* Work: Summer seems like a long time ago, even more so as my work in July and August is quite separate to what happened when September came along, and what I’m doing now. August saw me hand over the Custom PC and bit-tech Editor’s Chair – for it is a chair, nay, a throne more like, bejewelled wi’ rubies and emeralds and all the riches of the Orient – and I didn’t really do a whole lot of writing for the site in these two final months. Nothing on the blog, but I did contribute a couple of reviews of two fabulous Xbox Live Arcade games. I’ve never played a game that engages with death quite as viscerally and tenderly as Limbo. It’s a distinctive, bleak and audacious game that really stuck with me. The other game I looked at was the far lighter Snoopy Flying Ace, an arcade flying game that’s visually charming but with hard-hitting, exciting combat.
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Archive for the ‘bit-tech’ Category
Recently: July and August 2010
In bit-tech, Freelance, Photography, The Wired Jester on October 22, 2010 at 6:40 pmRecently: May and June 2010
In bit-tech, Freelance, Photography, The Wired Jester on July 16, 2010 at 6:59 pm* Work: Well, May and the start of June are all about Computex in Taiwan; we covered it in quite some style, with myself and two other reporters. It was good fun, especially as it was the first time for one of the guys, and Taipei delivered its usual craziness in spades. Not literally in a spade, although there are times when the jetlag and lack of rest mean you never feel something that surreal is too far off. The show this year lacked big product launches, but the behind the scenes jostling made it the most fascinating one I’ve been to yet. The battle between Intel and ARM is fascinating, as is Apple’s influence and the way that mobile smartphones/tablets are taking off. I tried to summarise it in a blog post. Speaking of mobiles, this blog post was a fun one to write: My iPhone told me what to have for lunch.
Recently: March and April 2010
In bit-tech, Freelance, The Wired Jester on April 28, 2010 at 12:13 am* Work: Well, we relaunched bit-tech! The new site looks lovely, it’s packed with additional features and functions and we improved the advertising (fewer annoying flashing things, better communication for advertisers and readers). I wrote two long blog posts about the redesign which go into details about the changes. I also spent a lot of time in the comment threads talking to readers. Bit-tech has a huge and passionate community who feel very connected to the site, and taking them through the redesign was tricky. A three week, open public beta really helped. So far, it’s worked well – traffic numbers are up, and the editorial team are able to write more content, and are less constrained, and more empowered. Happy days!
But that’s far from all…
Recently: January and February 2010
In bit-tech, Photography, The Wired Jester on February 22, 2010 at 12:40 am* Work: Technical piece of analysis - Why the iPad is Intel’s worst nightmare, and to balance that out, a distinctly less technical review of the marvellously simple Zombie Driver.
* First few photos from my epic trip to China on my sabbatical in September/October last year: Tea and Temples.
* The Wired Jester: My year in books, 2009.
Best of, 2009 edition
In bit-tech, Fiction, Non fiction, The Wired Jester on January 1, 2010 at 8:42 pmSo that was 2009; full as ever, although work gave up a little room to other things this year – I found the time to work on my photography, and it’s really developed(1), helped, of course, by a near seven week sabbatical break in September and October which took me to beautiful, strange, tasty Southwest China and Maryland and Virginia in the USA. It feels as if I wrote less than in previous years, both outside of work, where my current novel seemed to seize up, and at work, where a bigger team meant more management and less of a need for me to write. On the plus side, there were a few things I really liked from 2009 in terms of quality. They’re linked after the jump. Now, on to 2010.
Killing is fun
In bit-tech on June 26, 2009 at 10:41 pmWhy computer games have a problem with war – they have to make killing fun.
