Decimal Time

Decimal time format

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 05:38:00 +0000

The previous post includes a representation of decimal time with the units (decimal hours, minutes and seconds) separated by colons (:), just as is usually done with standard time. I see this with most decimal time clocks. Not having any other model, I initially wrote decimal times this way, myself. However, this makes it difficult to distinguish decimal time from standard time.

Also, when referring to decimal time as used during the French Revolution, this format is probably inappropriate. I do not know when it started being used, but in old books I do not see it, either for decimal or sexigesimal times. Often the number of hours and minutes were written out, as in "eight hours in the morning" or "twelve hours and thirty minutes". When abbreviated, the time was typically given with the initials of the units following their number, e.g. "12 h. 30 m." Sometimes a period was included, sometimes not, and other times a superscript was used, e.g. "12^h 30^m". I see this historically in both English and French, and it seems to be still in use in France, although usually without the last unit, so that the "h" acts as a separator, e.g. "12h30".

In revolutionary France, when decimal times were written out, the same was done but with "décimales" added after the last unit, such as "à 5 heures décimales" or "à 7 heures 80 décimales. I also found abbreviated times such as "à 6 h. 67 décimales". A few decades later, French decimal time enthusiast Joseph Charles Francois de Rey-Pailhade provided superscripted examples such as "3^hd 93^md".

So I think that when expressing decimal times, at least when referring to their historical use in France, that it should probably be written in one of the ways shown above. This is what I have done with the decimal time on

the right of this page, under the Republican Calendar date.

MJD 56045.233
Nonidi 9 Floréal an CCXX
à 2 h. 39 m. d. t.m.P.

Metric Clock Gadget

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 04:09:00 +0000

For once I'm not going to post about a smartphone app, but a Windows desktop gadget. A gadget is an applet that sits on your Windows desktop and displays dynamic information, such as time, calendar, weather, etc. Recently I found a new one named Metric Clock by Dr. Igor "Igogo" Bushin in Ukraine. The description is copied from Wikipedia and Minkukel. The gadget basically displays the current date and local decimal time in h:mm:ss format. Options include changing the size, hiding the title, copyright and "date sting" (sic), and changing colors for all elements. The gadget is compatible with Windows versions from XP to 8, and is free, with a request to donate on the web site. His late cat also has a web site.

MJD 56045.171 (8:79:00 PDT)

Sternzeit

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:08:00 +0000

I have posted before about stardates and stardate apps for iPhone. A new app was released in November (55877) named Sternzeit, which is German for "stardate", by Sebastian Bothe. Originally the US AppStore description was in German, although text within the app was in English, but the description has now been translated.

Version 2 was released today (56015), which fixes an issue with not being able to select the year. You can now select dates in any year to convert to a stardate. Initially there was a bug which caused it to revert to the current date every 30 seconds, but it's working now for me.

The unique feature of this app is that it gives you the ability to share the stardate via Twitter, email or SMS, with a default message like, "Captains's log, stardate : -310757.56". You can also follow other users of the app on Twitter via a hash tag from within the app. I appear to be the first tweeter.

The real problem I have is that the algorithm he uses starts counting from the year 2323, which means that all stardates in the current century are negative, as well as being six digits, unlike the ones on TV, which were four or five digits, and lack the minus sign. It's fine if you want to find the stardate Capt. Janeway brought Voyager back to the Alpha Quadrant in the year 2378, but it's not what I want in my tweets. I know that the "algorithm...is known throughout the net", but it was devised specifically for the 24th century, and doesn't even work for Capt. Kirk's time, let alone ours. There are plenty of other stardate algorithms on the Net, like the contemporary date algorithm at TrekGuide.com. (I don't recommend the Andrew Main algorithm, used by Google Calendar.) IRL astronomers have their own way of dating star observations, which looks a lot like the stardates on The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. And of course, the latest version of Star Trek simply uses the year number with a decimal.

At least he no longer states that 2323 was the year of the first warp-flight, when every Trekkie knows it was nearly three centuries earlier, in 2063. How did he think Kirk got around in the 2200s?

Sadly, I can't update to the new Sternzeit version on my iPhone 4S because for some reason the app requires the new iOS 5.1, and I am stuck on 5.0.1 because I'm jailbroken. Funny, I've updated scores of other apps this month and none of them require 5.1. I had to try it on my iPad, so of course it looks like crap because it's designed only for iPhone, for some reason.

