| What I've been working on for the last long while... |
[Oct. 20th, 2009|01:45 pm] |
It's done! The most visible of my changes in this release is geolocation in TrafficScript and Java. You can now efficiently get the city/region/country/lat-long of an IP address from a supplied data file. Handy if you want to vary your website depending on the client's location, for example. |
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| Case of the missing parcel, reprise |
[Oct. 13th, 2009|04:26 pm] |
I had a similar call in June 2008 and never worked out why, or what sort of scam this could be the basis of:
A man from "Parcel Point Deliveries" or similar called me at work yesterday, saying they had tried to deliver a parcel last Thursday, and would try again today between 9 and 5. He asked me to nominate anyone who could sign for it instead; I gave one name (see below). He said the parcel was from Manchester, but that he had no further information about its origin. This parcel has not turned up, and somewhat foolishly I didn't take the caller's number (nor was it logged my company's phone system, apparently).
Does anyone want to own up to trying to send me a parcel? The only benefit I can see the caller getting from this call if they made it up is the name of someone else inside the company, but several such names can be trivially found on our website. Also my mobile number, which they were supposed to call, but that's also easy to find. |
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| My job, in all its Web 2.0 glory |
[Dec. 17th, 2008|05:07 pm] |
My employer recently released an update of their traffic manager, ZXTM 5.1. One of the headline features, which I've been heavily involved in developing, is improved event handling: you can now set up mappings from some/all events to various actions, including arbitrary scripts. Looking at the comments on a recent blog post discussing some of the new functionality, I've found a short video of some of the, um, productive, business-critical use to which this feature has been put (needs sound).
Yep, my code lets people integrate their traffic managers with, among other things, the hollow wifi-enabled bunnies of the apocalypse. What have I done?! |
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| Was it something I said? |
[Sep. 12th, 2008|08:42 am] |
I've been at Zeus for just over two years now. During that time, I've talked to quite a few of you about working there, but only seen two incoming CVs with names I recognise. It's obviously not going to be everyone's ideal job, but I'm still curious as to what happens to the rest of the people in that category (full disclosure: the recruitment bonus might have something to do with my curiosity). That is, if you considered working for Zeus and then didn't apply, may I ask why? We see very few good candidates, and if we're somehow putting people off, I'd really like to know about it. |
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| The case of the missing UPS delivery |
[Jun. 9th, 2008|05:13 pm] |
Did one of you lot send something via UPS to my workplace? Someone claiming to be from UPS called them on Monday 2nd (my birthday), asking if I would be in between 9 and 5 the next day to sign for something. My workplace told them I wouldn't (I was on holiday all last week); the caller asked for (and was given) three names who could sign for it instead. Apparently, no such delivery ever arrived. I've just called UPS and they say they probably have no record of any of this, but they can't be sure without a tracking number, which the caller didn't provide. Anyone care to own up? :-) Alternatively, does anyone know of any type of fraud or similar this caller might have been attempting? UPS said this type of call isn't generally something they do; they tend to only call if they have trouble finding the place or have failed to deliver something (and I quite often see UPS vans delivering successfully to this building), but they did say that a new driver started in this area last week. |
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| LastGraph / why I listen to so much gothy bleep |
[Feb. 8th, 2008|03:51 pm] |
For those who use last.fm, a random cool thing: LastGraph. Give it your last.fm username and a date range, and you'll get a "wave graph" showing which artists you've listened to in that time and how much, in PDF and SVG. Here's my graph (PDF), starting in January last year, just before I started listening to streams from last.fm. It's a much better view of things than the charts available on my last.fm profile: you can see how I've listened to numerous artists, some of which I've liked and kept listening to, and how my tastes have changed over the past year.
Currently my listening habits seem to be approximately centred on the tuneful end of what's played at The Calling. A good example is Mind.In.A.Box, whose album, Crossroads, I've recently bought (I've never heard that particular group played at The Calling; if any of the DJs are reading this, could we change that?) That's because these days I mostly listen at work and I find that style about right as a background for that. At a concert or when sitting around not doing anything important, I love listening to the Wise Guys, who are engaging, funny and often moving too. When I'm coding, I really don't want that; I just want something tuneful, not too distracting, active/bouncy (so as not to send me to sleep) without being cheesy. It's the last of those that's largely the explanation for the tendency towards darker, gothy stuff; I think very few more mainstream bands get that right. My favourite example of one that does is The Feeling, despite the quote on that page: Don't fear the cheese, embrace it. Contrast that light-heartedness with groups who try to write terribly serious stuff and fail (except perhaps from the point of view of the average teenager, hence their success).
What about you lot? Those who write code (or do vaguely similar work) in particular, what do you listen to? |
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proud
confused
amused
curious
proud
recumbent