.. with one interview that's in the process of being arranged.  The bonus is that it's company and job that I really would like to work for, and do.  I'll shall say no more for now. 

But there have been a few more rejections (including one who sent me the completely wrong rejection notice which implied I had interviewed with them - which I had not.   Having made an inquiry because the email was so baffling, it turns out that they've removed the job completely and rejected ALL candidates with a view to publishing it again in the near future.  Bonus points to them, though: it came from an actual person's email address and not a no-reply address).  Even so, sigh.

So here's some A.I. slop to round off the week based on Monty Python and The Holy Grail...

Here's a song that many people won't have heard before.  Back in the 90's there was an animated TV show for kids called The Dreamstone.  It featured a soundtrack by Mike Batt that had no right being THAT good for a kid's show.  It really is that good (or at least I think so). 

The following song from the show features Batt with Ozzy Osbourne, Frank Bruno (yes, really), and Billy Connolly (whose theme to Supergran still lives in my head), accompanied by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

Well, I got the SysAdmin Appreciation Day wrong.  It was last Friday.  But that didn't stop me from buying my (soon to be ex?) colleagues a couple of cakes.  These ones definitely do not lie.  No. of jobs applied for so far: 65.  Deathly silence.

I've now applied for, or have sent speculative feelers for, a total of 55 jobs (and counting) since the 23rd July.  I've decided to take the weekends off, mainly for the sake of my sanity.  Out of the 55, three has outright rejected my application before ever moving forward to an initial contact/interview, one should be forwarding my details to their client, and I'm waiting a callback from somebody else.

A small taste of my spreadsheet I'm using to keep track.  I'm also keeping tabs on the HR platform because I'd like to know - at least statistically - which ones yield the better responses.  Already I've spotted that many companies that use Greenhouse.io don't do much to customise the templated responses.

Let's keep going!  There's got to be somebody who can make use of my skills..

This Wednesday (30th July) is SysAdmin Appreciation Day (It was last Friday, the 25th July), where companies all over the world should be showing their appreciation to their hard working system admins.  Except for mine.  You could say they're a bit super dismissive about it. 

The cake, as they say, is most definitely a lie.  If that's not an appropriate gaming reference, I don't know what is.

Just watching Netflix's Sandman series 2 having thoroughly enjoyed season 1, and knowing that they shot Dream's Throne Room at Guildford Cathedral for season 1, I had wondered if they had gone back.  Without spoiling things too much - no, it seems they did not, as Dream's realm gets a bit of a DIY SOS makeover at the start of season 2.

But..

As the series progresses, I've noticed a few things that look.. rather familiar.  It turns out that the police station that they use in the show was Duke's Court in Woking (where I once applied for a job in the aircraft fuel industry[ 1 ] - also home to a games company (which reminds me I need to send off a speculative application)) and I pretty much go past that every day when commuting to my (probably soon-to-be former) workplace.  They also shot the cemetery scenes at Brookwood Cemetery which I used to cycle past everyday when I was working for Memset.  They also used an old Debenhams store (in Woking), but it's not something that I've recognised and I've lived here for over 20 years now.

As for the second series itself, I think this has been one of Netflix's best shows in a long while.  It is a great shame that the current situation involving Neil Gaiman has marred things (my only thought at this stage is that it should now be up to the courts to resolve this mess) - but I think that should Allan Heinberg (who has done a sterling job steering the ship) and his team of writers were up for it - I think it could continue without any further issues.  Or least some kind of spin-off series.

However, as I gear up for a potential redundancy, I've cancelled my Netflix subscription.  Once I'm confirmed that I am in regular employment one way or another, I'll resubscribe.  But streaming services have to take a bit of a back seat for a while.

Yesterday's mood was one of pure, unadulterated anger. Overnight, this has turned into anxiety and sadness, including lack of sleep. 

