167 posts tagged “whanganui-a-tara”
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:
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:
Wow. Six minutes to load the compose screen. That’s definitely this week’s record.
This is the other photo I wanted to show:
He says he has a friend with a Cobra Jet 428, which we both thought was the best of this series, and that this shape was probably the nicest before Bunkie Knudsen’s fat Mustangs hit the streets for the 1971 model year. Sometimes I like the ’68s, and the ’65s, but right now, the ’69s seem to appeal to my taste in 2009.
“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.
More scenery shots
These would have warranted individual posts, but that’s not going to happen.
Remember when masonry was a real art, done by people and not a computer? This was beautiful work at one of our government buildings, where I was meeting a friend.
At last night’s launch of the Chinese New Year Festival, painter Stan Chan created a work live while Natalie Foy (niece of comedian Raybon Kan) sang a traditional song. As I remarked to the Mayor, the last time I saw something like that was Rolf Harris on the UK version of The Generation Game in the 1970s. A bit far away on the photo here:
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 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.
Here’s today’s bad parking job. Unless this Toyota’s driver wants to tell me that originally, there was a bike in front and a Smart ForTwo behind. Otherwise, being in the middle of a two-car space and not allowing something as small as my Renault to get in behind is not cool.
However, the Honda Accord driver from June still ranks in my book as 2009’s worst. Interestingly, that was just a block way from here.
They no longer look this nice, thanks to some strong winds on Sunday. But they grew to a beautiful size, considerably larger than last summer’s.
Who knew that there would be an Already Ghosts group right here in Wellington?!
Vox was dead again for the last couple of days. Daisy has been very good and has replied to my messages, though it’s a bit annoying that no one else at Six Apart has. It still seems this problem is unique to me, but it can’t be if I can’t compose messages on Vox on any one of three different computers. (I’ll be trying from another office shortly, too, and we are both on the same ISP.)
Complaining about Vox interrupts the flow of these posts a bit, especially when I just wanted to share these Wellington images with you. Christchurch seemed to have better weather when I visited.
For overseas friends who would not have seen it live, here is the link to my TV3 appearance this morning on Sunrise. Props to Helen Baxter, to Ali Ikram and Carly Flynn on the programme itself, to Lars and Frankie at the Wellington studio, to Claudine for my make-up, and to Alison for the contact. Only one quip about the mayoralty; the rest was about Facebook and the dangers of having your photographs uploaded to it.
While I wouldn’t consider myself a “birther” (I am far too left-wing, relatively speaking, for that), there’s a part of me that wishes the American president would show his birth certificate, just to silence a good group of his critics and get them focusing on more important matters. I publicly said so at the time when the matter first came up and yes, it did seem odd, even if his challengers in the courts’ system had fairly ill-prepared cases.
However, I remember how John Major, then PM of the UK, resisted showing his O levels, which he also had sealed, because he felt they weren’t important. Eventually, he released them, and his marks were unremarkable. They made absolutely no difference to his authority and it was a “nothing” story that the British media were good at pushing. Maybe President Obama is taking a lesson from a conservative politician: showing it would be a waste of time.
I imagine in the US, things are so divisive politically that if President Obama were to show his (original, long form) birth certificate, there would still be people saying it was faked. I have read some comical criticisms even of his certification of live birth, pointing out the colour differences between ones they had seen and the one on the President’s campaign site. I guess those people have never used more than one scanner, or more than one digital camera.
The political right, even if its case had merit, kept shooting itself in the foot with some of the less thought-out theories. I admit there is a question that could be easily cleared up, but Obama’s own critics are clouding the issue. While they’re doing that, then the President and his allies can sit back comfortably.
Still, just to get a bit of closure as I potentially enter local politics, here’s a 37-year-old piece of paper (in fact, it is 37 years today that Dad had my birth registered):
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