How do you start one of these things? Never done any kind of opinion-y writing before, so this is all kind of a leap into a big, dark scary hole with no safety harnesses hoping to be caught by my loving reader (I’m an optimistic person). I guess I’ll stop the rambling and go with the Alcoholics Anonymous method:
Hi, I’m Jonny, and I’m unashamedly a tech-phile. I’m a graduate from the University of Exeter
with a Physics BSc. I’m originally from Caterham in Surrey and I currently work
at Formula One Management in the Broadcast team doing fun things like Team
Radio and On Board Camera Replays.
Yeah, that will do.
Anyway, welcome to my blog about tech. The reason I’m
starting one of these with no previous writing experience is to rectify that
very fact. I’m thinking of a career in tech journalism and need the practice if
I’m gonna make it anywhere. I’m not going to promise any kind of regular weekly
or monthly pieces as I am almost guaranteed not to meet those targets, so it
will be sporadic at best, but hopefully entertaining and maybe even informative
if all goes to plan. So I guess this post is just going to be a bit about me,
my background and how I fell in love with tech.
I’ve kept half an eye on tech from back when I were a wee tot.
My dad has always enjoyed audio-visual stuff and has been amazingly well
restrained when it came to spunking an inordinate amount of money on TVs,
entertainment systems, HiFis and speakers.
But when he did spend, he spent it well. Growing up with
amazing speakers to listen to and TVs with awesome quality that stand the test
of time has endlessly benefited me
We would always sit down together to watch The Gadget Show
on Channel 5 every week, partly so Dad could gawk at Suzy Peri, and partly to
listen to tech maestro, Jon Bentley, as he always gave very well informed,
impartial judgements about what was the best buy in every walk of tech, from
razors to computer systems.
But the real moment when I fell deeply, painfully and wholly
down the rabbit hole was when I was searching for a new phone in the autumn of 2013.
I had chosen my previous phone, an HTC Desire S, because it was roughly the
same size as but cheaper than an iPhone. The decision turned out to be a meh
one at best as with that phone I experienced a weird array of quirks including
the bottom half of the screen just nope-ing out after a few minutes of use, but
working perfectly again if you locked and unlocked the screen. It had so many
of these little moments that it became a running joke amongst my friendship
group, with the phrase “stupid HTC” being uttered hourly. This time, I wasn’t
going to make such an uninformed decision. I researched endlessly in my price
bracket to find the one for me and I narrowed it down to two, the Sony Xperia
SP and the HTC One Mini. I ended up going for the Sony because of the better
camera and the fact I hadn’t quite forgiven HTC for my Desire S.
The result of my research was kind of moot in all honesty.
It had been a gateway drug to constantly reading reviews about phones and
everything to do with them. I got hooked on how quickly the industry moved. As
soon as a phone was released there was a day of hype, ogling how pretty it was,
and the very next day, rumours would start floating around about its successor.
What fancy new angle would the manufacturer take, what features would it
include, would it be a complete shift in design philosophy or be an iterative
update. I GOTS TO KNOW. And so, from there, I would religiously check PhoneArena
daily for all that hot, new gossip that was perpetually coming in and just
learned more and more about the industry.
Now, I’ve somehow become that person that people turn to and
ask that terrifying, unanswerable question, “What phone should I get?”.
The natural progression was of course to move on from just
being the mobile phone guy to learning about all walks of tech, but with phones
as my core knowledge base. I do, however, have a big soft spot for laptops and
headphones. As a result, I’ve been very much enjoying Dave Lee (D2D) on YouTube
lately, check him out. He knows his shit.
From PhoneArena, which is dedicated to just phones and has a
definite soft spot for Android, I graduated up to TechRadar who cover tech. All
tech. Cars, headphones, tablets, laptops, speakers, mobiles, anti-virus
software, gaming. All of it. Not only do they cover a wider range of tech, they
write in a light hearted, but informative and assistive way that compares all
the variables and makes an informed decision about the best choice for certain
criteria. They also keep up to date with all the latest gossip and rumours
fuelling that fire and building hype for whatever the next big release will be.
Basically the dream is to one day get a job with them and become one of those
awesome people (ahem, Gareth Beavis, if you do on the off chance read this,
pls?).
I’m very fortunate in having a good group of friends who are
nerdy like me and like tech things. I can actually talk to them on an equal
playing field about this stuff as well as learning from them.
It’s these friends that have persuaded me to write this
blog. I mentioned in passing whilst contemplating going to the OnePlus 5 launch
in New York (I happened to be there, not quite at the stage of travelling
especially for these events yet) and mentioned how great it would be to bump
into the guys from TechRadar or BBC Click and just to be whisked up under their
wing after I woo-ed them with my charisma and good looks. They brought my head
down from the clouds and told me that if the day ever did come where I could do
this for a living, I should be prepared and thus came about the blog.
Speaking of which, I haven’t really mentioned what I will
fill this blog with. Well, it will hopefully be my attempts at reviews of tech,
when I can get my hands on some, opinions on things, companies, new ideas, the
direction the industry is going or anything I feel strongly about, and other
things that I’m sure I will come up with as this idea matures and grows.
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