I recently purchased a folding slingshot (or sling shot, however you want to spell it) from Wholesale items from China on eBay.

Yes, I know. The only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. When I was young we made shanghais. They were made out of a fork of a tree with a piece of shock cord and a vinyl pouch. While looking for something else on eBay one day I found the slingshots and happened to purchase one!

A quick note on quality of the slingshot. It seems strong enough, but the finish on the metal fork and brace is a bit rough. But then again, you don’t want your slingshot to look too nambie-pambie do you?

Apparently there are some Australian states that won’t allow importation of these slingshots. They are sent directly from Hong Kong. The seller posts the slingshot unassembled — that includes the handle not screwed together or band attached — and in two separate boxes a week apart. The seller guarantees delivery, but make sure you purchase using the ‘Australia-only’ slingshot listing.

My understanding though, at least in Queensland, is that slingshots are legally allowed to be sold as long as the rubber sling is not attached to the fork. So I do not believe that I am doing anything illegal, as long as I do not use it as a weapon …

However, it leaves the question of how to attach the surgical tubing used as the sling to the posts on the fork. If you try to just slide the tubing on the posts, it only goes on about 5 mm … and the first time you give it a decent pull, the tubing comes off.

A quick search of the internet reveals that dipping the ends in rubbing alcohol (that does not contain any lotions or glycerin) before sliding the band on the posts is the secret. Leave it to dry for 24 hours before pulling back on the slingshot and the tubing should not come off.

The only readily available brand of rubbing alcohol I could find in Australia was Isocol. The Isocol packaging does not alert you to any additives that may make the band slip off. You still need to give the end of the tubing a good twist to get them on the posts and then need to align them so that the pouch hangs evenly.

Now for a little target practice …

The usual disclaimer applies.

I have bought a few things from eBay, apparently safe that my purchases were protected by PayPal.

On 7 January 2009 I bought a battery charger for $14.40 (+$10 postage) on eBay from AUSSIE_BATTERY INC. I paid for the purchase immediately through PayPal. Aussie Battery states that items are generally shipped out the next business day by Australia Post eParcel, that is, registered post with a tracking number. The tracking number was only sent to me after I chased Aussie Battery for it. I still have not received the item and the tracking number is no longer current.

After several e-mails to Aussie Battery with no forward progress, I escalated this to a PayPal claim on 21 January. It is now 26 February and there is still no result. I have now made a complaint to PayPal about the length of time their process is taking. Me? A serial whinger?

It seems to me that PayPal’s dispute resolution process is firmly in the favour of the seller, not the buyer. Don’t count on getting disputes resolved by PayPal quickly. And certainly NEVER buy from Aussie Battery.

Not good enough Aussie Battery, or PayPal.

Update: I finally received notification that I am getting a refund — on 13 March, nearly two months after the PayPal dispute was opened. PayPal agreed that Aussie Battery failed to deliver — I am not a serial whinger after all! I have not yet seen the money appear in my bank account, but I am presuming it will eventually. PayPal says that it will take up to seven days …

Trouble is, I have chewed up a stack of my time chasing after less than $25. Most people probably wouldn’t bother, which plays straight into the seller’s hands.

A most unsatisfactory buying experience I must say.

The 100,000 km service of our Subaru Forester by City Automotive Group that turned into a ridiculously expensive $3,337 exercise is some time ago now. A quick update is in order.

My wife has finally got around to trading this car in. It is just over six years old and has only done 84,000 km.

She has been looking at a Mercedes Benz. But she is not really a car person and is having difficulty justifying spending $80k on a depreciating asset used to get from point A to point B. It is not that she can’t afford it — it is whether she wants to afford it.

So despite the bad servicing experience, back she went to City Automotive Group to buy a new Subaru Forester (some people just don’t learn, hey?). In fact, she was ready to sign on the line for a brand new Forester immediately. The sales guy was nice, but the manager was so rude and arrogant — at one stage he physically pushed past her, forcibly knocking her shoulder — that she walked out of there in disgust!! And she would have done the deal there and then!!

