colin's intertube

Every once in awhile, I turn to eBay to buy or sell something. Every once in awhile, I'm reminded why I can't stand eBay.

The concept is fine., and the site itself is fine - I have no problem with these. Sure, the fees are annoying for sellers, but in many cases your options are to deal with them, or keep the item. The problem I have, and I know that millions of others would agree, is stupid users. A few days ago, I listed a 4x5 Graflex Graflok back. Handy item for large format shooters, but I just don't have a use for it. Its not a particularly expensive item, so I just took some photos with my cell phone. I even went as far as strapping a photo enlarger lens to my phone, which actually helps quite a bit for overall image quality. The results are obviously not the greatest, but by eBay standards, they're more than fine.

Apparently, somebody disagrees. The next morning, I find this in my inbox:

Dear rhubarbicus,

The first picture is of such poor quality that I cant see the flaws or
scratches this back may have. Totally useless. Can you post an
image that wasn't made with a cell phone?

- tios_corner

Where the hell did that come from? If he would have just sent the first sentence, I would have been quick to help him. But the rest of the message is just plain rude. Because of that, I'm starting to think that this guy probably isn't worth the hassle of selling to. Whatever, I'll tell him what's up, and see how he responds before I outright block him. My response:

Dear tios_corner,

I did take some better photos, but as I do not
own a digital camera, I had to process the film
and it was not yet dry enough to be scanned at
the time of the posting. I will have them up as
soon as I can, unless someone else buys the item
first.

Sorry for being totally useless.

- rhubarbicus

Seems reasonable enough to me. And 100% true. For whatever reason, he didn't believe me:

Dear rhubarbicus,

I dont know whether you're being serious or just being sarcastic. If you can post sharp
pictures of expired film than I'm confidant you have the means to do the same here.
Let me know once you're ready with a serious photo that's clear and representative of
the item. If that's not going to happen then I have no time to waste on silliness.

- tios_corner

On a side note, a quick search for his username seems to indicate that he has plenty of time for silliness. Regardless, this eliminated any doubt I had that I want nothing to do with this guy. In hope that maybe he'll learn a lesson from this - to not be rude to people in the future, I let him know that I was indeed serious and that he's definitely not getting the item:

Dear tios_corner,

Yes, I was completely serious. I do not own a digital camera other than my cell phone. The expired film photos were taken with the same cell phone. Other than that, I shoot film exclusively. I took some photos of this item but as I said, I don't have the film scanned yet. I'm not sure why that is difficult for you to believe.

Regardless, I don't even want to sell it to you anymore, because I know it will just be a gigantic hassle. I don't have time to deal with people who worry about how pretty an item is and whine at me if there are 3 scratches and I only said there were 2. I've been through it. You are the reason I and so many others hate ebay. You've been blocked from bidding on my items. Good day.

- rhubarbicus

and boom goes the dynamite:

Dear rhubarbicus,

No YOU are the reason ebay is a hateful experience for people who have been
here for years and years. I have 3 accounts with feedback totaling in the
hundreds. But look at YOU, Mr. 55'er. You come in as a new little shit, you
claim an item is this way or that way then you publish SHIT photos to match
your personality and then the buyer is forced to file a not as described claim
against you for your willful arrogance. Learn to read, I already told you I have
no time for stupidity. Do not EVER contact me again, you got that jackass?
NEVER.

- tios_corner

Hot diggity damn. How could I NOT reply to that?

Dear tios_corner,

Seriously, are you 12? Let me give you a tip.
If you want somebody to do you a favor, *don't*
be rude and call them names. People don't like
to help people who are rude. If you would have
been POLITE in your initial request, I would have
been more than happy to help you out. But you
didn't, you decided to be rude for no particular
reason. I have done absolutely nothing wrong,
nothing to incite these hateful comments. There
is one person here who is acting like a child,
calling names and using foul language, and that
is you.

Grow up.

ps I'm pretty sure having multiple accounts is
not allowed.

