eBay Dismay

Networking

So it happened yet again: I tried to be too clever with some manual sniping in an eBay auction, and ended up losing … the item in question (a DVD-based Satnav system for my car) sold for a good €60 less than I was willing to pay.

My mistake? I waited until about 50 seconds before the end before placing my winning bid. Unfortunately, eBay had timed out my account, so wanted me to login again. Very unfortunately, eBay’s login server (though not its main server, apparently) was running very slowly. It took 12 seconds to display the login page, another 12 seconds to process my login, another 12 seconds to accept my bid, 12 more seconds to accept my confirmation … just in time to tell me that the auction had ended and my bid was invalid 🙁

Why didn’t I just bid earlier? From experience, there are always a few people waiting in the shadows to place a last minute bid and pip the highest bidder, and I didn’t want to drive the price up unnecessarily. In this case, the last minute bidding went from €210 to €250, and I was willing to go to €312.

So, new strategy to avoid this extremely irritating log-in process: two minutes before the auction ends, place a minimum bid for the item in question. Also line up my maximum bid, ready to press submit. 30 seconds before the auction ends, hit Submit. I’ll still get caught by eBay’s annoying habit of letting users bid against themselves (what’s going on there?), but for an eagerly contested item, it’s worth paying an extra pound or two safety.

Bush in Freefall

Random Thoughts

I just came across a pointer to this cute animated demo of George Bush in freefall:

http://www.yeeguy.com/freefall/

Use the mouse to drag the prez around; it’s strangely addictive, and quite cool.

I found it at Viktor’s Day Book (Viktor has one of the longest running MUD2 sites, among his many other accomplishments).

Does anyone remember Thrust on the Amiga? Low-gravity games are almost always fun.

Traffic Flow Dynamics

Useful Links

For better or worse, I find the whole topic of traffic flow management strangely interesting. So, I was delighted to stumble upon William Beaty’s article describing Physics For Bored Commuters, which describes ways you can influence the stop-go nature of cars in heavy traffic, once you are aware of the underlying processes at work.

Looking forward to trying it next time I’m caught in a jam…

(And if you enjoyed that article, you’ll also enjoy this one.)

Another cool Google Maps hack

Technology

People continue to find new ways to explore Google Map’s public API. Today, I came across this site:

http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/

It lets you measure the walking (or cycling) distance between any two points in the city, simply by double-clicking all the significant direction changes along the router. Simple, but effective.

Dart + Google = Cool app

Technology

A friend referred me to this website today:

http://www.mackers.com/projects/dartmaps/

It’s a very cool Google Maps hack that scrapes realtime DART position info from Irish Rail’s website and plots it on a Google Map of Dublin.

Be sure to zoom in – you can actually see the trains moving in realtime. Click on a train to find out its destination.

Amazing what you can do with a bit of XML, scripting and some ingenuity…

Asimov’s world beckons…

Technology

New Scientist has an interesting article about a new robot with a knack for finding its feet.

While there have previously been some impressive demonstration videos of robots from Toyota, Honda and Sony, this is the first robot I’ve seen that actually mimicked human like movement patterns.

You can download the 13 MB demo video here; it’s rather unsettling to watch.

I just hope they have a good team working on the software…

Linux RAID problems

Technology

I came across this article about RAID systems under Linux, and some of the problems that can occur.

It’s interesting reading, especially the explanation as to why a single drive failure in a Linux RAID system is often also followed by a second failure before the array has had a chance to rebuild … rather concerning, since that can effectively negate the redundancy benefit of having a RAID in the first place.

Let’s hope my MegaRaid SATA150-6 controller doesn’t suffer from similar problems…

Also of interest: drive manufacturers appear to be routinely making minor adjustments to the size of discs, even when the model number remains the same – this can cause problems when swapping out a dead drive, if the replacement is slightly smaller. Might be an idea to stockpile a few spare drives to have on hand which are from the same batch as your original set.

A Tax Tip from the King of Sweden

Random Thoughts

I noticed this on a discussion board today:

One of my favorite little bits of history is the way the king of Denmark, when Denmark encompassed at least the southern parts of Sweden, assessed taxes on ships passing through the waterways between the North and Baltic Seas. Captains of ships passing through were allowed to declare the value of ship and cargo without any recourse by the taxing authorities. On the other hand, the taxing collectors were authorized to purchase said ship and cargo at the declared value if they thought it would be profitable.

I like it!