Last week in an attempt to clear out the house I put a few items up for sale on eBay. Among them was an Apple iMac computer that belonged to my wife. It wasn’t particularly old but she was selling it because those glossy screens aren’t great for accurate colour matching, which is essential for her work. So she’d replaced it with a different set-up.

The auction wasn’t due to end until Sunday 10th April but on the preceding Tuesday at around 17.30 I noticed I’d had two missed calls and a voicemail from a man saying that he had bought the iMac using eBay’s Buy it now feature. It was a slightly garbled voice-mail so I called him back. The number was +44 7550 710 157. The conversation was also difficult to follow; it wasn’t a great line and at the time I was walking through a crowded Holborn in central London. I asked for his name and he told me it was “David Anderson”. With hindsight he did sound a little bit dodgy. I said I’d check and call him back.

I checked my emails and the eBay app on the phone and confirmed what he told me. The buyer’s username was sharisace – Sharon Anderson, and I’d been left a note on the item:

“please call me on 07550 710 157 or 0207 1400071, i am in LONDON for 2days”

Back on the phone to “Mr. Anderson” I told him he could collect the item if he wanted later that evening. He said it would be a “bit later tonight”, because he was still at work. I jumped on the tube back home.

I got home at about twenty past six and sent a PayPal invoice through eBay to the buyer. I figured that PayPal is safer than using cash because there is a record of the transaction and besides: they’d already requested it. My wife and I went out for some dinner, five minutes walk from home.

Shortly after we’d paid for our meal our friend Mr Anderson called again. He said he’d paid for the iMac and that there was a car waiting to pick it up but that nobody seemed to be home. I told him I’d be back in a few minutes. At this point – and this is the most annoying thing – I was pretty sure there was something dodgy going on. I checked eBay on my phone as I walked home, and the payment had still not been made.

On arriving home I walked past the waiting cab and straight into the house to check PayPal on my laptop: Still no payment. I called Mr Anderson: “Oh really? Let me just check.” Then he mumbled something about using his brother’s PayPal account.

At about 20:20 I received an email:

Subject: You received a payment of 900.00 GBP from sharisace (r.taylor57@virgin.net)

Given that I was already a bit suspicious I logged into PayPal to check that the email was not a fraud. It wasn’t. I had indeed been paid, so I was happy it was legitimate.

At this stage, in my mind I had they money so I didn’t really care about much else. So I took the iMac outside and carefully placed it in the back of the cab. We even wrapped it in some protective foam. The cab driver was complaining in broken English about having waited for 30 minutes and how we’d have to pay waiting fees, so I told him to speak to the people at the drop-off address. He drove off.

And no, I didn’t get the numberplate or details of the taxi firm, nor his phone number.

I called David to tell him it was on its way, that we’d wrapped it carefully and that I’d created a fresh user account on the computer and set the password to ‘password’ for him. You know what? He didn’t seem that interested.

Five minutes later my heart sank when I received this email from PayPal:

Subject: Please respond by 12/04/2011 regarding Case no.PP-001-268-479-221

Dear Adrian Rowbotham,

A review of recent transactions indicates that you might have received a
payment that the PayPal account holder did not authorise.

To protect you from problematic transactions, we sometimes request
additional information about PayPal payments.

We need more information about this transaction. Please log in to your
PayPal account, click the “Resolution Centre” tab, and provide more
information by 12/04/2011.

I phoned Mr Anderson who kept up the act: “Really? Oh that’s weird. Let me check. Maybe there’s a limit on my brother’s account”. He even sent me a text to which I responded:

I duly filled in the PayPal dispute forms, at this stage assuming that the buyer had simply decided to cancel his payment. Maybe it was an honest mix-up. Maybe. I’m an optimist.

Then the following morning, to my dismay, I received a another email from PayPal:

Subject: A payment has been reversed

Dear Adrian Rowbotham,

We’ve concluded our investigation into the transaction detailed below.

Because you did not meet the eligibility requirements for the PayPal Seller
Protection Policy, you will be charged for this reversed transaction. We’ve
returned the funds to the PayPal account holder. Your account will be
debited for the amount of this transaction.
Helping ensure safe transactionsMost payments<sic> you receive will be from
good, honest buyers. However, there may be some that are not.

