Just a quick note to say I’m going to move the site’s feed away from FeedBurner. By the looks of it there are still a few of you subscribing to me via RSS (which is great!) so if you could all update your feeds to http://www.istherefood.com/rss.xml I’d very much appreciate it. Or use the link at the top of the site.
Amazon Glacier and Arq ∴
When Amazon first launched Glacier, their super cheap alternative to S3, my immediate reaction was “when will Arq support it?”. Answer: now.
So hurrah, right? We should all ditch our Crashplans and our Backblazes and our Dropboxes, and even our S3s and move to Glacier, yes? Well, probably not.
Glacier is super cheap for storage, yes. Ludicrously cheap in fact. According to various Glacier calculators online, storing 100gb of data for a month would set me back a single dollar (at the time of writing, 62 of my shiny British pence). Currently I back up 82gb of family photos and video to Crashplan at a cost of $5 a month. So I could move that the Glacier and save a few dollars.
I could also nuke Crashplan’s Java based Mac app, and install Arq which is all lovely and native. Although Crashplan’s app allows me to not only back up my content using their online service, but also allows me to very easily perform a backup to an attached USB drive and network attached storage, which Arq doesn’t do now, and based on conversations with the developer, probably never will.
There’s another reason though. Suppose I wanted to pull that 100gb of data back from Glacier. Doing so would cost me quite a lot of money.
Glacier isn’t really geared up for retrieval of data. It’s fire and forget. You don’t want to store this pile of data that you rarely look at? Fine, throw it at Glacier. You’re unlikely to ever want it back, and if you did, you’d probably only want a sliver of it.
But with family photos, videos, mp3s, and the kind of consumer data that’s so commonly found on the hardrives of computer users today, you a) want that to be accessible for those nostalgic strolls down memory lane, b) want to know it’s safe, and c) want it back pretty damn quick if you lose it.
Thanks to the impenetrable voodoo pricing scheme that Glacier employs, it’s a little tricky to work out how much data retrieval will cost. Online calculators help, but it’s still such a dark art that I’m not entirely certain they’re accurate. Which is a problem in itself.
According to the calculators to retrieve 100gb of data in one shot would cost nearly $180. The tricky thing is, Glacier doesn’t want or expect you to pull data back in one shot, so you get a retrieval allowance. On 100gb, the retrieval allowance is something like 170mb per day, or 5gb per month. So if I didn’t mind waiting 20 months to pull back my 100gb of family photos, it wouldn’t cost me anything1.
If I wanted to pull my data back from Crashplan? I just do it. No questions asked, no costs incurred. Even better, if I want to check a specific file or photo in Crashplan, they have a pretty good iOS app that lets you access your stuff. Which is very handy, but also gives real peace of mind.
Before switching to Glacier, make sure you know it’s the right fit. As another layer of backup on an existing solution, which you’ll only ever need to rely on in the worst possible scenario, it might suit. But I’d quite like my last line of defence to be something I can prove works, and I can’t test a complete download from Glacier without incurring a huge bill. Your mileage may vary.
Regardless of whether you decide to use Glacier or not, you should have a look at Arq. It’s a great app.
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My understanding of the retrieval costs could be nonsense - that’s a distinct possibility. If it is, I’d love to know, so please tweet me and tell me I’m an idiot (and explanation as to why I’m an idiot would be nice too). ↩
Photostream Management with Hazel
The other day I read a post by Federico Viticci on moving your photos from iPhoto to Dropbox as a “management app”. I’d pondered this in the past, especially when Dropbox increased everybody’s base storage amount. I’ve never committed and gone through with it though, although I have stopped using iPhoto and replaced it with managing my own folders. When photos are coming in from potentially lots of different devices, I’d rather manage them myself.
Plus, I was never a fan of iPhoto’s “would you like me to delete all these photos now, I’ve copied them all into my library, honestly I have” prompt. I just don’t trust it. I want to see the photos with my own eyes, before I let an app delete them forever.
After Federico’s post, Stephen Hackett posted his own version of the approach, along with an Applescript technique for moving photos from Photostream into Dropbox. But something nagging in the back of my mind said “surely Hazel can do that?” and so I set about to see if it can.
Turns out it’s possible, and I tweeted Stephen to let him know. I thought I’d post this as a more permenant home for the solution because, well, Twitter.
I don’t use Hazel as much as a should. These days I have a Mac Mini running all the time as a server, so it makes sense to start getting Hazel to do more for me. Mail rules are another “thing” I need to get my head around, but that’s an entirely different post!
