I feel like every developer/technically inclined person goes through a phase of trying to fix timekeeping. I know I did. I think it's a good exercise in recognizing that we (largerly) make tools and standards that fit existing social constructs, not the other way around, and that there are some things that are just inherently messy.
Metric Time
81–90 of 343 posts
Re: Metric Time
#82I just realized that the standard time watch face feels like it will follow the sun rising from left to set on the right side. But since the sun is rising in the east, it should be horizontally reversed. Or you should always look to the south / to the sun. Or it feels right because of my western idea of writing from left to right?
When you are in the northern hemisphere just look south and the sun will follow the clock from left to right :)
Re: Metric Time
#83I love how the example is super confusing. You sleep 3.33… metric hours. You fall asleep 9:50 metric time. You'd think we can just interchange the . and : so you should wake up 12:83…, or 2:83… the next day. But no, it's apparently 2:75 metric time. Why? Also nice how they IMMEDIATELY ran into a continuing fraction 1/3, which is exactly the point of the 60-minute hour, 24-hour day, or 360-degree circle: lots of facto…
Its like we have built our entire lives around another time system! /s
You get similar problems converting between Freedom degrees and Celsius. Its just what people have built an understanding of.
Re: Metric Time
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. And having 7 days per week is majorly impractical, also for reasons of divisibility. With 7 being prime, it's impossible to do things every other day or every three days without being left with a remainder.
Unless you are a bodybuilder. https://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=107926751
It's a shame the internet has pinned this on bodybuilders just because of the URL. TheJosh has a progress photo on his profile - he must be very deep into an offseason. bodybuilding.com is a general exercise forum and is infamous for the trolling on its misc board.
Re: Metric Time
#85This site says "Metric Time", but I think they mean "Decimal Time" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time ). There is a https://www.decimal-time.com/ site that has working Decimal Time clocks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_time
Yes, a very confusing error. The metric time is the SI time (24h 60m 60s). The decimal time is base 10. French tried to get it used during the revolution and it did not work. Its the only unit that resisted decimalization, with a couple others ones in a handful of countries still using something called « imperial units ». Another similar thought experiment is binary clocks which I remember using to get use to read in…
>with a couple others ones in a handful of countries still using something called « imperial units ».
The only country I know of offhand that uses "imperial units" is the UK.
There's a different, but similar (and sometimes overlapping) system called "US Customary Units" that's used in the US. Imperial pints and gallons are NOT the same as US pints and gallons.
Re: Metric Time
#86I just realized that the standard time watch face feels like it will follow the sun rising from left to set on the right side. But since the sun is rising in the east, it should be horizontally reversed. Or you should always look to the south / to the sun. Or it feels right because of my western idea of writing from left to right?
Clock faces were inspired by sun dials. The hour hand traces a version of the path the sun's shadow makes. At least in the northern hemisphere.
Re: Metric Time
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
True. And having 7 days per week is majorly impractical, also for reasons of divisibility. With 7 being prime, it's impossible to do things every other day or every three days without being left with a remainder.
Wouldn't that make sense in a context where the useful number of 6 counts the days reserved for the affairs of mankind, and the seventh was an extra day reserved for rest or worship? I.e. the background of our 7 day week
I'm sure that's religious revisionism (just like the Christmas holiday). Like so many time-based things, the 7-day week comes from the cycles of the Moon, and goes back at least as far as the Babylonians.
Re: Metric Time
#88There's a parallel universe where the French chose to base their new system around twelve instead of ten. Divide the day into twelve twelfths and each twelfth into twelve parts again. (They'd have to coin prefixes for each.)
And hopefully we use a base-12 numbering system. It would make division into thirds, quarters and even sixths much easier. Sign me up!
Re: Metric Time
#89swatch beats or gtfo
Re: Metric Time
#90honestly, the mental math around metric time demonstrated in this post makes me think we should go the opposite way and make everything else base 12 instead of making time base 10. Being divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6 makes a lot of mental math easier.