591 posts tagged “new zealand”

A sunny day in Wellington, even if it took over half a day to get a compose screen on Vox. I’m already blogging more on Blogger, so I suspect these posts will become fewer (and not out of choice). This was around 5 p.m. today:

   Happy Hanukkah!

I’m getting paranoid importing from YouTube because of the tags they introduce, and tags might be one of the reasons it takes me hours to get a compose screen on Vox. However, this one came up on demand, which is a relief.
   I showed this to my neighbourhood yesterday, but as the YouTube one is public, I have no problems sharing it more widely. It was my TV appearance last month on CTV, with Angela and Megan on Good Living. This was not networked, but it was very fun to do. The set reminded me a bit of the Good Morning one at Avalon, except I got one thing that I was promised but never got: a subtitle with both my and Lucire’s names.

A minute to load this second compose window after a 12-hour block. Oh well, have some photos.

   From left to right: an old Hillman Minx in town, another red-light runner, and a giant strawberry.

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.

At least I no longer have to wait hours, but I do have to wait minutes and several reloads to begin composing on Vox.
   I have never traded DVDs before, but after buying that fancy Casino Royale set from Real Groovy, I didn’t need my old two-CD one any more. I also bought a five-movie James Bond set (left) a while back, which meant I had doubled up on one of my favourite Bond films, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. I took them in to Real Groovy.
   How it works: one goes to the trades’ counter at the store and hands them over. The store gives you an option of store credit or cash.
   The two DVD sets, which cost me around NZ$60 to buy to begin with, were worth NZ$12 used as store credit; NZ$6 if I wanted the money.
   As I buy from Real Groovy all the time, I opted for the former, to which they issue a credit note, redeemable on a future purchase.
   Sony has still done well out of me. While I only paid NZ$5 for the new Casino Royale boxed set—because of Real Groovy’s loyalty scheme—that’s still NZ$34 overall (NZ$35 purchase price for the first set, NZ$5 for the new one, minus NZ$6 for the trade). The five-movie set was NZ$39—let’s round it up to NZ$40 for easy calculation—which means each DVD was NZ$8. The original On Her Majesty’s Secret Service DVD was c. NZ$25, so that’s NZ$27 out of my pocket for the copy I have today.

   Since I have all the Bonds I want out of the 22 Eon ones made, I am in no hurry to plug the gaps, but it seems these boxed sets are the way to go. I buy them when I see them on special, but I am not sure if I will buy the remaining two (I also have vol. 4), so Moonraker is the next to head to Real Groovy—I forgot to take it today. If it also nets NZ$6, then an NZ$18 credit on the sixth season of Mission: Impossible (below) will make it worth buying here rather than via Amazon.com. I await its arrival—we are somewhat behind the US when it comes to these sets’ release.
  

Time elapsed for compose window to appear: about ten seconds. Have they fixed it? (Last time I asked that, I jinxed it, and the next load took something like 16 hours.)
   I was at Newtown Mall last week (not a regular shopping location for me) and noticed a pretty big typo. Where did the missing i in responsibility go?

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.