Posts by webweaver
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Being a Machead through and through, I don't ever have to worry about PC nightmare OSs - except of course that I have to use the bloody things to test my websites... and if you're doing an e-govt compliant site that means a whole bunch of different combinations of browser and OS. I have a few test PC laptops I bought off TradeMe so I could get all the browser/OS combinations I needed:
All new or significantly redeveloped websites must be tested against all browser and operating system combinations identified as A grade by Yahoo! Graded Browser Support. Agencies must also test against at least one browser not graded A, on a platform of their choice. Agencies might choose a non-A grade browser by considering their website statistics.
Last time I looked (a couple of months ago) that meant 16 OS/browser combinations. Now it's down to 13 (12 + 1 other of your choice), but I note with some dismay that they've knocked Mac 10.4 off the list and added 10.6. Bollocks! I do not have a couple of thou spare to buy Snow Leopard just so I can test my sites on FF and Safari in 10.6 which I know are going to work just fine anyway!
My worst test machine is the ancient Win2000 PC I bought for 50 bucks, which came complete with 32 viruses, Trojans and worms of one kind and another. Nice! I haven't even tried to get the Win2000 machine to talk to my Mac, as it's so old and crap - and although I've killed all the viruses on it I still don't trust it - much safer to keep it in isolation I reckon.
My WinXP test laptop (for IE6 and IE7) is a very nice little machine - an IBM Thinkpad which for some reason I find very pleasant to use. I have another lappy running WinXP to test IE8. Don'tcha just love Microsoft? Even though I can use a standalone (hacked) version of IE7 together with IE6 on one machine, I have to have a whole other machine just to test IE8 because it breaks the standalone browsers if you put them on the same machine. Ugh.
But the one I loathe the most is the one running Vista. It's one thing to have an old Win2000 machine that can't talk to my Mac - it's quite another to have a relatively new Vista PC that completely refuses to communicate in any way, shape or form with my Mac.
My WinXP machines have no problem seeing files on my Mac, which means I can build on the Mac and test seamlessly on the PCs - but can I get the Vista machine to do the same thing? Can I heck. I've wasted hours and hours trying to get it to connect, and it's completely impossible. I hatessss it.
Guess I'm going to have to bit the bullet and get yet another machine soon to do testing on Windows 7 (I'm sure it'll get added to Yahoo's list before long). Oh bum. And no doubt they will require testing in both IE7 and IE8 on Win7, which of course I can't do because there's no way of installing both IEs on the same machine (I already have the same problem with my Vista PC).
Wish I was a real geek and knew all about installing virtual machines and running different OS/browser combos virtually...
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@BenWilson - Do you have stats for confidential surveys showing that there are far fewer bisexuals than homosexuals? What are the numbers? Could it be that some bisexuals just don't advertise the fact that they are bi?
Seems to me that if you're gay and you're out it's possible that you've been on quite a journey to get there - and once there, you might just feel that both the journey and the destination are something to be proud of, and worth telling people about. One's sexual preference can become a political statement if you've had to fight to be accepted for who you are, especially in places like the US where the Fundy Right traditionally uses the hot-button topics of God, Gays and Guns to stir up the masses. Plus if you want a partner in this hetero world you have to let people know that your preference is for those of the same gender as yourself...
It's not quite the same when you're bi. In my experience (and I'm only speaking for myself) being bi can be far less politically-charged than being gay - if you want it to be.
If you're bisexual, you can quietly go about your business and still find opposite-sex partners without having to advertise yourself as being "different" to what many people will assume you to be. Potential same-sex partners can either be admired from a distance but never requited, or you can wait until someone of the same gender decides they fancy you, and then you can decide if you fancy them.
In other words it's quite possible to be a "stealth bi" and still get your rocks off from time to time - you don't necessarily have to either fight to be accepted for who you are, or shout it from the rooftops in order to get laid :)
I think this is why some of my lesbian friends disapproved of bisexuals, and of lesbians who sleep with bisexuals. They saw being bi as being "on the fence" - as being too cowardly to go all-out and "just admit it and become a lesbian like you know you really are...". They saw bisexuals taking their women without having to go through all the social stigma/trauma/hassle/disapproval that some of them went through when they came out as lesbians.
