The Dave

Amazon Tomfoolery

thedave — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 17:07:51 +0000

tom·fool·er·y/ˌtämˈfo͞ol(ə)rē/
Noun: Foolish or silly behavior

Example: Getting caught offering different prices to new customers vs repeat customers in the past in a “test”

They seem to be doing something like it again today:

In the screenshot the left window is logged in to my account, the right is a private browser (no naughty cookies for Amazon to use to identify me), copy/pasted the URL to both sides to ensure that I’m looking at identical items on both sides.

Note the Kindle price varies from $7.99 to $6.39.

No related posts.

The stupidest news day of them all

thedave — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 11:00:51 +0000

I’d like to wish everyone a happy “Don’t even bother reading any tech news” day. I admit, I used to laugh at some of the April fools press releases, and some are still worthy of a snicker. SaveIE6.com, for example, is worth a run through if you haven’t already.

But the retarded press releases? Can we all just agree those have been done to death? Pirate Bay buys eBay on eBay? Really?

Note to Americans: Vote

Eye to eye

thedave — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 01:11:52 +0000

Just a couple toad shots I’ve had kicking around that I felt like posting. These are both taken with an iPhone 4 through plexiglass so the shots aren’t fantastic, but they’re interesting poses:

Hypostomus “The Sucker” plecostomus

thedave — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 22:17:41 +0000

Our last giant pleco died a few weeks ago, and even with the economy where it is, finding a suitable candidate was a pain. As of today I’d like to announce that effective this afternoon, the position has been filled. “The Sucker” has accepted a full time position with room, heat and water, lighting and all meals included.

As an added bonus, he matches the driftwood log already in our tank (seen left)

netflix.ca – A giant “don’t bother”

thedave — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 01:46:47 +0000

Over the Thanksmericangiving weekend Microsoft was running a “Free XBox 360 Gold” promotion, and along with that, NetFlix was offering 30 days of free streaming service. I figured why not try it out, maybe we’d find some interesting movies or TV series that we’d enjoy?

Signing up was reasonably easy, although I would suggest creating your account on your computer first rather than trying to type out a decent password on an XBox 360. Twice.

The first thing that jumped out at me was the selection. More specifically, the lack of selection. It took me a good 15 minutes of flipping through TV shows and movies to find something I would watch to test out the streaming video quality and functionality. No, not a show to actually sit down and watch, just something to try out to gauge the video quality.

I ended up watching about 5-10 minutes of Mythbusters episodes. You won’t have to worry about spoilers of new TV shows if you’re a bit behind on your PVR watching since the available TV episodes were years old.

Recalling how much money and resources Netflix puts into algorithmically determining user preferences I thought I’d give it a chance, so that evening I spent about 45 minutes on Netflix’s website telling Netflix all about my movie preferences, genres I enjoy (and not), rating movies it offered to help Netflix learn about me. I also installed the iPhone and iPad clients, thinking I might go watch a movie on the iPad. Unfortunately I still couldn’t find anything that interested me. The suggestions weren’t bad, but I’d seen the movies I wanted to see and literally couldn’t find anything that I hadn’t already seen that interested me.

I picked one and sat through about 15 minutes on the iPad. Video and audio quality was good, but the movie didn’t grab me enough to care so I went to bed.

I got Lori set up with Netflix on her iPhone too to check out the selection, she watched a few more shows than I did, but the month trial isn’t even over and neither of us can find anything to watch.

The video quality was good, the interface isn’t horrible, selection of clients was nice. Heck, it even streamed video over 3G, something Apple can’t manage on the iPhone 4 (although other video-calling capable phones have been doing it for years), but what’s the point when there isn’t anything you want to watch?

More annoyingly though, when canceling service Netflix.ca is careful to spell out that they terminate your service immediately and you forfeit the remainder of the time you prepaid. Let me type that one again more slowly: Customer pays for service. Customer decides to not renew at the end of the agreed upon prepaid term. Netflix says “great, but don’t tell us until the last possible minute or we won’t bother to give you the service for which you paid.”

Sorry guys, but that’s a dickhead move and it pretty much guarantees I won’t bother trying Netflix again even if they ever get a decent selection of movies / TV shows.

(And yes, I’m aware that it was a trial and I’m not actually out any money. I plan on keeping it that way)

Kindle 3

thedave — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:42:03 +0000

I got a Kindle 3! Yay!

All in all, so far, I love this device. I’ve been reading books on my iPhone and iPad so far, but at this point, I’d highly recommend it!

I got the $139 version which has wifi only, but for $189 you can snag a 3G version that will let you download eBooks from anywhere without setting up your own wireless network.

