Friday 6 August 2010

State of the Blog: twittering, previewing, formatting

Friday 6 August 2010
Despite my early skepticism about it, I've become an avid Twitterer since I joined last year. Not to the ridiculous extent of some people (who seem intent on letting you know everything they're doing minute-to-minute), but I often have a little surge of activity in the evening. It's also fun if a quick tweet to a celebrity gets a response. I was on something of a roll recently, with Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Steven Moffat all replying to my nonsense. The latter exchange pleased me in particular:

My tweet to @steven_moffat:

"An observation I thought you'd like: The Doctor's bow tie resembles the Infinity symbol ( ∞ ) I'm SURE this was intentional."
To which I received this reply:

"Yeah, but he's the Doctor!! To hell with infinity, it probably squirts water. OHH!!!"
But it's not all just about briefly entering a celeb's mindspace, as I've realized 80% of celebs on Twitter have nothing of substance to say. It can sometimes be depressing to realize some of your favourite actors/writers/directors are so deathly dull, or else egotistical. A few also use Twitter for little more than self-publicity and to push political agendas, which is a shame. I don't disagree with that use (people can do what they want!), but I think some moderation is called for. A memorable example is Chuck's Adam Baldwin, whose tweets are almost entirely comprised of right-wing jingoism. He lost a follower in me.

Anyway, I heartily recommend Twitter. It takes awhile to settle into its groove, but it's a great place to offload opinions, jokes and random comments. From a personal standpoint, there are lots of things I want to "put out there" that doesn't justify a specific blog post, so Twitter fills a niche very nicely. Follow me! Well, if you're not following already. Maybe I'll break through 400 followers this month if you do!

It's also been a good week in respect of my continuing attempts to get my mitts on screeners for TV shows, which has only occasionally happened in the pas. But it now seems likely I'll have access to BBC and Sky content I'm interested in ahead of broadcast, thus allowing me to write (a) more comprehensive reviews a week or so before they air, and (b) perhaps write non-spoiler reviews before a show's broadcast.

I saw the final part of Sherlock on Tuesday this way, so a 1,000-word review will go up after that episode airs on Sunday (literally the second after the credits roll!), and I have the first two episodes of Vexed to watch. I will most likely trial a preview-style review for that comedy-drama a few days before it airs (15 August).

It'll be interesting to see the response to reviews of shows before they've aired. I've done previews in the past, but very rarely. I guess people will be LESS inclined to comment until they've seen the episode themselves? Who knows, but we'll try it.

Finally, a few little cosmetic changes to report: news-based posts now tend to include a headline image that's word-wrapped to the left, just to shake things up visually; and I've started using the new Caption facility in Blogger, which can be a pain and messes with my formatting at times, but I'll persevere and hope Blogger's boffins improve its usability. So expect little comments and quips underneath images from now on.