More biking... Fixie!

I rebuilt a track bike this summer here is a picture of her. She's fast and sweet as sugar on the uphill, but not so fast on the way down (no brakes).

Since I took these pics I had to replace the stem and handlebar because the first stem had a fracture in it. Lucky for me bikeworks had a brand new-old-stock cinelli model #63 bar to match the same cinelli XA stem that I bought online.





Here is a pic of the track dropout on my schwinn madison.

Last night was the 10th annual Poets House bridge walk. At the end of the night, Bill Murray read "A True Account of Talking with the Sun at Fire Island" by Frank O'Hara. This is officially now one of my favorite poems. In it The Sun is speaking directly to Frank O'Hara. I especially like this part,

...You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you’re different. Now, I’ve heard some
say you’re crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you’re a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You’ll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don’t appear
at all one day they think you’re lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.

Best Buddies 90 miler

I should have posted this right after the ride but it took me some time to get the pictures together. I went on a 90 mile bikeride from Boston to Cape Cod on 5/22/05.






It was a fundraiser in support of kids and adults with mental disabilities. It was in the cold (sometimes freezing) rain, with heavy winds, and my bike tire sprung a leak at the 18 mile marker that had me stopping to pump air every 30 minutes. I couldn't get a spare tire because I was riding "tubular" sew-up tires and I had packed my own spare tire in the wrong bag!

To make a long story short, I got off course for 4 miles (8 miles out and back) and eventually didn't finish the full 90. I made it to the third support stop at the 62 mile mark and was so cold that it was hard to stop shaking. Here are the stragglers (me included) walking our bikes across the finish line in Hyannis Port.



On the bright side, I got to shake hands with a presidential candidate and I even rode with him for a bit. I hope he runs again in 2008, HE did finish the ride. Kerry is genuine and tough.

The next day, back in New York, being frustrated at not having finished I went for a 20 mile bike ride around Manhattan and Brooklyn to make up for it. I'm hoping this is the year I get back on the bike.

Holy Car!

Pope Benedicts XVI's 6 year old Volkswagen sells for $244,000. Full story.

3-d web browsing

What I'm referring to is the ability of web pages to display actionable sub-menus.

There are lots of navigation menus that do this, but what I'm referring to is a bit different. After some thought I realize navigation menus are idempotent -- they have no lasting effect on the world.

Fill out forms and server side programming are different. When a user clicks on a button or a hyperlink, it triggers an event on the server. This changes the content of subsequent pages. For example, at eBay the sold items have sub-menus where an item can be relisted, an invoice can be sent, or an item can be marked as paid, etc. [screenshot would be appropriate].

Clicking an actions such as 'mark as paid' changes the contents of the menu so that the choice is no longer visible. Because the 'mark as paid' link is in a sub-menu that requires a click to be made visible, I call this 3-d web browsing. It feels like you're visiting a new page when you click the link to show the sub-menu, but what is really happening here is that a sub-menu div is being 'unhidden'.

Is 3-d web browsing the right word for this? Was it a design flaw, or on purpose? This is just starting to catch on for cgi type actions. This plus XMLHttp, and a little javascript, and things could get really interesting. (ajax==actionable javascript?)

final note: I think most designers would make the unhide effect something that happens onMouseOver instead of onClick. But end-users probably prefer the click effect since that gets you really focused on the list of actions available.

cool stuff!

I was looking for a way to make a USB charger for my rio karma and, in my searching I found these neat idea. Did you know that you can run linux through gmail?

But this invention will blow your mind. A guy burned audio onto rfid tags. They play back when the tag is near the rfid reader. I'm imagining "Hello my name is... Floovio" name tags that play automatically when you're near the reader.

A great way to kick off a shy people's convention, or for the blind... or more apriopriately for the mute?

tax refund = plasma tv?

I admit it. I'm a big fan of uBid. They often sell new products with warranty for less than what the same used product goes for on eBay.

Check out these 21" plasma TV's for $549. Yup, $549 for a brand new Fujitsu 21" plasma TV monitor with progressive scan video. Cost $3,505 when it first came out.

It's not high-def and it has no audio -- but anyone buying a plasma TV should have a home-theater setup and a video source anyway.

Interactive google maps + NY apartment rentals

This really blows me away - such a great idea!

