Taking the shine off the Chrome. (And the Big 8...)

Just a thought, but maybe if people stopped being rabidly pro or anti Chrome/IE8/FF/whaddevva, and had a bit of a think about it, more constructive things would get done.

All this "IE8 does it and was the first" is great, but the fact is that Chrome was released within a few days of IE8 - surely not long enough for Google's nasty, Microsoft-plagiarising software engineers to build exact copies of all those functions? These features were no doubt on the top of many developers' lists of things to do, and the fact that Microsoft came out with IE8 a week before Chrome doesn't mean that Google stole all the ideas.

Also many claims of "hyping the features up" by bloggers and tech sites is a bit misleading - I've read half a dozen articles on Chrome (I'm not that much into reading gigabytes of data when a few thousand words will do) and of those, half acknowledge that IE8, FF, and Chrome all have very similar feature sets. It's hardly surprising, really. It's the direction they're all heading in, and they all have equally smart people working for them.

Here are a few REAL Chrome bugs though -

• Import your favourites from IE or bookmarks from FF, and see where all your folders go to. Mine vanished in the import, and several hundred bookmarks along with them.
• Or go to Facebook with Chrome and try and poke someone, the endless succession of reloading the same window will drive you to distraction. This is most likely because FB still don't have a user agent signature in place for Chrome and are sending out code without the pop-over dialogs - but wait, there's more: Also, try clicking on a message in your inbox and then the delete button. Great heaps of nothing happens...
• Oh and that's not to say that IE8 is any better - in Gmail, try dropping down the list of tags for an email and scroll down the list using the scroll wheel or the scroll bar - the browser has a basic bug of not putting focus on the righ part of a list element, and keeps zipping right back to the first item in the list, you have to use the arrow keys to move the highlight.
• IE8 also explodes pretty much when it re-uses certain of your toolbars and BHOs from IE7 - I had the worst time getting it to open and stay un-locked-up long enough to disable all the add-ons and then start re-enabling them one at a time until I got a relatively stable browser.
• One last thing - the impression that tab isolation was present in IE8 before it was in Chrome. But I've found that opening a new tab in IE8 still freezes the other tabs, whereas in Chrome that effect is much less noticeable. There's a difference between *claiming* tab isolation and *achieving* tab isolation.

So what I've found is that between IE8 and Chrome, I'm using FF most at the moment, at least until the other two sort some of their beta bugs out.

And on that subject, the bugs. Guess which browser lets me submit bugs the easiest? Chrome wins, hands down. So while I've been a regular IE user up to IE7 (even when the rabid controversy-fuelled bloggers were dissing it as the biggest POS ever) and a Firefox convert for the nice plug-ins, there definitely now IS a new player in the field for me. And I will give them all the benefit of doubt and promise not to hype or diss unless there's a good reason.

Can't find my way to support

That last post reminded me of another thing, how service affects bottom line...

About eight - ten weeks ago, Garmin opened operations in Australia under their own aegis. They'd been using another company as their presence here before that. I won't say who, but I will say I got my GME TX3220 UHF CB from them... %)

The day that Garmin went live, I phoned about a product they had, which would let me use my own GPS module with Garmin software and maps, on my laptop. After being on hold for ages (surely they couldn't have such a huge demand for support on their first day? Surely their product isn't that inscrutable?) I got through to a gentleman who had no idea what I wanted, and when I mentioned I'd downloaded their free software as an evaluation, he told me that he didn't have that software available to him, and he promised me faithfully he'd get back to me on both matters.

Four week later, I rang again and asked if anyone had made progress with the software bug I'd encountered, or with the commercial software I was quite prepared to buy. This gentleman swappee email addresses with me and promised he'd get back to me when he found out what had happened.

He didn't respond to an email I sent a few days later, so I let it rest. But another three weeks later (and almost EIGHT WEEKS since I'd originally contacted Garmin) I phoned again. I was, undertsandably, not pleased.

Turns out, the software I was after was not due for release in Australia yet. But no-one could be fucked to follow up and tell me, apparently.

And the "free software" as claimed on their website, is a free add-on, you have to have bought another piece of software first. Just that they neglected to mention that, nor could they be fucked to follow up with that, either.

