Unix Epoch and PHP's calendar system
I just saw a commit flying past as a response to PHP bug #50155. While right now it is proper to define the Unix Epoch at "1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC", UTC wasn't actually defined until 1972. So it would be more correct to define the Unix Epoch as "the number of seconds elapsed since midnight proleptic Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) of January 1, 1970, not counting leap seconds." (from Wikipedia). What the bit "not counting leap seconds" means, I've already explained before in Leap Seconds and What To Do With Them.
Similarly, PHP's internal calendar is the ISO 8601 calendar. This is a modification of the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar implements the current set of leap years every 4 years, but not every 100 years, but again every 400 years (to get to an average year length of 365.2425 days). Obviously this calendar is only in use since 1582 (some countries adopted it as late as the 1900s), so using days like 1066-10-14 in the Gregorian calendar makes little sense because that calendar didn't exist back then. Now, PHP's ISO 8601-based calendar even modifies the Gregorian calendar by including the year 0. The Gregorian calendar goes straight from -1 to 1 which is a pain to do proper date calculations with. Therefore the ISO 8601 calendar uses Astronomical year numbering.
Life Line
It's been an interesting day.
Besides fixing up PECL, I have mostly dealt with journalists.
Half an hour phone chat with the Dutch NOS nieuws, and a 4 minute item for tonight's NOS Journaal (in 5 minutes).
And then a live interview for the international feed of BBC News.
Can I go back to bird watching?
Specify whether traffic signals have tactile indications that it's safe to cross
Determine roads lane count
Specify motorcycle parking capacities
Specify motorcycle parkings covers
Specify parking access
Specify road surfaces
Specify whether roads have lane markings
Survey postbox collection times
Specify street/place names to addresses
Survey opening hours
Survey hairdresser's customers
Survey if places still exist
Specify cycleways width
Specify width of opening
Specify whether there are cycleways
Created a main entrance and a home entrance
Okay, I think I fixed the PECL load situation.
Everything is now cached.
It means nobody can upload any new versions as you can't log in, but at least the server is not dying now.
It is deprecated, so this temporary measure is good enough for now.
I walked 2.8km in 18m39s
I've just finished reading The Things We Make by Bill Hammack.
A curious introduction into the world of the engineering method. How it's different from pure science and with the end product of serving mankind in mind.
Updated a restaurant
Updated 2 restaurants; Confirmed a bakery shop
I walked 4.1km in 48m53s
Updated a restaurant
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