30 posts tagged “errors”

Not sure how many hours the compose screen took today, but here it is.

   This post will be non-sensical only because I didn’t want to waste a compose screen, since they are rarities. On left is the football match last night. At the right, mutant strawberries (the DLE envelope is a size guide), also from last night.
   Katie Taylor (the current Miss New Zealand) deleted the pics I took of her—sorry, lads.
   Given what Patricia told me with her issues, I have no confidence the Vox boffins will ever fix their bug. She’s been at them since before September. While Daisy is a huge help and actually cares about Voxers, I wonder if anyone else at Six Apart gives a damn.

Wow, a day to load the compose window. Vox is really dying.
   Folks, I am carrying on Voxing. I had a few days on Tumblr, but it doesn’t have room for comments, nor does it have the privacy settings I want. Other platforms are a bit lacking on that, too. Maybe my habits have adjusted to Vox over the last three years, and I still like it (when it works).
   After discovering that setting up an alias meant that I could blog on demand again, I have set up a new account at lucire.vox.com.
   I explain there that I don’t like setting up noms de plume, so I had to justify it to myself by using it for work (specifically Lucire). And it was better for me to get lucire.vox.com rather than some splogger pinching the name.
   I have “neighboured” many of you (my apologies for any accidental omissions), and hope you can follow me there. I will eventually rejoin a lot of the groups as well.
   I may put my private posts on there for friends and neighbours, which is the principal reason I like Vox.
   I will still keep checking in here, not just because of the spammers who will undoubtedly leave comments, but I believe I can take a Pandora’s box approach to Vox’s failure. One day, this blog will come right. Mind you, Patricia gave up in September when she went through exactly the same scenario as me, and Ninja still has to use Internet Explorer just to use Vox, so maybe I should not hold my breath. Yesterday, Vox began blocking my access to the recent activity page, and I heard from Snowy that that has begun happening to him, too.
   If only everyone was as caring at Vox as Daisy.

I think Vox must be working on the bug preventing me from blogging. I had a brief chat to Daisy (a.k.a. the most caring person at Vox) in the DMs and gave her my password to try out. (I also gave it to a very good friend to see how it would go for him.) The bet was that once logged on as me, one would find it equally difficult and nearly impossible to compose.
   Good news is that this compose window took mere seconds to emerge. Although I still wonder what caused the bug in the first place. A server database getting corrupted? A glitch in the DNS, MX and A records? A disgruntled splogger who I narced on—in which case I have helped Vox plug a vulnerability? And, as before, will I be able to get a new compose window within seconds?
   More soon …

First time I have seen the Vox compose window for over two days. This site is so dead.
   Here was yesterday’s traceroute from Auckland:

   So I have now tried Vox this month from Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland; on Macs and PCs; on OSX, XP and Vista; using TelstraClear, Surfspot and Kordia; using Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari; and being able to compose is a rarity. I am not exaggerating when I say that Vox has been down for me for more days this month than it has been up.
   Based on feedback, three Kiwi Voxers have been able to get on this site. I still refuse to believe that this error is unique to me. As many of you know, I am on Vox regularly, and average well over a post a day, but the comment thread here gives you an idea of the number of times it has failed. I heard from one Australian Voxer who can no longer blog from Vox using Firefox and has to switch to IE8, so there is something very serious going on with the site in blocking certain individuals from using it normally.
   At least I was able to get these Mini E videos up for your enjoyment: a few days ago, Vox would not let me import images or videos.
   Hey, I’ll take what access I can get right now …

Just Tweeting with Robin, who can, strangely, blog from his home in Auckland, New Zealand on to Vox. I have found it nearly impossible to blog for most days (or parts of days) this month, and for many days since August, whether I am in Wellington or Christchurch, using a Windows machine or a Mac, never mind which browser.
   One observation I have made is that when things do not work, the status bar has ‘Waiting for www.vox.com’. When it believes the page has “loaded”, the message disappears. Of course, all I see is this:

