Hacking for Christ

I Have a Mozilla Job!

I'm extremely happy to be able to say that my company, Data Connection, is evaluating the Mozilla platform for use as the basis of an upcoming project. If the evaluation goes well, I will be moving to work on that project for the forseeable future.

As you might expect, I can't say any more at this stage. But basically: working with Mozilla is going to be my job - a real answer to prayer! Party! ;-)

Charset confusion

We've been discussing how to fix Bugzilla's charset problems.

At the moment, Bugzilla doesn't send a charset header on its pages. Although this means they don't validate, it can be a good thing, because if a Bugzilla is used solely by people with one default charset, everything just about works. In fact, if people with different charsets comment on different bugs, things still just about work - because of browser auto charset detection. b.m.o. is an example of the latter case. However, multiple different charsets on the same bug usually leads to a nasty mess, and unreadable comments.

What you really want is for everyone to be able to discuss the same bug without a problem. And that basically means using UTF-8. This is fine for new installations, with recent versions of Perl and MySQL. However, how do you write code which upgrades a Bugzilla and converts all the comments to UTF-8, if you don't know what charset they were in, in the first place? :-|

Magic solutions for this problem would be welcome... (Read the bug first, though.)

Gerv

Tesco don't quite get it...

I discovered a bug in Tesco's online shop, and sent an email to their "Technical Queries" email alias to tell them about it. Here, approximately, is the exchange:

I said:

If you enter a phone number with spaces in, the submit silently fails.
The problem relates to the fact that the form submit() call is in the final
else() branch of the JavaScript in SubmitFormAddress().
If you have a phone number with spaces in, you enter this branch:

         else if (isNaN(document.form1.textdayphone1.value))
         {
             temp = document.form1.textdayphone1.value;
             while (temp.indexOf(" ")>=0)
                 temp = temp.replace(" ","");
             if (isNaN(temp))
             {
                 alert('Please use only numbers for the phone number');
             }
         }

 If the phone number has spaces, the first isNaN fails, but the second
 succeeds, and so you don't get an error popup, but then the submit doesn't
 get done because it's in the final else {} branch of the big validation
 statement. 

They sent me an automated acknowledgement, and then said:

Thank you for your e-mail.

You cannot leave any spaces in the phone number or the system will reject
it.

Kind Regards
...

Oops. I've obviously hit the wrong technical level. I was hoping for a techie... So I said:

This is the problem - the system neither rejects the number nor submits the form. It just does nothing.

Please pass my original message on to your technical team - they will understand the problem.

After another automated acknowledgement, they said:

Thank you for your e-mail.

There are no current technical problems with our website, therefore, please
call 08457 22 55 33 and select the option for "Technical Assistance" if you
cannot register. These queries are not easily resolved via e-mail.

Kind Regards
...

Did he actually read what I said? I'm not having a problem registering. And "there are no current technical problems with their site"? That must make it unique among e-commerce sites... And they want me to report website bugs by phone? The mind boggles.

I replied to that effect, but as yet have had no response.

Mark - Experienced

Wow... that was a blast. We had within spitting distance of 200 people there. Several said afterwards that they really enjoyed it - which is nice, but not particularly relevant. :-) I'm more interested in whether it made them think...

For those waiting patiently for Mozilla-related blogs, I promise some soon. I'm new to this, OK? :-)

The Mark Experience

This Saturday, a group from my church is performing a dramatization of the gospel of Mark. We've been learning an outline for weeks, but the first rehearsal was only last night. I've been asked to play Peter, one of Jesus' disciples - forthright, impetuous and over-confident. Reading the gospel, it's clear how little he understood - witness his confident assertion "I will never betray you", yet he does exactly that a chapter later. Even so, after Jesus rose from the dead, God used him greatly to preach the gospel. Shows how little we can do without His help...

To be honest, one of my greatest fears when I signed up for this was that I'd be forced to act the part of a tree, or something else I'd find embarrassing. And sure enough, I was one of the four people asked to help illustrate the parable of the Sower. Yet "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels." (Mark 8:37-29). So if it helps get the message across, I'm not going to let myself be ashamed or embarrassed to do it.

I'll let you know how it goes :-)

What I Do

Chris Chernesky asked in the comments what else I do apart from Mozilla stuff.

I'm a member of the core Bugzilla team, with a particular responsibility for Reporting and Charting. I maintain the DSMLTools, and Patch Maker. I also have a strong interest in usability.

My day job is working for a medium-sized software company called Data Connection, and my current project is a data conferencing server.

As you may have noticed, I'm a Christian (here's why). My local church family is Enfield Evangelical Free Church, here in Enfield, North London, UK. We used to have a website but it seems to have disappeared at the moment. We're currently meeting in a school because our building has been compulsorily purchased by the council to build a multi-storey car park and shopping centre. But that's OK - God's got it all under control, and I'm sure we'll have a new permanent place to meet in a few years time.

More about me can be found on gerv.net.

First Post

It is time.

I've always said to myself that I'd get a blog only when I had something useful to say on it. Several times in the past couple of months, I've thought "I could put that on my blog - if I had one" - and so here it is. Expect entries on Mozilla, Bugzilla, hacking in general, and other things of importance in my life.

Thanks to MozillaZine for hosting (I'm honoured to be in such distinguished company), and to Movable Style for the stylesheet.

So why the title? Simply because it sums up why I do what I do. Jesus is my Lord and Saviour; my life is focussed on His priorities. I recognise that I've been given a gift by God - the ability to write software - and I want to use it for His glory.