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MARTYN WITH A Y

Martyn Drake's Personal Blog

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   * Interview with Susanna Clarke (2007)
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AN APPLE A DAY DOESN’T KEEP THE EU DMA AWAY

22 March 2024 by Martyn Drake

As a distraction from the soap opera of will he/won’t he be leaving SMG, I
thought it might be good to brain dump a few ideas about Apple’s recent woes
involving the EU DMA and the US DoJ anti-trust suit.

Firstly, Apple looks to be stagnating. While it’s doing very well on the Apple
silicon front, making impressive leaps in performance with each generation, the
iPhone has started to feel less like a phone and more of a glorified Oojamaflip.
Its cameras are undoubtedly brilliant, and a supporting operating system for
managing photos, music and other consumable media – also brilliant. It runs
third party apps that can extend the use of the phone to do practically do
whatever you want it to do. Except you can’t.

It’s not flexible.

The ecosystem is essentially a for-profit prison in which you’re told what you
can and cannot do because security. But the truth is that when I’ve tried to
find an app (that usually doesn’t exist – yet), I’ve come across loads of fake,
duplicate, cheesy crap which could well be hiding all manner of things. I do not
honestly believe as a gatekepper, Apple is doing that good of job. Quality over
quantity? Nope.

The main reason I switched from an iPhone 15 Pro Max to a Pixel 8 Pro is that
the raw phone component of the iPhone is utter crap. It has the most basic call
handling and filtering that I’ve come across. Third-party apps don’t help – and
they’re restricted to what they can do. But the Pixel 8 Pro with Android 14 has
more useful tools built-in that it doesn’t require any third-party utilities. It
can call screen and transcribe, provide a visual display of a call centre to
speed things up, and can notify you when a person has picked up the phone when
on hold. It recognises business names and numbers, can filter known spammers and
nuisance callers, and you can contribute to that by reporting numbers too. It
can also transcribe voicemail, but EE doesn’t support it. Android allows for far
more customisation, and makes repetitive tasks substantially easier.

The big bugbear that both the EU and DoJ have is iMessages. It’s an Apple-only
feature, but the argument is that why should you have to buy an Apple to have
its security functions. You could argue there are alternative options like
WhatsApp, Telegram and others – but the point they’re trying to make is that you
shouldn’t have to be limited by the hardware or operating system to be able to
send secure messages (except when the government objects to it – oh, the irony).

I think it’s about time that Apple concentrated on making more of its services
cross-platform – in the same way that Apple Music works on Android and Windows
11 (though the Windows 11 Apple Music app is buggy – it’s enough to make me want
to move to Spotify, but Spotify has to do better in some areas first – that’s
for another post). I can’t watch my purchased Apple movies and TV shows on my
phone – I have to use a PWA (progressive web app) and that only allows me to use
Apple TV+.

The only three things that I have which are Apple: iPad Mini 6, HomePod mini and
the Apple TV 4K (64Gb). Everything else has recently been replaced: M2 MacBOok
Pro was sold and replaced with a Dell Inspiron 16 Plus (highly recommended), the
iPhone 15 Pro Max replaced with a Pixel 8 Pro, the Apple Watch Ultra 2 replaced
with .. well, that’s a difficult one and again, will be another post – but
essentially I’m sticking with the Garmin Instinct 2 Solar for now. I’ve replaced
the AirTags with Tile Pro products.

Given everything that’s gone on in the games industry recently, Apple has a
snowball’s chance in hell of ever making the Mac suitable for playing triple A
titles. It is possible, but many developers aren’t going to spend limited
development budgets on converting existing titles or establishing new titles for
the Mac. Apple would need to essentially partner with or take over a game studio
in order to establish greater dominance in that area.

Apple’s behaviour with Epic Games has been atrocious. I was highly critical of
Epic when they deliberately broke Apple’s rules with Fortnite, but Apple has
since behaved just as badly – if not more so – when it’s come to the DMA’s
rules. All in the name of “security”. Security shouldn’t cost the Earth, for
starters. I firmly believe good security shouldn’t be priced out the reach of
the ordinary consumer or business.

It’s a complete mess, and it’s not hard to see why both the EU and the US DoJ
have had to step in. The next few months are going to be interesting.

Categories App Store, Apple, Apple Store, Apps, Fortnite, Gaming, Google, iOS,
iPhone, iPhone 15 Pro Max, Mac Gaming, macOS, Music, Pixel 8 Pro, Watch, Work
Leave a comment


TAX(I) CREDITS

17 March 202416 March 2024 by Martyn Drake

As I await my fate with SMG – the details of which should be next week – and
with the news that Dreamworks are about to layoff a significant amount of
people, I want to mention something which one of the commentators in the above
article mentioned: “Thank goodness for Uber and Lyft. You can immediately start
making money while you wait for another gig.“

LOOK! A BRITISH TRAIN! They actually EXIST!

