Month: December 2009

Minding the Gapps..

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 28, 2009

After just over two months I’ve decided to return to Google Apps.  The main reason is that I’m loving my Android phone so much, with it’s integration with Google services, that it’d be a shame not to make the most out of Google Apps.  The main reason for me leaving was that it felt a bit akward as somebody working for a web hosting company to be using what is essentially a competitor’s product.  Yet we do have customers using Google Apps and therefore I still really need to be on the ball as to what’s happening.

Therefore I’m heading back.  I’m still going to be using MDaemon for at least one of my other domains that I use on a semi-regular basis, so nothing will be lost there.  I’ll still be self-hosting too.

Christmas without a TV is brilliant!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 26, 2009

Jennifer and I have been a TV free household for a considerable while now.  And we’re still coping nicely, thank you.  There are, however, a few issues that prevent us from accessing everything you might see on an ordinary TV.  The four main Internet catch-up services suffer from the dreaded regional licensing issues whereby certain programmes and films cannot be streamed or downloaded through these services.  Films, unless otherwise co-financed or co-produced by the broadcaster, are often off-limits as are big popular US imports (such as Family Guy).

That said, the BBC have excelled themselves this Christmas with their iPlayer.  Firstly they have been very quick to make available programs after they have first aired.  Usually this can take many hours up until a full day before aired programmes start showing up on iPlayer.  This Christmas period they’re now being made available at a much quicker pace.  Then there are films.  iPlayer is now streaming major Hollywood films through it’s service.  The Incredibles and Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End are just two of the big films that can viewed online.  For free (to those in the UK, of course).

On the other hand, the commercial catch-up services are beginning to suffer.  Firstly I’ve noticed that unlike the BBC, the quality of the video stream is considerably poorer than that their non-commercial, TV license funded competitor.  ITV is particular appalling.  When made full screen, compression artefacts make everything look horrendously blocky.  During the X-Factor programs, the constant changing of lights during the live performances turned everybody into lego men (and women) because ITV must have limited bandwidth or resources required to encode these shows in a more sensible format.  Torrents of ITV shows would, I imagine, offer better video quality to that offered by the broadcaster themselves.

The quality of these commercial streams probably lies with the (lack of) advertisers who pay to advertise their goods on them.  Judging by the same adverts repeated over and over in the same advert block, multiple times in a single program, must mean that there are very few companies choosing to advertise this way.  For example, on many ITV programs over this Christmas period we’ve seen the same Tic Tacs advert appear up to EIGHT times in a single hour’s worth of programming – repeated TWICE in each advert block.

Channel 4’s 4oD isn’t much better.  Slightly better encoding, but they too suffer from the same problem with the same old repetitive advertisers coming up again and again.  It gets to the point whereby you don’t want to buy their product or use their service because it’s far too repetitive to see the same thing.  It’s far worse than sitting through adverts on the over-to-air TV services.

Speaking of advertising on the commercial catch-up services, I’ve also noticed that the “controversial” Waitrose Christmas advert which featured a solider coming home for Christmas that was subsequently edited to remove that part, took at least two weeks to be updated on 4oD whereas from what proper TV I’ve seen during the day (whether it be at a takeaway, etc.) clearly had that part removed as soon as it was announced.  So it seems that it’s a slower process to get (or update) your advert on these services.

I had a look at Sky Player over the past day or so to see if they might offer Neil Gaiman’s short film, Statuesque, to rent.  Sky Player allows non-subscribers to watch Sky TV for either a monthly fee (identical to that of those WITH proper TV’s and satellite dishes) or a one-off fee for certain programs or films.  Sadly, Sky Player does not offer any of the Ten Minute Tales at all.  And Murdoch wants to charge you the same price for using their catch-up service as regular TV subscribers?  What a fecking liberty.  To rub salt into the wound, they don’t support the Google Chrome web browser – unlike all the other catch-up services which happily work with it.

So this Christmas, it’s been great watching the programs I do want to watch – for the most part – when I want, and for free .  I’m annoyed that Murdoch and chums have not considered opening up all of their programming to individual rental – especially when you consider the Ten Minute Tales were an original Sky Productions commission – for non-Sky subscribers.  Murdoch has long been bemoaning that the BBC makes it difficult for them to compete  in the marketplace for certain services, but yet Murdoch & chums are not making it easy for people to get their content how they want it.  Which is precisely what the BBC is doing, and doing a far better job of it to boot.

What’s also great about ditching the TV is that one doesn’t sit in front of the TV and flick channels.  It takes time to plan and choose what wants to be watched and you watch it when you want to watch it.  And to be quite frank, the lack of original ideas in the broadcasting industry these days makes it very easy for us in terms of what we choose to watch.

Happy holidays everyone!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 23, 2009

Will be spending much of the time in the kitchen over the next few days, so won’t be Tweeting or blogging away as usual.  Therefore I’d like to wish my readers (who somehow still tolerate my inane and nonsensical posts) a very happy holiday season.