So, to Photostream and Hazel. The special sauce to make this work is an option in Hazel called “run rules on folder contents”. Photostream creates subfolders on the file system for every photo; instead of…
“\photostream\photo1.jpg”
…you get…
“\photostream\long guid based id\photo1.jpg”.
You need Hazel to dig down into each folder in the top-level Photostream folder, and treat each folder it finds as a folder to process.
To make this work I added two rules, like this:
Then the first rule is extremely simple:
The second rule is where Stuff Happens. Because the first fule contains “run rules on folder contents”, the second rule happens on each folder within the Photostream directory.
Note: the iPhone Camera Roll folder in the screenshot above is just where all my iPhone photos end up. Just to clarify any “why copy from Photostream back to the camera roll?” confusion.
This isn’t just useful for Photostream, anywhere you want Hazel to process a folder full of folders, you can use this option.
My next trick is working out how best to take two Photostreams and mash them together for archiving.
FrightFest 2012
FrightFest the 13th is coming! By this time next week I’ll be knee deep in the annual five day celebration of all things horror cinema. I thought it would be interesting to highlight my most anticipated screenings, and then come back to this after the event to see what the highlights actually were. FrightFest doesn’t always play out the way you expect it to; there are always surprises and some keenly anticipated films that don’t live up to expectations.
Him Indoors
I’ve been excited about this since it was announced. Reece Shearsmith plays an agoraphobic serial killer, Pollyanna McIntosh his suspicious next-door neighbour. Premiering at FrightFest, I believe this short film promises to be something quite special.
The Seasoning House
The directorial debut of Paul Hyett, famous for prosthetics and effects work on films like The Woman in Black, Ironclad, Eden Lake, and the Descent. The plot for this sounds like nothing that’s come before: a deaf mute orphan in a Balkan brothel plans revenge on the men who murdered her family, avoiding detection by moving between the walls and crawlspaces. Hopefully this is just the sort of brave, challenging material that can make for astonishing FrightFest moments.
Cockneys Vs Zombies
OK, so perhaps not so challenging. James Moran, FrightFest regular and writer of Chris Smith’s Severance (as well as numerous episodes of Dr Who, Spooks and more) brings us this charming tale of Londoners battling the undead. FrightFest attendees were treated to a glimpse of material last year, and it looked far funnier than the name or concept would suggest. Alan Ford always provides value for money, and Michelle Ryan usually does a good job with this sort of material1. Watch the trailer and tell me Richard Briars fleeing zombies (slow moving, of course) using his zimmerframe isn’t a work of genius.
Nightbreed: The Cabal Cut
Any fan of horror should be acquainted with Mr Clive Barker. While his most famous cinematic offering is probably Hellraiser, in 1990 Barker directed an adaptation of his 1988 novella Cabal. I have very fond memories of both the novel and the film, and it’s always been a bit of a shame that Barker didn’t direct more (he stopped after Lord of Illusions in 1995, which is also well worth seeing).
I didn’t know it at the time, but on Nightbreed’s release it was hacked about by the studios. Barker’s vision wasn’t compatible with what the studio had paid for, and so the film was recut, performances were redubbed, and a new ending was added. For years since there were whispers that a more complete version existed. Then a few years back, the whispers grew louder, became chatter, and the Cabal Cut started to become a reality.
I never thought I’d get to see it, but thanks to the efforts of all involved it’s screening at FrightFest this year. How it’s going to look projected on the Empire’s massive screen, I don’t know. Whether the restoration actually elevates the film dramatically beyond it’s original incarnation remains to be seen too. But as a fan of the film since day one, I’m thrilled at the chance to see something as close to Barker’s original vision as we’re ever going to get. Boone, Peloquin, and the ‘Breed captured my imagination years ago, and I’m very happy to spend another couple of hours with them again.
V/H/S
I do love a good anthology film. V/H/S has been getting some very positive buzz from other festivals, has some great names behind it, and could well be one of the festival’s highlights.
Stitches
Comedian Ross Noble as a zombie clown, resurrected to get revenge on those responsible for his death in a fatal party mishap. How can anyone not be up for that?! Directed by Conor McMahon who gave us the quite splendid bovine zombie epidemic movie Dead Meat in 2004, I’m hoping for solid comedy horror here. (See also Grabbers - in which the only way our heros can survive a bloodsucking alien invasion is to get drunk).
Sleep Tight
Rec director Jaume Balaguero brings a more Hitchcockian number to FrightFest this year. I’ve heard very good things about this, so it’s very high on my list of most anticipated films for the weekend.
Berberian Sound Studio
Another that’s been generating buzz from other festivals. I’m totally in love with the concept behind this, but I’m not totally sold on Toby Jones as a leading man.
