Month: July 2009

Just one Cornetto, give it to me..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 30, 2009

Haven't done a blog post in a while, so here's one to tide us over for a bit.

The past few weeks have been very hectic at work, but we've now taken on board a couple more sysadmins and already the overall load is being balanced out nicely.  I can now actually get around to doing internal tickets and project work which has been otherwise thwarted by the ever increasing support queue.  Had annual review which went well and everybody seems to be happy with me and I with them.

The electric bike is holding up well, despite recently suffering a puncture on the way home on Wednesday when a twig with thorns managed to lodge itself in the front tire and causing the inner tube to puncture and deflate by the time I got to Brookwood Sainsburys.  Luckily the bike shop in Knaphill was open and got them to change the inner tube there and then.

Hope to have some good news about Jennifer's job hunting progress soon.

Current queue of Blu-Ray films to watch:

Wanted
The Colour of Magic
Sweeney Todd
Die Hard 4.0

I continue to be impressed with Blu-Ray's quality and versatility.  I was particularly impressed with the 1951 original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still.  Truly wonderful sound mixing, some interesting documentaries and the film itself was presented exceedingly well given it's age.

Off to see Les Miserables in London tomorrow evening.  Have only heard bits and pieces from the show, so it'll be good to put them in the right order and see what it's all about.

Carbon cost of Downloads versus CDs

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 17, 2009

As a follow up to my previous blog post regarding newspapers being wasteful giving away free DVDs and CDs, my boss and managing director of Memset Ltd., Kate Craig-Wood, has posted a blog entry that reveals just how much energy is used in producing CDs versus downloading.

How does one plan for long term archival of photos, video, etc?

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 17, 2009

Reading Robert Llewellyn's tweets about his shiny new Drobo desktop RAID hard drive cluster, I was wondering just what people are doing about long-term archiving their photos, videos and other important valuable data? 

Back when I was working in the film industry, we were using near-line storage and tape backups to archive assets.  For the most part, this worked okay, but required a heck of a lot of room, was very complex (one full time person dedicated to the job) and during my time there, the kit evolved at least three times.  When I was working at previous web hosting companies/ISPs we used tape backups.  The type of tapes we used are now redundant and about as much use as a betamax video.

When I've been shooting video, I had been using Mini-DV for both SD and HD material.  Unfortunately I no longer have access to a Mini-DV system because my own camcorder has died (so I would need to repair or buy a new one) and the HD stuff used a specific encoding system.  If I back up what material I've transferred to DVD or Blu-Ray, I'd have a limited shelf life of around 100 years before the surfaces started to deteriorate and a new medium found.  These days I shoot on SDHC cards, but even these are evolving and new formats coming out all the time.

I like Blu-Ray as an archiving medium at the moment, but (a) it's too slow to write 50Gb of data, and (b) something's going to take over sooner rather than later as a superior format with a greater amount of capacity.  But at least it's a format that allows me to put all of my iTunes collection and photos onto a single disc.  And that's good enough for me.  At the moment.

The trouble is that storage is constantly evolving.  I no longer have access to a vinyl record player or even normal cassette tapes that we used to buy in bulk to record music from the radio (or if you were like me (probably not), record your own "radio shows" and give them to your friends to listen to – who would then do the same.  Hey, we were cheaper than Jonathan Ross back then).

The trick is to find a medium which is going to last, can be passed down the generations, and not cause our future relations to have to resort to building a tape, DVD or HD player from scratch to play their ancestor's video of a day trip to Canvey Island.

A prime case of rapidly evolving technology being a right pain in the arse.

Why can’t Microsoft keep current pre-order Windows 7 pricing for the duration of the OS’s life?

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 17, 2009

As soon as Windows 7 came available for pre-order on the 15th July, Jennifer and I secured our copies.  We have now pre-ordered two FULL copies of Windows 7 Home Premium (E) for £65 through Amazon.co.uk – £32.50 per copy.  Okay, we used a free gift voucher from Be to claim more money off, but nonetheless it's still a bargain.

The demand for Windows 7 has been such that the pre-order price has now gone up to £80 for the Home Premium edition.  When Windows 7 is finally released, it'll go up again.  But why?  Why have Microsoft's operating systems always been so damn expensive (especially the Ultimate editions of Vista and 7)?  In comparison, Apple's OS X have been cheaper, have no activation restriction (with the one exception being OS X Server).  You're forking out a fortune even before you've added any useful applications other than the media players, gimmicky games, and web browser (and even then, Microsoft have taken that out of the European edition of Windows leaving the user to use another computer or magazine cover disc to install one – they didn't have to do this, but Microsoft seem to be sticking fingers up at the EC commission at the expense of their customers).

