Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Counting down the days

Much of the advanced elements of maths pass me by and I don' think many people would think me stupid for that. However, recently it appeared that a far simpler aspect of numbers also passed me by and I still don't comprehend it.

I finished my maths quilt a good few days ago. I posted it in a draft to Blogger and postdated it to 1st December. Only, I didn't. Because our blog is American not English (bah!) and so to it 1/12/08 became a post for 12th January ( or should I say January twelfth.... what is it with you Americans and your hatred of the definate article?.... ahem...). Fortunately Brenda who is smarter than me (but then she has an unfair advantage being married to an American) spotted it and altered it - but some people may have seen it because the RSS feeds picked it up. Certainly it was on my Google Reader list.

If you did see it you are sworn to secrecy. But in any event. I don't understand. If I posted it erroneously days ago why did it only hit the feeds today? All I can say is that the confusion caused by Trans Atlantic lingusitics makes this post on Rayela's blog all the more supprted by me.

4 comments:

Françoise said...

I don't understand either... I'm sure it was written "December 1st".

Gerrie said...

I am sure it is some Google mathematical thing. Google was probably spending some time trying to figure out what you really meant and finally tossed a coin and went with the January date, :-)

Kristin L said...

1st -- I missed your premature posting because I live on the other side of the world now and apparently sleep through all teh fun stuff.

2nd -- Try being an American in Europe with business both with American bureaucrats and Europeans. I never knew when to write the dates as 1/12/08 or 12/1/08. Luckily, once past the 12th of the month, it was pretty obvious what I meant. I've been reduced to writing out dates more fully, like 15 Dec., 2008 or Dec. 15, 2008 just to avoid confusion.

3rd -- John Cleese cracks me up!!

Anonymous said...

RSS feeds apparently don't focus on fresh posts that are date-stamped in the past. However, when I changed the date of your post to 1 December, Blogger treated the post as being published at the current time and moved it to the top of the blog even though it displayed a 1 December date). Super-efficient Google Reader picked up the RSS feed soon after. When I realised what had happened, I converted the post to a draft but the Google Reader horse had bolted...

So there you have it. Confusing date formats; silly Blogger; bumbling Brenda - they say things come in threes!

Anyway, I can promise everyone that Helen's quilt is brilliantly conceived and you will gasp when it is officially revealed.