After somehow managing to post something useful earlier in the week, I’ve decided to prove that metaphorical lightning can indeed strike twice in the same place by making another useful post. This time, it’s about the eBay Auction Enhancer user script for the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox. This nifty little bit of JavaScript adds a countdown timer to eBay auction pages (as well as an in-place bid placer, although I tend not to use that so much).

Why am I posting about it? Well, it seems that when our clocks went back to GMT (marking the end of British Summer Time) the countdown timer stopped working, replacing the hour of the countdown timer with ?? which renders the script a little bit less useful than before. Thankfully, the fix is simple: open up the script and replace the following line:

zones: {UTC: "", AEST: "+10", AEDT: "+11", CEST: "+2", CEDT: "+2", CET: "+1", EST: "-5",
EDT: "-4", Paris: "+1", IST: "+5:30", BST: "+1", WET: "", "H\\.Esp": "+1"},


with this:

zones: {GMT: "", UTC: "", AEST: "+10", AEDT: "+11", CEST: "+2", CEDT: "+2", CET: "+1", EST: "-5",
EDT: "-4", Paris: "+1", IST: "+5:30", BST: "+1", WET: "", "H\\.Esp": "+1"},


To open the script, right-click the Greasemonkey icon in the Firefox status bar and select Manage User Script… Then, in the window that opens, click eBay Auction Enhancer and click the Edit button. Then make the amendment as above and you’re all set.

Two useful posts in one week? I’m starting to feel a little faint. Better pass the smelling salts, just in case.

Want to know what’s shaking the walls here at tossr towers? No? Well I’ll tell you anyway; at the moment I’m rocking a triple-whammy of free mixtapes.

The first is The Root Down Live! Pt. 1 mixed by Heavy Stylus, a 69-minute blend of funk/soul/hip-hop/etc. representing the sound of local (to me) club night Root Down.

Secondly, we have Siliconbeat’s The Breaks Are Here which is 69 minutes of breakbeat fury.

Finally, there’s Mash Up Ting mixed by Firestar, which throws together a bunch of dancehall-inspired tracks from assorted genres over the course of 57, encompassing breaks, garage (including a nice selection of 4×4 speed garage — it’s like 1998 never went away!) and drum & bass.

Pithy one-line comment to round off the blog post? Not this time!

What? Something worthwhile at tossr? I can scarcely believe it myself, but it’s true!

As someone who’s fallen for Netvibes in a big way (not least because, ahem, it’s the only online RSS feed reader I’ve found that isn’t blocked by the web filtering software at work), I’m finding myself increasingly ignoring Bloglines in favour of the young French upstart.

Now, as you may or may not be aware, the recently-released Firefox 2.0 has a nice feature which will offer to add an RSS feed as a Live Bookmark in Firefox, add it to the web-based aggregator of your choice or add it to your favourite computer-based reader. Unfortunately, the existing choice of online aggregators is limited, and doesn’t contain Netvibes.

So, here’s how to fix it: click this link here and you’ll be asked whether or not you want to add Netvibes as a feed reader. Click “Yes” and, as you might expect, you’ll now be able to add feeds to Netvibes from within Firefox.

Want to test it out? Step this way! Want to know more about adding feed readers to Firefox? Have a peek over here. Fancy bulking up your browser a little? Help is at hand!

Those damn naturists, they think they’re so smart! If you want to give them what they’ve had coming for a long, long time, you should head over to Threadless and take advantage of their two-day sale where they’ve slashed their prices from $15 a shirt just $10 (or, to put it another way — buy two, get one free) — apart from the fancy-pants Select shirts, which are down $5 to $20 each (with the exception of the current lot of shirts in the Think Faest promotion, which stay at $25). UK denizens such as myself can look forward to paying $44 all-in for three shirts, which is about £23.50 (although the shirts themselves cost £16, which is under the £18 limit set by HM Customs and therefore no tax is payable on them. Screw you, VATman!).

Full disclosure: I get $3 in Threadless store credit for every shirt bought via the link above. Buy, buy, buy and keep me clothed this winter!

Well, it had to happen I suppose. I’ve strayed from the path of righteousness. Yes, that’s right, I’ve cheated on that which is closest to my heart.

Namely, Costa Coffee.

A couple of months ago I was dragged into a local Caffe Nero and — you know what? — it’s not half bad. Ever since Costa dropped their spicy meatball panini I’ve been oscillating between the only other panini that I fancied: chicken arrabiata and plain ol’ ham and cheese. However, now that I’ve discovered Caffe Nero and their mozarella and meatball special… well, there’s no going back now.

Or is there? I was visiting family last month, and in their local Costa (the only fancy-pants coffee chain in town) they did have spicy meatball. Back for the Winter? Or regional variation? I’m not sure, but I’ll have to visit my local one again to check. Or at least, I would if I hadn’t been reeled in by Nero’s loyalty scheme: buy nine coffees and your tenth is free. Note that the nine coffees don’t have to be bought at once, although to be honest I don’t need much encouragement to drink prodigious amounts of the stuff…

So, what conclusion can we draw from this? Basically, I think we’ve learned that I can talk a lot of shite about inconsequential bollocks. Hooray for me!