The HTC Hero/G2 Touch makes using a mobile phone fun again!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 21, 2009

On Saturday I received my T-Mobile upgrade handset, the HTC Hero aka the T-Mobile G2 Touch.  I must say that I’ve over the moon with it.  It runs Android 1.5, but HTC are due to release a firmware upgrade reasonably soon to bring it up to Android 2.1.  Even if the phone wasn’t upgradeable, the wide variety of applications installed and available from the Android Marketplace is wonderful.

Through Market, I’ve already installed Spotify, Twidroid (Twitter), an SSH client, and Google Sky Maps (which is *fantastic* – it uses the phone’s digital compass so that wherever you move the phone, it’ll update the map on screen with the stars and constellations as they would appear in the sky).  Spotify makes listening to all my playlists built on the PC and Mac a breeze, and offline mode really makes the difference here (although note: I need to buy a much bigger microSD card to hold all of the playlists of interest).

As a phone, the call quality is excellent.  I now have all my contact information stored using Google Contacts.  Unfortunately my previous phone had all the contacts installed in the phone’s memory and I’m not really willing to take apart the Hero again to get the SIM to retrieve everything again – so I’m starting from scratch.  I may need to get in touch with some of you to update numbers, addresses, etc.  But at least this time I can take a copy of my contacts in CSV format in case Google explodes.  And I really like the ability to add a photo next to each contact.  I’ve got most of my family and colleagues photos in there (mainly taken from last year’s Christmas party <sniggers> :)

I now need to get a case to protect the phone, although the screen and phone itself looks resilient enough to carry around in just my pocket or backback.  The phone also comes with a fairly decent pair of in-ear headphones and the cable length is quite generous.  Charging is through mini-USB to the computer, or through a wall plug adaptor (supplied).  Transfer to and from the phone is through USB or Bluetooth, but I’ve still yet to figure out how to get Bluetooth file transfers working properly.  HTC Sync does NOT work with Windows 7 64-bit, but this is not too big a problem for me as yet.

The only gotcha for me was attempting to link the phone to my Google Account.  As I had re-instated my Google Apps account for drake.org.uk, and disabled email, I had assumed that Android would be happy to use that.  It would be if I had email enabled.  Trying to use my standard Google Account using my email address failed to work each time.  So I enabled Gmail for my Google Account (not Google Apps) and used my @googlemail.com address instead for the login and it’s all worked nicely.  So if you have both a Google Apps and Google Account using the same domain/email address – and you just want to use your Google Account – make sure that you sign in with your @googlemail/@gmail.com address.

Oh, and typing on the virtual keyboard is a real pleasure to use.  While my fingers do occasionally miss the mark, the predictive/corrective system works flawlessly.  Far better than the iPhone in my opinion.

Result of the T-Mobile G2 Touch versus Blackberry Bold 9700 choice

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 18, 2009

T-Mobile called me yesterday to let me know that I could renew my contract early.  So I have done so, rather than opt to leave and go with the iPhone.  In fact, it’s probably because of the iPhone’s popularity and that it’s now being offered by other vendors other than O2 that T-Mobile have revamped their contract plans.  I’m basically on the same plan as before but with unlimited Internet (I’m sure there’s a caveat there with regards to the word “unlimited” so I will need to check that out) and my Flex-T allowance now takes into account 0845 and 0800 numbers and some international calls too.

But what’s sold it for me is that I’ve opted for the T-Mobile G2 Touch (aka the HTC Hero).  I was sold upon seeing one in action as well as reading reviews from the likes of Stephen Fry and co. who have praised the handset to high heaven.  It is currently one of the few phones that gives the iPhone a run for it’s money.  While the Blackberry would have done almost everything I wanted it to do, it’s 3.5″ headphone jack is placed awkardly and there is no Spotify application.  Yet.  I also fancy having a go at trying my hand at Android programming.

Should be getting the phone over the next few days.

Technology/Post-Production company Thomson files for bankruptcy protection!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 17, 2009

For six years between 2002 and 2008 I worked for The Moving Picture Company as a production systems engineer.  MPC specialises in high end digital visual effects for film, television, pop promos and commercials, and has won many industry awards for it’s work.

Thus I am shocked to learn that the company which owns it, Thomson SA, have just filed for bankruptcy protection against it’s $3.8 billion of debt.  Prior to Thomson buying MPC, it was owned by Carlton Communications.  Thomson also owns amongst it’s broad portfolio, Technicolor, Grass Valley (famed for it’s telecine kit), a share of the MP3 patent, and Alcatel (who manufacturer ADSL modems and other telecommunications equipment).

I’m hoping that Thomson will pull through this successfully as they are simply too large and important a company in the industries they operate to fail.  If nothing else, perhaps they should consider selling their share of the MP3 patent..

Ice Ice Crashy

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 17, 2009

Came off bike this morning.  I had not expected it to be that icy as yet.  I got up to the Sainburys roundabout in Knaphill (2nd of three) and did a rather spectacular (well, from my viewpoint) 360 degrees spin before being separated from the bike and landing on the muddy embankment.  Unlike the previous accident, I couldn’t recover from this one and landed on my back with legs akimbo and arms flailing like a pathetic upturned tortoise.

