We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds? • Hacker News Board

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#21

Post by qxb » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 10:21 PM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #4

Both are crazy. Why would anyone want celebrate being closer to death? Plus, as a nerd, I wouldn't choose an arbitrary unit of time like seconds.

Writer, philosopher Alain de Botton: "We should cite our age not by how many years we've lived, but by how many we statistically have left: a 70 yr old UK male as 8 etc."

http://twitter.com/#!/alaindebotton/status/95809899929407488

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#22

Post by delinka » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 10:21 PM UTC

georgemcfly wrote: post #13

georgemcfly wrote: post #12

Because no one knows the second they were born? I actually know the minute (0:21 EDT) but I suspect even that is unusual to know.

Also, how long should we celebrate it for? 1 second?

I like the idea of counting down to the event.

"I'll be a billion seconds old next Friday night! Come to the party and be there when the second arrives!"

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#23

Post by v21 » Wed, Sep 07, 2011, 10:52 PM UTC

Here's a even more beautiful variation I've seen : http://interconnected.org/home/more/lightcone/

It takes a birth date and tells you when your personal light cone passes nearby stars.

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#24

Post by synnik » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 12:04 AM UTC

ptarjan wrote: post #20

synnik wrote: post #16

I'm 39. My birth year is not even selectable in the drop-down. I had to go to 1974, then scroll back 2 years. Not exactly a positive experience.

Yeah, this date widget has issues. Have you seen a better one anywhere else? You can always just fall back to the text box, but that is less good.

I've used the jquery-ui datepicker before. You can customize it to make the year a drop-down, similar to what you have. I forget what the default range of years is, but we modified it to suit our needs anyway...

But can't you just modify your widget? Somewhere in your code must be the range of years provided...

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#25

Post by ars » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 9:03 AM UTC

ptarjan wrote: post #9

ars wrote: post #5

That is a REALLY irritating method of entering a date! To go back a decade, you have to go to january of the first year in the dropdown, click the previous month button. Can't I just type in a date?

Typing in the text box should just work. I'll try to make that more discoverable. Or if you have another date input widget I'm all ears.

Just replace the year dropdown with a text input, or even just load the dropdown with 100 years (or both).

I can't type in the text box, as soon as the widget closes the form submits.

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#26

Post by tagawa » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 9:50 AM UTC

ptarjan wrote: post #20

synnik wrote: post #16

I'm 39. My birth year is not even selectable in the drop-down. I had to go to 1974, then scroll back 2 years. Not exactly a positive experience.

Yeah, this date widget has issues. Have you seen a better one anywhere else? You can always just fall back to the text box, but that is less good.

Ideally you could use the input element with type=datetime for browsers that support it, and a date widget fallback for browsers that don't. This should provide a better experience for users and hopefully less support issues for you.

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#27

Post by gnoupi » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 1:50 PM UTC

ptarjan wrote: post #20

synnik wrote: post #16

I'm 39. My birth year is not even selectable in the drop-down. I had to go to 1974, then scroll back 2 years. Not exactly a positive experience.

Yeah, this date widget has issues. Have you seen a better one anywhere else? You can always just fall back to the text box, but that is less good.

Also, it allows you to set hour and minute of birth, but the rest of the site doesn't use them.

Since it has second-related marks, it would be nice if it was working with hours and minutes as well.

Re: We celebrate our birthdays every year, but why not our 1,000,000,000 seconds?

#28

Post by gnoupi » Thu, Sep 08, 2011, 1:53 PM UTC

georgemcfly wrote: post #13

georgemcfly wrote: post #12

Because no one knows the second they were born? I actually know the minute (0:21 EDT) but I suspect even that is unusual to know.

Also, how long should we celebrate it for? 1 second?

Deploying surprise party in 3, 2, 1... It's over now, thanks for participating.