Neil Gaiman Sandman film or TV series

Not unsurprisingly, I own all the graphic novel compilations of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics and am currently reading through them all yet again.  Easy to do.  The artwork in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics is superb, Neil Gaiman’s story writing is incredible and the characters literally out of this world … even when they aren’t.  Not only that, Sandman is often hilariously funny, deeply poignant and even tragic.  How many writers can manage that?  Neil Gaiman is truly exceptional.  Then you’ve got those amazing Sandman covers by Dave McKean as well! So what about a Sandman film or TV series?

A good adaption of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman could be the best thing ever in comic adaptions but a poor one would be deeply disappointing.  Fortunately, since 1991, Neil Gaiman has said that he’d rather see no ‘Sandman’ movie than a bad ‘Sandman’ movie made.  He said that the time of a good ‘Sandman’ movie is getting closer but feels that a ‘Sandman’ movie needs someone with the passion of a Peter Jackson for ‘Lord of the Rings‘  or Sam Raimi on ‘Spider-Man‘ to get the film through Warner Bros.

What I can never understand is why the original story lines never stand up when it comes to filming.  It seems that everyone is so frightened a film won’t work that they feel they must cherry-pick the best ideas from an entire series to make the first film.  This must cause a lot of problems for any sequels.  Then you get daft situations like the so-so Iron Man sequel when there is this amazing character The Mandarin in the Iron Man comics who hasn’t made an appearance in either film.  It beggars belief!

As far as my money goes I could imagine a series far longer than Heroes featuring Neil Gaiman’s Sandman but then maybe some daft idiot will pull the plug for no good reason like NBC did with Heroes.  So what do you think?  Film or TV series?  Should Neil Gaiman’s Sandman ever be made as a film or TV series at all?  I hope you feel the need to comment on this otherwise I guess nothing will ever happen anyway.  Oh, yes, I’d love to see a really top-notch adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.  If it doesn’t happen then I’ll keep reading the Sandman graphic novels until my eyes give out or the Corinthian comes for them! :-)

Well OK then, maybe we are pals now!

What a change appears to have come over PayPal in the last few years.  Even a short while back we were writing that we have tended not to promote PayPal as a main payment method but things certainly have changed.  In years past we tried to tell PayPal what we unhappy about only to be met with complete indifference.  No replies to emails.  Nowhere to phone other than on a premium rate number etc etc.  Now that PayPal have become a “proper bank” they seem to have changed their ethic and are now proactively encouraging businesses to use PayPal by offering competitive rates and good customer service.  Yep, they DO reply to emails now.  So; we now have the PayPal Express checkout as well as our own PCI DSS compliant secure checkout so customers have every option they need to be able to make their payment easily.  We also have a few customers who prefer to send a cheque or postal order to us and so this “payment separately” option still exists.  Of course, the advantage of PayPal is that if you have a PayPal account you can buy online without even having your credit or debit card with you.  Now all that has to be seen is whether this payment option is truly as secure and free from fraud as PayPal claims it is.  If it is then I guess we will stay pals for many years to come.  You can see it all in operation here  :-)

Well, they definitely made us pay!

Customers who have visited to order from us a few times over the last month may have had the surprising experience of paying in three different ways although selecting the same option.  As you would expect, we are always doing our best to keep our systems up to date and to comply with the ever more stringent banking legislation.  The challenge for many online retailers has been to offer a PCI DSS compliant system that is efficient and easy to use both for the business and the customer as well as not being too expensive to run.  After all, if you are paying high fees for transactions it is the poor old customer who ends up footing the bill.  That is one reason why, like many other main retailers, we have tended to not have PayPal as a main payment option although we do review this from time to time.  Anyway, a customer could have paid through our old Shared SSL a month ago and then via HSBC Secure ePayments a week or so later and now via Actinic Secure Payments.  Why?  Well, nobody at Actinic or HSBC saw fit to mention that there is an incompatibility issue (known for some years too!) between Actinic and HSBC Secure ePayments.  We had to find out the hard way.  We also found out that a number of the ways we had previously made customer purchasing easier would no longer work.  That is why it had to go out in favour of Actinic Secure Payments.  There are now just one or two minor design issues left and then, really, when you think about it, what we achieve is to end up back where we started since our track record for efficient card processing and security was excellent to start with.  Anyway , at the end of all the hassle and hair-tearing it all works and we can say we are PCI DSS compliant.  Does anyone care?  Who knows?  I expect most of our customers come to us by recommendation and all they are concerned about is how soon their order will arrive.  If you’re not already one of themk and you’d like to join them then click here.

Sadistic Weather Gods

Well there it is, Lancashire is ruled over by sadistic weather gods!  How else do you explain it?  All over Europe there’s been a burning hot summer with people complaining about the heat but in Lancashire you’re lucky if you get round to taking the winter duvet off the bed.  It isn’t as if there has been no sunshine at all.  No, it is worse than that.  The sun will come out for the last hour before sunset after a gloomy overcast day.  Alternatively, there’ll be a bright sunrise and then it’ll cloud over and tip it down for the remainder of the day.  All sunny intervals are suspect and even the idea of a really hot sunny day is the kind of legendary myth worthy of Tolkien or Salvatore.  What did the people of Lancashire do to deserve such vengeance from the sadistic weather gods?  Any ideas?

No Entry I’m On Holiday !

Council workers in Swansea have put up a road sign in Welsh that is meant to inform heavy goods vehicles that they can’t enter the residential site.  Unfortunately, what the sign actually says is “I am out of the office at the moment” because that’s the reply they got when they emailed their internal language department asking for a translation into Welsh of “No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only.” Beware the dangers of auto-reply!   :-)

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