Although this compose window still took a while, Daisy got back to me with a new theory, one that sounds very plausible, about why I had been having so much trouble.
   When each compose window loads, it comes with one’s tags (if you look at the source code for a compose window, there is a whole line of them). It is to enable Vox’s auto-complete feature for the tags.
   Since I have blogged a lot in the last three years, and introduced a lot of tags, the server appears to time out when loading them with the compose window.
   While the video and photo windows also have these tags, I assume they have less code on them.
   It doesn’t explain why I had a problem with my second Vox account last night (could it be the cookies?), but I have spent just over an hour today removing tags, seeing if they would make a difference. Most of the unwanted tags on this blog have come in via YouTube video imports, so I’ve focused my efforts there.
   Patricia was a regular Vox user and I suspect she will have had her share of tags that led to her problems. However, she only fielded a few dozen posts per annum, so it makes me wonder. She has some long tags, so maybe that was it?
   While the tag auto-complete a user-friendly feature, if it causes this much grief, I would not object to having it switched off.
   It is still too early to tell if removing some of the tags has helped, but I believe we will soon find a solution. Thanks, Daisy!

What's your guilty television pleasure?

Watching it. Have you seen the crap that is on nowadays [1]?

John

[1] Of course, this has always been true, even before "My Mother the Car". As Sturgeon once noted, 90% of everything is crap. (Which makes TV critics the moral equivalent of dung beetles.)

A minute to load this second compose window after a 12-hour block. Oh well, have some photos.

A surprising thing happened tonight: I could no longer get a compose window at my second Vox account.
   I have done some more neighbour removals (after the clue from Kimmie) to see if it made any difference. While that account is working again, I could not relate the glitch to any particular neighbour. In fact, I have the same neighbours I did prior to the glitch occurring there.
   I tried removing a few more here to see if it made any difference to whether a compose screen would appear. In all cases, it did not. If you are a Voxer who was puzzled why I added you to my neighbourhood today, when you know full well I had added you before, it was down to this experiment.
   This compose window took 12 hours to emerge, so the weeding-out of dormant and departed neighbours yesterday has had no real effect on this account. Removing neighbours added in October 2009 also made no difference.
   I am a stubborn fellow, more so when I know that by solving my problem, we potentially solve Patricia’s and Ninja’s, with their composing-blocks of varying degrees here on Vox. Here’s hoping Six Apart is as willing to get to the bottom of this as I am.

Do me a favor, would you? Start counting. I’m willing to lay pretty long odds that you counted like this:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Don’t believe me? Go back to that counting you just did, only start with 2001. 2009 is only number nine on the list, not number ten. See – we’ve got a whole ‘nother year in the decade!

So why do people do this [2]? Partly laziness and partly a failure to think. The failure to think is obvious – just counting the years would show that this wasn’t the end of the decade [3].The laziness is a little less so. Because so many people have decided to go with the wrong answer, other folks assume that it is the right one [4]. And few of those who know better are willing to make the obvious point that the wrong answer is, well, wrong. They feel (not without reason) that there are more important things to worry about than a misplaced terminator [5] (e.g., the end of the world, the end of the world as we know it, and the end of the whirl as we know it).

To a certain extent I agree with them. But it still annoys the crap out of me that so many cannot even count, much less think about what they are counting!

John

[1] Geek points for the reference!
[2] FWIW, this is not a new phenomenon. There were folks in the 1800’s who were just as confused as to when the twentieth century began [a] and don’t even get me started on the whole change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendars [b]!
[3] Other than in the same sense that any year can be the end of a decade, if the decade is arbitrarily begun.
[4] Sort of like the idjits on TV that refer to Clinton, Reagan, Bush, and the other ex politicos as “President So and so”, even though they are no longer properly accorded that title once they have left the office of PotUS. Or the jukes who think that the seasons begin on the solstices/equinoxes and not half-way between them. Or the kallikaks who vote single party tickets.
[5] They also worry (again, not without reason) of being labeled as “party poopers” and pedants, simply because they would like things to be called by the correct honorific. IMHO, those who use the pejoratives do so because that is the only answer they can make.
[a] And that’s another source of confusion, isn’t it? The first century covers the years from 1 to 100, the second covers the years from 101 to 200, and so forth until we reach the twenty-first century, which covers the years 2001-2100.
[b] Proposed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 CE, it wasn’t the international standard until 1926, when Turkey finally adopted it. What this meant was that if it was Tuesday, March 9, 1926 in Belgium, it was Tuesday, March 22, 1926 in Turkey. Imagine drawing the International Date Line for 1900, when at leat eight major countries had not adopted the Gregorian calendar!

Ah, remember the days when Chrysler rested on the words of another Italian guy, Chairman Lee?

Despite still having some compose-window blackouts over a few hours today, December 8 marks the day when Vox has given me 10 compose windows within minutes, a record.
   I’m still not sure which neighbour might be causing the glitch, after Kimmie at Six Apart gave me a clue that it might be someone I was following that began my problems back in October.
   I spent the day deleting dormant and dead accounts, as well as some added in October. While things aren’t perfect, they are better than they were last week, when I had another 24-hour block.
   So it’s time to share a few videos again. I finally watched a recording of the most recent David Tennant Doctor Who special, ‘The Waters of Mars’. (I missed it due to a business trip last week.) I didn’t think it was that great, but since we have two Tennant stories left, I know we are building up to a pretty impressive finalé. There were more references to David Bowie (the Mars base was named after him), which got me thinking about Life on Mars again …

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/pol

Abbott gives fresh start to Kevin Andrews, Philip Ruddock and Bronwyn Bishop

Philip Ruddock will be brought back in as the secretary to shadow cabinet to draw on his “extraordinary corporate knowledge”.

“I think the government is vulnerable,’’ Mr Abbott said.

“The government is very vulnerable on economic management with three interest rate rises in just three months.

“It’s a balanced team. Many of Malcolm's supporters have been promoted. I accept some people have shifted but inevitably if you are going to have a new team there does have to be some change.’’

Mr Abbott praised Mr Morrison as a great talent who was one of the bright new stars of the new generation of MPs.

“Scott Morrison is in the energetic mainstream of the Liberal Party and I know he is going to do a very good job,” Mr Abbott said.

Victorian Tony Smith will take on communications and former chief climate change negotiator Ian Macfarlane takes on infrastructure.

Mr Abbott's promotion of Turnbull supporter Mr Morrison to the key immigration portfolio prompted anger from then incumbent Sharman Stone, who told The Australian yesterday she had been done over by the party’s right wing after performing a difficult balancing act between competing factions within the Coalition.

As expected, Joe Hockey has retained the crucial treasury portfolio and Greg Hunt has retained environment but has secured an expanded role covering climate change to recast the divided Coalition’s policies.

Mr Abbott described him as a “great communicator”.

Chris Pyne has retained education and his role as manager of opposition and would continue to expose waste and mismanagement.

Scores of frontbenchers who quit in a revolt over climate change were rewarded with reinstatement of new roles on the frontbench.