If I had my way, Windows 7 would be completely free for existing users of Vista who have had to endure a very long time for an operating system which now promises to live up to being a good one.

Technology in film – friend or foe?

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 16, 2009

I'm currently following the progress of Kick-Ass, the latest movie adaptation from Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn.  Based around the creator-owner comic series by Mark Millar. 

I got into a bit of a debate on a forum related to the movie as to just how useful technology has been for filmmakers in fine-tuning their craft, but at the same time wondering if we're getting into a state where one can endlessly tinker with a film that one can never say it is truly finished (yes, George Lucas, I'm looking at YOU). 

The reason I got into the debate in the first place was that it is revealed that much of the blood splatter effects are being produced digitally through Double Negative, and Matthew Vaughn mentioning that he had been wondering if he should have done the effects live on set.  It kind of spiraled onto films that used entirely artificial environments (green screen stuff) and the use of technology, especially when it comes to tinkering and fine-tuning.  The "fix it in post" mentality which generally effects the bigger budget film.

I recall the times when I was working in post-production when directors would endlessly keep changing their minds, watching deadlines screaming towards us while all the time tweaking and fixing was going on until it's absolutely perfect in the eyes of the client.  All of this happening until the very, very last minute.

Of course with the advent of digital non-linear editors, you can go back and keep tweaking, re-arranging, adding and removing material at a whim.

Yet there was a time in film land when one had to plan everything out meticulously, shoot it, and spend time thinking about how the story is presented.  Every cut of the film required the editor and director to think about every shot before the physical cut is made to the film.  Re-shoots were expensive.  Special effects were even more expensive (and time consuming) to re-shoot.  Most of my favourite films were shot prior to digital technology came into the mainstream.

But not now.  Everything is relatively cheap (labour cost included) and any filmmaker can tinker until their heart desires.  Digital cinematography allows directors to shoot far more material than they would do so if they were using film.  It would certainly allow a director and editor to have more choice over the material they incorporate into the finished film – but also probably increase the number of deleted scenes on your DVD and Blu-Ray disc.

Also thanks to digital cinema, systems capable of self-editing are not far off.  By utilising often under-used meta-data on modern digital camera systems, and direction in the script, it's quite possible (using third party software) to produce EDLs (edit decision lists) which can be imported into editing systems to produce a very rough edit of your film.

Don't get me wrong.  I love digital cinematography and the digital post-production work-flow.  I also love a good digital visual effect when thought and artistic love has gone into it.  But I thoroughly dislike films which have had very little or no prior planning before shooting it, and everything is a mad dash in post to fix everything before the studio goes mad and wonders what the hell they were doing investing the money in this pile of junk in the first place.  And I've seen a few of THOSE kind of films go through my previous employers at one time or another.

The times they are a-changin’ – company standards are dropping

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 15, 2009

Over the past few weeks and months, it's been a real eye opener as to how standards are slipping as to how companies write to their customers, potential customers or potential employees.

One example was from the Insolvency Service who required a high level of accuracy in the job they were advertising.  Jennifer spent an age filling in many pages of the application form and sent it off, only to get a letter addressed to her with the title of Mr. as well as mis-spelling the address.  It makes you wonder if they ever bothered to read and process the application in the first place.  

In returning the faulty pushbike we bought, we had a letter from the company responsible for picking it up to invite us to call them to arrange the pick-up date.  It was signed by the General Manger (as opposed to "away in a..").

And why is that when you apply to a company for job, having filled in pages and pages of application forms, do they say that if you don't hear from them in x number of days or week that you've got to assume you've been unsuccessful?  I think it's a courtesy to the applicants that if they've taken the time to show interest in your company and having spent the time filling in whatever forms you want them to fill in that you take the time to write back regardless of whether they've been successful or not.

The great big useless free promotional DVD/CD trash pile..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 14, 2009

I am beginning to get fed up with newspapers (especially the Daily Mail who seem more zealous than most to give away as much useless rubbish as possible) that give away free CD and DVDs whenever a film or television company, or music artist, decides to start heavily promoting their crap to all and sundry.

Warner Bros. are currently pushing Harry Potter and the Half-Price Blood (as some kids described it having overheard a conversation on a bus once) and the Daily Mail seem all too eager to give away preview CDs and DVDs of the film and video game at every opportunity.  These discs aren't provided with the newspaper, but are available to pick up at certain retailers.  Even so, I think this is a dreadful waste in terms of energy produced to make these things and the wastage of having something that has strictly limited usefulness.

