quite have the vigour of the first and I don’t think that I got as close to the chatty tone of a magazine article as the first article managed to. It was perhaps overly ambitious and frankly, just too much work to do for a free project that wouldn’t bring any direct benefits.

The Third One – “What It Would Take To Make Me Consider RISCOS Again”

The article was only finished about a week ago so, I might not yet have enough distance from it to make a proper analysis. The best thing to come out of writing article #3 was that I have started experimenting with using a ‘mind mapping’ tool for the note taking stage of a small projects (see last news item for details). I’ve made some useful advances in the project planning area. I also chalked up a bit of experience in terms of ‘what not to do’ when writing such an article.

The planning stage went well but I ended up letting the article length balloon out of control. The project really started to drag so I was sick of it by the end. As I was nearing the 6,000 word point, half as a long again as the other two, I made the decision to finish it off at all costs. I was so sick of it that I don’t think that it was even given a thorough proof read.

There are a few little moments where the article starts to shine, with a bit of in-depth analysis and theorising but it much of it ended up as a dull stating of dry facts. I had anticipated a bit more fallout from hardcore RISCOS fanatics so the final bit of work I did was to add a bit of pre-damage control to the front of the article. In retrospect I wonder if I might have insulted some of the RISCOS enthusiasts who read the article?

Anyway, as a learning experience, article #3 was quite useful. But the article wasn’t the most worthy addition to my portfolio. To really finish the article would have meant adding another two or three thousand words and spending perhaps a total of another few nights on it.

The main thing that I have learnt from writing #3 is that there might be more value in creating articles closer to the 2,000 word mark. At this length, it can still be a useful exercise but there is less chance of me becoming bogged down when writing it. If the idea needs further exploration, it might be worthwhile to revisit it later with a part 2. No more epic-length tech articles!

Future Articles

I’ll try to maintain the 1 article per month rate but I’m going to cut down on the article length. Then, they can still serve as a useful exercise but without detracting from other, more important writing work.

Before long, osnews.com will have published another one of my articles. When they post it on the site, I’ll link to it on the side menu as usual. The subject this time is the RISCOS operating system. It’s an OS that I have some emotional attachment to as the machine that I geeked my way through the middle part of my teens on was a RISC OS workstation. It’s also an OS with a fanatical set of followers so, let the flaming begin!

Finishing the article ended up being quite a lot of work; having just woken up, the next day, it is an effort to even write this news entry. In that spirit, I’m going to take the day off from doing any more writing and get out of the house instead. Time to do some Christmas shopping.

Hello to all people who have surfed over from OSNews. I hope you all like the article. By the way, the names Rhyder/Michael Reed/Robin Hyder are all synonymous. Click here to read it.

Erk. It would seem that I may have been pipped to the post in my dream to create the first IT orientated sit-com. I haven’t seen a copy of The IT Crowd yet so, I don’t know how bad this is. If TIC is really similar to my own thingy, I may have to abandon the project entirely.

I’ll see what audience reaction to TIC is like and maybe try to get hold a copy before deciding whether to proceed with TUOL. The plan had been to rewrite the pilot to create a second draft. Amongst other changes in the second draft, I planned to make the script more plot orientated. I also came up with the brilliant idea of adding a female character to the main cast; you can perhaps picture me sighing when I saw the pictures and read the first accounts of TIC :-/

Serves me right for thinking ‘ah well, you’re 30 now (on 31 of Jan) what else can go wrong this week?’