You can often reduce your risk to these payments by paying close attention
to payment details and unusual requests.

Watch for address inconsistencies:

Although it’s fairly common for a buyer’s postal address to be different
from the billing address, in some cases it could indicate fraud. For
instance, a high-priced item that has a billing address in one country and
a postal address in another may be suspicious.

…

Shit.

The transaction details were as follows:

Robert Taylor
sharisace
r.taylor57@virgin.net

Shipping address – confirmed
Sharon Anderson
58 The Dukeries
Westgate
Gloucester, Gloucestershire
GL1 2PU
United Kingdom

I sent an email to the contact address on the transaction saying that I was going to call the Police. I promptly received a call from a confused-sounding Robert Taylor, who lives in county Durham, and knew nothing about any iMac or eBay transaction, nor the fact that his PayPal account had been hacked. The penny dropped.

Unsurprisingly Mr Anderson was no longer picking up the phone, I guess because by this time it was most likely sitting in a public waste bin.

Cash is the safer option

Having raised the case with both parties, neither eBay nor PayPal seem willing to cover this, despite the fact that PayPal’s system has been compromised.

Retrospectively, looking at the small print I’m not actually covered by their Seller Protection Policy. So actually, if you are handing an item over in person you are not covered by PayPal.

The mistake I made was to think that once I had received payment through PayPal it meant that the money was mine. This belief alone led me to hand over the item. I was completely unaware that a PayPal transaction could be reversed by the payer once it had been made.

Now, looking back at the text further down the payment notification email it does actually say:

Please be aware that your payment can still be reversed, (e.g. if it is subject to a chargeback), even after you have posted the item to your buyer. Complying with PayPal’s protection programs and following the trading guidelines, in our Safety Advice Centre helps to protect you from things like chargebacks.

This needs to be made more obvious. The conclusion to draw is that for the seller cash is actually safer. I guess PayPal just don’t want to draw your attention to the fact. eBay should disable PayPal as an option for sales with the delivery type set to Collection in person.

I’ve reported it to the police but unless it happens to shed light on some larger case I don’t imagine a S.W.A.T. team will be crashing through Mr Anderson’s skylight anytime soon.

It’s been a while since I made a pointless technical demo. For most of the last 10 years I was working with Flash. Prior to that, I’d learnt how to write basic procedural JavaScript (at the same time as teaching myself HTML and CSS), but I’d never really fully got to grips with design patterns and more structured or object-based JS.

And more recently, when not busy writing emails or sitting in meetings, I’ve been more focused on back-end stuff: PHP frameworks, and fumbling around on Linux servers (with the help of much Googling). So my JavaScript abilities have become quite rusty.

I had the idea of making a broken 7-segment display clock after walking past one every morning, getting off my train at London bridge. There’s something interesting about the unfamiliar symbols, and it’s vaguely reminiscent of the self-destruct device in Predator.

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate enough to have ten hours to kill, on a flight. I had my laptop with me so decided to have a crack at building the clock with JavaScript, CSS and a few PNGs. It took me around 4 hours, including the Photoshop bit.

This is the result. It is kind of pointless but it looks quite cool in my biased opinion. Clicking on the clock gives you the real time, which is arguably more useful.

Feel free to download the source code. Sorry it’s not on GitHub, I’m not down with the cool kids yet.

UPDATED: You can find the code here on GitHub

Having just discovered that the WordPress iPhone app allows you to create local drafts, I thought I’d kill a small chunk of this four-hour flight writing a post. (Not wanting to break the rules, I’ll of course only publish it when we land and I can safely switch off flight mode.)

I’m going on holiday, somewhere warm, away from work.

Assuming that the image worked, the observant among you may just be able to make out (in the typically underexposed iPhone camera shot) the signature orange hue of those aerodynamic things under the wings I can’t recall the name of (and currently can’t Google).

Yes, we’re flying with everyone’s favourite camelCase airline easyJet.

Stelios & Co. charged us an extra £18 to check in a suitcase, which caused me to raise an eyebrow or two. Apparently it’s only £8 to do it online but I distinctly remember not being offered the chance to do so when I booked with Expedia. And after booking I tried on the easyJet website to no avail.

