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Time/Date Conversion Tool

2009 Aug 28, 3:39

I built timestamp.exe, a Windows command line tool to convert between computer and human readable date/time formats mostly for working on the first run wizard for IE8. We commonly write out our dates in binary form to the registry and in order to test and debug my work it became useful to be able to determine to what date the binary value of a FILETIME or SYSTEMTIME corresponded or to produce my own binary value of a FILETIME and insert it into the registry.

For instance, to convert to a binary value:

[PS C:\] timestamp -inString 2009/08/28:10:18 -outHexValue -convert filetime
2009/08/28:10:18 as FILETIME: 00 7c c8 d1 c8 27 ca 01

Converting in the other direction, if you don't know what format the bytes are in, just feed them in and timestamp will try all conversions and list only the valid ones:

[PS C:\] timestamp -inHexValue  "40 52 1c 3b"
40 52 1c 3b as FILETIME: 1601-01-01:00:01:39.171
40 52 1c 3b as Unix Time: 2001-06-05:03:30:08.000
40 52 1c 3b as DOS Time: 2009-08-28:10:18:00.000
(it also supports OLE Dates, and SYSTEMTIME which aren't listed there because the hex value isn't valid for those types). Or use the guess option to get timestamp's best guess:
[PS C:\] timestamp -inHexValue  "40 52 1c 3b" -convert guess
40 52 1c 3b as DOS Time: 2009-08-28:10:18:00.000

When I first wrote this I had a bug in my function that parses the date-time value string in which I could parse 2009-07-02:10:18 just fine, but I wouldn't be able to parse 2009-09-02:10:18 correctly. This was my code:

success = swscanf_s(timeString, L"%hi%*[\\/- ,]%hi%*[\\/- ,]%hi%*[\\/- ,Tt:.]%hi%*[:.]%hi%*[:.]%hi%*[:.]%hi", 
&systemTime->wYear,
&systemTime->wMonth,
&systemTime->wDay,
&systemTime->wHour,
&systemTime->wMinute,
&systemTime->wSecond,
&systemTime->wMilliseconds) > 1;
See the problem?

To convert between these various forms yourself read The Old New Thing date conversion article or Josh Poley's date time article. I previously wrote about date formats I like and dislike.

PermalinkCommentsdate date-time technical time windows tool

Timelines: Time travel in popular film and tv | Information Is Beautiful

2009 Aug 28, 3:02Lovely visualization of the time travels taken by characters in various movies and television series and notes the places where they overlap.PermalinkCommentsvia:waxy time-travel bttf startrek tv movie information visualization

Parents Visited

2009 Aug 25, 12:34

My parents visited this past weekend, met Sarah's parents, saw our house, and met our bunny. On Friday we went to BluWater in Kirkland which was pretty busy and the service was slower and slightly worse than we usually find. Saturday my parents helped us with our yard quite a bit and for dinner we went to the Icon Grill with Sarah's parents. I had forgotten how much I enjoy the food at the Icon Grill - I had the very tasty meat loaf. Dinner went well and afterward we stopped at the Three Lions pub in Redmond. On all previous occasions I had tried to go in there the place was packed for a soccer game. This night however there was a man with a guitar, singing and it wasn't nearly as packed. I also found that near the bathrooms on the wall is what looks to be James Bond's jetpack.

On Sunday we went out to see Jeannie and Carl and see the renovations to Jeannie's place. We met up with them at the Fremont Market to which I hadn't been previously, and had a look around there before going back to Jeannie's to see the lovely work they'd done to her place. For dinner my parents took us out to the Melting Pot for my approaching birthday. It was fun having my parents up and I look forward to the next time they're here.

PermalinkCommentsfamily weekend

YouTube - AtYourLibraryOrg's Channel - Cory Doctorow Interview

2009 Aug 24, 9:56AtYourLibraryOrg interviews Cory Doctorow on library and librarian related Cory Doctorow topics, then breaks up his answers into short videos. Easy to watch and interesting.
PermalinkCommentsvideo cory-doctorow library information drm literature business economics

Schneier on Security: Non-Randomness in Coin Flipping

2009 Aug 24, 3:11"It turns out that flipping a coin has all sorts of non-randomness", includes link to research paper and blog post with gems like: "If the coin is tossed and caught, it has about a 51% chance of landing on the same face it was launched"PermalinkCommentssecurity random coin coin-toss

Profile for shimala - Reward! Have you seen my bicycle?

