Tag: history

Old style calendar

Growing up in USSR, since I was a kid, I remember I always had a confusion regarding the calendar. While most dates were normal, a few were referred to as “old style” dates. And even though I’ve asked around and it was explained to me a few times, I never truly understood what it was about. I just new there was some calendar change in the past that created the shift.

Today I tweeted about Russia celebrating the Unity Day. Which I think is a silly replacement holiday for a huge celebration of the October Revolution. For as long as I remember, it was celebrated on November 7th. Then I realized that celebrating an October Revolution in November sounds strange. Then I remembered that the revolution actually took place on October 25th, the “old style”. And November 7th is the same date but the “new style”.

I am not a little boy back in the USSR anymore, I thought. I am a man in the modern age, equipped with powerful tools, such as Google and Wikipedia. No more should I suffer the confusion. And thus I quickly found out the source and history of “old style” and “new style”. Here is the relevant snipped from the Wikipedia page on the migration from Julian to Gregorian calendar. I’ve highlighted the important and interesting bits.

The Julian calendar was in general use in Europe and Northern Africa from the times of the Roman Empire until 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII promulgated the Gregorian calendar. Reform was required because too many leap days are added with respect to the astronomical seasons on the Julian scheme. On average, the astronomical solstices and the equinoxes advance by about 11 minutes per year against the Julian year. As a result, the calculated date of Easter gradually moved out of phase with the March equinox. While Hipparchus and presumably Sosigenes were aware of the discrepancy, although not of its correct value, it was evidently felt to be of little importance at the time of the Julian reform. However, it accumulated significantly over time: the Julian calendar gained a day about every 134 years. By 1582, it was ten days out of alignment from where it supposedly was in 325 during the Council of Nicaea.
The Gregorian calendar was soon adopted by most Catholic countries (e.g. Spain, Portugal, Poland, most of Italy).
Protestant countries followed later, and the countries of Eastern Europe adopted the “new calendar” even later. In the British Empire (including the American colonies), Wednesday 2 September 1752 was followed by Thursday 14 September 1752. For 12 years from 1700 Sweden used a modified Julian calendar, and adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1753, but Russia remained on the Julian calendar until 1918 (1 February became 14 February), after the Russian Revolution (which is thus called the “October Revolution” though it occurred in Gregorian November), while Greece continued to use it until 1924.

Very quick pass through 100% of Quake

Quake, a revolutionary game released back 1996, is awesome even by today’s standards. Maybe the visual effects have moved up a notch or two in the modern games, but the game play, the maps, the balance of the weapons – all these are much harder to figure out and Quake still kicks butt of the most modern games in those aspects.

Today, via Goblin, I came across these awesome video – a guy is going through Quake levels as fast as he possibly can, but at the same time, opening each and every secret place and killing each and every monster. That’s a 100% pass! Most of us, even hardcore gamers who finished the game back in 1996, haven’t seen every corner of every map. Now is the chance.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhzXKMqZBBc]

It takes only a minute or so per level. The precision and the speed are mesmerizing, sucking into the monitor. The sounds and familiar locations bring back nostalgic memories. I almost want to install Quake on my laptop and give it another go through. Maybe now, in 2011, I have a machine to run it at full speed.

Daylight Saving Time tidbits

I came across this interesting article about Daylight Saving Time (DST) by David Petheric.  Firstly, I spent most of my life in countries that were adjusting their times, so I never suspected that there were so many countries, the majority in fact, that didn’t follow this practice.  Have a look at the map.

David explains the colors:

A look at a map of the world today shows very different approaches to DST in different countries, and even within countries such as Canada, Australia and Brazil. Most countries don’t use DST – and most that do are in the northern hemisphere. Blue denotes where DST is observed, Orange where it is no longer observed, and Red where it has never been observed.

Secondly, as David, I also had a question in my head of who did come up with this whole DST thing and who started using it first.  The answer is right here.

On the 30th of April 1916, Germany and its World War I allies were the first to use DST as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year, and the United States adopted it in 1918. Modern DST was first proposed in 1895 by the New Zealand entomologist George Vernon Hudson, whose shift-work job gave him leisure time to collect insects, and led him to value after-hours daylight. Britain also used double DST during World War II, apparently to ensure there was more daylight time to get the harvest in during the summer.

And thirdly, there is an excellent historical reference for a variable length of the hour:

However, what I found the most fascinating was to discover how ancient civilisation dealt with this issue: temporal hours. They just made the length of an hour flexible. How long an hour lasted depended on what the date was. Flexi time! Babylonian water clocks, which measured time by weight of water, would have around one-sixth of a pound of water added every two weeks after the summer solstice.

Roman water clocks had different scales for different months of the year: at Rome’s latitude the third hour from sunrise, hora tertia, started by modern standards at 09:02 solar time and lasted 44 minutes at the winter solstice, but at the summer solstice it started at 06:58 and lasted 75 minutes. Unequal hours are still used today in a few traditional settings, such as in some Mount Athos monasteries and in Jewish ceremonies.

 

Shakespear? Yes, sure

Daily Post, a blog that suggest a topic to write a blog post about for each day of the year, raises an interesting question: do you think Shakespear existed? Apparently, a few people doubt the fact because there is way too much work credited to him for a single person to create.

While I’m not that big on history in general and Shakespear in particular, I do have an opinion on the “too much work” reasoning. I’ve heard it before a few times and it was wrong every time I’ve heard it.

15-20 years ago, before the Internet was mainstream, most of the Russian connected people were using the FidoNet. As with any community, there were celebrities in FidoNet, and one of them was a writer under the name of “Alex Exler”. He was credited with so much stuff that rumors were going around that Alex Exler is not really a person, but a creative group of a few individuals. It turned out to be false. Alex Exler is a somewhat known writer, and a very well-known blogger on the Russian web. These days he has a website as Exler.ru. The website is updated daily with movies and gadgets reviews, opinions on software and political news, personal experiences and what not.

10-15 year ago, when I was just getting into the world of Linux and other Open Source software, I’ve heard rumors that Alan Cox is not really a human, but a bunch of goblins working underground around the clock. Alan’s contribution to Linux kernel and many other software projects was huge. More so, he seemed to have never slept. His patches were coming out any time of the day, he replied to his emails within minutes, and also managed to somehow follow all the discussion at Linux Kernel Mailing List (aka LKML) – a mailing list known for its huge traffic. Of course, Alan Cox is not a bunch of goblins. He is a very talented and productive individual.

Without knowing too much about Shakespear, I think that it is much more probable that William was a very talented and productive individual rather than he never existed or he was a group of people.