MJD 56016.339

eBooks

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 00:38:00 +0000

I have been waiting for electronic books my whole life. I've always been a big sci-fi fan, and it only made sense to me that e-books would be superior in every way to their paper counterparts. The very first episode of Star Trek made with Captain Kirk, which first aired the day my little sister was born, showed characters reading e-books and other documents. Granted, in that particular episode they were reading relatively bulky monitors attached to the wall, rather than what we would call an e-reader or tablet, but in later episodes handheld tablets are used, some of which were touch-sensitive, and others which used a stylus. The monitors worked with removable cards, referred to as "tapes", although it was not clear whether they contained literal tape inside, and sometimes documents are transferred directly from the ship's computer. There are plenty of other works of science fiction which also depict e-books.

The first time I saw a dedicated e-book reader in real life was about 20 years ago, when I was on a flight sitting next to a man using a prototype, which he said the company he worked for was developing. I don't know whatever happened to that particular device, but I know that a number of portable e-book readers have been produced over the years, which did not succeed for various reasons. E-books themselves, however, could be read on personal computers, and as laptop computers became smaller, they became more convenient for reading e-books, until dedicated reading devices and tablets finally made e-books more convenient than the paper kind.

I always knew that this day would come. Others were more doubtful. I don't know how many times over the years that I heard people complain, even now, that e-books could not provide the same experience as paper books, the same texture and smell and the physical action of turning the pages, that reading electronic displays are too tiresome, etc. Some of these criticisms were merely technological, and could be solved with innovations such as e-ink. Others were rooted in sentimentality for superfluous features of the old medium, which those who will grow up with e-books will not share. Do we today miss the characteristics of scrolls and hand-written parchment, or of clay tablets? No, because most of us today have no experience with those things, and would consider it perverse to prefer them. Likewise, our descendants will not recognize the desirability of paper books, except perhaps as antique collectibles.

I have always found paper books to be less than optimal. They tended to be heavy, often heavier than my iPad today. They were also bound, so that you had to prop them open, lest they close or change pages by themselves, and then you had to worry about damaging the spine. And once they closed, you would lose your place if you did not have a bookmark. It was cumbersome to have to flip through hundreds of pages. E-book haters talk about snuggling in bed with paper books, but I always found them to be poor bedtime companions. Plus, you cannot read them without a light!

So I am thrilled that the technology has finally caught up with sci-fi. What I find irritating is that many people confuse the content with the medium. For many, the word "book" refers strictly to bound leaves of paper. However, there were books before it was common to write them on codices, and there will be after paper is gone. A book is the words that are written on the paper, on digital medium, or other media such as parchment, clay or stone, and is independent of the medium, itself. Remember, Homer did not write on paper; he could not even see! But you can now download his works as e-books. Books will live on, longer than paper will.

MJD 56015.026

The equinox marches on

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:23:00 +0000

Spring has officially arrived in the Northern Hemisphere. Not that you'd notice here in the Western US, where it's unseasonably cold. Of course, in the East it's unseasonably hot, and in the middle the combination is causing tornadoes.

In fact, spring arrived last night, at 10:14:09 pm my time, Pacific Daylight, on the 19th day of March by the Gregorian calendar (56006.21816). That's the 20th of March for most of the world, but this is still the earliest equinox in over a century. Part of the reason for this is that there was a leap day last month, which pushes the date back a day. The next one, in 2013, will come nearly six hours later, and so on until the next leap year in 2016, when it will again jump back a day. In fact, it will jump back slightly more than a day. It continue to slip earlier and earlier every leap year, until 2100, when we will skip a leap year. The reason we have leap years is to keep the equinox from arriving later and later every year. The reason we skip leap years is to keep the equinox from arriving too early. The earliest vernal equinox this century will be in 2096 (86686.5848) after which it will advance nearly six hours each year until 2103 (89243.265). In 2104 the leap year cycle will start again, so the equinox date will again go back a day, or about 18 hours before 2103 (89608.509).

For the rest of this century, spring will arrive more and more often on the 19the day of March in Pacific Daylight Time, instead of the 20th. Then it will arrive on the 20th every year from 2099 to 2135. Of course, it will always arrive earlier in the Eastern Hemisphere, often on the 21st day of March, as it's supposed to. The Romans, it's said, originally fixed the equinox on the 25th day of March, as Julius Caesar noted on his calendar, but by the fourth century it had slipped to the 21st, and the latter date is the one that Pope Gregory noted on his calendar, by which time it had slipped by between 9 and 10 days, so he dropped 10 days, although it probably would have been more accurate to have dropped only 9, since it usually falls on the 20th in Europe. At least it's closer in Asia and Australia. (I know that doesn't quite add up, since the date should have slipped only 3 days in the first four centuries rather than 4, but I don't know the reason for the discrepancy.)

