Archive for January, 2006
I want that one
4x faster than the current PowerBook? Yes please - although I think I’ll wait for the second generation. Only a very brave soul shells out for version 1.0 of anything.
Update, 11 Jan
After reading through the specs of the new Macs, the most interesting thing for me is that the iMac can now be part of a twin-screen setup (until now, if you wanted to run dual screens you needed a Power Mac or Powerbook). I suspect that when it’s new computer time, I’ll plump for the iMac rather than a new ‘book - it’s £500 cheaper, and I’d still have my current Powerbook for doing stuff when I’m out and about.
Oh, and MacBook Pro is a terrible name for a computer.
This Is No Game, says Jack Handey
From The New Yorker:
I was walking past a building and I saw a man standing high up on a ledge. “Jump! Jump!” I started yelling. What happened next would haunt me for the rest of my days: the man came down from the building and beat the living daylights out of me.
Tesco, self-service checkouts and security
I bought some shopping in Tesco yesterday and used one of their new-fangled checkouts. It’s very clever: you scan the stuff yourself, swipe your bank card and, er, that’s it. However, when I swiped the card it didn’t ask for a PIN - which means that you could use anyone’s card.
Tesco is apparently going to make its self-service checkouts Chip and PIN to address the problem, and it says that a signature is required for transactions beyond a certain level (although I can’t find any figures to say what that “certain level” actually is). But for now, the firm’s offering a fantastic opportunity for card crooks.
Nice ebook. What about the DRM?
That said, there’s two things that would put me off, and inevitably they’re pricing and DRM. It’s unclear what restrictions Sony will slap on its ebooks: its previous Librie ebook reader killed your copies after 60 days, whether you’d read them or not. Without knowing the DRM details, it’s impossible to say whether Sony’s ebooks will be a sensible purchase at any price.
The other issue, pricing, is turning me off too. Sony promises that titles will be 20-25% cheaper than regular retail price. If that’s the RRP rather than the street price, then ebooks will be more expensive than printed ones: thanks to the ongoing book price wars and bundling deals, the price you pay for a real book is almost always considerably less than the RRP.
Put it this way: Sony’s promising DRM-restricted digital books for 25% less than RRP, and those books may be time-bombed. Amazon sells physical books for an average of 30% less than RRP. Proper books don’t have DRM, don’t have an expiry date, and don’t explode if you drop them in the bath.
So you want to be a voiceover artist?
You’ve got a great voice. Why not use it to earn at least £50 per hour for voiceover work? That’s the promise made by UKVoices, whose ads turn up in the back pages of magazines such as Now.
The fact that the ad appears in Now should ring alarm bells immediately. Voiceover work is a branch of acting, and the trade magazine for the acting profession - the place where people advertise their jobs - is The Stage. To the best of my knowledge, Now is not regarded as the bible of the acting profession.
Let’s assume that UKVoices is just trying to find new talent, though. What’s the deal?
It’s simple enough. Sign up - it’s £20 - and you can record a brief showreel, which will then be downloaded by agents who are just gagging to take you on. UKVoices doesn’t charge any commission, which makes them very attractive to would-be employers.
Here’s the thing. If UKVoices tries to get people voiceover work, its employees are idiots.
Let me explain. If UKVoices doesn’t charge commission, it makes no money from getting people work. Its only source of income is sign-up fees, so it’s in the firm’s best interests to sign up as many people as possible, irrespective of whether they’re any good or not (and if you listen to the sound clips on the site, it’s clear that quality isn’t a key criteria). If the firm does anything other than bank the sign-up fee, it’s spending time and therefore money on something that won’t generate any return. That’d be madness.
A quick aside: staff agencies aren’t allowed to charge registration fees for that same reason (the relevant legislation only covers Employment Agencies). Instead, temp agencies take a fee, usually an hourly one. The more work you get, the more money they get. If you don’t get any work, they don’t get any money.
The truth is that voiceover work is like writing novels, getting a record deal or becoming a full-time journalist. It’s much harder than most people think. As the excellent Excellent Voice Company’s site points out:
There is a huge difference between people who have a nice voice, read aloud well or whose friends tell them that they ought to do voice-overs - and a professional voice over. Professionals understand that the smallest alteration in inflection can make the difference between success and failure, they understand why the client or director needs a particular style of read or performance. They appreciate the need to save time and know how to fit a forty second script into thirty seconds without it sounding like a machine gun.
Good voices develop a sense of timing in their heads. They can see a written script and tell you exactly how long it will take at an average read. They can sight-read to time without looking at the studio clock. They know how a scriptwriter’s mind works, how to get inside a script, and what to bring out, without having to have it spelled out for them.
This doesn’t mean to say that new voices don’t turn up on the circuit - but it does explain why so few really make it - they’ve got to be very, very good.
The advice continues:
To survive, any industry needs to recruit new talent - and there’s nothing more pleasing from an agent’s perspective than hearing that extra special something on a showreel, and knowing that you’ve discovered a new voice - who then goes on to become a success. But there’s no point in being anything other than brutally honest about a really tough industry.
You might get a gig via UKVoices. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Puffed-up nonsense
Scottish smoking ban rivals California - Newspaper Edition - Times Online
Update, 8 Jan
One of the key bits of guidance from the Executive is that firms should under no circumstances provide smoking areas, such as outdoor shelters, for employees or visitors. The reason? It undermines the anti-smoking message. So…. you’ll never guess which Scots organisation is about to spend £20,000 on such a shelter. I’ll give you a clue. It begins with “S” and ends in “cottish Executive”. The Sunday Times reports:
POLITICIANS who voted for a ban on smoking in public buildings have given the go-ahead for a £20,000 shelter at Holyrood that will allow them to continue to light-up at work — in breach of their own guidelines.
The executive’s guidance argued against smoking shelters outside public buildings, including councils and hospitals, stating that clamping down on smoking at work would make people more likely to quit or cut down.
“There is equally strong evidence that the provision of any smoking area for staff — including external smoking shelters, undermines this potential health gain,” the guidance states. “In terms of health and wellbeing a smoking area does little to benefit either the staff or the organisation in the short or the long term.
I’m reminded of the building in Glasgow’s St. Vincent Street that has plastered its street-level windows with posters stating “only idiots smoke here”. I’m finding it very hard to resist the temptation to create my own version - “only ****s work here”.