Someone asked what decimal time format I prefer, so I figure it's time I explain again the ones used on this site.
Showing posts with label Swatch. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Swatch. Show all posts
2016/03/26
2016/03/14
Eliminate time zones, while we're at it
Someone just edited the Wikipedia article on Swatch Internet Time to add a link to this TechRepublic article from from last year. The article doesn't say anything new, but it does talk about the problems with time zones and Daylight Saving Time that Internet Time was supposed to solve, which happens to be apropos to the DST post I wrote yesterday.
2014/08/30
Swatch on TLDR
The NPR program On the Media publishes a podcast and blog called TLDR, which is an Internet abbreviation for "too long; didn't read". On MJD 56896.7 (August 27) they re-released a podcast originally released on 56701.6 (February 13), which was about Swatch's Internet Time. You can listen to the podcast and read the transcript.
@63
MJD 56900.021
2013/06/09
iPhone and iPad apps
Apps in this post:
CalRep by Jacques Lafon (MuppetJack)
I have more apps for iPhone and iPad. Since I've been posting about the French Republican Calendar, I'll post about those first. I've talked earlier about Calendrier, Salut et Fraternité for iPhone, Salut et Fraternité for iPad and revol-di. Now we have some more.
CalRep by Jacques Lafon (MuppetJack) is a universal app (meaning it is designed for both iPhone and iPad). Originally released October 2, 2012 (56202, CCXXI/1/11), version 2.1 November 5, 2012 (56236, CCXXI/2/15). It is free, with $1.99 in-app purchase for the "complete version". I don't know what that means, and I'm not going to pay before I find out. In addition to the current date, you can convert between Gregorian and Republican dates for any year after I. I found one bug: all the Roman numerals for years are wrong on the selector, e.g. the current year 221 shows CCXX, although on the iPhone (but not iPad) the year is also correctly shown next to the picture. It starts in 1792 as "Yr (1) / Yr I (2) / Yr II (3)…" It sends daily alerts, which I like, and you can set what time to receive them, although for some reason you can't get them before 9 am, which is late for me. The dates are calculated according to what I call the continuous rule, which is the fixed rule that leap days are added before (not after) most years divisible by 4, which is continuous with leap days during the Revolution, although those were determined by the equinox rather than a fixed rule, so sometimes it's a day off from the equinox date in some years. It does not show the decimal time, but it does show for each date the month's calendar girl and a picture of the rural calendar name, although for today it shows the barbel fish instead of the cornflower (barbeaux)! (See previous post.) It also has links to Wikipedia articles, although some of them don't exist, as such. Unlike some of the others, it does not show decimal time.
Update: The CalRep app is no more. It has been updated to version 3.0 and renamed UniCal - Universal Calendar, with a new icon, and now includes a bunch of other calendars, including Chinese, Mayan, Hebrew, Islamic and Persian. (What, no Julian/Orthodox?) The year number bug has been fixed. Also, you can now get alerts as early as 5 am, although it does not always work for me. The years appear to begin on the equinox. I just noticed that only half the day-names appear; every other day says "Free Version", so now I guess I know what the difference is. Maybe that's why I'm only getting half the daily notifications. 56477.131 (Sextidi 16 Messidor an CCXXI à 1 heure 37 minutes décimales t.m.P.)
Calendrier républicain by Hachette Livre is also a free universal app, released on September 3, 2012 (56173, CCXX/12/17). It converts between Gregorian and Republican dates, and also converts French day names (like Barbeaux) to dates, although you have to scroll through an unsorted list of 366 names! However, like revol-di, it only works for dates during the Revolution, itself. But you can use it to find current dates if you add 220 to the year. It also does not show decimal time.
TI:ME by Alexander Clauss is a 99¢ universal app, released November 2, 2012 (56233). It displays the current time in any of the following formats: decimal, local standard (24-hour, 12-hour or AM/PM), standard in other timezones, Braille, hex, octal, Swatch Internet Time (.beat), NATO DTG, trig (degrees or radians), or with numbers represented by symbols on the periodic table of elements. There are various settings for each clock.
Geek Time Pro by reizverstaerker medienwerkstatt OG is a 99¢ iPhone app, released August 9, 2011 (55782). It displays the time in binary coded sexagesimal (lights or 1/0), binary coded decimal (BCD), hex time or decimal time.