According to a member of staff at the airport you need the booking ref no. to do this on the website, but the first we saw of this reference number was on the boarding passes themselves – which you get AFTER you check in. Hey maybe I just ballsed it up somewhere, but it’s still quite a lot extra.

Anyway, none of that is very interesting.

So that’ll probably do I suppose. Be good while I’m away. And don’t try to burgle my house because my brother is looking after it, and he’s got a black belt in Jazz.

I’m just checking out the iPhone WordPress app here really. I installed it several weeks ago but haven’t had the opportunity till now, at 5:45 on a Saturday morning, to look at it.

I should point out that I’m not getting up at 5:45 on a Saturday, but have of late developed a strange ‘insomnia hour’ habit. This comprises roughly one hour of unwanted wakefulness, inconveniently starting at around 5:30 each morning, and therefore ending just in time for me to catch an unsatisfying 30 minutes, or less, of light sleep before Radio 4 wakes me up for work.

No such troubles today of course, and once I’m done with this somewhat bloated Twitter post I’ll be back in the land of nod for a well overdue lie-in.

The fact that now is the first opportunity I’ve had (yes, or created) for several months to actually write something is in all honesty a fair reflection of how ridiculously busy I’ve been. Busy to the point of unpleasantness really. Even the photography has been more than a little thin on the ground which is something that nags me constantly.

I’ve mostly been behind a desk creating ‘Flash stuff’ for people, from 8 till late, six days a week.

The problem is that – being a freelancer – I started the year full of Daily-Mail-style *Credit Crunch Fears*, and thus took on each and every piece of work (within reason) that landed on my desk. And those financial fears weren’t helped by the fact that we had a large chunk of the back of the house rebuilt starting the first week in January.

That’s all done and nice and paid for now so maybe (definitely) it’s time to become a little more selective about which jobs I take on.

Despite the bags under my eyes I count myself very lucky in having this as an option – I know a few people who have been out of work. I guess it all depends on who your client’s (or employer’s) client’s are, and whether or not they’ve gone into administration.

But (I vaguely recall an English teacher telling me that one should never start a sentence with the word ‘But’) it’s 6:30 now so sleep beckons again. I usually spend my insomnia hour browsing blogs in Google Reader on the phone (there’s an excellent mobile web version) so thought it time I wrote something instead.

With the latest project all but finished, and a trip to OFFF in Lisbon next week, hopefully I’ll have an actual *subject* to write about soon, and maybe even the time to do it. And at the very least I’ll post some photos.

Have a nice weekend.

It’s been almost three months since I made a non-photographic blog post, and even that one was essentially me pimping a website I’d just made. Prior to that was a blog post about CSS and before that a somewhat more popular post entitled Seven Seas of Bullshit. And before that there is only really one other text-based post in this blog.

Back in the early early Gridrunner days I’d regularly bore my audience of none with the minutiae of the day’s mood swings, dietary habits and failed attempts at attracting the opposite sex at parties. Nowadays picture posts are just a hell of a lot easier for all of us: two clicks on Flickr and it’s done.

But right now I’m actually starting to run out of decent images to post. The last two sets I posted to Flickr are basically just holiday snaps – and nice as they are – they have limited appeal to those outside of my family.

I’ve not literally run out of shots to post, of course. I’ve got hundreds of RAW files waiting to be processed, some of which will (I hope) make nice images, but I’ve not had time recently to go back and browse through them, nor have I taken anything particularly portfolio-worthy of late… apart from the squirrel shot above, of course. Maybe I should do an urban squirrel series?

So, I thought I’d write an actual blog post. And for all intents and purposes it’s a “what Ade has been up to” one, so feel free to switch off now if that’s not your thing. Normal service will be resumed…

Anyway let’s start with Today. The Olympics are happening. In Beijing. This afternoon I watched some of the synchronised diving, which struck me as a slightly strange and rather abitrary thing to become really good at. Impressive in its own right though. And a couple of our guys did OK at the swimming, though I don’t think they made it to the final, sadly.

On Friday my friend Will’s first child was born. All I know is that it’s a boy, he’s very cute and that they haven’t named him yet. Congratulations and best of luck to them! I’m looking forward to meeting the li’l fella.

