The holidays and the end of the year is a time of giving. With disasters occuring on the other side of the world, we should do our best to help.

Nat came up with this idea a while ago where people should be able to put a random item from their wishlist on their blog/webpage/whatever. Since I had nothing to do over the holidays, I thought that I'd write it up.

Here's the test page. I took the liberty of making several people's wishlists available. It will take a bit to load.

I'm using a cgi script that makes an XML call to the amazon web services, and then parses it using XML::Parser::Lite (I'm mainly using this module because that's the one I came across, and I also couldn't install XML::Parser/XML::Parser::Expat on the server - due to non-root user account, so it probably could be cleaner).

So I made it safely home for the holidays. Man is it cold back here, I froze my ears waiting for my dad outside the airport terminal. My softshell just isn't going to cut it for an Ontario winter.

We had a laid back night with Andrea and crew in Vancouver before heading out for home (big thanks for putting us up for the night), see Matt's post for his Lemony Snicket. We'll have to go back to Ginger's next time.

Hanging out with the parents right now.

So I filed the police report on Monday (I was actually called down to reception at work "there's an officer here to see you"). And Tuesday at noon I get a phone call telling me that they have located my car. I think some parking enforcement officer was probably writing a ticket when (s)he noticed it was reported stolen.

My snowboard boots that were in the trunk are gone, as was the brand new battery that I had just bought for the car. I spent the afternoon calling and getting bounced around by the insurance people (I wanted it towed to a shop so they can do an inspection to see if any other parts were missing). Finally I just got fed up, and Matt drove me to buy a new battery. I installed it, and now it works fine.

I'm wondering how they started the car. The ignition is fine, so they didn't hotwire it. Do these thieves have master keys? They also took my registration, so I'll need to get a new one.

I'm going to buy The Club as soon as I get back from holidays.

Preorder the 6th book, The Half Blood Prince, now at amazon.com (to be released July 16).

Update: the sales rank of this book went from #280 (when I checked it this morning) to #1 in about 4 hours.

I had a great morning today.

First I get a call from the parking garage people telling me that they didn't impound my car, which would normally be wonderful news, except it now implies that my car has been stolen. Sure, I don't drive it a lot, and I haven't even checked in on it for a week, but I still like to use it from time to time. So imagine my surprise when I went to drive Dan to the airport on Friday, only to have to call and tell him to find another ride.

Then, in true comedic fashion, confirming that tragedy never strikes just once, my iPod is no longer working. When I go to start it, it just continually reboots. All attempts to recharge, hard reboot, or connect it to a PC has failed. Apple phone support won't help me because I don't have the extended AppleCare plan (so they obviously don't care about me), and I can't go to the Apple store in the u-district because, oh, right, my car has been stolen.

Merry Christmas.

This is a cool project, where they digitally alter images of those giant logos on poles so they seem to be floating in midair.

via Metafilter

I'm taking a lot of time off work and going home for the holidays. My plane arrives the evening of the 24th.

Feel free to drop by Guelph and pay me a visit.

There's been a story going around the net lately about this student who failed a high school English exam because he based his compare/contrast paper on the terms stealing and piracy, and his teacher didn't agree with him. So today I actually went and read his paper.

As a matter of personal opinion, I believe that there is a difference between the terms stealing and piracy (or at least internet piracy), and that the music industry is trying (through lobbying, commercials, and throwing money at marketing instead of R&D of new distribution models) to equate piracy with stealing; and that there's still no convincing evidence whether internet piracy really affects the industry as a whole.

But after reading his essay, I would almost agree with the teacher in failing him.

First of all, his first two points are based on speculation (a. theives only want what they get and don't care who it hruts while pirates really do respect and care about artists, b. badly written paragraph on different distribution systems, which is almost the same point as his third reason) with poorly thought up examples (pirates usually get the music of smaller artists - just look at the statistics of Britney or Xtina downloads).

Secondly, and this is nitpicking, and I'm not sure what grade-level English 3 corresponds to, but anyone who uses the word "totally" in its slangish term on an exam gets a -1 in my books.

Lastly, I would disagree with his terminology. By using "pirates", he is invoking an extremely broad term that also includes people who actually make a commercial profit from pirated cd's, and those people are definitely not what he wants to contrast the term stealing with.

His last point does make a lot of sense, and is the main reason that anyone who argues a difference between piracy and stealing uses, but too bad it's the only good one.

So I bought the Sony VIAO VGN-S260P after my first paycheque.

I must say that I generally love it. It's thin, light, and has a good industrial design (read: beautiful). But there are also some things that could be done better.

First of all, there's no s-video or rca output, so I can't just plug it into my TV (something that Sony shouldn't have overlooked). And there's also no integrated Bluetooth. But my main gripe is that there are no dedicated Page Up/Down buttons. You need to press the Fn button in conjunction with the up and down arrow. This makes one handed browsing very difficult (and I love one handed browsing, sans mouse). The funny thing is, there's 2 empty spaces right above the left and right arrows, which totally could have fit 2 more keys. Another minor issue is that the buttons beneath the trackpad is too skinny, but I can deal with that.