Duodi 22 Prairial an CCXXI à 2 heures 42 minutes décimales t.m.P.
MJD 56453.236
2012/08/22
What's Metric Time?
Thetechguy2000 is a pretty smart kid who has a new video up talking about metric time. He has obviously read Lyle Zapatopi's A Guide to Metric Time, since he mentions Lyle's proposed quinto prefix for 10-5, so 1 quintoday is equal to 0.864 second. He also talks about Swatch .beats Internet Time.
MJD56161.908 and 33 quintodays
2012/07/07
New metric units
I received the following from James Strom, with my comments added:
Hi! I like to dabble in things like you have at your decimal time site. Decimal time is definitely an idea who's time has come.
Whose time has come? I'd say it already came and went two centuries ago!
But for it to be practical it must be compatible with any metric system in use. If the second were changed by anything other than by a power of ten then the cost of conversion would be enormous. The definitions of a joule, newton, ampere, volt, etc. would all have to be changed as well. Can you imagine having to multiply your wattage by 0.864 cubed to arrive at the new watts? A simple way around that is to simply keep the second either the same or 10 or times smaller. I would recommend the latter so as to allow a second to be equal to 1/864th of a milliday and for other reasons.
I agree that the metric system (SI) is a serious impediment to introducing new time units. Redefining the second would be a practically impossible undertaking, regardless of whether it's by a power of ten. In fact, with today's technology it's just about as easy to convert decimally as otherwise. And you cannot simply change unit values while keeping the same names, or nobody would ever know if you were talking about the old or new units. Remember that everything in the world for hundreds of years has been recorded using essentially the same second. Likewise for other units, although not for as long. Creating all new units with the same names, even if they're a factor of 10 different, would create chaos.
I have noticed that if Greenwich is used as the prime meridian then 10 time zones can be created which fit very neatly with the continents. So forget Swatch's idea.
You apparently mean Swatch eliminating time zones. You do not say why we should favor 10 time zones over one, or 24. We may as well reform everything at once. Business today is international. So is my family. It seems to me that time zones one-tenth day (2.4 hours) wide lack the advantages of smaller one-hour zones, while being only halfway to a single one for the world.
Any modification of our current system should have as a high priority ease of convertibility. The system described below has that in mind. In fact, it could be used by anyone right now without any trouble.
There is nothing that is as easy to convert as no change at all. You need to have major advantages to outweigh the disadvantage of any conversion, no matter how easy it might be. And I don't really think that your proposal would be as easy as you claim for those who are currently using these units.
It won't be necessary for any international organization to get everyone else to agree to the change for it to work.
Who would use it, then?
It also assumes that lower case letters will someday be eliminated.
Why? That would eliminate half the available symbols for units and prefixes. It would also require everyone on the Internet to SHOUT all the time.
I've devised a modification of the current metric system that I think would be simpler, more intuitive, and easy to convert to. It would be similar to the change from the old cgs system (centimeter-gram-second) to the mks system (meter-kilogram-second).
These two systems used different names for nonequivalent units. It was also a big pain in the ass to change, and not everyone has, yet.
As it is now the basic unit of mass requires a prefix (kilo) and doesn't correspond with weight.
The kilogramme was originally defined as a unit of weight. The definitions of mass and weight were separated after it was realized that an object's mass is relatively constant, but it's weight is not. My sisters in Colorado gain weight every time they come to visit me on the coast, but their masses remain the same. (Unless my Mom is cooking.) Scales do not actually measure mass, but the force of gravity acting on a particular mass. However, for everyday use we can use our weight to approximate our mass. To those relatively few professionals who have to use units of force to measure weights, it is advantageous that mass and weight have different values, lest they get confused.
The unit of density is, unlike almost all other measurement systems, is not even close to that of water but, in fact, less than that of air. This makes it difficult to visualize them.
The SI unit of density is kg/m3. Water is 1000 kg/m3, or 1 t/m3 = 1 g/cm3 = g/ml. I have no problem visualizing a cubic meter of water, or of a milliliter (cc).
On the other hand, if a system were devised that made the unit of acceleration close to the force of gravity on earth then it would be easy to picture it. Also, weight would become almost synonymous with mass. This would make it easy to imagine force in terms of these units. And if the unit of density were the same as that of water then there would be the obvious benefits.
