Thankfully the new server has a current version of PHP 5. As a result, I’ve been able to get my posts to ping.fm running again, via PingPressFM. That was an ongoing low-level annoyance, the past couple of months.
Microsoft – Twitter Deal
Nathan forwarded me this link from Mashable, with the subject line prefaced with the word “HUGE”.
From what I can tell, it looks like Microsoft is finally starting to put together the pieces of an overall web strategy: determine what Google would like to do and put roadblocks in their way. Hence the previous Yahoo deal.
Its obvious far to early to see if this helps them out. I’m fairly sure though that it means search engines will be displaying a lot more “current” or trending data pulled from profiles and micro-blogging posts.
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Update on Server Issues
The server on which our site is hosted was switched last week, resulting in some issues. I believe most of them have been sorted out at this point. If you notice anything broken on the site, please let me know though.
Coding Practices at Large Companies
I just had an interesting email exchange with one of my newer staff, a friend from university who worked for [insert name of company] for a number of years. Aforementioned anonymized company being a Fortune 500 company that is in the IT industry. I’ve got stuff with their logo on it in my office.
The conversation began when he asked if he could use a goto statement (in PHP code!) for error handling.
Bearing in mind that this is somebody who is extremely familiar with both Object Oriented and good coding practises, I realized that there must be an interesting story underlying this.
His response to my query for more info is informative:
Tease all you want — I’ll lean on the weight of nine years of experience at [big company name], where (gasp) gotos were ubiquitous (almost exclusively in error handling code, but still).
To clarify further: I actually wasn’t aware that PHP had a goto statement (see: php.net/goto – they have the nice xkcd cartoon in the comments). I’ve been coding in PHP for a long time.
There’s two methods that I usually use to handle errors in PHP code, in case you’re wondering:
1. Make sure that code that can crash is encapsulated in a nice neat function. Check return values of function calls inside the function. If necessary, stick an “@” before function calls that tend to crash in a messy manner. Then return useful info about the final state from the function itself, and check things out higher up in the stack.
2. Stick try/catch code around code that can crash. If necessary, subclass error classes and put in nice handlers for them.
In both cases, make sure that the error level for reporting is appropriate, and that we don’t output actual error messages back to the end user. Where useful, put in logging, and possibly put in code to email error reports back to admin.
Google Wave Releasing Beta
Google Wave is releasing in Beta to about 100,000 people today. I have at least one staff member who is excited about this.
When GPS Gets You Lost
I’ve been hearing stories for years about excessively literal-minded people getting themselves in terrible trouble by paying too much attention to their GPS units.
I also once worked with somebody who would regularly call into the office with the complaint that their GPS had succeeded in making them lose their way.
The story reported on Yahoo’s tech blog here (http://bit.ly/lEXUH) is a pretty good one though.
Almost as good as the guy that went off the autobahn, across a field, and smashed his 7-series BMW into a porta-potty.
Office Update
Our office is starting to look a little bit more business-like and comfortable. The other day we actually had a water-cooler conversation. The reception desk is courtesy of Erez at MIT Consulting, who didn’t need it any more. Moving it required a bit of “sweat equity”.
[Sorry – due to a server move, the photo gallery is temporarily broken]
Office Pics
A few people have asked me for photos. Below are a couple from the old office, and then snapshots of what the move looked like, and what the office looks like with everything set up. I’ve obscured people’s faces to protect the identity of the innocent…
Business Internet
I think there’s a potential business plan in all this.
We moved a few days ago into our new offices, which we are sharing with CO4 Computing. Last week we had an (unnamed) internet DSL company put in a connection. We tested it on Sunday, and it was working perfectly.
By the time we actually moved in, it had stopped working. It turns out that the unnamed internet service provider above actually uses phone lines (in this case something called a dry loop, which is basically a phone line without a phone number attached to it) that they lease from [insert big phone company name here]. Some technician at the [big phone company] had decided that there was something wrong with the dry loop, and had randomly disconnected it (without – I might add – letting the DSL company know).
At the point in writing, we’ve been trying to get the DSL company to fix our internet connection for three days. The problem, of course, is that they are totally reliant on the phone company’s technicians in order to do this. The phone company won’t tell them what they are doing to resolve the problem, and furthermore won’t let them know a timeframe either.
In the meantime, I’m being stonewalled by the DSL company as well.
We also looked into going directly to the phone company (unfortunately they’re the only ones who have lines going into this building) in order to get internet service from them. Apparently there’s a two week delay before they can install it. That’s minimum two weeks, not an absolute timeline.
For home internet, I can get a technician at my door within two to three hours. For business though, getting a new internet connection takes two weeks, and fixing a broken connection can take days. I’m puzzled as to why anybody puts up with this.
New Office
We’re in the process of setting up and moving into our new offices. We should be fully moved in by early next week.