GMT
Part 1 of the Dream Vacation Blog Series
Ok, I'm back from what was truly a dream vacation. The first stop was London! Here I hung out with my good friends Kudah and Shivani. They were great hosts, taking me to Gourmet Burger Kitchen (sorta like a British version of Red Robin) and the grounds for the 2012 Olympics. But the highlight for me was the Greenich Meantime Park!
Here's the context: In programming, datetimes can be a source of numerous issues. These can arise when you use an api that bases the time stored on the machine's current time. This can be ain issue for a web application where the timestamp is created on a server that is in a timezone different than the client machine. A common solution is to store all time ins UTC time and translate that to the local time of the client machine. In UTC, greenich meantime is the center; 0 hours ahead or behind. So after years of translate to this time, it was cool to be in the place where it all started!
I think this piece of trivia was lost on my fellow park dwellers, but it had a lot of other cool scientific/historic stuff too. It also sits on 0 degrees longitude. So you can literally have a foot in each hemisphere. Further, it had the telescope used to find Uranus. And if none of this works for you, it easily has one of the best views of London. It's a must see when visiting the UK!
Links
GMT vs. UTC: http://geography.about.com/od/timeandtimezones/a/gmtutc.htm
Ok, I'm back from what was truly a dream vacation. The first stop was London! Here I hung out with my good friends Kudah and Shivani. They were great hosts, taking me to Gourmet Burger Kitchen (sorta like a British version of Red Robin) and the grounds for the 2012 Olympics. But the highlight for me was the Greenich Meantime Park!
Here's the context: In programming, datetimes can be a source of numerous issues. These can arise when you use an api that bases the time stored on the machine's current time. This can be ain issue for a web application where the timestamp is created on a server that is in a timezone different than the client machine. A common solution is to store all time ins UTC time and translate that to the local time of the client machine. In UTC, greenich meantime is the center; 0 hours ahead or behind. So after years of translate to this time, it was cool to be in the place where it all started!
I think this piece of trivia was lost on my fellow park dwellers, but it had a lot of other cool scientific/historic stuff too. It also sits on 0 degrees longitude. So you can literally have a foot in each hemisphere. Further, it had the telescope used to find Uranus. And if none of this works for you, it easily has one of the best views of London. It's a must see when visiting the UK!
Links
GMT vs. UTC: http://geography.about.com/od/timeandtimezones/a/gmtutc.htm
posted by Mr. Sharps at 11:23 PM
<< Home