I don't have a problem "picturing" these things, nor do I see how that is necessary. I already weigh myself in pounds or kg, not 780 newtons. I imagine newtons only when measuring small things in a lab. (Which I have not done in decades.) The benefits are not obvious to me.
This is what I propose:
1) The new unit of mass would be called a ton but would have the same mass as a kilogram.
We already have several different ton units causing confusion, and you want to add one that is not even close?
2) The "new" meter would be equal to one tenth of an "old" meter or a decimeter.
Again, I don't see the benefit of changing the value by an order of magnitude.
3) The day would be divided into 1,000 minutes. Each minute, in turn, would be divided into 864 seconds. Thus the "new" second would be equivalent to one tenth of an "old" second.
A compromise that has all the problems of both, and the benefits of neither!
I won't go through the rest, since I am not interested in changing the metric system. That ship sailed a long time ago. It took a lot of time and trouble to get the entire world to accept the current metric system, and now that it's done, there is no advantage to massively change it now, even if it's not perfect. We have discussed these issues ad nauseum on this site in the past.
4) The ampere would remain the same and would be defined as the amount of current that would produce a force of 2X10^-8 Newtons between two wires, etc., in terms of the new units. In other words; the ampere would be 1/10,000th of the value that it have if it were defined by the basic three units alone. That's an improvement over the current system that requires division by the square root of ten million.5) The unit of angle would be 1/1,000th of a circumference. This would align it with the units of time. The earth, in relation to the sun, would rotate one degree per minute.6) The unit of temperature would be defined as 1/1,000th of the triple point of water. A celsius-like system could be used as well so that water would freeze at 0 and absolute zero would be -1000.7) The unit for amount of substance would not change except for its name. It shall be called a quant instead of a mole and be represented by a Q instead of mol.8) The unit of luminosity would be equal to one joule per second per steradian in terms of the new units and be renamed the young (after the scientist, of course).Each of the units shall be represented by one letter only without regard to upper or lower case status.The prefixes shall follow this rule as well.Thus there will be 26 common units and a like number of prefixes.Ratio refers to the ratio of the size of the "new" units to that of the "old" ones in the mks system.
Unit Symbol Quantity Formula Ratio
Ton T Mass T 1
Meter M Length M 0.1
Are R Area M^2 0.01
Liter L Volume M^3 0.001
Second S Time S 0.1
Hertz Z Frequency 1/S 10
Einstein E Velocity M/S 1
Gal G Acceleration M/S^2 10
Bole B Momentum T*M/S 1
Newton N Force T*M/S^2 10
Planck P Action T*M^2/S 0.1
Joule J Energy T*M^2/S^2 1
Ampere A Current A 1
Coulomb C Charge A*S 0.1
Weber W Flux J/A 1
Volt V Potential J/C 10
Henry H Inductance W/A 1
Farad F Capacitance C/V 0.01
Siemens S Conductance A/V 0.1
Ohm O Resistance V/A 10
Gauss U Strength A/M 10
Maxwell X Intensity V/M 100
Degree D Angle D 0.36
Kelvin K Temperature K 0.27316
Quant Q Amount Q 1
Young Y Luminosity Y 6,830
Symbol Prefix Multiple
V 10^33
W 10^30
X 10^27
Y Yotta 10^24
Z Zetta 10^21
E Exa 10^18
P Peta 10^15
T Tera 10^12
G Giga 10^9
M Mega 10^6
K Kilo 10^3
H Hecto 10^2
D Deka 10^1
S Deci 10^-1
C Centi 10^-2
L Milli 10^-3
U Micro 10^-6
N Nano 10^-9
B Pico 10^-12
F Femto 10^-15
A Atto 10^-18
O Zepto 10^-21
J Yocto 10^-24
Q 10^-27
I 10^-30
R 10^-33
This system is meant to work with decimal time, a reformed calendar, and the eventual elimination of lower case letters.But that is the subject of another email.(Don't worry about copyright or anything. I don't care who gets credit for what. I only bring this up because while googling your name I found some idiot who was trying to take credit for coming up with an obvious idea that dated back to the French Revolution. There's all sorts out there.)MJD 56115.995
2010/07/25
@beat app for iOS by Christophe Dirac
There is a new free app displaying Swatch .beats/Internet Time. @beat by Christophe Dirac displays local 24-hour time and date along with the current beats and tenths (decibeats). It also shows a slide show of the first 50 images in your camera roll and works in landscape mode. There are no options. Tapping the "i" brings up a tribute to Internet Time inventor, Nicolas Hayek, who recently passed away, and a very brief history of Internet Time, although no description is given for what .beats actually are.