Thankfully no apparently damage apart from being shaken up a bit.  A little hurty on my lower back, and pride well and truly thrown out window, but otherwise okay.  Not sure about bike.  I’ve cycled/walked it back home (so it seems to be okay) and will be working from home today.  As it’s the company Christmas do tomorrow I’ll be bussing it in on Friday, which gives me plenty of time to get the bike checked over before Monday.

Oh, and thanks to the two car drivers that stopped to see if I was okay.  It was very much appreciated and it’s good to know that there are people out there that actually do give a damn about cyclists.

Cloudy with a chance of falling files..

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 16, 2009

I’ve recently been testing a variety of products for storage in Amazon’s S3 service.  I first came to get to know S3 through Rackspace’s Jungle Disk service which provides a Windows, Mac or Linux client that can backup all your files to the “cloud” either using S3 or Rackspace’s own “cloud” offering.

While I am very impressed with Jungle Disk’s Windows server backup solution, I’m not so convinced on the Windows or Mac desktop service.  Timeouts at both Amazon and Rackspace’s Jungle Disk gateway as well as numerous other little problems has not convinced me I want to entrust to it my 17Gb of well earned music, film and TV collection on iTunes.  I’m fine with the Windows backup since (a) Memset backs up the MDaemon directory nightly anyway, and (b) I’ve not seen any errors.

But something with Amazon S3 (particularly their Europe service) made me think that if I could find a utility that allows me to upload and download stuff as easily as an FTP client, or even offer full sync capabilities, I would still have a use for it.  Sadly, the options are very limited and I have to say I’m not at all impressed.

On the Mac, there is Cyberduck.  This is an FTP, SFTP, SCP,S3, WebDAV, Rackspace Cloud, MobileMe file transfer client.  It’s literally the Swiss army knife of file transfer clients and the very best thing I’ve seen for any platform.  Ever.  I can create S3 buckets easily in Amazon’s EU datacentres and upload/download and even mirror entire directories.  If I interrupt the transfer, I can resume the next time without any fuss.  Very confident my data is safe with Cyberduck.  And Cyberduck is freeware/donation-ware in that it’s free to use, but a donation to the author is appreciated.

I then tried Time Warp for OS X.  This is currently in beta and is free to use while this is so.  Unfortunately Time Warp did not offer me the choice of Amazon datacentre and seems to default to the US.  No good.

Next up was Atomic Drive.  This is a cross-platform client, but like Jungle Disk, requires that you sign-up to them and pay them a small monthly fee for the privilege of using the client (fair enough) as well as the S3 transfer/storage fees.  Unfortunately the client only allows US datacentre use, and does not resume transfers if you’re in the middle of transferring gigabytes of data and need to interrupt for whatever reason you may have.  This is not good.

After that was S3 Bucket Explorer, but found the user interface unwelcoming and cluttered (and the queue system I found to be too fussy).  It also takes an age to load on the Mac.

Thus the winner on the Mac is: Cyberduck.  By far the friendliest and most feature packed S3 client I ever come across.

In terms of Windows clients, I was even more disappointed with the choice available.  Cloudberry Lab appears to the be leading developer of S3 clients.  They have a dedicated backup product (CloudBerry Backup) as well as a general S3 bucket explorer-cum-FTP client called CloudBerry S3 Explorer PRO.  I liked CloudBerry Backup very much, apart from one problem.  The bandwidth and usability was sufficiently uncontrollable that my wife and I argued over it’s use!  I was forced, to keep the peace, to uninstall the product, even after limiting the bandwidth used by CBB, since stopping the manual backup saw the backup resume again after a minute.  Pausing the backup still seemed to  do the job, but activity was still present.  Thus, with regret, I had to walk away from this product which when I saw it working, seems to be one of the best I’ve seen.

Cloudberry S3 Explorer PRO is another product which I like, but seems to suffer from a problem whereby if I’m uploading a lot of files and then close the program, restart it, and kick off the queue again, just get errors upon errors and cannot resume the transfer for the files still in the queue.  I’ll need to look at the debug/log files to figure why that is.  Haven’t had the time to do so as yet.  The user interface is clean, crisp – everything I like in an FTP client and is very straight forward.  If I can get around the queue issue, I think this would be the best product for S3 bucket management for Windows.

I have yet to look at Cross FTP for Windows (or Mac), or CloudBuddy (Windows).  Everything else out there seems to be in perpetual development (alpha or beta).

It’s a Chrome away from Chrome.. I’ve switched from Firefox on two platforms!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 15, 2009

While I have given up Google Apps (no, it’s not because I fear the Google and it’s tight grip on my data – I’ll write a blog post about why I left Google Apps a bit later), Google still gets used an awful lot here at Drake Towers.  Google the Search Engine is the de facto here.  Then there’s Google Maps, Google Reader, Feedburner, Google Webmaster Tools,  Google Analytics, Google AdSense, YouTube, and so on.

