I came across this handy tip over at Lifehacker website. I think that’s pretty useful for outdoor photography, when camera people want to some of the best sky colors.
All you need to do is extend the hand full and count the number of finger width distances between the sun and the horizon. Each finger is approximately 15 minutes, which means each hand is about an hour. This is of course just an approximation, but it’s always better to have an approximation than nothing at all. Enjoy.
Every time I proudly wear my EFF member t-shirt, people ask me what is EFF. And every time I explain and point them to EFF.org for more information. It’s a shame that many of those who even live and breath online don’t know what EFF is and what those guys do. Have a look at their most recent victory:
In a statement, Astrolabe said, “Astrolabe’s lawsuit against Mr. Olson and Mr. Eggert was based on a flawed understanding of the law. We now recognize that historical facts are no one’s property and, accordingly, are withdrawing our Complaint. We deeply regret the disruption that our lawsuit caused for the volunteers who maintain the TZ database, and for Internet users.”
“It’s a fundamental principle of copyright law that facts are not copyrightable, and Astrolabe should have known that,” said EFF Intellectual Property Director Corynne McSherry. “While the lawsuit should never have been filed, we’re pleased that the legal threat to an important resource has been eliminated.
You can help them do what they do, by joining and donating.
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.
We have a little tradition in the office where I work now. We call the last working day of the week – Friday. It doesn’t really matter which day of the week it is really. If there are some public holidays ahead, then, even Wednesday can be a perfect Friday. Sometimes we refer to such Friday as an Early Friday.
A good example of this is today. Even though the calendar on every electronic device around me says “Thursday”, my colleagues are walking around with smiles on their faces. “It’s Friday finally”, they say. That is because tomorrow the Republic of Cyprus joins Greek in celebrations of the Ohi Day. It is a public holiday which usually also features a military parade.
Interestingly, we don’t have a similar tradition for Late Monday. Even though it would be logical to call the first working day of the week Monday, we don’t. I think that is because Mondays are special. They are tough and ugly and nobody likes them. Calling another day of the week Monday is an insult. Whereas calling another day of the week a Friday is a compliment.
With that, happy Early Friday to all of you guys!
