Category: Internet matters

Posts about the internet

First eBay sale

I’ve joined the ranks of those who have at least listed an item on eBay. In this case, it’s the Sony headphones that I want to sell in order to get money for a snazzier pair. These are brand new and in the original packaging.

I may have set the minimum bid a bit high, but you can’t set a reserve price under £50 and I’m really not willing to sell these for less than £15 after spending almost £25 on them. In any case, we will see how this experiment in commerce goes.

[Update: 21 June 2006] With exactly 12 seconds left in the auction, someone placed a bid. Looks like I am offloading these headphones for £15 plus the cost of shipping.

The economics of it all:

Price initially paid on Amazon: £25.66 C$53.01

Payment received from eBay: £15.00 C$30.99
Shipping fee from eBay: £2.00 C$4.13

eBay listing fee: £1.29 C$2.68
PayPal currency fee: £0.86 C$1.77
Cost of packaging: £0.49 C$1.01
Cost of shipping: £0.68 C$1.40
Net eBay income: £13.68 C$28.26

Amazon cost – eBay income: -£11.98 -C$24.75

In the end, choosing to buy these headphones cost me about twenty-five bucks for three months’ usage. Let’s hope the ones I choose to replace them with last much longer.

Syndication and RSS: a simple introduction

A few people have asked me what ‘syndication’ and ‘RSS’ are, so I thought I would write a quick, non-technical introduction.

Syndication intro

The content of this blog can be broadly separated into two types: the text that makes up posts, and all the formatting that surrounds it. What syndication does is take just the text, allowing it to be read through some other site or program than the one usually used to view the site. The big reason why this is helpful is because it lets you quickly check a great many information streams to see if any have changed.

Instead of having to check more than 100 different pages every time I want to see if one has been updated, I can take a look at one page that lists all the different syndication ‘feeds.’

BlogLines

One service that allows this is BlogLines. If you have a look at my BlogLines account, you will see that it tracks more than 100 different ‘feeds.’ These include things as diverse as all the LiveJournal, WordPress, Blogger, and other blogs run by friends of mine; listings of video clips from the Colbert Report and the Daily show; headlines from Metafilter, Slashdot, and other news sites; and a few miscellaneous other things.

If you sign up for a BlogLines account, you can add two different feeds from my blog. Both use a technology called RSS, which stands for ‘Really Simple Syndication.’ The addresses in question are:

Blog posts: http://www.sindark.com/feed/
Blog comments: http://www.sindark.com/comments/feed/

Opening either in a normal Internet Explorer or Firefox window will probably bring up a lot of confusing looking garble. This is the machine readable version of the blog. If you add one of those addresses to your list of feeds in BlogLines, however, you will see a list of recent posts presented, complete with short summaries and links back to the original. Whenever this site (or any other one you have listed) gets updated, it will turn bold on your BlogLines page.

Signing up for the comments feed will allow you to see whenever anybody leaves a comment on any post of mine, without having to check each one individually. I find it a useful way to follow conversations, without having to look at many different individual pages. For people running blogs, it can also be a good way to catch spam.

Firefox live bookmarks

Another way to read RSS feeds is to add them as ‘Live Bookmarks’ within Firefox. This can be done very easily. In Firefox, look over to the right hand side of the blog’s address, inside the white box near the top of the window. On the right hand side, there is a little orange icon with a white dot and radiating arcs. Any page on which you see that icon has a syndication feed available.

If you click that orange icon, a window will pop up asking you to name the bookmark and choose where in your bookmarks menu you want to see it. Then, any time you go into the bookmarks menu and select the name of that site, it will show you a listing of recent post titles. You can click on any of them to go to the post itself.

More information

Bloglines FAQ
WikiPedia on RSS (includes the orange logo I described)
Firefox Live Bookmark tutorial

A few words on the OED

Those of you on the networks of better universities probably have access to that finest of English dictionaries: the Oxford English Dictionary. A bit of the colourful history of the thing can be learned from the entertaining book The Professor and the Madman. Perhaps the most notable thing about the OED is that it doesn’t simply seek to define all words in the English language, it also seeks to identify when they were first used in a particular sense. As such, it constitutes a wonderful history of the language itself.

