[HN Gopher] Forebruary
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       Forebruary
        
       Author : colinprince
       Score  : 95 points
       Date   : 2024-05-22 09:01 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (ilyabirman.net)
 (TXT) w3m dump (ilyabirman.net)
        
       | RecycledEle wrote:
       | I see a single web page that refuses to fit on my screen and has
       | zero links or interactivity.
        
         | wingspar wrote:
         | Click on the dates. On my iPhone it moves the frame to show the
         | correct month. Landscape looks better than portrait . I gather
         | it's a design exercise not a product.
        
         | Pwntheon wrote:
         | And also with some mega tags that prevent me from pinch
         | zooming.
        
       | neutrinobro wrote:
       | Every month of this sliding calendar has 31 days.
        
         | ed_blackburn wrote:
         | That's the first thing I thought. Is that part of the
         | minimalism? An oversight? As a used an April with 31 days makes
         | me question the basic competency of the site, I'd relate it to
         | poor copy. However, I do adore the stripped back aesthetic, and
         | I hope this demo can inspire some UX evolution for calendars.
        
         | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
         | You're deducting points because of his excellent consistency?
        
           | pfdietz wrote:
           | "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds" --
           | Emerson
        
             | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
             | Hobgoblin was my favorite superhero in the DC universe.
        
       | foolz wrote:
       | Maybe I'm misunderstanding the value here, but this doesn't
       | handle any months that have less than 31 days (including February
       | ironically, which seems to be the source of its name).
       | 
       | Additionally how does the user align the frame year by year? Look
       | up the month on a normal calendar first?
        
         | eru wrote:
         | > Additionally how does the user align the frame year by year?
         | Look up the month on a normal calendar first?
         | 
         | In practice, probably yes.
         | 
         | In theory, when it's December 31, you can relatively easily
         | figure out what day of the week tomorrow is going to be.
        
           | foolz wrote:
           | Ah yes that makes sense, thank you.
           | 
           | On the last day of the month, you would align the 1st to the
           | next day of the week.
        
         | david206 wrote:
         | I guess you should delete the last days of each month according
         | to its length, Or - have 4 "calendars" one for each possible
         | month length: 28, 29, 30, 31
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | Yeah, you just have to know when to ignore the 31 (and as you
         | say, also the 29 and 30 in some cases).
        
       | jimmcslim wrote:
       | Nice, as long as it's printed on whiteboard material you can
       | scribble out the surplus days if there are any, write on the
       | month, and annotate with birthdays, etc at the start of each
       | month! Where do I buy?
        
       | precommunicator wrote:
       | People who buy physical calendars: why?
        
         | m463 wrote:
         | I think there's a huge market for things in plain sight.
         | 
         | That said, with new displays you can hang on a wall, there
         | might be a replacement.
         | 
         | Related, I wonder why we can't store more of our stuff in
         | shallow drawers where everything is visible (think rolling tool
         | chest drawers where you can open one and see all your wrenches
         | at once)
        
         | LVB wrote:
         | Not buy, but I print out a 2-month "calendar" (just the current
         | + next month) every month. I love scribbling on it, drawing
         | arrows, x-ing stuff out, colors, whatever. I do 2 months since
         | near the end of the month, stuff will bleed into the upcoming
         | month. On the 1st, I thoroughly enjoy printing out a clean
         | version for the next 2 months and copying the rollover items.
         | It is a satisfying ritual.
        
         | nluken wrote:
         | A calendar with good art or photography can be worth it as a
         | wall decoration alone. I find them especially nice for the
         | kitchen because it isn't the end of the world if a $20 calendar
         | gets wet or dirty.
        
         | toast0 wrote:
         | I haven't bought one, but they're handy to write future events
         | on for reference, and they often have a pleasant picture to
         | look at for every month.
         | 
         | In my house, we ended up with a makeshift calendar on a
         | whiteboard with the basic events. Trash + X day (greenwaste and
         | recyling alternate), school days, practice days, vacations and
         | visitors, volunteering. Everyone can glance at it and know
         | what's going on.
         | 
         | Computerized calendars are nice too, but don't live in a
         | certain place to be looked at in passing.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | I have 4 kids. Having a centrally visible (kitchen wall), huge
         | (A3 or bigger) zero power consumption display of the family
         | calendar is _absolutely fucking essential_ to my and my spouse
         | 's scheduling needs, by which I actually mean our sanity.
        
           | pavel_lishin wrote:
           | We just hung up a large dry-erase one in the hallway. My wife
           | has wanted one for awhile, and it's an excellent way to make
           | sure that our child can add things to the calendar that are
           | important to her, that she or we will otherwise forget about.
           | 
           | (For example, today's busy schedule includes climbing a tree
           | with a neighbor friend at 11am, which is somewhat frivolous,
           | but there have been things she's been upset about missing
           | because she either didn't mention it to us, or we forgot to
           | jot down in our calendars.)
        
             | baq wrote:
             | Got that too! Though we use it for actually whiteboarding
             | math homework and tried a chore kanban-ish board (which
             | even sort of worked for a couple weeks).
             | 
             | The kitchen calendar is approved for writes by the kids,
             | too.
        
         | quartesixte wrote:
         | Sometimes they have nice designs or pretty pictures.
         | 
         | Circling an important date takes very little effort.
         | 
         | No opportunity for distractions.
         | 
         | That whole "flip through the months to think through future
         | schedules" is actually a pretty good UX.
        
