Paparazzi! v0.4.3 is a great little utility that lets you grab the whole of a web page, even it extends below the bottom of your screen. Saves a lot of time grabbing twice, then stitching together in Photoshop. Just type the URL in the space provided and hit the Capture button. You can also […]
A sad day for me recently with the news that one of my very first freelance titles is closing its print edition. Haymarket has decided that Promotions and Incentives mag isn’t cost effective to print and distribute any more. I am genuinely sorry. Obviously that’s because I won’t get to write any more thrilling features […]
One of the things I do when I’m not pretending to be a journalist is animation. I love stop-frame particularly (that’s Wallace & Gromit-style puppetry) and I managed to spend a very happy three months last summer on the Bristol Animation Course on a kind of sabbatical from work. I didn’t manage to blog about […]
Recently a sub I know was made redundant by a trade magazine. The grand total of sub-editors it now employs is zero. While we both found this shocking, he found it a lot more shocking than I did (and not just because it was his job that went belly up). In fact, this a recurrent […]
According to Dictionary.com, this is the word that means “a person or thing that shows the existence or direction of a trend”. But it’s nothing to do with the way the wind is blowing. So it’s nothing to do with the weather. “Bellwether”: a sheep (wether: a castrated ram) with a bell around its neck […]
“Lose” is a verb that describes how one may mislay something – like punctuation. “Loose” is an adjective that describes something that is not tight – like much writing. (Though sometimes, but not often, it’s a verb that means “to set free”.)
“Free rein” is when you give something considerable freedom of movement, like loosening the reins on your horse. “Free reign” might be something to do with the monarch if it even existed as an expression. It doesn’t – ditch that “g” people…
“Just deserts” are the justice that someone richly deserves. “Just desserts” is a restaurant that someone should open that only serves pudding. Only one “s”, people!
A “wrack” is a very old-fashioned shipwreck. A “rack” is an old-fashioned torture device. If you are “racked with pain” you are in pain as if you were being tortured on a rack. Remember – no “w”!
Jane Shilling in the Times yesterday [UPDATE 11/11/2009: the link is broken because the Times seems to have lost some of its content] did what a lot of columnists do, particularly in what we might describe as the more upmarket broadsheets. She spent a thousand words or so moaning about how tough life is financially […]