The great eBay Oscars Sale

I've just discovered a great eBay secret: Auctions that end during major television events (The Inauguration, The Oscars, The Gramys, The Superbowl, etc.) end up way under the typical eBay selling price.

Prime time for an auction is when it's almost over, and thus ranks at the top of searches and listings. People also get excited when things are almost over. But when everyone is busy watching the Oscars, there's no one to bid on the item!

Twitter Noise

Watching the Great gMail outage of 2009 unfold on Twitter Fall (twitterfall.com/gmail) it dawned on me that as Twitter expands, there will be more and more noise to filter though. There needs to be some sort of measure of authority. Some way to filter out the Twitter losers. And it needs to be something built into the API.

Here are some things that could help measure:

-# of times the person has had a tweet favourited
-followers
-replies
-re-tweets
-length of time the person has had their account

Firefox 3.1b2 Home/End Keyfix

In Firefox for OS X, "fn+left arrow"/"fn+right arrow" do not work as they should (gMail and some other sites). This should solve that problem.

I merely edited Matt Ball's Keyfixer for Firefox 3 and initial testing indicates that it works. I'm not 100% that it wont' cause any problems and/or blow up your computer, so be careful and always back up FF/Minefield before you do this. Nightly build of Firefox 3.1b2 is here.

DOWNLOAD KeyFixer for Minefield 3.1 (aka Firefox 3.1b2). If you're using Firefox 3.0.x or earlier, then I would highly recommend using the original patch--made by the amazing Matt Ball--on his blog here.

Please leave a comment to let me know how you get on.

Morons Let it Ring

Even the most polite people sometimes struggle with mobile phone etiquette. But there is a special class of people out there who particularly annoy me. They are the the ones who let their phone keep ringing when they want to ignore an incoming call.

How dumb are you? It's 2008--learn to use your fucking cell phone! It's not like I'm asking you do anything technical. On 99% of phones, silencing the ring while ignoring an incoming call is as simple as pressing a side button (Razr: volume down on the side, iPhone: volume down on the side, etc.)

Please, please stop letting your phone ring over and over again while you try avoid the re-po man's phone calls...

Obama Will Make Joe Plumber a Millionare

With his multiple mentions in the final
Presidential Debate, it is highly likely that this wary plumber will be
able to achieve his goal of having his own plumbing company. Who gives
a fuck how much taxes he is going to pay, he now has national fame,
provided, ironically by Barack Obama. How often do two
Presidential candidates advertise for someone? This guy is one lucky
plumber. Well maybe not so lucky, he is a plumber after all...

Free Sports Betting With Real Cash Payouts

It may sound to good to be true, but in this case it isn't. CentSports.com like any gambling website, allows you to bet real money on real sports, but with one caveat, it doesn't cost anything.
Every account is given 10 cents with which to start betting and the account balance can never dip below 10 cents. Once the total reaches $10.00, it can be cashed out via check or PayPal. At this time of this writing, the all time highest balance is $443.58, and the highest cash out is $300.00. They get their lines directly from Vegas and offer all standard line-type bets such as over/under, point-spread, and moneyline bets(all of which can be parlayed). They allow betting on almost every college and professional baseball, basketball, football, and hockey. The site is in the process of adding more sports, such as soccer, horse racing, etc.

Last years Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act made illegal any gambling sites that allowed money deposits. CentSports.com cleverly takes advantage of the loophole that allows real money to be gambled as long the user doesn't deposit money.The website sustains itself through an unobtrusive banner ad across the top of each page. The site, while still in beta, is generating more money through the advertisements than it is having to pay in cash-outs. It is being developed by students and professionals based at Texas A&M University in Texas.

Spiders and Drugs: A Familiar Story

I assumed the video i was watching was merely a rehash of the pictures of experiments where spiders were given different drugs and then alterations in their web designs were recorded. This web represents that of a spider on Marijuana.

I thought this video would be on the same topic, but boy was I in for a treat.