11–20 of 36 posts
"Logarithmic". That's the word I needed. I've been trying to visualize a calendar that captures everything from seconds to years (akin to the marvelous but abandoned "once around the sun" work some years back), and at last pondering was wondering how to scale a spiral-of-spirals-of... which would capture the cyclic nature of our model of time; problem was scaling. Some application of logarithmic scaling may work...
Would love this for a paper calendar. I remember being stumped by the same problem of wanting a better overview over periods of time, and so came up with a scrollable-zoomable-timeline visualization called LineTime ( http://www.linetimeapp.com ). Smooth pinch-to-zoom and it displays days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries. At this point, LineTime isn't a productivity app but a history timeline. But actually I…
"Would love this for a paper calendar." This one would be tricky - it looks like this needs continuous re-scaling. This would probably need a system of movable paper parts - labels, post-its or whatever. There's a serious danger you'd spend more energy tweaking those than thinking about the actual tasks :)
You'd have current month large, then scale down through future 3 months, remainder of year, future years. Post-its / whiteboard marker / magnetic markers for various events.
The advantage of software is of course that you can have scaled views but infinite (or at least very large) storage capacity.
"Logarithmic". That's the word I needed. I've been trying to visualize a calendar that captures everything from seconds to years (akin to the marvelous but abandoned "once around the sun" work some years back), and at last pondering was wondering how to scale a spiral-of-spirals-of... which would capture the cyclic nature of our model of time; problem was scaling. Some application of logarithmic scaling may work...
Since I can remember, I've visualised time as a set of continuous spirals - years are the largest, with Christmas at the top and early summer at the bottom. The years lie on top of one another and fade off into the distance, like a slinky viewed end-on. I see days, weeks and months separately, but in continuous spirals of their own. I don't know how common this is, but I vaguely recall reading that it is a form of sy…
At the time I had the "insight", it was incredibly sad to me. I felt like we have a beautiful stretch of time laying out in front of us, and instead of enjoying every unique moment, we entangle it with spirals and walk through similar lives, week after week, month after month, year after year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since I can remember, I've visualised time as a set of continuous spirals - years are the largest, with Christmas at the top and early summer at the bottom. The years lie on top of one another and fade off into the distance, like a slinky viewed end-on. I see days, weeks and months separately, but in continuous spirals of their own. I don't know how common this is, but I vaguely recall reading that it is a form of sy…
While "meditating" one night, I had nearly the opposite perception. I realized that time is just one long stretch, and our convention of splitting it up into week s, month s, and year s is just a way to allow us to repeat the same existence over and over again. The day is the only unit that we biologically require, since we have to sleep once per day. We spend five days working, looking forward to those two that we c…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Would love this for a paper calendar." This one would be tricky - it looks like this needs continuous re-scaling. This would probably need a system of movable paper parts - labels, post-its or whatever. There's a serious danger you'd spend more energy tweaking those than thinking about the actual tasks :)
A magnetic / whiteboard planning calendar might work though. You'd have current month large, then scale down through future 3 months, remainder of year, future years. Post-its / whiteboard marker / magnetic markers for various events. The advantage of software is of course that you can have scaled views but infinite (or at least very large) storage capacity.
"Logarithmic". That's the word I needed. I've been trying to visualize a calendar that captures everything from seconds to years (akin to the marvelous but abandoned "once around the sun" work some years back), and at last pondering was wondering how to scale a spiral-of-spirals-of... which would capture the cyclic nature of our model of time; problem was scaling. Some application of logarithmic scaling may work...
Since I can remember, I've visualised time as a set of continuous spirals - years are the largest, with Christmas at the top and early summer at the bottom. The years lie on top of one another and fade off into the distance, like a slinky viewed end-on. I see days, weeks and months separately, but in continuous spirals of their own. I don't know how common this is, but I vaguely recall reading that it is a form of sy…
This is a great idea, and fits nicely with the observation that humans seem to perceive many things, including time, logarithmically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber–Fechner_law
"Logarithmic". That's the word I needed. I've been trying to visualize a calendar that captures everything from seconds to years (akin to the marvelous but abandoned "once around the sun" work some years back), and at last pondering was wondering how to scale a spiral-of-spirals-of... which would capture the cyclic nature of our model of time; problem was scaling. Some application of logarithmic scaling may work...
Since I can remember, I've visualised time as a set of continuous spirals - years are the largest, with Christmas at the top and early summer at the bottom. The years lie on top of one another and fade off into the distance, like a slinky viewed end-on. I see days, weeks and months separately, but in continuous spirals of their own. I don't know how common this is, but I vaguely recall reading that it is a form of sy…
It's rather amazing how many life-long concepts come out of kindergarten.