It's an interesting position to be in. You can choose to tell no-one, or a few select people, or the entire world - and you can still find loving relationships, whichever you choose to do. There will always be some people who disapprove - and for bisexuals this disapproval can come from both sides of the hetero/homo divide - but in my experience the vast majority of people have no problem with my sexuality at all - if indeed they even know about it.
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No-one (or very few people) are absolutely, positively 100% at one end of the sexuality spectrum - 'people are attracted to people'.
But most people won't explore the whole range of their sexual 'being' (for want of a better word). Societal expectations/norms, repression, etc.
*nodding head in utter agreement*
I absolutely agree. Seems to me that sexuality is a continuum from 100% straight at one end to 100% gay at the other. Most people are somewhere between the two. People are scattered all the way along this spectrum from one end to the other, but as you say, Rich, I think many people who could be bi, choose not to explore that potential for whatever reason.
I'd also like to mention the fact that there are some guys who find the idea of going out with a bi woman rather exciting, I think because they can fantasise about her being with another woman at the same time as being able to shag her themselves.
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- If this is how it flies, then there's going to be some real cost pressure on Maori Television. I'm presuming the $3m is basically the bid -- in which case, having sold $3m worth of advertising time during games to TPK, MT's ability to cover production costs, let alone turn a profit, without doing yet another sly deal (eg: TPK agreeing to pay over the odds to free up some time for sale), or finding even more public funding, is very constrained. If I was TVNZ or TV3, I wouldn't be leaping to help MT spread the cost.
I was speaking with a friend about this last night. He's in the sport-on-telly business and was telling me about MTV's ability (or lack of it) to do the serious amount of Outside Broadcast-ing that the RWC will require.
He doesn't think they have the level of production staff expertise in sufficient numbers to do OB for all the games across the country, and neither do they have enough OB equipment (and what they do have is a bit old and crap).
He reckons they are going to have to do some serious deals with companies that do have the OB expertise and gear and/or OB contractors up and down the country who can supply the person-power they need to cover all the games.
And that ain't going to be cheap.
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Kerry - I did indeed spend quite a bit of time with the very wonderful Misty! She did my tarot cards for me at one point, I seem to remember.
The family had the best set of hippie names ever - except for the youngest who only got half a hippie name (their shared surname) - I guess maybe they ran out of inspiration by the time she was born. I'd love to share their names with y'all but it's probably not good netiquette to fully identify a family on a public board when they're not involved in the conversation - so I'll leave it at that :)
All the kids at the Ohu were an absolute joy - true free spirits and really sociable and loving. They had so many international WWOOFing visitors over the years that they'd all become quite adept at making friends with new people - even though they lived such an isolated life in other respects.
It was a wonderful place with magical people and will always have a special hold on my heart.
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Apparently a Country Calender from April, 1998 detailed the AhuAhu Ohu on the Whanganui river. I can't imagine any PM since being so broad-minded.
oohooh! When I first came to NZ as a traveller I decided to go WWOOFing for a bit with my friend - and the first place we went to was AhuAhu Ohu. Drive for miles up the River Road out of Wanganui, park the car at the side of the road, jump in the row-boat that's tied up under the trees, row across the river, walk 4km along a bush track while being serenaded by willow warblers and fantails, and you arrive at the Ohu. No road access at all. Seriously isolated. 5 or 6 families with a bunch of kids between them and no-one else for miles and miles and miles.
We went for a week and stayed for a month and it was there that I began to fall in love with Aotearoa:
Hilltop behind hilltop
A mile of green pungas
In the grey afternoon
Bow their heads to the slanting spears of rainI remember the Country Calendar piece - quite a few of the people I'd lived with at the Ohu in 1992 were interviewed - I'd love to see that again!