Sure, they've tried more eco-friendly DVDs in the past.  But as I wrote on a previous blog post, the Eco Disc wasn't playable on DVDs that feature a slot-drive mechanism.  This results in wastage unless you know somebody with a DVD drive that can play it and has a particularly desire to watch tripe that the Daily Mail has been asked to distribute with their paper.

I am getting sick of "preview DVDs" and the ilk.  I want newspapers to stop wasting unnecessary energy in producing these things and stick to reporting news.  But it's not just the newspapers we should blame, but the film and TV studios as well as recording artists eager to push their material in the most wasteful way possible.

Of Jaffa Cakes and pushbikes..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 12, 2009

Following up from the Heute Cusine post, the strawberry Jaffa Cakes were nice, but not as nice as the usual orange ones.  I also couldn't taste much Guiness in the Guiness chocolate..

Have slept most of the day due to the rather long and trying week.  I was also on-call the previous week and last weekend had a lot of on-call alerts.  So it was good to just sleep through most of Saturday even though this annoys Jennifer greatly. 

Next week should see my electric bike picked up and fixed, and the broken non-electric bike picked up.  We still need to build the replacement…

About Martyn Drake

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 6, 2009

Martyn is 33 years old, married, with no biological children. He lives
in Surrey with his wife, and is in the process of adopting a child from
China.

Between 2002 and 2008,
Martyn worked at The Moving Picture Company, a prestigious and multi-award winning (BAFTAs, Emmys,
and other media industry awards) post-production house in Soho, London,
specialising in the complex production system infrastructure required
for high-end film, television and promo/commercial projects. These
include the Harry Potter series, Terry Pratchett’s live action
adaptations of Hogfather and The Colour of Magic, the Tomb Raider
series, the James Bond series, and many more besides. He liaised with
major film studios and clients to ensure that work was delivered to a
very high standard. Martyn has worked on 42 major feature films and television productions
at the time of leaving the company (although only received one official
film credit). The most recent project is the forthcoming Wolfman from Universal Pictures.

Outside of work, his interest in films and
film-making extended to attending the world premiere of Peter Jackson’s
King Kong in New York City, and interviewing Jane Goldman for her work on the screenplay of Stardust. He was invited along to Neil Gaiman’s
own personal private screening back in June of 2007.

After leaving the post-production industry,
Martyn spent six months working for a specialist software developer
that produces high-end visual effects hardware and software
architecture for the film and television industry. He was also
responsible for producing and filming the company’s promotional video
for NAB show in Las Vegas that involved travelling around the US and
Europe interviewing prominent members of the visual effects community.

Unfortunately Martyn was made redundant shortly after (90% of the work force laid off!) but is now happily working for Memset Dedicated Hosting
as a systems administrator providing hosting and support for clients
including Private Eye magazine, KFC, Hilton Hotels and the RSPCA.

He
still has a very keen interest in film production – both technical and
logistical, especially in regards to digital cinematography,
post-production and work-flow.

Martyn has also written several
commentaries and letters to the broadcast industry regarding various
issues, and actively campaigns to try to ensure that engineering teams
are properly credited for their work on feature films.

Martyn does not own a TV (also see this Sunday Times article about me and my TV habits).

Martyn was, until recently, a Google Apps Top Contributor, which meant he spent his spare time helping people on the official Google Apps Help Forums as well as providing feedback and comments to Google on the Apps products

Could the TV license fee form part of council tax or income tax bill? NO! NO! NO!

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 4, 2009

According to the Daily Mail, the BBC Director General Mark Thomspon has suggested that the TV license fee could be scrapped and instead funded through council or income tax.

No, no, no, no, NO.

TV is, and always will be, a luxury item.  It is not essential in the daily lives of millions of people.  It is entertainment.  It should not, and must not be made compulsory for those that choose not to watch TV.  Taxation is there to pay for the essentials of running the community and country.  Watching TV must be about choice.

The problem is that the BBC, who has produced a wonderful video on demand system through their iPlayer system, doesn't seem to know how to best get money from those of us that have done away with TV (and therefore the TV license) and have gone online to watch shows through video-on-demand systems such as the iPlayer, 4oD, ITV Catch-up, etc.  Fox's Hulu is set to join the UK VoD revolution later this year too.

