Darkoshi

thewayne: I think we'll be seeing RIP: Bandcamp in the not distant future

I noticed today while browsing my online collection of prior purchases on Bandcamp, that songs from a particular artist were missing. The artist's page no longer shows up on the site, so they likely closed their account.
Apparently when an artist does that, any items you purchased from them are no longer be downloadable or accessible online.
I always download my purchases right away, so didn't lose anything. But it was a surprise to me that they would disappear from my online account like that without any warning or notification. So, beware.

Doing a search on Amazon, I got annoyed that it doesn't let you exclude certain words from the results. (I want chewable vegan vitamins that are NOT gummies!) So I ended up including a few profanities in my ever-lengthening search string.

The results made me laugh.

Yodelling Pickle Musical Toy, Fun for all Ages, Great Gift
"Are you sick and tired of trying to teach your pickles to yodel? Pickles can be so stubborn. At last, the yodeling pickle you've been waiting for. With a mere press of a button (yes, it has a button) this little pickle will yodel its heart out. You'll think you're in the Swiss Alps listening to a yodeling pickle!"


Mugs with witty things written on them:

Mug: "Of course I talk to myself. Sometimes I need expert advice"

(Amazon seems to be telling me, "With a search string like that, you must talk to yourself a lot")

Mug: "i before e. Except after C and also when you heinously seize your feisty foreign neighbor's conceited beige heifer from the ceiling. Weird."

(now I can't even remember any i-before-e words other than retrieve and believe/belief... sieve...)

Mug: "I Shall Purchase a Large Sword | and name it Kindness | and Kill People With Kindness"

This is a follow-up to my entry about Amazon's MP3 sales interface.

After making that post, I had found this thread:
Has Amazon stopped allowing the 30second sampling of digital music?
One person commented:

"I just got off an Amazon chat with a member of the "dedicated team working on this." Shine wrote, "We haven't removed it permanently. It will be back soon. It has been temporarily removed as our website is getting redesigned in a better way. So, we can expect that option of playing sample music very soon."

Now today I see that the functionality is back again. Amazon's digital music pages let you preview the songs. There are also links again for buying the albums and individual songs. But there's no mention of adding songs to a cart. So I'm not sure yet if the MP3 cart functionality is still there, or if it only lets you buy and download one item at a time.

.

If everything else were the same, I'd prefer buying MP3s somewhere other than Amazon. When music is available on bandcamp, I get it from there as Bandcamp is known to give artists a good deal. And I had found that 7digital is an alternative to Amazon for a lot of the music that isn't available on bandcamp.

But now I'm not sure if the MP3 quality is the same for Amazon vs 7digital.

For this same song from the same album, the Amazon sample sounds much better to me than the 7digital sample:
https://www.amazon.com/Theme-Mysterious-Cities-Gold/dp/B006ITBSE4/
https://us.7digital.com/artist/london-music-works/release/music-for-big-kids-1523739


I've previously determined that I don't need super-duper quality sound files, as I struggle to notice any difference between MP3s encoded at V2 and V9. So if I can tell a difference in the above samples, the worse one must be really bad quality.

But maybe the quality is only bad on the sample, and not on the actual file you get to download. I wonder, and might buy one just to find out.

Has Amazon removed their 30 second music clips, so you can no longer listen to song clips before buying them? Can you no longer buy individual MP3 songs?

I no longer see a play icon nor an add-to-cart option by each song.

There's a "Listen Now" button at the top-right of the page. If I click that button, it opens an Amazon Music page, and if I try to click the icon to play one of the songs there, it gives a message "On-demand listening is only available with Amazon Music Unlimited. Now starting a station based on your selection". Then it plays something else than the song I wanted to preview.

So, what does this mean? Amazon doesn't want to sell music anymore? They only want to sell streaming services? Or am I not being observant enough and somehow overlooking a new way to preview clips?

..

Now I've found 7digital.com, which appears to work the way Amazon used to. Though I haven't tried purchasing anything from there yet. So if Amazon doesn't work anymore, I may have an alternative. I wonder how they both compare in what they pay artists for each sale. I use Bandcamp when possible as I heard it pays better than Amazon, but it doesn't include as much as Amazon.

I'm shopping for some curtains for my mom's living room windows.

