Technologies of Christmas past

Saturday, December 26th, 2009

The grandest Christmas traditions have been with us for centuries, and many will doubtless stick around for centuries more. Trees, gifts and alcoholic exuberance come to mind.

But we techie types have some more modern rituals too. Online Christmas shopping, for example. Loading up your Sky+ Box or Windows Media Center with films you’ll never watch. And, of course, hiding away in the study while you get to grips with this year’s must-have PC game.

For many of us, these customs are as much a part of the Yuletide season as wassailing and mulled wine; yet the technology that makes them possible has only come into being within the past few decades. And as 2010 comes knocking, I find myself looking back over Christmases of the past and marvelling at the huge advances we’ve made within my lifetime to get here. (more…)

iPhone: a return to the golden age of gaming?

Tuesday, August 11th, 2009

When I were a lad, a new computer game didn’t cost the same as a tank of petrol. I remember eagerly scanning the shelves of my local WH Smith, hoping to find a new release among the stacks of Commodore 64 tapes priced at £2.99. If I hadn’t given my mum too much lip that week, I might even have been able to persuade her to part with £3.99 for one of the premium titles, such as The Way of the Exploding Fist.

The era of the low-budget game pretty much died with the Commodore 64, Spectrum and Amstrad era. Before long the Amiga and the Atari ST had raised the budget bar to £9.99 – not so much an impulse purchase, as a couple of weeks pocket money at the very least.

Yet, that was nothing compared to the inflation of the console era. New PlayStation titles routinely cost £30. Today, a brand new Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 title can set you back £50. I sympathise with the parents I see dragging their disappointed offspring away from the game aisles in Tesco, explaining they simply can’t afford the latest releases. For my mum it was a couple quid on top of her copy of the Daily Mail and Woman’s Weekly; for today’s mums it’s almost as much as the weekly shopping bill.

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Big Ideas (Don’t get any)

Friday, June 6th, 2008

This fantastic video from James Houston was made in response to an online remix contest from Radiohead which invited musicians to reinterpret tracks from their recent album, In Rainbows.

Some of the results were fantastic, most were not. Houston took things a step further than most, hacking vintage hardware to recreate the different instruments in the song.

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