There is a good graph of the March equinox's wanderings on Wolfram.

MJD 56006.974

Astronomers gone bad

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 05:43:00 +0000

Last week astronomer Phil Plait posted on his Bad Astronomy blog an article about leap day. In it he stated:

The year is not exactly 365.25 days long. Our official day is 86,400 seconds long. I won’t go into details on the length of the year itself (you can read a wee bit about it here), but the year we now use is called a Tropical Year and it is 365.242190419 days long. With malice aforethought — my calculator won’t hold that many digits — let’s round it to 365.2421904... There is no official rule for leap days with cycles bigger than 400 years. I think this is extremely ironic, because the amount we are off every 400 years is almost exactly 1/8th of a day! So after 3200 years, we’ve had 8 of those 400 year cycles...This whole 400-year thingy was started in the year 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. That’s close enough to the year 1600 (which was a leap year!), so in my book, the year 4800 should not be a leap year.

Except that he's wrong. He was also wrong when he posted this originally four years ago. I posted a correction in the comments then, and I've done so again now, but obviously he does not read the comments. The reason he is wrong is because he's using the wrong value for the year. The document that Gregory issued establishing his calendar is called the Inter gravissimas. It clearly states that the reform is intended to fix the date of the vernal equinox, upon which Easter is based. The year defined by equinoxes is not the same as the Tropical Year mentioned above, but a slightly larger value between 365.24237 and 365.24238. This is closer to the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days. Using the equinoctial figure, it will take about 8000 years before it's off by one day, which would be in the tenth millennium. Due to the variability of the equinoctial year, we cannot even predict its value that far in the future. The way it's trending now, I could even be much further in the future.

He is not alone. This error is often repeated by astronomers. It is sometimes traced back to John Herschel, but during the Revolution French astronomers calculated that the mean year was between 365.2422 and 365.24225 days and proposed an adjustment after 4000 years. But none of them were using the vernal equinox, as Gregory did. The correct figure may be found in Wikipedia and others. Anybody can figure it out themselves simply by taking the average between the equinoxes of any two years.

MJD 55994.238

The Short, Strange History of Decimal Time

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:24:00 +0000

In my previous post I linked to an article from the science and sci-fi blog, io9. There was another post there a couple of weeks ago I wanted to link to, The Short, Strange History of Decimal Time.

MJD 55987.308

Leap Day

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 07:13:00 +0000

I know I haven't posted in a long time, as I've been busy, but I have some time now, and this date happens only once every four years, so I won't let it pass without comment.

The truth is, calling the last day of February "leap day" is a relatively recent practice. Although we today count days from the start of the month, our Gregorian calendar was originally a slight modification of the Julian calendar, itself based by Julius Caesar on the earlier Roman calendar, which counted days backwards. Thus, the first day of each month was called the Calends or Kalends of that month, so the last day of February would be known as the day before (Latin Pridie) the Calends of March. (This is where we get the word "calendar".) The rest of the days in the last half of each month were likewise counted down to the Calends of the following month. The Romans included the Calends itself as the last day in their countdown.

Caesar did not insert the leap day at the end of February, but on the 24th day, which in Roman counting was the sixth day counting down to the Calends of March. Thus, in leap years two days were both counted as the sixth day before Calends, which we would now call the 24th and 25th days of the 29-day month. (Sometimes the 24th was considered the extra day and sometimes the 25th.)

Consequently, someone born on the last day of February in a leap year, i.e. February 29, would not have celebrated only once every four years, but rather every year on the last day of the month, which we call February 28 in common years. Since the extra day was counted as the same as the 24th, as though it were one 48-hour-long day, anyone born on the leap day, i.e. February 25, would celebrate their birthday in common years on February 24, the sixth day before the Calends of March. Likewise, the Roman Catholic Church recognized February 24 as the feast of St. Matthias in common years, but February 25 in leap years, up until as recently as 1970. Other feasts near the end of February were likewise shifted. I believe that this is still practiced by those using the Julian calendar, i.e. Orthodox churches, although in this century Julian calendar dates fall 13 days behind those in the Gregorian calendar.

