Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Author: Carrie

  • Screenwipe: writers on writing

    This week’s episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe was fascinating. Instead of pouring bile on the usual deserving targets, Brooker sat down with the writers of Doctor Who, Peep Show, Hustle, Shameless and the IT Crowd and asked them to talk about writing. Which they did. Russell T Davies was a particular delight, but I found the whole thing fascinating.

    In particular, I was surprised just how universal some things are: impostor syndrome, the feeling that writing is the easy bit (it’s the thinking that’s difficult), the importance of editing, editing, editing and then doing a bit more editing, the problems of drinking too much (booze at night, coffee by day) and writers’ complete inability to even start writing until the voices in their head tell them to get working.

    If you’re interested in writing, not just for the telly but in general, it’s well worth your time. The clip I’ve embedded is the first part; the whole thing’s currently on iPlayer.

  • Opera 10 (alpha) now available for download

    Title says it all, really. Features list promises standards support, better performance, SVG…

  • Is there more to the Glasgow Herald / Evening Times redundancies than meets the eye?

    Newsquest, publisher of the Herald and Evening Times, is giving redundancy notices to more than 230 journalists and giving them the “opportunity” to apply for “new” jobs. 30 to 40 hacks will get the bullet. According to Media Guardian:

    The move is seen as a way of dismantling a powerful National Union of Journalists chapel at the group, which publishes the Herald, Evening Times and Sunday Herald, according to one senior insider.

    Political and trades union leaders in Scotland also said they were shocked and alarmed by the scale of the restructuring measures implemented by Newsquest, which is owned by US newspaper company Gannett.

    “The worry really is that what they’re really trying to do is slash wages and conditions. So if you go for a job, it will be a much lower paid one,” the Herald & Times Group source said.

    “This is all to do with the fact that the Herald is a relatively well-paid newspaper. What they clearly want to do is to put these jobs on provincial English pay rates. What they just can’t understand is why the Herald should be paying more than they do in Southampton or Bradford,” the insider added.

    …Circulation of both the Scotsman and the Herald have been in steep decline, which many observers believe has been accelerated by staff cuts at both titles and their failure to adapt quickly to the digital news industry.

    Update: Shaun Milne asks, “What about the readers?”

    And as I’ve already argued over what I fear will be similar dramatic developments to come at the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, progress should and could be made to benefit quality journalism, not in spite of it.

    Is it any surprise that sales have fallen at a time when there is less quality journalism, campaigns and investigations to lure readers in?

    Where is the tipping point? How mundane and bland to we have to make these fine institutions before there is no point printing papers of record at all?

  • From the archives: how to write an angry email

    We’ve all experienced it: someone says something really annoying or offensive, you search for a witty comeback and your mind goes blank. Three days later, in the wee small hours, the words come to you – “Yeah! But your wife looks like a horse!” but it’s too late, because the moment’s gone. Online, though, things are different. Time is on your side.

    Writing angry emails can be an entertaining and rewarding hobby, but it’s important to know the rules. The most important rule of all is: never write an angry email when you’re actually angry.

    It’s tempting, we know, but it’s a recipe for disaster. BANG! You hammer the keyboard with your meaty fists. SMACK! You stab the Send button with all your might. HAH! You sit back in triumph. ARSE! You’ve accidentally sent the message to your boss. We’ve read lots of business books, and we’re pretty sure that “OMG UR WIEF LOOKS LIEK A HORSE!!!!” won’t get you a pay rise.

    The trick to angry emails is to stay cool. If your tormentor thinks they’ve got under your skin, they’ve won – but if you seem unconcerned, that’ll really annoy them. Never respond to their digs at you; instead, identify their weak points – everybody’s sensitive about something – and then exploit them elegantly. We’ve had good results with phrases such as “I’m sure that you are aware”, “I am surprised that you didn’t”, “If you really understood the subject” and “I’ve got your children in my cellar.”

    [Originally published in Official Windows Vista magazine. The last bit didn’t make it into the printed version]

  • From the archives: Everything you need to know about Internet TV

    Until recently internet TV tended to involve cameras pointed at cheese or happy slapping clips on YouTube, but the telly times are changing. Internet TV is coming!

    It’s incredible how far we’ve come. In the bad old days you’d spend £200 on a TV set, another £100 on a video recorder and you’d get your programmes for free. Today, though, technology has made everything better. All you need for internet TV is a £1,000 PC, a £20 per month broadband connection and a portal into a parallel universe where instead of throwing slippers at the screen when the broadcaster shows repeats, you reach for your credit card instead.

    We’ve seen technology do some amazing things, but we never thought it could get people to pay for repeats. But that’s exactly what’s happened: by calling their old tat “archive material” or “premium content”, internet TV services are successfully persuading people to pay 99p for old episodes. Presumably the broadcasters could paint lipstick on a pig, tell everyone it’s Madonna and get the same people to shell out £100 on tickets to see it dance to disco music.

    According to technology evangelists internet TV is just the beginning. They say that everything we currently get over the air – such as TV broadcasts – will eventually be piped into our homes, and they also say that the reverse is happening, so everything we currently get via pipes will come through the air. Which means that somewhere, someone is trying to transmit water over Wi-Fi.

