MediaFire needs to get their shit together

July 1, 2009

I’ve been using MediaFire as my general “online file storage” location for a little over a year now, and I really like the cut of their gib. It’s well organized, you have lots of control, and the free account covers most of what the average user could ask for.

The only real limit that I’ve encountered is the “maximum possible upload size per file” of only 100MB. It doesn’t happen that often, but it gets in the way every once in a while. Recently I came into some money, so I decided that I should just pay the $60 (for a year) and see if I could actually make the Pro Account worth it.

In the process of upgrading my account, I chose to pay using Paypal. After agreeing to their Terms & Conditions I was redirected over to Paypal, sent them some money, and then redirected back to a “success screen” at MediaFire. But when I went to upload a file larger than 100MB, everything was still as if I only had a free account. I hit back a bunch of times, trying to find the “success” screen and I found this in it’s place:

Paypal sent us back some invalid data! Please contact support@mediafire.com immedaitely [sic] regarding this issue or try to use a credit card. (-144)

I emailed support@mediafire.com asking what was up, but the email was sent back to me saying that there was a failure trying to send it. I was at an impasse. Do I try to contact them through some other means, or do I just submit my payment again but with a credit card? I really did not want to pay them twice.

Just as I was thinking that, I got an email from Paypal saying that I a “recurring payment has been created” with MediaFire. I checked my paypal account and, sure enough, I was charged $59.70 by MediaFire for a Pro Account, but I sure as hell don’t have Pro Account features enabled on my account.

So, I went over to support.mediafire.com and submitted a ticket explaining my situation. It’s been about 24 36 hours and I haven’t heard a single thing back from them. I know that that’s not that long (that), but in this day and age you’d think I would have at least got a “we’re looking into this” message or something. And it’s not like this is hard to fix, just go in and manually flip the “Pro Account” switch.

While I wait for MediaFire to get their shit together, I’m doing the last thing that a brand new paying customer should be doing: looking around to see what the competition has to offer.


Lemon Vanilla Wacky Cake

June 28, 2009

In an effort to fully explore all the Vegan Strawberry Shortcake options for Nate & Ingrid’s wedding, we have to be open to all possibilities. So far we’ve tried your typical Wacky Cake, Vegan Shortcake, Vanilla Almond Wacky Cake, and last night we experimented a bit more.

Lemon Vanilla Wacky Cake

(for a 8″ square/circle pan, double this recipe for a 9 by 13)

Sift together into the pan in which you will be baking the cake:

  • 1 3/4 cups flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix the dry ingredients together with a fork, making sure to get an even mixture. Then make 4 wells (some big, some small, and some just right) in the dry ingredients. Pour one of the following ingredients into each of the wells (respectively):

  • 1 tablespoon vinegar
  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 2 teaspoon lemon zest

Then pour 1 tablespoon of lemon juice into 1 cup of cold water and pour that over the whole thing: mix well with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes… until a toothpick comes out clean.

LEMONY!!!!!!


How Many Colors Do You See?

June 26, 2009

Gregg Attleson is a fan of BuzzFeed, which led him (and indirectly me) toward the Pringles Banner Ad I tweeted about, and then toward a story about a color optical illusion. Usually I’m not a big fan of color illusions, being colorblind and all. But this one was different:

How many colors do you see?

Don’t scroll down all the way. Take a second to study the image.

There are only 3 colors, I promise.

I studied the image very well before I answered. I made sure that I wasn’t being fooled. There are 4 colors. Wrong. Only three. Seriously. If you’re on a Mac right now, bust out your trusty DigitalColor Meter and prove it to yourself (or just check out the details on the original post). The illusion works even if you’re colorblind, which was really cool to me.

But the really amazing part came when I clicked through to the original site where that image came from: Akiyoshi’s illusion pages. Click that link and take a minute to poke around. Don’t worry, I’ll be right here when you get back.

* * *

It was fun, wasn’t it?

Now, I know these are just silly color illusions, but that website (although not the best looking in the world) has to have thousands of illusions. It’s unreal. It feels like I could never look at all of them even I looked at 20 a day for the rest of my life. Crazy.