Common year:
February March
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 1...
VIII VII VI V IV III II K

Leap year:

February March
22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 1...
VIII VII VI VI V IV III II K

So in actuality, the leap day occurred on Saturday, February 25, rather than today. There are a number of articles on the Internet today about leap years, so I'll link to How the Quest for the Perfect Calendar Accidentally Created February 30.

MJD 55987.300

iPhone 4S

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 12:26:00 +0000

I have been broadcasting live video using my iPhone 4. I've been waiting to see if the new iPhone would be worth upgrading to. Now that the iPhone 4S has been released, I can tell you that there have been specific improvements to the camera and video processing:

• 8 megapixels, up from 5
• Wider aperture
• Additional lens (5 instead of 4)
• Faster shutter
• Face detection
• Faster processor
• 1080p HD video
• Video stabilization
• Temporal noise reduction

Hopefully some of those will result in better video broadcasts, with better color, sharper images, less graininess at night, less shakiness and less problems. The download speed is potentially doubled, depending on the network, but the upload speed is unchanged, so that will be of little help.

Another benefit is the integrated Siri voice assistant, which will apparently allow me to do more hands-free while driving, such as getting addresses and directions, sending texts, etc. I'll have to wait to see it in action.

Will it be worth $200 plus $55 tax to upgrade? I guess I'll find out in a week, because I've already ordered one! My wife should be grateful to get my iPhone 4.

It's a shame that Steve Jobs had to pass the day after it came out. This is his legacy.

Bonne année!

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:06:00 +0000

The autumnal equinox occurs on MJD 55827.378 (2011 Sept. 23 09:04 UTC) or 9h13 in the morning, Paris mean time. Therefore, according to the rule in effect during the French Revolution, MJD 55827 (23 September in the Gregorian calendar) will be the first day of year CCXX in the Republican Calendar.

According to the rule used by Brumaire, including their iPhone and iPad apps, MJD 55827 is also the first day of the 220th Republican year. The day before, MJD 55826 (22 September), is a leap day according to Brumaire, but not according to the official calendar rule. Dates prior to this are different by one day, but with the start of the new year, dates will be the same by both rules until 2014.

The first month of the Republican calendar is Vendémiaire, so New Year's Day is 1 Vendémiaire. Happy new year!

MJD 55824.627

Metric clock video

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 07:52:00 +0000

I found this video by a guy who actually had a mechanical "metric clock" made for him.

Btw, I'm using the new Blogger app on my iPad to write this. Maybe now I'll post more often. But it leads me to wonder again why anybody makes iPhone apps that aren't formatted for iPads.

MJD 55658.367

Salut et Fraternité app for iPad by Brumaire

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 21:55:00 +0000

Finally, people are starting to make apps formatted for iPad. Salut et Fraternité for iPad by Brumaire is a port of the Salut et Fraternité app for iPhone, which displays the current French Republican calendar date and decimal time, and allows you to convert between Republican and Gregorian dates. Unfortunately, instead of simply updating the original app for iPad, they made it a separate app, forcing you to pay $1.99 for both. The iPad version is pretty much the same as the original, but looks better on the bigger screen. Also, instead of a separate tab for the decimal time watch, you select a setting to have it displayed on the main tab. However, for some reason the season images don't appear for me on the "Convert" tab after I turn them on. If you already have the iPhone version, you might want to simply use that on your iPad, rather than pay twice, even if it does look a bit crappy, although another two bucks at least won't set you back much.

MJD 55783.913

Carrigan paper

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:12:00 +0000

Richard Carrigan's 1978 paper in the American Scientist, "Decimal Time", is now available online at JSTOR. Unfortunately, you need an account to read the whole thing, but the first page is available for free. Here is the complete citation:

Decimal Time: Unlike the metric system of measurements, decimal time did not survive the French Revolution. But is dividing the day by tens a possibility for the future?

Richard A. Carrigan Jr.
American Scientist
Vol. 66, No. 3 (May-June 1978), pp. 305-313
(article consists of 9 pages)
Published by: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27848641

MJD 55770.882

Revol-di app for iPhone by Kodaski.fr

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Sun, 29 May 2011 10:47:00 +0000

Revol-di 1.0 by Kodaski.fr was released 2011 January 20 (55581) and is the third French Republican Calendar app for the iPhone. The name is taken from an early proposal for the first day of the décade, better known as Primidi. Unlike Calendrier and Salut et Fraternité, this one is free. Unfortunately, like the others, it is formatted only for the iPhone (and iPod Touch) and not the iPad. (It's been over a year, why doesn't everybody recognize the iPad?) Also unlike the others, it is targeted at genealogists, so it only converts dates during the revolutionary period when the calendar was in effect, 1792-1805 (JD 2375840-2380688), and does not convert more recent dates, nor does it display decimal time. At least it does not have to worry about which method to use for determining modern dates.