I now use Google Public DNS on the Dell laptop at home and as a secondary DNS server for my MDaemon mail server.  And now I’ve converted to Google Chrome, Google’s efforts to produce a fast web browser designed for simplicity.  And it works exceptionally well on Windows.  And now OS X.  Despite Chrome being beta on my work Mac, I now use it as my primary browser despite a few kinks (the main one being the passwords are not saved if you’re browsing a site that uses an expired or self-signed certificate – I’ve filed the bug with the Chromium bug report system).

My dependence on Google will not end there either.  While I have no intention of running the Chrome OS on this PC (although if I had a netbook I would probably consider it), I am still very tempted by the T-Mobile G2 Touch which runs the Android 1.5 (at the time of writing) platform.  I’ll be carrying Google in my pocket too.

BAF-TA-RA

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 14, 2009

Sometime last week I mentioned I was heading down to BAFTA in London for a screening.  That screening was for a series of 12 short films (entitled IIRC: Ten Minute Shorts) comissioned by Sky Movies and produced by Endor Productions (Hilary Bevan Jones, whose most recent work was producing Richard Curtis’ The Boat that Rocked).  I was invited by Neil Gaiman and Hilary as Neil had written and directed one of the shorts, entitled ‘Statuesque’.

So on early Sunday afternoon I head down to London.  Pleasent enough train trip.  Took the Jubilee Line from Waterloo to Green Park, then walked down to 195 Picadilly.  Went inside, registered with reception, and then went upstairs to the BAFTA members bar.  And then I panicked.  I recognised nobody and everybody was gathered in small groups.  No announcements, nothing.  To be honest I had expected some form of meet and greet, but there was nowt.  I’d have sat down somwhere and had a drink until something started moving along, but I just walked out.  Quite irrational behaviour, I’m sure you’d agree.

After having a 10 minute walk around Picadilly Circus in the fresh December air, I went back.  I figured that it would be ill mannered for me to just walk away having been especially invited to the screening.  So I returned to the members bar which was rapidly filling up with people.  Again, nobody I recongised, no meet and greet.  Everybody else knew each other, and I didn’t.  Not even one.  Not even Holly Gaiman whom I vaguely met at the Stardust screening.  I’m rather used to not knowing anybody that from the years I’ve been in film (and up until now I had no problems integrating myself in some way), but this really made me feel put out.  The atmosphere was warmer at Peter Jackson’s premiere of King Kong – an environment with hundreds of security personnel, bodyguards and security scanners.  This was a smallish bar in the middle of London.

Since nobody seemed to be announcing anything, and everybody was scattered about, it was difficult to tell what was going on and just after 3:30, I decided to leave.  I couldn’t stand to be in the same room any more.  Again, irrational behaviour, I know.  I headed back home and dropped Neil and Hilary an apologetic email since I’d taken up a seat that could have gone to somebody else.

In all my years in the film industry, having the occasional smooze was never a big problem for me.  But this screening triggered off something that I can’t define.   BAFTA itself seems nice enough, but one couldn’t help think there needs to be better organisation at these types of screening.  It’s probably just me, though, isn’t it?  I should clarify – this incident is in no way a bad reflection on Neil or Hilary – both of whom are extremely nice people (met both of them in 2007) and won’t have a bad word said against them.

Sky’s Ten Minute Shorts start, I believe, on the 21st December on Sky One and Sky HD.  Neil’s short film, Statuesque, starring Bill Nighy and Amanda Palmer airs on Christmas Day.

T-Mobile UK forums: eye test/CAPTCHA is official PIA

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 13, 2009

T-Mobile UK is both equally wonderful and bloody annoying in equal measures.  On one hand, their service works.  Never had problems with reception.  But their customer service is so bloody frustrating it makes me want to tear up my contract with them when I try to deal with them.

This also applies to their support forums.  Despite signing up to them recently, the support forums are just not recognising my credentials, and I’ve confirmed they’re correct with the “Lost Details” link.  I’ve tried to sign up with a different username (and email address) and I’ve tried at least 10 times to get through their “eye test”/CAPTCHA system.  I really must have bad eye sight these days because it just keeps failing.

fooking

The above sums it all up

I’ve now finally registered.  Arghh.

Vote off the X-Factor, vote instead for Rage Against the Machine

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 13, 2009

Despite what Simon Cowell thinks, this is not a personal vendetta against him.  This not a personal vendetta against Joe or Olly either – both whom I’ve found to actually be entertaining (although not enough to buy a single from either of them just yet).

No, this is a vendetta against the X-Factor concept, and how the pop charts are being hijacked by talented amateurs being manipulated by untalented professionals (choosing piss poor cover songs or original songs seemingly written by 5 year olds).  This is also for a bit of fun (will RATM actually overtake the X-Factor single?  Very unlikely, but I’d much rather my money went elsewhere, thankyouverymuch, even if the RATM and the X-Factor single share the same record label (Sony) – I much rather see Sony see their established artists get the vote than this).

What I absolutely dislike about the X-Factor is that the business “professionals” behind it are exploiting these new, wide-eyed amateurs, and Cowell recently spoke to the press to say that this campaign is unfair to the contestants for whom the X-Factor is the only way to get them into the business quickly.  Well, Mr. Cowell, life is unfair.  It’s terribly bloody unfair.  But you deal with it and get on with things.  I don’t particularly think it’s fair that life should deny my wife and I the ability to have biological children, but hey, we’ve moved on.  We deal with things as they happen, and Cowell and the winner has got to do the same.  When you get right down to it, it’s a bloody singing competition, for crying out loud.

