I've modified the "eBay RSS feed generator" javascript that I created a couple of months ago. Nothing terribly big… but now you have to option to limit the search to only items with free shipping, and also set a minimum and maximum price range. Also, rather than just a link to the eBay RSS feed, the feed should open up in a preview frame beneath the search options, so you can look at the results and refine your searches without ever having to switch tabs or windows.

If you have any other parameters that you would like to see added, just ask in the comments and I'll try to add them quickly.

(Edit [10:13pm]: at the request of UnlikelyMoose, you can now choose to have results sorted by "Best Match" or "Auctions Ending Soon")

Enough talking. Here it is:

Yesterday, I decided that my unofficial job title is "Productivity Tool".

In addition to working way too fast and destroying my workload almost every day, I help others do the same thing. As the resident computer guru, when someone finally comes to me and asks me for help with something they've spent days or weeks on – it's my job to write a program or script that will finish it in seconds and absolutely amaze them.

Trying to clean up a list of 200,000+ ISBNs with garbage text mixed in? One magic regular expression will do it in under 2 seconds.
("/\d{7,15}x?/" if you're curious. I know that giving a range of 7-15 digits matches more than ISBNs, but there are screwy numbers in there that may be important, so I erred on the side of caution, rather than just dumping them all.)

etc. etc. etc.

I've begun measuring my performance in terms of how much of other people's work I get done.

Ok people.. there's a difference here.

When I came in to work today, one of the students told me that she made "muffins" and there should be some left. Imagine my surprise when I went looking for the muffins and found… CUPCAKES!

Here are some easy tips to help you out if you're ever confused whether something is a muffin or a cupcake:

• If it has frosting on it, it's probably a cupcake.
• If a larger version would be called a "cake", then it is a cupcake.
• If a larger version would be called a "bread", then it is a muffin.
• If it would be considered a desert, it's probably a cupcake.
• If you'd eat it with a meal, it's probably a muffin.
  (But don't get confused here! If it's not in a cupcake/muffin shape, you may be eating a "slice of bread" or a "roll")

Oh man!

sparxMind.com celebrated its 2 year birthday (from the date of the first post) on July 21st, and I totally forgot about it!

Instead, I posted about drinking too much water making you have to pee. A lot – almost proportional to the amount of water drank… I'm still trying to figure this odd connection out.

So anyway… Happy Birthday sparxMind! And don't drink too much water!

You know what I never see? Vending machines full of ice cream.

I think making ice cream vending machines more prominent and more widely available would make the world a much better place to live. Why fight or be unhappy when you can just go and get an ice cream?!

I'd be happy with either machines that sell prepackaged ice cream treats like you'd get from an ice cream man driving around in one of those ice cream trucks that plays the same song ooooover and oooooover, or a soft-serve dispensing machine similar to a coffee vending machine.

I want my Palm Pre… getting tired of waiting til my contract is up so I can renew and get a discount on it.

Hey, someone from Sprint reading this – what's the easiest way to upgrade from a SERO plan to an Everything Plus Referral Plan? And are there any discounts (Customer Loyalty, etc) that can be added to get the price down a bit closer to my current SERO pricing? 🙂

I would go nuts if I couldn't listen to music at work. Very quickly. But luckily I have Pandora to dull the pain of being a drone. Or had Pandora rather.

Due to the music industry and corporate douchebags, webcasters/webradio services are now subject to REDONKULOUS licensing fees. Pandora managed to cut a deal with these soulless creatures – allowing them to continue to offer their great, FREE, music service… but at the cost of limiting free listening to 40 hours a month. So now I'm switching between pandora and last.fm for all my music needs.

Pandora sent me this email a few days ago telling me that I can listen to music again!

Hey, Tim here –

We're very sorry about limiting your listening last month – I'm writing to let you know that, starting today you can listen to the free version of Pandora again. We hope you'll come back!

Sorry if this limit is driving you nuts – it's the last thing we want to do, but it's the economic reality of streaming. We pay royalties for every song we play, which we feel good about, but it means that for our most consistent listeners, like you, advertising revenues don't cover the costs. If you want to listen more than 40 hours a month, we've come up with two options:

* For unlimited, ad-free listening, along with a bunch of other cool features, you can upgrade to Pandora One.

OR…

* If you run out of hours in any given month, you can pay $.99 to listen for the rest of the month (you'll still have advertising). This is a one-time fee: we won't charge your credit card again.

We really hope one of these options works for you. To check on how many hours you have remaining, just click the 'account' link above the Pandora tuner. There's also more information on our blog.

Thanks again for listening and, I hope, welcome back!
Tim's Signature

Tim Westergren
Founder
Pandora

I don't know why.. but this email makes me kinda grumpy. Oh well.