    [Originally published in Official Windows Vista magazine]

  • From the archives: Everything you need to know about online auctions

    When boffins invent teleportation we’ll be able to travel around the world in seconds, but for now online auctions offer the next best thing: with a click of the mouse you can send all of your money or all of your possessions to Nigeria.

    When you advertise your dog-eared 2006 Official Girls Aloud calendar on an online auction you’ll immediately receive seven hundred emails offering two and a half million pounds for it. You now have two choices: you can stop the auction early and get ripped off now, or you can wait until the auction ends and get ripped off then. It really doesn’t matter: whether you post it today or a week today, the calendar’s going to Nigeria – and the payment’s from a cloned credit card, so it’ll be yanked by your bank within three seconds of posting your package. That means not only will you lose your money, but you’ll no longer have a picture of Kimberley to cheer yourself up.

    If you’re a buyer, things are even more fun: when you win an auction and make your payment, one of three exciting things will happen. One, the package will arrive and you’ll discover that you’ve bought a photo of the thing instead of the thing itself; two, the package will arrive and you’ll discover that you’ve bought a box for the thing instead of the thing itself; or three, no package will arrive and you’ll receive a postcard from your money instead. “Wish you were here,” it says. “In Nigeria!”

    [Originally published in Official Windows Vista magazine]

  • From the archives: everything you need to know about user-generated content

    You wander downstairs, bleary-eyed, and grab the morning paper. The front page is blank.  So is page two, and page three, and every other page. The paperboy’s delivered 70 bits of blank paper and a biro, but when you call the newsagent to complain, he says you should be happy. “It’s newspaper 2.0!” he’ll cry. “Behold the power of user-generated content!”

    In the old days websites published stuff and we looked at it. If we clicked on the adverts the sites would make money – which was fair enough, because the sites created the content in the first place. With user-generated content, though, you and I provide the content for free and the site owners still keep the money. In 2005, photo sharing site Flickr.com was sold for $30 million (£17 million). Flickr users got nowt.

    User generated content is mainly a web phenomenon, but it’s spreading. Tabloids regularly ask “do you have any news stories? Decent photos? Can you spare half an hour on Friday to empty the bins in our office?” and TV stations want you to send in your videos. Even restaurants are getting in on the act. Some places already encourage you to pick your own ingredients and cook them at your table, and it’s just a matter of time before you get the opportunity to do the dishes afterwards.

    All grandparents tell the grandkids that “in our day, we made our own entertainment” – but we’ll be the first grandparents who are actually telling the truth.

    [Originally published in Official Windows Vista magazine.]

  • From the archives: Why Macs are better than PCs

    This gleefully biased piece was written for MacFormat aaaaaaages ago – Leopard wasn’t out, MSN Music was still a going concern, etc – and it was designed for potential switchers who might be sneakily reading Mac mags in the newsagents [There’s a companion piece, the Seven Deadly Sins of Apple Ownership, that I’ll post later].

    Some of the advice is hackneyed and some of the prices are out, but I’m still amused by the really bad jokes…

    1 Our Apples don’t explode

    The slogan “Dude, get a Dell!” did wonders for the PC firm, but perhaps it’s time for a new slogan – such as “Dude! Get a fire extinguisher!” In August, Dell embarked on the biggest battery recall programme the world has ever seen, replacing 4.1 million laptop batteries that suffered from an itty-bitty, teeny-weeny problem: some of them exploded, taking people’s PCs with them. Of course, Apple recalled laptop batteries too – but it didn’t wait until things blew up to take action.

    (more…)

  • From the archives: Everything you need to know about online dating

    Meeting Mr or Miss Right isn’t easy. Silly little details – shyness, extreme body odour, dressing like a security guard from Star Trek or carrying bits of your murdered ex-partner around with you in a bin bag – often prevent people from getting to know the real you. If only they could look beyond that and see your sparkling personality! Thanks to online dating, they can.

    Online dating is easy: just sign up and then lie, lie, lie. You may spend your days watching Star Trek re-runs and pretending to be Captain Kirk while stuffing your face with Wotsits, but online you’ll say you love long romantic walks, trips to the theatre and teaching cats to play the banjo. Inches – and in some cases, several feet – are magically added to your height, multiple zeroes appear on the end of your salary, and your occupation becomes the job you’d like to do rather than the one you actually do.

    And none of this matters, because the people you meet are all lying too – but one thing you can’t really fake is your personality, and that really is something special. Before long you’re chatting with someone who seems to be a soulmate – smart, funny, available, and as interested in you as you are in them. So why not meet?

    And you do, and that’s when the wheels fall off the love bus. They’re shy. They’re wearing a red Lycra jumper. There’s a definite whiff of cheese. And they’re carrying something in a bin bag.

    [Originally published in Official Windows Vista magazine. Their budget didn’t stretch to the real Guy Browning, heh]

  • God bless the tabloids

    The Sun reports that condom sales have increased. The headline? “BRITAIN HUMPS THROUGH SLUMP”.