British Programmer living in Andorra

The apostrophe in my name does cause a whole load of hassle. Luckily for me, as a programmer, it makes me more likely to understand the frustration people must experience when they sign up on Internet forms and the thing fails. These can include: Validation errors kicking out my perfectly legal full name. Database INSERT errors as the the apostrophe is the termination character. Insufficient digits for my perfectly usable Andorran mobile number. Messed up character when I enter the name of our house in the Pyrenees called 'Chalet Eché'. Now living in Iberia with all the accents and other non-English characters, I can see we got a long way to go. A lot of sites make it damn hard to contact them in any meaningful way so as a little helpful reminder here are some of the more annoying form breaks I've discovered as I surf the web.  I suspect a techie looking at the web server logs is more likely to pick up this post, rather than a customer support person w

So some hilarious problems trying to sign up Tanya with her Xperia U and google account. Not only is she forced to take a gmail account which she will never use, it then took me at least 10 goes at the captcha, see pic. And the worse thing. It's not even over yet as there is a problem communicating with Google servers at this time, final pic. Sent from my Windows Phone

I've searched for this a few times on the Internet before, and found some examples, but none as clear as Joel who, as usual, has produced a hilarious article describing the issue. It is amazing how true all this is, he worked at Microsoft, so I guess he's had plenty of experience. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html   Look at point 8. I copy the funny part, but read the whole article as it contains other important steps any company should follow. Here's the simple algebra. Let's say (as the evidence seems to suggest) that if we interrupt a programmer, even for a minute, we're really blowing away 15 minutes of productivity. For this example, lets put two programmers, Jeff and Mutt, in open cubicles next to each other in a standard Dilbert veal-fattening farm. Mutt can't remember the name of the Unicode version of the strcpy function. He could look it up, which takes 30 seconds, or he could ask Jeff, which takes 15 seconds. Since h

Not being particularly good at spotting good gifts, here is a tip:  For people in India your old mobile phone is perfect.  Don’t forget the charger.    Any other old stuff like board games, plastic toys etc. will all be gratefully received. Here are some pictures of our little home team.  Gopi, Anita, Anika and the little monkey Maheep. http://goo.gl/maps/BwVtF   is the address.

So we´ve been in Vallabh Vidyanagar for over 3 weeks now, and just one to go. This town, it seems was inaugurated in the late '40s or earlt 50s and apparently the house where we go to work is a 60s building. But it is hard to tell because even new blocks of flats and houses seem to age very quickly in the climate or with the lack of maintenance. I been trying to look for some old photos of the Anand region on the net but can't find any.  Maybe it was called something different in those days, or maybe all the sites are in Gujarati. There seem to be a lot of old photos of Europe from say 100 or 50 years ago, but nothing I could find on the 'net. I did find 2 pictures of Connaught Place which is in Delhi. Thanks to these guys: http://www.thedelhiwalla.com/2012/01/15/the-biographical-dictionary-of-delhi -homai-vyarawalla-b-navsari-gujarat-1913-2012/ http://www.liveindia.com/delhi/cp.html What a difference!

This is the view of next door neighbours gangaman plot.  I wanted to take the capture the pic as he’s removed most of the plants and the camo netting.  The Google maps get updated once and a while so this is what it looked like when we  bought it.

You've gotta love spam.  I mean _ what on earth _ is this spam message below supposed to illicit?   From: Mv Smtp [mailto:notify-id948336@mvsmtp.com] Sent: 08 July 2012 00:05 To: bendecko@hotmail.com Subject: Test Email camping!   Cheryl and all, Below is the receipt for the January payment on the website. Also, our domain name must be renewed to keep it. Frankly, I'm not sure I want to. I have asked for help numerous times...to no avail. Unless y'all are willing to step up and start doing something, then I cannot see continuing. I just don't have the energy. Tammy   ----- Forwarded Message ---- From: " service@paypal.com " To: tblair417@yahoo.com Sent: Fri, January 7, 2011 8:10:31 AM Subject: You made an automatic payment No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.2195 / Virus Database: 2437/5117 - Release Date: 07/07/12

The answer is “generally yes”. Apparently ‘ tetracycline’ which is used as an antibiotic might not be so great after the expiry date, but 90% of other things even Insulin and drugs you need to keep in the fridge are OK. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/is-it-ok-to-use-medications-past-their-expiration-dates