Monthly Archives: June 2009

Another day, another bee, and Paul Hales

Posted on June 12, 2009 | 4 Comments

PAUL HALES was trying to burn my house down this morning when yet another bumble bee decided it wanted to be saved.

They always batter themselves insensible against the glass and look like they’re close to death, poor things.

Eventually I found it, and, yet again, said bumble bee did a little jig to orient itself and off she flew.

Off Hales flew too, right into the maze that is Oxford’s one way traffic system. I couldn’t rescue him. Even seven hours later he might still be trying to orient himself.

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TG Daily goes live

Posted on June 10, 2009 | 4 Comments

OUR MAGAZINE is doing exciting things. It also works on Crackberries. It is here.  I refuse to be a Twitterati.

Sources at www.theinquirer.net tell me that the magazine I created is going to be a vehicle for the small and medium enterprise market. This is difficult for me to understand.

When VNU bought me, the INQ was a very viable magazine. A then publisher said to me: “Mike, we want to do this with the Inquirer. What do you think?”

I said heck, it’s like selling a house. I sold a house. You want to turn it into a brothel, how can I stop it?

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Hales bales as INQ thinks

Posted on June 9, 2009 | 1 Comment

OVER AT my old organ The INQSTER, mop haired lovable Dunstabubble boy Paul Hales has announced he’s leaving the ship.

We’ve both worked together a lot during the years. In the early 1990s, when I was in exile for some reason or other, we both worked on The Software Magazine and were rewarded for our hard work with bouncing cheques from the proprietors.

But I first met him on a boat in the Thames.  He and another young editorial assistant called John Barnes had taken advantage of Unisys’ bountless supply of fine foaming wines, and were attempting to sail it, much to my alarm.

Good luck Halesie, wherever you’ll tip up. And good luck to the other motley crew, the herd of freelance cats that I pulled together when I hurriedly created the Inquirer. The story is here.  Charlie, another of my prodigies (shorely proteges, Ed) has started his own site, www.semiaccurate.com.  This is spooky, because I was toying with starting one called Semi Conscious.

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The INQUIRER goes all funny

Posted on June 8, 2009 | 6 Comments

MY OLD VEHICLE, the Inquirer, appears to be going through some changes.

There’s hardly any stories on it, and there’s a picture of a humming bird which points to a UK Press Gazette story about redundancies at Incisive Media ensconced in Castle Despair. Picture of the day was always an unsupported feature, but is there some strange mojo working here?

PCW is – or now was –  an ancient tech magazine, originally founded by one Felix Dennis. A bit of a flagship.

I did try to buy the INQ back about nine months ago, but was told by B in no uncertain terms, FOAD™ – which is nothing to do with Fuad or Fudo. It is actually quite rude. I leave you to guess what it means but the last two letters stand for “and die”.

Ah well. Vehicles do need to be replaced from time to time.

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Dearie me, libel and copyright theft

Posted on June 5, 2009 | 2 Comments

FERNANDO CASSIA of the Argentinian yard points me to Daily Tech where I discover that not only am I being libelled, but my own pictures are being published too.

The page is here. The photograph of me was taken in Oxford Jail – now a tourist attraction rather than a clink.  The IT Examiner and The News weren’t set up to take advantage of cheap journalistic labour.  You can get cheap journalism anywhere, even in America it seems.

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