Well, isn’t somebody going to be very disappointed! They thought they had a bargain deal, claiming an iPhone 3GS in perfect condition for less than the going price and then, when the postman arrives, they are the proud owners of an iPhone box. What could be worse? In their excitement, they rip open the box, tearing at the seal, desperate to find their great deal inside and in the process destroying the most expensive packaging perhaps ever paid for!

Fair play to the seller, whether he was really trying to trick someone, or genuinely selling a box, he certainly made a killing. Maybe the Dutch guy had read this article, Get a good price by selling on ebay! One thing is for sure, the bidder didn’t read “Know how to buy on Ebay!”

So what happened .. in German (according to Google) he clearly says “Here you can make offers on the original packaging of the black iPhone 3G 16GB.” [Hier können Sie auf eine Originalverpackung des Iphone 3gs 16 Gb schwarz bieten.] and “I expressly point out that here only on the box of the iPhone, not the device itself” [Ich weise hiermit ausdrücklichst darauf hin, dass Sie hier nur auf die Schachtel des Iphones, nicht aber das Gerät selbst bieten.]. So although the title of the auction was “Apple iPhone 3gs Schwarz (16GB) OVP” he was honest in his description. And even more explicit, he says “It comes all that is visible in the pictures.” [Es wird alles geliefert was auf den Bildern zu sehen ist.] so you only need to look at the photos displayed to see that, yes, it is a picture of an empty box – open!

So, the final bidder, who jumped in at the last minute paid a whopping € 107.50 for an iPhone box plus postage! Oh dear. I wonder what he will think when he opens the box.. I wonder what comeback he may have, after all, the seller wasn’t making false claims as to what the description of the box was, unless “The condition of the box is perfect” [Der Zustand ist Tadellos.] was not the case. Presumably the Dutch guy will have celebrated already and spent his winnings down the pub so not much chance of a refund!

But the strange thing is, when looking at all those silly mugs who bid on the item making 32 bids in total, an extraordinary amount of those bids (22 of them) were from people with zero feedback. So, that makes me wonder if something fishy was going on? OK, maybe they are all naive new Ebay users, or maybe brand new accounts set-up purely to push up the price of the iPhone packaging.

I think the lesson is, do not bid on ebay unless you know exactly what it is you’re bidding for.

There are levels 43 until 150 here so far, with the exception of level 120 which is really bugging me!! I really hope to finish level 120 soon and then I may just buy the next 50 levels, except it is stopping me doing far more important work. UPDATE 3rd Jan 2010: Aha, well, I found out as suspected that there was a bug in the previous version of Geared, and Level 120 was missing an essential orange cog. Without that cog, I could only get a half-result. However, with an iTunes iStore App update, to Geared V1.70, the cogs have been glossed up but importantly, Level 120 was fixed, which meant I have successfully finished all levels 1 through 150!

I’m especially impressed with Level 79 which I managed to complete with one cog left over. Level 146 I also managed to complete with one small cog left over, quite an easy one this, despite being late in the series.

There are two completed versions for Level 141, the first version probably the supposed answer, but then I worked out another solution without using all the orange cogs. I also like the answer for Geared Level 80, which took some sussing out, quite a tricky design that one.

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I liked the look of redbel theme, which is designed by a Belgian named pixelb. It has simple stark colours, simple design, with a nice WordPress 3.0 menu. So, as easy as 1-2-3, I installed the new theme and had it working, after a fashion.

Modifying WordPress Theme

However, as usual with these free WordPress themes, there are a few things that needed to be changed, or tweeked, or modified to better suit the look of the website.

For example, the Forbidden City brand needed to be stronger, with the use of a logo on the header, which was easy enough to add to header.php, but meant the removal of the custom search page. This is something I will talk about later.

Photoshop Change Colour of Image

Also, the colours were too plain. Forbidden City plays in red / yellow, as the colours of the Imperial Forbidden City of China. The blue buttons, sidebar sprite, article, read more labels and .pngs did not match. Using Adobe Photoshop CS4, I added an adjustment layer and colorized the hue/saturation, which is a very easy way to change colour of the image, if it is a fairly simple colouring.

Tutorial

1. Open the .png or .psd image in Photoshop
2. Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (or press Ctrl U on Windows) to open the adjustment settings.
3. Actually it is better practice to go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Hue/Saturation to add a new adjustment layer. This means a new layer is added on top of the base image, so you can easily revert or delete the layer if things don’t go according to plan or don’t look right.
4. Name your layer as you like, leave color as none, normal mode and 100% opacity (as default settings). Press OK.
5. Click the colorize button, then change the hue setting to match your new colour chose (60 for yellow). Adjust the saturation (90 for bright yellow) and the lightness to suit (+5 for yellow).
6. Job done. Save your new .png image as you like.

With the redbel theme there are four blue colour images you should change, in my case to either red or yellow. You can then either change the .css link for each file, or simply rename the existing images and upload them via FTP to the theme images folder.

Photoshop Colorized Images Screenshot

Here are the new colorized images as I changed them, which you are welcome to download to use on your redbel theme, giving some extra colour palettes if preferred.

