"Your request was indeed sent, you will receive an answer as soon as possible. Thank you for your confidence."

Ha!

Who am I kidding?

A question for Matt Dubsky:

We have run out of decent sized drinking glasses at work, so I am drinking water from a coffee mug, with a handle and everything. As a result, I somehow feel like I am a geologist.

Is this normal?

Last episode, our hero purchased some cards from Paperchase. Let's see what happens this week!

Our hero: "Hi, yes, I bought this pack of five cards, and I'd like to swap two of the cards because they are incomplete."

He offers the two cards up for inspection, where, sure enough, the cards are found to each have a corner missing.

Staff member: "Oh, well, see, that's because these cards are hand-made."

Our hero: "Yes, well, I understand that. However, I'm not sure that's an excuse for the cards being incomplete. In fact, surely the fact that they are made by hand suggests that there is an opportunity for the person making the cards to ensure that they are, for want of a better phrase, finished?"

And so, once again, justice is done! Tune in next week for another exciting episode....

(Yes, I am back! My parents have visited, I have travelled widely, and I have married. Who would have thought it? Well, I would have, but only recently. Updates to this site are planned!)

Todd Hoff on the High Scalability site writes:

Amazon's EC2 sounds good, but how do you make use of all that throbbing CPU power?

Clearly Todd has only read about EC2, not used it. Don't get me wrong, EC2 is great. But throbbing CPU power?

Do you have any idea how many server instances you have to fire up before you even get a pulse?

Here's a brilliant idea: Test social policies through the use of RCTs.

No such thing.

Joel writes:

"The biggest surprise was how much work it took so that every user sees things in their own time zone."

Oh yeah, I hear you. Now imagine that your software has to do that not because you are hosting it for your clients all over the world, but because your clients all over the world are hosting it themselves, but on boxes controlled by someone else, in a different part of the world to where they are. Also imagine that these hosting companies refuse to set up the box in the timezone of the client.

Now, try and get your software to work in five different versions of PHP, with major differences in how timezones work. Deal with the fact that the hosting companies haven't configured the PHP timezone correctly for the server's timezone either.

And then throw in some bugs as well.

Joel has it easy.

Speaking of features...

The gallery now has locations for photos, and I've added MyBlogLog.

No, I haven't died.

I've been busy.

New feature! A page of news I've been reading that I think is interesting.

Okay, last post on service for a while, I promise

This sign is on a pub near the Ealing Broadway tube station.

I can't sleep, so I figured I'd wade into the inline documentation debate.

Travis states that programming languages are declarative, so code, along with associated unit tests are enough to define what the code does, as well as provide examples of how to use the code.

Well, I agree with that.

However, that doesn't mean that inline documentation is therefore a "bad thing". Tobias has pointed out a couple of reasons why that's the case. I can think of a couple more, too.

Continue reading "Doc Blocks Rock!"

Cathy and I went to Brugge over the Easter long weekend. No complaints

Photos are up in the gallery.

Speaking of customer service, I returned some faulty headphones at Micro Anvika last week.

Normally, I'd do everything I could to not shop there - I can't stand the stores, due to their appalling sales service. No one in the store is interested in helping you, and they certainly don't know their products. (They are, however, better than Currys.)

However, I got some vouchers as a gift about almost a year ago, and so had used them to buy some headphones. The right headphone wasn't working, however, so I took them back.

I have to say, I was really impressed. Sure, it took 20 minutes for them to locate a new set, but they swapped them over without a word of complaint (or the usual expected accusations that I wouldn't know if the thing was broken or not), and they issued me with a receipt for another 12 month warranty.

Now, that's how it should be.