February 13, 2009

date/time value reaches 1234567890 tonight

Many computer systems represent date and time values by counting the number of seconds since a specific date and time. The commonly used UNIX date time value counts from 1 January 1970 00:00 GMT.

At 23:31:30 GMT today (Friday 13 February 2009) the unix datetime value reaches the integer number 1234567890.

Frequently asked questions

Q1: Is there a website where I can see a countdown?

A: Why yes, visit : http://www.1234567890day.com or also http://coolepochcountdown.com

Q2: Will anything bad happen?

A: Probably not. We have another 29 years before we reach the maximum 32 bit value for this time, see wikipedia on the 2k38 problem

Q3: Is this important?

A: Not really^[1], just a cool number.

Q4: How do I turn a number into a local date/time?

A: date -r 1234567890

Q5: How do I find out what time it is in this form

A: date +%s

Q6: But I don't have a unix machine?

A: javascript:d=new Date;alert('it is now '+d.getTime()+' seconds since UNIX epoch');

[1]: Unless you wrote some code in the 80's or 90's and never imagined we'd still run your program, or have working computers after y2k and decided that 1234567890 was a nice number to represent something like 'end of file', or 'initiate self destruct sequence'.

February 13, 2009

Telescopic Text story

A nice little story about making a cup of tea by Joe Davis which uses javascript to expand and re-wite the story word by word.

Telescopic Text is a short story by Joe Davis. ...
Telescopic Text is a short story by Joe Davis. The story expands word by word. ....

I wonder if something similar might be a nice starter or exercise from writing in English?

My first thought was some kind of programming project to write a telescopic text editor.

On second thought though, perhaps it is simpler to use a bit of paper. Start with a sentence at the top of the page, and progressively rewrite adding or replacing words to make the story longer and longer, as exercise in drafting and rewriting.