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Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

ilyabirman.net

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Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#61

Post by fsck--off »

pothibo wrote: post #44
rlt3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know why, but I like the imperfectness of our calendar system now. Stupid stuff like February having only 29 days is pretty funny and those 7 days of December 25th to January 1st is perfect because its an exact week. It would be too boring if every month was the same. Could we have fun stuff like `April Showers Bring may Flowers' if every month was just the same 28 days? I'm sure we could, but everythi…

From a developer standpoint, I loathe our calendar/time system. The world has wasted shit load of time & money trying to fix stupid bugs with our time systems, I would welcome a more linear system.

You might enjoy Naggum's A Long, Painful History of Time:

http://naggum.no/lugm-time.html

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#62

Post by kps »

kgermino wrote: post #46

Wait, I can't buy this from him?! Anyone know of a place that I can get something similar? Or recommendations on the best was to make one?

Search for a "perpetual calendar" or "eternal calendar". They used to be reasonably common as desk accessories and are still made as promotional items.

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#63

Post by bobwaycott »

maxerickson wrote: post #50
bobwaycott wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've long wished we simply numbered days from the first of the year onward, and didn't bother with months. Today is 213.2013.

2013.213 would sort better (in existing systems).

Naturally.

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#64

Post by justinpombrio »

YokoZar wrote: post #41
finnh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people's birthdays wouldn't rotate around the days of the week, which would be lame for 5/7 of the population. Edit: back to Forebruary, I think it's quite nice looking. and the timeline at the bottom is awesome. Reminiscent of the timeline in "Rock Me Amadeus". one of these things is not like the others...

I suggest you do what I did and redefine your birthday the way they do Federal Holidays. It's not "September 22nd" for me anymore, it's "The 4th Saturday in September".

Under the proposed system, "The 4th Saturday in September" would also be known as "September 28". I suppose you mean to suggest simply celebrating your birthday on a nearby weekend.

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#65

Post by batiudrami »

dustincoates wrote: post #53
rlt3 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really know why, but I like the imperfectness of our calendar system now. Stupid stuff like February having only 29 days is pretty funny and those 7 days of December 25th to January 1st is perfect because its an exact week. It would be too boring if every month was the same. Could we have fun stuff like `April Showers Bring may Flowers' if every month was just the same 28 days? I'm sure we could, but everythi…

It's not a popular opinion at all, but that's how I feel about the Imperial units of measurement. I get the benefits of metric, but Imperial just feels more... poetic? It could also be just familiarity with what I grew up with, I suppose.

It works better as a spoken language (and therefore fairly well for estimated distances), but man, does it make any kind of calculation annoying (many engineering textbooks are from the US and use imperial units - you end up with stupidity like BTU/ft^2.s.

The thing I think many people from the US don't understand about a transition is that it doesn't mean you're somehow not allowed to use imperial units anymore - in Australia it's still used regularly in spoken language (especially with regard to distances) - but anything where the number matters, the value is given in metric, so calculations can be performed simply.

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#66

Post by cbhl »

dalore wrote: post #25
untog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the existing system really that broken, though? It's a pain, but it works. People know it. The pain of moving to a new calendar system would be considerably bigger than the pain of dealing with the current system.

Would it really be a big pain? It's not like you have memorized the calendar. You always look it up, you will just be looking it up in a new system (or not needing to look it up as it's a logical system).

People tend to write date code themselves, no matter how many times we tell them not to.

There have been leap year bugs in everything from Zune to Windows Phone 8 to iPhone/iOS.

This, in spite of legions of CS professors trying to get it into people's heads that they should be using libraries (once, of course, they have verified that said library is accurate).

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#67

Post by [deleted] »

dalore wrote: post #25
untog wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the existing system really that broken, though? It's a pain, but it works. People know it. The pain of moving to a new calendar system would be considerably bigger than the pain of dealing with the current system.

Would it really be a big pain? It's not like you have memorized the calendar. You always look it up, you will just be looking it up in a new system (or not needing to look it up as it's a logical system).

[deleted]

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#68

Post by nimrod_135 »

andrewl wrote: post #58
Roedou wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirty days has September, April, June, and November; All the rest have thirty-one except February alone which has twenty-eight; Except on every fourth year, when it has 29; Except on years divisible by 100, when it has 28 again; Unless the year is also divisible by 1000, when it's back to 29.

I grew up with this: Thirty days has September, April, June, and November, All the rest have thirty-one except February, Which has four and twenty-four, 'til leap year gives it one day more.

Use your knuckles, with both hands next to each other, from left to right Jan - Dec. Each 'hump' has 31 days.

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#69

Post by cbhl »

untog wrote: post #17
forinti wrote: post #7

If we had 13 months, all of them would have exactly 28 days. We would need and extra day in order to complete 365 days, but we could make it a special case (the first day of the year, for instance) not belonging to any month or week. Then all months would be alike, every 1st, 8th, 15th, etc, would be a Sunday, and so on. We would never need a calendar again.

Is the existing system really that broken, though? It's a pain, but it works. People know it. The pain of moving to a new calendar system would be considerably bigger than the pain of dealing with the current system.

We already are on a "new" calendar system.

If you're on unix/linux/os x, run

    cal 9 1752

Re: Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

#70

Post by frogpelt »

forinti wrote: post #7

If we had 13 months, all of them would have exactly 28 days. We would need and extra day in order to complete 365 days, but we could make it a special case (the first day of the year, for instance) not belonging to any month or week. Then all months would be alike, every 1st, 8th, 15th, etc, would be a Sunday, and so on. We would never need a calendar again.

Let's make Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec the 7/8/9/10th months again. Jan and Feb can be 11 and 12. Make March the 1st month. I would rather start every new year near spring time anyway.
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