More permanent stuff at http://www.dusbabek.org/~garyd

01 June 2009

Tagfriendly Updates, 1 Jun 2009

I've been quietly hacking away, albeit slowly, on the next iteration of my Tagfriendly project.  The back end is in a state I am happy with, so this version is all about making the front end suck less.

You can sample the work as it progresses at http://www.tagfriendly.com/tf2. This is truly alpha-quality work, lacking much in the way of CSS, but I link here because I know a few people follow this blog and are interested in it.  That, and since I'm not actively working on the current version, I feel the need to show something for my efforts.  :)  I push updated code live about once or twice a week.

I use more AJAX this time around, including fancy transitions and assembling the page in chunks.  I'm not sure if this is the right approach yet or not; I'll see how far it gets me.

In a few days I'll start work on the new player, now that I've discovered there is a published API for the Yahoo! Media Player (that is very hard to find via google).

And Now, A Completely Unrelated Gripe:

I offcially hate eBay.  I sell one or two items on eBay per year, so things are usually in a different place every time I need to sell something.  I can handle that, but two things tonight really bugged me.

1.  I could not find a way to sell my stuff without signing up for and agreeing to automatic payment of seller fees.  This needless hoop was in my face and prevented me from doing what I needed to do.

2.  I have an unopened seasons 1-5 boxed set of 7th Heaven that I want to get rid of.**  Well, in its wisdom, eBay has decided to cap shipping on DVDs at $3.  In other words, I couldn't charge more than $3 if I wanted to.  But this boxed set weighs about 5 pounds and will easily cost me $6-7 ship.  I realize what they're trying to do, which is crack down on S+H abuse, but at what cost?  They know the exact item I'm selling because they had me enter the SKU.  They should know how much it weights and what it would cost to ship through various methods.  Total fail, eBay; it's craigslist from here on out.

**I really thought Nicole liked the show and it would make an excellent Christmas gift.  It turns out she only watches the show on Myth because she can skip the commercials and watch it at 150% speed.  Total fail, Gary.

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