Well, a good few weeks ago – just before we received the news about what was
going to happen, I took an Uber into work (train strikes). The driver works in
the film industry (and actually lives abroad for personal reasons which I won’t
divulge here) and has worked on many of the recent big hit TV shows currently
airing on Netflix, Apple TV (such as Masters of the Air) and Amazon Prime Video.
But at the moment they were Ubering to make a bit of money, and it suited their
schedule.

We were nattering about the state of the industry as a whole, particularly the
dominance of the streaming services and how it’s affecting British production –
the good and the bad – and the level of influence the big companies (streaming
or otherwise) have on our film and TV industry – especially when it came to
government support through tax credits. It was fascinating to learn more about
the production side of things given that I’ve generally been post-production
(which is kind of changing thanks to virtual production, which absolutely
fascinates me and has restored my interest in VFX again especially given its
close ties to the gaming industry).

But I could never become an Uber driver. Firstly, I can’t drive. Secondly, when
you hear about the stories about the requirements that Uber puts on its drivers
(I’ve had some very interesting chats with other Uber drivers over the years),
the expense seems to outweigh any benefits. From what I remember one driver
telling me, they’ve had to put their all electric vehicle plans back a bit due
to a variety of factors. But then again, maybe if Uber either owned the cars or
gave a massive discount to drivers, that plan may have accelerated by now.

But back to the present, I had a rather nice surprise when I got a call back
from a company I had previously contacted but the salary on offer was somewhat
lower than I’d have liked. Another Guildford games company has reached out to me
after I put in a speculative application, so that’s another potential lead too.
A few rejections – which is to be expected – but they probably weren’t right for
me anyway. Maybe I could put an end to all this later this week? Who knows.

Categories Entertainment, Personal, Public Transport, Travelling, Work Leave a
comment


A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION, A LITTLE MORE ACTION, PLEASE..

9 March 2024 by Martyn Drake

> A little less conversation, a little more action, please
> All this aggravation ain’t satisfactioning me
> A little more bite and a little less bark
> A little less fight and a little more spark…
> 
> – Elvis

Well, I’ve made it to the end of another week. This week saw me take on three
job interviews (the first already mentioned in the last entry). One of them has
already lead to a second interview (in Wimbledon, no less). Plus yesterday
evening I had an interview with a Canadian virtual VFX firm. The last one would
be a fully remote job with a decent amount of flexibility. I’ve felt positive in
all three interviews. I should find out if I have another second interview with
the first company I interviewed with sometime mid-next week – I’m really hoping
to progress on that one, so please – everything crossed for me.

There was one job position – another remote job – for a games studio in Northern
Ireland. But they had such a complex and recruitment process which could
potentially last TWO months and 7 interviews. It came accompanied by a diagram.
Now, if ANY job – regardless of whatever it may be – requires a diagram, I’m not
interested. I get it that a company wants to be sure about who they are hiring
(and having to deal with many, many applicants), but it doesn’t make ANY sense
to me that so many hoops have been jumped through to do so. It can be a risk for
the candidate too! As ABBA once sung, “Take a chance on me!” – especially given
there’s always a probation period. So this company was initially interested in
me, but then when I saw what they intended to put me through I had to tell them
that I’m no longer interested.

But I must admit the whole consultancy process is getting me down a bit. I
really can’t go into much detail, but the problem is that I do not think
management have thought things through enough when it comes to IT infrastructure
and support. For example, this week I’ve been fighting something that which lead
to the entire team having to get involved to assist due to the complexity and
reach of the problem. It also required getting a vendor involved too and having
to keep chasing them to get what we wanted done. And while this is going on,
something has to give in delivering the IT service to the company – other
projects, technical support, etc. until it was fixed. But that’s what the
consultancy is for – to make senior management aware that – at least as a
department – we’re ALL going to be be needed, or be prepared to suffer.

But I must still make plans to jump ship. This rat is a survivor.

Nonetheless, this is a rotten position to be in, it really is. I am desperately
sad for everybody else in this position at the company and I’ve been reposting
my colleagues (not just in my department) #OpenToWork posts on LinkedIn.

But I must give the lovely folks over at Afi.ai a special mention (especially
Ingrid) who have waived ALL fees for my Microsoft 365 tenant backup which means
that I can keep an online backup of all email, OneDrive and any Teams/Sharepoint
sites I have nice and safe. It’s a service that I would highly recommend, and
super simple to set-up and maintain. Please do check them out. They also support
Google Workspace too.

Categories Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Personal, Work Leave a comment


NOT BAD FOR A MONDAY..

4 March 2024 by Martyn Drake

At least no shock announcements today. In fact, it was a pretty good day. I had
my first job interview in over a year with an animation company that has won
BAFTAs, EMMYs, and has nominated for an Oscar. Their portfolio of work is
extremely impressive. If I were to get this job, it would mean that I have
worked for more BAFTA, EMMY and Academy Award nominated AND winning companies
than most people have had hot dinners. Okay, okay, I exaggerate – but it would
be impressive.