I've been through my fair share of redundancies over the years. The worst one was when I was due to get married and the company I was working for decided it was going to downsize and move into deepest, darkest Essex from Kingston upon Thames. Having spent a not inconsiderable amount of money on the wedding and honeymoon (Bora Bora, then two weeks in New Zealand), it was too late to do anything. So I went and got married whilst unemployed. Went to one of the most expensive places on Earth—unemployed. Backpacked around one of the most beautiful countries on Earth—unemployed. If it weren't for savings, I'd be royally buggered.

Thanks to my cousin, I decided to pursue a career in VFX, and after a very good (but ultimately unsuccessful) meeting with Cinesite, I applied to MPC and got the job. Alas, I am not so fortunate to be in that  kind of financial position now (plus I'm now divorced and single - so only one income), and I'm waiting to hear on a variety of things from work to determine my best course of action. Meanwhile, my emotional state changes hourly, and it's not likely to stop doing that for some time.

.. one day you're enjoying ice cream from an ice cream van hired by your employers and the next you're discovering that your job is at risk - again - because "the games industry".  I cannot (and won't) go into details, but to say I am hugely disappointed is an understatement.  The creative industries have got a lot to answer for these days; watching my former employers MPC die earlier this year was an especially painful reminder of this.

In the meantime, can anybody 'gis a job (winking emoji followed immediately by a sad/crying emoji)?  Details via the About Martyn link and via my newly reconstructed LinkedIn page.

.. very angry with HP (Hewlett Packard) and their [bleeping] servers.  And I am especially annoyed when they remove vital software (albeit discontinued) from their site which leads me to look at potentially dangerous sites for somebody who has bothered to mirror it.  

When Tron opened in 1982 it sat squarely at the cutting edge of cinema technology. Its ground-breaking computer-generated imagery—created on mighty mainframes such as the Foonly F-1 and DEC PDP-10—was combined with tens of thousands of hand-inked, back-lit animation cels. Much of that painstaking colouring work was carried out by artists at Wang Film Productions in Taiwan, giving the finished film its unmistakable neon glow.

(I once used a similar DEC machine at university and immediately took a dislike to the VAX operating system. However, when I got my hands on an SGI Onyx workstation, I found that the IRIX OS suited me perfectly. To be fair, by the time I entered the VFX industry, Linux had already made significant inroads into the space, and, as a result, SGI was becoming less relevant, especially with access to much cheaper (and more powerful) hardware.)

I have now seen the trailer for Tron: Ares. Although the visuals are undeniably striking, they don’t feel as revolutionary as the 1982 original. Perhaps that’s because modern audiences assume “it’s all done on computers”. In truth, today’s visual-effects work is far more varied. Miniatures, motion-controlled cameras, stop-motion creatures and prosthetic make-up still sit alongside CGI. The Mandalorian and the forthcoming Skeleton Crew, for instance, mix practical models with digital rendering on “the Volume”, a wrap-around LED stage that displays real-time 3D environments using Unreal Engine.  Tron: Ares may use a combination of those things, but it still doesn't give me the kind of vibes the original did when it was a pioneer in its field of computer graphics.

Affordable motion-control rigs, photogrammetry and 3D printing have brought techniques once reserved for blockbuster films within reach of television and indie productions alike. My own enthusiasm for traditional VFX waned when the pace of change seemed to slow, but the games industry is now pushing real-time rendering and interactive storytelling into exciting new territory. I suspect it will soon influence screen entertainment even more than the old studio system ever did. Interesting times ahead!

(Well, hopefully.  A solution has been proposed, I have accepted.)

Good to see Sky stepping up (finally) and have acknowledged my complaint(y), and what's good is that they haven't tried to palm me off with a refund or cash - just a straight forward resolution that gets the matter resolved.  I appreciate the resolution team's efforts.  Thank you.

(See the original post, My Sky "Complainty", for more info)

[ I'd like to preface this article by saying that all opinions, experiences and views are my own, and not that of any company or person mentioned here.. ]

I spent six years in the film and television industry, largely supporting visual effects for the Harry Potter franchise—though the most exciting and rewarding assignment was Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather, which earned us a BAFTA.

