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I’ve been meaning to write this for a while, but for reasons that will soon be apparent it’s taken a lot longer than I expected. As regular readers will know, I became a dad for the first time in October 2007, and since then I’ve had the joy of watching Baby Bigmouth’s first thirteen months.… [more]
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“Hi, I’m Steve Jobs – and I’m bargain crazy!” Doesn’t work, does it? Anyway, the UK Apple Store’s one-day event is on, and there’s the odd discount – a fiver off an iPod, thirty quid off an iMac, sixty quid off a MacBook and a free horse. I’m lying about the horse. [more]
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According to the latest bunch of government statistics, 94.1% of Brits connect to the internet via broadband – and the percentage of dial-up modem users has dropped below 5%. That means to all intents and purposes, dial-up is dead. Which in some respects is a shame. Don’t get me wrong. Dial-up was desperately slow, horrifically… [more]
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Forgive the self-promotion, but I enjoyed writing this what-if for PC Plus: Of course, bandwidth isn’t controlled by sheikhs or delivered in trucks, and we’re pretty sure that the US won’t invade a sovereign nation to seize control of its cable TV network – but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t striking similarities between oil,… [more]
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This brilliant website appeared via an ad on a journalism forum, which promised a sure-fire way to make money from freelance journalism: as more and more companies and entrepreneurs have turned their attention to the Internet, the competition has made finding fresh, original content more difficult than ever before. This situation has created a dire need… [more]
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My old Powerbook is knackered – six keys no longer working, and I suspect the culprit may be baby food – so I’ve dragged out my arthritic Acer Aspire, which “runs” Vista. It’s basically a desperately underpowered laptop that struggles to get out of bed, let alone actually do anything. So hurrah for Google Chrome,… [more]
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Linking to defamatory material isn’t a good idea, and as Matt Wardman writes: this scenario exists in the case of the BNP Membership List if a single person is on there by mistake: links will be to a post alleging that x, y or z is a member of the BNP. Bearing in mind that… [more]
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Ars Technica: High Definition Content Protection (HDCP)—you can’t live with it, but you practically can’t buy an HD-capable device anymore without it. While HDCP is typically used in devices like Blu-ray players, HDTVs, HDMI-enabled notebooks, and even the Apple TV in order to keep DRMed content encrypted between points A and B, it appears that… [more]
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Not everybody in marketing sees the entire world as an advertising opportunity, it seems. According to Silicon Alley Insider, Procter & Gamble’s GM for interactive marketing and innovation, Ted McConnell, isn’t keen on Facebook ads. Who said this is media? Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces.… [more]
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There’s an interesting piece by David Carr in today’s New York Times about (US) newspapers’ latest cost-cutting wheeze: firing their best writers. Right now, the consumer has all manner of text to choose from on platforms that range from a cellphone to broadsheet. The critical point of difference journalism offers is that it can reduce… [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.
