Youtube videos

Since I recently have had access to high speed internet, I've been spending far too much time on youtube and browsing forums. Having dial up, I used to avoid topics such as favorite youtube clips, amusing pictures, motivational poster threads, etc., now that I have high speed internet I've been going through those threads, finding quite a bit of amusing things, along with stuff I have no idea as to why people like it.

Internet video sites are pretty addictive and I find myself watching weird things. For example, I spent six minutes watching an Australian girl making and drinking Milo (a chocolate milk). Afterwards I thought, why did I just watch that?

Having high speed internet has also allowed me to catch up with some shows and watch shows I wouldn't have as easily otherwise, such as cable television. I only have antenna television, I had people record the shows for me or got them from the library before. So I've been watching things like South Park, Kim Possible, and Mythbusters.

I had already seen a lot of the good older videos on Youtube. I used to do fansub trading via the postal service when high speed internet was less common and it was common for people to add amv's and other videos as filler/extras/bonus's and occasionally someone I know would see a video they liked a lot and have me watch it later.

Here is a Caramell Dance (Caramelldansen in Swedish) also known as Uma uma dance in Japan, with Ranma characters (I didn't make it). I really like this one because the characters look so very happy and I like seeing people, or in this case animated characters, happy.

Geocities closing

With the recent announcement that geocities is going to close soon, Ive been going through my bookmarks and saving pages/finding alternative sites. Few things I quickly realized; my bookmarks are extremely bloated and there are a lot more Ranma fanfics not on fanfiction.net or saved in the RAAC archives than I thought (just today I found 37 fics not on those archives). While quite a few of the geocities sites in my bookmarks are about Ranma fanfiction, there is also quite a few Dirty Pair, Evangelion, Tenchi Muyo, Your Under Arrest, and Slayers fan sites as well (those are really great anime). I've found more Dirty Pair fan fiction in my bookmarks than I thought had existed, sadly they aren't that good.

As I've updated, switched browsers, even switched computers I've just been adding and adding to my bookmarks. For some idea as to how long I've been doing this and how large my bookmark list has grown; for geocities sites alone there were 93, there were also more than a dozen anific sites, and quite a few xoom/nbci sites saved in my favorites/bookmarks when I started this undertaking. I am saving quite a bit to my hard drive, accessing many of the dead links via the internet archive (sadly quite a few of the sites are not on the archive), making use of google for alternative sites, and if the site had fan fiction located on fanfiction.net I've added the author to a fanfiction.net profile I created specifically for this purpose, for later perusal.

I am still in the process of going through my bookmarks and expect that this will take awhile (I really shouldn't have allowed my bookmarks to become so bloated). Some of the old fics I'm finding are pretty good like those by Zen (author of the Bitter end a very angst filled Ranma fic, though I don't much like angst), Bryan Neef (like his Tenchi Muyo short in which Mihoshi pretends to be a tree) and some are just strange (like the Ranma/Barney crossovers). There is no real hurry though since quite a few of the sites are on the internet archive and Jason Scott is making a back-up of geocities.

update post geocities shutdown: I have found that for some sites changing the g in geocities to an r (reocities) works since a group had archived a lot of the geocities sites via that way.

Darwin Awards

The website, as well as five books, Darwin Awards is very amusing. The site's purpose is to showcase people removing themselves from the gene pool from acts of stupidity. Some are true and verifiable, others are internet rumors/urban legends, it's difficult to separate fact from fiction. Part of the difficulty is that stupidity knows no boundaries and reality can be/is stranger than fiction. It is kind of interesting that men are so much more likely to be awarded this than women are.

It maybe callous to take enjoyment from people's suffering and the loss of life but the people who receive the Darwin awards often deserve it, bring it upon themselves, at least the majority do. I prefer ones in which people did things out of pure stupidity, i.e. they really should have known better, for instance, the one about an electrician using copper wire as kite string near power lines. The stories in which the action was done out of ignorance, rather than stupidity, I generally do not find nearly as amusing; for example there is one in which a person picks up a poisonous snake and makes a comment about not knowing that there were poisonous snakes in that country (Black Adler in Scotland). In those cases I tend to think things like he should have been taught that. Ignorance can be remedied by knowledge, stupidity can not be stopped regardless.

The best ones are stories in which the person was warned repeatedly but did it anyways. Though the ones in which the person should have known beyond any doubt, been doing the job for years are amusing as well. It is best when a truly stupid, purposely ignorant, person is punished.

Of course there are degree's of idiocy, some on the surface aren't very stupid or had the person not taken one more action it would have been fine. Example of one that wasn't stupid that became stupid: sucking up wasps into a vacuum cleaner, is a perfectly valid way to capture wasps. Had the person simply blocked the opening causing the wasps to eventually die of natural causes nothing would have happened. The stupid part was spraying flammable poison into the vacuum which had a hot motor causing it to catch on fire.

Gender Genie

I recently found a website that uses an algorithm to determine a persons gender based on what words they use while writing. The site is here: Gender Genie. I played with it by putting posts from this here blog on it. It correctly got my gender around 70% of the time. Of course that means 30% of the time it did not. I find it interesting as to what words are considered more female/male. Going by that males are more likely to talk about objects/statements and females more likely to talk about people/personal opinions.

Ebay and Me

I do not often purchase things, either in person or on the internet. I have used ebay a few times to make some purchases, for example it is where I acquired the Ranma 1/2 manga in Japanese. It was a very good deal, go the entire set in one purchase. I have been purchasing things on ebay for awhile now, but had never tried to sell stuff on e-bay. I recently sold some items on ebay. I do not own a scale so I decided to use the post offices Priority Mail Flat Rate Boxes and Envelopes, I'm not sure if that was a good idea or not.

Other than the few items I sold on ebay recently, selling things online is something I've never done before and don't really know much about. I've traded and still do trade stuff. I used to trade anime fansubs via the mail (had too slow an internet to download them -still do), I've traded games, and I am actively trading books on a few sites listed in another post, but never sold anything.

My experience of selling things did not work out so well. I must have done something wrong since the way I figure it I lost money. I hear of people making a lot of money from ebay but I have no idea as to how they do it. I was not expecting a lot of money but I expected to get more than I did.

I put new items up for sale. Stuff still in their original boxes. I had good feed back from purchases I had made in the past. I did not get any bids until the last day of the auction. One bid per item. The items ended up selling for .99 cents a piece. After the listing fee, ebay's percent from the price and Paypals fee, I got around 40 cents per item. It definitely was not worth the trouble of doing. I had to spend time making the listing, taking pictures of the items, uploading the pictures, package the items, and shipping the items. I suppose I should have put a reserve price or maybe a buy it now thing, but I figure it would not have sold at all had I done that.

I was recently reading on another blog about how a person purchases books new, reads them as fast as possible, than sells them on ebay. Somehow making a profit. How? New books are sold at suggested retail price at most places and books are extremely easy to find online (just check a site like abebooks or dealoz). To make a profit, he'd have to sell the books for more than retail price, who would buy them for more than retail when many places online would sell them at retail. Even if he bought the books at discount, why would the ebay price approach the retail price? and would the discount he got the books at cover the various ebay/paypal fee's?

If you have any pointers for selling stuff online, I'd appreciate them being left in the comments. I'm not even sure if Ebay is the best place to sell things but it's big and everyone has heard about it but there are other services online that maybe better.

How do you get people to bid higher than the minimum when you have little feedback and only want to sell the occasional thing (sometimes with months between sales)?

What is the best way to list the item?

Reserve prices and buy it now, good ideas? or not?

What is the best way to ship the items, assuming you do not have a scale?

How do people make a profit?