The next day – Adam took me for a blast around some favoured bits of the enduro riding paradise that is Kalgoorlie.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie9
Those grey boxes contained water in the outer skin – 3 liters each. All that bashing meant that both had sprung leaks and left me with just a small cup full of water.
Here we are at the end of the dirt – very happy to get out, although that nighttime riding indicates that we were pretty late, and had decided not to camp.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie8
A bit further on.
Well – it was dark, my battery gave up the ghost after I had left the high bean and main beam on for a while and so Adam towed me to a jump start. After a very short bit of dragging the bike started – and stayed on until the end.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie7
Much later than we expected were were about halfway. Time for a tasty snack!
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie6
Just around the corner I managed to lose that grey box anyway.
The 4wd track had no room outside the tracks, so that meant the boxes and handlebars were constantly getting hit.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie5
I really don’t like a lot of sand – it doesn’t go well with heavy bikes.
This happened when there was a nasty tree coming up on the left (the left hand grey box would have hit it), and I didn’t want to attempt to cross the soft center. I braked and fell in front of said tree.
Adam also had trouble here, and ended up shoulder charging the tree. The tree won, though Adam did stay upright.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie4
But there was sand. Plenty of sand.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie2
The track was stunning – greens, reds, golds and after a torrid morning of rain and cold, blue sky.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie2
we went via the Holland Track – an old carting route recently reopened by 4WD enthusiasts.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie1
Time for a test run. So I fully loaded the bike, and headed off to Kalgoorlie with Adam.
The IRD’s SME website
A great thing. The IRD is going to set up a website to guide SME’s through their tax obligations at various stages of the business.
They are outsourcing the work, and it will worringly include a bunch of Flash as part of the “interactive tool”. We can hope that it doesn’t turn into another Mission-on.
The good news is that The Small Business Company are in charge, and their website actually seems ok – though the formatting is screwed up on FFX3 and their marketing module appears to be a giant advertisement for Yellow. At least it is not a flash monstrosity. Some of their work looks pretty good – including training modules for other parts of Govt.
In general NZ Government Websites are generally excellent – one of the reasons that Mission-On ranks so low on a Google search is that the NZ Govt. websites talking about it rank that much higher. It helps that there is a wonderful set of guidelines – even warning against flash and its’ ilk.
So – We’ll wait with interest to see how this one turns out. Given that September is the launch, I am guessing the cost is a while lot less than $10m.
Mission On is…Off
So I read Bernard’s eviseration of the Mission-on Website, and the debacle of spending over $10m on a useless flash monstrosity. The best part was his daughters quote:
“Oh My God,” she yelped. “It’s all in Flash. I just never use Flash sites. You can’t navigate them, they’re usually just so crap. My browser is set to block these yucky pop-ups. No. No. No,”
The next best part is the site.
It doesn’t work.
Is that because Bernard has sent it too much traffic? Is it because I am on a mac? in Australia right now? Who cares – it doesn’t work, and for $10m+ that’s a pretty basic error.
Here’s the site:
Ugly huh?!. Nothing, nothing at all is clickable in that page. My manic attempts at clicking eventually resulted in this:
The authors of this monstrosity are Clicksuite, who unlike their profit producing site, actually appear at the top of a google search for their name.
Bernard and daughter were particulalry scathing on the excess use of flash – and interesting Clicksuite have blogged about a new searchable flash player that will be made avaialble to search engines. Sadly it isn’t a cure-all for trerrible usability, nor even SEO.
To be fair to Clicksuite, a design is only as good as the less good of the people doing the design and the client driving the design. So I am nt sure where to place blame, and for $10m I guess a lot of companies woikd take some embarrassment. (I’m looking at those involved with Ferrit as well here)
iPhone apps lift the game
It’s a fast moving world when you are developing for the mobile or web. We at Lingopal are in the throes of some fun stuff involving mobile phones and translation, and it was always going to be a nervous time when the iPhone apps launched.
Sure enough, there are a few nice looking applications, but nothing that makes us too nervous. Phew.
Most interesting was the pricing – ranging from Zero to $38.99.
Now I guess I have to get the iPhone, if only to do proper competitor surveying :-)
When money isn’t enough: Getting an iPhone
Michelin play hard to get, and it is the same with Apple.
