pterjan's diary

  The most unusable branch locator I have seen so far

Today I wanted to locate an HSBC branch in London, close to either the office or my home. Thanks to HSBC I got upset before 8.

That starts fine, they have an "interactive map" or allow you to enter your postcode. Unfortunately they use only the beginning of the postcode (SW in my case) and then list you many towns in this area. Using the map stops at the same level. Then you click one of them (I should do all of them as I don't know some which may be close) and get No branch exists in ...

Is it so hard to list the closest ones from the given postcode or place them on a map? And what about just removing from the list the places without a branch?

  Google Geolocation API

I found today the API documentation to use http://www.google.com/loc/json in order to get a location from the seen wifi APs or GSM/CDMA cells.

It is very easy to use:

$ curl -X POST -d '{
  "version": "1.1.0",
  "host": "perdu.com",
  "request_address": true,
  "address_language": "en_GB",
  "wifi_towers": [
    {
      "mac_address": "56:7a:e8:68:15:4B"
    }
  ]
}' https://www.google.com/loc/json
{"location":{"latitude":48.868646,"longitude":2.355392,"address":{
"country":"France","country_code":"FR","region":"Ile-de-France","county":"Paris",
"city":"Paris","street":"Rue Sainte-Apolline","street_number":"2","postal_code":"75003"
},"accuracy":150.0},"access_token":"2:yWOkYM4kI79VH1Bj:cvMZFkJhXSflywZB"}

I guess this is what was used for this attack, and this seems to be used by Firefox and Chrome geolocation features.

Update: I found on http://code.google.com/p/gears/wiki/GeolocationAPI the following note: "Note that the JSON protocol described here and at http://code.google.com/apis/gears/geolocation_network_protocol.html is published to allow developers to provide their own network location server for use through the Gears API. Google's network location server is only to be used through the Gears API", so this is nice but you can't use it.

  Supermarkets in London

As I now know my future address in London, I was looking for supermarkets around and found no easy way to find all the available ones. After looking on each supermarket website I decided to gather the information.

So, I collected positions of ASDA, Tesco, Morrison, Sainsbury's, Poundland and Waitrose (with opening times for some) and pushed them into a Google map.

I actually have info for all UK but if Google map paginates it becomes unusable as you need to go through all pages to know the supermarkets in your area. If someones knows a way to restrict the list to current view on "static" maps, I am interested.

  Small post from GUADEC

GUADEC 2010 in Den Haag is going very well so far even if so many people are missing this year. I hope you did not miss the best talk so far! If you don't want to miss other talks, live streams are available on GUADEC website.

The major GNOME announce yesterday was GNOME 3.0 being postpone to the next release, in March 2011.

People seem mostly happy with it and as you can see on the following photo, they still love release team!

  Broadband in UK

The relocation company will help me for finding a place to live, bank account, etc. However I need help for some more technical questions, like which broadband provider (and mobile but this can wait) should I subscribe.

Orange is out of question because of their fair use policy stating that if I use too much my connection (for example by listening to Orange's own Liveradio or downloading large files) they may either reduce the speed or suspend your service and/or possibly close your account.

What a lovely definition of unlimited, and they don't even tell anything about a warning before closing the account...

Currently the shortlist is TalkTalk and O2 (even if it seems some O2 modems need to be rebooted very often to get WiFi back since they updated their firmware to fix a big security issue), but I did not yet check all offers (like Virgin or Sky in case I am eligible).

And what about smaller ones like Andrews & Arnold Ltd which offers static IP, IPv6, ... but has traffic limit and would imply I don't do big checkouts or download iso at daytime (which should be fine except during vacations).

Any opinion on this ?

  Mandriva 2010 Spring is finally out

Yes, it finally happened!

For this release, codenames of pre versions were aviation pioneers. Final one is Henry Farman and by reading his wikipedia page, I found an interesting detail: In 1908 he was the first to fly a complete circuit of 1 kilometre, in a plane powered by Gnome engine!

  About Mandriva Linux future distribution

Today a PR was issued which states At the heart of this strategy, Mandriva Linux will be distributed exclusively by a sales and integrated IT network, as well through OEM partnerships (Original Equipment Manufacturer) in the EMEA (European and Middle East) and BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) zones..

Don't worry, this exclusivity of distribution does not apply to the downloadable editions, only to retail. The new 2010.1 is already available to early seeders and will be available to everyone tomorrow as usual.

  London Calling

Few months ago, when Mandriva situation started to be very bad again, I decided to give a try to the Google interviews I had been invited to over the last few years.

Phone interviews went fine enough (even if it was not my impression and I thought afterwards to many ways I could have improved answers), and in May I was invited to on site interviews in London offices. This was a good experience, everyone was friendly and questions were interesting and challenging (and the night in 4* hotel before was nice even if I did not use much of what the hotel offered :) ).

Three weeks ago I got a job offer that would be very hard to reject, so I resigned from Mandriva and sent back the contract last week. My last day at Mandriva will be July 23rd, so I can attend GUADEC and I will start at Google as Site Reliabilty Engineer in London on September 6th.

Brick walls, I'm coming

It will be quite a change for me to work in good conditions, for a company trying to avoid most hassles and letting you concentrate on your job.

Mandriva was a great experience. I have worked here for almost 6 years (and contributed for a few years before), met a lot of great people, and worked on a lot of different kinds of software.

This experience also had wrong sides, like commercial side where most motivated and competent people have left quickly or became demotivated. Engineers tend to resist more but for some reason it seems that top management has always tried to demotivate everyone.

Some changes are happening in Mandriva now but I have no idea if that will mean that Mandriva (the company) will now have a clear goal and people willing to reach it, and if it will include the Linux distribution as we know it.

I hope Mandriva distribution has a long life and that I can still use it and contribute to it but feel quite pessimistic currently.

  I am attending GUADEC!

As part of a bigger chain of events, I should be able to attend GUADEC this year!

Now I have to decide when and how I go, from where, to where and where do I stay (my life will me a bit complex this summer, more on it later).

  Income Taxes

I have always heard that France has a high level of taxes but I found today that it's not true for income tax itself, it's only true if you add other things like social security.

When looking at income tax alone, for a single person without kid, it is even quite low compared to other countries.

Here is a small graph comparing tax rate in France, UK, USA, Belgium and Germany:

Update: As per several requests, I added Brazil, and I also created this new graph correcting things based on Big Mac index so that comparing countries is now a bit less meaningless.