Here’s an example of what makes this show fun to watch:

and it gets better – here’s when things really get out of control!

I’d really like to see 12 Yard go that extra mile (boom boom!) and take the show to the US – from New York to Los Angeles – since the previous four series have remained firmly in Europe and a little bit of Africa and Asia. Perhaps for series 5, eh?

In the mean time, all four series are available on 4oD, YouTube or SeeSaw.

SquirrelSave (note: I work for the company that runs it and am it’s primary support)
Jungledisk
Mozy Home
Mozy Pro
SugarSync
Humyo
Backblaze
Dropbox

I run both Windows 7 and Mac OS X (Snow Leopard), and have attempted try both platform where offered. My findings may surprise you, and I still advocate that you beg, borrow or buy a portable USB hard drive at the very least to store a copy of your data locally or invest in a Blu-Ray writable drive (they’re becoming cheaper slowly but surely) and doing the same.

I’m also at odds as to why if you download an App from the iTunes App Store via your iPod/iPhone that when you transfer it back to iTunes on your desktop computer, iTunes refers to it as a “purchased item” if the App you’ve downloaded is free. This has lead to me to accidentally nuking Spotify and other applications all the offline music at one point as I was attempting to sync with my MacBook at work. I’ve now disabled syncing with the MacBook and will just use the Mac as a charging point.

While I may have some reluctance with the Apple camp these days, there’ s no point denying their products are bloody good to look at and use (when they work). If the QA could improve slightly, I’d have no hesitation now to come back to the Mac side for good. Especially now that Portal 2 (and possibly Half-Life 2) are going Mac native (although it’d be nice to see a few Grand Theft Autos coming to the Mac as well – that said, there is Chinatown Wars for the iPod/iPhone so it’s a start)!

Avatar MUST win Best Visual Effects, otherwise something has seriously gone wrong somewhere. Up will win Best Animated Feature. The Young Victoria will most likely pick up Best Make-Up. As for the rest, I’m undecided as yet. I strongly suspect Colin Firth will pick up an award for A Single Man, mirroring the BAFTA success.

My fingers are crossed for everyone, although as I always say – you enter the film industry to win awards and not films… Erm .. I might have got that bit the wrong way around..

As the article suggests, Apple may either allow iTunes customers to store backups of their purchased music, movies and TV shows so that they can recover them should their computers and own backups fail (after all, while the cost of storage is coming down all the time, there are few households with decent fault tolerant SANs), or to stream the content direct to the desktop, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. I’d go for the former – one can recover purchased Apps from the iTunes Store but not music, films or TV shows. This necessitates that one has a bloody good backup plan in case of failure. I myself backup to blank Blu-Ray media, external hard drives, and online backup services such as SquirrelSave (UK) and Backblaze (US).

However, the article suggests that as far back as 2008 (it may be nearly two years ago, but that’s an age in the digital era), the major film studios (NBC Universal, Warner Bros., Sony, Paramount and Fox) got together to flesh out something called the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (or DECE for short). This is a system that intends to implement some form of universal DRM that would allow any device to play digital content such as video or audio. Thus iPhones, Android devices, Chrome OS netbooks, etc. could all play the same content across all these platforms, yet the content provider keep a tight leash over when the content is played – and by whom. The studios would be free to negotiate their own price points, terms of access, etc – something that they’re currently restricted by when using a third-party CDN such as iTunes.

I’m not certain DECE will be a success. It would require a complete industry acceptance of the system. Look what happened with HD DVD and Blu-Ray: studios such as Warner Bros., Paramount, and NBC Universal all initially supported and backed HD DVD over Blu-Ray. Fox was one of the few studios not to. Arguments over the technical details soon started to cause drifts and eventually the format lost out to Blu-Ray. The same could go the same way of DECE unless EVERYBODY agrees on how it is to work.

In short: Hollywood is unable to get together to agree on anything. It’s history of petty squabbles, fierce competition and greed has resulted in a horrible experiences for the consumer who ends up paying the price because nobody seems to be able to agree to anything. Will DECE produce something viable? Might do, but given the dominance of Apple and iTunes – it may be too little, too late.

HERE BE SPOILERS. If you don’t want to know what happens at the end of the film, LOOK AWAY NOW!

