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.

The article was written quite quickly by making use of some of my notes for the book that I’m writing. However, I still haven’t yet reached my goal of placing any paid writing work on the subject of men’s issues. If you’re in publishing and you hear of any publications that might need some men’s rights or feminist critical content, let me know.

Paul’s also the editor of Men’s News Daily which has taken some of my posts in the past. Paul even has a ground-breaking Men’s Movement call-in internet radio show. As some of you will know, I’m not a very active participant in the Men’s Movement at large, as I prefer to work on my ideas for my book in isolation, but I’ve listened into the show and it sounds amazing.

All my musical equipment is set up at the moment. From time to time, I seem to take a year or so away from it, and when I was very poorly, pre 2005, I found it particularly difficult to stay involved with music. At the moment, I’m just getting back into practice. When I’ve produced a few instrumental electronica tracks that I’m happy with (probably via YouTube and maybe Soundclick). Following that, the first thing I want to do is to revisit some older material, yet I don’t want to touch it while I’m still out of practice. The older material consists of guitar based acoustic prog rock that stretches back to 1999 and some other, mostly incomplete electro-pop material that was written in 2003-2005. Given the amount of work that I put into it, I really ought to try and make some sort of release out of it. I’m trying to fit in a bit of time for music each day.

The weather has begun to improve, so hopefully, I’ll be able to get back into shape for cycling. In addition, carbooty season is getting back into full swing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.