Tonight I got the following piece of email in my hotmail account

Hi
Did you get my last email?
I saw your ad on xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,I liked what you said and it is different from other ones, so I thought I would write.
I'm new in this place, I could use a friend with good heart as I just moved near Seattle from Evanston about a month ago andI must say I really like it here.
I have not been here long enough to get to know people around here., except for my roomate who moved here a while back. She's made some friends through the internet and she says there's a lot of nice and interesting people I might find here.
I don't have an email connection yet so I am using my friends at the moment. Well, a little about me, I am generally a happy and friendly person. I have been on my own most of my life so I am pretty independent, but it sure would be nice to have a shoulder to lean on occasionally. I am too complex a person to try to explain in this little space.
My roomate Christine thought I should email you and she showed me how to send it but nowI can't figure out how to attach my picture here. My friend and my picture are at www.Friendlymatching.com where she put them. You can locate my number 2986262. If you'll think you are interested, you can call me on my cell phone tomorrow at 65259285I am fairly open minded and I like trying new things. I am a very fun to be around. Upon meeting someone, I can probably make them laugh in about ten minutes. I am by no means a creature of habit, and I strive to experience as much as I possibly can.
Any way we can talk and see what we have in common and possibly get together if it feels comfortable. Bye,
Janie

P.S.
Hope to hear from you soon.
I don't know how long I can use this address till I get my connection so call me and let's see where it goes.

If you actually go to the site and search on the number, her profile shows a hot girl in a bikini on a sunny beach. It's a good picture.

Immediately I got a little suspicious, not that I'm not confident in my individuality, but this does sound a little odd. By now, the astute reader will have also noticed that the phone number she gave is missing a couple of digits, and 652 is not a valid area code.

So I do a whois on www.friendlymatching.com, and saw that their administrative contact was (Ph: +1.24877755557, Fax: +1.5555555555). Alarm bells ringing now.

So I send her an email (from the email reply address). My hotmail account is already spammed to the max, so I'm not afraid of one more spammer getting my address. Immediately I get an auto-response, saying that they don't check this email address anymore, and to message her through friendlymatching.com.

By now it's fairly obvious that they want you to sign up on this website, and then they'll probably ask for a credit card number for you to become a member, just so you can email this girl. (A quick search on google turns up this FAQ). Scam confirmed.

The scary thing is that they actually go on the dating sites to harvest emails, so that it's more targeted (they knew where I'm living, for example), and they've probably scammed quite a few people.

Watch out, internet daters.

Usually, when I go to the search page of a website, I want to find something. I'm not sure what other people expect, but I have a general presumption that the results will be displayed in a prominent place that will easily catch my attention (i.e. the center of the page, if the website is center-oriented, the left major column, if it's left aligned, etc.).

Today, I went to www.bestbuy.com, and did a "store-finder" search. This is the entry page, and this is the results page. At first I was taken aback. I actually thought that the search returned no results, I was ready to type in my zip code and do the search again ... until I noticed the right column, where the search results were hiding.

Several things are broken here.

1. I took the time to type in a zip code or a complete address, why would I want to see the input fields again, displayed prominently on the results page (what's especially annoying is that they're empty again), instead of the actual results?
   
2. The results page has almost the exact same layout as the search page (with the results taking over some text in the right column). This makes it easy to miss. Even if they left the right column empty before, and filled it afterwards with the results, it would make it easier to recognize.
   
3. Valuable real estate (where the input fields and the preferred store box reside) is taken over by text that no one will read, instead of featuring the search results.

Studies have shown that people don't recognize minor changes very well, and often glance over them. If you actually want customers to notice the search results, it must be thrown at them, or at least place it where they will expect it. Important information need to take over the primary real estate, otherwise people will become confused and leave.

I distinctly remember having a conversation about this (NYT link, use bugmenot for a login/pwd) a couple of weeks ago. See Ben, it is possible.

On a side note, why does Blogger suck so much these days? It shouldn't take me 8 minutes to log on and click through to the post page. I thought that after Google acquired Blogger, the least they can do is scale up the performance better.

So alongside jeans with no back pockets and thongs that are hiked up too high, my other pet peeve is people who can't be bothered to walk from the 1st to the 2nd floor, and have to take the elevator.

It's not even that they make the elevator stop yet again on a busy morning, but how lazy do you have to be? It probably takes longer to press the button, wait there for the elevator, go in, press the button, and go up, than to just walk up the stairs.

This is akin to another case where someone at work sent out an urgent email saying that a package that was interofficed was lost in the shuffles. Tragic, until you read that it was from the 6th to the 3rd floor, in the same building. Just walk down, take a break, get some exercise, you probably need it.

When I moved to the US, I thought that I'd be inundated by offers of credit cards in my mailbox. After a month of not receiving any, I decided to head down to my bank and apply for one.

A couple of weeks later, I get a piece of mail from them saying that my application was declined, but I was preapproved for another card. No problem, I send in my confirmation.

At around the same time, I noticed that they had typed in my social security number wrong when I updated it along with my application. I had to make a couple of phone calls to get this corrected.

Another week later, I get another piece of mail saying that I need to send in employment information, paycheque stub, proof of address, etc. It's a bit of a hassle, especially since they already sent me mail saying that I was preapproved. But I figure they just want to be sure, so I send in the documents.

Yesterday, I call them to find out where they're at with my application. Declined. Because the check box asking "Are you a US citizen or permanent resident" was checked. Now I know I wouldn't have checked that box, and I don't know who did, but that was the reason they gave me for the decline. At this point I was a little incensed, simply at the horrible job their staff has done in this entire process. But nothing could be done except to put in another application.

So I try to apply online, except that I can't, because they don't allow non-citizens/permanent residents to apply online. I call them up, start the application process, and half way through the agent tells me that they don't give credit cards to non-citizens/permanent residents. This is blatantly false, since I know other people who are in exactly the same situation as I am, with the same bank, and they have credit cards from that bank. The agent was clueless, and wouldn't let me proceed, so I hung up.

That afternoon, I put in 3 more applications at different banks. If any one of them gives me a credit card, I'm switching everything over.

It's time to boycott Bank of America.

To be continued ...