Starting from this observation, I started to search information about time notion, and more precisely in the measure that was done by humans.

In most of the worlds we're using the Gregorian calendar: established on 1582, it's using the SUN and the earth rotation around it to define the year and the day. Since this time the calendar included the 29th of February every 4 years to obtain a year with 365,25 days.

But the earth go round the Sun in 365,24219 days. Which means there is a tiny shift which is getting ride every millennium but not adding the 29th of February. And because day of the week are never at the same date from a year to another, it's becoming hard to know which day of the week was the March, End of 1954! Moreover this calendar is really marked by the Christian culture.

And we also have to edit new calendars every years, re-think the holidays, etc...

Here are the problems that we can evoke about our current calendar. Let's have a look about other calendars now.

The first and probably the most important to note here is the Maya calendar. This calendar cut the time in many different unities regarding the time length. One surprising thing is that it's ending on December 21st, 2012. There is plenty of different explanations for it that I can't speak about them here.

An other calendar that we could speak about here is the Republican calendar which was created during the French Revolution. In the same idea to separate references about monarchy like the foot, it has been etablished to be a time unit on base 10, with weeks of 10 days, months of 30 days, etc... It was used only for a few years after the French revolution and finaly went to the bin, probably because of the week length, too long....

Finally the Muslim calendar is based on the moon and its phases. That's why there is a shift with the Gregorian calendar.

OK, and what?

So one day I asked myself if it wouldn't be possible to create a new calendar that we could use and establish simply. The aim of this calendar and it's new time scale would be to propose fixed days throughout years without having to use an additional day every 4 years. This imply that the notion of day would be modified to operate. And so on the hours and the minutes.

As the second is the scientific time unit, this calendar will keep the relation with the current second. That will also simplify the computer change, because the time is stored in seconds, before being converted in a human readable date. The year will also be kept: it's determined by the time the earth use to go around the Sun. The weeks will still be with 7 days, to avoid bigger change in the work world.

Let's construct this calendar

For the units, I simply used the current name and prefixing the letter n.

We have 365 nDays to dispose. We can see that 365 = 52 * 7 + 1. So we can start that we'll have 52 nWeeks + 1 nDay.

52 = 4 * 13 : Let's place 13 nMonths of 4 nWeeks each one, which 28 nDays in 1 nMonth.

that way the calendar obtained is very strict and each nth nDay from the mth nMonth will be eaxctly the same xth day of the week.

Regarding units during the day, why don't cut the nDay in 10 nHours, and every nHour in 100 nMinutes? I didn't already make the conversion calculs, because I'll need to know the exact number of seconds in one year, year as it's astronomical term. Don't forget that 1 second = 1 nSecond.

We can notice that this change of scall for the hours and minutes will imply a tweak problem for the conversion from Gregorian dates to a date of this new calendar. In fact the minutes around midnight will sometimes be equal to the previous day, sometimes not. This will depend from Sun gap, so depends about the leap years... One more time once the conversion calcul will be done, the answers to these questions will be very clear and simple.

There is still one thing to do: define the relation with the current calendar and when it should be used. As the December 21st, 20012 seems to be an important date for many reasons, I propose to use this date as the first date of this new calendar. That's imply that the first nDay of the year will also be the winter's day, or more scientifically speaking the day of the winter solstice; date from when the days starts to become longer (in the north hemisphere).

I created a web page to show this calendar, with the dates relation.

This imply many nice thing for the season:

• The spring will be the 7th nDay of the 4th nMonth, which will be equivalent to a Sunday.
• The summer will be the 14th nDay of the 7th nMonth, still a Sunday.
• the autumn will be the 21st nDay of the 10th nMonth, one more time a Sunday.

And if you look on the calendar, these dates are obliquely line up.

That's it about the theorical part of this calendar. You probably thought I'm totally crazy because I thought at least more than one second about this craziness, but why not?

After all most of the inventors was taken for fool at their time because they didn't think with the same paradigm than the others.

And you, what do you think about that?

Version française de ce billet

To do a nice lipdub :

• Take 300 people whom are most student at the IUT of Belfort-Montbéliard
• A track which is 100% student : Monsieur Connard from Tock'art
• Only one repetition morning
• One shooting afternoon with some technical trouble with CD player

You've got le méchant lipdub.

 

And probably many more and more...

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On these pages, this book try to answer to one question: "How could we manage long projects when needs and requirements are changing between the beginning and the end of the project?"
With their experience in the website design, Adaptive Path explain us how they work, but even more interesting, which errors they did and what they did to not reproduce them.

The first chapters speaks about products and/or services to be designed. Quick reminder and extension of the Purple Cow, it's explained that time when designers created without take care of the user is past. The user -and his experience- should be now the center of the development process to result in a product which will please -and so which will be bought.
We learn how to create user cases more convivial, by developing the empathy for the final user. Adaptive path discovered actually that this empathy, which must be present in the whole team, the project will most of time fo to the trash or won't be as good as expected.

Then along the reading we're starting to draw the Adaptive Path's work methodology. They set up an work organization allowing us to increase the team spirit and the design ideas for the final result. Nobody is excluded from the project meeting: developer, graphic designer, project manager, and the client speaks all together about the solution to realize a successful final product. The method isn't infallible. Errors are actually part of the process, used to correct as soon as possible the project thanks to the user tests.

Finally the last chapter speaks about the Agile method which correspond to the description above. At the first reading it looks like funnier, and more pleasant than the heavy development method. But when a project manager will read this, he won't like it simply because, as the name said, this method make it a matter of principle of the team should be flexible to answer to the expectation when they arrive or when they are discovered. This is what its strength, and also its weakness.
How a project manager will know how long will take a project before knowing what will do his team? To do that, Adaptive Path explain his own experience for doing this transition smoothly. Some key points that we could remember are: encourage innovation, improve feedback and user support, and make development more iterative.

If you're a project manager or development manager in a company, no matter what is its size, I strongly recommend this book. It won't probably be possible for you to implement the idea immediately. However it'll provide you new ways to work and fresh ideas.

Version française de ce billet

A new website, with an international target this time, is using nyroModal : Bob Dylan (official website).

Here is an utilization example.

Thanks to PJ who told me that in a comment.

By surfing in some French online store to find my new laptop, I called at the Boulanger (Baker in English) website.

I clicked on a thumbnail to see the zoom, and I immediately recognize nyroModal. After a quick investigation in the source, it's really the 1.1 version of my plugin which is used here!

What a pleasure for me to see this plugin used in a national online store!

I sent a message to the technical team through their form to ask some questions regarding this choice, and tell them they should update. I didn't get an answer for now. If by chance somebody working on it or in charge of this choice read this, I'll be glad of he could contact me.