The X-Factor is no guarantee of a secure future and Cowell is being immensely cruel and irresponsible to these poor sods if he keeps telling them that they’re going to be hugely successful and loads of no.1 singles and albums.  They don’t know that for certain.  And should their career come crashing down around them, who is going to look after them then?  Not Cowell, not Sony, not anybody.

Therefore I lend my full support behind the Jon Morter campaign to get Rage Against The Machine’s “Killing in the Name” to the number one spot in the Christmas pop charts (currently Facebook only, but I believe it is to get it’s own web site soon) to knock out any X-Factor single.  The winner of the X-Factor has got to realise that showbusiness is tough, and that they’re going to be exploited left, right and centre – even by the public.   The sooner the winner knows and learns from this,  the better.

I’ve also said in a previous post that music professionals, many who have spent decades honing their craft, aren’t getting a fair crack at the whip any more.  This is true.  But just as I’ve said about life isn’t unfair, they’re professional enough to recognise that shows like the X-Factor are the current trend (and that the public have no taste at all), and perhaps that’s why they don’t bother to release at Christmas unless they know they’re in a strong enough position to do so.  And all professionals were amateurs themselves once, so perhaps they can see that aspect in the X-Factor and are willing to concede to give these young upstarts a chance (although they had no such luxury of a TV talent show, and had to work much harder to secure the contacts that they had to get them into the business of show in the first place).

Either way I’d rather see a professional pop song released than a mish-mash of nonsense brought forth by a TV talent show.  And besides, we’ve not had a good Christmas tune with the word “fuck”  in it for a good while (well, not least since Kirsty MacColll and The Pogue’s Fairtytale of New York).

Daily Mail calls Alan Yentob: Alan Yengorytob! Miaow!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 12, 2009

Alan Yengorytob? (Click on image below to enlarge – sixth paragraph down).  Well, it’s better than calling him Yentorygob, eh?

Yengorytob

Yes, yes, it’s a typo.  Or IS IT?!  Original article here.

TV shows we used to watch as kids – part one – Rolf’s Cartoon Time (& Club)

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 11, 2009

When I mean we, I’m referring to most of us in our late twenties and early-to-mid thirties. This week, I’d like to look at one of my favourite shows as a child, and that was Rolf’s Cartoon Time on the BBC.

What I loved about this show was that Rolf would show PROPER cartoons, as made by multi-award winning animators back when cartoons were lovingly created. Animators such as Bob Clampett, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and Hanna-Barbera (to an extent – I thoroughly dislike most of their stuff from the late 50s and 60s, such as that of the Flintstones and Scooby Doo, but their earlier work with Tom & Jerry was superb).

As a kid I really disliked most of that 13-frame a second nonsense commissioned by toy companies just to sell their products (namely anything from Mattel, as one good example). It was sloppy, uninteresting and little thought went into them. But the classic cartoons from Warner Bros., MGM et. al were works of art. They made me laugh like a loon (along with the rest of the family) and were just the most entertaining thing on TV.

Rolf eventually went over to CITV for his Cartoon Club, which I fondly remember as actively getting kids to try their own hand at animation. It also sparked an interest of mine in ray tracing and computer animation as Rolf would occasionally feature short CG films from around the world (particularly from Pixar who were producing a lot of their famous shorts at the time, such as Tin Toy). This was way before Toy Story. I seem to recall they even featured Ray Harryhausen helping kids to animate on one of the shows. Hugely inspiring stuff.

Puppet Wars: Return of the Muppets

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 10, 2009

I’ve always been a big fan of the Muppets.  Loved them as a kid – proof may be found here:

Aghhhh! My eyes!

I had always wanted to work for the Jim Henson Creature Shop, and nearly came to a work experience placement with them when I was at secondary school except that due to heavy work commitments they had to pull out (I had an interview all set-up with Neal Scanlan who has now gone on to run his own creature FX studio – one of his most recognisable creations has been the Tweenies).

Somewhat ironically I ended up working in digital VFX instead and the Creature Shop in Camden had then consequently shut back in 2003-2004 – presumably due to the competition from the Soho FX houses and the lack of demand for animatronic creations (MPC itself took on a lot of work replacing creatures which started life as animatronics which just never worked well enough for the director).

But after Jim Henson died back in May 1990, the quality of the Muppets output dramatically declined and I stop watching them pretty much after the Muppets Christmas Carol which was, to me, the only good thingthey did after Henson’s death. Everything else was mediocre, made worse by the lack of the talented writing team that made the Muppets what they were. Sure, the performances from the puppeteers were marvellous (even though quite a few of the original team have retired from performing – most notable is Frank Oz), but they still seemed to lack soul.