- rhubarbicus

At this point, part of me was hoping that this would be the end of it. I'll be honest though, I was really hoping to hear back again, purely for comic value. And oh boy, did he deliver. Not only did he deliver, he played internet detective and found my personal website and email address! Here's his latest email:

Okay Colin Baker - no problem, I reported you for a policy violation and just heard back from ebay about it. This will be recorded on your account. What you and your friends think of me personally is of no consequence. You're weak for even sending something like that. What matters is when someone tells you not to contact them again you might want to consider whether it's worth risking your year older account to defend your fragile ego. I've had another knuckle head bounced off ebay for similar nonsense so you wouldn't be the first. Follow policy before you get thrown off ebay. Nice blog btw, boring but nice.

Well, hopefully my blog is a little less boring now. I was a bit interested to see that he took the time to report me for a "policy violation" - as far as I can tell, the only policy I have violated is posting photos not up to tios_corner's requirements. Oh wait, that's not a policy. I was curious, so I asked:

Dearest Tio's Corner (if that is your real name),

Wow, now you're stalking me too? Incredible. So exactly which "policy violation" did you report me for? As far as I can tell, the only thing I've done wrong is post photos that are not up to Tio's Corner's standards. I don't think that's against the rules.

Oh, and for somebody who "doesn't have time for stupidity" you sure do have a lot of time for trolling ebay and harassing other users in much the same way:

http://thecommodities.blogspot.com/2009/07/question-ii-regarding-polaroi...
http://thecommodities.blogspot.com/2009/09/up-to-speed.html

Awesome. I'll bet my blog will be less boring once I start posting about you too!

I'm still waiting for my account to be suspended, btw. Haven't heard anything yet, but I sure am nervous!

Your pal,

Colin M. Baker XVII
Master of Totally Useless Ebay Photos

Welp. I think I zinged him pretty good here. And I'm still waiting to be kicked off of eBay!

Actually, now that I think about it, I should start using eBay more often. Because he's right - this blog is boring, and I could use a few idiots to write about.

While its not quite the direction I had hoped to go with my next film camera (I had been hoping to find something inexpensive and medium-format and more elitist than a Holga), I picked up a used Nikon N6006 last week. And that makes sense, since I do have a few Nikon lenses that I've purchased for my digital camera. I was really excited to finally be able meter in-camera with my favorite lens ever, the $30 55mm f3.5 Micro AI. My D40 takes great pictures, but a lot of important features (for me, at least) are missing - the ability to meter with old manual focus lenses, and the ability to auto-focus on older, non AF-S lenses being two of the biggest. The N6006, despite being almost 20 years old now, can do both of these. I picked the camera up from a local dealer for about $50, which seems to be a fair price for the body.

First thing I did was popped that old macro lens on. Wow! Metering! What a breath of fresh air. It seems silly that I'm impressed by this, but after spending so much time trying to do guess-and-check metering with this awesome lens, I feel like I just acquired the most advanced camera ever. Excellent. Next, I tried swapping on one of my newer AF-S zoom lenses. This did not work so well, unfortuantely. My lenses are all of the "G" variety, which means that they're missing the aperture ring - on these, aperture is controlled from the camera. Program and Shutter-priority modes give an "Fee" reading on the LCD, which I assumed to mean that those modes won't work*. Switching over to aperture-priority appeared to display the current f-stop fine, however, so I assumed that was the way to go. I couldn't find a way to change this from the camera, so I also assumed that it only supports the maximum*. Which is fine, since that's what I use most of the time anyway.

* I was wrong about this

I picked up a cheap 4-pack of Kodak Gold 200 from Walgreens (I'll try something better later), and loaded the first roll. I took a bunch of photos with the 55m Micro and my 55-200m VR, got the negatives developed and scanned to photo CD. The photos taken with the 55m all looked great, but everything with from the VR looked horribly underexposed (I'm still getting used to the whole "better to overexpose" rule with film, as opposed to the opposite being true with digital). Here's a sample:
Underexposed N6006 VR photo
I focused on the man crossing the street, but as you can see, the entire photo looks sharp. The LCD aperture reading always showed the maximum aperture for that particular zoom level, but as the photo suggests, the lens must have been set to a smaller aperture. Because of this, the meter calculations were way off. Even though it was a bright and sunny day, the camera's calculated shutter speed for the large aperture still didn't expose long enough for the smaller opening on the lens. I'll bet that I could probably use a different camera to set the aperture, and then move the lens over and use manual mode to meter correctly. But that would be the most annoying and ghetto thing ever.