Their iPhone (and let’s face it pretty much all of their products) is so damn good that I simply must have one to satisfy my technolust.
Yet by partnering with buffoons like Vodafone NZ, Rogers Telecommunications in Canada and pretty much all of the other telcos, Apple has made it wildly expensive and complicated to own their product.
Witness Optus’s plans on the left – that’s on webpage. Theire plans are incredibly hard to understand, and like the hapless Vodafone New Zealand, assume that big data users are also big talkers.
They are not. And indeed big datas users may well prefer to be using data to connect rather than talk.
It’s a really really long page from Optus, and it’s complicated as well. I gave up.
I’ll also forget about Vodafone, the smirking monopolists from New Zealand will no longer get any discretionary business of mine – in any country. I say doscretionary, becasue I’ll be forced to use their services in New Zealand – at least until Telecom get their act together. (That’s really Hobsons choice right there)
So I went to Telstra, who, mere hours before launch, do not have iPhone plan details on their website. Geekzone do though:-).
Telstra coverage is what I want – in the rural areas where I’ll be motorcycling Vodafone and Optus fade away.
Their prices apparently include a 3GB plan, with $400 up front and just $25 of calls per month. That’s essentially perfect for me – minimum monthly spend, and it’s all concentrated on the data.
However, try looking for a Telstra store that sell these things, and you realise just how few they will have.
There is just one iPhone-selling store in the Perth metropolitan area, along with one in Kalgoorlie – about 6 hours away. I may try tomorrow, but I’m guessing that they’ll be sold out before I get out of bed. Else I’ll be in Kalgoorlie on Monday, and so I can stare forlornly at the empty displays.
No pricing, no phones and poor distribution – that’s not a great way to attract customers, but I still want one, and I’ll still (I think) try to get one. I’m 99% positive that I’ll be disappointed, and so sleeping in seems like an increasingly good thing to do.
When money isn’t enough: Michelin Deserts
Michelin Deserts. I’d love (not even like) to buy each of these right now, but it seems that Michelin are determined to make it hard, or even impossible, for me. So hard in fact that I feel obliged to go elsewhere because I am so annoyed, but the product is so good that I really will do anything to get them.
Just Deserts
The Michelin Desert is the ultimate overland tire for motorcycling in sandy terrain.
The tires last for an extraordinarily long time, are highly resistant to punctures and have immensely strong sidewalls that mean you can actually run with them flat for a while.
They are also wildly expensive, and legendarily difficult to get on and off, which you mneed to do when you get a puncture.
They are used for long and hard travel on deserts and dirt, exactly what I am setting my bike up to do, and exactly what I am going to do. They are also the tire of choice for Paris-Dakar racers, and for any number of other overland races, like the Australia Safari.
They are, in short, elite of overlanding tires, and I have always wanted to own a set.
But I can’t. The local distributors have being with holding all of their Michelin Desert stock until after the end of the Australia Safari, which is the Aussie version of the Paris-Dakar race, and it is here in WA.
So I simply cannot buy them, even though there is a warehouse full of these things not 10kms from here.
The logic is befuddling – the Australia Safari is a great promotional vehicle, before, during and after the race. It gets people excited about overland riding through the conditions that the Deserts are perfect for, and yet the tire of choice is…unavailable.
So rather than me feeling good about Michelin and their tires being used by the pros, I feel massively pissed off at their lack of common sense in bringing in a bunch more tires to sell.
They didn’t get my money – I got some other brand instead. However that other brand of tire is wearing away before my eyes- and every time I see by just how much, I feel another pang of anger towards Michelin.
It’s not just a convenience thing, or a coolness thing – the Deserts would get me from here to Townsville on the mainly off-road tracks I’m loking at being on. The Pirelli MT-21’s may do so (they are also unobtainable) but the piece of rubbish Karoo’s I have are likely to expire in the middle of nowhere.
That’s not just inconvenient, that’s potentially deadly in the desert. Michelin – are you really wanting this sort of publicity?
They are givng me the impression that they are feelingless bastards, but I still want to buy their product. (I’d love to talk to a human – but the only contact-us on thewebsite is for other countries)
This all reminds me of something else going on these days…
Lance Wiggs 