Living with Mangee

04:15:00 - Dugg: Apple ticking off New Zealand Mac users. No DST updates for NZ time change.

Quoting Russell Brown on Hard News "At 2.00am on Sunday September 30, New Zealand Daylight Saving Time will begin -- a week earlier than has previously been the case. It's looking very much like Macs won't be there". Apple to date hasn't seen fit to supply a patch... and with a week before it happens there is still issues with NZ keeping in sync with the rest of the world.

Yes, I submitted it to digg.com Apple did update their 'advice' on manually setting your clock during the week until the old rules change it automatically - but this still doesn't help issues with international calendaring - e.g I've got an online EMC conference next week - and constantly rely on iCal to give me timely notice of international events, such as other online Apple User Group meetings, or online events. Not just iCal, but anything that relies of a (non local) timestamp relating to a local one. So far UTC based events still seem ok, but anything in NZST/NZDT is a bit confusing.

Back ups that store times in UTC (converted from local) are an hour out in tests, and this will be a week of wrong backups - while an hour isn't that critical (it's a memo to all backup admins) - what have we missed?

Assuming Apple updates NZ with the rumoured 10.4.11 updates (due 27th September?) - there will likely be another slew of changes of timestamps as they are fixed. Argh! Apple has likely known about this for 6 months.. but is New Zealand so insignificant that it is only "September 13, 2007" before Apple even acknowledges there is a problem?

Great job Apple.

http://www.drury.net.nz/2007/09/19/daily-savings-time-on-osx/
http://publicaddress.net/default,4488.sm#post4488
http://publicaddress.net/system/topic,727,hard_news_deriving_satisfaction_from_the_misfortune_of_others.sm


read more | digg story

21:59:00 - Database Cluster & Scaling Engineer from Digg.com to talk on scaling for Web 2.0

The event is coming up - so here are some more details as per up.org.nz:

When: Tuesday 27th February 2007.
Where: CBC, Telecom Centre, 49 - 55 Tory St, Wellington City (Follow signs to Reception, Unit 2, Level 2)
Time: 5:30 pm for 6pm start.

In the Web 2.0 world, few sites are making as many waves as Digg. But as you surf, suggest, comment and vote your way around the social software world take a moment to consider the technology behind the site: At close to a billion pages/month, scaling, backup and fault tolerance for Digg requires a team of talented and experienced engineers, one of which is coming to Wellington to speak to Unlimited Potential members.

So, at 6 pm on Tuesday 27th February come listen to Tim Ellis - veteran of "There", Friendster and currently at Digg - talk about how an emerging Web 2.0 site can scale from miniscule to massive without loss of sanity; how LiveJournal created the path most trodden; and about whether or not the best tool for the job comes from a big name vendor. With his 10+ years experience in Oracle, MS SQL, Sybase, MySQL and PostgreSQL, there's bound to be something for everyone. He'll be available for questions during and after and, actually, would be disappointed if there weren't any.

A chance not to be missed for those involved in Web 2.0, professional DBA's or even just the casually interested.
And hey, it's all free, including the beer and pizza. What's not to like? RSVP now. | Digg story

Current Mood: accomplished

08:04:00 - Theres still hope for the US...

Digg Story - NASA goes metric. When: for the next moon landing.

With this - maybe by then the rest of the US will realise that the rest of the world either has a dual set of socket wrenches - or makes the 5mm work with 3/16 bolts.

I note they're also talking about IP protocols for the moon. Anyone want to do a calculation on latency? Especially if you're on the dark side. ;) You'd need some serious protection on your server rack on the moon, but probably not need any cooling.

Anyways:
http://digg.com/space/NASA_Finally_Goes_Metric

read more | digg story

00:50:00 - New Zealand government warns about using open source

The government of New Zealand has posted a website warning againstreport outlining the pitfalls in the use of open source software. End users are warned that open source is "infectious" and should be "Quarantined".

The report seems to have got a few people humming over on digg.com.

We wouldn't want the secret code the government has to get GPL'd now would we.. :)

read more | digg story

Current Mood: amused