Tags » datetime shenanigans

Cleaning up messy dates in JSON

I wrote a Python script to help me get timestamps in a consistent format in my JSON.

TIL: How to find the Pygments token type for a short name

Look at the source code of pygments.token.

TIL: Remove the microsecond precision from a datetime in Python

Call datetime.replace(microsecond=0).

TIL: The person who runs the Cambridge NTP servers has an excellent email address

Localising the <time> with JavaScript

I’m using the <time> element and some JavaScript to display timestamps as human-readable, localised timestamps. Something like Tue, 15 Apr 2025 at 20:45 BST is easier to read than 2025-04-15T19:45:00Z.

TIL: There’s a musical that tells you the number of minutes in a year

The song Seasons of Love from Rent starts with the line “Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes”.

Preserving Dates during JSON serialisation with vanilla JS

How to make sure you get a Date back when you call JSON.parse and JSON.stringify.

Have a single definition of “now”

Having one function that you always use to get the current time is super handy when debugging issues that only occur at specific times.

What year is it? (A tale of ISO week dates)

If you use ICU date formatting, make sure you use the right format specifier for year.

Finding the months between two dates in Python

Showing human-friendly dates in JavaScript

What’s a nicer way to show a date than an ISO 8601 timestamp?

Falsehoods programmers believe about Unix time

It’s not quite the number of seconds since 1 January 1970.

Darwin, pancakes and birthdays

Looking at whether Darwin ever missed out on birthday cake for pancakes