August 2004 – woowoowoo

vika and linda play to packed picnic blanket!

Vika and Linda's album cover There’s a park near us which was redeveloped about 18 months ago. For reasons unknown, it’s taken until today to officially open the facility. An auditorium is part of the facility, so musical acts were on the program – headed by the wonderful Vika and Linda.

Well, I don’t know what happened to the publicity – there were almost as many councillors as there was audience, such a disappointing crowd! – still, once the officials had all droned on enough, the music started.

So, Vika and Linda played to about 120 people – almost like a private concert – their voices cutting through the late winter wind, weaving and crying their way through about 10 numbers – most of my favourites – mostly gospel. Sensational! The band, just cool and unfussed – perfect.

naughty hyro, bad hyro! you made a mess!!

Back a couple of years, when I was ‘between jobs’ I targeted a lot of web and multimedia design studios that I thought were the ‘cream’ of the crop. One of them was Hyro. Good clients, nice work… definitely something to aspire to. I thought!

Quick change to last week, when I’m getting quotes on health insurance from a site I’d found useful before: iselect.com.au. Register mild interest when I find it’s been redesigned. Definitely a bit more dynamic and a nod of approval to see it’s been done by hyro.

Approval turns to puzzlement as it doesn’t seem to work properly – never mind, I prefer Safari, but I’m grown up enough to realise that not all sites comply with standards. I’ll try a more forgiving browser… Netscape 7.1. Still doesn’t work. Camino, Firefox, IE, Mozilla, Opera (I’ve got ’em all!) – not one mac browser lets me access the site.

Finally get somewhere using Virtual PC and IE6, but even then the status bar flashes a little icon that there are some ‘undefined objects’ and ‘unterminated strings’ whatever that all means.

How can this still be happening in 2004? a company is effectively cutting off 10% of it’s potential market. (at least! – we’re talking home users here, where the mac is a much more significant platform – and who knows what happens if you don’t use IE on windows!)

Not only that, but they’ve no doubt paid hyro handsomely for the privilege! Shouldn’t there be some comeback for companies that are given defective web pages?

I’m not even going to go into the usability – the menus are all over the place. There are four separate navigation areas on the home page!

Naughty hyro! naughty, naughty web design!!

it’s a blizzard!

a snowy day on Lake Mountain Yesterday was Melbourne’s coldest August day in 26 years. 100km/h winds on the bay, trees blown over, local flooding etc. and where did we spend it? At the snow, where else?

It was sensational! I have never seen snow like it – hanging thick in the trees, deep drifts everywhere. The best skiing snow I’ve ever been on. It was busy, cold, wet and a lot of fun! Photos here.

Not quite so much fun getting off the mountain when a car that ran off the road turned the road into a parking lot and the half-hour trip to Marysville took 2 hours, but you can’t have it all.