So, little videos made saying “Happy Birthday” and the like by famous people.
Caitlyn Jenner
Patriarch-turned-matriarch of the Kardashians
£2,075 a videoLee MacDonald
Zammo McGuire in BBC TV’s Grange Hill
£15
Presumably “famous in the comments section of his own blog” would mean me paying them….
Over at Quora it’s possible to make money by posing questions for people to answer. Not a lot, it’s the sort of amount that might attract a third worlder. But possibly this model needs a certain analysis. For we do end up with questions that aren’t worth answering:
When were the Chinese economic reforms of 1978 put in place?
Something BiG says:
“I think you do more research for one throwaway column than the average “journalist” does for above the fold on the front page.”
And, well, I cheat. I write about things that I already know about. Or am interested in at least, have something to say about.
In one sense this is just what we’d like all to be doing. In another it’s rather different. The newspaper, the journalists on it, have to pick up the stories that are there and say something about them. That requires lots of looking around in order to have something to say. Even, to find out what is going on.
My cheat is to look around, see something I’d like to say something about, then do a piece. That is a fundamentally different approach. I’m specifically choosing the things I’ve already got an approach to, that largely guided by my already knowing something to a lot about it and having references to it. Journalism is, in its essence, the other way around. Here is something that has to be written about now, what in buggery is it?
There are rare occasions when I’m asked for a piece on something where I don’t already have a view. I flail around at such points just like everyone else.
The prime suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann was feared as a gun-toting criminal according to locals in the small town he holed up in shortly after she went missing.
Christian Brückner found a job as a waiter in a remote village 40 miles from Praia da Luz and befriended a German couple who looked after foster children, often staying at their house, local reports claimed on Sunday.
Remarkably, Portuguese police have not yet visited the village of Foral to interview potential witnesses, despite the overwhelming evidence that the convicted sex offender was living there in the weeks after Madeleine disappeared.
That’s the next village but one from where we were back then.
Not, actually, a lot there. In English we’d not say village but hamlet (there is no church for example, at least not that I know of). In fact, not really a Portuguese village at all. Rather more an area of spread out large houses with gardens, not the way the P countryside generally works at all. That being more small labourer’s places actually in the village, then farms around it.
That’s the Royal Crescent in the background. And at the time I was doing software in Russia. Games development and stuff.
Lord knows which newspaper took that, can’t recall it at all.
What’s the difference between a TV screen and a computer screen?
I see vast screens for TVs at x price. And the same size but in the computer section for 2 x x. What’s the difference?
So the bloke in a hazmat suit and a face mask came down the road this morning spraying the pavement etc with – I assume – disinfectant.
At which point it started to piss down cats and dogs.
Those sewer rats aren’t going to get it. Although what it’s done for the rest of us is a bit of a mystery.
That’s Academia.eu, the site.
It keeps telling me that people are citing me. Which is lovely, obviously. Then they want some money each month for me to find out who and why. Which is a lot less attractive.
Is this the sort of thing that a university library would have free access to? Or is it purely a single user, single fee?
I would assume that all the cites are to me saying something at Forbes anyway – my list of academic papers is exceedingly short, even if it has just doubled by rising by one.
This blog’s chief canine officer gets a trot out up and down the street of a morning. Accompanied by a roll of sandwich bags to deal with the usual accompaniments of a canine morning trot up and down the street.
The roll of such I noted this morning. Or, rather, noted something about. A neatly squished mozzie – or some such – in that roll. Several layers deep, entirely dry, obviously been there some time. The assumption is that in some factory somewhere an innocent insect alighted on some moving surface of plastic which then got quickly rolled up and packed.
Mildly interesting might be stretching matters but I’ve not seen such before……
I was reading The Observer and thinking, hmm, haven’t I seen this before?
Not an unusual experience for that paper as the whines are ever the same.
Have they, though, forgotten to add this week’s content to the site?
Ah, no, it’s Saturday. Gonna be one of them days, eh?
To give workers the feeling of an immediate Brexit bounce, Mr Johnson approved an increase in the threshold at which workers start paying National Insurance from £8,628 to £9,500, resulting in a tax cut of £104 for a typical employee starting in April.
Still a way to go but the idea that the working poor shouldn’t be paying income tax and NI on their paltry earnings……it’s happening.
Good.
I pointed out that I had a new little gig. I now no longer have that new little gig. My grammar’s not good enough, apparently.
Ho hum.
At least I did get to invoice them once…..
Boris Johnson is planning to beef up the House of Lords with Brexit-supporting experts to create a ‘working’ upper chamber, according to Tory insiders.
Lawyers, trade specialists and environmental gurus are expected to be elevated to the peerage in the coming days and weeks as the government seeks to strengthen its hand before passing more Brexit legislation through both Houses of Parliament.
Perhaps I should apply to be a Senior Lecturer?
This might be a little over the top. A description of me via email:
I think your unique selling point is you not your content. I don’t read and donate (occasionally) to the CT because the content is great but because you are the only liberal journalist left.
Should I start wearing a cape?
Or, less likely, that Ted Nugent* agrees with me:
3. Whatever the arguments for private vs public ownership of grid, I see little basis for claim that public utility would be more likely to reduce fire risk. One way or another ratepayers or taxpayers will have to pay to fireproof system. Ownership structure is mostly irrelevant.
Well, yes:
So, changing the system or ownership of provision is not going to change matters. Moving to a community-owned, state-run, or even just more regulated provider isn’t going to solve the problem.
Consumers, given their voice through that regulation process, aren’t willing to carry the costs of the maintenance and upgrade of the current system. Let alone move to that more expensive technology, the burial of cables. Who owns the system doesn’t change this underlying reality.
We are fully capable of providing an electricity grid year-round without burning down half the countryside.
*It’s Ted Nordhaus which is much less fun
Three test pieces and I’m out already.
“unfortunately I still consider the writing style relatively inaccessible for the average reader.”
Should people who find my writing style complex be allowed to handle their own money?
Onwards to the next writing idea then.
Example here.
While I like swimming as a form of exercise I’d like to vary matters a bit. Living in the centre of a town means that cycling isn’t quite what it used to be – skimming through the countryside.
So, alternatives. Weights, well, yes, but not really. So, thinking about a rowing machine.
Anyone got any tips? What to look for? What to avoid? Types to bypass?
Things that cost £500 and up aren’t going to get chosen, at least not in this first iteration of trying it out.
So, the collective intelligence, what sayeth it?
A leetle problem. Doing a test run on writing stories about stocks. Obviosly I know the generalities.
But the specifics. How to find 20 a month to write about?
What I can’t do is look at the normal stock trading boards. Nor pick up from the HL newsletters and all that. But I still need those 20 stocks a month to write something about.
If I can find such then it’s worth doing. The actual writing up is near trivial – given how long I’ve been pumping out few hundred word stories it is.
But, umm, sources?
Which safe (presumably Tory) seat would like to parachute me in?
Varied problems being
1) Not a Tory Party member
2) Not a Tory – although that’s not been a huge problem for many current MPs
3) I have been known to say “fuck” – and worse – on the internet.
4) Not on the approved list of candidates.
Applications to the usual address……