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My Life in Weeks

weeks.ginatrapani.org

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Re: My Life in Weeks

#151

Post by jks »

silvestrov wrote: post #88
morsecodist wrote: post #73

Weeks is the most terrifying unit of time to think in. Short enough so you have a good sense of how long it feels but long enough to add up quickly.

Fun fact: Nordic countries use week numbers for all sorts of planning, e.g. vacation period, school events, company planning, statistics reporting, ... All calendars show week numbers.

Another fun fact: there are three commonly used ways to define week numbers (see `man strftime`, %U, %V, %W; %V is the one used in at least the Nordics). In some years they coincide so you might not notice that you picked the wrong one until next January.

Yet another fun fact: with %V week numbers, the date 2024-12-30 (December 30, 2024) was 2025-W01-1 (the Monday of week 1, 2025). Thus strftime needs two different ways to specify the year: %G denotes the year that goes with %V week numbers, %Y denotes the year that people usually think of when they ask "what year is it". Unfortunately %G comes before %Y on the strftime man page, so people who scan the page quickly can easily pick %G when they really want %Y. I've seen a few bugs caused by this.

I have also seen the corresponding bug in SQL, using IYYY instead of YYYY. This boggles the mind, but apparently when some people read "ISO 8601 week-numbering year", they only see "ISO 8601 ... year", think "yes, that's the date standard we use" and don't care about the "week-numbering" word in the middle.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#152

Post by OccamsMirror »

kqr wrote: post #146
sneak wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still tons of websites (more now than ever) not owned by gigantic corporations. It's not their fault that you and the masses mostly stopped going to them in favor of facebook and twitter and instagram and, of course, apps. (You're on one right now, naturally.) I get the same feeling when people say "RSS is dead". I read dozens of websites via RSS and my RSS reader still works fine. Very few blogs I want to…

This happens with programming languages also. Lots of people cry "Perl is dead" because its market share is decreasing. But its absolute user count is increasing! It's not a competition for a limited size of pie; the pie is still growing at a frightening pace, along with all its pieces.

Although there used to be a time you could be a "successful blogger" and make enough money from advertising that you could focus on it full time.

Those days are long behind us.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#153

Post by billforsternz »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #32

This is an interesting way of reflecting on one's life. I have calculated my ROL (Rest.Of.Life i.e. before been garbage collected) productive hours (hours dedicated to side projects) in a similar way, and the result panics me. Assume that I still have 37 years before been garbage collected, and 35 years before cognitive degeneration: Starting from today: [Time-frame 1]: I have 200 days before kid goes to primary scho…

I think there's some kind of proper name for the fallacy that things now are how things are always how they're going to be. I mean kudos for thinking and planning about the future, but it's kind of ridiculous to assume that there won't be underlying changes in society that will mess with these arcs tremendously. Upsides and downsides. As much or more than the health issues which you (sensibly) do recognise as uncertainties.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#154

Post by elcapitan »

silvestrov wrote: post #88
morsecodist wrote: post #73

Weeks is the most terrifying unit of time to think in. Short enough so you have a good sense of how long it feels but long enough to add up quickly.

Fun fact: Nordic countries use week numbers for all sorts of planning, e.g. vacation period, school events, company planning, statistics reporting, ... All calendars show week numbers.

Quite common in German companies too, it's usually refered to as KW, tomorrow (2025/02/17) KW 8 starts.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#155

Post by jks »

Apofis wrote: post #74
morsecodist wrote: post #73

Weeks is the most terrifying unit of time to think in. Short enough so you have a good sense of how long it feels but long enough to add up quickly.

And the best part of it is that there's really only about 4000 weeks for any one of us! It's an interesting metric.

Oliver Burkeman wrote a book about this, named "Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals". The main point (at least as I remember it) is that there are way more books to read, links to click, and things to do than you can fit in your lifetime, so it's a delusion that you could ever get to the end of your to-do list.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#156

Post by sircastor »

pronik wrote: post #92

Gina Trapani! That's a name I haven't heard in a long time and at first couldn't place correctly -- for some reason, my mind went to Groklaw, but Lifehacker was the correct answer. Maybe I'm idolizing my own youth and its associated available free time just a tiny bit and I can't actually believe it's been 20 years, but those felt like good times, Web 2.0 with its focus on communication instead of publishing, with Sl…

I did the same thing! For me though it was a bunch podcasts she was on.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#157

Post by jhrmnn »

barrkel wrote: post #122
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first ~1000 are spent in the the very limited tutorial area. I think it's kinda strange that you're saying up to age 19 is "the very limited tutorial area", as if it doesn't count. Up to age 3 or 4, before you have stable memory, perhaps I could understand, but I'm well, well into middle age and I think of some of the time between say 10-19 as the most vivid in terms of my memories, friends, direction of my lif…

I scarcely recognize the person I was at 19 as the same person as me. I have almost no recollection of school except for maybe a couple of dozen moments and a handful - no more than 4 or so - acquaintances. They were friends at the time, but we went to different colleges in different towns, we're not close now. I remember books I read, but they're detached from a timeline. I remember programming - that was the most f…

I have it the same! But it’s not common. People are always puzzled by this lack of episodic memory.

Re: My Life in Weeks

#158

Post by the_arun »

Is it safe to publish your life in public? Even at a weekly precision? What about privacy & security? Genuinely asking. Could anyone take advantage of it?

Re: My Life in Weeks

#159

Post by j7ake »

I remember making a calculation that a 4 year PhD is about 200 weeks.

This means every two weeks you are 1 percent closer to finishing.

That got me real productive.

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