It does have features the others don't, however. For one, you can make notes, which are stored under the (Gregorian) date they are made. This is useful for recording birth dates and such during the Revolution. The entire notepad may then be shared via email. Under "Information", facsimiles of the laws relating to the Republican Calendar are available, in French. (Gregorian dates are also displayed in French.) "Historical context" gives information about the calendar. "The calendar months Illustrations" shows period paintings of calendar girls. There is a "Help" section and four different wallpapers to choose from.

MJD 55710.444

Nonidi 9 Prairial an CCXIX à 4^hd 50^md t.m.P.

Skynet becomes self-aware today

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:41:00 +0000

In the first episode of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the terminator Cameron, played by Summer Glau, says:

The Skynet missile defense system goes online April 19, 2011, declares war on mankind, and triggers a nuclear apocalypse two days later.

The exact time is frequently given on the Internet as 20:11, or 8:11 p.m., although I don't know what time zone this is supposed to be, nor can I find the exact quote this time was taken from. I also find it curious that the time is the same as the year, suggesting that someone may have mistaken one for the other.

If it's Eastern Time, it just now happened. I believe that Skynet was located in Colorado, which could mean that we have two more hours. If it's Universal Time, then it would correspond to MJD 55670.841, which was several hours ago.

In Terminator 2, and presumably in the original movie, there was a different date (50689.260):

The Skynet Funding Bill is passed. The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.

Judgment Day is averted at the end of this movie, but in Terminator 3, which was released in 2003, we find that it was merely delayed until July 25, 2004 6:18 pm Eastern Time (53211.929).

The events in the 2008 TV series take place after T2 and creates an alternate timeline, having the characters travel forward in time so that John Connor, who was supposedly born in 1985, can still be a teenager in the present day. This is how Skynet's awakening is delayed until today. Judgment Day will now happen on Thursday. (55672)

Good luck to you all!

MJD 55671.029
[via SF Weekly]

iPad apps

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 08:49:00 +0000

I've been busy playing with my new iPad 2 for the past couple of weeks. When I first connected it with iTunes, it transferred over all my hundreds of iPhone apps.

I noticed right away that these fell into two categories. Some apps open in a small window, slightly larger than the iPhone screen, with a "2X" button that enlarges it to fill most, but not all, of the screen, but generally making the graphics blurry and pixelated with elements that are not formatted for that size. Other apps are formatted for the iPad and fill the whole screen. The latter are indicated by a plus sign on their purchase buttons in the app store, and are called "universal apps", meaning that they are designed to work on all iOS devices, so that they are formatted for both iPhone and iPad. I also downloaded a bunch of iPad apps, which do not run at all on iPhones, although almost all iPhone apps will run on an iPad, even if not designed for it.

It seems that there are hardly any decimal/metric time apps designed for the iPad. I could find no universal decimal time apps. However, ecce, maker of the MetricClock and MetricClockFree apps for the iPhone, also now makes iPad only versions of these apps. However, since they are separate apps, you have to pay twice to get both the iPhone and iPad versions of the paid apps, although these are only $0.99, or you can just get the free versions with ads and fewer feartures. That's a better deal than some other apps, such as SkyFire, which charges $2.99 for their iPhone app and another $4.99 if you also want it on the iPad. (I'm using the iPhone version on my iPad, which looks crappy, but I only use it to convert Flash videos.)

On Wednesday (55657) ecce updated the MetricClock for iPad Free app to version 1.4, adding the ability to use backgrounds from your camera roll, and set the clock color. When I updated to the new version, my clock disappeared, but after I deleted and downloaded it again, it worked fine.

The only other decimal time iPad app I could find is Julian Date Converter, which is the iPad version of Julian Date Calculator for iPhone. This app, which costs a dollar more at $1.99, takes advantage of the larger screen by showing twelve different decimal times at once, while the iPhone version only shows the Julian Date and one other at a time. The iPad version includes one decimal time format that the iPhone one does not, GPS Time, and also displays the sidereal time and longitude, and also has the feature to "lock to UTC", which keeps all the times synchronized with the current time, incremented once a second.