The source is empty as well.
   I have noticed that when the compose screen does come up, ‘Waiting for www.vox.com’ changes to other servers, too, such as static.vox.com. Right now, the screen comes up in a very rapid (for Vox) two hours—go Vox!
   I’m deducing one of two things: when pings come from here in Wellington or Christchurch, they reach the Vox server, but the server fails to go forth to the subdomain and load whatever files are necessary for the compose screen to appear.
   Or, two different ISPs in Wellington and Christchurch (TelstraClear in Wellington and Christchurch, and Surfspot in Christchurch) can only ping www.vox.com but not resolve for static.vox.com. But surely these subdomain URLs are the server end and not the ISP’s? (I believe they are on our own server.)
   I tried a US proxy server last night to see if the compose screen would come up and, once again, it did not. (Proxy servers are a good test: for a while I could not access the Autocade home page from New Zealand, and had to route things through proxies before I could see it. Since complaining to the ISP, things have been fixed.)
   I would love to know what caused the Australian blackout in August, which did not affect New Zealand. That time, I recall Snowy, Ninja and other Australian residents could not blog, and it seems similar to what I experience now.
   I will test Vox from Auckland in a few days’ time, and use a third ISP, to see what happens.
   Diagnoses from boffins who actually know about this stuff are welcome.

I lost count of how many hours it took for the compose screen to come up, but since it is night-time now, and I am pretty sure there was sunlight when I first began clicking ‘Create’, we can say a good quarter of the day has passed, at least.
   The good news is that Daisy at Vox—a.k.a. the only lady who seems to care—has written back to me to say my issue has been passed on to the boffins there. I hope they can sort it out, but I believe that since I have tested Vox on Macs and PCs, and in two different cities using two different ISPs, and all manner of browsers, then we can rule out anything I am doing wrong. I have, after all, been on the web since 1993 and kind of know what I am doing.
   The other good news is that I have something other than technogripes to post.
   First up, the Auckland Savings Bank, which is owned by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, is trying to push how “Kiwi” it is. Kiwibank, in New Zealand, must be a real threat to ASB, because people are conscious of how much Australian banks have been ripping off New Zealand customers. Hence the whole local angle, which is not really convincing anyone except for a few people in the boardroom at ASB. (In fact, a whole Facebook group has been set up to refute these advertisements.)
   Here is the outdoor ad that reminded me of the campaign:

to which Helen Baxter, others and I say, ‘Cobblers!’
   As it is nearly impossible to get a compose screen on Vox, here is a second image I wanted to share. The yellow roses that I posted earlier were the worse for wear after some gales here, but you can’t beat nature. Here’s one of the new arrivals, photographed earlier today:    Like Chance the Gardener, I have other flowers. In the spring. In the garden.    As you can see, the spring weather has finally come, albeit very late in the piece.

Wow, Vox took 75 minutes to come up with the compose screen [and it took an extra 120 for it to come up again because I had a tiny edit to make]. I had wanted to send a private, friends-only post tonight, but after clicking ‘Create’ once every few minutes and fiddling around with cookies, the inspiration has well passed. Looks like we only had this site back for three days before it died again, and no one at Vox seems to give a damn.
   I’d love to insert the earlier screen shot I took of the empty compose screen, but according to Vox right now, I have nothing in my photo library.
   Once upon a time, whenever Blogger fell down, I came here, because it was more stable. Now, Blogger is more reliable, though it is deleting even legitimate blogs—I’ve been battling them since July when they began blocking my friend Vincent Wright’s blog. (They have now deleted it, along with four-and-a-half years of work.)
   So, if anyone has suggestions for a Vox alternative, I’m more open to hearing it than I ever did. I know I can set up a Wordpress blog, but even that platform is buggy as heck and consumes more and more memory with each incarnation. (Again, I’d love to show you a screen shot of one of the bugs, but see above.) And I’d need a lot of plug-ins to get the sites running the way I want.
   Another down side is that I have enough URLs already, and introducing yet another one so friends can keep up with my meanderings doesn’t sit well with me.
   Also, I’ve come to like the community we have here—Linda-Joy, Jaklumen, Robin, M., Jenn, and the many others—and the groups I have built up.
   Am I really asking that much when I just want the technology to function as the makers claim?
   But right now, importing all my Blogger posts at jackyan.com/blog into Wordpress, as well as whatever I can from Vox, might not be a bad idea, if I had the time.