Warner Bros. were frequent clients, but—frankly—not particularly good ones. As a cinemagoer, I find their endless reboots and re-hashes exasperating; as someone helping to make their films, it could be just as painful. On Troy, for example, they granted most of the network bandwidth to the accounts department and to director Wolfgang Petersen’s office, while the VFX team received virtually nothing. I remember standing at Shepperton Studios as the VFX supervisor uncovered the problem and fought to have it fixed. There was also the occasion when a VPN endpoint used on the first Harry Potter film failed, and Warner Bros. simply could not be bothered to replace it.

During this period I followed the attempts to adapt Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. New Line (a Warner Bros. subsidiary) cycled through several screenwriters, each trying to squeeze a vast novel into a feature-length script. Unsurprisingly, it never became a film. Eventually a sensible voice suggested turning it into a television series—outside New Line—and Peter Harness’s superb mini-series was born. It perfectly captured the charm of the book and is now available on Prime Video in the UK; I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Jonathan Strange was not the only ill-fated New Line adaptation. Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, on which  pre-production operations were based at MPC's London offices, suffered the same fate. The film flopped—spectacularly—partly because too much story was crammed into a single instalment, and partly because of rushed, ill-judged visual effects. Years later, another Warner Bros. division saw sense and produced His Dark Materials as a three-series television epic. It took time, but the result was magnificent—easily on a par with Jonathan Strange for quality and attention to detail.

Yet after eight Harry Potter films (I worked on five), Warner Bros. now plans a detailed television remake of a story that already worked perfectly well on screen. Anything omitted from the films is readily available in the books and audiobooks; the films stand on their own merits. Instead, the studio is returning to its habit of regurgitating content—what I call “mamma-bird syndrome”—apparently hoping to squeeze out more profit, this time with the backing of the increasingly controversial J. K. Rowling.

It is worth noting that I spent nine years working for a transgender woman, Kate Craig-Wood—one of the finest people I have ever known. She led Memset with kindness and flair, winning significant business and numerous awards. There was no controversy, no “forced ideology”, merely a calm, efficient workplace. Her presence contradicts the fear-mongering propagated by anti-trans voices such as Rowling.

For these reasons I dislike what Rowling has become—and I question the wisdom of Warner Bros.’ new series. The vast sums earmarked for yet another adaptation could be better spent on literacy initiatives, particularly when Fantastic Beasts remains unresolved.

I was once proud of our work on Harry Potter, but what is the point if the studio simply keeps remaking the same material with minor tweaks? Yes, it maintains employment, but there are far more worthwhile projects. I wonder how many crew members—whether on production or among the VFX vendors—will return, and how they truly feel. I know I would not be enthusiastic, especially after Warner Bros.’ 2005 threat to the UK government over tax credits, an episode circulated internally as an existential danger should Gordon Brown fail to comply (spoiler alert: he didn't). Two decades on, MPC has folded after over-expansion and relentless under-bidding in a market controlled by the studios.

In the end, constant repetition stifles creativity and squanders resources. Warner Bros. could—and should—do far better.

Help!  I feel I've just been held to ransom(ware) by M&S's pricing on their food items.

Imagine my surprise when I popped into M&S Food next to Guildford station and discovered the cheeky buggers have increased the price of the meal deal - again - by an extra 50p!  Over a week this adds up to an additional £2.50.

2023 = £5.00 –> £5.50 
2024 = £5.50 –> £6.00
2025 = £6.00 --> £6.50

A £1.50 increase doesn't sound too bad over three years, but while they have been increasing the price, they have also severely restricted the choice of items that are part of the meal deal.  Too many times have I failed to spot something is no longer part of the deal and had to go back to put it back.  This is in part due to M&S keep moving everything about, and part due to poor labelling.

I get it - inflation.  National Living Wage also increases cost.  There's also the £300 million dent in profits due to the recent cyberattack (which took M&S an age to resolve - and even now I think it's still affecting deliveries).  But what gets me most is the number of items that are available on the meal deal now.  

I’m having a bit of a trip down memory lane. Principally, I think I was trying to recall the street where my maternal grandmother used to live in London (which I've now remembered and bookmarked in Google Maps).

