Well, life has been full and interesting these past few months. Plenty of things happening at work, but today I’m posting about my own new personal writing project which got underway last week. It’s called A Month In Music. I have all my MP3s in iTunes, and at first it tells you how many hours worth of music you have, and then how many days. I recently realised I had 30.3 days of music in my collection – a whole month. I was fascinated with the idea that I had, over 15 years, accumulated so much music that I could listen to it non stop for a whole month and never hear the same track repeated.

So that’s what I decided to do, writing about it as I went.The were rules of course: I was allowed to pick only the first song, and that after that, iTunes played randomly through the collection, and there would no skipping or pausing. Not at night, not during the day. Not at all. It was a really fascinating project, and I think it comes at an interesting time, as, thanks to Spotify and Youtube, the idea of a music collection with a definite border, an in/out, us/them split, becomes increasingly antiquated, despite music being such a key part of identity and pop culture. It was also a really good opportunity for me to revisit songs that once meant a lot to me, and go through some memories, because really, your music collection is a self-portrait in audio.

In addition to all the original writing, there’s a series of photos too. It’s going live once a day as a blog on monthinmusic.tumblr.com. I would, of course, be very happy if you checked it out.

We went to New York right after new year to kick off this year’s biggest project, but there’s a long way to go with it. In early February, I spent a very enjoyable and intense 10 day period on the design for what will be our first app, and here I was lucky to find a terrific UX expert to mastermind the process, an old colleague I bumped into a Windows Phone 7 event. It was great to actually get out of meetings and strategising and start the sketching and questioning, plotting and planning for an actual product.

That said, it does feel like we’ve also made progress at Dennis when it comes to structure and strategy. It’s just a slow and far from straightforward process, and I’m not a patient person (as my friends and beaten computer keyboards can attest to).

Can’t really add anything more specific than that. When it’s done.

In terms of writing, January and February have been my two least productive months for perhaps the last ten years, if not longer. Life as a journalist is receding quickly: the only articles I’ve published this year are my Mac User columns. Incidentally, there’s a new editor on Mac User and the magazine is looking great, with some terrific covers. I should perhaps say practicing journalist. Like being a lapsed Catholic, it’s one of those things you never really shake, especially when half your friends and the people you work with remain true believers. It’s not just the career change that slowed down the writing, either: over Christmas I finished the first, very rough draft of my next personal project. The plan was to wait two months, then go back to it for the next draft and then see how it feels.

Photo-wise, despite the awful watery winter light, I managed to get some nice shots over the Christmas break, and some of New York, although home internet crappiness means there’s not that much stuff up on Flickr. The Wired Jester has begun its latest metamorphosis, and is now quite concerned with this year’s BHAG: cycling 2,011 miles over the course of 2011.

The team was initially called Emerging Platforms, but now goes by Dennis Media Factory. It’s a little vague, but intentionally so, giving a bit of room to change course, adapt, iterate. All important things when you consider this time last year the iPad wasn’t even on sale. At the same time, the name has a solidity and purpose and it suggests making things. Two simple words, but ones that promise a lot of change for media companies I think. Most of what they do – or see themselves doing – is creating on a very large, slightly vague scale (i.e. magazines that have become brands, containing print/online/event/merchandise/spinoffs), or, on a much smaller level – articles and features. Things - or better yet, products - are right in the middle of that. At the moment, by things, I mean Apps for the phones and tablets, digital magazines, eBooks. The challenge for us at work is to implement structure and processes that can achieve efficiency at scale and, of course, to make sure we sweat the details to make some absolutely cracking specific things.

My role (currently under the title Development Manager) is the second bit really. Talking to the different brands at Dennis about what they could, should and can do in terms of Apps. I’ve been reading and learning a lot about Product Management as a job function within media companies; went to a great AOP conference about it, and I’m enjoying the chance to have a lot of input into such a new, interesting bit of the company. If you want to keep up with what we’re doing, I’ve set up a link blog for DMF, and we have a Twitter account too.

