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Sat Jan 30, 2010 at 19:36:48 PM EST
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| Get up early at 7AM in the morning on Thursday to celebrate the Alphabetic New Year! That's right, here in the Eastern Time Zone, 7AM on February 4th is the time when the World Time Format (WTF?) Alphabetic Date will roll over from FJRZZ to FJSAA, marking the start of Alphabetic year S. We're going to have a celebration at the Diesel Cafe in Somerville where the Alphabet Clock and WTF were born, if we can actually get up that early in the morning (if only we lived in England, it would happen at Noon).
An Alphabetic Year consists of 26 Alphabetic Months, which are each 26 Days, so a new Alphabetic Year happens every 676 days. After this one Thursday, February 4th, the next one will be Monday, Dec 12 2011. (We decided to skip Alphabetic "Weeks", since 26 days is close to a lunar month. Alpha Centuries last approximately 48 years (that is, 48 orbits around the Sun), and Alpha Millenia last about 1251 years. The next Alphabetic New Century (FKAAA:) is on Mon Nov 25 2024, so make your New Alphabetic Century breakfast reservations now. |
| John Howard :: Celebrate the WTF New Year |
| The WTF Alphabetic Days correspond to the astronomical Julian Day, which is used in many computer databases to store date and time information. The first Julian Day (the year AAAAA:) was some day in 4713 BC, which apparenently is the first day in recorded history, or perhaps the earliest recorded astronomical event. There have been more than 2.4 million days since then. Every new day begins at Noon on the Greenwich Meridian, so it is twelve hours off from the legal calendar day and Universal Time or GMT, but, like UTC, the WTF time is the same all over the world (hence, "World Time Format"). The time is represented by a decimal fraction, the portion of the day elapsed. This way, every event in history can be represented by the number of days since that first day. Today's Julian Day is 2455227, and it is now a little less than half way through the day (in the Greenwich time zone), so it is now (well, just was) exactly 2455227.3934798613. Expressed in Alphabetic Time, which is simply Base 26 rather than Base 10, it is now FJRZV:KVEXW. Halfway through the day is Midnight in Greenwich and 7PM here, and is :NAA (or just :N), since N is the thirteenth letter of the 26 Alphabetic hours in a day.
So join us at the Diesel at FJSZZ:ZW (Thu Feb 04 2010 06:51:28 GMT-0500 (EST)), to count down the last few Alphabetic minutes of the Alphabetic Year R and usher in the new Alphabetic Year S! Remember to designate a driver as there probably will be roadblocks set up for the morning commute. |
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