The Daily Parker

It's now just past what computer people call "2018-01-01T00:00:00" (or, in more human-readable form, "2018-01-01 00:00:00 +00:00").

Some of you will remember that 2017 was exactly 1 day and 1 second shorter than 2016, owing to the leap second added a year ago at 2017-12-31T23:59:60.

Even thought 2017 was that much shorter than 2016, it seemed so much worse. But that's literally behind us now (or at least in the 13/24ths of the world on GMT or ahead of it). Here's looking to 2018 to be just a tiny bit better.

Happy new year!

Just a minute or two ago, Kiritimati (Christmas) Island became the first place in the world to enter 2018. This happens every year—or, at least, every year since Kiritmati moved from UTC-10 (the same clock time as Hawai'i) to UTC+14 (the same clock time as Hawai'i but a day ahead) so they could be the first place on earth to enter the 2000s.

So, just a few minutes ago, that choice caused a fascinating consequence.

As of right now, and until the next person is born on the island (which could be days or weeks because of its small population of 6,500), every single adult on the island will have been born in the 1900s, and every single child will have been born in the 2000s.

As each successive time zone moves into 2018 today, this will continue to be true until the first baby is born before 1am in a particular zone. My guess would be that New Zealand will probably have a baby born before 1am, and eastern Australia certainly will, which means the 1900s/2000s split will only last 3 or 4 hours.

It's just an interesting consequence of a public-relations decision a tiny Pacific atoll made 18 years ago.

Today is the last work day of 2017, and also the last day of my team's current sprint. So I'm trying to chase down requirements and draft stories before I lose everyone for the weekend. These articles will just have to wait:

• The New York Times interviewed President Trump; Josh Marshall has some thoughts about it.
• The Times also describes how a small section of the 2nd Avenue Subway is the most expensive mile of subway track on earth.
• Mother Jones has a video tribute to Trump Administration staffers who left their jobs in 2017.
• Joe Scarborough has an op-ed predicting "2018 will be the most consequential political year of our lives."
• Citylab investigates where urban fauna go when their habitat changes.
• The Chicago Tribune summarizes 200 new Illinois laws that take effect Monday, rounds up the biggest brand fails of 2017, and predicts a lot of restaurant closings in 2018 (starting with Glazed and Infused tomorrow).
• Also on Monday, the work of several notable artists including René Magritte passes into the public domain.
• And finally, did you know that PowerPoint is Turing-Complete?

We now return to "working through lunch," starring The Daily Parker...

I'm on a train, using my mobile phone to tether my laptop to the Intertubes. I know this is an old technology, and also the reason I have unlimited data on my mobile, but I still love this stuff.

Things I'm reading:

• The Daily WTF asks, "how is an employee ID like a writing desk?"
• Cranky Flier describes his life on a 747.
• Josh Marshall calls the tax bill passed today a "big heist." Because it is.
• Bruce Schneier reports that the GCHQ (the UK's equivalent of the NSA) found and reported a vulnerability in Windows 10. Hear, hear!

Now approaching...Highwood! And soon off to my meeting.

I'm under the weather today, probably owing to the two Messiah performances this weekend and all of Parker's troubles. So even though I'm taking it easy, I still have a queue of things to read:

• NBC is reporting that the President was warned in August that Russians would try to infiltrate his transition team.
• Josh Marshall thinks Trump will try to fire Robert Mueller at some point in the near future.
• Atlanta's Hartsfield airport—the busiest in the world—had no power for 12 hours yesterday.
• CityLab goes over what is and isn't in the Republican tax bill.
• Alex Shephard thinks the Alabama election and the tax bill represent "the end of economic nationalism."
• Chicago's Metra rail transportation agency is looking into starting peak and off-peak pricing.
• On this date in 1932, 85 years ago, the Chicago Bears played the Portsmouth, Ohio, Spartans in the first NFL playoff game—at Chicago Stadium.
• PBS's Nova had an episode on dog intelligence recently that I will have to watch.
• One of my teammates pointed me toward the Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) framework. I immediately made a dad joke. She was not amused.
• Chicago will have significantly above-average temperatures this week followed by an Arctic plunge on Christmas.

I will now...nap.

I spend almost all my time in cities with world-class public transport systems. San Francisco is one of them. And yet there are odd gaps.

Today I discovered, at 6:45 am, that I was not, in fact, going to take BART to the airport, as it didn't actually start running for more than an hour.

I mean, really, San Francisco.

I'm about to head to SFO after this very-quick trip to California. My sleeping Surface will have these articles waiting for me to read:

• The Economist's Gulliver blog grumbles about airlines squeezing bathrooms to make room for more seats on planes.
• The Atlantic has a history of how the Agile Manifesto came about.
• In this era of heightened awareness about sexual harassment, it's comforting to know some Silicon Valley companies continue quaint traditions like hiring models to pose as party guests.
• New fiction from New York magazine.

And finally, check out this recruiting video from the New Zealand police (via Deeply Trivial):

I'm traveling for the weekend in one of the six cities I've experienced year-round. Updates may be spotty. Right now, I just need a nap.

I was thinking back to a somewhat strange question: where in the world have I experienced all 12 months of the year? I mean, I think you have to do that in order to say you really know a place.

Before I get to that, let me explain the post's title. The second time I ever set foot in New York was 30 years ago Monday, on 4 December 1987. (The first time was 23 July 1984.)

New York is also the second place in the world, after Chicago, where I experienced all 12 months of the year. I crossed that finish line on 1 April 1989, during my first year at university.

The other places (and dates) are Raleigh, N.C. (1 May 2010), London (1 September 2013), Los Angeles (1 October 2014), and San Francisco (29 October 2015).

L.A. really surprised me. Half my family lived there for 30 years, but between school, work, and dumb luck, it took over 40 years from my first visit there (19 April 1974) until I finally, finally experienced an October day there. And that was a work trip—I didn't even intend to do it.

The other odd bit is that the entirety of the time I spent in North Carolina is documented in this blog.

I think this post will interest about six people, but since one of them is me, and the rest of my brain is working on some pretty slippery user stories for work, up it goes.

Emirates, despite what I may think about its ownership and massive state subsidies, has some of the coolest equipment in commercial aviation. Their latest innovation is to provide virtual windows for their interior first-class suites:

See, Emirates laid out its new First Class suites in a 1-1-1 configuration on the 777. The suites on the sides are treated to several windows, but what could Emirates do about the suites in the middle? Some people love aisle seats and others love windows. (And there are probably a strange few who even prefer neither for some unknown reason.) But people generally prefer to have an aisle AND window when possible. And if you’re in First Class, that seems like quite a reasonable request. There obviously can’t be windows in the middle of the aircraft, so Emirates did something awesome. It installed virtual windows. You can see them in action in this video:

I mean, that's just cool. And it has some really interesting implications:

This kind of technology can also allow designers to really get creative on new aircraft. Think about the B-2 stealth bomber. That kind of triangular “flying wing” design” could lend itself to commercial aviation some day, but windows would be a real challenge. Now imagine that could be built with virtual windows throughout the cabin, giving people a constant ability to look out without requiring any structural work.

Heck, you could make the whole airplane a virtual window if you want. That would result in something similar to Airbus’s 2050 concept airplane (though that plan apparently would, in theory, use transparent cell membranes or something crazy like that).

Yes, this may seem like it’s just a fake window, but it’s so much more. I’m excited about what it might mean for future aircraft development. Oh… and yeah, those new Emirates suites look pretty darn nice too.

I don't think I'll ever actually fly in an Emirates first-class suite, but I agree with Cranky Flier: there's a lot to be excited about in there.