Letter Never Sent

I’m starting a little hosting business on the side. If you sign up for an account now, you’ll get free setup with your second month free. In all honesty, it’s a good deal. Check out everything here. Also, check out the site and tell me if everything is working okay.

I changed a little something in my server settings so that now those Dutch people who keep hotlinking my images for their forum avatars will get a gay porn image instead. I made sure to heavily pixelate the naughty bits, but you can still tell what’s going on. I added a message as well. “HOTLINKING SUCKS STOP STEALING MY BANDWIDTH”.

Basically, if anyone tries to link to my images remotely (hotlink) so that it is using my bandwidth to decorate their page they will be redirected to this other image. If anyone notices anything weird caused by this please let me know. It should only disallow direct linking to my images in IMG tags from domains other than this one. People can still save anything I use here, but if they want to use it on their website they should save a copy to their server.

That thing on the left, near the bottom, where it lists what I’ve been listening to, Blogamp, finally fixed it. Not that YOU would care. I have something I should be working on, so as a result I work on stuff I’ve been putting off rather than work on this thing I really should be doing.

I also noticed that Wikipedia has a new look. Super mignon!

I will pay someone to implement my Trillian Pro Plugin ideas. Plugins are basically addons to add extra abilities to the application. Usually, they are written by third-parties. I even had a dream I tried to persuade this chubby kid to write Trillian plugins for me. I’m obsessed. Here a few ideas I don’t mind blabbing about:

• Plugin to save chat logs as formatted HTML (colors and all) which can be saved locally and/or uploaded as blog entries
• Plugin to query whois records to look for new domains.
• Plugin to send a message to people when they log into AIM if you are not at the keyboard.

I have more floating around but I can’t remember just what they were at the moment. I need you mysterious programmer, if you’re out there. Send help.

he plugins I am very happy with now:

• Cabriometer (great weather plugin)
• News reader plugin
• Spellcheck for your IM’s
• POP3 Email checker plugin

There are a lot more, but there are so many it’s just best to load the ones you’ll actually use.

…and I am an eBay addict. I even bought a digital postage scale. This is probably a phase that will pass as soon as I unload all my junk. The good news is, it is an obsession that is making me a little money while ridding me of some unnecessary stuff. Here are a few things I’ve learned while researching and through my own experience:

1. Start your auctions on the weekend since they will end on the weekend (for 7 day auctions) when most people are using eBay
2. Don’t use any of the auction upgrades. They may help, but the costs are prohibitive unless you are selling expensive items. Instead of auction upgrades, add more photos (using your own image hosting) to your descriptions and spend some time writing good descriptions.
3. Set your opening fee low, that way you capitalize on the lower listing fees and attract more bids.
4. Figure out the shipping costs BEFORE you submit the auction. A few times I’ve either overcharged and had to refund, or undercharged and got stuck with the remaining due postage.
5. Accept most forms of payment. It will bring you more bids and may save paypal fees.
6. Maintain a good rating. Some people won’t buy from anyone with a less than perfect seller rating.
7. Communicate with your buyers even though they can be really time-consuming with their requests.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some stuff, but that’s a good start. Ebay fees suck suck suck, but where else can you sell stuff to so many people?

I was going to make some impulsive declaration about having some sort of blogging ennui, but I decided that would turn out to be a very temporary feeling. I do feel like I should have something important and/or profound to say, but I really don’t. I don’t even feel remotely self-promoting. I do feel a duty to a few individuals who expect the text here to rearrange itself from time to time. I feel like I’ve been pretty busy at work and everywhere else, especially with E3 coming this week. I’ll be working with people at the show… over the internet… via voicechat… while in game. That should be interesting for the first hour and then tedious, I would imagine. I’ll be helping demo one of our games from Austin to convention attendees in Los Angeles.