Dear Amazon

Dear Amazon,


I guess the “F” stands for “Freddie”?

Because you liked F-Troop...

Dear Amazon,


I just finished reading book 9 of the Destroyer series on my Kindle. From inside the book, I clicked to go to the Kindle Store, and my recommendations were:

  • Six Easy Pieces, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations, and Six Not-So-Easy Pieces, by Richard P. Feynman
  • Bad Astronomy, by Philip Plait
  • Genius, by James Gleick
  • The Faith Healers, by James Randi
  • The Varieties of Scientific Experience, Pale Blue Dot, and Billions & Billions, Carl Sagan
  • Japanese Hot Pots, by Tadashi Ono & Harris Salat
  • The Destroyer volumes 7, 6, 12, 3, 11, 17, 40, 31, 36, 37, 27, 44, 35, 34, 43, 30, 42, 26, 45, 39, 33, 20, 25, 49, 48, 46, 32, 38, 29, 47, 41, 28, 55, 50, 53, 52, 51, 57, 54, 56, and five more un-numbered books related to the same series by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir.

All praise for filling the list with things I’m actually interested in, but do you think maybe you overdid it a bit on the Destroyer novels, especially since the one I’m most likely to want right now isn’t on the list at all?

At a guess, the metadata simply isn’t up to the task of identifying series relationships, and I’m seeing the usual “you just bought a nice watch, so you must be interested in buying a dozen more nice watches” problem.

Also, while I’m pleased that I finally have my Kindle recommendations straightened out, I sigh in despair at the weeks of Android-app-recommendation cleanup I face after buying some apps for my Sony Tablet.

[Update: it seems book 10 is the only one in the first fifty or so that isn’t available for Kindle yet.]

Dear Amazon,


I’m a bit puzzled at the moment. Usually CD releases in Japan are even more overpriced when they’re imports.

New Younha album on Amazon Japan: 1,013 yen (~$12.75), labeled as “import from US”, release date July 10.

New Younha album on Amazon US: $21.11, labeled as “import”, release date July 10, free shipping.

New Younha album on Yesasia.com: $14.99, import, release date July 6, free international shipping.

Oh, wait:

iTunes US: $10.99, release date July 3.

“never mind, I’m good”

Dear Amazon recommendation system,


Okay, I agree they’re both Blu-ray discs, but other than that, I don’t see how you got from Casablanca and African Queen to this.

Play it again, Witch.

Dear Amazon,


Slight classification error, here.

Number 1 in Snore Relief Pillows?!?

Dear Amazon US,


Please don’t tell me why the results of a search for the Bluray edition of The Seven Samurai included the Japanese edition of Kick-ass 2.

Even more baffling is the import of the Samurai Champloo box set that showed up in the results, for more than ten times the price of the US release. The product description suggests that this isn’t a case where the Japanese set had significant extras:

Draw a rare journey of Foo daughter of cafe Liquidambar genius swordsman Jin era drama action animation! Wild boy infinite Shinichiro Watanabe "Cowboy Bebop" and "Animatrix" time as director! 3-Disc Blu which recorded all 26 episodes -ray BOX.

Dear Amazon recommendation system,


Never change.

Tongs, because USB3

Dear Amazon,


I can find a very faint trace of relevance in the first recommendation, but not in the second one. Please enlighten me.

From from kindle to kinder, from music to mattresses?

(and the reason this image is so large is that I took the screenshot on my Surface Pro 2, which has a high-density 1080p display, and Photoshop refuses to make the fonts readable if I shrink it any further)

“Need a clue, take a clue,
 got a clue, leave a clue”