75 posts tagged “bugs”
Folks, I have a theory.
After asking on Twitter, and using two different ISPs in two different cities, and trialling different browsers, I have found that in New Zealand, I (and one other Twitter friend) cannot reach our Autocade site without the browser coming up with an error asking one to save the page.
However, using a US proxy server, there is no problem, and the page functions normally. It actually opens.
I suspect something is afoot with ISPs in New Zealand blocking certain sites. Can friends reading this confirm this with me, please? The site is autocade.net.
I remember last month there was quite a bit of furore on Twitter when TelstraClear customers could not reach justinflitter.com (since closed). Again, I had no problem accessing Justin’s site via a proxy server. I simply could not reach it from New Zealand, even though Justin is a New Zealander.
I wonder if Vox is fixing its problems. I have been trying all morning to get the compose screen up, and here it is, after a couple of hours (as opposed to days). The only problem is, two hours on, the inspiration for writing the post has kind of left.
Let’s see what I’ve put up lately that I had an intention to mention: how about this guy in a Chevy Camaro Transformer costume? Watch on: there’s a bit of a surprise. (Thanks to Tanya for this one.)
Meanwhile, this was an oddity from a few days back. I would have loved to have commented on this site, but putting an ad (it’s the scenic view) in front of the comment box (which did not disappear even after you clicked on it) is not smart:
Any bets I can still compose on Vox later today?
How odd, the compose screen comes up twice over a short period, despite being out of action for two solid days. Even before those two days, it was only working intermittently (but I could deal with clicking refresh for a few hours—a few days gets boring).
Before the service goes away again, here are some shots I wanted to share with you of Christchurch from my last visit. These were shot from my suite at the Hotel Grand Chancellor.
Any mathematics’ whizzes out there?
I am sitting here using QuattroPro, as I have done since the early 1990s. It’s always worked. Except today.
This is the first time I have used the program on the new computer, so I think there must be something incompatible in there.
Feeding in 15.28 into a numerical cell, the computer insists that I typed 3.28. However, in the formula window up top, it shows 0.644444444444445.
So I tried putting in 15+.28, assuming that would give me 15.28. The computer believes the answer is 6.43, though the formula window is correct.
The cell is a numerical one—as the whole column has been since 2002.
Can anyone see relationships between what is being typed and what is being displayed?
The good news: Facebook, last week, stopped accusing me on a daily basis of copyright infringement, but I had to battle them for over a month to get the warning removed.
The bad news: the site still doesn’t really work. Funny, it worked in 2007.
For instance, I was surprised to note that comments made by both myself and one friend, Gary, had disappeared from my wall earlier today:
To double-check, I put an s after http in the status bar. And everything was back again:
Gosh, don’t these computer boffins test anything any more?
I installed Firefox 3.5.3 today on my laptop. I had heard that most of my plug-ins were compatible with the program, and as it is the fourth incarnation of the 3.5 series, I thought: surely the errors had gone. But I kept some healthy scepticism on the grounds that ‘improvement’ in the computer world usually means that I would waste time downloading something and have it blow up in my face.
This was no exception.
It not only created a bug with one of our sites, which could have been coincidental, I found some rudimentary interface issues. Pressing down on the mouse wheel, on some sites, did not open the page in a new tab. Again, I doubt I am alone.
In Firefox 3 in the past, one could select text and drag it into the Google Toolbar search box. The behaviour then would be: the text would be, if it was comprised of multiple words, framed in dumb quotation marks. The text existing inside the box would disappear in favour of the new phrase. The Google Toolbar would automatically begin the search.
Not any more. And this is not Google’s fault. The latest toolbar works fine with Firefox 3.0.14 on my desktop machine. It just doesn’t work with 3.5.
All that happens is that the text is pasted in to the box, wherever the cursor happens to land. The old text is not deleted. The search does not activate.
This is one of the most basic, oft-used, everyday features in a web browser in 2009—but Firefox 3.5 does not support it.
I was advised to upgrade on the Mozilla forums. That’ll teach me to listen to computer boffins. I now have a buggy browser that has caused me some frustrations already in its first few hours. It is also not that noticeably faster than its predecessor.
People: test, test, test. I am not asking the world here. I am just asking that things work reasonably.
Ten to one no one has bothered filing a big report because they are quite happy to tolerate crap. I shouldn’t judge: after all, I am still on Facebook. If I was that intolerant, I would file a complaint with them every day. Instead, I only file one every two weeks and still manage to refrain from calling Mark Zuckerberg a nonce.
So a nickel’s worth of advice today: if you haven’t “upgraded” to 3.5, don’t.
According to Mashable, people must upgrade their Wordpress installations as an attack is under way. I believe we only have a couple of sites that would be potentially at risk: Lucire has already been sorted, but the Your Wellington blog is still processing in the background as I type.
People say how easy this automatic upgrading is, but I have found it very difficult. I have done several of these upgrades now, and this is all I see:
Lucire’s upgrading process conked out after a few minutes earlier tonight, only to report, when heading back in to Wordpress, that the upgrade was successful. There, too, all I had was a blank screen before the error report.
I do not dare stop Your Wellington’s one, even though it has now taken longer than the Lucire upgrading.
Apart from the Amazon importing, have others found that Vox is back to normal in terms of speed? I seem to find that composing and adding images is nearly back to where they were, say, a month ago, even though I miss having the site previews.
I woke to find that in one folder—the one where Autocade pictures are stored—the captions have disappeared:
PS.: Fixed, but not using any logic, but using randomness. Solution: ask Windows Explorer to stack the files by name, then ask it to not make any stacks. The captions then reappear.
P.PS.: Not fixed. On exiting and re-entering the folder, the captions disappear again, and I have to repeat the stacking. Not good. A more permanent solution would be welcome.
P.P.PS.: One hour later. This guy had the answers. However, I have no way to show the file menu, so I resorted to randomly clicking in various places in the folder till I could see a drop-down menu that had ‘Hide File Names’ as an option.
The top nav bar returned to Facebook today, sans logotype. As did the now-familiar accusation against me for copyright infringement, even though Facebook removed this on the 17th and, as I mentioned, reinstated the very video it wrongly removed on the 3rd. As before, there is no way to file a counter-notification either with the form linked from here, or a second DMCA form linked when the first form’s submission results in an error.
Facebook must have a manual at its HQ entitled How to Piss off Your Users. Wrongful accusations will do it.
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