American Mary
I’ll admit I’ve not yet seen Dead Hooker in a Trunk, the debut feature from the Soska Sisters. But American Mary sounds just as challenging as some of the other features on display this year. Body modification isn’t exactly an overused trope in the genre, so this has the potential to offer something new and interesting. The sisters will be in attendance, so I’m looking forward to a decent Q&A afterwards. Don’t let me down FrightFest audience2!
Chained
It’s possible that Chained could be the festival’s most disturbing and upsetting entry. There are always a few films that cause non-genre fans to wonder why anyone would want to put themselves through the experience. I’ve mentioned it twice already, but it’s partly about challenge. Horror, sometimes more than any other genre, causes the viewer to challenge themselves. Not literally - as a test of endurance, or will - but to open yourself up to something horrible, unthinkable, and come away from the experience with a different perspective. The very best of horror does this. Recent examples like Martyrs, The Woman, Irreversible, and Requiem for a Dream3 are not at all pleasant experiences, they’re deeply upsetting, but they push the limits of the genre. This is my pick for the most affecting film of the festival.
Before Dawn
I try to regularly attend the annual celebration of all things zombie at Leicester’s Phoenix Square. I’ll post more on it nearer the time, but last year we were treated to a scene from Before Dawn (at that point it was untitled). The scene we saw as shot entirely in the confines of a small garage, and featured Paddy from Emmerdale (Dominic Brunt) trying to avoid being eaten by a particularly hungry looking zombie. It should have been laughable, but it was anything but. Tightly directed by Brunt himself, it was inventive and incredibly well staged. I’m a little disappointed this isn’t on in the main screen (Under The Bed, and After are on the in the main screen during its two screenings), because I’m not sure how I’ll fit it in…
Homework
There are three things I need to do between now and the start of the festival:
- Watch Dead Hooker in a Trunk - it’s not fair to not watch the Soska’s debut feature seeing as they’re making all that effort for us.
- Watch The Hamiltons - sequel The Thompsons is showing this year - never watch a sequel without seeing the preceding films first.
- Watch Outpost - because Output II, see above.
Soon…
Not long now. I may post a few bits and pieces during the festival, but I’ll be sure to post a follow-up once I’m back. If you’d like to hear my thoughts during the festival, you can follow me on Twitter (@moviedan). If you’re going to be in attendance, then see you there, please do come and say hello!
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Honestly, she’s under rated. Yes, she’s also quite easy on the eyes. What of it? ↩
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Last year, after watching Ben Wheatley’s brilliant Kill List, one audience member asked “why did you make it so violent?”. This has entered FrightFest legend as the most moronic question in the entire history of moronic questions. ↩
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Yes, it’s a horror film. ↩
The Elusive iPad ‘mini’ ∴
Once again the iPad Mini rumours are reaching critical mass, and once again I’m getting pretty tired of hearing about them. The question of whether Apple can do a particular thing is at this point totally redundant. From a hardware point of view, Apple can do pretty much whatever the hell they please; they have the designers, the supply chain, and the funds to build devices that surpass previously perceived limits of portable technology, and they can make a profit doing it.
A better question, and the one that Ben Brooks is the latest to ask, is this:
What is demonstrably better about a 7 inch tablet?
Bingo. Apple already sell the iPad 2 at a reduced price, and as time goes by that should become even cheaper to produce, so why not just work to drop the price of that one? What does the 7 inch form factor offer that a cheaper version of the 10 inch doesn’t?
Having used a 7 inch Samsung Galaxy Tab for a few months, I feel qualified to weigh in on this. Because qualifications always stop people weighing in on the Internet, right? I’ve ordered Google’s Nexus 7 based on the experience I had with Samsung’s offering, despite owning the latest generation iPad. Why?
The two main reasons are portability, and preciousness.
Let’s tackle portability first. Commuting by train takes me roughly ten minutes, so I don’t bother sitting. I’ve tried to use my iPad to read on during that time, but it’s too bulky to hold one handed while I hang on to something so I don’t flatten the person next to me as the carriage bumps along. I ended up going back to using my phone to read on, which does the job. I could read on the Kindle, which is probably the best point of reference for the 7 inch form factor, but I don’t want to read a novel for such a brief amount of time. I want to hit my Instapaper queue, or catch up on my RSS.
It goes beyond the commute. Anyone that’s worked away from home on business will know what it’s like to sit alone in a restaurant night after night. Sitting with an iPad in a restaurant is pretty awkward. The smaller form factor fixes that. I’ve found the iPad is too big to use comfortably during long periods of air travel too, certainly when flying economy. It’s just too big and too heavy. Same thing in bed. I can’t comfortably sit and hold my iPad for extended amounts of time when reading in bed; it needs to be propped up on something, either my chest or the bed next to me.