So when YouTube videos of the Muppets started to appear over the past few months – with the likes of Sam the Eagle, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker, and the rest (now under one roof) – I began to feel that the overall quality has significantly improved. The Muppets feel more like the Muppets again, and not some hollowed out shell that they once were. I particularly love their take on the Bohemian Rhapsody.

So: welcome back, Muppets. I’ve missed you (says this 33 year old man!).

(But is it just me – has the Muppets themselves received a bit of an upgrade in that those Muppets which had “arm sticks” no longer need them? It’s a bit freaky – it’s as though the hands have a life of their own!)

In the immortal words of the late, great Falco..

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 9, 2009

Rrr.rrr.rrr.rrock me Amadeus. Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus, Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus, Amadeus Amadeus, Amadaeus, oh oh oh.. Amadeus.

I’m currently enjoying the Director’s Cut (WHAT? What’s that I said about Director’s Cuts yesterday?) of Amadeus on Blu-Ray.  I have seen it before – more than a decade ago on VHS.  But I’ve forgotten just how fun this film is.  You’ve got the brilliant Tom Hulce as Wolfang Amadeus Mozart,  a fun-loving, energetic, philandering musical genius.  F. Murray Abraham as the downtrodden, bitter, jealous Italian maestro Salieri who believes, as an old man, responsible for Mozart’s death (and Abraham’s old age make-up is incredibly good).

Amadeus won 8 Oscars, and it’s not hard to see why.  The production design is so beautiful, the cinematography stunning, and the performance and direction absolutely superb.  It’s funny, entertaining and dramatic.  To an extent it reminds me of Sofia Coppola’s excellent Marie Antoinette, a film that shares a very similar look and feel in all departments (although unlike Amadeus, features a contemporary soundtrack which works a lot better than you’d think).

Amadeus: The Director’s Cut is a film I’d like to buy on Blu-Ray at some point as it’s definitely re-watchable.

Protecting your data with SquirrelSave..

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 8, 2009

Making Cedric the Squirrel work harder, faster, stronger for you!

Disclaimer/Caveat: This is a personal blog, and all opinions within are my own and are not necessarily shared by my employers, Memset.  I provide support for the SquirrelSave service and therefore everything you read here is merely a personal view rather than official Memset opinion or documentation.

Online backups versus traditional backup methodology

Over the past few years, I’ve found online backup systems to be absolutely invaluable alongside backing up to DVD and Blu-Ray, as well as using external hard drives.  An online backup account allows you to instantly retrieve a deleted file from the Internet much faster than it takes to find the right discs, put them into the drive (or hook up the right external drive) and then copy the files across.

Additionally, with historical online backups, you can delete a file – forget about it for 30 days or more, and then suddenly realise that you need it again.  Big problem if you’re simply dumping/overwriting the contents of a backup on a hard drive.  Your physical backup may also die when you least expect it.  DVDs and Blu-Rays have a limited shelf life, and hard drives are quite prone to failing at any time for any reason.  Online backup services could be seen, in my eyes at least, to be like an extra insurance policy against both your computer and your physical media backups from failing.

Where SquirrelSave steps in

The service that I provide support for, SquirrelSave, has been successfully running for the past few years.  The datacentres in which data is stored are based in Reading, UK.  All data to and from the datacentres is encrypted between your computer and the backup server, and the filesystem in which your backups are stored is also encrypted.  But the real beauty and major advantage of SquirrelSave, for me, over all the other online backup providers (Jungle Disk, Mozy, Humyo, Carbonite, Backblaze, etc.) is that it’s based around existing open source software.  SquirrelSave essentially provides a GUI wrapper around SSH, rsync and SCP.

With SquirrelSave you define your Include and Exclude lists within the GUI (SquirrelSave ships with a set of sensible defaults – generally your C:\Users\<username> directory is set for backup, and many temporary/system directories are set for exclusion[1]) and then hit Start Full Backup.  This kicks off the long backup process which can take several days to several weeks depending on how fast your broadband provider’s upload speed allows[2].  You can specify a limit to the amount of bandwidth SquirrelSave uses if you find that Cedric the Squirrel is feasting a bit too much on your uploads.

Examining backed up data or restoring is simplicity in itself.  While SquirrelSave does not provide a web based interface for this, it does include the WinSCP client that makes it easy to navigate through the backup server directories to recover your files.  It is then simply a case of dragging and dropping directories and/or files over to your hard drive to restore them.  SquirrelSave also has multiple historical backups, so that if you do delete a file from your machine, you can restore a file from 2,4,6,12,14, etc. days ago (the historical data doubles each time).

I’ve used SquirrelSave myself both at work and at home to recover files that I’ve been stupid enough not to back up manually first.  The most recent case was when I had to reinstall the Macbook due to serious rainbow beach ball issues upon start-up.  I recovered all of my documents, SSH keys, etc. within a matter of minutes of installing the SquirrelSave client.  Note: the Mac SquirrelSave client is still in development/testing at this time.

SquirrelSave Tip #1

If you see “Some files not completely transferred (23)” when performing a SquirrelSave backup, don’t worry.  This indicates that somewhere within your Include list, you’re backing up temporary files which existed when SquirrelSave (or rather, rsync) was compiling it’s list of files to back up.  By the time the backup started, those files were deleted or moved.

