Category Archives: Personal Rants

APIs and dates

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Time for a rant. If you are building an API, whether it is for public consumption or not, you should make sure you communicate dates in an unambiguous way.

You should always be able to figure out the exact time, regardless of time zone or daylight saving. The best way is to just use UTC. Or, if you can’t/won’t do that, you should include the time zone every time you mention a date. If you don’t, then you’re going to run into trouble when daylight saving ends, because you end up with the hour that precedes the changeover, and the hour that follows it, being the same. And that causes problems.

You should also not rely on date offsets from the current date, because your clients cannot be guaranteed to have an accurate time. So if you have an offset of 0 in your data that means “today” but your clients’ clocks are off, then they might think the data belongs as part of yesterday. Or tomorrow. And that is annoying.

Offsets from a particular point in time are fine though. And I don’t mind what epoch/reference date you choose. As long as it’s consistent.

APIs, in my opinion, are meant for computer-to-computer communication. They shouldn’t handle prettifying dates, for example. So you should pick the right tool for the job.

That is all.

Really not looking forward to travelling Ryanair

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Apart from the early flight, I was taking a look at their cabin baggage policy:

We reserve the right to cancel your reservation without refund and to deny you boarding if you arrive at the boarding gate with more than one item of cabin baggage or if that item exceeds the maximum dimensions.

Cancelling your reservation without refund? So if you turn up with too much baggage, and offer to throw it out, they could still cancel your ticket.

I don’t understand how they can get away with it! Why do people keep flying with them? Having said that, I still haven’t booked but they are one of only two airlines that fly to where I need to get!

iAd in the UK

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In my (it seems) continuing series on things that work in the US but not in the UK, Apple’s new iAd network doesn’t seem to be serving ads to people in the UK.

I am not sure if Apple are actively selling inventory in the UK, or if they even have plans to in the short term.

I really wish these American-based companies would clarify when things are U.S. only. Apple said that they had a lot of ads, but I haven’t seen one. So if I had created an app with a primarily non-U.S. audience, hoping to monetise it with iAd, I would be very disappointed.

Apple aren’t the only ones that have a habit of forgetting 6.3 billion people. At Google I/O, they said that everybody attending would have access to AdSense for mobile (which was in closed beta) but on signing up it said U.S. only. There was also a big press release saying that Google Voice was open to everyone. But it was still limited to the U.S. Funny definition of everyone. They did correct it later, but still, it’s not on!

Google.com from the UK

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Today is 4th of July. There’s a Google doodle for it, but you wouldn’t know if you’re from the UK. Google.com is completely different if you are coming from a UK IP address. There is no 4th of July doodle, and what’s worse, you will get entirely different search results, with UK sites having more prominence. The results are slightly different from google.co.uk, as well.

I think it would be better for the regionalised Googles to be the same no matter where you come from, and that includes the US Google.com. What’s the point of the “Go to Google.com” link if going back there isn’t the real American Google?

I haven’t taken a look at Google.cn or Google.com.hk!

Rant over!

Ubuntu annoyances

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For some strange reason, the Ubuntu people decided that the latest release should mimic Mac OS as much as possible. The default background is now purple, eerily similar to the Mac OS default. And they decided to move the buttons to the left hand side, just like on a Mac. Which is annoying. Not because I am used to Windows, but because if you were used to previous versions of Ubuntu, you’d be very annoyed.

Rant over, here’s how to fix it: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13535/move-window-buttons-back-to-the-right-in-ubuntu-10.04/

I have decided to switch to Linux my equal-primary platform, as I am going to be developing my next project using open source tools. I may as well use an open source operating system as well. Also it was an excuse to buy a bigger, better, faster (but probably not stronger) hard drive.

That is all.

Looking for work on the Internet

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It’s obviously a slow news day again, because the Herald has written an article about being careful when posting things on social networking sites if you’re searching for work. I’ve seen articles like this before. It’s common sense, really. Don’t put anything online that you don’t want others to see. Even if it’s in an ostensibly private area of one of those sites, it’s still on someone else’s computer, and there’s still a risk that it could get out.