On Amazon, "Ambesonne" has a seeminginly unending selection of vivid polyester print curtains, in fantastic and unusual designs. But they aren't all shown on one page; each page has about 40 choices, and I keep finding more pages. I've made notes on a few choices that might be good for my mom's room. But I'm horrible at making a decision when there are more choices I might not have looked at yet; it makes me want to keep looking and looking and looking.

I remember reading once that when it comes to choices, some people will look until they find something they like, and then choose that and be satisfied with it. Other people don't feel good making a decision until they've looked at all the possible choices. I definitely fall into the latter camp.

Culture Club's new album, Life, is released today. I didn't pre-order it, because the last time I pre-ordered one of their albums, it ended up being delayed and delayed and finally shelved. That was the "Tribes" album, of which this Life album is the new reincarnation.

I hadn't been planning to order it tonight after midnight, but Amazon was showing it as available, so I thought, why not do it right now? I can be quick.

So I added it to my MP3 cart, as well as a few other songs I'd been thinking about getting... which of course took another hour.

When I finally went to check out, I kept getting an error message. When I clicked the Continue button like the error message told me to do, I got a "page not found".

So then I had a chat with a support person, who suggested I try buying a single song. That worked. Then I bought the Life album on its own. That worked. Then I tried the remaining items in my MP3 cart, all together. That worked too.

Ok so great, I finally got my items purchased, but after 2am.

Then I go to download them, and whaddaya know, the Life album isn't even available for download yet!!! Even though the album page made it look like it was available. Only 3 songs are downloadable so far. I assume the rest will be available later today somewhen.

Even more confusing, my digital orders page lists those 3 songs separately, along with a $3.87 charge for them. At first I thought Amazon messed up my orders, and was overcharging me by $3.87. But then I realized they were charging me $5.62 for the rest of the album, rather than $9.49 which is the total. So it's correct after all.

Sheesh. Instead of all that hassle, I could've been listening to the songs on YouTube.

By the way, this is one of the songs I've already listened to, which I like quite a bit:



Video title: Boy George & Culture Club - God & Love (Edit)
Posted by: Culture Club
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7qSGnA1Yxs

Qiao ordered something, and the FedEx tracking shows it was delivered last Saturday afternoon, when we were both home at his house. At the delivery time that is listed, I was in the living room using my laptop, and the doorbell did not ring. Supposedly the package was left on the porch. It was 70 pounds (an exercise bike), so it would not be easy for anyone else to just walk off with it.

We contacted FedEx on Sunday, and they said they'd put a trace on the package. The FedEx driver stopped by on Tuesday and told Qiao that he had stopped by 2 places on this street, one of which he remembers. He said he didn't remember Qiao's house. And he said if the package doesn't show up by Friday, to contact Amazon.

What I'm wondering is, doesn't FedEx use GPS to track where its trucks go and where they stop? Many years ago when we had a problem with a UPS shipment, they had GPS info to determine that the truck left the package at the wrong address. Does FedEx not have that? Or are they just trying to cover it up?

Remember that song I bought on iTunes, which was so much trouble to buy?

Not only that, but in addition to the price of the song I bought, iTunes charged me an extra $1 which they are now refusing to give back. When I initially contacted them about it via their Report a problem link, they replied by email that it was only an "authorization hold on my credit card" and that it would automatically drop off in an unspecified amount of time. I was dubious, as the $1 had been taken from my PayPal balance (which I told them), not from a credit card. However, I found a PayPal page which indicated that those kind of charges might take a month to get refunded, so I decided to wait that long to see, before bugging iTunes about it again. The $1 never got refunded.

After the month was over, I tried contacting iTunes again via the same link (twice!), but even though upon submitting the report, the confirmation page states that they'll get back to me within 48 hours, they haven't, either time. I didn't even get the immediate "We'll be in touch" email response like I did the first time. So it seems like their system is purposely ignoring me now. (Why? I can't figure that out.)

I had also tried disputing the charge via the PayPal site, however none of the choices PayPal provides for the reason of the dispute seemed applicable. I clicked what seemed the most relevant one and chose answers to the remaining questions that were presented to see what would happen, even though none of the answers were applicable. I thought I'd be given an opportunity to either Submit or Cancel at the end, and that I'd choose Cancel and maybe then try a different initial option. But after selecting the answers, I was only shown a message like "Well, you said you received the thing you ordered (ie. the song), so you can't dispute the charge."