MJD 55658.367

Macrosoft Converts to Metric Time System

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 07:24:00 +0000

Last week Macrosoft (not to be confused with Microsoft) issued a press release announcing that the company was converting to metric time. Of course, this was a not-very original April Fool's joke, but it may be the first with a YouTube video.

MJD 55658.308

Double Summer Time

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 11:27:00 +0000

In the United Kingdom, proposals are repeatedly made to move the clocks forward. Like most northern countries, the UK currently moves their clocks one hour forward in spring and back in the autumn. From the last Sunday of October to the last Sunday of March, Britain is on Greenwich Mean Time, also known as Universal Time or Western European Time. Then from March to October, they are on British Summer Time, i.e. one hour ahead of GMT.

There are now two different proposals being discussed. One is to move the entire country one hour ahead of the current times all year, i.e. one hour ahead of GMT from October to March, and two hours ahead of GMT from March to October, which is called "double summer time". The other is to keep Scotland the same, and change the rest of the UK, i.e. England, Wales and Northern Ireland, so that the country would be divided into two time zones.

The reason to exclude Scotland from the change is that the further to the north and west you go, the later the sun comes up, so that on the shortest days it wouldn't rise until about ten o'clock, and on the longest days it would set after eleven in the evening. This is just too late for some Scots. But having two time zones would obviously put parts of the country out of kilter. One of the motivations for moving forward an hour is to be in the same time zone as most of the European Union, Central European Time. Currently in the EU, only Ireland and Portugal are also on Western European Time.

It has been tried before. During World War II, Britain was on the same system, being one hour ahead of GMT in winter, and two in summer. And for three years, from 1968 to 1971, they were on Daylight Saving Time all year, i.e. GMT+1, although without double summer time.

I have never understood the desire to tinker with time. Why not simply get up earlier in the morning? All you have to do is change work schedules. Why mess with the clocks? Just let everyone quit (and start) work an hour earlier. There are a number of arguments to advance the time, most of which seem specious to me. I wonder what the real motivations are?

MJD 55616.477

MetricClockFree iOS apps by ecce software

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 17 Feb 2011 03:00:00 +0000

Another post, another app. This one may look familiar, because (as the name suggests) its a free version of ecce's MetricClock app for iPhone. The differences are, first, iAds in the free version, and second, no ability to change settings, such as color, digital display, custom image background, etc., although you can still move the clock face around and resize it. It also does not display the percentage of your life span. So if you want to try before you buy, or you just don't care about any of that, you can now get this free app.

There are also iPad versions of both the paid and free apps, which I never noticed before, since I don't have one of those devices, yet. They appear to be the same as the iPhone versions, just reformatted.

MJD 55609.125

Reviews: Bluetooth headsets

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 12:24:00 +0000

I am on the road a lot, and I used to listen to talk radio, such as NPR, but when I got my first iPod I started listening to podcasts, since I did not have to depend upon whatever happened to be on at a particular time, and I could pause playback. I also had a mono Bluetooth headset for talking on my "feature" phone, which I also used when I upgraded to an iPhone, a Motorola H680. Although this worked fine for talking on the phone, I still had to switch to the earphones on a cord to listen to podcasts, with one in my ear and the other dangling so I don't get a ticket. (For music, I just listen to the radio through car speakers.) The problem with this is getting tangled in the cord and seatbelt, especially while the phone is plugged into the charger, as well as smashing it in the door, etc. I have ruined several iPod headphones that way.

After a few months, I found the Bluetooth Mono for iPhone jailbreak tweak, which solved the problem beautifully. However, it required that I had to keep jailbreaking my iPhone every time Apple updated the firmware, which means waiting weeks or months for a new jailbreak before updating, or going without, which I was forced to do for a couple of months when I got a new iPhone. The current jailbreak method is still "tethered", meaning that it will break if I reboot, although that has not been a problem. Jailbreaking also offers a lot of other great stuff, but everything else I really wanted is now available without jailbreaking. Except playing music and podcasts through a mono Bluetooth headset.

But there are alternatives. iPhones now support the A2DP stereo Bluetooth profile, and there are mono headsets which will support A2DP. After hearing several recommendations, I got the Aliph Jawbone ICON. It sells for $99.95 at the Apple Store, but Best Buy had it on sale for $20 off. The same day I got the Jawbone, my wife bought a Plantronics BackBeat 903+ Bluetooth stereo headset from the Apple Store for $99.95. She already had a Motorola MOTOROKR S9-HD.