To make matters worse, when the old car was inspected to work out a trade-in price, it was identified that the head gaskets were leaking … again! That is, the $3,337 service that included fixing the cyclinder head gasket, only temporarily fixed the problem. What is the problem City Automotive Group? Doesn’t spending $3,000-plus get a proper fix?

I look forward to another $3,000 service on a car with a trade in price of only $9,000 … not!

The silly thing is, City Automotive Group is aware of the original blog post – I e-mailed them after they wrote to us enquiring why we were no longer getting the car serviced through them … and I noticed the hits to that page spike for a few days! — but they have not done anything to get us back on side. There has not even been a phone call to amicably discuss the issue. If they had dealt with the issue in a positive manner, these posts on my blog would not even exist!

Mercedes Benz on the other hand has admitted that they do occasionally have expensive servicing issues with their cars, but they work with the owner to fix the problem, ie. they do not leave the car owner holding the can. Mercedes Benz: my wife is coming to buy a brand spanking new car!

Well, I have finally managed to move all my web sites that were hosted with Hosting Shop. At one stage I had three web sites hosted through them.

My reasons for moving to a new web site hosting provider included:

• e-mails delivered up to four (yes, 4!!) months late
• undelivered e-mails
• web sites often down
• incredibly slow web sites
• very high spam levels.

In response to my requests to look into the problems, I either got no answer from Hosting Shop, or was advised that the problem had been fixed … but the problem would reoccur a short time later.

The silly thing is, when I advised that I was not going to renew one of my web sites, Hosting Shop offered to move me to a different server in their server farm. Apparently the server this particular web site was on had known problems!! In other words, Hosting Shop knew what the problem was all along, but failed to fix it until I threatened to leave!!!

The final icing on the cake was that I received a renewal notice for the last web site I had with Hosting Shop in the lead up to Christmas. When it was automatically renewed and my credit card charged in early January 2009, I advised that I did not want the hosting renewed. In fact, the web site had been moved some weeks earlier. However, the accounts department at Hosting Shop stuck to the letter of their terms and conditions rather than the spirit of good customer service. Because I had not given two weeks notice, they would not refund my money.

This final act exemplified my experience of Hosting Shop’s poor customer service and unreliable hosting service. I guess I should not have expected anything else.

Perhaps you could subscribe to the theory that you get what you pay for — and I only paid Hosting Shop $125 per year to host each web site. However, Jumba offers excellent personal web site hosting starting at only $29.95 a year. When I changed over, I realised what a poor hosting service Hosting Shop had. Jumba includes up to date Cpanel and other installed software, including WordPress which runs this blog.

Update June 2009: Hosting Shop has been taken over by AussieHQ, who owns also owns Jumba.

The Canon Powershot A590IS marketing materials indicate that the camera gives the user complete control over the photography settings. So why is it so hard to take a photo with the subject focused and the background blurred? A quick scan of the internet reveals that many other people are also experiencing difficulty gaining this effect.

Here is how I managed to achieve it on my Canon Powershot A590IS:

• set AF Frame to centre (in Menu)
• set on Av – aperture priority (dial on top of camera)
• zoom in to 4.0x (zoom trigger on top of camera)
• set aperture to F5.5 (left button on four-way toggle)
• stand close to the subject (about 80 cm should do it)
• focus on the subject (press shutter halfway)
• take photo (press shutter fully).

The photo below was taken with my camera using the above settings.

When starting out, you may find it easier to reduce the quality of the image to M2 (bottom of function settings) so that you can zoom in further to 6.4x.

Incidentally, if you set the Canon Powershot A590IS to portrait mode (dial on top of camera), you can generate a similar result. The trick is to zoom in and stand close to the subject. Only trouble is, zooming in and standing that close to a subject does not make for an ideal portrait … who has a head that small???

The next logical step was to see if my fully automated Canon IXUS 90IS could perform the same trick using portrait mode. And it does!