We went to see The Lovely Bones last Saturday and was looking forward to seeing what magic Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens weaved into the screenplay based on Alice Seabold’s bestselling book. Perhaps part of me was expecting another Heavenly Creatures, but what we actually got was a dreadful, uninteresting and altogether mediocre film in which not much really happens to the extent you don’t give a Gollum about the outcome.

I like Peter Jackson’s work. I really do. I’ve loved virtually everything he’s produced – from Bad Taste, Brain Dead, Meet the Feebles, the Lord of the Rings, King Kong. Heck, for King Kong I travelled over to New York to the worldwide premiere. It was the most expensive cinema visit of my life. So I was most surprised to dislike The Lovely Bones as much as I did.

The problem is not so much the actors. Saoirse Ronan as Susie Salmon is on top form. As is Mark Wahlberg as her dad. Susan Saradon as Grandma Lyn gets the performance spot on. Although Stanley Tucci as the murderer/rapist, George Harvey, was a bit too creepy and was really the the stereotypical pervert (and bizzarely enough reminded me of Hugh Dennis’ Mr. Strange – aka Milky Milky man).

The real problem stems from the screenplay which is tired, flat, and generally void of any warmth at all. Even when Harvey’s killing spree is revealed, you don’t want to start screaming things at the screen. And the real purpose of the story – how the family copes once their daughter has gone, just doesn’t stir up any emotion at all. It was tedious and was about as emotional as finding you’ve just finished your Cornetto.

And speaking of Susie, her little corner of heaven clearly comes gift-wrapped direct from MTV. The visual effects are uninteresting, synthetic; a poor show from a company that’s won multiple Oscars and industry awards for their work. Harvey’s death in the book is silly enough (and the overall story – not the fault of the screenwriters I might add – makes the police look like incompetent arseholes), but in the film it’s grossly unnecessary. While I can happily watch people’s brains exloding in things like Bad Taste, watching a digital double fall down the mountain and hit branches and rocks on the way down is not good. We get the idea that he dies as soon as he falls off the side of the cliff (I mean the guy stands right by the edge for no reason at all and a bloody icicle causes him to lose his balance!). The ending requires the audience have a leap of faith in divine intervention, but all it succeeds in doing is in generating a fantasy beyond anything that J.R.R. Tolkien could devise!

All in all the Lovely Bones isn’t Lovely at all. It’s a horrible adaptation of a rather good (but also flawed) book. And this is from a trio who really know how to adapt books into films (although a part of me wishes they’d go back to making up stories from scratch again other than capitialising on other people’s work).

Then the symptoms started creeping in. Losing the 3G signal in an area where 3G works well, Wi-Fi connections at home wouldn’t automatically connect and had to manually be connected through Settings, touchscreen would lose calibration, forcing me to twist the phone around like a baton until the bloody thing accepted the correct input. Google eventually rolled an update back in February which fixed the 3G part, but Wi-Fi was still giving problems and the touchscreen still is causing problems.

The last straw came when I went on-call for work. I found that I’ve missed out on emergency SMSes due to delayed sound alerts. Due to the speaker being positioned where it is, I also found that the alert sounds are quite muffled in comparison to our four year old Sony Ericsson non-smartphone. In short: I don’t trust the Nexus One in it’s current state. I was also hacked off that photos taken didn’t show up in the Gallery after the most recent OTA update. I could access them through USB and through the Camera application itself, but not through the Gallery. A reboot of the phone seemed to have fixed it and the photos then turned up in Gallery. I shouldn’t have to do that, though.

Thus I’ve stopped using it and gone back to the SE. The battery life lasts well over a week, I can hear all incoming SMSes just fine, and as a phone only, it does what it says on the tin. The Nexus One tries to be too clever and fails. The AMOLED is also a complete arse to work with in strong daylight. My wife has also been complaining about the quality of calls recently and has kept asking if I’m on hands-free when I’m not.