On the work front: Over the past few weeks I’ve been busy doing lots of varied jobs for various clients, while waiting for a couple of bigger projects to emerge from meeting room and actually start happening.

Last Wednesday I finally started on one of those – a pretty big Flash project that’ll take me the best part of a month to create. So that’s a month of head-down programming for me. It’s a lot more techy than it used to be, what with ActionScript 3 and all that entails. It takes longer to set up, but is more rewarding and you generally end up with a more solid product at the end. The (not-so-hidden) geek in me finds it really satisfying when it all starts coming together.

And it pays the bills too, which is very handy at the moment. Rachael and I are in the process of remortgaging the house, which is fairly costly. And that’s straight after paying for some expensive roof repairs, a weekend in the Lake District, a honeymoon in New York and Toronto, oh and a wedding.

Oh yes, so Rachael and I got married. Hurrah! Months of wedding planning stress paid off and the wedding – in Lincoln at the end of June – went really well. It was a fantastic day.

Afterwards we went straight off to New York where we spent a week, and then we went on to Toronto for a few days too. We basically did most of the obvious touristy things, along with lots of eating, drinking and sleeping. And as a result I put on over half a stone in weight. I think if I lived in New York those big cooked breakfasts would be the end of me.

And suddenly I’m back and it’s already more than six weeks since the wedding. There are over 2500 wedding photos still to sort through, which is slightly daunting. Maybe at this rate there’ll be an album for the parents by christmas. Time seems to be marching on at an exponential rate.

Anyway I’m afraid to say there’s no tidy point or conclusion to this blog post. I seem to be a little out of touch at writing. Or maybe it’s all the programming – I keep wanting to put odd arrangements of brackets around the paragraphs, and end the sentences with semicolons;

I’ve still got plenty of projects in the pipeline, though I sometimes wonder whether I’m starting too many things to ever finish any of them. Right now, as soon as I can afford to take a few weeks off from the ‘pays the bills’ Flash work there’ll be some fresh photography to post. Meanwhile I’ll try to dig out some older images and polish them up so you don’t have to read any more of these wordy posts for a while.

I know I’ve probably got too many of these social web applications on the go at once, and perhaps shouldn’t be adding yet another one. But FriendFeed looks as though it might actually improve the situation. It ought to cut down the amount of time wasted visiting all those various sites, because it consolidates all of the feeds onto one page.

My FriendFeed page is at http://friendfeed.com/aderow. Get involved!

I love the feeling of freedom that comes at the end of your last day at a job you’ve resigned from; as you walk out the door. My fondest memory of this is leaving my job at the small company in East Yorkshire, in July 2002. It hadn’t been a bad two years there, but it offered no further career prospects I was interested in, and I’d made my mind up to head to London. And what made it all the more exciting was the fact that I had nothing lined up in London. I was going to try my luck as a freelancer.

5pm came (Yorkshire working hours – something I do miss) and I walked out the door, got in my car and (rather childishly) wheel-spun it out of the gravel car park, never to return. Freedom!

Freelancing didn’t actually work out too well (I had no contacts) and I ended up back in full-time work the following March, which continued until August of last year.

My exits from the two digital agencies I worked at in the interim period were less exciting (and certainly less gravelly), though they felt good nonetheless. It’s not that I’m work-shy or anything, but once you’ve made your mind up to leave, nothing feels better than to finally do that.

Now I get to have last days all the time. I don’t normally like to take on in-house contracts that go on for more than a couple of weeks – better to not get bogged down in the meetings and politics.

At five weeks, the contract I’m currently in is my longest to date. It’s been good, but it’s time to go. In about five minutes in fact. And after that I’m my own boss again for a whole month. Shame I have to effect my getaway via a packed Friday night tube train.

On at least one occasion I’ve been accused of setting up too many websites and blogs. And the accuser was probably right. It’s all too easy to do. And considering the frequency (or lack of) with which I write blog posts, the content gets spread too thinly.

So this is not a new blog. Think of it more as a continuation of the old one, with a different address. And that means that this blog has actually been going since September 2003. So there.

But long since gone are those heady days of semi-emo anonymous waffling, (or so I intend). Expect nothing but topical and engaging techno-creative content, combined with some pimping of my photographic exploits.

Update your feeds, feed-folk.