Now when I try clicking the link to dispute the charge again (thinking that maybe I'll select a different initial reason this time), the link doesn't work ("Sorry — your last action could not be completed"). I suspect it is because they previously decided that I have no grounds for dispute.
ARGH.

I do still have the option of calling the PayPal customer support phone number. Maybe I could find an iTunes phone number.

It is only $1 they stole from me. It's not worth the hassle. But it's not right.

Update, 2017/08/19:
I still wasn't getting any response via Apple's Report a Problem page. So instead I contacted Apple support via chat (from that support page, I selected the links for: iTunes - iTunes Store - Purchases, Billing & Redemption - iTunes Store Account Billing - Chat). During the chat, the Apple rep reiterated that the $1 charge was only an authorization hold, and told me to contact PayPal; that PayPal should credit me the $1 back.

So I disputed the charge via the link on the PayPal site again (the link was working ok now - maybe there's a time-out period for how often you can click it?) This time, I selected the option for reporting a Billing issue, and an "issue that's not described". I attached a copy of my Apple support chat, and submitted the report. Within 24 hours, PayPal sent me a reply that they had accepted my claim and credited the $1 back to my account.

So finally, the problem has been resolved.

On Tuesday, I surpassed 10,000 steps in a single day for the first time since I started tracking my walking. At 11:45pm, the pedometer showed 9900. Naturally, I decided I had to do at least another 100 before midnight arrived.

The sky was very beautiful while driving home this evening. Awesome layers of clouds and light that make you want to look up rather than down at the street. The sun was setting, orange.

The wisteria/kudzu smells lovely.

Azaleas in full bloom. I still have some azalea photos from a year ago that I never posted. Still haven't finished going through all of last year's photos.

I have some photos of the cute budding fig leaves from a week or 2 ago... Now the leaves are already full size. Last year, I took photos of the young fig leaves too. I'm sure I'll get to them eventually.

I ordered 7 small items from Amazon last night. Button batteries and a couple other items which I've had trouble finding in physical stores. Already got shipment notifications on 5, and USPS tracking emails on 2 of them. California and New Jersey. Interesting to think that around the country, stuff is moving just for me.

When ordering Amazon Marketplace items, the credit card charge may randomly show up from either "AMAZON MKTPLACE PMTS" or "Amazon Payments". Because of that, it's no longer convenient to use Shop-Safe credit card numbers (which for security purposes allow purchases from only a single seller) for those purchases. Half the payments have been getting declined, and I've had to submit them again using a different credit card number. The weird thing is that when Amazon resubmits the ones that were originally charged to "Amazon Payments", the 2nd time they actually charge them to "AMAZON MKTPLACE PMTS".

Forestfen lost her camera, so I decided to buy myself a new one and give her my old one. (When her old one broke a few years back, I bought her a new one as a gift, and was slightly envious over the extra features it had compared to mine, although mine was still perfectly good and still is.)

As I've had audio problems in the past when recording videos, the main feature I was looking for in a new camera was an external microphone port. There aren't many compact point&shoot type cameras to be found with an external mic port. But snapsort.com had a listing of cameras with this feature. I finally decided on one - the Canon N100 - which was only slightly larger than my current camera.

I then ordered it from the website of a local store so that I could pick it up at the store without having to deal with shipping and delivery. Today while inspecting my new camera and reading the manual, I find out that it doesn't actually have an external mic port! Snapsort.com was DEAD WRONG about that, and also wrong on my 2nd choice, the Canon SX700 - apparently that one doesn't have an external mic either.

I thought I had seen the external mic port mentioned in other reviews, but that must have been when I was still researching other cameras, not the Canons. Why didn't I think to double-check the specs on Canon's website? Doh!

It might end up being a great camera in spite of that, but that's a lesson for me. Never trust the specs listed on a single website! As it was my own mistake, and not the store's, I'm not going to try to return it. At least the built-in microphone is in stereo.

This is almost on par with my great vacuum cleaner debacle of 2007.

Hrmm, re-reading that first post, I never did get around to painting any of the rooms in this house. All I painted was a closet and a doorway. I still feel proud about that closet.

Oh, and speaking of carrying a heavy vacuum cleaner up the ladder into the attic, I was doing that just this last weekend to clean out the remaining rat droppings from up there.