Someone has figured out how to hook these two things up, craigslist and google maps. I love it because these are so naturally related. I always google the location of any real estate ad. This is Craig's Google.

Of note, ubid.com is selling 2GB mp3 players for around $100 bucks.

I like to watch movies in spanish. No I don't mean spanish channel american movies dubbed in spanish, I'm talking about the ones where people's mouths actually match what they're saying. Last night I watched "En La Ciudad Sin Limites," a beautiful spanish movie set in Paris about a family and their dying father.

I admit that Sometimes I watch a show called 'the roof' on Mun2. It was there that I discovered the names of reggaeton and bachata artists that I actually like.

Until I moved to new york, I used to like this kind of music. But then living at 162 stanton street changed this. My then next door neighbors kids would blast this music all weekend at levels that made the walls shake (I imagine they had a 24" subwoofer or something insane). It usually started at 3pm on Fridays and ended at around 9pm on Sunday. So I got tired of it.

Recently I've searched i-tunes and I like these artists: Aguakate, Rubirosa. And I'm not sure but I might like these too: Nandee, Po fat, Dose, dj kazzanova.

If your spanish is really good, listen to aguakate's lyrics. They're unbelievable! I can't believe this doesn't have an 'explict' tag on it, becuase 99% of the stuff they sing and shout about is either directly sexual or some sort of innuendo. It's awesome!

Tell me whatcha want what ya really really want

AAASeller has been live for over a year now and I feel like a really truly understand all of the ins-and-outs of what sellers want. AND I WANT TO BUILD IT ALL INTO AAASELLER.COM! Problem is, it takes me longer to write the code than ever before. Answering phones, processing refunds, replying to technical support. Phew! Man! I don't mind doing that stuff it's just that it's so divergent from actually writing clean code.

Back to understanding all of the ins-and-outs... There are a lot of them. As a developer, it's not like you can just pick up a book and learn how eBay works. And as a seller, it's uncertain that you'll be able to build the right features that everyone can benefit from. My hunch is that there are developers and suppliers/sellers out there who have merged their skills. Still, I think the developer needs to understand how eBay works in greater depth than the seller.

Sure, you can get the gist of how to operate a business by purchasing Marsha Collier's eBay for dummies book, but that doesn't go into depth on things like how to customize your store, or the eBay fee structure. These could each have it's own book written about it. Insertion fees, reserve fees (hefty at 1%, but fully refundable if your item sells - there's a nice little gamble), final value fees, listing upgrade fees (i.e., $.40 for a 10 day listing), and the diminishing return of submitting your item with listing upgrades on a free upgrade day since everyone else is doing this too. Maybe I should try and write a book about it for developers, although eBay isn't doing a bad job with their developer's program.

What I really want to be able to do (and I think I know how to do it), is offer sellers a tool that’s easy to evaluate and has enough in-depth features to keep 'em busy for months. This means the ability to customize templates so sellers can choose a style and insert pictures however they please, any size they like, anywhere they want. I have a mockup for how to do this. This means the ability to craft semi-generic actions/macros to handle things like feedback. AAASeller has a feedback automation program works -- but it would be nice to have drop-down lists containing multiple choices for each automated response. Same applies to sales policy - why have just one? I'm not even a power seller and I have 2-3 sales policies. One policy for really nice stuff, another for regular stuff, and a third one for big bulky items that might require a local pickup.

Make it easy. Know where you stand. Macaroni and cheese. (I have to hire someone to help code all of this.)

disappointed by flash

Yesterday I found this great flash component. It's called slideshowpro and it's a flash mx 2004 component. It's got a really beautiful and sleek interface for slideshows, and i thought to myself, this would be great to try and work into aaaseller.com.

I bought the component, then discovered that it won't work with flash mx (flash 6). It needs flash mx 2004 (i.e., flash 7). Unfortunately flash 7 doesn't have great market pentration yet. See Macromedia's Flash Player penetration chart. 83% of users as of 3/30/2005! That's terrible, when 17/100 of all viewers can't see your flash programming.

So I am stuck waiting. I can't imagine how unhappy the end users (sellers) at aaaseller.com would be if 17/100 of ebay user's couldn't see their slideshow pictures. Oh well.