How I handle Craigslist spammers

Whenever I post anything online for sale, I usually get quite a few responses like “Is the item still available” or “I’m interesting in buying.”  Well, unfortunately, most real people responding to CL ads aren’t much more (if any) articulate, so I often find myself replying to these initial queries, not that I often expect a legitimate response.

In fact, almost always, I get something like this:

I’m purchasing it for my cousin as a gift.  I’m presently out of town (offshore) so I can’t pick up, but I will offer you $[MORETHANYOUASKED] including shipping expenses via USPS Express Mail to him as he schools in Belgium
Let me know if we can make the transaction asap, and I’ll send the money through my paypal account.
Regards
Susan

So, recently, I’ve starting responding like this:

Oh, wow, that sounds great!  However, I looked into it, and it’s going to cost US $4963.00 to send this ITEM overseas. If you send me that amount, plus the $1750 I’m asking for the ITEM, plus a US $3722.00 packing fee, then once the cashier’s check has cleared (in about 90 days) then I will send the ITEM right out to you!

Let me know if you agree.

I’m hoping I get a bite one of these days and make a nice return on my time…

I have thought about taking one up on their offer some day, and then sending them wet phonebooks instead of the “item” but since I don’t go to great lengths to hide my identity, I just figure that would backfire and find me in trouble. Dang legal system!

~w

Some people are just plain silly

I was walking home a little bit ago, in a light drizzle as I am wont to do. I was crossing Mass Ave near Beech street in Cambridge, using the crosswalk in front of the Newtowne Grille. I looked both ways, as always (and, as anyone who walks with me can attest, I’m nearly paranoid about crossing the street) and I saw a van, about 2/3 of a block away coming my direction, but easily far enough way to slow for my crossing. I began to cross, and noticed that the van was not slowing at all. I picked up the pace and just as I entered the second lane, the van sped past me with the audible growl of acceleration and honked at me. The vehicle honked at me for being in a crosswalk. Yes. Again. A motor vehicle honked at a pedestrian for using a crosswalk. A woman across the street laughed when I finished crossing and said “how do you like that, beeped at for being in the crosswalk.” It was vey obvious the driver was wrong – not just to me, but to the bystanders.

That upset me a bit because Cambridge is a very pedestrian-friendly town, the van was in an area that has no less than five crosswalks crossing Mass Ave within about a three block section, and with behavior like that, the driver is going to hurt someone some day. I like to look after my fellow humans, and my righteousness was flaring, so I ducked around the corner where the van was parking and began to write down the number to the plumbing company that the van belongs to along with the license plate. The driver jumped out at that point and began yelling at me, telling me to be sure to tell the company that I jumped out in front of him when I call and that he would have killed me had he tried to slow down since he would have locked up the brakes. Yes, apparently he was unable to slow the vehicle over a 2/3 block distance without locking up the breaks. Honestly, if he thought that it was too rainy for me to be using the crosswalk normally, then doesn’t it follow that it was too rainy for him to be driving so fast as not to be able to safely stop in that distance?

Anyway, at that point he started getting belligerant. He claimed to have a witness who would testify that I jumped in front of him and demanded my name so he could file a police report before the morning. Of course, that is just a waste of resources for a petty situation, so I told him we could just drop the whole thing and leave it be. He would hear none of it and instead called me a douchebag. Yes. A douchebag. It’s funny, he looked older than 12, but I guess not.

I left at that point, unwilling to put up with any more from this silly person. After talking with my husband, I did choose to call his workplace and leave a message, calmly explaining the situation, stating that I was calling them because it was their vehicle that was being driven irresponsibly and dangerously, and mentioning that I would be happy to let the situation pass if the driver would as well. Then I shrugged it all off and headed home. I can’t imagine that anyone of sound mind would make anything of this, but if he choses to do so, I wanted to put down my recollections of the incident while it was fresh.

Now for some pure speculation…

I have no idea what was going on in this guy’s head, but I imagine that he legitimately thought that I was misusing the crosswalk because he was in a situation where he needed to make accommodation for a pedestrian. (comments he made like “I know you pedestrians think you own the road” made it clear where he stands in regards to the most healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transportation we have) I imagine, though, that he quickly realized he was in the wrong when he noticed me taking down the information on his van, and in typical macho-man fashion, chose to embellish, expand, and vigorously defend his story so as to have something to fall back on if he got called on his actions. Unfortunately this is a vicious kind of person – the person who knows he’s wrong but has followed the lie so far that he can’t get out of it. I find these people to defend their positions so irrationally and vehemently as to be scary, impossible to deal with, and dangerous.

I made only one mistake in this entire situation. I gave him my business card when he demanded my name. I have absolutely nothing to hide, and so I should not be worried about this, but, honestly, when dealing with an irrational person like this, I do have some misgivings having given him too much information about myself. It will all work out, of course.

Protest the Keystone XL Pipeline

I suspect that many of you already know about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline that may be built from Canada all the way through the midwest to Texas – a 36″ diameter behemoth that will be carrying some of the nastiest crude oil we know thousands of miles through fragile ecological areas. Land is being seized and government funds are being used to make this project possible but only a handful of large oil corporations will see any benefit from it at all – and I can’t imagine that they will ever be held responsible for the horrendous fallout should even a small leak occur. (Which, even by the admission of their engineers will happen on average of every 7 years.)