So to start with it, the packaging is very Apple-like. So is the charger. That’s nice. It doesn’t come in a shipping box, the box it comes in IS the shipping box, that’s a damn nice design to avoid wasted packing materials.

Out of the box is a nice experience; the Kindle itself is wrapped in plastic and the screen has instructions on how to get started printed on it. If you want to look like less of a fool than me, you won’t try and pry them off since unlike most devices that have a beautifully printed plastic cover over the screen, the startup instructions are the screen itself! Talk about a great first impression.

Oh, and yes, there is a charger plus a USB cable included in the box. Another nice touch in a day where $300 devices *cough*iPod Touch*cough* don’t include power adapters.

I already have a Kindle account and read eBooks on my iPad and iPhone, when I fired up the Kindle it was pre-configured to my Amazon account and once I got wifi connected, I was immediately able to download books that I’d already purchased.

The screen is absolutely beautiful, the Kindle is so much lighter than I’d expected, and it’s a very comfortable fit in the hand. There are page-turn buttons on the left and right, so it’s great regardless of which hand you’re using at that particular moment.

Unfortunately I did have one fairly major problem with the wifi setup. On the plus side it should work fine for most normal home networks, the problem only occurs when using a configuration that is more common in business networks.

If you really care about the details, read on:

It’s looking like a bug in Kindle’s network stack. Specifically, the device breaks when a DHCP server returns this configuration:

IP: 172.16.0.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Default Gateway: 172.16.0.1 DNS Server: 172.16.0.40

After the Kindle obtains an IP address, it attempts to send a DNS lookups to 172.16.0.40, but routes the packets to the default gateway instead of correctly delivering them to the local network.

Interestingly this works on “normal” home LANs where 172.16.0.1 is both a router and DNS server, but breaks on a more “corporate” style LAN where the router/firewall/default-gateway is not the DNS server.

I’ve reported the problem to Amazon’s support, we’ll see how much hassle it is to get through the first level support droid.

The one in the red hat

thedave — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 04:04:32 +0000

Lori said she’d be the one in the red hat:

I think I see her.

Princess Gracie

thedave — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:30:41 +0000

I recently mentioned we got a toad, Prince Al but how happy can a Prince be without a Princess?

Introducing Princess Gracie:

Selling my laptop: Toshiba A205 15″ T5300 SOLD

thedave — Mon, 17 May 2010 19:05:27 +0000

(This laptop is now sold, thanks!)

This laptop was my baby for the last couple years, I bought it for dual work and personal use while traveling, but recently work tossed me a new Lenovo and I just can’t bring myself to drag around this powerful a personal laptop too, so I’ve switched to carrying a little Netbook for my personal needs.

Included with the laptop is the power adapter, freshly installed copy of Windows Vista Ultimate, installation media, and an APC external battery that has nearly double the capacity of the internal battery. It’s a bit of extra weight to carry around, but you can work 8 hours without a recharge.

Laptop specs are as follows:

Genuine Windows Vista? Ultimate(32-bit version)
Intel® Core? 2 Duo Processor T5300 (1.73GHz, 2MB L2, 533MHz FSB with 64-bit C1)
Intel® Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN (802.11a/g/n)
Configured with 2048MB PC5300 DDR2 SDRAM
280GB using two Serial ATA hard disk drives, Primary + Secondary drive: 120GB + 160GB
DVD SuperMulti (+/-R double layer) with Labelflash? drive
Maximum speed and compatibility: CD-ROM (24x), CD-R (24x),
CD-RW (16x), DVD-ROM (8x), DVD-R (Single Layer, (8x)),
DVD-R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD-RW (6x), DVD+R (Single
Layer, (8x)), DVD+R (Double Layer, (4x)), DVD+RW (8x), DVDRAM
(5x)
15.4? diagonal widescreen TruBrite? TFT LCD display at 1280×800
native resolution (WXGA)
Native support for 720p content
NVIDIA® GeForce? Go7300 with 128MB DDR2 discrete graphics memory
Built-in harman/kardon® stereo speakers – Amazing sound for a laptop
ExpressCard? slot (ExpressCard/34 and ExpressCard/54)
Secure Digital, SDIO, Memory Stick?, Memory Stick PRO?, Multi
Media Card, xD Picture Card
Fingerprint reader
4000mAh Lithium Ion battery pack

Hoping for $395 but if you’re interested, feel free to make me an offer on my contact page or in the comments.

Tango sez hi

thedave — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:33:58 +0000

With the recent demise of my photo gallery (possibly to return, if I find a gallery system that isn’t horribly nasty), I thought I’d post a recent photo or too. Not my dog, but it is my photo, so that’s good enough for me.