Now, I have learned to never trust anything that Ken Rockwell says, but he does have a useful Nikon Lens Compatibility guide that appears to be correct. The tables confirm my findings, stating that only P and S modes work with the newer Nikon "G" lenses. It appears that the camera won't allow you to set aperture manually (I'm assuming it just wasn't designed with the G anti-feature in mind), but it can handle it automatically. Makes sense, since I think some lenses allow you to set it from either the aperture ring or from the camera's controls, and with aperture-priority, you're supposed to set it yourself (and maybe this camera only supports using the aperture ring).

Overall, I like the camera despite the quirks. I guess I'll just have to get some more old-school auto-focus lenses. And then upgrade my digital body, so I can use those on both!

Recently, I decided to make it a personal goal of mine to visit every Midwest League park before the end of the season. And why not? Most of them are within reasonable driving distance, tickets are cheap, and the parks typically have a lot of stuff for little kids to do. I've been to a few Wisconsin Timber Rattlers games, which I really enjoy...it's great to have a Brewers affiliate within driving distance again. Last Saturday, I saw that there were two more games reasonably close - Peoria and Quad Cities were both playing within 3 hours from me. Randomly, I picked Quad Cities. We bought tickets online, hopped in the car, and made our way.

Davenport, IA was hosting what appeared to be a music festival downtown, so most of the streets leading toward Modern Woodmen Park were blocked off. We eventually made our way around it, and arrived at the park about two hours before game time. There was an older gentleman sitting at the parking lot entrance, who was there to inform us that parking was free...excellent. Even though we were there early, there were still a lot of cars there, and even a few tailgaters. Lots of fans were wearing Hawaiian shirts - turned out to be Jimmy Buffett Night*. The stadium was situated along the Mississippi River, and waterfront stadia always score points with me. On the outside, I thought the brick façade made the stadium look much larger than most single-A facilities.

* is there some requirement that every minor league baseball team has to have a Jimmy Buffett Night?

Around one and one-half hours before game time, the gates opened. Interestingly, there was a long, steep stairway that went up from the main gate to the grandstand. I suspect that this was done to protect the seating area from flooding, though I'm not sure how useful that is if the parking lot/entrance is underwater. Inside the park, you will see box seating extended down to the end of each dugout. Beyond that, the 1st base side has stairs leading to a large picnic area. On the 3rd base side, bleacher seating extends much further into the outfield. Like many parks built around this time (1931, in this case), the L-shaped seating configuration leads me to believe that it was built with both baseball and football in mind. Despite this, it feels very much baseball-only. Great sightlines - I watched bits of the game from just about everywhere in the park, never had any bad views, and you can get very close to the action.

As someone who almost always purchases a general admission ticket to minor league games, I really enjoyed this park. This is one of the parks I've visited that allows you to walk all the way around the playing field in a complete loop. This is good for one year old boys who always need to be running someplace, as well as dads who like to take pictures from various spots. Leaving the complex after the game was easy, even with a large music festival going on nearby - traffic was still very light. I'll definitely look forward to returning.

The rest of my photos from the day can be found here

The Palm Pre is a pretty awesome phone, but there are a few minor drawbacks. One, the built-in IM client only supports AIM and Google Talk at this point. I'm sure others will be added in the future, since the messenger uses the same libpurple that Pidgin does, but until then you're either stuck with those two, or probably trying to find some workaround.

