While we're in the Christmas season, here's a Christmas-themed maths problem.
The Christmas season is the 12 days from Christmas Day (25th December) until the day before Epiphany (which is 6th January, so the day before is 5th). From that 12 day period comes the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. Many of you will know it, but for those who don't:
It turns out you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet. Or at least, if the internet gives you some information, use a bit of common sense to check you've been given an answer that feels right, rather than just taking things uncritically and at face value.
I wanted to know how far it was from Jerusalem to the Mediterranean.
So I asked Google:
You what? 1000 miles?
It's Advent, which traditionally has two focii.
The season is about preparing for the coming of Christ. The more obvious half of that is preparing to celebrate Christmas. The other side to it is about the final return of Christ to this world, when he comes to judge the living and the dead, to usher in the new heavens and the new earth, and to free the cosmos from its bondage to decay. What we, slightly mistakenly, call the "second coming". We remind ourselves that it's coming, and we prepare ourselves for it.
I don't normally moan online about things, but I think there's a cautionary tale here that's worth broadcasting.
You see something you can buy online, and you have no way of knowing whether it's a reliable purchase until you try it. In our case, the amount of money lost was small, but some people make much larger purchases, so I think it's worth making sure people are aware of the risks.
This is just a short post:
PHP released version 7.1 yesterday. Congratulations to all those who worked so hard to get this version out of the door. Especial congratulations to Davey Shafik and Joe Watkins, the release managers, and to Anatol Belski who mentored them.