PS.: As the compose screen took 75, then 120, minutes to come up today (once to compose, once to edit), I am seriously considering giving up on Vox. I am trialling Tumblr right now, so if you miss me here, try me there: jackyan.tumblr.com. (I signed up there a long time ago but only made three posts in January 2008.) Down side: no confidential setting for friends.

“Only” took 20 minutes for this screen to come up this time. In a day and age when we should wait no more than 20 seconds. Still, I’m sure Vox believes I should be happy because 20 minutes is less than 16 hours. ‘Yay!’ they must think, ‘our load times have come down from hours to minutes!’
   I know, no one likes the pissy tone I take when I begin these posts, but it’s so darned frustrating when technology does not work as advertised. And no one seems to think there’s anything wrong: I’ve heard from neither my ISP nor Vox on this bug.
   That’s not totally true. I haven’t heard anything recently. TelstraClear says there is nothing wrong and it can reach vox.com. Duh. I know that. So can I. I just can’t do anything while I’m there except make comments (hence I am using one post’s comment space to blog at—this is how ridiculous it has become—and to keep track of how often Vox’s massive bug is keeping me from doing what it says on the tin). I can’t compose, add photos, add videos, etc. Except once every long while when it opts to let me have a screen to write in.
   And Daisy, who seems to be the only person working at Six Apart who cares, has written to me as well. But I’ve heard nothing for a few days.
   Remember how long the Amazon conduit took to get fixed here? Considering this “can’t do stuff on Vox” bug has been around since August, and has gotten worse by the week, I’d rather sacrifice the Amazon conduit in favour of, well, being able to blog.
   Readers, I’m sorry you’ll have to put up with hugely long posts because I have no guarantee on when Vox will let me compose again.

Ben Kingsley
Here’s one thing I wanted to blog during one of the many, many blackouts on Vox.

Yay, the compose screen! It only took nine hours for it to come up, rather than 16 since the blackout before.
   Here’s something else I wanted to share, before I realized that these screens only come up for a few minutes before they die again.
   About 10 years ago, I had a student called Rochelle Stewart, who was a very digilent worker. I hope she has done well. Every time I see City Life journalist Rachelle Stewart’s byline, I keep muddling them up.
   I have never met this R. Stewart, but she might be the hardest working woman in the community newspapers in this city. You see her byline a lot in her newspaper, and I would say if she ever quit, City Life would disappear.
   If you have the output of Rachelle Stewart, it is only natural that one would make the odd mistake. I know I would. And I should note that the ones she made below are acceptable when copy comes in at any publication—we have received far worse here.
   And with City Life’s foreign owners, who are much larger, there must be staff there who could catch them, because that is what they are there for.
   But no. I don’t think, in fact, any of these should have made it to print.
   Remember, these are the folks that had a ‘Melborne Cup’ (sic) special in 2008, where you could join the ‘Winners Cirlce’ (sic). And I really wanted to read this ‘Did you know?’ feel-good piece by Ms Stewart in the November 11 edition, but I kept getting distracted. I had to get out the pen:

   I have not marked some things that would be considered errors at JY&A Media but might be right based on City Life’s house style.
   I might be wrong, but I heard their subs are in Australia, so there is little wonder they do not know the correct spellings of our suburbs and streets. I can barely spell some of the Australian place names, though I can do Woomera and any place a car was named after.
   Of course, this probably means this paper won’t be endorsing my mayoral run because I am a smart-arse.

The compose screen is back for the first time in 16 hours! I wish I knew what was going on with Vox, as this bug has been around a lot over the last few months. Again, the original inspiration for the post has long passed. Oh well.
   For the last day or so I was only able to comment on people’s posts, so I might just leave this entry as a place I can comment whenever I cannot post or add media to Vox. Watch the comment sidebar for new content!