Da blues ...

Da blues ..., originally uploaded by _iNK.

Playing around with the iPhone camera and the Lolo filter in CameraBag.

The blues on a Saturday morning ...

Hokoku-ji Bamboo Forest in Kamakura (Japan)

Hokoku-ji Bamboo Forest in Kamakura (Japan), originally uploaded by JP in Dublin.

I'm a little bit taken by these shots of buddhist temples in bamboo forests ... How beautifully serene.

Between the bamboo - Explore #390

Between the bamboo - Explore #390, originally uploaded by kiddo75.

I think this picture is excellent! I love the lighting and the lines in this. I find forest pictures to be quite difficult - primarily because the light at ground level is hard to work with and you invariably have to shoot with a large aperture so a narrow depth of field.

But the best part about this picture is the serenity that it radiates. I love the calm that comes from sitting with it ... :-)

Fake iPhone adventure

Had a couple of beers at the Toxteth with @alphajuliet and after we had solved the problems of the world, we got to talking about AJ's experience with his iPhone. I've wanted one for a while but have been bound to this contract with optarse so have been waiting patiently for the new year to tick over. Also, I have been burned by first gen Apple hardware so thought I would give the product some settling time.

With craving freshened by my conversation with AJ, I hit eBay early the next morning and ran across a pretty unbelievable deal - $580 for an unlocked 16GB. The seller had a 100 or so transactions, had been on eBay since 2007, and had a 100% positive feedback. Trusting in the Trust Ratings of eBay, I went forth and PayPalled my way to a particularly insalubrious experience.

Couple of days later (a Saturday), I woke up to two emails - one from eBay and another from PayPal - the item had been delisted, the seller suspended.  I had no obligation to buy the item anymore and I was to begin the process of getting my money back.  

I had used PayPal and expected that the Buyer Protection doovilaki would kick in and I would just get my money back - after all, both eBay and PayPal knew that this had gone wrong and had informed me of the situation themselves.  No such luck.

The only way of telling PayPal that I wanted my money back was to raise a dispute.  And the only option available there was to use the "Item not received" category (with no way of referencing the email that they sent me in the first place).  

PayPal immediately contacted the seller to tell them that I had not received my iPhone - WTF?!!  Anyway, the seller writes back with tracking info - says, its been shipped - its on its way - bloody PayPal are glitching things up - all's okay ... you should get your iPhone in the next few days.

Monday morning we get a courier come in and deliver what you see below.  Flagrantly counterfeit!  The box says "Phone 3G" and is without an Apple logo.  The only place the logo appears anywhere in the whole shooting match is as a sticker on the back of the thing that is trying to be the iPhone.  The packaging is oh so not Apple - and on close inspection, the thing has the wrong number of buttons, and its connector is quite different from that of the iPhone.  The documentation is a single fold out that has no Apple on it - anywhere!

Its the kind of thing you might run into in a market in Mumbai and you might be tempted to part with a few dollars to buy it as a kris kringle - oh how disappointment!!

But not without entertainment!  Hope the pics give you some sense of how laughably fake this is (click on a pic to see the large size - in particular, check out the box!).  I didn't fire the thing up in case it blew up and I didn't have anything to return!  I was feeling optimistic that the mighty empire of eBay and PayPal would magically return me my money and this appears to be how things will come to pass. Apparently I have to ship this piece of crap back to the seller - to a PO Box in Highton, VIC (a PO box - go figure) - and they will reverse the transaction.  

Accomplishment:  Experiencing first hand, the tribulations of a bad transaction on eBay.

Lessons learned:  Its not that hard to be duped.  Recovering from being duped is not easy. 

Epilogue (20 January) - This story ends well.  I got my money back from PayPal.  :-) 

Back to it ...

I'm a Dad!! We have a beautiful daughter ... and we are enjoying the adventure of parenthood!

And this post will mark the end of my foray into self disclosure for a little while ... the iNK blot will tack towards things that are a little less private :-)