[HN Gopher] Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need t...
___________________________________________________________________
Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace every
year (2013)
Author : Tomte
Score : 330 points
Date : 2022-06-29 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ilyabirman.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (ilyabirman.net)
| sigtstp wrote:
| Side-note on digital calendars: What I'd really like is a
| continuously scrolling calendar to help with long-ish term
| planning (3-4 months). Most apps are stuck in the single-month
| page view analogy to physical calendars, which for me keeps
| breaking my mental flow of stringing activities across the
| boundary/long distances. And I get why (standard
| behavior/components and user expectations) but it just seems like
| a missed opportunity. Not sure how many want this but I suspect
| more would do if they were exposed to it.
|
| A few calendar apps allow a stretch of >4 weeks and there's this
| POC web version: https://madebyevan.com/calendar/app/ but all I
| can do for now is constantly switch from a Gantt app to my
| calendar app (Thunderbird or Google Calendar).
| dmd wrote:
| If you're on MacOS/iOS, "Fantastical" is ... fantastic in this
| way.
| nyuszika7h wrote:
| Not a fan of the subscription model. Features that don't
| incur ongoing costs (e.g. server costs) to the developers
| should not be locked behind a subscription IMO.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Another vote here for Fantastical. I don't think I'm using it
| in any novel ways, or really pushing it's power, but wow is
| it a nice calendar. My only gripe, and probably something I
| can change in a setting, is sometimes when I have a drought
| of events, it can be confusing what's next, because it will
| show me something a month or so out but not in a clear way
| that the event it is showing me isn't tomorrow. Probably a
| "me" problem, but one of my few gripes about the app - the
| other being a desire for better Watch complications.
| yboris wrote:
| My favorite paper calendar shows the whole year in one sheet:
|
| https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/
|
| It has wide margin on the right for notes; gives you long-term-
| planning potential ;)
| bornon5 wrote:
| Fastmail's calendar does exactly this - infinite continuous
| scroll - and I love it. I also find it constricting when I use
| another calendar (Google Calendar, for instance) that paginates
| by month.
|
| Edit: An image of the Fastmail calendar:
| https://www.fastmail.com/images/features/cal-1.png
| noSyncCloud wrote:
| Changing months in GCal is so disorienting. Scroll a pixel
| too far while planning, and the month you were looking at
| just... vanishes?
| tehno wrote:
| One of the most compact alternative calendar styles I've seen
| is like this: M T W T F S S M T W T
| F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T
| F S S M T 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
| 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
| 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1 2 3 4 5
| 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
| 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
| 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
| 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
| 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
| 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1
| 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
| 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
| 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 29 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
| 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
| 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 30 29 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
| 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 29 30 31
|
| Months are offset so weekdays of columns are matching row to
| row. Looks nicer and more understandable also with weekend
| columns colored differently.
|
| I have a super simple HTML/JS/CSS variant of it on Gist here:
| https://gist.github.com/erkiesken/54bdbc069ba7df21eab6e4e480...
| Macha wrote:
| The one problem then is with that style of calendar compared
| to the traditional month view is I need to calculate for e.g.
| "what is the date of Thursday in 3 weeks?"
| jayknight wrote:
| Also, which line is June? What day of the week is the 4th
| of July on this year?
| otikik wrote:
| There's 12 rows, so I believe the top row of numbers is
| January, the second one is February, and so on. So the
| 4th of July is Monday.
|
| This is different from the OP in that it only works for
| one specific year, it needs to be generated anew for
| every single year.
|
| I do think that having to "count rows" is a bit too much
| minimalism and probably we could have spared 3 characters
| per line in order to put month names:
| 2022 M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T W T
| F S S M T W T F S S M T W T F S S M T
| Jan 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
| 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
| Feb 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
| 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Mar 1 2 3
| 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
| 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Apr 1 2
| 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
| 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 May
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
| 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Jun 1
| 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
| 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Jul 1
| 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
| 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Aug 1 2 3 4
| 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
| 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Sep 1 2 3 4
| 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23
| 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 Oct 1 2 3
| 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
| 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Nov 1 2 3 4 5
| 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
| 25 26 27 28 30 29 Dec 1 2 3 4 5 6
| 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
| 26 27 28 29 30 31
| andsoitis wrote:
| > What I'd really like is a continuously scrolling calendar to
| help with long-ish term planning (3-4 months).
|
| The iOS calendar works this way (if I understand your use case
| properly).
|
| At the top right is a back arrow, which, if you're in a more
| granular view (say, for a day or a week), will take you a view
| where you can scroll through all months, and if you go back one
| more time, scroll through all years. From one of these "zoomed
| out" views, you can dive back into any more detailed view.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Yes, but unfortunately this view does not show any of your
| appointments.
| ginko wrote:
| I hacked up my own little bash script[1] to show the next 3
| months with ncal like this: $ mcal
| June 2022 w| Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su 22|
| 1 2 3 4 5 23| 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 24| 13
| 14 15 16 17 18 19 25| 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
| 26| 27 28 29 30
| July 2022 w| Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su 26|
| 1 2 3 27| 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 28| 11 12 13
| 14 15 16 17 29| 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 30| 25
| 26 27 28 29 30 31
| August 2022 w| Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su
| 31| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 32| 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
| 33| 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 34| 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 35| 29 30 31
|
| [1] https://pastebin.com/BNWynUZT
| Schiphol wrote:
| there's also `cal`, in the util-linux package.
