Author: William Gallagher

Don’t give away the goods too soon

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Screenwriter Phill Barron writes a caustic blog that invariably talks sense but entertainingly. This week’s edition of The Jobbing Scriptwriter talks about the danger all freelancers face of being a bit too keen and doing more than you should.

I know, I know, I should learn my lesson and walk away from these things. And to be fair, I am doing so more and more.

What has tended to happen in the past is in order to make the ludicrous deadline, I need to start working before the contract arrives … which I do, because I’m a trusting soul.

Never, ever trust anyone. That’s a lesson to learn right there.

So I beaver away, come up with a bunch of ideas, talk it over with them, incorporate their feedback into the plot and generally hash it out until we (amazingly) have something they like the sound of.

Even if I have (accidentally) forgotten the child-abuse.

Now they need a one-page synopsis.

That’s all, just one page.

Contract still hasn’t arrived, but that’s fine. It’s only one page after all … but they need it immediately. By nine the next morning.

Too Much Too Soon – Phill Barron, The Jobbing Scriptwriter (10 June 2014)

If you never read on, well, you won’t this time either. But imagine this link comes with me guiding your finger to the clicky or the tappy bit of your screen.

Find the best online course in anything

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I’ve long had a soft spot for Lynda.com and more recently have enjoyed watching some of Screencasts Online’s work. Plus if you’re a member of the Writers’ Guild, the NUJ, Equity or the Musicians’ Guild then you can get free online courses in a huge number of things from the FEU, The Federation of Entertainment Unions and its training site.

But there are more online courses in the world than you can shake your head at and Lifehacker has found a site that helps you find the best one for you.

Online classes are a great way to learn new skills. SlideRule makes your search easier by letting you browse and search through over 17,000 online courses.P

SlideRule’s reach is extensive and covers many popular education providers, like Codecademy, Khan Academy, Udemy, and MIT Open Courseware. You can browse by provider or through subjects like Computers & Technology, Business & Economics, and Law. SlideRule also has a review system so users can rate courses and help you avoid the ones that aren’t worth your time.

SlideRule Searches for the Best Online Courses in Any Category – Patrick Allan, Lifehacker (4 June 2014)

In my poking about it, I don’t think the reach is that great: there is a clear bias toward technology subjects. But then Screencasts Online has that too and Lynda.com includes a lot.

But I am keeping an eye on SlideRule; have a look yourself and see what you think.

If strangers talked to everybody like they talk to writers

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I think the video one about If Gay Guys Said the Shit Straight People Say is funnier but I do recognise a lot of this…

There is something unique about the way people talk to writers. Strangers seem very willing to offer career advice — “self-publishing is where the money is!” — literary advice — “People love vampires!” — or to oddly ask you to guess what work they’ve read in their life and if any of yours is among it. It got me thinking about what it would be like it people talked about other professions in this way.

“Ah, a middle school teacher? Have I met any of the students you’ve ever taught?”

“Cool, I always wanted to be a car salesmen. Maybe when I retire I’ll settle down and just work on selling that Buick I’ve had in my head for years.”

“Huh. A chef. Do people still eat food?”

“An accountant? Wow, I haven’t even looked at a number since high school.”

If Strangers Talked to Everybody like They Talk to Writers – Lincoln Michel (6 June 2014)

Do read on.

The best idea wins

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I’ve been contributing to a Royal Television Society project in the Midlands where schoolkids are asked to pitch ideas to a TV company. (It’s for real, too, this isn’t some paper exercise. I love that the RTS arranges this.) I think I’ve popped in to perhaps five schools, I think the RTS has worked something like ten.

The groups of school kids vary quite widely in number; I went to one that had 150, yesterday I was at one where there were 30. So yesterday’s one had fewer kids and it is quite late on in the process, if I’m right about there having been ten schools in total, I think this was number nine or maybe even number ten. So there have been a lot of schools, a lot of kids, a lot of ideas.

But there was a new one yesterday.

A new idea I hadn’t heard from any of the other schools, a new idea that the RTS told me they hadn’t heard anywhere they’d gone.

There were a lot of good teams in this school and there was one I was rooting for very early on because I thought they were working together very smartly, very professionally. But when I heard this one new idea, I was sold.