I was born in Ipswich, Suffolk. My mum was born in London—I believe it was St Bartholomew’s, which technically makes her a Cockney, as that falls within the sound of the Bow Bells. My father, on the other hand, was from the East Midlands and was born in a castle (yes, really).

Eventually, we all ended up living in North East London for the majority of my childhood and teenage years. I remember the trips my mum used to take me on when I was a small lad to visit my grandmother, who lived in the Islington/Shoreditch area. She lived just off one of the streets branching from Whitecross Street, which regularly hosted the Whitecross Street Market. I remember the market so vividly. It was quite different back in the 1980s compared to now, but it never failed to intrigue me with what was being sold. We had family who operated stalls there, and we would occasionally catch up with them as part of our visits to see my nan.

There were various ways to get to my nan’s flat, but sometimes we would make our way through the Barbican estate—a large brutalist residential and arts complex. Even back then, I remember being in awe of the place—and I still am—because of its size, complexity, and strangely beautiful ugliness. No wonder it was used so effectively in the recent Star Wars TV series, Andor.

I’m also pretty sure—at least subconsciously—that the Barbican may have influenced my decision to go to university at the University of East Anglia (UEA), whose ziggurat-style brutalist architecture reminded me very much of the Barbican when I first saw it. Again, thanks to brutalism, during my time at UEA we had a Doctor Who spin-off filmed there (which interestingly introduced the world to Kate Lethbridge-Stewart, the Brigadier’s daughter). Walking along those walkways always felt as if you were in some 1970s sci-fi series, even if you were just going to do the laundry.

I’ve been to the Barbican a few times since—my father has taken me to see a show or two, and I’ve also been there a couple of times with a previous girlfriend back in the late 1990s. I haven’t been since—maybe I should. Sadly, my nan and mum are no longer with us, and I miss them a great deal. But I am incredibly grateful to them for the wonderful memories I had growing up. I could write an entire blog on the adventures we had down at our caravan in Canvey Island, for example. Those were extremely happy times for me.

However, I am also acutely aware of just how much I don’t know about both my maternal and paternal families—and that’s even with my father (and uncle) doing a substantial amount of family history. For example, I have some German ancestry on my father’s side, but there is still much more to discover.

I recently made a somewhat expensive mistake (which I am now trying to rectify or appeal), and it has highlighted just how important it is to check absolutely everything before even considering a free trial.

I’ve been using object storage since around 2008, when I first started with Memset. Whether S3-compatible, OpenStack, or any other variety, I’ve seen the ins and outs of many object storage providers over the years. Wasabi caught my attention some time ago because they offer an S3-compatible service at a significantly lower price than Amazon’s S3. I began using it myself, testing it out, and even recommended it at work as a good drop-in replacement for some of our existing solutions.

More recently, I noticed that Wasabi had introduced a Cloud NAS product that promised considerable savings. With my 8Gbps internet connection due to be installed in August, I thought this could be genuinely useful. At $8.99 per TB per month, it seemed like a great deal. I don’t use much more than 1.5TB or 2TB at most, and with those kinds of speeds, it would genuinely feel like having my own NAS—without the costs or space requirements of maintaining a physical device.

ALAS!

I didn’t read the small print. Most of the important information wasn’t actually on the website—it was hidden away in a PDF linked as a Data Sheet. I didn’t read the Data Sheet (mainly because I generally expect all the information to be on the web site - I despise having to download PDFs - mainly because of my security stance on such matters). Had I done so, I would have realised that the service requires a Windows Server, which is no use to me as I’m entirely Mac-based at home.

When I discovered this limitation during my trial, I simply thought, “oh well.” There weren’t any specific settings for NAS in the admin dashboard, but the familiar Object Storage user interface was still available, so I started using that. I even converted it to a paid product, as I was using it to backup my server and blog at the time.