| cal -3 May 2022 June
| 2022 July 2022 Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
| Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa 1 2 3 4
| 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1 2 8
| 9 10 11 12 13 14 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
| 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 10 11 12 13 14 15
| 16 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 17 18 19
| 20 21 22 23 29 30 31 26 27 28 29 30
| 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
| 31
| Arnavion wrote:
| `cal -n 3` to be precise, since ginko said "next three
| months"
| the_arun wrote:
| I remember, in School, our professor asked us to write
| "cal" command in C in early CS classes. I was a good
| exercise for us to build interest in programming.
| sigtstp wrote:
| Neat! I was thinking of hacking something for org-mode (to
| support creating events and gcal sync) but this is definitely
| good for quick lookup.
| dotancohen wrote:
| If you're interested, I can share my khal config with you. It
| also displays 3 months, and syncs (via vdirsyncer) with
| Nextcloud to show my personal and work calendar events, all
| right there in the terminal.
| kej wrote:
| Not the person you replied to, but I'm interested and would
| like more info on your setup.
| panki27 wrote:
| `ncal -A2` will do the same, but show the months
| horizontally.
| sigtstp wrote:
| I see there's a -v flag for vertical layout which matches
| horizontal listing better.
| amrtn wrote:
| The -v flag didn't work in my WSL.
|
| This worked: $ ncal -b -M -A2
| June 2022 July 2022 August 2022
| Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th
| Fr Sa Su 1 2 3 4 5 1 2
| 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 4
| 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 13 14 15 16
| 17 18 19 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
| 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 22 23 24 25
| 26 27 28 27 28 29 30 25 26 27 28 29 30
| 31 29 30 31
| k4rli wrote:
| -v didn't work on 12.1.7+nmu3ubuntu1 and -M does nothing
| seemingly. `ncal -b -A2` looks very good.
| amrtn wrote:
| -M sets the first day of the week to Monday. If in your
| locale the weeks already begin on Monday you are not
| going to see much difference on the output.
| sigtstp wrote:
| Ah, my bad. I'm on Arch and it packages cal, not ncal.
| Wasn't familiar with it and it looks like the flags are
| different. Because why not...
| dolmen wrote:
| On MacOS: $ LANG=C cal -3 May 2022
| June 2022 July 2022 Su Mo Tu We
| Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 1 2 3 4 1
| 2 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 3 4
| 5 6 7 8 9 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 12 13 14 15 16
| 17 18 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 22 23 24 25 26 27 28
| 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 29 30 31
| 26 27 28 29 30 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
| 31
| ginko wrote:
| Well, cal -3 shows the previous and next month, but I
| wanted this month and the next two months. I also wanted
| them arranged vertically and with week numbers. (And with
| weeks starting on Monday)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| jayknight wrote:
| Every year, I use `cal` to generate the calendar like this
| for the year, paste that into word and do some minor
| formatting (dim weekends and holidays, bold paydays) and
| print it and put it on my office wall. I reference it all the
| time just to re-orient myself to where I am in the
| month/year, etc.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Not being aware of ncal, but based on long experience of
| bash, I anticipated a fiendish and impenetrable 300 line
| monster full of arcana to crank this out from first
| principles. So this was a very elegant surprise :)
| ironrabbit wrote:
| are there any continuous calendars like the linked one that
| allow sync or import from google cal?
| mxfh wrote:
| At least german office culture knows of a quite popular 3-month
| format in a physical printed wall calendar, usually
| highlighting the current month and showing the preciding and
| following months with less contrast. They are distributed for
| free or very low cost as promotional product for any type of
| business.
|
| From my understanding _Burokalender_ as in _office calendar_ is
| often used synonymously for this format in Germany, which can
| be seen as an indicator to it 's ubiquity.
|
| The format seems not to be that popular, elsewhere but at least
| in the UK it's marketed as _shipping calendar_ , which was the
| use case for what it was invented for in 1937 by B. C. Heye &
| Co., now terminic GmbH
|
| https://www.terminic-uk.eu/company
|
| There are even versions showing 4 to 6 Months in a vertical
| layout.
|
| https://www.printas.com/en/4-month-calendar/
|
| going up to eight months:
|
| https://www.terminic.eu/monatskalender
| april_22 wrote:
| I find this layot very useful, especially with the little red
| square to see what day it is.
| april_22 wrote:
| *layout
| sitting_duck wrote:
| Really ubiquitous in German offices, in any industry. Thanks
| for letting me know where it came from.
| mxfh wrote:
| didn't know either, just found the history it by accident
| on the companies site. A bit more from Bremen:
|
| https://www.wfb-bremen.de/de/page/stories/bremer-
| erfolgsgesc...
| dolmen wrote:
| cal -3
| ghusbands wrote:
| The horizontal layout of cal doesn't have the same
| benefits.