I’ve decided to go running back to Apple despite my earlier grumblings about them. Love them or hate them, they do make exceptionally fine products. Which work. I’m starting off with an iPod Touch 64Gb and assuming that I’m able to switch my contract to Memset late next year (or after the T-Mobile/Orange merger allows the legal purchase of an iPhone on my existing contract with T-Mobile), I’ll go iPhone. I’m finding it hard to go back to the Android platform right now – especially how well I’m finding the iPhone/iPod App store and how well multi-touch and Apple’s capacitive display just works. The quality of the applications seem a lot more professional too.

The irony is that I had no problems with the HTC Hero. It was a little slow, but it worked well. I hope the HTC Desire works better than the Nexus One – I’d so hate it to turn out like the Nexus after Sense UI has been applied.

I now split my smartphone use between the Sony Ericsson and my iPod Touch. Phone for the phone related stuff, iPod for the apps, calendar and everything else.

This week: ancestry.com. Their automated systems have constantly ignored any and all attempts to unsubscribe. It states I will receive no more newsletters, but guess what – I receive more newsletters. I’ve blocked them via Postini’s Content Manager, but even when they receive SMTP refusal, they STILL bombard with newsletters.

They’re going back in SMTP block for good this time.

When I took out Mobile Broadband a little over a year and half a go, I was lead to believe I had unlimited T-Mobile hotspot access as well. But you did not provide me with any login details. I called your technical support line and was given a series of confusing and conflicting statements from your support staff about logging in. Your web site has magically changed to remove ALL information relating to HotSpots (internal search reveals a link which redirects back to Mobile Broadband which does not mention anything about

Now. Am I to resolve this amicably by letter to Customer Services first? Or am I to “do an Orange” and take this up with Trading Standards in order to nullify my Mobile Broadband contract for failing to deliver and provide an acceptable level of information about using the service (which may or may not exist – tech news web sites say yes, you say yes but are a bit confused, your web site says no)?

Your choice T-Mobile UK. This may well be the last 18 month period I stay with you, after a good few years (was is it – 4 years now?) together. I’ll just switch to my employer’s mobile phone scheme (not T-Mobile or Orange I hasten to add) and probably get an iPhone in the process. Probably.

Good idea? Bad idea? I think it’s a bad idea. Amber will really need to up the ante with regards to changing the public’s mind about the quality of straight-to-DVD films. The general public assumes (and for the most part, quite rightly) that straight-to-DVD movies are of low grade quality. I’ve seen a few turkeys in my time (especially the Starship Troopers sequels – they’re so bad, they’re funny). What happens when the initial exclusivity ends? Can LOVEFiLM get a look in for rentals (which is ironic given that Tesco’s DVD rental service *IS* LOVEFiLM)? Will they go to cinema (otherwise why spend lots of money of high-end camera kit for low-res TV entertainment – dig out that Super8 camera or that battered VHS-C camcorder and be done with it!).

I also shudder at the prospect that the same people responsible for bringing the appalling Golden Compass to the big screen are going to try again with another Philip Pullman adaptation. That poor sod must be a glutton for punishment!

Quite frankly, if I was a book author and was approached by Tesco/Amber to have my work turned into a film for DVD purposes only, I’d run away screaming. Apart from Lord of the Rings, Amber’s former executives are not exactly well known for producing hit after hit. A few development projects from hell include: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke (rights were announced in 2004, it’s 2010 and the script has undergone various re-writes by two screenwriters and still nothing), and The Man on Platform Five by Robert Llewellyn (six screenwriters have attempted this and the project appears to be officially dead). There was also Inkheart which DID make it the screen, but flopped at the box office (although I rather liked it myself). As did The Golden Compass (liked the book, detested the film).

I believe Tesco are being terribly misguided about all of this. I think that it *may* have a very marginal success for *some* titles, but it’ll flop spectacularly like Hugh Hefner without Viagra for most of the others and eventually Tesco will walk away licking it’s wounds. I’d like to be wrong, of course, since I’m all for independents raising funds for producing movies – but I’m just not sure that exclusive supermarket distribution is the way forward.

I wonder, if other supermarkets got in on the act, how those films would turn out. Kwik-Save presents A Toothbrush With Death! Lidl presents Con-Air Freshener! Morrisons’ presents Pie Another Day. You get the idea.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

The pilot starts to unravel how the Cylons eventually gain consciousness – the seeds are firmly planted in this two-parter. BSG’s battle between “the one true God” and the polytheism is in full force here, with supporters of monotheism advocating violence against non-believers (to the point whereby a student walks onto a train with explosives and detonates – killing all – including Joseph Adama’s wife and daughter and Daniel Graystone’s only daughter).