Ben Brooks himself mentioned on his podcast a few weeks back that the iPad was impossible to hold while nursing his new born daughter. There’s another area where the 7 inch form factor would help. There are lots of use cases where your phone (unless you’re using something freakishly large, like a Galaxy Note) is probably too small for extended comfortable use, and your iPad is too big.
And so to preciousness. I would never, ever, under any circumstances contemplate taking my iPad to the beach with me. Not that I frequent the beach, being a pale and pasty developer type with an aversion to simple daylight let alone the sun’s scorching rays. But sand is to beautiful glass screens as Kryptonite is to Superman; it will mess him up good and proper. The iPad, despite offering superb value for its capability, is too expensive to encourage careless use. I always feel like I’m using a substantial, expensive piece of equipment that deserves to be looked after.
Did I care with the Galaxy Tab? A little, but nowhere near as much. But by the same token it felt less precarious, less delicate. I could carry it around with one hand without worrying about it slipping to the floor. Adam Lisagor mentioned something similar when he appeared on John Gruber’s The Talk Show recently: he’s not found a tablet that he felt could be carried around with there being an real risk of dropping it.
Would a 7 inch device encourage people to be less precious with their iPad, or would simply lowering the price of the existing 10 inch tablet have the same effect? A cheap 10 inch could still feel like it’s easily droppable.
It seems to me like Apple could solve a lot of the above by simply making the existing iPad lighter. Except, it’s not simple. Not by any stretch of the imagination. With the retina screen, the latest generation iPad needs a significant chunk of battery, which makes it heavier. It needs a certain kind of glass, which makes it heavier. There’s no easy way to make the current generation iPad lighter. There will be, that’s almost certain. Over time newer battery technology, better glass, maybe even a different material for the case will serve to make the iPad lighter. But not in the immediate future.
And so the simplest, cheapest way for Apple to make a lighter iPad is to make a smaller iPad, with a non-retina screen so it needs less battery and less processing grunt to power it. Maybe it serves as a test for a new case material which could ultimately make its way to the larger iPad - I seem to recall Apple tested a new kind of glass on the original Nano, much to the annoyance of pretty much anyone that owned one.
Apple can then kill a number of birds with one 7 inch stone: they overcome any objection about the iPad being too heavy (“buy the smaller version”), or too expensive (“buy the smaller version”), and they manage to offer at least something to buyers on the market for a smaller tablet.
FrightFest 2012: First Films Announced ∴
Brutal As Hell have posted a FrightFest press release containing a few choice nuggests about this year’s festival. Specifically the opening and closing films: interesting psychological thriller The Seasoning House, and cool sounding snipe-em-up Tower Block.
The only other explicit mention is Spanish zombie prequel [REC]3:Genesis. Which, as you might have guessed, I’m hugely looking forward to.
It wouldn’t be a FrightFest release without a couple of teases though:
Expect a lot of very famous Italians to be in attendance throughout the August Bank Holiday weekend as our line-up will be reflecting the genre resurgence in that country. No clues, but do try to remember I am launching the updated edition of my FAB Press book on Dario Argento “The Man, the Myth and the Magic” at FrightFest!
So, can we expect Dario himself to make an appearance with his new Dracula 3D project? And will it be received in similar fashion to his Giallo from a few years past?
Other hints? There’s the anthology you want to see, the best Halloween 2012 release, the greatest serial killer thriller since HENRY and this year’s AMER.
So hopefully V/H/S, Sinister (although festival friend Adam Gierasch appears to have a new offering called Schism due out around then, and there’s Paranormal Activity 4, but I doubt they’d show that), and the Maniac remake. I have no idea what this year’s Amer could be…
That should get you all into the FrightFest the 13th spirit ready for the Thursday August 23rd kick off and we’re so excited about the whole event I’m not sure we’ll be able to contain all the secrets until then. Sod it, here’s another… what’s the one controversial monster movie you’d love to see the complete version of? We have that too.
The final tease could potentially suggest something I’ve wanted to see for a very, very long time: the restored Cabal Cut of Nightbreed!
The next batch of FrightFest news should break on the 29th of June when the full line-up is revealed, followed by ticket sales on the 30th. Hopefully I’ll be picking up a full season pass again this year and I’ll try to be a good little blogger and post thoughts on each film I get to see.
Until then!
Diablo 3 Error Message Meanings ∴
Error 37 - The server is full. This is likely due to high login traffic. The only solution is to keep trying to log in.