The BBC could (and I've said this before) restrict iPlayer to those holding a TV license – in that you have to authenticate yourself as a license player before watching programs whether it be live or not.  Or perhaps they could have a separate iPlayer license.  No full TV license would be required, but you'd have pay a small monthly or annual fee to gain access to watch programs (live or otherwise) through the iPlayer service only. 

Either way, the BBC has got to find a better solution to the TV license system as it currently stands.  But it must not involve being made compulsory through taxation.  No way.  And neither must the TV license be shared by commercial broadcasters such as ITV or Channel 4.  If they can't raise their funding through advertising, then that's their problem.  Not ours.

Heute Cuisine

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 3, 2009

Today I shall be mostly trying Strawberry Jaffa Cakes and Guinness Chocolate.

Why I dislike free email services..

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 2, 2009

I've just come across a situation which highlights the problems of using free non-domain email services such as Gmail, Hotmail, AOL or similar (including your broadband ISP's email service). 

There is a finite number of account names one can pick when setting up a new email account on these services.  As such, the uniqueness of your email address may come down to having to pick out a certain letter-number combination, such as:

mbdrake1976
mdrake76
martyndrake1976
etc.

because martyndrake@isp.com has been taken by somebody else.

What do you think would happen if I were to mistype, perhaps leaving out the 'b' in mbdrake, into a form which would send back important account information?  They may well be a mdrake76 already existing on the same service I'm using.  I could be unwittingly giving them confidential account details for an online service if I mistype one single letter.

I've just seen something like this happen, and it's reinforced my belief that spending a few pounds for one's own domain name and a hosting (or email hosting) service is a good thing to do.  It doesn't get rid of the problem completely, because there could well be martyn@drake.* mailboxes other than at .org.uk or .me.uk.  But at least it's a bit more unique than wibbly8234@someisp.com.

I also find that having an email address which uses a domain name to be much more professional looking, and also a lot easier to remember.  Especially when it comes to businesses.  I'm still confused about businesses that use Hotmail, Gmail or similar free services when providing email contacts.  I can't for the life of me remember any of those kind of addresses.  You'll also find there are some online retailers who refuse to take Hotmail, AOL or similar free accounts due to their reputation.

So go on – do yourself a favour – buy a domain name and use a decent email hosting service (and Memset can help you with that).

Mixing Standard & Premier Google Apps

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 2, 2009

Introduction

One of the most popular FAQs and requests with Google Apps is the
ability to mix and match the Standard (free) edition accounts with that
of the Premier (paid) edition. Not everybody requires the full feature
set that the Premier edition provides – if anything, people just want
the extra mailbox quota (7Gb+ versus 25Gb). Until Google is able to
offer the ability for Standard users to upgrade mailbox and services
quotas, there isn’t much you can do other than to switch to the Premier
edition for the extra space.

Note that is it impossible to mix and match Standard and Premier
accounts – the main reason that Premier adds just so much more than
additional quota increases. Premier adds IMAP migration, email routing,
Postini Message Security and Archiving, APIs and so much more that
would affect the organisation as a whole rather than individual user
accounts.

But don’t fret – it IS possible to hack something together, but this
is NOT for the feint of heart nor is it recommended for any
organisation that is likely to manage hundreds or thousands of users.
My solution requires the use of:

  • Two Google Apps accounts (one Premier, one Standard)
  • One domain name and one sub-domain name
  • Email Lists
  • Gmail’s Send Mail As feature

Setting up the Standard edition

Throughout this explanation, let’s refer to an example corporate
organisation called Corporate Wibble. They own a domain name called corporatewibble.com. They have 50 users altogether, but 5 of them require the extra 25Gb email quota that Premier provides.

The IT administrator of corporatewibble.com would register the domain with Google Apps via the sign-up process.
He’d use the Standard edition and then proceed to verify the domain
(either through HTML or CNAME DNS record) and change the MX records to
point to Google’s mail servers.

Once the IT administrator has completed this step, they would then
create 45 users (all of the Standard users minus those that are to be
given Premier edition accounts) to get them up and running. Each user
is given an email address of user@corporatewibble.com

Setting up the Premier edition

The IT administrator now creates a sub-domain in their DNS to
represent the Premier edition. For this example, let’s call it
premier.corporatewibble.com. They then register this sub-domain with
Google Apps as a Premier edition account and, like the Standard
edition, would verify the sub-domain and create MX records to point
mail for that sub-domain to Google’s mail servers.

From here, the administrator creates the 5 user accounts.  Each user is given an email address of user@premier.corporatewibble.com.