Daniel Graystone is the billionaire technologist who eventually creates the Cylons. At the time of the deaths, he has already developed a robotic solider for Caprica’s military although it has no AI and performs badly during tests. Graystone is after the Holy Grail – artificial intelligence – but is years away from developing it himself. A rival company, based on the planet Tauron, has already developed such a device but has yet to develop the physical hardware/robot body for it. Enlisting Adama’s help, thanks to his links with the Tauron Mafia, he obtains the only artificial intelligence CPU in existence.

Prior to all this we learn that Graystone’s daughter, Zoe, has been developing a virtual avatar capable of independent thought (i.e. AI) using an interconnected virtual reality system where teenagers hook up to go to parties and perform all sorts of outrageous acts – all carried out in this virtual world. After Zoe is killed in the train blast, Graystone learns from Zoe’s friend about the avatar and proceeds to combine it with the AI CPU into his new robotic solider.

From here we’re given the impression that Cylon’s eventual independent thought stems from Zoe. Oh, one other thing – Zoe was/is a supporter of the “one true God”.

The only issues are:

1) Is it REALLY a good idea to insert the AI CPU through a mouth slot on the Cylon? Shouldn’t it be difficult to get in and out in case somebody decides to sabotage or hits the thing repeatedly in the “mouth”? Seems a silly place to put one of the most essential components of your advanced robot.

2) Graystone didn’t seem to do much reverse engineering of the stolen AI CPU. We assume he has had to do something, because it’d be bloody foolhardy to insert a CPU into something without actually knowing how it works..

3) The Cylon’s voice. Similar to that of the original series, although we hear the robotic undertone mixed with Zoe’s voice (which actually improves it – I found the electronic voice of the original Cylons a bit difficult to understand at times due to heavy voice processing, and why the hell create a robot force with speech impediments?). Graystone’s house robot/PA has a very clear human voice (albeit still a little bit processed). Does Graystone intend to remove humanity from it’s military robots (aka the Centurions)? A bit ironic, then, given that he’s trying to create a robot so that he can give his “virtual daughter” a physical body.

I will be looking forward to watching the entire series when I can get my hands on it (iTunes).

I recently watched Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds via iTunes and I have to say I loved it. Loved it to bits. A film that’s only 30% in English (the remaining 70% in German, French and a smattering of Italian). It’s smart, funny, and is wonderfully tragic. Not nearly as gory or even as violent as I was expecting, but still very Tarantino-esque all the same. As with other Tarantino films, the soundtrack is absolutely bloody marvellous and I already have it on my Spotify playlist.

It’s a pity, then, that this is a film that’s distributed by Universal Pictures. This means I couldn’t rent it on DVD or Blu-Ray through LOVEFiLM because of disagreements (and while I fully support LOVEFiLM, I just wished they would be a bit more open about this issue). As I’ve said in a previous post, the issue at hand is that Universal want a greater cut of the rental market fees. Blockbuster, as far as I know, are the ONLY physical media company in the UK to have agreed to this new arrangement. This gives them exclusivity, and makes consumers lives a bit more awkward.

There is iTunes, but as I’ve said previously, Universal walked out on Apple as Universal wanted to charge more money for rentals and film sales. They eventually returned, having gotten their way, but the price paid is that we have to pay more money. A pain in the arse because Universal probably haven’t paid Apple that much to distribute their films – certainly, it’s much cheaper for Universal to provide their films through iTunes, a ready-made cross-platform Internet distribution system for home entertainment systems (computer or Apple TV) or mobile devices (iPod/iPhone), then having to come up with their own distribution mechanism. In terms of quality, the UK movie store does not have HD rentals or sales for films. Unlike the US store. We’re missing out again, folks. I’ve also noted that the colour reproduction and artefacting of the film due to the official transcoding is close to being a little unreasonable for a higher priced rental. I may well complain to Apple about it. In fact, I will.