| k_g_b_ wrote:
| I'm using a aCalendar+ on Android and the monthly view has
| continuous scrolling, though given the constraints of a phone
| screen I only get 6 weeks displayed at once.
| avivo wrote:
| This is one of those brilliant little things that I just want
| to see everywhere.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| I hate this as well, it's one of the reasons I am clinging on
| to using Outlook in Windows. It seems like they are going to
| remove this eventually as the Outlook client for Mac and web
| does not allow calendar scrolling. :(
| ghostly_s wrote:
| the Mac and web clients have always had wildly divergent
| feature-sets, I wouldn't take them as harbingers of the
| future of Outlook at large.
| kieckerjan wrote:
| I am a big fan of Dsri Seah's Compact Calendar with its "candy
| bar of time" layout. Should not be too hard to make a script
| for that format. https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/
| ausaus wrote:
| Vacation Days for Android by Ingmania had the best year view I
| have seen on mobile.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Yep, I want the next 6-8 weeks, with no month breaks, in a
| block. Calendar.app on the desktop in Big Sur is almost there,
| but there's no way to keep the current week on the top, as it
| defaults to the current month. On iOS, there'a a gap week.
|
| I used to do these by hand when in school, because I didn't
| want assignments hiding on the next page.
| vel0city wrote:
| FWIW the built-in calendar function on the Windows Taskbar for
| a while has this continuously scrolling functionality. Click
| the current time on the taskbar and it'll open a calendar view.
| Scroll on the calendar and it'll scroll by the week. Click on a
| day and if you've connected a calendar to your Windows account
| it'll show events on that day.
| [deleted]
| sharat87 wrote:
| Hey, you may like my Just a Calendar: https://cal.sharats.me
|
| Months are laid out in clean no-nonsense way, and it's a very
| lightweight app. You can click on dates to mark them to get
| some bearings while planning things on a Calendar, kinda like
| pointing a pen at a date. Drag to mark multiple dates too!
|
| No logins, no extra engagement features, and nothing much.
|
| Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30851174
| jamesfisher wrote:
| I wrote about something similar a few years ago! [1] I'd be
| interested in hacking something together one day. I imagine it
| would display your Google Calendar events, in a format
| reminiscent of Google Calendar, but where the smallest cell is
| a week.
|
| 1: https://jameshfisher.com/2017/06/06/long-calendar/
| mbesto wrote:
| Fantastical offers Quarter view now:
|
| https://flexibits.com/blog/2022/02/fantastical-scheduling-ar...
| tingletech wrote:
| I wrote something like that
| https://github.com/tingletech/tingcal
| manwe150 wrote:
| Google Calendar has a setting to enable a 3-4 week forward view
| from any date. Not quite infinite scrolling, but it is what I
| use as my default view.
| sfitz wrote:
| Cron does this - cron.com
| reality_inspctr wrote:
| show hn: we are doing this at @sundialcalendar, with whole-life
| activity forecasting
| wnolens wrote:
| I tried to build this once but found myself basically
| rebuilding Google calendar for visual changes which iCal mostly
| did quite well. And front end is not my expertise so it was a
| grind.
|
| I wanted both infinite scrolling with no month breaks, as well
| as the ability to fluidly zoom out to see multiple months
| worth.
|
| Someday. I'd be willing to put the work in if a front end
| expert wants to help!
| _1tan wrote:
| Can we crowdfund this please?
| samatman wrote:
| I really only want two things out of a wall calendar: the ability
| to write on it, and a fresh picture every month.
|
| I'm sure someone has a non-overlapping set of needs for a wall
| calendar, involving displaying some numbers that let you
| synchronize the weekday and month day, with a bit of squinting.
| They'll love this!
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| What do you do with the extra days in February?
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| Alternatively, we could switch do Decimal Time to have the same
| calendar every year (except for some adjustment for the last day
| of the year) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Mind is blown. I really had to check what was actually happening.
| The magic thing is that nothing is happening :-)
| thombat wrote:
| Yep, my key insight was "oh, you don't worry about next month".
| So you just need to separately know when the current month ends
| (whether a leap year, etc), so it's a pure series of seven day
| weeks starting from an arbitrary offset. Really elegant, if a
| little daunting that my entire life will be described by that
| rectangular frame twitching backwards and forwards across a
| field of indistinguishable dates :-)
| nmeofthestate wrote:
| So all you need is a calendar, and you can consult that in
| order to set up this thing that is... somehow useful?
| thombat wrote:
| It presumes you know both what the current month is and how
| many days it has. I'm pretty solid on the former and for
| the second it's either "thirty days hath September" or
| counting across my knuckles. I also know it's Wednesday but
| don't ask me whether it's 28 or 29. That's where I'd be
| checking a calendar.
