[ 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.