My fantastic little Sony Cybershot U20 is gone. It disappeared sometime between my flat and the new house. No idea where it went, or even when it went. I’m very annoyed. I lost some pictures too – they were on the memory stick in the camera. There’s a slight chance it’s on my cluttered desk at work, or somewhere in my old flat, but I really doubt it. Grr. I’m going to do some looking tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’m checking out some digital camera reviews. The Fuji FinePix F10 looks very nice indeed, and it’s not priced insanely. That being said, I do like the size of the Sony DSC-L1

But really, I just want my camera back.

Major geek time. I swiped this off the excellent Macintouch website.

In regards to Jeffrey DeWitt’s upside-down displays, at least under Tiger, there is a hidden option in System Preferences to rotate the display. The trick to show that preference in the user interface is to keep holding down the Option key while opening System Preferences, then clicking (while still holding down the Option key!) the Display icon. If you let up on the Option key before the display preferences are displayed, you won’t see the Rotate pop-up menu. You can rotate in 90, 180, and 270 degrees. (Mike Hendrickson)

It doesn’t show up on my lowly iBook running 10.3. Perhaps it’s a 10.4-only option, or perhaps something to do with the video card. Cool, though.

In this case, The Man is eBay. I’m fairly pissed off at them. Here’s the text of an email I just sent to them:

Hi,

Let me start by explaining that I’m fairly annoyed at eBay, specifically the lack of useful help I’ve received with my problem in the past. It’s difficult to remain polite.

I moved from Canada to Australia three years ago. At that time, I tried to change my eBay account from a Canadian account to an Australian one. I filled out the form online, submitted it, and got a reply saying that it would take up to a month (!) to be processed. Okay fine. I waited, nothing happened, and I lost interest. About a year later, I tried again, with the same results. Just a few months ago, I tried for the third time – it also didn’t work.

So I used my account to place some auctions. As expected, I got a bill. Here’s the problem: the bill is in Canadian Dollars. I can’t pay it. I realise I owe eBay money, and I want to pay eBay, but I cannot pay in Canadian dollars. Foreign currency transactions are expensive for me, and I refuse to pay a premium to fix a problem that someone else created.

Yesterday, I received notice that my account is suspended until I pay this account, and that eBay is charging interest on the outstanding money. Not only did my original message accomplish nothing, I’m now worse off than I was before.

About a week ago, I sent a version of this letter to eBay Support, and got an entirely useless answer from someone named Mike. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough in my original letter to Mike (reprinted below). I’ll be clear now:

• The automated system for changing countries hasn’t worked for me three times now. Don’t send me information on doing that. I also know that it won’t work until I’ve cleared my balance, which I will not do until I get a bill in Australian dollars.
• Don’t send me stuff copied-and-pasted from the online help. I’ve read it. I’m not an idiot.
• Solve my problem: Get me an invoice in Australian dollars and I will pay it right away.

Again, if you want to solve my problem, you will send me an invoice in Australian dollars and I will pay that.

Here’s the message I sent in last week:

I’ve been trying to do this now for nearly a year, and I’m quite frustrated with the process. I moved from Canada to Australia nearly 3 years ago, and have been trying to change my eBay contact information for the past couple of years. Once every few months I fill out the form, and am informed that the change may take up to a month to happen. So I wait. Nothing happens. I lose interest. A few months later, I try again with the same result.

Right now, I have a message in my inbox telling me I owe eBay C$88.20 for some auctions I created. I want to pay this in Australian Dollars, because that’s where I am. I actually cannot pay this in Canadian dollars, because I have no Canadian credit card. Please change my account to an Australian account so that I can pay your bill.

Feel free to contact me on my mobile 0415 276 127 if you have any questions.

I await your reply.

.....jurgen

We’ve just moved. More on that later. In the progress of moving, quite a lot of bubblewrap was used, and quite a lot of bubblewrap was popped. It’s mostly used up now, and I need a fix. Luckily, someone has felt the same pain and made a Silly Flash Thing. Manic mode is especially good.

... you laugh out loud at this list while reading it at work, and apologise to anyone who might have overheard.

killerwhaletank!

No really. Your banana. Get your mind out of the gutter, I know what you’re thinking. Well, at least I know what I was thinking.

A Vancouver-based company has created a hard plastic cover for preventing bruising to bananas during transport. Or at least they’ve created a website saying they’ve created a banana guard. Next thing they need to work on is an alarm that goes off when a pear is ripe. Those things are so sneaky.

I’m told that some nutty bride ran away from her nutty family in the nutty USA a little while ago, and everyone’s all up in arms about it. Oh well. Like another tempest in a teapot, the USA thinks that everyone in the world cares about it too. Apparently it’s been front-page news. Wow. These people need something to do with their time… but I digress.

The fantastic Smoking Gun website managed to get a whole bunch of feedback sent to the town and the pastor and pretty much everyone involved in the event. My favourite is one from a pastor who goes on a sensible, tasteful rampage against huge formal weddings today, and the general scary nuttiness of the USA.

This is such a wonderfully arty-geeky thing: The Baby Name Wizard’s Name Voyager. That mouthful will take you to a Java applet that tracks, graphically, the popularity of baby names over the past 100 years. Fascinating statistics, and they’re presented in a useful and elegant way. Major arty and geeky points to these fine people.

PS Don’t read more into this than what’s plainly up on the screen. I filed it in the “Geek” section for goodness sake!

Georgi was good to remind me that there’s a Beer Festival coming up in a couple of weeks. Well, she didn’t so much point out the beer festival in and of itself (she’s a dyed-in-the-wool wine snob and I love her for it), she actually pointed out the Beer Hunter game, where you shoot beer off the top of Flinders Street Station. Cool.

According to this Slashdot article, Microsoft is working on cars that don’t crash. Microsoft. Crash. Go nuts, gentle reader.