|
| But it is something of an exercise in minimalism, sitting
| between functional and fun. So not for everyone, but
| scratches my itch, as does my wall clock with just an hour
| hand smoothly gliding through the day (it has 12 marks per
| hour so at a glance one sees the time to a resolution of a
| few minutes, which is more than good enough for almost
| anything in daily life)
| a_c wrote:
| Add secondary sliders on the primary slider to indicate current
| date/month/days in month then I can rest in peace. Oh wait, then
| it would be less elegant
| marie1595 wrote:
| d--b wrote:
| Honestly, this is where design really falls flat.
|
| It looks nice, the idea is appealing, but the result is awful.
| This thing is totally unusable. You need to remember to slide the
| frame every month. It doesn't even tell you that you did or not.
| Sliding the frame requires checking the number of days there are
| in the month. When you're in the last week, having the 31 always
| there is a pain in the ass. Knowing the next month is kind of
| useful.
| hnbad wrote:
| Wall calendars often have a horizontal stripe with a small
| window highlighting the current date. That would help solve the
| problem of forgetting to update it. You'd still need to
| remember how many days there are in the current month and you
| need to know the current date and day of the week to set it up
| but at least it seems workable.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| My grandmother had a small desk paper weight sliding calendar
| from the 60s that she got as a promotional item from a bank.
| One side had the calendar and the slider and of course the bank
| name. The other side had a cheat sheet for year/month and what
| to set things to if you got lost. Think there were some plastic
| bits to clip over the days that were not in the month but those
| were lost to time. Think Matt Parker had a vid a few years ago
| on reusing calendars from previous years. 14 combinations I
| think was the total number of calendars you had to keep. But I
| could be remembering wrong.
| jxf wrote:
| Yes, it's 14: the year can begin on one of 7 days (7
| possibilities), and then it contains either 365 or 366 days
| (2 possibilities), for a total of 14.
| skeyo wrote:
| Exactly, you need another calendar in order for this calendar
| to work.
| baisq wrote:
| It would work so much better if the frame had weekdays.
|
| >You need to remember to slide the frame every month
|
| And if you have a wall calendar you have to remember to tear
| down the page of the previous month every month...
| Anderkent wrote:
| Except the wall calendar has the current month on it in big
| letters, so all you need to know is what month it is. This
| thing does not tell you if it's showing you the days for Jun
| or Jul
|
| also the entire point of a wall calendar is that you can make
| notes on specific days, isn't it?
| yellowapple wrote:
| > also the entire point of a wall calendar is that you can
| make notes on specific days, isn't it?
|
| Which is still doable for this design, provided the backing
| is a whiteboard.
| april_22 wrote:
| maybe this is just a design thing to keep as an accessory
| with no real value
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Yes, I forgot to tear off the month 29 days ago so every time
| I look at the calendar I keep thinking it's still May.
| parkingrift wrote:
| It's not nearly that complicated unless you just outright have
| no idea how many days are in a given month. Not sure how many
| adults don't know that answer, but if you struggle to remember
| whether June has 30 or 31 days perhaps this calendar isn't for
| you.
|
| It's not for me either as I see no value in a physical
| calendar, but I'd imagine the people who do see that value are
| the same type of people who are aware that June has ... let me
| just pull out my phone real quick... 30 days.
| Aachen wrote:
| > It's not nearly that complicated unless you just outright
| have no idea how many days are in a given month. Not sure how
| many adults don't know that answer
|
| Please straight up ask ten people, even if your circles are
| on average highly educated, and see how many know an
| arbitrary month (not significant ones like February, or
| December where the 31st is new year's) without having to
| think about it or count knuckles. Asking about the current or
| an adjacent month might also be something they remember from
| recently seeing calendars that tell you this information.
|
| I think it's very uncommon to have this memorized to the
| point where using a calendar that doesn't tell you is as easy
| as using one that does.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > without having to think about it or count knuckles.
|
| Why is this constraint necessary? If you can even so much
| as think about it or count knuckles (let alone that you
| happen to have memorized the number of days per month),
| then this calendar is useful.
| jackthezipper wrote:
| >I think it's very uncommon to have this memorized
|
| I think this might be a cultural thing. A friend of mine
| from Taiwan was perplexed I didn't have this memorized, my
| reaction was the same as yours.
| parkingrift wrote:
| I don't think there is any correlation with level of
| education. I truly don't understand how people don't know
| this. There are a total of 12 months and the days per month
| absolutely never change outside of the occasional leap year
| in February.
|
| What's wrong with counting on knuckles? You adjust your
| calendar with this contraption once per month.
| recursive wrote:
| > I truly don't understand how people don't know this.
|
| And yet it's true. It would take me a lot of thinking to
| answer how many days are in an arbitrary month. And I'd
| probably only be 80% confident. I truly don't understand
| how I don't know this either. But I've never made an
| effort to learn it, nor has it been a problem.
| baisq wrote:
| There is an old trick that you can do with your knuckles: htt
| ps://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Mo...
