5 posts tagged “industry”

While I love the fashion groups here on Vox, I thought it might be useful if fashion professionals—designers, interns, pattern-makers, photographers, stylists, make-up artists, publicists, journalists, and others—had a group where they could network and share their experiences. As of today, there is a fashion professionals’ group on Vox for the industry and anyone who is thinking of entering the fashion professions. I’ve stuck a few things on there to kick it off, and welcome others. (I hope the respective group owners will permit me mentioning this on their groups.)

I went back to Dick Smith and swapped yesterday’s faulty webcam for a new one costing twice as much. It kind of works, and I kind of got my al-Jazeera Listening Post spot done, but the set-up remains buggy. The main problem now is that the software stops recording whenever it damn well likes. I also have not found anything on Logitech’s tech support pages about this, or about a massive black band appearing on the left of the screen in certain situations (which situations, I don’t exactly know). Maybe there is some convention that webcammers know of to prevent these automatic turn-offs—but I sure don’t, since I missed that memo.
   This was to be a shout-out to Randy and everyone at a private Vox group, but I thought it was funny where it stopped. It’s like the program knows its masters were being criticized (cue Twilight Zone music).

Video 23

I walked inside and asked if they did circumcisions, as I had recently converted to the Jewish faith. The guy there looked at me puzzled and said, ‘But this is an electronics’ store. How could you possibly get the idea that we would do circumcisions?’
   ‘But it’s on the front of your shop,’ I replied.
   ‘Show me,’ he demanded.
   So I did. Emblazoned on the front of his shop were the words, in Avant Garde Gothic Bold, uppercase, ‘Dick Smith’.

I am joking about the above, and no, I am not Jewish. But I did go to Dick Smith Electronics today and bought a Logitech QuickCam Go webcam after having been asked to appear on al-Jazeera. From there, the problems began. After all, it is the tail end of Mercury retrograde.

• Got home to find that the sealed box was missing the stand.
• Went to a nearer Dick Smith store to be told that they had sold out, but a customer return of the same product had a stand, and that was given to me.
• Began installing software. The box claims it’s very easy: install software; plug in camera; video instantly. The instruction menu warned me to not plug in the camera till prompted.
• Installation froze about three-quarters of the way through. Had to crash out of the program.
• Restarted installation. Program took four minutes to start from the time the CD-ROM was reinserted.
• Installation was slow and took nearly half an hour. At no point was I prompted to ever plug in the camera into the USB port.
• Installation program alerted me, despite the status bar having reached five-sixths of the way, that I should reboot my computer. I clicked ‘OK’. As I did so, the remainder of the installation continued while other programs were crashing around me.
• The installation completed as everything else was shutting down, in the nick of time. A second prompt about rebooting appeared. Still no prompt to plug in the camera.
• Computer rebooted. Started Logitech’s program. It complains that I have not plugged in the camera. I plug it in.
• It asks for a sound check. Lo and behold, it turns out that this device has no microphone built in. Not that there was any warning about this other than a line in the instruction manual. In other words, a regular Joe would not know that he had to buy an optional accessory to be heard. And I am not appearing on telly with my regular headphones on.
• The camera supposedly stands on top of the monitor. I’d like to see it done. Yes, I do have a flat screen. I just assumed the stand would be designed to accommodate both. It isn’t: you need a CRT for it to work. Otherwise, it’s out with the Scotch tape.

   This comedy took around an hour to see its way through, from the time the stand was supplied by Dick Smith (whose service, I should note, was excellent).
   Let’s see how they are when I take this piece of crap back.
   As with most software and hardware I have bought of late, remember the golden rule: do the opposite of what the manual tells you and all will be fine.

So, do you reckon Dick Smith sells Viagra?

New Blogger’s site feeds do not work, if an email from my friend Johnnie Moore is any indication. He is right: I just put my mouse over the old Atom feed button, which used to be correctly linked at old Blogger, and it gives the wrong URL—regardless of whether I have this set right in my new Blogger settings. I have just hard-coded the URL into the template code, rather than rely on the string that Blogger’s template uses (as it seems that old templates and new templates do not appear to be compatible).
   In the old days, I could choose for only the home page to be updated. I no longer have that choice, and I am going through the process of waiting for the entire blog to be republished in another IE7 tab right now. Only thing is, as I typed this post, the following came up at Blogger:

I have started a new Vox group called Fashion Magazines, at fashionmags.groups.vox.com. I thought I’d expand the dialogue, since there is a general fashion group and one on fashion photography—it seems the right time to do one specifically for magazines. Share news inside and outside the industry, talk about your favourite magazines, photo shoots, articles. All are welcome.
   My posts are a bit biased to inside the industry, but I would love to get readers’ views, especially on topics that might be a little controversial. The industry needs to answer a lot of these, including New York’s decision not to ban too-thin models.