The situation between Universal and the rest of world is barely acceptable at the moment. I’ve decided that I will see Kick-Ass at the local cinema, if only because the people behind it are good people and I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt they may not have known the situation between Universal and LOVEFiLM (Stardust did exceptionally well on the rental market, and Kick-Ass should do the same – but given that LOVEFiLM operates a bigger rental market in the UK than Blockbuster, MARV could stand to lose money on this). If Universal continue to be arseholes, they’re going to lose money. I hope so – their pursuit of more profit is hurting the consumer who merely wants to watch good quality films and programming.

Secondly: love going to the cinema, but why can we not have a better loyalty rewards scheme? The one we’re got at the moment restricts viewing times for the free screening which is awkward and requires NINE trips just to get that. How about a monthly pass, operated similarly to other cinema chains, which would for a fixed price. allow unlimited trips to the cinema each month? Would prefer that rather than a loyalty card to be honest.

Thirdly: please provide better, more comfortable seats or at least put in superior/more comfortable seats for additional cost (again, similar to other cinema chains). The past few things have ran well over two hours and after that time my lower back is really beginning to ache. Those seats need better lower back support.

On the second night, we ate at the apartment. We popped along to the local shop (Billa), about 8 minutes walk away from the apartment. We stocked up on veg, frozen pizzas, beer and salad dressing and brought the lot back. We then discovered the electric oven didn’t work and had to cook the pizzas in the microwave combo-oven, which meant that the top of the pizza was nicely done, but the bottom was a bit soft.

On the third night, Jennifer’s birthday, we went to a Japanese restaurant located in the subway leading up to the local Mandarin Plaza shopping centre. Kiyv has many subways and each one contains a multitude of small kiosks selling everything from DVDs to bras, food, knick-knacks, and goodness knows what else. Leading up to the main square, you can find an entire shopping centre underground. The restaurant was wonderfully small, but very attentive waitresses and the food was good. Several courses and two beers cost £15 for the lot.

The fourth night we ate at a local restaurant specialising in local Ukrainian dishes. It was the most expensive of all the restaurants, and the total bill didn’t add up properly (it was out only be several pounds and we deliberating whether to take the waitress to task over it, but in the end we decided just to pay and not leave a tip). Two courses and three beers cost £25 for the lot.

The final night we decided to eat back at the apartment. We popped along to the nearest hypermarket, a 20 minute walk from the apartment itself. We bought mushrooms (which we later read in the phrasebook not to buy due to possible contamination from Chernobyl, although the phrasebook said not to pick them or buy them from open markets – we assumed these ones were safe since (a) it was a hypermarket in which everybody and anybody used and (b) if the mushrooms were radioactive, surely the other locally grown produce would be as well) and a few other ingredients to make pasta and sauce. We also picked up some bread from the bakery which was fantastic.

On our last day we checked out of the apartment at 12pm and made our way to the central train and bus station. It’s a hodge-podge of minivans, buses, people and small market stalls. We dumped our luggage at the train station (it costs 12 grivna for a token and you need to specify a combination on the inside of the locker before you shut the door and insert the token. You’ll then use your combination to unlock and remove you luggage) and headed off back into town to see St. Michael’s Church.

The pavements were hazardous due to the late flurry of snow on Sunday and we were sliding about, very dangerously I might add, on the ice a good number of times. Another problem that you’ll encounter in Kyiv is that when the ice stalls melting from roofs, it tends to fall off without warning. I nearly came a cropper when a good chunk of ice fell from one of the roofs of a big apartment block. The people of Kyiv tend to rope off sections of the pavement to make people walk around the more hazardous areas where ice is likely to fall.

Got back to the bus station around a quarter to three to pick up our luggage and take the minibus back to the airport. It costs 30Hr per person and takes about 40 minutes.

