Falling over was one ability that the bike and I had retained….
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie11
I was too busy hanging on to take many photos, suffice to say that single track sand was a recurring feature. The KTM ate it up, even if I was somewhat shocked at what the bike could do.
Holland Track and Kalgoorlie10
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 :-)
Lance Wiggs 