The teams had to devise this idea and the perform a pitch. The pitch matters. By the time they get to that stage in the day, I and everyone else has been around every team and every table, we know all the ideas. So I suppose we could huddle in a corner and I could lob in my thruppence. But we sit there like proper judges at the end, watching the kids present their pitches.

There are always some that are good and some that are very poor. Yesterday’s was perhaps a better than average run in that the presentations tended to be good. But a good presentation coupled to a new idea, that is a killer.

The team presenting this new idea had an unfair advantage: the idea was so new that they would have had to really mess up the presentation not to win.

They’ll now be going on to a final contest with that idea next month and it’s then that I’ll hear whether they’re going to get on the telly. But the reason I’m telling you this today is just that one about the idea giving them an advantage. After eight or nine other schools and certainly hundreds, maybe a thousand pupils before them, one team came up with something genuinely new.

I tell you, I was inspired. And as soon as I can tell you their idea, I will.

This is why I buy Macs

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You can tell me that PCs are more customisable and I’ll nod but think you a geek. You can tell me that PCs are more powerful and I will take you at your word because you’ve got that kind of face. You can most definitely certainly tell me that PCs are cheaper, there’s no question about that.

But my question is why you’d put yourself through this:

And so I proceeded to install the updates that were available, all 97 of them! I thought I would click to download and install and just leave it running. It stayed on 0% and would not budge. After some digging around I found out that there is a setting turned off by default that can cause this problem so I swiped from the right of the screen, tapped Settings, chose Change PC Settings, tapped Devices and then turned on ‘Download over metered connections’. How did I not spot that immediately? It’s just so obvious…

Anyway, I started to download the updates again and nothing happened until I was greeted with an error code that meant nothing to me. I went to help and support and found out that it meant that other updates were being installed. Well, they were not and I still have not installed one single update.

UPDATE: some new updates appeared which I managed to download, but I now have to provide administrator access to install them. I am logged in as an administrator, but it won’t let me install them because I need to give administrator access despite the fact I am an administrator and that it will not tell me how to do that. For f*cks sake!!!

If you are using Windows 8, I feel sorry for you – Shaun McGill (10 June 2014)

Via The Loop.

A short slice of Jim Carrey

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Reportedly actor and comic Jim Carrey just gave an inspirational graduation speech. He did it at the Maharishi University of Management and I’m sure the full thing will be online soon but already we get this.

This is one minute and two seconds from it in which he genuinely is inspirational. I think the top half of the minute is a bit cloying but it becomes sensible and good and strong:

Swedish government trying six-hour workday

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Shudder.

Some government workers in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden, are about to embark on an interesting experiment this summer–a six-hour workday, with full pay.

The year-long project, set to officially begin July 1st, will divide some workers into two groups. One enviable test group will work shorter days, while their colleagues will work eight hours each day. It is unclear how this will be decided exactly, but it is an experiment designed to test growing assumptions that fewer, more-focused hours could be a boon for employee productivity. “We’ll compare the two afterwards and see how they differ,” Mat Pilhem, the Left Party deputy mayor of Gothenburg, told The Local. “We hope to get the staff members taking fewer sick days and feeling better mentally and physically after they’ve worked shorter days.”

A Six-Hour Workday? Sweden Will Start Experimenting with Shorter Hours This Summer – Chris Gayomali, Fast Company (3 June 2014)

Via 99U

Mesmerising New York City app

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If I haven’t mentioned this before, I am an NYC fan. There, I’ve said it. I will doubtlessly say it again. For whatever reason, I promise I am taller when I’m in Manhattan. As ever when you’re into something, you are attuned to every mention and so that’s how I heard of an app that has mesmerised me today.

Tunnel Vision.

If you’re in New York City and waiting for a train on the MTA, find a map, point this app at it and you will apparently unlock gorgeously fascinating information. I’m in the UK and I’ve tried pointing it at a Google-found image of the MTA transit maps and not got anything.

But there is a button marked “Or use without a map”. And, grief, you have to see it. You get Manhattan covered in different coloured blobs that pulsate at you so fast.  It’s showing, in real time, how many people are entering New York underground stations. Now.

It’s a gorgeous example of what can be done when a city allows access to its databases but, still, I do not need this information.

But, still, I love it.

Get Tunnel Vision for free on the iPhone App Store.