Do we really live in an age where it’s acceptable to have such unintelligable, non-human readable error messages? Why even report this to the user as “Error 37” - the user should be told plainly and clearly, in their configured system language, that the servers are full.
And don’t even get me started on the root cause - the fact that Blizzard underestimated the demand for a game that had 2 million preorders, and forces every single player to be online regardless of their intention when they get the game up and running.
Maybe a DRM-free alternative is in order…
Draw Something player numbers plummet ∴
Figures collected by US data tracker WebMediaBrands suggests that the game’s daily active user count has dropped from around 14.3 million to 10.4 million between 2nd April and 2nd May.
The problem with Draw Something is that when people started to first install it - and there were only a handful of people aware of it - it was a harmless bit of fun. Once it reached a certain critical mass it became a full time job to keep up with all the games that were on the go. Before you’ve responded to one round of drawings, another round has come in.
I think as a result, a lot of people are less active than they were, or have given up completely. I’ve certainly slowed down, so apologies to anyone reading this waiting for me to take my turn!
Major Reboot
A while back, this site got hacked. A vulnerability in a PHP script that was part of an older theme meant that the site was compromised and flooded with junk; spam content and links were injected into the current theme and database and I had to rummage through and clean them out. The entry point wasn’t even in the active theme, but the fact that the file existed on the server was enough to provide access.
The first I knew of it was an email from Google telling me the site was being pulled from their search results, because they’d detected all the gunk that had crawled its way into the inner workings of my blog.
That planted a bit of a seed: maybe I should rethink this WordPress thing. I have nothing against WordPress, nothing at all. And it’s not like the vulnerability was within WordPress itself. But the software has evolved, iTunes style, into something that’s a long way from what it started life as. There are vast amounts of functionality and overhead which I’m never going to touch upon. And then there’s the overhead of updating to newer versions of both the core software, and plugins. On top of that I’m a habitual fiddler, and so I like to learn new things and try to solve new problems.
So, I’ve totally rebooted the site. To say that it’s now running “on” Marco Arment’s Second Crack isn’t entirely accurate - Second Crack takes a directory structure full of text files, adds a soupcon of special sauce, and spits out a set of static html files - the old school building blocks of the web. So I suppose the correct description is that the site is now “generated by” Second Crack.
This has its perks: I can now post to the site using any text editor I like. Whether I’m on my iPad, iPhone, Mac, or PC, I can easily start to write a draft or publish. This should mean I post more - there’s no login involved, no pages to navigate through, no text fields to fill in. It’s just a case of opening a text file, and typing some words.
I’ve posted a lot in the past about writing again, about rebooting the site, and about changing the way the site looks. I know, because I’ve read them as I migrated everything out of a MySQL database and into text files. But I hope that this time it’s true. And I want to start to collect my thoughts and opinions on events, films, and technology with a view to look back on them later on. I’ll touch on this more in another post.
One casualty of the migration is the site’s comments. In recent months, the comments have become little more than abuse and spam, so I don’t think they’re a great loss. Historically though there have been some good points, and I intend to try to post them onto the bottom of older articles so they’re preserved. If you want to comment on a newer article, I’d encourage you to do so through Twitter, Google Plus, via email, or using your own site.
After 6 1/2 years on WordPress, it’s time to shake things up and try something different.
Anniversary
Today marks the tenth anniversary of my marriage. It also marks the sixteenth anniversary of our first date.
Frustrated by or perhaps in celebration of (I don’t remember which and in truth, it was probably a bit of both) being single, our circle of friends decided that we’d arrange a night out. There were six of us if I remember correctly; an even split between boys and girls. Plans were made, a date was set. Friday, February the 23rd, 1996. We’d meet up at the cinema.
It didn’t happen that way. People dropped out, didn’t show up, cancelled. I’ve long suspected that everything was planned, that we were set up, but - of course - the resulting cinema trip had only two attendees: me, and my future wife. The film we watched was the Robert Rodriguez indy action flick Desperado. Some couples have “their song”, we have “our film”.
Sparing no expense, we hit the nearby McDonalds for a post-movie coffee (classy, right?). I remember saying “people will talk, just the two of us, out like this. You know we’ll never hear the end of it.” Awkward pause. “Of course, there’s nothing for them to talk about…” I said.
“Maybe there is,” she said.
And that was it. Neither of us could have predicted the events of the years that followed.
At our wedding, my sister (our best man) said that she believed everyone had one person they were supposed to be with. I believe the chances of finding that person are slim. But I believe I was lucky enough to find her years ago, and she’s been a constant in my life ever since.