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > It's not nearly that complicated unless you just outright
| have no idea how many days are in a given month.
|
| Unless you work closely with dates, asking somebody "how many
| days in April" will result in a calendar check, a song or a
| them doing something odd with their knuckles.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| I honestly think most people know how many days in each
| month..
|
| But yeah, the point still stands. Having a calendar
| actively has wrong number of days is very misleading and
| counterproductive even if one knows how many there are
| supposed to be. Not to mention it doesn't even have month
| shown.
| SamPatt wrote:
| For some months like February (unusual), October
| (Halloween), or December (New Year's Eve) I remember
| them.
|
| But for the other months I sing the song. Takes about ten
| seconds, required monthly at most. I think this is pretty
| common.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Interesting.
|
| I personally just remember the cutoff point (7/8), and
| before that odd months have 31, after it even months have
| 31 days. It eventually became "muscle" memory.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| For me at least, once I hit my thirties I had just kind of
| memorized them all by osmosis.
| parkingrift wrote:
| What's wrong with counting on your knuckles for the 12
| total times per year that you need to adjust this calendar?
| phone_book wrote:
| I had a physical version of this a couple of decades ago as a
| kid. I can find similar products searching for "perpetual
| calendar". The one I had included a slider to select the month.
| It also had the day of the week at the top and a small circular
| peg to place over each day.
| cph123 wrote:
| It would be possible to make an electronic version of this so
| that the frame slides into the right position, and the current
| day lights up.
| UncleEntity wrote:
| Wouldn't be too hard methinks.
|
| The hard part would be all the cloud based backend stuff so
| people wouldn't have to remember to slide the frame at the end
| of the month and remember how many days are in each month. And
| vendor lock-in so people don't attempt to use non-Julian
| calendars or any equally distasteful things. Calendar as a
| Service it would be called.
| bregma wrote:
| My mother has a pen with this feature (printed eternal calendar
| inside a rotatable sleeve) in the 1960s. It lasted many years.
| Good to know someone has finally invented it.
| acomjean wrote:
| I was wondering what that would look like.
|
| https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-parker-cathay...
|
| We had a giant plastic wall hanging perpetual calendar in the
| 1980s. "Ring-A-Date Perpetual Calendar" I guess as a kid I got
| used to the grid of days not always starting in the same place.
|
| https://jukiamsterdam.com/products/ring-a-date-perpetual-cal...
| rafaelturk wrote:
| Dates are hard..
| Findecanor wrote:
| That's nice and simple but I depend also on the additional info
| that a traditional printed calendar provides: week numbers (it's
| a thing in my country), national holidays (time off work) and
| celebrations (waffle day, etc.). I also enjoy seeing the phases
| of the moon, solstices and equinoxes.
| hddqsb wrote:
| Neat. Some limitations:
|
| - It doesn't tell you how many days there are in the month
| (31/30/28/29).
|
| - Working out how to move the frame at the end of the month isn't
| very difficult, but it's not trivial either (especially given the
| previous point).
| jhbadger wrote:
| Doesn't anyone remember the old poem?
|
| Thirty days hath September, April, June and November; All the
| rest have thirty-one, Excepting February alone. Which only has
| but twenty-eight days clear And twenty-nine in each leap year.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I can never remember it. I use the much less helpful method
| of knowing Julius and Augustus Caesar were megalomaniacs, so
| they have 31 days. February is special, and that just leaves
| 9 months of guessing.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| That's actually not a bad place to start. If you know that
| months alternate 31 and less-than-31 days, then:
|
| - working backwards from July you get May, March, and
| January have 31 days; -
|
| - working forwards from August you get October and December
| have 31 days
|
| Now you just have to remember that February is special.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Thanks. I feel like someone taught this to me when I
| originally learned the "Caesar must be best" method, but
| I lost the useful bit over time. Let's see how long it
| lasts this time!
| LargeWu wrote:
| I learned it a bit differently, although the first part about
| February is a bit clunky:
|
| Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November All the
| rest have thirty-one, except February which has 28 Leap year
| comes one year in four, and February has one day more.
| wrycoder wrote:
| https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1595:_30_Days_Hat.
| ..
| danbee wrote:
| I have a shorter version:
|
| Thirty days hath September, and the rest I can't remember.
| hddqsb wrote:
| I was taught the knuckle mnemonic, which I really like:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_mnemonic
| dwighttk wrote:
| But only on the century if it is divisible by 400.
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| I've always thought that this poem is useless as a mnemonic
| because a lot of the months have the same number of syllables
| and rhyme with each other. So remembering the poem is no
| easier than remembering the months directly.
| hnbad wrote:
| I've never heard of it and it seems completely useless
| unless you're good at rote memorization (in which case you
| probably wouldn't need it): not only do some months have
| the same number of syllables and rhyme with each other, but
| also the order of the months in the poem seems completely
| arbitrary.
|
| The knuckle mnemonic is how I learned it and while it
| doesn't help with remembering February, it's at least
| fairly foolproof because it still works if you get
| directions mixed up.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Songs and poems are easier to remember, at least for most
| people.
| Alducer wrote:
| to me the point of the poem is that it reminds you that
| there are 3 classes (30,31,feb) and the rhythm tells how
| many months are in each class. Remembering 4 booleans for
| which 4 are the 30 day months is easier than remembering 12
| arbitrary integers (unrealistic worst case uncompressed
| memorisation technique)
| misterben wrote:
| The playground joke was "thirty days hath September; all
| the rest I can't remember"
| wrycoder wrote:
| _30 days hath Septober, April, June and no wonder; all
| the rest have peanut butter, except for Grandma who has a
| red wagon._
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Curious, in Spanish there's something similar. There are
| several variants, but the one I learned when I was a kid was
|
| "Treinta dias trae noviembre, con abril, junio y septiembre.