2009 Aug 21, 9:01Humorous no reward bike missing signs.
PermalinkCommentshumor bike missing sign photo

In Which She's Every Woman - Today - This Recording

2009 Aug 21, 3:31"A woman approaches me and tells me that she's with Getty Images. They're shooting stock photos in the park today, would I be willing to pose?" Then finds her photo on tea, camera ads, Quicken's website, etc.PermalinkCommentshumor photo advertising getty via:waxy

Dive Into HTML 5 by Mark Pilgrim with illustrations from the Public Domain

2009 Aug 21, 3:26"Dive Into HTML 5 seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked Selection of features from the HTML 5 specification and other fine Standards. I shall publish Drafts periodically, as time permits." Lovely design.PermalinkCommentsvia:waxy reference programming howto design html5 typography mark-pilgrim html web development technical

Creating Accelerators for Other People's Web Services

2009 Aug 18, 4:19

Before we shipped IE8 there were no Accelerators, so we had some fun making our own for our favorite web services. I've got a small set of tips for creating Accelerators for other people's web services. I was planning on writing this up as an IE blog post, but Jon wrote a post covering a similar area so rather than write a full and coherent blog post I'll just list a few points:

PermalinkCommentstechnical accelerator ie8 ie

Fake Zombies attacking an innocent driver

2009 Aug 17, 8:39Laughed for this comment on the zombie photo used in the Wired article: 'Funny, the Wired article attribution ... says, "Fake Zombies attacking an innocent driver." I don't know who decided on that caption, but it made me immediately want to ask 1. How do you know they're FAKE zombies? 2. How do you know the driver is INNOCENT?'
PermalinkCommentshumor zombie photo flickr wired

For Consumers - Alaska, Oregon and Western Washington BBB

2009 Aug 17, 6:33Lookup the Better Business Bureau's stats on businesses in the Northwest.PermalinkCommentsbusiness washington economics

Compact E-Cash

2009 Aug 14, 6:20"This paper presents efficient off-line anonymous e-cash schemes where a user can withdraw a wallet containing coins each of which she can spend unlinkably."PermalinkCommentsmoney future reference research economics cryptography technical system:filetype:pdf system:media:document

Recap Firefox Extension | "turning PACER around"

2009 Aug 14, 3:55The government program PACER is an online archive of court records and even though the documents are public domain, PACER charges access to them ostensibly to pay for PACER. This plugin uses the Internet Archive as a kind of free intermediate cache, rewriting the PACER HTML to reference the free Internet Archive versions of the documents when available and uploading PACER documents to the IA cache when you download one it doesn't yet have.PermalinkCommentsvia:waxy firefox government politics research reference legal law plugin technical

IEBlog : Engineering POV: IE6

2009 Aug 12, 4:55"As a browser supplier, we want people to switch to the latest version of IE...", "Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product.", followed by a large number of comments from irate webdevs who missed the point.PermalinkCommentsblog microsoft ie ie6 dean-hachamovitch technical

The IKEA Fancy Dress Dinner Party

2009 Aug 11, 9:11Invite your friends for a fancy dress party with wine, dinner and board games of course, at IKEA. "...Jason downplayed our real intent, but let the very nice man know that we were here to play board games, and that we had chosen IKEA for the location because it was so much nicer that any of our own actual homes..."
PermalinkCommentshumor video prank ikea party parody

The Railway Track Market of Samut Songkhram

2009 Aug 11, 9:03Train tracks run through this open air market. "Eight times daily, a train runs through without care for stopping, sending vendors and visitors to action stations before business as usual resumes."
PermalinkCommentsphoto video thailand train

80’s Throwback: Choose Your Own Adventure Turns 30! | GeekDad | Wired.com

2009 Aug 11, 8:18Choose Your Own Adv. classics on your cell! "But in 2006, the brand was reborn when Chooseco, LLC relaunched the series with reprints of classic adventures as well as new stories. They have also expanded into new areas ... adventures on the iPhone ..."PermalinkCommentschooseyourownadventure iphone wired book interactive if

Dandella by DIC - Design Year Book

2009 Aug 11, 7:35Lovely Dandella looks like an electric scallion and it "... works with GPS enabled mobile phones to track physical locations. Dandella bends and points toward the targeted location."
PermalinkCommentsdesign technology cool wishlist shopping cellphone gps

Major labels preparing new digital album format | Music | guardian.co.uk

2009 Aug 11, 6:22Good luck with that. "Forget WAV, MP3 and M4A – major labels have something new in mind, and it's called CMX. Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI are reportedly preparing a new digital album format that will include songs, lyrics, videos, liner notes and artwork."PermalinkCommentsmusic cmx mp3 audio apple itunes

Translation Party

2009 Aug 7, 7:03Starting with an English phrase, Translation Party converts back and forth between English and Japanese until the result no longer changes.PermalinkCommentshumor language google javascript english japanese translation via:waxy
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