Torbens blog

I’m observing a few items on eBay these days, mostly out of curiosity. It’s remarkable how ignorant and counterproductive most people are concerning eBay.

This post is dedicated to explaining a few simple and proven principles that will help buyers to win at lower prices, and help sellers achieve better prices for their auctions. Of course these two sides are in competition against each other, but that’s just the way the market works.

It’s a fact of life that you can only win a game if you know the rules. The same is true for any marketplace: Understanding the market always helps you, regardless whether you want to buy or sell. If everybody followed these rules, then every product would be sold at exactly the value it’s worth. But because many people don’t know these rules, there is a profit to be made: better traders get better prices!

Take advantage of the fact that the majority of eBay users (buyers and sellers!) don’t know these principles. Continue reading this story »

Enough is enough. This article in Wired is but one in a sea of cries against Facebook, and they’ve all got a very good point: Facebook is actively undermining the privacy of the users, but we users should be able to control what information gets published about us or not.

So I’m preparing to leave Facebook, and I’ll make sure to delete all my information in there in an attempt to protect my privacy. I’m going to focus on my own homepage and blog instead, so that people who really want to follow me can still do so.

Incidentally, here’s an article on Lifehacker describing what you could do, if you agree on the above.

If you don’t know what “DNS” means, then never mind this article. But if you are familiar with DNS, then you’ll likely appreciate this tip. Google has recently provided a Public DNS service which is often significantly faster than your ISP’s DNS, especially if you’re outside the USA. My own tests verify that it’s a lot faster than using my ISP’s DNS servers. YMMV.

Skip right to the good stuff — use this:

Google Public DNS
Primary DNS Server: 8.8.8.8
Secondary DNS Server: 8.8.4.4

Read up on why this might be useful for you:

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

It annoys me when stuff suddenly works differently for no obvious reason, and even more so when the result is a lot worse than before. (Here’s a tip, Microsoft: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!)

One such annoyance is Windows Explorer in Windows 7 and Vista. When you dive into sub-folders by double-clicking in the right-hand pane, the left-hand pane doesn’t expand to reflect where you are. That’s a pity, because that has been in there ever since Windows 95, a brief 14 year-long period of doing it right.

Here’s how to fix it: Continue reading this story »

Hi all. I felt like posting a short message about what’s going on at the moment.

Continue reading this story »

After installing the new version of the iPhone OS this morning, I just found the best feature! It’s no the landscape keyboard mode in many apps, but rather the keyboard itself!

Continue reading this story »

So here’s an attempt at writing a blog post on the go. I’m on the morning commute to work and just trying out the new WordPress app for the iPhone. I still miss a proper keyboard but at least this way I can post minor stories even when I’m not near a computer. The app even lets me publish photos.

I’m now well into the training, so I thought I’d post a little update with some of my observations. Most importantly, my training is coming along well and I am going to complete it. I feel great about this! However, I had my first setback yesterday. Continue reading this story »

I’ve started on a training program to improve my back muscles. I stumbled upon the website one hundred push ups which offers an exercise plan that caught my interest. The idea is to follow a six-week training regime that means I am going to do push ups every other day.

Every training day, the number of required push ups is increased ruthlessly: First day, as many push ups in a row as I can (I managed ten). Second training day required 25 push ups (with strategic breaks), and let me tell you that was hard! Third training day:  42. And so on…

By the end of the training regime, I should be able to do one hundred push ups without breaks!

I’m curious to see how I’ll do. If I survive, I’m going to do two hundred sit-ups next. And then I “just” need to keep that going. It’ll be good for my back.

My plastic brain is dead. Long live my plastic brain! This post marks the official end of my “Age of Psion” that started eleven years ago, in November 1997. Over the course of the years I have “used up” three Psion Series 5/5mx PDA’s, and they have served me well.  But now the time has come to move into the Age of Internet and leave my Psions behind. With some sadness, I have just finished moving data off my beloved Psion. I am not going to use it anymore, and I will put all my Psion stuff up for sale soon. Continue reading this story »