Andrew Flegg's Nokia Developer BlogA Forum Nokia Blog2012-02-26T13:35:52+02:00http://www.lifetype.net,1.2/Copyright (c) afleggLifeType at Forum NokiaAvoiding jet lag using continuous clock changetag:www.developer.nokia.com,2012-02-26:36272012-02-26T13:35:52+02:002012-02-26T13:35:52+02:00
These days I'm often travelling long distances; whether it's to Asia or Detroit with work; or San Francisco for the MeeGo and JavaOne Conferences.
Ten hour flights are rarely fun; but ...aflegghttp://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/andrew-fleggs-nokia-developer-blog
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<img src="http://bleb.org/software/maemo/maeflight.png" width="80" height="80" align="right" />These days I'm often travelling long distances; whether it's to Asia or Detroit with work; or San Francisco for the MeeGo and JavaOne Conferences.
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Ten hour flights are rarely fun; but when combined with a ten hour time difference? The jet lag can destroy you.
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However, I trust a clock when I see it. So if I can convince myself that the time isn't changing in one big jump, jet lag is less of an issue. I used to do this with my watch: every two hours on a ten hour flight with an eight hour time difference: move my watch forward two hours. By speeding up, or slowing down time, I find it excellent for transitioning gradually to my destination timezone.
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My N9's standby screen provides an opportunity to do this automatically: every time I glance at my phone on the flight, it could show me the right "transient" time.
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I prototyped it with a spreadsheet (<a href="http://bleb.org/software/maemo/flight-time.ods">download</a>), for a recent trip to Korea, to see how effective it would be before writing an app:
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<img src="http://bleb.org/software/maemo/flight-time-1.png" />
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To try it out, first off, <strong>enter</strong> the local departure and arrival times; and the timezone difference:
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<img src="http://bleb.org/software/maemo/flight-time-2.png" width="280" height="61" />
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If travelling eastwards, the <em>time difference</em> will be positive. If travelling westwards, it will be negative.
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A shell script will then be shown in column E. <strong>Copy</strong> this column and <strong>paste</strong> it into a text editor. <strong>Copy</strong> the resulting script to your UNIX-based mobile device (N9, N950, N900, N8x0, jailbroken iPad).
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On a Harmattan device, the script needs to be run in <strong><span style="font-family: courier new,courier">develsh</span></strong>:
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<span style="font-family: courier new,courier">~ $ develsh outbound.sh<br />
...</span>
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On everything else it needs to be run as <span style="font-family: courier new,courier"><strong>root</strong></span>:
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<span style="font-family: courier new,courier">Jaffas-iPad:~ mobile$ su -<br />
Password:<br />
Jaffas-Ipad:~ root# sh outbound.sh<br />
...<br />
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If run with <span style="font-family: courier new,courier">screen</span> or <span style="font-family: courier new,courier">nohup</span>, you shouldn't even need to keep the terminal open.
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<span style="font-size: medium; color: #8a765d"><strong>NEXT STEPS </strong></span>
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Obviously the next step is an app. Is it something you'd be interested in? Is there a nice Qt API for changing the time? Are there Qt APIs for looking up timezones, and setting the device's timezone?
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<span style="font-size: xx-small"><em>Thanks to eipi for allowing me to use <a href="http://apps.formeego.org/staging/applications/n9/pr1.0/harmattan/Other/maeflight/">MaeFlight</a>'s icon in this post.</em></span>
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