The airport. This is where the problems started. First of all, you can’t check in until the display tells you that the flight is available to check in. The check-in desks themselves are located beyond Customs, so there’s no going back out once you’ve gone through. Our flight was delayed for four hours as Luton airport had closed due to snow. Wizz Air, however, neglected to tell us this. They told us only that there was a delay and that was it. We found out the reason from people with iPhones who were able to connect to the Internet. Due to the delay, Wizz Air gave us vouchers for refreshments we couldn’t use straight away as we’d got them when we checked in, and we’d already gone through customs at the time. They couldn’t be used at the Irish Bar, so a few of our fellow passengers collared an airport rep who arranged for us to go in small numbers back through security (surrendering our passports and having to rescan our carry-on baggage in each direction. We even had to scan our meals (a very expensive microwave dinner – ha!). We were given 70Hr to buy a meal. This got us a chicken kebab thing, some fries, coleslaw and a bottle of Coke. Better than nothing.

Speaking of security, there seems to be some inconsistency with the way security treats Ukrainians versus foreigners. We clearly saw security allow Ukrainians to pass through to airside carrying unfinished bottle of drinks. When a UK couple tried to do the same, they were told to ditch the drink. The security people also like to manhandle you, are very impatient, enjoy barking orders and generally being most unpleasant.

Our flight eventually left at 10:30pm, some four hours after it was supposed to. The flight itself was smooth, but spoilt by Ukrainian teenagers sitting in front playing up (and being shouted down by a fellow countryman at one point in which they soon shut up). These teenagers also were playing with their mobile phone during take-over, during the flight, and during landing. For some reason people don’t seem to understand what’s being said since on our flight into Kyiv, the woman passenger in front of us received a phone call during the actual landing. If the cabin crew were aware of this, they didn’t say anything.

When we arrived in Luton, it was too late to catch any connecting buses or trains back to Woking. Easybus, whom we used to get to Luton from London told us that we’d have to buy brand new tickets. There were no representatives from Wizz Air to help arrange ongoing travel (or even to use a phone to do so ourselves). We tried to check into the local Holiday Inn, but the Inn was full (SING: Little Donkey). As was the local Ibis. So we caught the Easybus back to London Victoria and tried to find a hotel there. No luck. The only one that may have been available would have been the Grovesnor, and at nearly £400 a night, that was right out. So from around 1am to 4:10am we spent a very very cold night sitting in the shopping precinct along Buckingham Palace Road. At 4:10 we hailed a taxi to take us to Waterloo Station and waiting there for the 5am train back to Woking.

We’re furious with Wizz Air for their failure to provide support when it was needed. You could argue that it should be Luton Airport that provides the support, since it was them that had shut for the four hours and delaying flights in and out. However, our payment and contract is with Wizz Air who have a duty of care. They are responsible for liasing with Luton. And it is Wizz Air for choosing to use Luton as their base. Needless to say, we’ll be writing to them about this.

We had a very pleasant drive which took us through the forest and into the outskirts of the city. We stopped off for some petrol (around 50p a gallon – one of the advantages of being so close to Russia, I guess) and went onwards into the city and to our apartment (which can be seen here).

The apartment itself was extremely comfortable, warm, and had plenty of ventilation as and when required. Entrance from the street takes you into a lift up to the fourth floor and through a steel security door (see this picture). From there, you’re presented with a 2″ steel front door that then leads to another door and then you’re inside. So security here is excellent.

The 42″ Plasma TV was addictive and had a few English channels to choose from (although mainly Ukrainian and Russian programming, there were a few Discovery channels to pick from and the essential BBC World, CNN and Euronews). The kitchen was well equipped, but the electric oven didn’t seem to work (although the gas hobs did) and the microwave/combo oven is all in Cyrillic. Thankfully Jennifer managed to interpret the buttons and we could eat shop bought food. I would have liked to have seen a tea towel too – the overhead drying rack isn’t particularly hygienic with stale water clogging up the drip tray. But this is a small quibble and we made do just fine.

The bed was very comfortable, and the bathroom a very good shower- hot and plenty of water pressure. The washing machine was highly convenient, although the soap/liquid tray had to be cleaned out a bit due to too much crap clogging it up (probably because previous renters had been using too much powder).

In terms of location, the apartment is in easy walking distance to the local food shop, Billa. There are a number of restaurants close by too – including TGI Friday. Shopping for food is inexpensive and beer especially so. You can expect to pay around 50-70p per bottle of local and imported beer depending on brand. We tried several, including this one and found them to be of excellent quality.

