Category: Uncategorized

After getting a rocket for my birthday, I saw a video on YouTube where someone attached a video camera and filmed the launch looking directly down the rocket. It was pretty neat because the rocket goes up quite quickly and you can see all the people standing around the launch and then see more of the surroundings. Then the rocket peaks out and you actually see the parachute come out, but it gets a little frantic as the rocket spins a lot on the way down. Still, pretty neat.

In the video, they said it was a gum camera because it was like a stick of gum. I went looking for a gum camera, hoping I could find something cheap (since you could easily break or lose the camera the first time you try it). I found a spy pen on eBay. It looked outwards from the pen, not directly down, and they seemed to go for about $20 shipped. I bid about $13 on a few of them, but never won. I looked around further and found the exact same looking pen at dhgate.com, a sort of Chinese version of Amazon for less than $10. You had to supply your own micro SD card for memory, but it came with a micro USB cable to read the contents. It claimed to be High Definition, but some reviews pointed out that while the resolution was high, really it was just VGA video at twice the size, but not twice the resolution.

Continue reading “Spy Pen”

This past week, a guy signed up to edit the Flashlight Wiki, and he even sent me an email asking to be confirmed, like the instructions say to do. I went ahead and confirmed him for editing and he went to work on the article about Maglites. Apparently on Wikipedia, there was some information being added that was kind of critical of Maglites, and some people said the information didn’t have legitimate sources since it was from flashlight discussion forums. Because it was still good information, this guy thought it would be good to move it to Flashlight Wiki, where sourcing isn’t quite as rigorous. I didn’t have a problem with that.
Continue reading “Wikimedia Database”

I was thinking about jazzing up my movie reviews website. I figured the easiest way to do this would be to add a stylesheet which could apply background colors, text styles, and snazzy layouts to the whole site easily. I went and looked for some sample stylesheets to see what I could do. I have worked with stylesheets on the blog and on the wiki and they get kind of complicated, so I just wanted something simple. But I would need to add some additional tags to the movie reviews to make it all work.

The way the movie review site works right now is all of the reviews are stored in a Microsoft Access database and then I can create all the pages of the website by pushing a couple of buttons in the database. Then I just need to upload the files to my server. This is different from how the blog and wiki work. They store the files in a database on the web server. You enter a blog entry or wiki article and it is stored in the online database. The blog and wiki use php code and SQL databases. It’s not insanely complicated, but I don’t want to have to write all of the php from scratch. So I wanted to stick to Microsoft Access.
Continue reading “Revamped Movie Reviews”

In 2007 I started DSL service for $19.99 a month with no telephone service. This was a condition that AT&T agreed to as part of the BellSouth and AT&T merger. So I knew it wouldn’t last. The rate lasted longer than I thought, but last December it went up to $25. Still, that wasn’t too bad, so I’ve been paying that, even though I have DSL Lite which is the slowest form of high speed internet (768 kbps download speed and 128 kbps upload speed).

The latest bill was for $29.95, which seems like too much for what I am getting. I have been getting ads for Clear internet service which creates a 4G cellular hotspot in your house. Their high speed plan is $50 a month (3000 to 6000 kbps download, 1000 kbps upload), but they have a lower speed plan (1500 kbps download and 500 kbps upload, still much faster than DSL Lite) for $34.95. They have two choices for equipment. One is a home hub that connects to the 4G network and then communicates with the devices in your house over wi-fi (it also has a port for a ethernet cable that I would use for my desktop computer). The other choice is a battery-powered device that gives you a wi-fi hotspot wherever you go since it is connecting to a wireless system anyway. That was kind of neat because it meant I could take the internet wherever I went. The home device has an ethernet port to hook up a desktop computer, but the portable one doesn’t. Either device is $50.

I figured before I signed up for Clear, I should check with AT&T and see if they would give me a better rate or at least increase the speed to something like what Clear is offering. Their offices were closed this weekend, but open today (surprising since it is MLK Day). They said they could upgrade my plan to one that costs $32.95 (I think, but I couldn’t find a plan online at that price point) and it would be a lot faster. Then they could offer me a 50% discount for 6 months, knocking the price down to $16.50. Alternatively, they could give me a $15 per month discount that would knock the price down to $23 (that must be for a $38/month plan which is 1500 kbps) but it would be for 12 months. I’d rather have 12 months and even with the higher speed it is still cheaper than what I was paying before the rate increase. That’s enough to keep me for another year anyway, then I’ll just have to revisit the issue next January. They said the new service would be available to me on Wednesday and I would just need to unplug the modem and plug it back in.

I used to post quarterly about all the stuff I was selling through Amazon affiliate links. But the iPod stuff has died down quite a bit. 2012 saw a little bit of resurgence with some flashlight-related things selling like flashlights, batteries, and chargers. Plus there is always a secondary effect where I refer people to Amazon and then they buy something completely different, but I still earn a commission.

All told there were 134 items sold in 2012 worth $2649, earning me a commission of $128 (which pays for the hosting the website and domain registrations). The most expensive item that was sold was a kitchen disposal for $129. Second most expensive was an Amazon Kindle for $99. The thing I sold the most of was compact Sony charger, with 13 units being sold (with prices from $7.99 to $11.97). It’s a great little charger and I actually do have links to it, unlike the disposal or Kindle.

The state of Georgia passed a law saying that any goods sold in Georgia, or by companies with locations in Georgia, should apply Georgia sales tax. So while Amazon does not have a location in Georgia, Georgia says that because I am in Georgia and am an affiliate of Amazon, that Amazon should collect Georgia sales tax. This seems like nonsense to me. If the original seller was in Utah, Amazon headquarters are located in Washington state, the affiliate is in Georgia, and the item shipped from a warehouse in Indiana, then by that reasoning they could all 4 charge sales tax. Amazon says it has no intention of complying, and I don’t know that Georgia has any way of making them comply. They could try to make me comply, but I’m not in a position to collect sales tax since I don’t process the payments. So we’ll see if anything materializes. If Georgia somehow wins, then Amazon might just drop all of its Georgia affiliates.