I’m shooting high with this role, but I think I am more than capable of the job,
and I would do it well and to the best of my ability. It would also give me a
chance to get back into a senior position.

Now, I really enjoyed the interview – which surprised me as I usually hate the
interview process. Everybody was extremely nice and felt that we got on. I felt
very comfortable. And it’s not often one walks away from a job interview with a
smile. Even if I don’t get the job, I will always be a fan of this company and
its people.

When I came home, I managed to find the video I made from the A.I. audio that I
created from my email interview with Jane Goldman. I remember having to find a
good video on which to train the A.I. voice model (of both Jane and my own
voice) and then have it generate each question and answer individually. It took
many, many hours of retrying the A.I. to get the right vocal tonation as close
as possible to having it sound human. As the A.I. system that I used
(ElevenLabs) works best on American accents, one odd side effect is that it
gives me a slight Scottish accent.

Once I generated the audio, I edited all of these in Audacity (which also took
an absolute age – remember kids, make sure your filename conventions and
metadata makes sense) and out popped an audio file that I think if you weren’t
told it was all computer generated would pass as an audio interview.

To create the video, I use an A.I. image creator (MidJourney) and edited it all
together in Final Cut Pro (as I’m no longer a Mac man, I now use Adobe Premiere
Pro). The result of which can be seen below.


Categories Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), Personal, Technology, Work Leave a
comment


WHAT A WEEK!

3 March 20241 March 2024 by Martyn Drake

I really rather hope never to go through another week like this again. But I’m
still here. Everybody I know is still here. The world hasn’t exploded. Yet.

But in a week where not only is my employer is looking to restructure, the
entire games industry clearly had the same thought. Bigger studios such as EA,
Sony and 505 Games have all announced layoffs this week too. Last year saw
around 10,000 made redundant from the video game industry and we’re already
approaching around 7,000 this year so far and we’ve only made March. It’s
absolute carnage.

Would I like to stay where I am? Yes, of course I would – and I will try to
fight the good fight along with my colleagues to argue the point all of us are
needed in the department. But at the same time I need to ensure that if things
do not go the way I think they’re necessarily going to go (I’ve been through
redundancy a few times already), I need to get a job lined up and ready to go.

Then we have the question: if I interview for a job and they like me, and I like
them enough to leave SMG on my own accord – where does that leave my colleagues?
Would they be safe because I’ve thrown in the towel voluntarily? What happens if
one or more of my colleagues leave? I believe that could cause considerable
damage to the company. Which is not my intent, since – as I mentioned in my post
about first anniversary there – I work with some of the greatest people in this
industry. I do not want to harm the company that has looked after me throughout
the year, nor the people that remain there. But on the other hand, I have
mortgage and many bills that need paying.

This is very complex situation – and as I’ve said, I’ve been through
redundancies before. But not at this kind of scale or complexity.

But I am not panicking just yet. I have a couple of interviews lined up already
and the CV is circulating nicely. At the moment, however, there are still
unknown variables floating about. As Donald Rumsfeld once remarked:

> Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me,
> because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know.
> We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some
> things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t
> know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and
> other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult
> ones
> 
> Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense

And finally, I leave you with a video that makes me grateful for whatever time I
may have left working for the company. Needless to say, I cannot comment on ANY
of the content.


Categories Gaming, Personal, Technology, Work Leave a comment


TIME TO PUT ON MY PITH HELMET..

28 February 202426 February 2024 by Martyn Drake

.. and go job hunting.

I can’t go into any detail other than to link to this news article, but it’s
looking likely that I’m going to need to find another job rather soonish. As
such, if you know of any open positions for a (senior) systems administrator/IT
Infrastructure engineer – please get in touch. I suppose I could always move to
Japan (as opposed to commuting – it’s a bit of a trek) and work for Kojima-san.

A copy of my CV without my address and phone details is embedded below (assuming
your browser supports it – otherwise please click here).

Please get in touch if you’d like a copy with full details. Essentially I’d be
looking to work in the Woking/Guildford areas, or London, Farnborough or
Basingstoke. Anywhere where I can commute to easily by train and bus. Hybrid
working is good, and I’d also accept remote working too.

Martyn_Drake_CV_2024_OnlineEditionDownload
Categories Personal, Work Leave a comment
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 1. Martyn Drake on Death Stranding: The Director’s Cut (Mac)5 February 2024
    
    Nothing else running in the background when starting the game? No additional
    audio drivers? Is macOS fully up-to-date (14.3)?

 2. Mark Riley on Death Stranding: The Director’s Cut (Mac)5 February 2024
    
    I get a crackling sound randomly in the background whilst even starting the
    options element of the game

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