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I blogged about an Eels gig seven years ago, and not much has changed: I still love Eels and I hate gigs. Last night’s show was a belter, although if you hadn’t heard the new album you’d be a bit lost: E’s gone for a garagey, three-guitar line-up this time around and the set was… [more]
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Apple’s Phil Schiller slags off Samsung, so of course Apple is doomed. Me at Techradar: You see exactly the same in music (“Our album’s going to be so much better than theirs“), and in boxing (“I am really good at punching people, and he isn’t”), and in supermarkets (“We’re cheaper than them, and our food isn’t… [more]
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Some parents let their kids use apps. Everybody panic! Me, at Techradar: My daughter’s been using gadgets since she was two. Kids’ ebooks from the likes of Oliver Jeffers and Nosy Crow are wonderful things. We’re using apps such as Mathboard to help her learn arithmetic. We have dozens of great apps for kids that enable… [more]
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Traditional publishers promise quality: you can be sure that when you buy a real book it’ll be properly edited. Increasingly I’m finding that isn’t the case. For example, I’m reading the current Peter Robinson paperback (Watching The Dark) and there are jarring typos and comma abuse that really shouldn’t have made it through the editing… [more]
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John Scalzi on dodgy ebook business models: This shit’s been around, my friends. It’s been around for decades, and writers groups and others who make it their business to warn aspiring authors about scams and pitfalls have been raising flags about it all that time. The idea that that because it’s now attached to electronic publishing, that… [more]
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Rock music is a young person’s game. With a few exceptions – scene lynchpins with modest but faithful followings; him or her from That Band, now solo; utterly deluded Oasis-a-likes still waiting for Alan McGee to sign them, because what the world really needs now is Fat Oasis – if you haven’t carved out a… [more]
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There’s been a big stramash about online publications asking journalists to work for free, and Paul Carr’s post is probably the only one you need to read on the topic: Advertising-supported sites like the Atlantic are trapped in a nightmare of their own making: reliant on delivering millions of page views to shift huge amounts… [more]
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My iPhone 5 is much quieter than previous iPhones, and that’s a problem: a lot of the music I listen to is quiet, or unmixed and uncompressed, and that means it isn’t loud enough when I’m on the bus. If you’re suffering from the same problem, there is an easy and free way to solve… [more]
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I wrote a wee piece in MacFormat about the scourge of videos shot in portrait mode, and Glen Mulcahy let me know about this superb public service announcement. [more]
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The answer, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is lots. MWC 2013Â really reminded us of Girls Aloud, the pop phenomenon that’s reunited for one last tour: while the girls are officially equals, Cheryl Cole is a much bigger star than all the others combined. MWC’s Cheryl was Samsung. Samsung might not have turned up in a… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