When I signed up, I used this form:

I should have scrolled down, because having looked at the invoice:

By clicking Get Started, you acknowledge Wasabi Cloud NAS + Wasabi Object Storage is a bundle offering, with a 10TB minimum storage amount (starting at $89.90 per month). You also agree to Wasabi’s Customer Agreement and confirm that you have read Wasabi’s Privacy Policy.

I ended up being charged $33 instead of the usual $6.99 for storing 1TB or less of data. Once VAT and other taxes were added, the total came to $44. I subsequently transferred everything to iDrive e2 ($5 per 1TB/month) and closed my Wasabi account.

When I contacted Wasabi technical support about converting my product to the object-storage-only service, they told me I would need to set up a new account and perform object replication. I couldn’t do this with their tools—thank goodness for Nick Craig-Wood (one of my former bosses at Memset) and his rclone utility, which made it easy to transfer data between the two services.  It's saved my bacon numerous times as well as helping me archive hundreds of terabytes of data over the past few years.

The only thing Wasabi has offered me is credits towards a new account, which is of no use to me. I’ve essentially given up and will not be recommending the product at work. I could have seen Wasabi as a good place to store downloads and uploads from vendors sent via the MASV file transfer system, which I set up to replace an ageing FTP service at work.

As with everything I do, I tend to take on these services to learn, explore, and educate myself about their capabilities, and I will even pay for them personally to help me make informed decisions at work. However, it’s not helped by poor web design on Wasabi’s part. I missed the big, bloody invisible asterisk about the 10TB minimum usage—while they advertise $8.99 per terabyte in large, friendly letters on the main product page, the small print is only on the sign-up page, which you might not see if your browser window (or overall display resolution) is small enough.

I’m still waiting for a follow-up email, but it’s been days since I responded to their charges and “offer”.

Shame on me. But also, shame on Wasabi.

On a more humorous note, I was looking at their Trustpilot review page and spotted this review from a very confused person:

I've never encountered a company like Sky that uses more email domains and subdomains than I've had hot dinners, especially when trying to maintain a consistent conversation through email.

Then there is this:

Is it obvious yet to Comcast/Sky that cutting three customer service centres with the loss of 2,000 staff is not exactly leaving customers with the kind of service they expect or deserve.

After a couple of months back with Google Workspace, I decided to move back to (on a different, clean tenant) Microsoft 365 Business Premium. There are a number of reasons for doing so:

• Moving back to a personal Google account means that I get all the consumer-level fun that most people get to enjoy with Google products. When using Google Workspace, you don't necessarily get all the goodies because Google won't bring them to businesses simply as there isn't a valid reason to do so, or it requires additional development and would take some time before those features became available.
• I was asked a question about Microsoft Teams at work the other day, and having not had to go anywhere near Teams administration for a while, I was rather embarrassed to say that I had forgotten.
• I really, really need to learn how to make the best use of SharePoint - and in particular, SharePoint design. Google Sites is much easier to use and can provides easy-to-use design tools. SharePoint can produce extremely professional designs, but the tools are very tricky to learn and get used to and thus requires a bit of practice. I'd rather not practise on a business-critical tenant.
• Gmail's font size is still far too small and I dislike having to use a Chrome extension to "fix" it. Where "fix" is  adjusting the font size for reading and the composing window only - all emails sent will be with the "normal" font size, which I honestly do not believe is suitable in the age of higher-resolution displays.
• Email Log Filtering. I raised a point with the Google Workspace Administration Features community about getting Google to implement better filtering of email logs. If I want to find a rejected/failed email, it is not a pleasant experience. Even being able to export logs and have some form of A.I. analyse it would be better (or better yet - integrate Log Search with Gemini directly).
• Plus, I just miss using Outlook (for web) which I feel is much cleaner and more polished, and has been given more attention by its developers than that of Google.

The downside is navigating the myriad of licensing options, and the many, many, many portals required to tune and tweak Office and Exchange Online for optimal use. What I won't be doing, however, is using Microsoft Copilot. It's too expensive and for what it does versus the other big A.I. giants (OpenAI, Anthropic, Manus, Google, etc.), it's a disaster.

So now I'm back with Microsoft 365, and it's been a good couple of days now without incident.