Symphonious

You know if there's one thing more confusing and less documented in programming than character set encodings, it has to be time zones. For example, here's the package tracking log for my new monitor:

Now either they picked up the package at 10:30 PM last night, drove around and around the block all night and then returned it to it's original location at 4:30 this morning, or someone messed up with time zones. Either way it renders the tracking capabilities completely useless. Funnily enough, it's only a 2-3 hour drive from Swansea to here so if they hadn't wasted all that time driving round the block I'd have my monitor by now.

I think one of my best purchases in a long while has been my fancy new iPhone. It was originally a major splurge just because it was cool but it’s so functional and easy to use that I’m using it constantly and looking for ways to get everything on the iPhone.

My email has always been IMAP so that got on there pretty quickly and it didn’t take too long to find newsgator’s iPhone rss reader that syncs with NetNewsWire so now my feeds are on it as well. Most recently I’ve found a wordpress plugin that optimizes the admin interface for iPhone. As such I’m happily blogging from my iPhone and there’s one less reason to get out of bed…

Of course I suspect the formattingof this post is going to go haywire as various plugins interfere with each other but once I see what happens it should be easy enough to fix.

The big downside I’ve found is that while you can add a site to your home screen, whenever you tap it a new safari tab is opened so I wind up with a heap I newsgator tabs left open. It would also be nice to have an icon badge with the number of unread items. The HTML only API is so close to being all you need but not quite. Once you’re in the app it really does feel lie a native iPhone app. I’ve seen a number of sites detect the iPhone and you simply forget you’re still in the browser.

The only other gripe I’ve got is that newsgator doesnt remember your login which is stupid and very annoying. That’s not something the iPhone can really control though.

Great notes on some common mistakes Java developers make from Christopher Owen at Atlassian. I know I've explained most of these to a number of new developers - well worth a read even if you've been coding in Java for a number of years you may easily have not learned these important lessons.

Ephox folk - we learn a lot of interesting tidbits like this both on coding and on XP and development processes and tools - could we take a little time to share them with the world and each other more often?  Ta.

Going through the process of setting up a new apartment in the UK, I've found myself Googling a whole bunch of things that normally I wouldn't need to. For instance, where can I find a desk and chair to set up a home office? Back in Australia I know of a bunch of different stores that would have that kind of thing so I wouldn't bother searching for it. Here though, I wind up searching for "home office furniture" and get a whole bunch of online only retailers of widely varying reliability. Even if they're all completely legit - why doesn't something like IKEA turn up when that's what all the locals recommended (somewhat grudgingly admittedly)?

Now I'm trying to find a teleconferencing provider that offers at least UK dial-in numbers - preferably a range of European countries and all Google's turning up is a bunch of "free" providers that seem to offer free calls if you just call into their premium number. Seems to be about as free as calling a psychic hotline… Maybe they could at least tell me where to find some decent furniture…

The impression I get is that if you're looking to buy anything or are generally looking for information on anything commercial Google will just feed you a bunch of spam. I'd revert to the yellow pages but it doesn't seem to know the difference between teleconferencing and telecommunications since it's categories are so broad. I've found the same problem when I've been searching for information on various printers and digital cameras - nearly all the results were from online stores rather than less biased reviews and experiences using the products. I guess those SEO guys really do have an effect - sadly it seems to be a bad one.

After much hassle with getting proof of address and what not, I've finally managed to get a mobile broadband deal through 3 in the UK and I'm very impressed. It helps that my house is within a HSDPA area so we're getting the fastest possible speeds but even when that drops out and we just get 3G connectivity it's quite usable. At £15/month for 3Gb/month it's actually quite affordable too. I can see it getting a lot of use on the train and places like that so I don't wind up wasting huge amounts of time travelling.

It's particularly nice to not have to head down to the local pub constantly just to get internet access - though it was one of the best excuses for going to the pub in work time I've ever found.