So now I have four Bluetooth headsets available to me, and I can make some comparisons.

My new Jawbone is beautiful. I got "The Bombshell", which has an irregular gold outer surface. It fits comfortably in my ear with the largest "ergo" earbud, and doesn't require an ear loop to stay in, although it does come with one. I had to connect it to my PC via USB and update it in order to activate A2DP stereo, but then it worked fine. You can also change the voice or language it uses to talk to you, which I couldn't care less about. The USB connector also means that I don't have to buy another car charger, which is a bonus. It is rated for only 4.5 hours of talk time, which is a lot less than the 8 hours my old Motorola lasts. At least there is a visible power indicator on the iPhone status bar, and pushing the single button gives me an audible estimate of the talk time remaining, while the Motorola simply starts beeping shortly before it dies. I have not yet had a chance to see how the Jawbone works out during extended use. [Update 55572.531: Now I have, and it lasts just as long, if not longer, and recharges quickly.]

The main drawback is that, like the Motorola, it lacks stereo controls, especially pause and play. I can pause playback on both headsets by simply switching them off, which at least is safer than fiddling with the touchscreen while driving, but I have to stop the car to safely unlock the iPhone screen, open the iPod app (if necessary) and tap the triangle to resume playing. This is slightly more awkward with the Jawbone, since the on/off switch is on the side that touches my face. [Update 55572.531: I meant to rant about the bug that prevents voice commands from working with podcasts, but I just figured out that if I load just one song, that fixes the problem, so I can say "pause" and "play" to control playback, although there is a significant delay, and sometimes it will dial a random number from my contacts instead of what I tell it. I also found that using the dash mount I got today makes it easier to use the touchscreen.]

Both headsets have a lower volume than the wired headphones, which makes it difficult to hear podcasts in a noisy environment, such as a moving car in traffic with passengers. The sound on the Jawbone seems to be richer than on the Motorola, although it's hard to tell for sure. The ICON also seemed to have better noise reduction, which is supposed to work by having a sensor in contact with your cheek.

But then my wife had to go and buy the Plantronics BackBeat 903+! This stereo headset goes in both ears and includes separate buttons for phone, volume up and down, and pause/play. It also has impressive volume, and is rated for 7 hours of listen time. She was unsatisfied with the Motorola MOTOROKR because all the electronics are in a band that goes behind the neck, making it uncomfortable to lie down with it; plus, she keeps losing ear-buds, and complains that it's not loud enough. The Backbeat has the electronics behind each hear, with a thin, flexible cord connecting them, which is quite comfortable to lie on. And it means that you can pop it out of one ear, and have it dangle from the other, making it safe and legal to drive with! It turns out that her stereo headset may actually be a better solution than any mono one.

I will continue using the Jawbone ICON for now, but I may end up borrowing my wife's BackBeat, at least when she's not using it.

MJD 55568.517

Smartphone app roundup

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:19:00 +0000

Several different things have come my way at the exact same time that are sorta like decimal time apps, but not exactly.

Decimal Time 1.0 by Harald Mueller is a 99¢ iPhone app which does not display decimal time. Rather, it represents standard 24-hour time as four columns, one for each digit. Each column has a number of binary indicators that indicate the digit, depending on the maximum number. For instance, the first column has two indicators, representing 2×10, and the second column has nine, so that the hours 0-23 can be indicated. The next two columns are for the minutes, so one column has five and the last has nine, for minutes 0-59. Get it? If you are looking for a real decimal time app, don't get this one!

At the same time, I saw this tweet by Oliver Bothwell directing me not to an app in the iTunes app store, but to a "Metric Time" web app, which is basically a web page that works on iOS devices. He says it's optimized for iPad, but it works on my iPhone. I find that it does not work on all Windows or Linux browsers, but it does work on Safari and Chrome. What is much more interesting is his Metric Diary, which not only uses decimal time, but also a decimal, or "metric", calendar, with ten-day weeks and ten months per year alternating between 35 and 40 days. This is all explained on his metric poster.

The final entry is the Metric Clock Widget for Android by Dan Perron. I'm not able to check it out, but it's one I'd like to have. There are few widgets for iPhone, and those are only if you jailbreak.

