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Der der der der der! I woke up this morning! Der der der der der! Went to a well known branch of a high street electrical chain! Der der der der der! It was rubbish! Der der der der der. The slightly more coherent version is over here: It’s a depressing old world at the… [more]
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One of my world-weary .net columns has made its way online: I’m not suggesting that social networks are bad. But again and again I’m finding that I seem to be living in a different world to the tech triumphalists [with] their sunny Californian positivity. [more]
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From the You Couldn’t Make It Up department: you’d need a very special brand of lunacy to decide that the best thing to do right now would be to put a tax on internet ads and broadband connections. Guess what? The government’s considering exactly that… To appreciate the genius of the idea, you need to… [more]
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Me, on Techradar: We’re so used to the idea that everything online should be free that we don’t even think about it. Of course the iPlayer should give us HD video for free. Of course Spotify should stream music for free. Websites? Free. News? Free. Video? Free. Software? Free. There’s only one problem. Free costs… [more]
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It’s all very confusing: one of my recent .net columns is up on Techradar: Print out this cut-out-and keep guide, pin it to your monitor and you’ll always know exactly who to look down on… If you’re on Bebo, you’re 14. If you’re on MySpace, you’re not in a band and you’re not an imbecile,… [more]
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Aaaaagh! The last time we looked, that big box on the Twitter homepage says “What are you doing?” Maybe it changes at 9.55pm on a Wednesday night to say “Why not tell the entire planet who’s been fired on The Apprentice?”, or maybe Americans get a special version that says “Quick, tell the Brits who… [more]
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Me, on You Know Where… Yahoo decided to take on Google. It bought search company Inktomi, Google’s closest rival, in 2002, and it bought search advertising firm Overture in 2003. All Yahoo needed to do was to put them together and integrate them with its existing search system. And that’s where the wheels came off. [more]
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Publishers are getting ready to embrace eBooks. I think they’re making a big mistake. Books aren’t music. You don’t read a book when you’re concentrating on something important, you don’t skip between chapters, books and authors in the space of a few minutes and you don’t need 1,000 different titles to read on the bus.… [more]
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Over at Will Write For Food, Dan Oliver gets annoyed about yet more “blogging is better than journalism, so nerrr” punditry. I’m inclined to agree with Dan: journalism isn’t dying, but the model is changing. I’m not convinced it’s changing for the better, but it’s definitely changing. [more]
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David Hepworth has a theory. The decline of the so-called “lad’s mag” – a sniffy name invented by the posher men’s titles, who know their readers are no older or wealthier but are in the business of selling luxury advertising – is not down to a sea change in society. It’s down to Photoshop. [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.
