If I Was Interviewed for The Guardian’s “My Media”…

I was reading The Guardian on the way up to London yesterday, and I got thinking about what I'd say if I was interviewed for the "My Media" column (well, got thinking about for a total of about two seconds, but it makes an interesting blog post). Anyway, as I'm a total media sponge, here's what I'd put down...

Newspapers

The Independent Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Guardian on Thursdays (for the IT section) and sometimes on Mondays, depending on how racy I'm feeling. Independent on Fridays and Saturdays, Observer on Sundays. I only usually buy a paper during the week if I'm travelling up on the train, trying to avoid talking to the client at lunchtime when on site, or if I'm popping in to Starbucks before work when down in Brighton. Not for me, the Metro and Lite freesheets, which as far as I'm concerned are a plot by the authorities to de-politicize the working class by removing all actual news from newspapers.

Magazines

I'm a bit of a sucker for a discounted mail-order subscription offer, what with all the train journeys and the fact that I always have to be reading something (as well as doing something else usually at the same time, such as eating, watching TV or pretending to be listening to the wife). Last count, I had subscriptions for Wired (the US version), the Economist (best news source bar none, in my opinion), Personal Computer World (got it since the 1980's), PC Format, Linux Magazine and Private Eye. I usually pick up a GQ or FHM if I'm off on holiday, sometimes Viz (if it's got Fru. T. Bun or Norbert Colon in it), and sometimes one of the Apple magazines, although they're always about desktop publishing and photo-manipulation applications, none are about the internals and the Unix stuff that I'd find interesting. Other mags I get through the Oracle work are Oracle Magazine, SELECT (the IOUG one), the ODTUG one and Oracle Scene. So I've usually got something to read on the train most days.

Books

Bit of a mish-mash of blokes comedy (Toby Young, "The Sound of No Hands Clapping", scarily close to me although he does it rather than just thinks it), IT industry stuff ("iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business", "On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore"), economics and psychology (Tim Harford, "The Undercover Economist", William Poundstone, "The Prisoners Dilemma"), some good old yarns about finance and gambling ("Liars' Poker",  Ben Mezrich's "Bringing Down the House", "Busting Vegas" and "Ugly Americans"), and some honest to goodness hard-SF (Steven Baxter, Larry Niven). Next one up on the list? "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins.

TV

Peep Show. The Office. Mighty Boosh. Nighty Night.  Mitchell & Webb. Newsnight. Match of the Day. Dragons Den. The Apprentice. The Root of all Evil.

Websites

Slashdot. Orablogs (or more recently, OraNA). Joel.reddit.com. OTN. Popbitch. BBC News and Football. Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus. Asktom.

Music

Three eras to accompany my teens, twenties and thirties. 1980's: Electronic pop, New Order, Cabaret Voltaire, Human League, The Cure, The Smiths, Cocteau Twins. 1990's: the Dance decade, House, Electronica, Trip Hop, the Mondays, the Roses, Charlatans. 2000's: Electronica (Erlend Oye, Lemon Jelly, Solvent), "dad-pop" (Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Badly Drawn Boy) - or more likely a bit of peace and quiet with Cbeebies turned off and the kids down the park.

Radio

Radio 4 if I'm in the car, Radio 1 if I'm driving and Janet's got the radio controls, Pete Tong on the very occaisional times that I actually get to go out.

New Media

All the usual suspects. An IPod Nano 2Gb, mostly for the Gym and I'm ashamed to say, usually stocked up with either the Ricky Gervais and Steve Marchant podcasts, or the techcasts from OTN. A Blackberry Pearl (just bought this morning, actually), 8Gb broadband through Zen, Sky Plus with movies and football. BT Openzone 4000 minutes/month subscription, Apple Macbook with WIFI. Next on the horizon is Sky HD, but there's only a couple of channels and most of them are wildlife ones, when all of Sky and the BBC goes HD then I'll probably stump up for this as well.

Well, that's me. Interestingly, I was actually interviewed by Business.HR when I was over in Zagreb last week, but I was obviously so boring that they never bothered to print the interview (or in fact they did, but as it's in Croatian I can't tell anyway). So, unless the Guardian start interviewing middle-aged IT consultants for their .media section, I expect this is about as far as I'll actually get for a newspaper profile.