Getting around Kyiv was easy, although signage (even in Cyrillic) was surprisingly absent. The Metro costs just 14p for one blue token that gives you one ride. Kyiv has some the deepest underground stations in the world, and it can take 5 minutes to ride up and down the escalators. The Russian influence in the station design is obvious, but there is plenty of room for everybody which is just as well – even during the day the Metro is absolutely packed and we were wondering where everybody was coming from!

In part two, I’ll detail our visits, eating out, and getting back to the UK. In the mean time, all photos of our visit can be found here on my Picasa album.

I learned yesterday (despite this being announced last November) that Universal Pictures are bullying DVD and Blu-Ray rental firms like Blockbuster and LOVEFiLM into new terms for rental of their movies. In short, titles I’d like to rent from LOVEFiLM cannot be rented and I must either buy a copy of the DVD or Blu-Ray or watch it in the cinema. This is not LOVEFiLM’s fault, and I applaud them for not caving into their demands (whereas Blockbusters have, and corporate whoring such as this is absolutely deplorable and I object most strongly to any form of exclusivity of film titles – which is also why I’m against the recent announcement that Tescos are bank rolling movies for Amber Entertainment so that they can create straight-to-DVD titles to be sold exclusively through Tesco stores). I was rather looking forward to seeing Inglourious Basterds and BSG: The Plan – but no, Universal have said no to that. I bet Kick-Ass won’t be available either.

We must not forget that Universal walked out on iTunes for a short period as they were unhappy with the costs that Apple were charging their customers. Universal wanted a higher price put on their films. Apple tried to reason with them, and it failed. They eventually came back, but the result is that NBC Universal films and TV shows cost a significant amount higher than what they are on physical media. For example, to buy all four seasons of Battlestar Galactica in HD on iTunes would cost £175 whereas the Blu-Ray edition costs £101. You don’t get any of the special features on the Blu-Ray, and you’d be responsible for backing up all the media files with no option of re-downloading from iTunes should your backups fail.

Once again, film studios are becoming far too greedy, and they clearly do not trust the consumers who buy their products. I’m also immensely hacked off with Universal Music after they practically accused all iPod owners of being thieves. Therefore the whole Universal stable is worth avoiding like the plague. I will not support their films or products until they start getting around that negation table and become a lot more reasonable. I will continue to support and subscribe to LOVEFiLM for whom I feel have done the right thing. They cannot and must not be bullied or threatened into deals that are unfair and unjust.

In other news, I hear that Warners Music is looking to get out of Spotify and other free streaming services. If this happens (and especially with Spotify Premium), then I’ll boycott Warners too.

I’ve already just made my stand against Universal and I hope they choke on it.

All in all, this is a bit messy.

What I think Google should have done is turned Buzz into a snazzy RSS reader for Gmail. Here you can subscribe to Twitter RSS feeds, web site feeds, etc. and read them all from one place rather than having to switch to, say, Google Reader.

I tell you one thing for certain, though – they’d never be able to visit a cinema or theatre – they’d be banned for being recording equipment and thus liable to pirate films for fun, profit, or just to piss off their owners. This will make the CEO of a mega corporation very upset as he’ll not be able to visit the cinema with his family and PA android who he relies on for everything. And the PA android would have so looked forward to seeing Avatar 4D: Na’vi versus Smurfs.

It actually makes me think about potential artificial implants, limbs or organs. For example, if you’re fitted with an artificial eye that sends electronic signals through a processor directly into the brain – could a film studio stop you from visiting the cinema because you’d be capable of recording the film into whatever device you can plug yourself into, and then watch later (or pirate the bugger out of spite)?

I’m curious to see, as artificial intelligence, robotics and genetic engineering develop, just how rights for both devices and humans change. Will freedom improve, or be hindered?

But it goes much deeper than this.

For VFX artists, they deserve better pay and benefits and better credit positioning. For VFX engineers, they deserve at least a credit. As a former VFX engineer it has to be said that we generally get paid better than most VFX artists (however this is not always the case and speaking to former colleagues at other facilities, the pay for system administrators/engineers can vary greatly – especially, it seems, when it comes to gender. Junior engineers who put in much of the grunt work when it comes to installing heavy server and workstation kit, earn far less than most VFX artists, and yet put in just as long hours and lousy shifts). This is because engineers are likely to be more employed full-time at a post facility rather than on a contract basis (unlike artists who can come to a facility on a contract/job/freelance basis). So here us engineers have the better deal so far it has to be said. But we should – in effect we’re working in a specialised HPC (high performance computing) environment – something where skills can be transferred to scientific/lab research positions and other specialised “cloud” computing infrastructures.

