Of Blogs and Oranges..

Yeah, so we have a slight chicken-and-egg situation happening on his blog. Turns out that while Thomas Alva Edison was no doubt a great man, he didn’t invent electricity. Just the light bulb. Apparently, James Watts-his-name invented the steam engine, which led to Michael Faraday inventing the Faraday (no wait, that’s just a unit named after him) or something and then Edison finally invented the bulb. At least, that’s what the Boy had to say. Bah, humbug. Why do I need to know this anyway?

So for everyone who missed me (you missed me, right? Right? RIGHT?):
1) I’m back from Delhi! Yes yes, you can now rejoice.
2) I missed you too!

My vacation was brilliant at that – two weeks of doing nothing but chillin’ (you didn’t really expect me to toast my skin in the sun, didja?) and catching up with my reading. Still, I do think my brain is rather fried all the same.

Here’s why. I was having a conversation with the Boy the other day and this is what it went like:
Me: “Why did the chicken take 20 years to cross the road?” (The answer I was expecting was – because he refused to stop and ask for directions. Lame joke? well then, just wait for his reply.)
Boy: “Because maybe the chicken was travelling at the speed of light and the road was 20 light years in width.” I’m not kidding, those were his exact more-or-less words.
Me: “Ha ha. You think you’re so funny, do you? But if I wanted to talk to a bulb (on acount of how smart people have a bulb go off over their heads when they come up with something smart,) I’d call Albert Einstein!”
Boy: “Albert Einstein?”
Me: Yes Albert Einstein. Are you not listening to me?”
Boy: “Oh, you mean because he came up with the theory of relativity and light?”
Me: “No silly, because he invented the bulb! No stop acting like a dim little tubelight.”
Boy: *Silence*
Me: ”No wait, didn’t Thomas Alva Edison invent the bulb and electricity?”

Arrgh. What is wrong with me? I used to know that! And why am I posting this tripe anyway?
 

Surprisingly, not only is this possible, it’s *very* easy too. Personally I would consider this a serious breach of privacy and a security leak, but apparently people do need to look this up often after trades.

http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/AdvSearch?sofindtype=10#RequestUserID is the magic link.

Why do I think this is a breach of privacy? Because if someone can find out my eBay user ID using my email address, they instantly know what items I’ve purchased over the past 90 days. This is an instant peek into my shopping habits and my lifestyle. If this isn’t giving away my personal information to strangers, I don’t know what is.

I hope eBay fixes this soon. Ideally if you have an e-mail address, you should ask the person directly (for their eBay ID), innit?

eBay India doesn’t seem to have gotten it’s act together yet. EBay took over baazee.com in 2004, and merged it’s userbase into eBay’s Indian website, www.ebay.in

Surprisingly, 3 years down the line, http://ebay.in still does not redirect to http://www.ebay.in; the connection just times out.

More seriously, eBay.in only supports PaisaPay, the local equivalent of eBay’s own PayPal. The site does not support PayPal to such an extent that you have to log in through http://www.ebay.com to pay by Paypal if you have purchased an item from a seller in the US. You can purchase the item through ebay.in, but you can’t pay for it through there.

eBay.in support? That’s probably another blog post!

Some merchandise I ordered from CafePress.com last 24th arrived today (in Mumbai) by ordinary post today, the 12th. CafePress is a website where you can design t-shirts, mugs and other stuff with images or text of your choice.

iTasveer, PicSquare and PrintCamp are Indian counterparts for one-off prints. Of course, I looked these up later.

Rectangular magnets, a pack of ten for $10.99

Basic Polo T-Shirt, $16.99

Printing on the back on the shirt.

Overall, I’m very happy with the magnets. Time will tell about the tee, as I want to see if the print will crack, peel or fade over time.