Updating all the timezone stuff one needs on a LAMP environment: (necessary in Australia because they changed the daylight savings start date once again). I haven't yet been able to convince my hosting provider to go through all this hassle; and the tables are outdated - so Aussie visitors may see an incorrect time on some of my websites for the next week. 

Test:

# zdump -c 2009 -v Australia/Sydney | grep 2008
Australia/Sydney  Sat Apr  5 15:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Apr  6 02:59:59 2008 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600
Australia/Sydney  Sat Apr  5 16:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Apr  6 02:00:00 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct  4 15:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Oct  5 01:59:59 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct  4 16:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Oct  5 03:00:00 2008 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600

(If the first two lines contain 'Mar' instead of 'Apr' you've got old tables). e.g. this is what an unpatched system would report:

# zdump -c 2009 -v Australia/Sydney | grep 2008
Australia/Sydney  Sat Mar 29 15:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Mar 30 02:59:59 2008 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600
Australia/Sydney  Sat Mar 29 16:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Mar 30 02:00:00 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct 25 15:59:59 2008 UTC = Sun Oct 26 01:59:59 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=36000
Australia/Sydney  Sat Oct 25 16:00:00 2008 UTC = Sun Oct 26 03:00:00 2008 EST isdst=1 gmtoff=39600

Debian:

# apt-get update 

# apt-get install tzdata

PHP5.x

# apt-get install php5-dev 

[fetch and save] http://pecl.php.net/get/timezonedb

# tar zxvf timezonedb-xxxxxxx.tgz

# cd timezonedb-xxxxxxx

# phpize

# ./configure

# make

# make install

# echo "extension=timezonedb.so"  > /etc/php5/conf.d/timezonedb.ini

# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

MySQL:

# mysql_tzinfo_to_sql /usr/share/zoneinfo | mysql -u root mysql -p

(ignore all the errors from Riyadh{NN}, iso3166.tab, and zone.tab) 

Those two or three people who actually visit this website may have noticed that I haven't done much with it lately. I think it's time to declare it over and done with - though I'll leave the archives here indefinitely should anybody wish to see the timeline of happenings. 

Blogging is so 2002. Social nets are so 2004. I'm tired of it all. Seems the world has tired of my writings as well (or more accurately it's just another channel of stuff amongst the 200+ million channels of stuff to choose from on the web). Thanks to the RSS fiasco and a host of other factors (e.g. search behaviour, PageRank changes, my use of a 'non-standard' community platform, etc.), traffic has plummeted way beyond rock bottom. We're now down to 3 visitors a day on average, down from 100,000 back in October and even the 20-30,000 around Christmas.

There's no point anymore writing into space - as I mentioned a few weeks back. The photo albums for friends and family are largely unseen. Except for two of you, friends and family are too intimidated by online spaces to touch the place.

The community site has been a dismal failure - a lot of hard work wasted. 

It's coming up on one year since I arrived in Australia, and so much has changed. Work and family consumes my time, as it should (at least family). Work is what it is. Blogging and social nets are a thing of the past, and tremendous time-wasters at that.

It was fun. Now onto the next chapter - of a book which probably won't be written online.

I'm pretty much ranted out.