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Sunday, 18 August 2002 |
Absolutely unbelievable. The 4th generation web browsers were the shoddiest and shittiest of all time, and have done terrible damage to web designers’ ability to build fully standards-compliant web sites.
Yet, these corpses are still walking. Enough people are using them to dictate that current web sites must still be built to degrade gracefully in them. These crazies continue to use these rotten bits of software—Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Navigator 4—even though versions 5 and 6 of the former, and Navigator versions 6 and 7 (in beta but usable), have been available for some time and have far, far better standards support.
Netscape has just released Netscape Communicator 4.8, containing Netscape Navigator 4.8, according to Versiontracker. The link is dead, but as soon as it goes live again I will download the latest version of this vile walking corpse. Not because I like it—it can only be the worst kind of garbage—but because I am going to have to know what new nastiness Netscape has introduced into this piece of crap. There are some crazy people out there who are just going to love this, and will use it. I guarantee that. I know some of these luddites.
Just when Netscape is on the verge of introducing a really, really good web browser with version 7, they come out with this trash! Incredible.
11:51:16 PM 
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I passed the committee examination for this federal government scheme to assist the unemployed into starting their own businesses, but I am still in a state of limbo.
I thought I would sign the papers immediately, but I have to go back and do that on the 3rd September. But even then I am not permitted to begin trading until the 12th September. Ironically, that is the anniversary of the day I and the others at the John Bevins advertising agency were sacked.
All these delays are driving me absolutely nuts. I have bills to pay, things I need, and worst of all is the fact the nature of my business demands that I charge my clients a 50% fee upfront before beginning a project. Because the government monitors my bank account, and will cut me from the scheme if I do business before the set date, I cannot do any business until the 12th September.
I am still in the nastiest kind of limbo.
10:35:31 PM
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The Time.com Innovators site has a short profile on this guy. Not much else is available on the web, though.
But there is a website for el Bulli (which means the bulldog).
9:43:47 PM
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I was flicking through an article about portraiture in the Weekend Australian magazine yesterday.
Not a bad article—it also makes mention of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra, and Polly Borland, the Australian photographer who lives in London with her husband film director John Hillcoat (Ghosts… of the Civil Dead) and who did the Michael Hutchence and INXS portraits for Black+White magazine for me before Michael did himself in on a trip to Sydney.
The article quotes Barry Pearce, curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, who just cannot resist blurting out a reference about that damned American TV show that we in Perth are forbidden from seeing when the rest of the country is allowed to receive it on Channel 9.
I speak of, yes, Six Feet Under. Here is what Pearce said about it:
“I wish I could think of a portrait that affects me the way that program does,” he says. “It’s so associated with with all your experiences and the experiences of everyone you know that it makes you love the human race and forgive them all their flaws.”
Incidentally, there is a terrific article on the amazing Catalonian chef Ferran Adrià, of El Bulli in a town near the French border named Roses. I had never heard of Adrià before this, but he comes across as the greatest contemporary chef of them all.
9:25:15 PM
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Wow! That has not happened for quite a while—the last post I made to this weblog has vanished altogether. I wonder where it went? Into some weblog ether? A weblog hidden dimension?
9:01:02 PM
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My RM Williams boots are unique. I have never seen anything exactly like them, made by any other bootmaker or designed by any other designer.
There are boots that are similar, and that share some of the same characteristics. Chelsea boots have elastic sides, and were originally made for riding horses, although they have flatter heels and a more traditional shape. Tim Little in the New Kings Road, my former workmate at The Leagas Delaney Partnership, makes the best traditional Chelsea boot. Tim is an admirer of the RM Williams boot, most particularly for the way it is made with one piece of leather, but his Chelseas are very different to anything RM Williams makes. However, if I was still living in Europe Tim’s are the only boots and shoes I would be wearing now. The quality is amazing, the designs are great and I like someone who does things with passion.
Williams boots are a little like American cowboy boots, but more understated in the Australian way.
Ah bugger it, that is all for now. I don’t want to overdo this boot thing!
6:18:00 PM
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My second pair of RM Williams black elastic-sided boots has returned to the safety of my flat from the factory in Adelaide where their soles were being replaced. I am so relieved!
I have two indentical pairs of them. I bought them at the same time, when I finally returned to the fold. I had been wearing English boots and American boots and had almost bought a pair each of French and Italian designer boots while living in Europe. But none of them, no matter how apparently well-made or high-priced, seemed quite as good as the RM Williams boots I had worn growing up and subsequently. Or anywhere near as comfortable.
When I was a kid I had either no shoes at all, during a period of relative poverty, or wore RM Williams Sante Fe desert kip suede boots, or their classic round-toed Stockman style in black, with high Cuban heels. The Stockman is no longer made in quite the same way, and the current model is a pale echo of what it was before.
I gave up on the Williams boots and gave them away, much to my retrospective regret, when I moved to the city as an art student and rejected the brand as the icon of the landed gentry, the squattocracy, the Anglo ruling class that I came to despise. Instead I opted for Doc Martens, those emblems of the English working class, and stuck with them for years, especially when I was a photographer. They were terrific for those long days and long walks, but their lack of a lining finally came to grate on me in the end. They were never quite comfortable enough.
Then, when I first lived in London, I discovered Church’s shoes and boots. I still have my first pair of Church’s New Yorker style lace-up shoes in glossy black bookbinder leather. The fit is a little tight now, after all that foot-flattening walking over the pavements of the cities of the world, but they still look great.
The second time I lived in London I bought a pair of Church’s buckle-strapped Jodphur boots that I had been lusting after for years and that have never been imported into Australia. They cost a fortune, and look great, but Church’s manufacturing standards had badly slipped by then and the left one rubs my heel raw after a short walk. I get them out every so often and try to wear them, but their quality shortcomings really piss me off. Especially given what I paid for them, and what that translates into in Australian dollars.
When I returned to Australia, under protest, I succumbed to my relatives’ shoe tastes and bought a pair of Blundstone elastic-sided boots with synthetic soles. I wore them to death over the period of a year, and then threw them out never to buy another pair. Blundstones are unlined and therefore uncomfortable, and their synthetic soles are not quite as bouncy as Doc Martens boots. And they served to remind me of how much better RM Williams boots are. Constantly.
I finally overcame my objection to Williams products on the grounds of political incorrectness, after taking a long hard look at the Sydney and Melbourne menswear designers and stores. I had come to the conclusion that the only really well-made and well-designed Australian men’s clothing was RM Williams’ products.
The stuff made by Australian menswear companies smacks of inauthenticity, of the ersatz, of clothing designed by studying the stuff in photographs in imported fashion magazines and then blatantly ripping it off, without the same degree of quality. Poor quality, phoney design, overpriced, dodgy fabric coarse to the touch. At least RM Williams’ shoes and clothes are made to be worn, by real people and not just by fashion models.
In fact, come to think of it, that is exactly how Australian designers design their menswear. I used to watch them at work when I dropped in to a couple of the top ones from time to time, and they had big pinboards full of clippings, and stacks of freshly imported magazines in the corner.
4:59:23 PM
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© Copyright 2002 Karl-Peter Gottschalk.
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