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And afterwards, I was always called a dyke. Of course.
Oh god yeah - the classic dyke reposte.
Because of course if you didn't respond in the "proper" manner for a girl* when they did something oh-so-gentlemanly like grab your tits or your ass or shove their hand up your skirt - or leer or make some obscene remark - you obviously must be a dyke - there could be no other explanation.
* which was expected to be - what - exactly? Open your legs? Shove your tongue down their throat? Giggle and simper and go google-eyed at them? Who the fuck knows?
...and then there's the other end of that particular spectrum, which I experienced a couple of times when walking through town of an evening with my girlfriend Jane who had short hair and wore jeans and t-shirts and was a dyke - which was that - completely randomly and out of the blue - some guy walking past her would turn and hit her in the head with his closed fist - and then carry on walking past as if nothing had happened.
Shocking, to say the least.
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Is this sort of behaviour worse in New Zealand?
In the UK where I (mainly) lived until my 30s, it was just as bad, if not worse. I remember being amazed that here in NZ if you walked past a building-site you wouldn't be automatically accosted by workmen yelling obscenities and wolf-whistling at you. This was absolutely par for the course in the UK and was pretty much guaranteed to happen. Did that used to happen in NZ as well?
I remember as a teenager in the UK walking down the street on a Saturday morning, minding my own business. Two guys (one perhaps in his 20s, the other older) were walking towards me, and one said (in a reasonably loud voice so that I could hear it clearly) "boing boing boing" - presumably a reference to my boobs jiggling up and down as I walked.
I was wearing jeans, boots and a big red sweatshirt. Not an inch of cleavage (or any other flesh apart from hands and face) in sight. I was absolutely mortified - and the fact that I can remember the incident in such detail years later shows how much of an effect it had on me. It may not sound like anything very bad, but to me it was horrible - insulting, upsetting and completely unexpected and uncalled-for.
USA - I first travelled there for about 6 months in my 20s. I don't remember any harassment, but I do recall on two occasions being mistaken for a boy. This was in the days of Big Hair in the US, and I had very very short hair at the time. Being quite vertically-challenged as well, I think I was actually mistaken for a pre-voice-broken boy on one occasion (because they had already heard me speaking), and on the other I was directed to the men's loos when I asked where the restroom was in a posh hotel. Weird.
SE Asia in the early 80s - especially Indonesia - we were hassled all the time by people wanting to talk to us and then laughing at us when we replied - but it was aimed at both me and my boyfriend equally, and I think was more to do with the difference in our overall appearance and skin tone, rather than gender. Travellers were pretty rare in Indonesia back then.
One cultural group in NZ where sexual harassment on a night out was absolutely non-existent was the dance-scene - especially the outdoor party/hippyish scene of Entrain, The Gathering, Eudaemony, ClearLight, Trancemission and other similar events in the 90s/00s - including ones where we decamped to the city for a night and made a venue our own.
Within that little community it was unheard-of to be hassled by a guy when you were on the dance-floor - unless it was by some pissed-up munter who'd accidentally wandered into our world and didn't understand how things worked with us. They stuck out like a sore thumb, and generally didn't stay around very long.
The difference of course (apart from the fact that we were all there to dance rather than cop off with each other) was alcohol - or rather, the lack of it. That particular subset of the dance scene was very much anti-alcohol, so the vast majority of people there were completely sober, drinking water and not much else. Alternative methods of transporting oneself to another dimension that people may or may not have been taking, served to enhance the enjoyment of the music rather than sparking up the old APB.
As a woman who loves to dance, loves to dance alone-but-with-other-people, and does not love getting hit-on by drunken idiots, it was paradise.
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It turns out some lecturer had picked a couple of bits of my writing to use in a paper on "personal biography".
...and the lecturer didn't think to ask you first, Robyn? How rude!
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And before that I went to high school (hi sch?) not college.
Hmmm. I think you must mean "igh ool", Emma. Assuming you're following the giovanni tiso method of education establishment shortening.