MJD 55550.513

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:49:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is almost here in the US, and this year falls on the 25th of November (55525), exactly one month before Christmas (55555). I was thinking about this a couple of nights ago, and was wondering when Hanukkah was this year, when I noticed that there was a full moon in the sky above me. I remembered Jon Stewart singing on A Colbert Christmas a couple of years ago (54793) that the Festival of Lights also starts "On the 25th." ("Of December?" "Kislev." "Which is when, exactly?" "I will check.") Since the full moon falls on the 15th day of Jewish months, that means that the holiday must follow in ten days, which would be the night of 1 December (55531/2). We don't really celebrate, since there are no kids left, but I'll probably bring home some gelt. That's all three holidays falling on the 25th of some month.

I just noticed while writing this that Christmas falls on Modified Julian Day 55555, which is another reason to celebrate, I guess.

I think it's funny that some people get upset if they hear "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas", because Christmas is not the only holiday. We have not only Christmas, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah, but also New Year, which most people celebrate regardless of their religion. I suppose somebody must celebrate Kwanzaa, too. ("What would it be like without Kwanzaa? Like every year before 1966.") If we were to be really accurate, we should mention all of them, but that would take forever, so why not just lump them under "holidays"? It's not meant necessarily to avoid offending non-Christians, and I don't why people want to do that, but it's to include the other holidays we all celebrate in this country, i.e. Thanksgiving early in the season, and the New Year later.

Happy holidays!

MJD 55523.534

Decimal Clock app for iPhone by Michael Behan

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:59:00 +0000

Decimal Clock is a simple app which displays an analog decimal clock, with the decimal time in digital underneath, on a green background with diagonal stripes. There are no other options or features. There is a 10 at the top of the clock, as with French clocks, but the digital display starts at 00.00.00, except a brief moment when it says 10.00.00. The app costs $0.99.

There's an ad that's one of those autogenerated videos like that GEICO commercial at www.headoverflow.com.

MJD 55510.453

Getting better

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 10:34:00 +0000

I've been using the Skyfire app for a few days now, and it seems to be working normally. It is still not ideal. The app is blocked on some sites, like Hulu and Fox, although I don't know why you would be able to watch Family Guy episodes on a computer but not on other devices. Some videos just don't load for some reason. However, the most annoying thing is pages that have multiple videos, like on io9, where Skyfire only plays the first video. It also don't work with Flash games and other animation, but fortunately Frash will work with some of them, if you're jailbroken. So still not perfect, but better than before.

MJD 55510.440

Still no Flash for iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (John Hynes) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 01:12:00 +0000

One of the biggest drawbacks with the iPhone has always been its lack of ability to run Flash. Flash is used to embed animation and video into web sites, and many sites use it, which means that a lot of web content is not available on iOS devices. Apple refuses to support Flash because it uses a lot of resources and degrades performance. This is true; I often have difficulty playing Flash videos on my old laptop. Apple has been promoting HTML5 for playing videos, and many sites now support this, but many still do not. I am frequently frustrated by this.

Two months ago (55440.685) Skyfire announced that they had submitted an app to the iTunes App Store which would allow viewing of Flash video on web pages. The way it works is that they convert the Flash on their own servers and send it back to your device. That way, you don't have to run Flash on your iPhone, but you still get the videos. I have been eagerly waiting for the past two months for this app to get approved. Skyfire is already one of the most popular apps on Android and other phones. Apparently iPhones are not the only phones that have trouble with Flash.

Well, today (55503) it happened. I bought the app for $2.99 and started browsing. First I tried one of their suggested sites, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart (even though I already watch it everyday on TV). It wouldn't load. Then I started browsing my news feeds, and quickly found a BBC story that had a Flash video. It took forever to load, then I got a few seconds of an advert and it stopped. Other attempts were also unsuccessful. I began to suspect what the cause of the problem might be, as it happens frequently when highly desirable sites turn on or get publicized. The servers are overloaded.

Turns out, I was exactly right. Skyfire has removed their app from the App Store. They state that within five hours the app had become the top grossing iPhone app and that demand far exceeded their predictions. So now we have to wait for them to increase their capacity, which will probably take a while. At least this time I managed to grab the app before it was pulled. Usually by the time I learn about an app too good to be true, Apple has already pulled it, like when that kid snuck in free tethering in his app. Hopefully as the early adopters finish playing with their new toy, the servers will start running again, in which case I am ready.

MJD 55504.050