Linked to that, I wrote a meandering piece on The Wired Jester about a week I spent up north, seeing the family, and what happened when they played with the iPad. I had almost a month off the bike in November as a result of bad weather and a minging cold, and I really missed it: 2010 has definitely been the year I got back into cycling, and it’s one of the best decisions I made all year. I’m getting quicker with doing stuff with my photos, thanks to Lightroom – here’s some pictures from my trip. In 2010 I upgraded to the D90 this year, and haven’t looked back. It’s a great camera – but nowhere near as significant to my pictures as Lightroom. Below, a few of my best pictures from the year.

Next year… well, next year will be very different to this one I think.

* Away from work, I spent the summer really getting into cycling, and over on The Wired Jester I posted some thoughts on riding the bike through London. It’s still not really a frequently updated blog, but stepping away from day-to-day journalism means I’ve had a bit more writing energy for the last couple of posts, which is a-good-thing(TM).

* Photography: I’ve finally put up some pictures from last year’s trip to Baltimore, Washington and the scenery inbetween. I also put up the photos from a brief trip to Gothenburg and the Swedish coast. Beautiful silvery light, and since I’ve started using Lightroom 3, I finally feel I’m getting a little closer to what I want from my photography. If you’re a digital SLR photographer and haven’t tried it yet, it’s an absolute must. It will make a bigger difference to your photography than any new lens or body, so stop saving for that, and get Lightroom instead.

I’m also using Instagr.am on the iPhone, as sifter if you want to add me.

* Freelance-wise, my Mac User column continues, and I was quite happy to revel in my geekery with this one, which begins with a debate as to which country has the best plug.

* Photos: I took my new Nikon D90 to the Far East – Taiwan for Computex, then gorgeous Hong Kong on the way back. The photos are on the all new Flickr, although I’ve not put them all up yet. Speaking of photos, I tried out Lightroom 3 and it’s terrific. The filters are amazing, and I think it’s had a great impact on my ability to take a photo that says what I think it’s going to say the moment before I push the button. You can see the results for yourself.

* My Mac User column continues; they’ve just relaunched their website into something more bloggy and individual, and it makes it easier to find my columns too. What more could you possibly want?

* I’ve found a bit of time for The Wired Jester, including some decent ramen links, a photo-post on jetlag and an extended ramble about clothes, particularly Uniqlo.

Other than that, I’ve been enjoying the warm weather – bit of gardening – I’m writing up a really exciting new project – and I’ve been to Sweden for a holiday.

* 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.

Plant portraits

Stalk of Fire. An old photo that I rescued from a dusty folder on the hard disk to brighten up a dull winter day. Taken an August ago, in the gardens of one of South East London’s best days out, Eltham Palace.

Nature will find a way. Close up of an abandoned WW2 tank on Peleliu. I think it made a nice memorial; nature is reclaiming it. The full story on my trip to Peleliu is here.

Engine lichen. Another shot from Peleliu, this time of lichen-spotted machinery in the engine bay of an old landing craft.

Garden views

A path winds through the grounds of Wuhou temple in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, China.

Reflections of the garden in a cup of tea at the teahouse in Wenshu temple, Chengdu. The city’s temple teahouses are full of people reading the papers, chatting and playing cards and relaxing on rickety bamboo furniture over endlessly refilled cups of tea. As a tourist they’re a perfect experience; everything from the colours to the smells feels right. The only strange thing is that most of the Chinese there are old. The kids are all in KFC or Starbucks.

Camera: iPhone 3G, processed with Camerabag app.

A favourite image of mine, snapped on the iPhone at Tate’s Rothko show. I entered it into a competition run by Penguin to win a big print of the new cover artwork for 1984. To win, you had to enter an image that reflected 1984; I chose this shot because it’s funnier and stranger than a lot of 1984-derived images tend to be, although of course, it doesn’t shy away from the central darkness of the novel – how bleak life is when words cannot be trusted.

Camera: Nikon D40
Lens: Nikon 18-55 (kit lens)

Not a place many people visit, but I’d agree with Rough Guide when they call Taipei Asia’s most under-rated city. Here’s some photos not of motherboards or netbooks, but of the place where they’re born.

Exiting Warren Street Tube station, London. Cross processed. My most popular shot on Flickr.

Camera: Ricoh Caplio RR211