Here’s a special bonus for people using Firefox or Safari. Follow these instructions and you can add a new button that, if pressed, opens a popup window that lets you do an OED search. Also, if you select a word in a brower window and click the button, it will automatically look it up.

Like online access to the OED in general, this will only work if you are physically connected to the network of an institution that subscribes, or you are using a virtual private network (VPN) to access such a network.

Third Oxford Bloggers’ Gathering Wednesday

To all those who run a blog in Oxford:

I encourage you to attend the third informal quarterly gathering of Oxford bloggers, to take place this Wednesday (May 31st) at 8:00pm at The Bear.

This was announced previously, but I am trying to encourage a good turnout. In the past, these gatherings have been good fun: with enjoyably conversation and a surprising amount of affinity between those connected by only this one activity.

Oxford bloggers who want to earn my thanks might consider posting something about this themselves, so as to broaden the scope of who might attend. Feel free to direct any questions towards me.

Bug report thread

Found something wrong with a sibilant intake of breath or an associated site I run? Please report it here. I try to get everything operating as well as I possibly can, but there will always be oversights. Right now, when people report them, they tend to do so all over the place and it’s hard to keep track.

This covers all types of errors not directly related to a particular post: compatibility errors, access errors, formatting errors, etc.

Those who contribute here will earn fame and fortune. Well, my appreciation, at least. If you posted an unresolved issue on another post, please copy it over here.

Many thanks.

[Update: 8 October 2006] This is no longer the proper location for reporting bugs. From now on, use the bug reporting page within the Sindarkwiki.

[Update 2 September 2010] Unfortunately, due to terribly spam problems, I had to lock down the wiki. Now, only authorized users can edit it. For anybody else, please post any problems with the site on this comment thread.

Oxford bloggers’ gathering: May 31st

After another debate about dates and locations, the following compromise has been reached for the third quarterly Oxford bloggers’ gathering:

Place: The Bear
Date: Wednesday, May 31st
Time: 8:00pm

As with the previous two such assemblies, anyone who runs a blog from Oxford is most welcome. Feel free to indicate the intention to attend, by means of a comment.

Another Oxford bloggers’ gathering?

The first Oxford bloggers’ gathering happened on 29 October 2005.

The second, on 21 February 2006.

If they are to be quarterly, the third is due fairly soon. Provided, of course, people are still interested. I am perfectly willing to shift from the format of meeting in the evening at The Turf, if people prefer something else. Indeed, meeting at The Perch on a sunny afternoon seems much more spring-like.

Remember, those who show up automatically get a spot at the top of my list of Oxford blogs.

[Edited on 15 May 2006 to add] I propose Wednesday of sixth week (the 31st of May) as the date for this event. Additionally, I propose that it take place at The Turf, as in the two prior instances. I’m not sure many people would be willing to make the trek to The Perch, much as I think it would be nicer. How is 8:00pm for a starting time?

[Edited on 17 May 2006 to add] Because The Turf will probably be packed with finalists, we have decided to relocate the gathering to The Bear: south of the High Street and fairly close to Merton College.

PS. On an unrelated but amusing note, thanks to the new Google Trends service, I can prove that more people are searching for love, but there is consistently more news about money.

WordPress has taken over

As you can see, going directly to www.sindark.com will not take you directly to the new WordPress blog. I encourage people to register for a user account that will let you comment without leaving you information, and perhaps let me do fancier things later.

If you want the RSS feed, it is: http://www.sindark.com/feed/ Please update your BlogLines accounts and such. There is even a feed for comments, at: http://www.sindark.com/comments/feed/

Should you want to look at it, the old blog is still available at www.sindark.com/blogger/. It probably will not be updated any longer. I will not be moving the post pages or archive pages for the moment, so Google searches leading to entries on the old blog should still work.