It’s documented on the Facebook article in Wikipedia (so it must be true) that people in American universities (is there a difference between a university and a college over there?) have been disciplined because of antics that were posted on their Facebook pages.

I’m only writing this entry as a bit a shout out to any prospective employers who have done a search for me on Google. I’m assuming that this is one of the regular steps when vetting new recruits these days, especially in the IT industry. But, strangely, I haven’t been receiving any hits recently through searches for “arun stephens”. So, either I’m wrong, and Googling potential employees isn’t an essential step these days, or nobody is looking at my CV!

That’s all for now.

My far-too-liberal Facebook friend policy

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I have 197 friends on Facebook. I don’t think I have 197 friends in real life.

When I first signed up to Facebook in the northern autumn of 2006, I had less than 10 friends. That was when I was in France, and most of the people I knew there were either still students (the poms) or had just finished university (the yanks). And Facebook was very big at universities in those two countries. (Back in New Zealand, however, it seemed that Bebo was the winner.)

Then Facebook began to become popular in New Zealand. People that I actually knew signed up and I added them. So far so good. Then one day I browsed the New Zealand network page, and saw someone that I went to primary school with. So I sent a friend request. And she accepted it. I felt special. I have this fear that I remember lots of people that I meet, but they don’t remember me. So I was pretty happy. That encouraged me to add other people I went to school with. And then people that I hadn’t found added me. That’s a good feeling – it’s fine when someone acknowledges your friendship, but when it’s the other person initiating the contact, it’s that much better! Continue reading →

What’s up with Journeyman?

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I seem to be getting a few hits about Journeyman (the show that is under threat of cancellation!) so I thought I’d write a bit more.

The people over at savejourneyman.net and the other Save Journeyman sites have decided upon sending Rice-A-Roni to the NBC offices. Originally it was going to be aspirin, because Dan gets headaches before he goes back in time, but they realised that charities wouldn’t be likely to accept a whole bunch of medicine. Instead they stuck to foodstuffs. Rice-A-Roni, originally from San Francisco, is known as “The San Francisco Treat”. (This is all new to me!)

Last week a new episode of Life aired in Journeyman‘s regular time slot. I think it rated slightly better than Journeyman has in the past few weeks, but not by much. It was also helped by CSI: Miami repeats being shown on CBS and I can’t remember what was on ABC. I also don’t know how heavily the timeslot change was promoted. Fans of Life would have followed it to Monday if they knew about it, but people who had never watched Journeyman aren’t likely to want to watch it if they didn’t know about.

Tonight it airs at its regular timeslot, after two hours of Deal or No Deal. I’m not sure whether that’s popular over there in the States. And if it, are Deal or No Deal viewers likely to stick around to watch a pretty much sci-fi show, at 10PM? I doubt it.

I think, unfortunately, that unless NBC moves it to a different timeslot, Journeyman‘s days are numbered.

Journeyman didn’t come last last night

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According to the overnight ratings at Zap2it, Journeyman didn’t come in completely last place last night. CSI: Miami won the night, but Journeyman came in second for total number of viewers (but third for number of households, which is what they actually care about). So that’s some nice news. But not that encouraging.

The people at the Save Journeyman page have a new campaign to send Rice-A-Roni (I have no idea what that is) to NBC. Apparently this Rice-A-Roni (it sounds like a combination of rice and macaroni) is made in San Francisco, where the series is set.

It will be unfortunate if Journeyman is cancelled, but as long as it gets a decent ending (and it looks like it will) then it won’t be too bad.

UPDATE: Here’s another article about Journeyman‘s ratings for 26 November, from a different ”Save Journeyman” blog. 

Below the Queen’s head

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A while back I noticed that the initials IRB appeared below the portrait of the Queen on recently-minted coins. It turns out that those are the initials of of Ian Rank-Broadley, the man who drew the portrait. I found that courtesy of the Wikipedia article on the British one penny coin.

So now you know the reason for those letters. I thought it might have had something to do with the series of the issue or something. But it was much simpler than that. It seems a bit odd that whoever is in charge of choosing the image allowed the initials on there. It seems weird for the artist to sign coins. But then, our notes used to have © Thomas De La Rue and Company on them (the paper notes).