The app store search function does not recognize non-alphanumeric characters, so try searching for a combination of "beat" and the author's name.
MJD 55402.920
@961
Update (MJD 55418.253): I noticed that the photo linked here has changed, which is because the app has been updated. Although not yet published in the app store, there are some new features, such as local temperature and humidity, day of week, choice of background colors and text-to-speech. See the author's site for complete details.
2010/07/14
New Clocks iOS app by Dennerlein Consulting
- Standard time (24x60x60 per day)
- Swatch Internet Time (1000x100 per day)
- New Earth Time (360x60x60 per day)
- Decimal time (10x100x100 per day)
- Stardate (00002.728 per day)
The standard and decimal clocks display hours, minutes and seconds, the NET clock displays degrees, minutes and seconds but only increments every 15 seconds (which is one second of standard time), and the Swatch clock displays .beats and centibeats. If you tap one of the times, it will show you a brief explanation and a "More info" button that links to Wikipedia. You can change the background color for the app, and the font for each clock can be set independently.
The only bug I've found is that the Swatch and decimal time clocks sometimes skip a second/centibeat, an issue we've seen in other apps.
MJD 55392.126
Update: (55392.366) I just noticed that the Swatch .beats show local time, rather than "Biel Mean Time" (actually CEWT/BST or GMT+1). As you can see from the screenshot, the Swatch .beats (@429.89) are the same as the decimal time (4:29.89), which is pretty redundant.
MJD 55392.126
Update: (55392.366) I just noticed that the Swatch .beats show local time, rather than "Biel Mean Time" (actually CEWT/BST or GMT+1). As you can see from the screenshot, the Swatch .beats (@429.89) are the same as the decimal time (4:29.89), which is pretty redundant.
Update: (55418.260) The app has been updated to fix the problem with the .beats I noted in my previous update, so they are now on BMT. Also, another clock has been added which displays stardates, according to the method used by TrekGuide.com, which basically increments 1000.000 units per year, or about 2.74 per day.
2010/05/04
2010/01/23
Wither Swatch .beats?
Apparently Swatch no longer sells .beat watches. These were the only mass-produced watches with decimal time. Fortunately, they are still available on eBay, where I bought one a few years ago. I stopped wearing it when the band broke; I'm not much for wristwatches anyway, and I use my mobile for the time, like most people now. Now the battery is dying, so the display is blinking and the light does not come on, but it still works, for the moment.
2010/01/17
Swatch .beats/Internet Time apps
I already mentioned earlier one free Swatch beats/Internet Time app for iPhone/iPod Touch, Internet Beat by Thomas Cherry. Dennis pointed out in his comment that this app has a bug, because it updates once per second, and a centibeat is less than one second, so it sometimes skips a centibeat. This is a pretty minor bug. However, I have noticed a bigger one. Half the time, when you turn the phone from portrait to landscape, the number of .beats changes. This is because when the centibeats are displayed in landscape mode you are seeing the exact number of .beats, but when in portrait mode it is rounded to the nearest .beat, instead of simply truncating. For example, @199.50 becomes @200. This is like saying that 1:59:30 is 2:00. A clock should not do that. If you go to the official Swatch website you will see that the app is half a .beat fast when in portrait mode, or 43 seconds.
I also found another app, InternetTime by Jaewon Choi for $0.99. I have not tried it, but I can see from the picture that it displays a map of the earth in the background, with approximate areas of day and night. It also shows the current date, and unlike the other app displays leading zeros, such as @090 instead of @90.
@971
MJD 55213.930
I also found another app, InternetTime by Jaewon Choi for $0.99. I have not tried it, but I can see from the picture that it displays a map of the earth in the background, with approximate areas of day and night. It also shows the current date, and unlike the other app displays leading zeros, such as @090 instead of @90.
@971
MJD 55213.930
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