Various Colour Palettes for redbel theme

Redbel custom colours download

Download the custom colours for the WordPress redbel theme.

Redbel Theme Image Colours yellow (219) – Download the Yellow theme background Colours for Redbel

Redbel Theme Image Colours red (205) – Download the Red theme background Colours for Redbel

Redbel Theme Image Colours green (215) – Download the Green theme background Colours for Redbel

Other Modifications

redbel theme mod

I changed the header background in a similar way to give it a bit of a yellow splash.

I then changed the default puce.gif, which is used as a list indent on the sidebar to a gif of a football, to remind of the football based theme of the website.

I wanted to change the width of the main article, but the border of this is made from a fixed width image, which would be screwed up if the page width was altered, so I left this for the time being.

I found a problem with the widget options in the dashboard, that they were not saving when reloading the widget menu, but found this fix on WordPress Forums. I understand bpixel has sinced fixed this on the theme download.

I still need to work out how to add a search page to the sidebar, as the default option and the current .css for search mucks up the layout of the sidebar background images.

With the .css file, I made a few text, image and text colour changes, but nothing too drastic.

Thanks again to bpixel for the theme I worked with. I am very happy with the redbel theme mods I have made so far for Forbidden City FC.

Anyway, here are a few replies I received to some random questions I have asked:

“Travel: Where would you rather be right now?”

John K. 43 / M / Denver, US “exactly where I am”

Yabbox “Good answer. You lucky man.”

John K. “very”

Lauren F. 28 / F / Middle Village, US “zihuatanejo!”

Yabbox “It looks idyllic. Take me with you!”

Lauren F. “Wish I could take myself!! ”

Dustin M. 25 / M / Missoula, US “Rob a bank”

Yabbox “Nice. I didn’t think of that.”

Dustin M. “I mean, look at women, listen to gossip, play pranks on people, or get rich?

Yabbox “Apart from wander around the rooms of a high class brothel, I thought of stealing a passport, or walking across immigration, or issuing myself a round the world airplane ticket, stealing a yacht, etc. Similar lines I guess, but yours has more potential!”

Ian M. 26 / M / San Jose, US “id (birth cert, other documents), laptop, cell phone and charger.”

Yabbox “Modern day essentials. Frightening but realistic. Thanks.”

Ian M. “yeah…pretty much everything else is optional”

Melissa A. 29 / F / Dubai, United Arab Emirates “harddrives, bicycle, plants”

Yabbox “Superb answer. Realistic, practical and loving.”

Melissa A. “cool”

Maria F. 20 / F / Lisbon, Portugal “I don’t know, but if I woke up in an unfamiliar place without having any memory of how I got there, I’d call the police.”

Greg S. 25 / M / St. Louis, US “A hammock suspended between two doric columns overlooking the ocean on Santorini.”

Fernando B. 31 / M / Sao Paulo, Brazil “Probably will try to raise as much money as I can …”

Skyphone G. 40 / M / London, UK “I won’t assume right off that you might be gay if you are a flight attendant not unless you might be giving away signs of being effeminate? Being competent flight attendant demands a rigorous attention to details when it comes to serving demanding flight passengers. Only highly qualified individuals are fortunate to qualify & most of these qualities can only be found on people with specific attributes regardless of their sexual orientation.”

No Hunting Dogs Allowed in Room
No Cleaning Game in Room

Uploaded by yabbox

This is a screen shot taken from BBC Series ‘Wonders of the Solar System’ episode ‘Order out of Chaos’.

No Hunting Dogs Allowed in Room – No Cleaning Game in Room

It took me a while to work out what the second sentence meant, then it clicked, no cleaning (of) game (animals) in room.

It seems that the TLC Farmer’s Motel isn’t the only place where hunters get up to strange goings on in their motel room. Someone called Kay2 commented on the Fodor’s website

Paxson—Paxon Inn/Lodge has a sign on back of room door “No cleaning game in room” made us wonder about the stains in the shower.

BBC Programmes

Albino Black Sheep

From a games page on We Live in Beijing, I started playing a game called Bloxorz, which is hosted on Albino Black Sheep, a predominately flash based gaming zone. Damien Clarke, the designer behind Bloxorz works for DX Interactive, and from this site, you can find out more about Bloxorz by clicking on ‘Flash Games’ and then ‘Bloxorz’.

I wouldn’t normally spend much time, wasting valuable time playing games. However Bloxorz found me at a time when I was happy to be distracted from work! But more importantly the simplistic nature combined with the logic testing behind Bloxorz makes it compelling. It is a simple 3D game which is very quick to to learn, with an extremely clever maze layout and a logical strategy to complete the 33 levels. Think of rotating a jenga piece over it’s different sides on an Othello board, with other obstacles and tasks along the way.

It took me around four hours over three days to complete each level. Take regular breaks and don’t get addicted! I struggled on Level 19 for some time, took a break and then cracked it first time on my return. My favourite stage was probably Level 28, such a long route along a clever cross-stitch maze.

For those of you who get stuck on a level, persevere. And if that fails, you can watch YouTube. I am glad to say I didn’t cheat, just got very frustrated at times!

Enjoy.