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Underground meeting

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

I met the PR woman in the Cellar Bar at the Merrion Hotel at around 4.30pm. She’s young and bright, and invites me to chat about the book for a bit – what was the scariest moment? how did I decide to do it? where did you stay? which place did you like the most?

After a while it dawns on me that she’s interviewing me as journalists will be doing. Apparently I did OK, because she told me that I’d be grand with the media interviews, and that the hacks would be as likely to write about me as the book, so I better be ready for that.

In some ways I already knew most of this, because I’ve been on the other side of the notebook a little. I interviewed Jostein Gaarder (author of Sophie’s World) for the Irish Times years ago, when the real hacks were all away on a school trip or something. But it’s still weird to think of journos sorting through a pile of review copies and press releases on their desks and picking out my stuff.

So the nitty gritty: the plan is to do a pile of things all in the space of a week or two. TV (Open House and Ireland am), and radio (Marian or Pat, Rattlebag). And some press stuff – as well as the review copies, try and get interview/feature things in the Times or Indo, and then do some local press. Maybe even a day in Belfast for the Belly Telly and the like.

I just sat there. Of course it was everyday stuff for my companion, but as I heard all the names I couldn’t imagine myself doing any of it. Of course, all the hacks might hate the whole idea, so I’ll not have to, but if you see a slightly embarrassed bloke sharing a TV couch in early March, that’ll be me. The accidental guest.

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The proof’s in the proofs

Friday, January 23, 2004

Just delivered the edited page proofs of The Accidental Pilgrim (very minor changes, thank goodness).

Despite having seen the whole book printed out many times, there was something very strange about looking at the proofs – typeset as the finished book will be, with crop marks and the French stuff in italics and all that mullarkey. Suddenly it looked like a book.

Cover design is now sorted, and publication’s set for third or fourth week in Feb, with publicity to follow immediately thereafter.

Should be talking with the PR folks next week, so prepare for a media blitz. You can never have too much coverage of bicycles and sixth-century saints, that’s what I say.

Posted by David in • Accidental Pilgrim

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Sick Boy

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

I’m struck down with a cold, blurggh. That’ll teach me to go to the Botanical Gardens in the middle of January. Until normal service is resumed, here’s an article I wrote a while ago, about a similar predicament:

Posted by David in • Life

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Tabloid Broadsheet

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

In the UK, broadsheets are now tabloid, and I’m not just referring to their editorial policies.

Late last year, first The Independent and then quickly The Times started producing issues of their papers on tabloid-sized paper, specifically aimed at commuters struggling to turn broadsheet pages on a crowded train.

I got the chance to check out a copy of the Independent while I was in England over Christmas, and I think it’s great – much more manageable even if you’re not hemmed in on the 7.45 to King’s Cross.

There’s obviously a design overhead in laying out two versions of the same paper, and the smaller size performs so much better from a usability perspective, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the broadsheet version was rapidly phased out.

Which leaves us with only one question – what do we use instead as a derogatory term since we can’t just slag something off as being ‘tabloid’ any more.

Guardian coverage of the Independent’s switch

Posted by David in • Life

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Conversion course

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

So I’m converting my old tapes to digital format in preparation for the arrival of my iPod (which is somewhere between LA and here, most likely in the corner of sorting office under a pile of other forgotten Christmas presents).

I’ve got a tape player downstairs, but for some reason the tapes were lurking upstairs in a dusty box. I think it was an attempt to forget the wayward music tastes I enjoyed in secondary school.

And it’s great to be reunited with albums that meant so much to me as a 17 year old. Steeltown by Big Country is still stirring stuff, and Outlandos D’Amour by The Police has some cracking tunes, but some inexcusable fillers too (’Be my girl – Sally’: a love song to an inflatable doll, I kid you not).

There’s also something satisfying about the process. (From the tape deck through an amp into the Mac, digitised in open source program Audacity, and converted from .aiff to AAC in iTunes.) Seeing songs as wave forms is probably as close to synesthesia as I’ll get, and the repetitive work is a rewarding combination of science fiction and manual labour.

There are plenty of tapes to get through (but I think I’ll pass on the Chris de Burgh ones), so I’ll just keep pulling the odd tape out of the box whenever I’m working on the computer. Next up, Suzanne Vega.

Posted by David in • Life

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