“Integrating” the two editions

In order for the Premier users of premier.corporatewibble.com to
receive email for the main domain, an email list is required to be
set-up on corporatewibble.com so that email is forward to the
premier.corporatewibble.com sub-domain. This is very simple.

As an example, suppose we have Fred Bloggs who wants to use the
Premier edition for his email account. We’d create his user account on
premier.corporatewibble.com giving him an initial email address of
something like fred.bloggs@corporatewibble.com. We’d then go back to the corporatewibble.com administration interface in Google Apps and set-up an email list for fred.bloggs@corporatewibble.com. We’d add only ONE recipient, and that is fred.bloggs@premier.corporatewibble.com. So the Standard edition of Google Apps will forward mail to the Premier edition used by the oraganisation.

In order for Fred to be able to send mail as fred.bloggs@corporatewibble.com,
he’d need to set-up Send Mail As within his Premier edition Gmail
account (Settings -> Accounts). When he does this, Gmail will
require him to verify that he has access to fred.bloggs@corporatewibble.com,
which will work providing that the email list has been set-up prior to
doing this. When the verification email arrives, Fred just needs to
click within the email to get Gmail to complete verification. It’s
recommended that Fred set the “Reply from the same address the message
was sent to” option in Settings -> Accounts to on so that Gmail
automatically uses the correct addresses in reply.

Drawbacks

The problem with this whole approach is that:

  • You need to maintain two separate Google Apps accounts and have to
    update each one whenever a new user account is needed or deleted.
  • Any mail sent from the sub-domain/Premier edition account DESPITE
    using the Send Mail As option is going to reveal the true email address
    within recipient’s Outlook email clients via an appended string (e.g.
    From: Fred Bloggs [Sent on behalf of fred.bloggs@premier.corporatewibble.com])
    and some webmail/third party IMAP/POP3 clients because Google uses the
    Sender: header which provides the true origin of an email address.
    There is currently nothing anybody can do to disable this.

But as I’ve explained above, I do not foresee Google ever
integrating different types of account. If anything, I’d probably
imagine they would enable Standard administrators to simply buy more
disk space for email and other services.

Journalists and the BBC

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 2, 2009

Full credit to my wife for spotting that the Daily Mail made the
mistake of referring to the BBC as being funded by taxpayers.  Of
course, this is not so (although one could argue that any MP who is
claiming their TV license fee on expenses IS making us fund the BBC through
tax!).  The BBC is funded entirely by the optional TV license fee.
 Having a TV is a personal choice and is not something that is being
forced upon you, quite unlike paying tax.

It’s somewhat ironic, therefore, that commercial broadcasters want a
slice of the TV license fee for themselves.  Particularly when you
consider that the big commercial broadcasters such as ITV, Channel 4
and the rest actually cost the TV license payer even MORE money than
the BBC, since commercial broadcasters are funded from advertising.
 Who pays the advertisers?  We do.  We buy their products.  We use
their services.  Well, those that pay the TV license fee and have
televisions, anyway.

If there is anything or anyone that’s failing commercial
broadcasters is the ad agencies themselves.  Have you seen any REALLY
good TV commercials recently?  Something actually SELLs you the product
that you go out and buy it just as soon as you can?  No, neither have
I.  Ad agencies are running out of ideas and have been producing lame
and uninteresting adverts for quite some time now.  The recession may
play one part in nobody spending money, but I can assure you that while
agencies continue to pump out over the top and ridiculous adverts –
nobody is going want to buy whatever the heck it is they’re trying to
sell you.  A gorilla playing the drums?  Do be brief.  Those people
that are already eating Cadbury’s chocolate are going to be doing so
anyway.  They don’t need a man in a monkey suit to convince them it’s
still okay.

Going back to the TV license; while I have no real strong opinions
on how the TV license is spent (other than it must NOT go to commercial
broadcasters for the reason I’ve specified above), TV license payers
are not shareholders.  And yet we have the BBC Trust to ensure that
certain standards are met and that the TV license represents value for
money.  And TV license payers have no say in who gets to decide all
this.

What a thoroughly strange way to organise and watch news and entertainment.  I am still very glad not to own a TV.

Wibble.

Posted by Martyn Drake – July 2, 2009

Wibble, wibble.  Wibble wibble wibble.  Pong!  And further more the tap dancing chickens of the dead mongoose king performed the dance of magic against the BBC's 10 O'Clock News.

(Yes, proper content will appear here soon)