Restoring files to a new PC

There’s no right or wrong way of restoring files to your new/replacement PC.  But there are several ways of doing so.  My suggestion would be to ensure that you keep a backup of your local SquirrelSave config directory.  This is located (on Vista and 7 machines) under C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Roaming\SquirrelSave.  I’d make sure that you’re using something like WinZip, PowerArchiver or any ZIP utility to back up the contents of this directory and keep it safe.  Not a problem if you forget to do this, as you can restore without this data – but any customisations made to your Include and Exclude tabs will be lost.

On the new PC,  if you’ve kept the config files, then restore them to the same path as was on your old PC.  Install SquirrelSave.  If you don’t have the config files, you’ll be prompted to login and run the configuration file from your SquirrelSave online web account.  If this is the case it is VITAL that you pause/select backup later when prompted.  You do NOT want SquirrelSave to start backing up your new PC just yet.

Once SquirrelSave is installed and configured, you can then use the View Backup button to connect to your files and then copy them over to your new PC. 

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not want SquirrelSave to back up these files again, or delete the contents of the current directory hierarchy on the backup server – make sure you copy these files back to the same paths on your new PC as before.  If you put files into different directories, SquirrelSave will think these are new and back them up.  Eventually the files in the old folders on the backup server will be deleted.  So files and folders must be like-for-like on the new PC if you wish to avoid these issues.

Once the files have been restored, you can unpause SquirrelSave and it’ll start to back up your new PC.

SquirrelSave Tip #2

The more advanced SquirrelSave user can use any SCP client to connect to their backup store.  Your private key is stored as ssh_key in the config directory (see above), and you can use this to connect to the backup store (the host that you need to connect to is formed from your SquirrelSave username, followed by .backup.squirrelsave.com).

There you have it.  SquirrelSave is a safe, easy-to-use, online backup service which costs just £4.95 + VAT per month (with 30 day money back guarantee) for unlimited storage.  While it is offered and supported on the Windows platform (XP, Vista or 7) at the moment, it WILL be expanded to the Mac and Linux platforms in due course.

If you need assistance with SquirrelSave, please do NOT contact me directly here – please use the official support email of support@squirrelsave.com.  We aim to reply within 2 hours of receiving your email (Monday-Friday in office hours).

Footnotes

[1] Users of Microsoft Outlook will need to explicitly declare the path to their PST files as SquirrelSave exlcludes the AppData path by default (this is because it can contain a LOT of unnecessary data).  To backup Outlook data on a Windows Vista/7 machine, you’d need to include C:\Users\<yourusername>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook within your SquirrelSave Include tab.

That said, I HIGHLY recommend Outlook users consider buying a copy of AJ Systems OutBack Plus 97 which can bundle Outlook configuration and PST files into a single file, as well as other Windows application preferences.  The resulting file can then be backed up by SquirrelSave quickly and easily.

[2] I’ve found that Virgin Media customers are seriously disadvantaged due to the peak usage caps that they place on customers.  I would advise that Virgin customers seek another broadband provider if you’re wanting SquirrelSave or other online backup provider – regardless of whoever you choose, you will see major delays in uploading your data versus other providers who do not impose such limits.

Milking a film for all it’s worth..

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 7, 2009

Okay, this is my lunch time rant, and it’s rather a long one.

I’m getting a little fed up over the number of times I have to buy or rent THE SAME film because somebody thought it would be good idea to produce a trillion special editions, with new features and a multitude of different edits,  just so that the people behind them can rake in even more money in royalties.  No harm in that, though.  People make films to be both artistic and to money and they’re not charities after all.  Capitalism at work.  No problems there.  Fine.  But it is  getting to the point that films are being released and re-released so frequently I’m beginning to lose track as to which version I’ve got,  what I’ve watched, and what I need to watch!

I was having a wander around HMV first thing this morning before heading into work.  I went in to buy Jennifer an early Christmas present and ended up taking a look at what else they had on offer.  As I have a rather extensive collection of DVDs, I found found that I couldn’t remember particular titles I own have special features or not.  So I’m looking at the Princess Bride (an excellent film, although the book is even better!) on offer for £5 and I’m thinking, “I have this – but do I have the audio commentaries?”.

I then went looking for the Time Bandits DVD and Blu-Ray.  I seem to recall that ages ago I rented a copy and found it had an audio commentary from Terry Gilliam.  Fantastic.  Except the version now on sale does not seem to offer an audio commentary, nor does the Blu-Ray.  Where is this fabled version?  I managed to find a 25th Anniversary edition online, and that’s probably the one that I rented.  God knows what’s happened to the retail copies of this film.

While I was looking out for Time Bandits, I eyed up the £34 Harry Potter 1-6 Blu-Ray set (which is a bargin!).  Very little in the way of special features.  I recalled that Warner Bros. are due to release special editions of all the movies at some point (reviews are going up already) and I can’t remember when they’re due out.  That said, one advantage of  having been involved with a company who has worked on all the HP shows during my time working there is – do I really need or want these special features?  I’ve seen stuff they’ll never include on any special edition.  So perhaps I should go for that box set and not bother with the SE when they become available.   No.  I tell you what I’ll do – I’ll RENT both sets of films in the series, and I’ll save my money.