| Veintiocho, solo uno, y los demas treintayuno".
|
| It has the limitation that it doesn't tell you explicitly
| about February, but that one is easy to remember. Some people
| mock that mnemonic because they say that it seems harder to
| remember that the months themselves, but in my case, it has
| served me well.
|
| Obviously there are similarities beyond chance, so I wonder
| which came first: the English version, the Spanish one, or
| maybe another from which both were inspired?
| HelloNurse wrote:
| The Italian version is basically identical to this Spanish
| one: Trenta giorni ha novembre Con
| april, giugno e settembre; Di ventotto ce n'e uno,
| Tutti gli altri ne han trentuno.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| Wikipedia
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Days_Hath_September)
| mentions a Latin version: Junius Aprilis
| September et ipse November Dant triginta dies
| reliquis supadditur unus De quorum numero Februarius
| excipiatur.
|
| But I'm not sure if this counts as the same poem or just
| another poem with the same information in it.
|
| Googling turns up a French version "trente jours ont
| novembre" but I don't know if this is actually taught in
| French-speaking places.
| dolmen wrote:
| French here, and father of kids in primary school.
|
| Never heard of it.
|
| We are using the knuckles version.
| nmeta wrote:
| this is how i learned it as well, and still use it to this
| day
|
| i find the knuckle mnemonic interesting but very difficult to
| use but i've only been trying it for the last 5 minutes
|
| maybe its a visual issue and the same reason the poem has
| served me better
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm surprised, as a single additional flap/sliding piece of
| whatever would be able to cover up the "last days" if
| necessary.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| - doesn't allow for different themed cals each year.
| bradrn wrote:
| - doesn't tell you which day it is
| hddqsb wrote:
| If you mean day-of-the-week, that's easily fixed by adding
| labels to the movable frame (like the existing red marking
| which indicates the weekend).
| TomK32 wrote:
| - what do I get my mom for Christmas?
| dwighttk wrote:
| - where's my far side cartoon?
| ainar-g wrote:
| Ilya Birman's work is greatly underappreciated. His Moscow Metro
| map proposal[1] was pretty cool, and his commuter rail map[2]
| summarizes the routes much better than its predecessors.
|
| [1]: https://ilyabirman.net/moscow/metro/map/2016/
|
| [2]: https://ilyabirman.net/moscow/rail/
| fredguth wrote:
| Thanks for pointing this work out. Great design.
| aasasd wrote:
| Birman had kind of an ongoing 'rivalry' with the guy who made
| the Metro map at Art. Lebedev (which became the official
| one)--in that both maps were developed and updated at the same
| time, with public progress reports and resulting education of
| the hipster masses on transport map design. But to find
| meaningful differences between the two maps, you pretty much
| had to whip out a magnifying glass. The two dudes also
| constantly nodded at each other's designs, and you could really
| see the micro-decisions at play, down to line thicknesses and
| distances to the labels.
|
| Frankly, personally I'm more captivated by the above-ground
| maps by both the Bureau and the Studio: the latter have at
| least the largest-format Metro map, with the city's points of
| interest, whereas Birman participated in stuff like this:
| https://ilyabirman.ru/ekaterinburg-metro/2016/
| notpushkin wrote:
| He also has written beautiful e-books on UI and Transit Maps
| design:
|
| https://bureau.rocks/projects/book-ui-en/
|
| https://bureau.rocks/projects/metro-en/
| april_22 wrote:
| Also, it seems like his work is actually being used. He
| designed all the street plates for Chisnau, the capital of
| Moldova and they look pretty cool.
|
| https://ilyabirman.net/chisinau/
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| So all months have 31 days and there are no leap years?
|
| I guess the joke is lost on me. But it's a neat design.
| toyg wrote:
| You can just use the common mnemonics [1], although I reckon
| the leap-year form is annoyingly long and complicated - much
| better to rely on the shorter version, like we do in Italy, and
| think a bit more on even years.
|
| Worst case, you could have a "three-day-long" magnet to cover
| the last few items as necessary.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Days_Hath_September
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Thirty days hath September / But all the rest I can't
| remember.
|
| I always just use the knuckle mnemonic -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuckle_mnemonic
| mdrzn wrote:
| Am I wrong or is February not doable with this notation?
|
| I mean, every month has "31 days" and you have to remember when
| to switch. But very cool anyway.
| tomger wrote:
| Con: remember February can have 28 or 29 days. Use magnet to
| mark day. Pro: save tons of paper.
| hddqsb wrote:
| Yeah. I guess you could manually fix it with some white magnets
| / reusable stickers.
| nottorp wrote:
| But 3/4 of the fun in a wall calendar is having a different
| picture every month and a different set every year.