The following photo of one of my dogs was taken with the Canon IXUS 90IS using centre AF Frame, Portrait mode and zoomed in to 3x.

The following photo was also taken using my Canon A590IS on aperature priority set to 4.5 and macro focus on.

Birthday rolls around again (only once a year thank goodness!) and this year I received a Canon IXUS 90IS digital camera. I requested this snapper because I thought it would be a good, easy shooter for the family to use. Our old Sony DSC-P72 camera was more than five years old and desperately needed replacing.

However, in the process of selecting the IXUS 90IS, I decided to pick up a Canon Powershot A590IS as well. Me? A gadgets guy? My wife has only just worked this out after seven years of marriage …

The IXUS 90IS has a great solid feel, and has a range of automated settings and scene modes. The manual mode on this camera only allows you to play with a few settings — it is not a true manual mode. The camera has been bagged in reviews somewhat because of the controls. I agree to some extent that they are not particularly tactile, but once you get used to them, they are quite easy to use.

I have not yet had much of a chance to play with the Powershot A590IS. It has a range of automated settings similar to the IXUS 90IS, but offers the added feature of being able to be used in full manual mode. I am looking forwards to playing with this camera some more.

For the record, the Canon IXUS 90IS was A$288 from Officeworks. I have put a 8GB SDHC card in it. The Canon A590IS was A$117 from Target and I put a 4GB card in it.

Hosting Shop, my old web site hosting provider, finally sent me a renewal notice. And I finally go around to moving this blog to Jumba. It has been on my list of things to do for a while, but just not got around to it.

I had experienced too many problems with the old hosting provider, including undelivered e-mail, e-mail delays and unavailable web sites. Now that I am with Jumba, I realise what I was missing out on! The latest CPanel and web site software is all readily available. 

A smooth transition, except I seem to have generated some pesky random  characters in the move. I will need to work out how to do a search and delete them.

Must go and do some other stuff.

I am looking for a few people to play in a casual saxophone quartet/duet in Brisbane, perhaps getting together one afternoon a month.

I have returned to the saxophone after 20 years of not playing and am keen to find some people to jam with. I have student-quality alto and tenor saxes at present. I am keen on jazz/groove/funk/pop/rock music. Forget classical though.

I have no aspirations of performing for profit. If we get good enough we might put a couple of tunes up on YouTube, or play for a family gathering or two. My emphasis is on relaxed, friendly, fun.

Contact me if you are interested.

Hi Stella

I know that you have found my blog because your sister mentioned it when I phoned her a while back. But either your sister did not pass on my message or you did not want to speak with me.

Are you okay? Drop me an e-mail sometime — rex@rantrex.net. I would love to know what you have been up to after 20 years. If I do not reply, it may be because of my spam filter — but I do want to hear from you so Google my real name and you will pretty quickly find a business phone number/e-mail for me.

I have had a wide and varied 20 years with my share of ups and downs — but it is all part of the journey isn’t it? I have also stacked on about 20 kilos!

I am still keen to get our old gang of six together for a 21-year high school reunion.

Rex.

PS. Hey Jessica: Is your sister okay? Drop me a line.

I have not made a post recently, and have not yet put up a few photos of the instruments I have bought. I have been busy.

But not too busy to purchase a Selmer Bundy II alto saxophone off eBay. Apparently the instrument was used for about six months, and then left in its case for 10 years. The instrument was described as being in very good condition, but in my opinion needs work. I am not particularly concerned about a couple of minor dents in the foot of the saxophone, or a few scratches and some light tarnishing. However, a couple of keys are sticking, which means that the instrument is not playable. Playing a tune and the G# key does not lift off, or sometimes C turns into an A becase B does not lift. I am also having trouble playing low C cleanly.

I am going to drop the instrument into a repairer in the next few weeks. The notes that do play really sing, particularly in the upper register so I am looking forward to playing this sax properly.

I have ordered some alto saxophone music from Sheet Music Plus.