       | albert_e wrote:
       | this is neat for minimalists
       | 
       | for some additional help ... marking days of the week (M T W T F
       | S S) along the top.. at least in relief might be a functional
       | addition.
       | 
       | optionally a month name slider could be added at the top -
       | obviously it won't look as "cool"
       | 
       | finally a smaller slider tab might be added to the frame, in
       | order to hide the numbers 29/30/31 as needed. that tab could
       | either be blank or have digits 1/2/3 printed on it (for next
       | month)
        
       | p9fus wrote:
       | The little timeline comparing it to the Shostakovich's 10th
       | Symphony, Yury Gagarin being the first man in space, and the
       | presentation of the IPhone was a fun touch lol
        
         | orthoxerox wrote:
         | Yes, Ilya loves to brag about his modesty.
        
       | baq wrote:
       | (2013)
        
       | deathanatos wrote:
       | > _For the United States, where week starts on Sunday (but it is
       | anyway considered a part of weekend)_
       | 
       | My fiancee likens the weekdays to books, and the weekends to
       | bookends. Books, bracketed by bookends, have two ends, one at
       | either side.
       | 
       | If I ask you to "circle the ends of this line segment", you will
       | circle two spots.
       | 
       | Of course, the problem with time is that it has a beginning. But
       | the above is her logic for it.
        
         | tobr wrote:
         | Does she also say things like "Did you do anything fun over the
         | weekends?"
        
         | KMag wrote:
         | More likely, it goes back to the origins of our 7-day week. The
         | ancient Romans had an 8-day week. Our 7-day week comes from the
         | Jewish calendar, where supposedly the world was created on a
         | Sunday, and the final day of the week is the Jewish Shabbat on
         | Saturday. (Though, we didn't keep the Jewish calendar's notion
         | that days start at sunset.)
         | 
         | I suspect that if you go back far enough, most of Europe
         | considered the week to begin on Sunday, but I have no idea how
         | far you'd have to go back.
        
         | pavel_lishin wrote:
         | > _Books, bracketed by bookends_
         | 
         | Ah, yes, hence why we refer to them as the bookend.
        
           | samatman wrote:
           | Perhaps there's some difference between bookshelves and
           | weeks, such that the weekend both serves as bookends to the
           | week proper, and is yet contiguous?
        
       | aszantu wrote:
       | cool idea, I hate free floating numbers though
        
       | wodenokoto wrote:
       | In terms of wanting a wall calendar and not want to buy new ones
       | every year, I like Matt Parkers idea of reusing vintage
       | calendars, as there are only 14 different calendars.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrgN-tvg53I
        
       | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
       | If one were to make this physically, it could have a narrower
       | width by having the days of month on paper, rolled up like
       | scrolls on either side, with knobs on each to adjust. Motorize
       | those, maybe.
        
       | quuxplusone wrote:
       | "Forebruary is a wall calendar that you do not need to replace
       | every year" -- Hmm. When I had a wall calendar, I used it to
       | write down upcoming events or tasks. So I needed to buy one
       | calendar for each year I planned to do anything: if it's August
       | 2025 and I'm already planning as far out as March 2026, then I
       | need wall calendars for both 2025 and 2026, in order to have
       | places to write what I'm doing. That is, I'd need to buy one
       | calendar for each distinct _year_ in which I had plans.
       | 
       | This minimalist calendar has space for only a single month. So in
       | the August-March scenario, I'd need to buy eight separate
       | calendars for August 2025, September, October, November,
       | December, January 2026, February, and March, in order to have
       | places to write down what I'm doing in those months. That is, I'd
       | need to buy one calendar for each distinct _month_ in which I
       | have plans at a time. (Presumably I could use dry-erase markers
       | and reuse a month 's calendar as soon as it was in the past.)
       | 
       | The above is the geeky/theoretical interpretation. In practice, I
       | don't think people would buy multiple of these; I think this just
       | doesn't function as a calendar at all.
       | 
       | It could be useful to display in a bank, where customers need to
       | know today's date and nothing else... except that the calendar
       | offers no way to _mark_ today 's date! Not even a little magnetic
       | ring or anything. A simple flip calendar (as banks already use)
       | is superior.
       | 
       | It could be useful to display in a place of business, like a
       | 19th-century clerk's office, where no employee would want to mark
       | events on the communal calendar but it would still be useful to
       | see at a glance "Next Monday, that's the 17th..." Unfortunately,
       | suppose today is the 29th. Then next Monday is the... uh... We
       | have two problems: not only can we not see dates in the next
       | month, but the calendar doesn't even give us a hint about the
       | number of days in _this_ month! There 's already a small genre of
       | office comedy about things happening on "April 31st" or
       | "September 31st"[1]; this calendar would exacerbate that problem
       | to the point of being counterproductive to display at all.
       | 
       | This calendar design isn't even a "solution in search of a
       | problem" -- it's merely several additional problems with no
       | familial resemblance at all to a solution.
       | 
       | [1] - Or the inversion on "Parks & Rec" where the intern
       | mistakenly believes that there is _no_ "March 31st".
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/94_Meetings
        
       | bunnyhero wrote:
       | these have been around for a long time. e.g.
       | https://www.ebay.com/itm/276030548980,
       | https://www.ebay.com/itm/275256905873
        
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       (page generated 2024-05-24 23:02 UTC)