| altdataseller wrote:
| I agree. Having to replace your calendar is a feature, not a
| bug
| gauddasa wrote:
| Nothing less than the output of the command "cal -3" is
| acceptable. In fact I have aliased cal to "cal -3" on my
| terminal.
| [deleted]
| tpoacher wrote:
| I recently discovered cursecal for the terminal. Imagine Gnu Nano
| but as a calendar app. Great little project.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Interested in checking this out! Is it called calcurse though?
| Can find one named cursecal.
|
| https://github.com/lfos/calcurse
| tpoacher wrote:
| sorry yes, that's the one!
| amelius wrote:
| Day of the week should be in the top row.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| You could put that on the frame, though.
| elpescado wrote:
| I scribble important stuff on my calendars. So replacing them
| every year is a feature, not a bug!
| JetAlone wrote:
| Seeing forebruary makes me realize what else I want from a
| calendar, which makes me realize I just want a room with a big
| ol' "calendar wall" of the entire year, which I will have to re-
| create once a year, but serves the purpose of being accessible,
| absolutely massive, easy to write on, and extremely informative
| and good for planning.
| Linda703 wrote:
| 0xTJ wrote:
| Neat, but I find it odd that this was the top item on HN for me
| at the time of clicking. It's not an innovative type of calendar,
| these have been around on keychains and other form-factors for a
| long time.
| [deleted]
| pards wrote:
| The root cause is that the Gregorian calendar is illogical and
| unsuited to today's needs. I wish the International Fixed
| Calendar [0] had gained traction.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
| saalweachter wrote:
| Eh, if you're going to break with previous calendars, you can
| do much better.
|
| 1. Round off the year to 360 days. 2. This lets us get an even
| 12 months of 30 days. 3. Drop the week from 7 days to 6, for a
| 4-day workweek and 5 weeks per month.
| happyopossum wrote:
| I'd go for that as long as we can throw in an annual 5-day
| 'bonus' week - preferably make it the Christmas/Winter
| solstice/New Year holiday.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I would've taken that bonus week to be a given; it's rather
| odd to me that other commenters seemingly ain't doing so
| and are instead discussing this as if the year actually
| would get disconnected from Earth's rotation.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| What do you do with the extra 5 or 6 days? Create a 13th
| mini-month?
| saalweachter wrote:
| Why do anything with them?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| You can't just disappear them into the void. The length
| of a year is not something we can control.
| saalweachter wrote:
| We've changed the length of a year several times in
| history, what's one more?
| otikik wrote:
| We can define a year however we want, but then planet
| Earth will answer "Ok, then my new orbit is 0.95434
| years".
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| The length of a year is determined by the earth's orbit
| around the sun. Sure, you can make a calendar that isn't
| actually a year long, and then correct the errors that
| accumulate every once in a while, either by inserting a
| few months every few hundred years, or by adding a leap
| day every 4 years, but why would you _intentionally_ make
| a calendar that isn 't a year long? Leap days are
| unavoidable, but seasons drifting out-of-sync are not.
| NoGravitas wrote:
| Because if you don't, the seasons and the months will
| drift out of sync with each other. And you don't even get
| the benefits of a lunar calendar as a tradeoff, because
| your weeks are shorter than 1/4 of a lunar month, and
| your months are two days longer than a lunar month.
| saalweachter wrote:
| > Because if you don't, the seasons and the months will
| drift out of sync with each other.
|
| And?
|
| > And you don't even get the benefits of a lunar calendar
| as a tradeoff
|
| What are the benefits of a lunar calendar? And it's not
| like our 7-day week actually stays in sync with the moon,
| it's just approximately the same length.
| happyopossum wrote:
| > And?
|
| People like predictability for planning things like
| travel, holidays, school, etc.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| The french republican calendar made them holidays
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sansculottides
| bombcar wrote:
| So did the Hobbit calendar:
| http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Shire_Calendar
|
| Basically make "Mid-summer" or "New Years" days that are
| outside of months (we could have something similar if Feb
| 29 wasn't part of Feb _or_ March) - Tolkien 's version
| had the extra days _also_ not be part of the week, so you
| 'd have Monday - Yule - Tuesday for example so that a
| given day of the month would be the same weekday each
| year.
|
| Downside - if your birthday fell on a weekday, it would
| _always_ fall on a weekday, forever.
| jxf wrote:
| It wouldn't take long before this calendar was inconsistent.
| The Earth rotates about 365 times before it returns to its
| previous spot in its orbit around the sun. If you adopted a
| 360 day calendar (assuming you by "day" in this calendar
| system you mean "a 24-hour period"), then after just a decade
| of this calendar, summer would happen 50 days earlier than it
| does today.
| otikik wrote:
| So, adjust with up to 6 days of world wide holidays
| depending on the year and problem solved :)
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Actually <pedant> it rotates 366 times, because each noon-
| to-noon it rotates 361 degrees. Just returning one face to
| the sun adds about one degree because of the earth's motion
| around the sun, and so adds exactly one rotation each year
| (each complete revolution around the sun) </pedant> <edited
| degrees>
| nsilvestri wrote:
| Close, but I think you confused the 360 degrees of a
| circle with the ~365 days in a year. The extra nearly-one
| degree of rotation in a solar day brings us to a hair
| under 361 degrees ;)
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Locking the calendar to the seasons is really valuable if
| you work on a farm or do other seasonal work. However,
| anyone who doesn't need to track the seasons may prefer the
| 6/5/30/12 simplified model.