It is, of course, quite common for studios to take advantage of film fans and make them empty out their pockets.  Remember when the Lord of the Rings trilogy first came out on DVDs?  They contained the movie and a few special features included on a second disc.  New Line then released the 4 disc Special Editions which contained lots and lots and lots of special features, but not those from the original 2 disc release.  So you would have to buy both the non-special edition AND the Special Edition to get ALL the special features.  They released both editions within a very short space of each other too.  And guess what, folks?  They’re going to release the Blu-Ray editions of these films.  So one has to triple dip if you’re really into this thing.  I’d imagine the kind of people who buy ALL the Lord of the Rings DVDs and Blu-Rays have the standees, the movie companions, the bookends, the Sideshow Weta collectibles, the costumes for COSplaying, a cat called Gollum, etc.

This is the reason why I hardly ever buy DVDs and Blu-Rays these days.  Blu-Rays are still very expensive in comparison to their DVD counterparts despite the ever expanding library of Blu-Ray titles increasingly weekly, and with the prices of Blu-Ray players finally coming down to sensible prices.

These are the only a few titles on Blu-Ray I want to buy (at some point, wife permitting, etc.) – Slumdog Millionaire, Star Trek, Transformers 1 & 2, Cinema Paradiso, Amelie, Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series (£129.99 – ouch!), and that’s about it.  Everything else I’m renting.  Even though I loved Stardust, unless Paramount pull out the stops to include the features from the US DVD release and keeping the UK audio commentary from Jane Goldman and Matthew Vaughn, then that’ll be a rental too.

And what I’m really hating at the moment are Director’s Cuts.  When they announced the Blu-Ray edition of Watchmen, I was under the impression that the release would be the Director’s Cut and that it would feature the extra material that was being talked about (something along the lines of a good extra hour’s worth of material or something).  No.  That’s being released independently on Blu-Ray and DVD fairly soon.  What gets me about Director’s Cuts is if  a director doesn’t originally release the version of his film that he is satisfied with, why the hell should I, as a film fan, pay either him or the studio MORE money because somebody couldn’t make up their bloody mind during the edit in the first place?  Fairly understandable if the studio has insisted on cuts – this is out of the director’s control – but when a director changes his or her mind later on.  Arggh!

I can see that all this double, triple and quadruple dipping is going to get so out of control that the right-to-buy a copy of a film will eventually dimish and consumers turning to the rental market – or video on demand with content updates.  Mind you, all this dipping is resulting in a profitable second hand market for old DVDs and, to a lesser extent, Blu-Rays.  We’ve picked up some bargins because people have either bought the special edition, or have gone to the Blu-Ray edition of their favourite film.

Stop the X-Factor from killing our music industry!

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 6, 2009

Let’s get some things straight.  In terms of the X-Factor charity single, I don’t give a monkey’s bottom that it’s for charity.  I will not buy it.  I donate directly to charities without giving credit to anybody else.  That said, this is the only avenue for some people to donate or give something to charity.  In my case, I make it a point not to buy charity singles made by the equivalent of human Muppets who are being manipulated from underneath by greedy showbusiness agents and record executives.  If you were thinking, “well – at least the charity single gives the charity much needed PR!”  Well, unfortunately the majority of these charity singles are made for already well established charities. :\

What I don’t like about the X-Factor is that every year it’s poisoning the charts with utter nonsense.  For starters,  rarely do we see a winner who has not attended a talent school (Olly Murs being the only one in the final that hasn’t).   It makes me wonder if established artists who have spent years, decades even, in the business from even bothering to release a new single at Christmas because (a) most of the younger generation are buying the newly released  X-Factor single or (b) everbody is buying compilation albums of Christmas classics (of which are mainly made up of previous X-Factor Christmas singles).

Cowell, Sony and ITV are polluting the UK Christmas charts each and every year and I, for one, would like to see our music industry become a proper music industry again and not some form of evil experimental lab for Cowell and his cronies.  This year I’ll either buy Rage Against the Machine, or Rolf Harris.  Just because.

Speaking of currently competing X-Factor contestants, there seems to be a camel missing a toe.  Stacey, please give it back to the poor creature.  Or at least wear something a bit more modest forcryingoutloud.  Goes to show that nothing changes in Essex :\

Gavin & Stacey

Posted by Martyn Drake – December 6, 2009

I must be one of the few people in this country who hasn’t, until recently, seen any episode of BBC’s Gavin & Stacey.  Upon Jennifer’s recommendation we sat down and watched episodes 1 and 2 of the new series on iPlayer and I’m hooked!  It’s genuinely laugh out loud funny and brilliantly written and performed by all, but Rob Brydon as Bryn stands out in particular.

Now looking to get series 1 and 2 on Blu-Ray from LOVEFiLM to play catch-up (but kudos to Ruth Jones and James Corden for making it easy for us newbies to get into the show without having to fight through tons of back story first).