Bigmouth Strikes Again: Carrie Marshall's blog

Carrie’s books | Carrie’s band

Category: Media

Journalism, radio and stuff like that

  • Q Magazine: comebacks aren’t just for musicians

    I’ve been reading Q Magazine for as long as I can remember, but last year I finally stopped buying it. That was partly because I’d reached the age where I had absolutely no idea who any of the bands in it actually were, but it was mainly because Q became crap. Lists of songs are funny when you’re doing a collaborative playlist on Spotify; they’re dull as ditchwater to read.

    But now – as Smash Hits might have put it – it’s back! Back! Baaaaaack!

    q270kings

    Credit where credit’s due: rather than head further into Heat territory, editor Paul Rees (formerly of Kerrang, I think) has taken the magazine in the opposite direction. I’d hate to see the freelance bill, but Rees seems to have looked up the Big Book of Good Music Writers, hired them, and given them enough space to do something interesting. The result is a magazine that’s as good as, if not better than, it was in its heyday.

    If you’re a lapsed Q reader, it’s worth picking up again. The current issue even manages to get an interesting feature from a Take That interview. Really.

  • PC Plus 2.0 (and a piece about iPhones and Android)

    PC Plus has revamped its website, and while content’s pretty thin at the moment – it’s a start-from-scratch job rather than a makeover – it’s looking good. A few long articles are already up, including one I did a few months back comparing the technology, business models and opportunities for iPhones and Google’s Android.

    If you’re interested in the background to the new site, the gorgeous, pouting Richard Cobbett talks about it on his blog.

    Also online: some Windows 7 features Apple could steal and improve upon.

  • .net column: I read the news today, oh boy

    Another of my .net columns has made its way to them thar internets:

    There were four interesting news stories this week. The Home Office decided that it fancied a giant central database of everybody’s internet activity, something that would be perfect for data mining in search of thought crimes. A student was detained for six days under antiterrorist legislation for downloading documents from the US Department of Justice website. A well-intentioned but badly drafted new law could put manga fans in prison as suspected kiddie-fiddlers. And Boris Johnson banned booze on the London Underground. Only one of these caused UK internet users to take to the streets in mass protest. Can you guess which one?

  • Twitter: here come the masses

    Me, on Techradar: Twitter’s about to be invaded by the masses. We have a cunning plan.

  • Leave Britney Steve alone!

    Techradar again: Steve Jobs is sick. Leave him alone.

    Imagine you’d had a close encounter with cancer a few years back. You turn up to work with a bit of a cold, and your boss gives you a worried look. “Is the cancer back?” Er, no. I’ve got a bit of a cold. You go for a coffee. “Oh god, is the cancer back?” asks the bloke from sales. No, you say. I’ve got a cold. Back at your desk, somebody accidentally CCs you on an email. It turns out that everybody in the company has become a doctor, they’ve all diagnosed you with cancer, and they’ve emailed your family to break the news.

    …that’s exactly what elements of the press pack and blogging crowd have been doing to Steve Jobs since June.

    The inimitable Ian Betteridge argues the exact opposite.

    Steve Jobs is also a senior executive of a publicly-traded company, and with that role comes certain responsibilities. Steve has responsibilities to his shareholders – and, importantly, so do Apple’s board of directors.

    The illness of a senior executive is a classic area where boards need to be strong, and work for the shareholders. It’s a tough time for everyone, but the role of the board, as I’ll explain, means they have to look at things in a way which is impersonal – and which some might find insensitive.

    So who’s right? There’s only one way to find out…

    I’ve been looking for an excuse to embed a Harry Hill video for ages.

  • Hey, Microsoft! Why don’t you give Windows 7 away for free?

    Me, on Techradar:

    It boots in less than a fortnight. It doesn’t make our laptop shoot up to 100% CPU usage for no good reason, generating enough heat to cook a moose. It goes like lightning on machines that struggled with Vista. It’s very good. In fact, it’s great. Which is why Microsoft should give it away.

  • In my head, I’m Ian Rankin

    The rather sarcastic Stuff Journalists Like website (which, incidentally, would be an awful lot better if the writing was better) sometimes gets a little bit too close for comfort:

    Stuff journalists like: writing a book

    Buried under nearly every journalist’s notebooks, papers and clips is an idea for a book.

    …Unfortunately, a good percentage of these ideas for books will stay just that as journalists are usually burnt out on writing after a full day day of writing for their newspaper, blog, Tumblr and Twitter.

    I was looking for something this morning and stumbled across my Book Ideas folder, where I’ve written outlines and in some cases several chapters of four or five different novels. They’re pretty good, I think, largely because only one of them is about a journalist – and he’s only a journalist because it gives me a chance to have him mutilated by gangsters, which is always good. Unless you’re writing a children’s book. But every single one of them has run out of steam, sometimes at the outline stage, sometimes after five or six chapters. The enthusiasm flags and they become Great Big Scary Things That You’ll Never Finish.

    Stuff Journalists Like nails the problem: you get brain-dead when you’ve spent all day working, and when you’ve been stuck in front of a screen all day the last thing you want to do after dinner is sit back down in front of a computer again. There are episodes of The Wire to watch! Partners to talk to! Videogames you still haven’t got round to playing! Exercising to do! Magazines to read!

    You’d think that the natural ebb and flow of freelancing would be ideal for fiction writing, but it isn’t. That’s partly because work expands to fill the time available, so if you’ve got a spare day then the job you’re doing will magically expand to fill that time, and it’s partly because the time you don’t spend working is spent doing admin, hiding from the taxman, pitching for new work or dicking about on the internet and pretending it’s research.

    Which makes me wonder, how do other people do it? Not necessarily writing, but doing anything creative when you’ve got a full time job, a family to feed and a very short block of time before you fall asleep on the sofa? Is it just about determination and willpower, or do you need to manage your “spare” time as ruthlessly as you do your work time? I’d love to hear other people’s experiences.

  • Leonardo da Vinci didn’t have to put up with this crap

    It’s Friday, which means time for another Techradar opinion column. Today’s offering: why Apple and Microsoft’s keynotes sucked.

    I love my job.

  • Why Police snooping powers are a step too far

    The nice people at Techradar.com have kindly given me a regular blab slot to talk about tech, and the first one is up: it’s about the powers that will enable the police to install keyloggers and other spyware on people’s PCs without a warrant.

    Imagine if the Home Office decided that the best way to fight terrorism was to ban curtains.

    “Hang on!” we’d say. “That means Creepy Dave across the road will be able to see me in my underpants!”

    The Home Office would nod sagely. “That’s true, but you know who else has curtains? Terrorists! Terrorists and gangsters! So it’s curtains for curtains!”

    The Home Office hasn’t banned curtains just yet, but it’s getting closer.

  • Evening Times: and this is *before* the layoffs

    etcrap As mentioned previously, Glasgow’s Evening Times is laying off a whole bunch of people because, apparently, they’re no longer needed in today’s multi-platform media world. Looks like they’ve already sacked the subs.