The Obama administration essentially must grant permission for this pipeline and they are likely to do so without a lot of pressure. With the money thrown around by the large corporate stakeholders, it’s essential that those of us who oppose this short-sighted and dangerous project are even louder so that we may be heard.

Late this August and into September, volunteers will be marching and protesting at the White House in an attempt to get President Obama to pay attention to non-corporate, non-profit-driven interests. I was scheduled to go, but my injury has prevented that from happening. I am inviting and encouraging as many others to take action and join in the protests as possible.

Please take a moment and read more about this critical issue here: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/invitation/

There may be some “alarmist” speech on that page, but I, for one, have begun to feel that raising the alarm is no longer premature.

~w

Arduino Dimensions

I’m always looking for the exact dimensions of the official Arduino board. It’s 2.1″ x 2.7″ if you need to know. If you need more, check out this handy image.

Self-serving media roundup post

So with this crazy iPad launch thing, I got some photos of me in the press!  Here’s where I ended up (that I know about):

Boston Globe (My photo was used, a competitor was actually mentioned in the article)

Boston.com (haven’t been able to bring myself to watch that one yet)

TUAW.com (That’s me back by the end of the cattle guards with David Nunez, a partner in DINO)

OK, that’s enough tooting.

An iPad security observation

The moment I had my iPad out and began setting up an email account, I realized that the iPad presents a challenge that the iPhone and iPod touch largely avoided. It is much easier to see someone typing in their password on the iPad than the smaller devices – not only is the keyboard larger, but the password entry fields (and thus the text) is also larger and still displays each character in clear text as they are being displayed. Add to all this the fact that I expect more people will be using their iPads flat on a surface for typing and it’s a bit of a worst-case scenario for password security. Luckily a little user training and common sense is enough to circumvent this security issue – just hold your iPad close and be aware of your surroundings when you are entering passwords.

iPad physical interface objects

I’ll be blogging a lot more over at my studio’s website – which is where I just posted about some physical interface objects I’ve made for the iPad.

Meta-Nixie Clock

I recently caught Matt Mets’ post on hacking a digital photo frame into a clock by generating a static image for each minute of the day, and then automating the action of advancing the image once per minute. This allows for any number of interesting clocks to be made with suggestions ranging from a written-word clock (as Matt’s project did) to photographing various clocks at each minute of the day to photographs of people miming clock hands. I happened to show this post to my husband and he absolutely loved the idea and wanted one for his desk at work. I immediately realized that I had found the perfect Christmas gift for him! Read the rest of this post »

lolshield hacking

My friend Jimmie Rodgers, maker extraordinaire has come up with a great new shield for the Arduino which he is calling the LoLshield for “lots of leds”. It’s a charliplexed array of 126 LEDs in a 9×14 grid that pops right onto an arduino. Neat!

A problem with charliplexing is brightness. Since you have to turn each led on and off only one at a time, you must cycle them very quickly and rely on persistance of vision to make it look like many are on at once. The faster you can cycle, the brighter they will seem.

Arduino libraries can be very convenient, but some are slow. Using the original routine which called PinMode() and DigitalWrite() twice for each LED, only limited brightness could be achieved. I worked out a way to use direct port manipulation instead, a process which allows you to directly set the output mode and state of the pins of the ATMega very quickly – and set multiple pins at once to boot! Check out the Arduino Port Manipulation page for more.

Here’s how it works. At the heart, we have a 2D lookup array which contains 4 values for each of the 126 LEDs on the board. The values are what needs to be shoved into the corresponding DDR and PORT registers to turn each LED on. (I used a quick processing sketch to generate this) As an example, let’s walk through the 4 values stored for LED 0, the upper-left LED. It uses pin 13 as its positive pin, and pin 5 as its ground. The values stored are:  {32, 34, 32, 0}

Searching for Space (for your hackerspace)

So, once Em, David and I decided that we didn’t need a space, we immediately started looking for a space. It was as if knowing we did not absolutely need a place made the search easier to handle. As I have mentioned previously, there are a lot of benefits to having a location around which to build a community, but the location need not be a defining part of the community. Still, I do think it’s easier for a community to define itself if it has a physical home. (But it’s not so necessary that a group should wait for space to start doing stuff!)

There are a few things you should know about when looking for spaces. (Warning: this could get a little long)

What kind of zoning fits your needs?
This can be a big one, and is going to vary a lot depending on your location and goals. If you are just getting a private space to have a few people share as a studio, lounge, hackerspace, etc. then you may well be able to get by with a residential place. This will generally keep everything cheaper, but you could run into issues with the landlords (who often frown on non-traditional use of residential space), neighbors (people coming and going at odd hours, suspicious of what you are doing, noise complaints), and government agencies (running many businesses out of a residence is illegal, gathering of people for commercial events is problematic, etc.).
A popular co-working facility I know started in a residential area, which served them well for a while. But with their growth and popularity on the rise, friction with the neighbors and landlords have forced them to look for a new space.

How much space do you really need?
Space is a paradox. It simultaneously goes further than you might expect, and is always smaller than you think. It pays to think this one out well. Get too little space, and you won’t have anything better than the corner of your bedroom where your soldering iron is threatening to send the bed up in a blaze. Get too much space and you may not be able to afford it long enough to get your community off its feet.

Read the rest of this post »

• Twitter

  • @jfeathersmith have a link? http://twitter.com/waaronw 2012/02/03
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