For those artists on contract/job/freelance basis have very little in the way of entitlements/benefits (holiday, sick pay, etc.). Full time employees at post houses usually have at least a pension scheme. This is not extended to contracted employees in most cases, obviously.

So what is the incentive for the VFX artist? Career progression? Possibly. But this depends, in part, on credits. And as mentioned in the original article, VFX staff are almost always listed after craft services and appear right towards the bottom of the credits. Even then not everyone is included (engineers are almost always excluded – it suggests that render farms, workstations, software, storage, VPNs, and everything else in-between sorts itself out despite the combination of grunt work, long hours, lousy shifts and most post houses consider engineering a “necessary evil” and hardly get a good word sent down to them from clients or even management of the company they work for) and everybody is fighting for space for their names to be included as studios allocated a set limit per facility.

Mind you, given how most broadcasters trim out the credits of films when they air anyway (yet same broadcasters won’t do the same for their own programs), it’s a moot point. Is there any need to expose more film for people’s names? How about flashing up an URL at the end of the film to learn more about the filmmakers and the people that made the film? To be honest, I just don’t know what the answer is, but the entire credits system is proving to be unfair. Even if you ARE included in the end credits, it’s likely your name is probably misspelt by the third party company responsible for typesetting and producing those credits.

My opinion of the VFX industry after six years working for it was that both creative and technical teams are seriously under-represented. I was not at all impressed with the Visual Effects Society’s representation in the UK at the time – all the benefits really went to those that worked in and around Los Angeles and New York. I am assured things have improved by now, but it’s still not enough. VES should be doing a lot more for it’s members – especially in the international, non-US community where a lot of UK facilities are being used for major Hollywood-funded films are made. Surely there must be an organisation out there prepared to truly stand up to the film and TV studios on behalf of those (artists, engineers, producers, supervisors, etc) to ensure better benefits for those that work in it?

That said, it’s the employers of VFX personnel who should be doing more for it’s employees regardless of whether they be full-time or contract. During my years in the industry, working full-time, I was never offered any training on anything that remotely interested me. There was always talk, of course, but absolutely nothing came out of it other than a monthly subscription to Safari Bookshelf on-line.

VFX work IS being taken advantage of by film studios. One could say that the post house is merely a film studio’s rag doll – to be battered about as needed, and when done, tossed aside for something cheaper and shinier. Some directors prefer working with certain facilities, but it’s probably more of a case that they prefer working with certain people. If those people feel they’re not being looked after by the facility they’e working for, or the film studio, they’ll go elsewhere.

All I know is that I’m encountering more and more artists leaving the film industry to pursue careers in graphic design, the games industry (yipe – if you thought the film industry could be scary, the stories I’ve heard about the game industry is enough to make one scream), or anywhere else their talent might be appreciated. Similarly for engineers who leave to work for specialist HPC/cloud systems.

This blog post has nothing to do with great old ones, but plenty of current great ones.  I’m currently playing with SeeSaw, an IPTV platform which was previously known as Kangaroo, the controversial video-on-demand system which was blocked by the Competition Commission back in 2009.  Kangaroo was then sold to Arqiva and has been since become SeeSaw.

Having been given a beta invitiation, I’ve had relatively short amount of time to give it a spin.  It’s not without it’s problems, but looks promising.  I’ll give a more informed opinion once I’ve had a chance to play around a bit more.

What about Hulu?  What about Canvas?  Well, at this point my head is spinning with all these different systems and I’m not one to be confused easily.  All I want is a open standard platform which I can watch what I want, when I want, and in a format of my choosing.  I don’t care how it’s done, I just want it to work without too many (if any) restrictions.  The day Murdoch and chums play nicely with the Beeb, Channel 4 and Channel 5 will be the day I’m tap dancing naked to work.