Today's Toys

[UPDATE: Well, rats. I suspect maybe Amazon is still working out the bugs with this—I've just spent three hours messing with it and I can no longer get it to work, despite trying a bunch of different things. The ads are pretty fun—I was looking forward to building these posts every day. I guess I'll let it rest for a few days before I try again. I've submitted help tickets to both TypePad and Amazon. Maybe somebody will get back to me.

So I've worked from seven to noon and haven't got a darned thing to show for it. SNAFU...that ever-useful expression from WWII. Situation Normal, All [effed] Up.

On the good side, I wrote a complete "Satire Alert" post about the election and TypePad swallowed it whole. Gone. No trace. So there's that. Some SNAFUs work out to your advantage.

In the meantime, just to prevent frustration for today, here were the four products I picked today, in old-fashioned manual links (I will not be doing this every day). 1, 2,  3, 4. (You can only link to text, hence the numerals.)  —Mike the not a computer guy]

We're doing daily toy posts as a revenue-raiser for the month of November (what does PBS call it when they do this?). If you don't see four ad links with pictures in line directly below this post, and would like to, consider whitelisting TOP in your ad blocker. Thanks as always for your support!

The weird flashlight idea is courtesy of my friend Jim, who has used one for years and finds it continually useful. The card is the Rolls-Royce option for the current high-end Fujis, which can handle UHS-II. (Note that your card reader also must be UHS-II compatible to get the ultra-fast download speeds).

Mike

P.S. When it works, it's supposed to look like this:

Anyway, sorry for the kernel panic here today. I'll reset tomorrow.

Original contents copyright 2016 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)

Comments

[David Miller]

Mike, to the best of my knowledge I don't have an ad-blocker, but there are no ads visible at the bottom of this post, and when I scroll down the ones that were there a few days ago have also vanished.

[Lindsay Bach]

not seeing anything and I don't use an ad blocker

[Patrick Perez]

I don't see any ads, and I'm not using an ad blocker.

Patrick

[Michel]

I ordered two flashlights. They will be fun Christmas gifts for my wife and daughter for our annual camping holiday.

I don't mind the ads and at a minimum I would suggest you continue to display the Amazon search box. Question for you, does (my) Amazon Prime membership affect your ability to receive credit for my purchases?

[Speed]

I have no ad-blocker but I don't see the ads.

[Steve Higgins]

Interesting. I had to add TOP to my allowed pop-ups list (I don't use an ad-blocker. Yet) to get the adverts.

[John Krumm]

Hmm, don't see them, but I do see the one's farther down.

[Patrick Cooney]

In Chrome, on a Widows 10 PC, with no ad blocker, and with your last ad still visible, I don't see this one. Your curated ads are fine by me, so I thought you would like to know all this.

[Andre]

A word of advice after having any number of long, time-consuming pieces of writing sucked into a black hole by buggy web forms, corporate tools, and the like: For any significant composition, do it in a well-trusted tool that hasn't been prone to giving you problems (a good word processor, or textedit on the Mac, Notepad on Windows, etc. and saving often) and then copy-paste it into the web form or other not-so-trusted tool. It adds an extra step, but a short one that's infinitely preferable to risking losing the entire thing to a capricious computer program. I've saved myself a lot of wasted hours by doing so.

[I'd gotten lax about this since TypePad added autosave. But I guess you have to save it yourself first one time before the autosave starts working. And wouldn't you know, the first time I went to save it, I got a 404 error. Blitzed and gone. Ya hate that. --Mike]

[MikeR]

The tote bag! Gotta have a gift option for supporters. Or, a TOP coffee mug.

[c.d.embrey]

Every day, in every way, the internet is becoming less and less safe. So no-one gets white listed—sorry 'bout that.

Google has become so good at tracking, and selling my 'net travels that it is scary. If I see another recommended for you tag I'll p̶u̶k̶e̶ vomit.

MacOS Sierra now includes ApplePay for internet purchases, so that's one less worry.

Why not just fix the problem at your end? How hard would it be to just display the ad of the day as a separate post with comments disabled? Also Amazon is in the business of generating money, they surely won't allow TypePad to get in their way—talk to them.

Why not sell T-shirts with welknown Mike aphorisms ... just sayin'

Maybe a parasol with a photo of Butters. Sorta like this Marc Riboud photo http://www.theemptyquarter.com/wp-content/uploads/Between-East-West-2.jpg Expand your market, sell to people who love cute animals, but have no interest in photography. I'm thinking of doing one with a shot of the Rev. Scrub Hansen.

[Clayton]

Would you send some lens suggestions to the people filming the Chinese open?

[Dick Drake]

Mike, a comfortable recliner, good music and an adult beverage helps.

[Grant]

I couldn’t figure out the toy posts, until I realized that my browser has an ad blocker. It really works. Perhaps to reach us blockheads, you should include manual links even when you can get the Amazon ads to work.

As for the lost post, which I’m sure was brilliant, you should compose them on a word processor, then copy and paste to Typepad. I trust that you will remember to hit “save” first.

[Hans Muus]

Mike, I am sorry to hear you lost a complete post. Don't you use TimeMachine on your Apple machine? It's such an effective safety net when something like this happens.

[I do use Time Machine, but I compose in the TypePad template in my browser, which Time Machine doesn't save. --Mike]

[Kenneth Wajda]

I see the ads just fine on a MacBook Air running Firefox. And I highly recommend Sally Mann's book in the link. Great read.

My partner works for the company that fulfills the NPR orders for the local stations' pledge drives--the most successful gift is the Nina Totenbag, a tote bag named for NPR correspondent, Nina Totenberg.

[Speed]

Three computers sitting side by side with no ad blockers. Two show the ads. One does not.

In my experience, trying to make software work can be an enormous time-suck. Like games but not as much fun.

[Bruce McL]

For next time: levitating bluetooth speakers!!!

https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Crazybaby-Levitating-Speaker-Subwoofer/dp/B01694UG5O/

[wts]

I want to see your "Satire Alert" posts on our candidates in the US. [...] With less than a week left to worry, a healthy dose of your satire would be helpful.

[Bob Dowd]

Weren't you talking about moving off of typepad and onto another platform a while back?

[Ken James]

I saw the ads yesterday early in the morning, then later they were gone. Now that I got your attention, I am waiting for you to talk about the 7200, please

[hugh crawford]

I am familiar with that saying about how anything than can happen will happen. Somehow I missed the part about all the weird outliers happening in 2016.