Oh yeah - and I now have a really GREAT Uniden GPS for my vehicles, it's wayyy cheaper than this other product, works without needing their tech support to ignore me for eight weeks, and I totally love it! Pick one up for under $200 at any of several chain store outlets, wayyyyyy better than the G word.

Gas. (The bottled kind.)

I'm home, and I'm pissed off.  I just spent almost three hours and did around 30km of travelling for a very simple thing, thanks to a clueless supplier and greedy dealers.  Check it out here.

Yike! This is only spring!

Today.  I watched the thermometer inside the motorhome climb to 26.8C (which is 80F to metric-challenged people) and, intrigued, I put a thermometer outside, in the shade.  28.5C. (83F.)  That was around 13:30 - 14:00 today, will be interesting to see what the weather bureau will say on the news.

It's the first week of spring, and I figure this summer is going to be a bit warm...  Luckily Trish and I joined forces and got two low-HP air conditioners, the old box type, for a very good price (thank you Retravision) and I've worked out a simple through-the-window bracket for use in the bus which will let me put the A/C in when I need it and store it in the boot when it isn't needed.

Meanwhile, (of course, *sigh*) I've chosen today, the hottest day this spring, to have an oven casserole of pork and veges.  Luckily the breeze is in and the afternoon has been beautifully cool and pleasant.  Ah - you have to love days like this!

New Toy, New Games

I picked up a GPS yesterday while looking for something else entirely - but at under $200AUD it was a reasonable price - and today decided to play a bit of a game with it.  Trish and I picked a region quite close (within 50km) of home, and then scrolled through the points of interest in that region until we found - a winery.  Set that as the destination and just set off. 

Okay on the way to the destination, we spotted a nice little river spot and pinned it for future reference.  Went to the Winery/Restaurant and baulked at the prices - $12 for a scoop of icecream (no matter how glowingly it's described) is just bullshit - and continued on because the Margaret River Chocolate Company was just up the road a ways.

Had a great lunch, retraced to the pinned river picnic spot, took a few photos, and wended our way back slowly. 

So new sport - stick a pin in the GPS and just go.  GPStrailing, anyone?

Whalemma

So now we're in the situation of having objected strenuously to the Japanese about their killing of whales in and around our waters, and having to put down a whale calf ourselves....

Portents and omens

Two things.  Make that three:

1900 hrs txting while sitting upstairs waiting while bookclub and couchsurfers occupied the blogger usual corner "teddlesruss: Is the blogger meetup on? about 2 hours ago from txt "

2130 hrs finally got home and decided to check twitter to see why I'd had no response "goatlady: bloggers meetup now INSIDE at the brass monkey - our regular spot is closed about 2 hours ago from mobile web"

2132 hrs reading the fine print on the website too "Please read about important changes to our SMS service."

Bugger!

Foxes Bears and News Of The Weird Oh My

Someone is playing some kind of a pun here - two talented young girls, both named Emily, one named after one animal, the other named after another animal.  This gets into the "classic middle name" territory, where fact is weirder than anything you could make up... 

Random pun thought of the week:  If you took a bunch of grapes and glued them together into the shape of a large citrus fruit, would that be a visual/artistic pun? 

Ch-ch-changes...

If you've been following the story, you'll have seen pictures at Flickr, and the odd article here, as I fiddle and fart my way through "minor" refurb and refit work on the bus now known as DuckZilla.  I say "minor" but it's turned out to be a fairly large lot of jobs. 

The bus now has real plumbing rather than garden hoses, can use mains water instead of just running off a pump and internal water tanks all the time, the 12V solar electrics have been reworked to prevent the shorts and intermittents, rollout annex awning instead of the old rope track slide-on, there's a gas hot water system almost finished installing, some roof leaks have been fixed, and I'm planning to replace thermally inefficient all around windows with insulated panels and smaller more efficient widows placed where I need them. 

Now when I look around me, I see familiar panels behind which are things I know intimately.  I know that if I get stuck any place, I will be able to manage just fine thank you, and I will be able to fix most anything that might fail, and that experience alone has made all the skinned knuckles, bruises, and aching muscles worthwhile. 

The remaining work is now mostly downhill, and now that I've kitted the bus out (at a cost of around another $3500 as near as I can figure) with all the extras, I will be able to live off the grid for four weeks at a time if I use my water sparingly.   The wild blue yonder is looking better and better by the minute...