|
| There would be some adjustment, like "winter" holidays
| occurring in the summer. Although anyone who lives in
| different climates or moves between the northern and
| southern hemispheres will already experience something
| similar.
|
| A good question may be how often would you need to
| calculate or look up something that the other calendar
| would make obvious. The better calendar (for you) is the
| one that reduces those occurrences.
| woojoo666 wrote:
| I think you're understating these adjustments. Christmas
| happening in the summer? School "summer break" happening
| during winter? These are massive changes
| 8organicbits wrote:
| I don't think either of those adjustment would occur.
|
| I know my highschool didn't have AC, so the summer break
| needed to happen in the summer. I expect the school year
| would continue to follow the seasons (unless, maybe, we
| had really cheap AC?). It would be strange to have the
| school year start in different months, but you'd get used
| to it. I know I already need to look up when the school
| year starts; it shifts a little already due to holidays
| and the days of the week.
|
| Personally, I grew up with cold winters and liked
| Christmas as a snowy winter holiday. But when I moved and
| had warmer winters and less defined seasons, Christmas
| came and it didn't really feel like winter. A summer
| Christmas wouldn't be noticeably different here.
|
| I like the idea of a major winter holiday for anyone
| struggling through a cold winter. For many people, that's
| currently Christmas, and I suspect the US and similar
| climates would benefit from keeping it seasonal.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Locking the calendar to the seasons is really valuable
| if you work on a farm or do other seasonal work._
|
| Or wants annual holidays to predictably fall during a
| certain season.
|
| "Grandpa, what was it like in the days when it was cold
| outside during Christmas?"
| saalweachter wrote:
| "Well, I hadn't moved from London to Sao Paulo yet..."
| 8organicbits wrote:
| Christmas can continue to be celebrated around the winter
| solstice. It doesn't need to be December 25th.
| munificent wrote:
| Sure, movable feasts are a thing too.
|
| But what's the actual value proposition of having a
| simple regular calendar if all of the important dates
| that people care about move around on it all the time?
| Sure, maybe you always know what date it is, but now you
| don't know what's happening on that date. The end result
| is the same level of complexity, it's just that now the
| date numbers are useless.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| > all of the important dates that people care about move
| around
|
| What dates do you care about?
|
| I know my calendar is full of one-off events, and the
| recurring events follow the calendar, not the seasons.
| For these, a 6 day week/30 day month would be easier.
| That weekly Monday meeting? Always on the 1st, 7th, 13th,
| 19th, or 25th. The next federal holiday? We can make
| those always fall on a Monday if we wanted.
|
| I can see that the start/end of the school year is
| important, but that already moves around enough that you
| need to look it up. If you are looking for best dates to
| take a beach vacation, yes, you'd need to look at the
| seasons.
| threatofrain wrote:
| How is seasonal data important for modern farming
| operations? Farms want even more precise weather data
| which they can augment to their own calendars. Most
| people care far more about weekly weather variations and
| will not experience difficulty in determining when summer
| is coming.
|
| Also, given the variation that people experience across
| geography, my per-month weather is quite different from
| yours. A global synchrony is not fit for farming
| operations. How much of the world even experiences a
| beautiful alignment of the seasons to their calendar?
|
| Further, the kinds of adjustments people are proposing is
| not going to knock anyone off their ability to schedule
| around entire seasons. People are proposing tiny
| roundoffs to eliminate calendar idiosyncrasies (excluding
| the offhand 360 suggestion, which while "small" is going
| to lead to more idiosyncrasy).
| saalweachter wrote:
| And?
|
| Mars has 687 days in its time around the sun.
| jxf wrote:
| A calendar designed to convey Earth's seasons doesn't
| have anything to do with Mars. Moreover, no one lives on
| Mars.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| I did find one illogical point, though:
|
| > The calendar is inconsistent with ISO 8601 regarding the
| first weekday of the week (Sunday vs. Monday),
|
| ;-)
| [deleted]
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| This sort of reminds me of this neat day-looker-upper:
| https://imgur.com/KKipvmV . To find the day of the week of Month-
| Date, just find their intersection in the table. Afaik this is
| the most compact representation of a year's calendar possible.
|
| You do need a new one each year, but there are only fourteen
| distinct possibilities (7 days that Jan 1 can be, times 2 choices
| of leap year or not). Figuring out the equivalence classes of
| years is a fun problem.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| to me the whole point of a calendar is to scribble notes inside
| days for events we are planning.
|
| Why do people use something like this?
| blackoil wrote:
| To answer "On which day is 4th July?" or "What's the date on
| next Tuesday?"
| pkulak wrote:
| Sure it's not 1985 right now, but who knows what tomorrow might
| bring?
| drewcon wrote:
| Leap day?
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