Google talk is really just a jabber (or XMPP) server. Jabber is nice because it can connect to other Jabber servers. There are also plugins that allow Jabber to talk directly to other IM networks, including AOL, MSN, Yahoo, and ICQ. AOL doesn't matter for us, since we have support included with the phone. I do use MSN and ICQ quite a bit, so I that's what I'm going to focus on. There are some public jabber servers out there that already do this, but I'm just a little nervous about storing all of my IM passwords on some random server run by people I don't know.

First off, I need a Jabber server. We use one called Openfire at work, and it seems pretty nice. Unfortunately, it's Java, and my personal server runs FreeBSD. I haven't had much luck getting the two to work together, so I didn't feel like trying. FreeBSD has packages for a couple other jabber servers - jabberd2 and ejabberd. I went with jabberd2, which can be found in ports under net-im/jabberd. I built mine with MySQL support, since I use MySQL for a lot of other things. It supports several other databases if you prefer something else.

Installing jabberd2 was easy with a simple 'make install clean'. From there, follow the official jabberd2 Basic Configuration Guide to set it up. It's very easy, and the configs are straightforward. Doesn't need anything fancy, you just need to be able to connect to it from the internet. Make note of the hostname you set, and you will want to add a DNS entry for it if you don't have one already. Its not 100% required, but you should generate an SSL certificate too.

Then, I installed transports for the other IM protocols I want to use. I chose PyMSNt for MSN and pyicqt for ICQ. These are in ports under net-im/jabber-pymsn and net-im/jabber-pyicq, respectively. To setup the MSN transport to connect to my Jabber server, I opened its only config file (/usr/local/etc/jabber-pymsn.xml on FreeBSD), and changed the following:

<pymsnt>
  <jid>msn.mydomain.com</jid>
  <host>x.x.x.x</host>
  <mainServer>x.x.x.x</mainServer>
</pymsnt>

Where <jid> is a hostname for the transport (make sure it has a valid DNS entry), <host> is your server's public IP address, and <mainServer> is the IP of your jabber server. You can change other stuff if you want, but those are the important ones. The ICQ transport configuration (/usr/local/etc/jabber-pyicq.xml in FreeBSD) was very similar - I made the same changes as above. After all this is done, we can start the services. I added these lines to my /etc/rc.conf:

jabberd_enable="YES"
jabber_pymsn_enable="YES"
jabber_pyicq_enable="YES"

and ran the three startup scripts:

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jabberd start
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jabber-pymsn-transport start
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/jabber-pyicq-transport start

Obviously, these will be different if you're on a linux or other server, so refer to each package's documentation to be sure. Once my server is up and running, I need to connect my Google Talk account to my new transports. You will need to do this from a standalone jabber client. For this purpose, I recommend using a client called Psi. First, you will need to set it up to log into your GTalk account. This is pretty straightforward, just follow the walkthrough here.

Once you're connected, right-click on the account in the main window and select Service Discovery:

In the Address: bar, type the hostname of your jabber server. You should then see a list of transports. Right-click on one, and click "Register":

You will then be prompted for your username and password for that network. The Psi client will also ask you to authorize the Transport accounts, as well as all of your contacts from that IM network. And that's just about it. One thing I would recommend is logging into Gmail and cleaning up your contacts list. Each contact from the networks you added will show up on your Gmail contacts as something like "icqnumber@icq.yourjabberserver.com". On my Pre, I prefer to have all profiles for a particular contact merged. To make this happen automatically, edit each jabber buddy's name in your Gmail contacts to match the name you already have set in your Pre's contact list. If you have multiple IM accounts for one person, you can merge the two contacts. I'd also recommend setting the transport accounts (which will show up as just msn.yourjabberserver.com or simlar) to never show up in chat. This will prevent them from appearing in the Messenger app on the Pre. Finally, log into your GTalk from the Pre. Your MSN and ICQ friends will all show up as Google Talk users, but you can see which IM account you're talking to from the conversation window.

And that's it. I'm sure I forgot something, but feel free to leave a comment if you run into any trouble.

I would like to see Chris Coleman manage the US National Team.

There, I said it.