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- and any other notable times. Sorry, readers in the UK will have to wait until next month for this.
Bongggg...
http://www.cccbr.or...rdings/grttomox.wav
Modestly suggest this for your 12:34:56 7/8/09 chiming pleasure [pocmloc, Aug 06 2009]
Times news story
http://timesnews.ty...for-your-diary.html
"At the anointed hour, a chap on Facebook warns: "Planes will fall from the sky." Meanwhile, a poster on DavidIcke.com writes: "There must be some huge cosmic significance to this hugely significant cosmic coincidence."" [hippo, Aug 07 2009]
Appropriate day for this (shameless self promo)
Floating_20holiday_...the_20same_20number
10:10:10 10/10/10 happens twice today [doctorremulac3, Oct 10 2010]
ni-yun
http://www.atlantat...ory.info/part1.html
OT, but I owed [doctorremulac3] a cite [mouseposture, Oct 10 2010]
ICAO Spelling Alphabet
http://en.wikipedia...O_spelling_alphabet
You guys are all crazy, and still crazy. [blissmiss] [Boomershine, Oct 10 2010]
Scrollum Wormius
http://dofuswiki.wi...ki/Scrollum_Wormius
I have no idea.... [Boomershine, Oct 10 2010]
Written on a piece of paper.
http://www.whattimeisiteccles.com/
[mouseposture, Nov 22 2011]
Pi
http://two-n.com/pi/
Searchable Pi for [xenzag] [neutrinos_shadow, Nov 11 2012]
Does pi contain all finite sequences of numbers?
http://www.askamath...n-the-digits-of-pi/
[hippo, Nov 12 2012]
Does pi contain 1000 consecutive zeroes?
http://mathoverflow...e-zeroes-in-base-10
[hippo, Nov 12 2012]
average working hours in the US
http://www.bls.gov/...ease/empsit.t18.htm
[Voice, Nov 10 2013]
number of workers in the US
http://www.bls.gov/...ease/empsit.t17.htm
[Voice, Nov 10 2013]
Large data centers are industrial scale operations using as much electricity as a small town
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_center
[Voice, Nov 10 2013]
http://www.theguard...age-memory-contests
[hippo, Mar 13 2015]
"Official"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
How we are "supposed" to write dates & times. [neutrinos_shadow, Feb 23 2022]
[link]
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It's the other way round. They get it in the States today but we have to wait until next month.
OK for other times too? |
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Yup, I just realised I'd typed "US" when I should have typed "UK" - it's still early... |
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You could make it even more unique if you added incrementally significant location co-ordinates, and to cap it all a particular altitude above sea-level. Throwing in something to do with a weight measure, a temperature, and an angle of inclination would obviously be taking it too far. |
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(Damn! - I'm still trying to work out what's special about 21:34 7/11/18 in ISO 8601 format...) |
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Ah! - a kind of Fibonacci series, but not the usual (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34) one. |
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For a moment, I thought that's 4 5 6 1 2 3. |
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OK. Got it eventually ... force not particularly strong over here at the moment |
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What a difference a day makes.
There should be a special chime for when one
finally gets this. Or a loud *BOING* at the very least. |
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A reminder for those who want to set a reminder for tomorrow. Midnight tonight doesn't count. This might have been a good opportunity to test the old 'If everyone in China jumped simultaneously...' |
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I can barely contain myself - only 2 hours to go. |
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Is it going to be like New Year's? Or even more of an anticlimax? |
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(I'm joking, I'm going for a tequila when it strikes...) |
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Link added - classic stuff. |
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Be sure you don't miss 09:09.09 09/09/09 tomorrow... |
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Erm... How might I miss it? |
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Okay, let's take a head count. Who's missing?
That will identify the baker who hijacked the Mexican
Airliner. It's gotta be one of us...God only speaks to
*us* through the dates on the calendar, right??? |
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<patiently waiting for 14:13.12 11/10/09...> |
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I was in the bath but my daughter knocked on the door to tell me i'd missed it. |
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How many special dates and times are there in a year, on the whole? If there were enough, the non-special ones would become the special ones. |
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...and your specialness threshhold. |
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It also depends on the unit of time, for instance the ten millionth second in the year.
By the way, it's "threshold" because in Anglosaxon it was spelt "þrescold", not "þresc hold". |
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[Ian] oops, yes, and I always forget about the 'real' ellipsis
character. |
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Today's ISO formatted date is palindromic: 2010-01-02 |
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So the time was ten ytnewt, was it? |
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We've been doing that for twenty-six years and two days now, [bigsleep]. |
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I think we should engage in a really important project where we identify something special about every date, time and date and time combination from now on until doomsday instead of whatever trivial tasks occupy us otherwise. |
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<submarine-style warning klaxon>Palindrome alert - It's 01.02.2010 today!</sswk> |
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sp: <Aroooogah!>your text here</A> |
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ooh, it's nearly 10:10:10 10/10/10 |
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10:10.10 10/10/10 here in about 10 minutes. |
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Beaten to it by about 10s. |
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2011 is prime so in the early hours of 2nd Feb next year we'll have the first string of prime numbers since late November in 2003. |
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//And then all life as we know it ends// Life as we know it is
always ending. Continuously. |
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Could sell a book to the gullible about harmonic
convergence. Say it's the perfect time to rub crystals
on your chakras and start auming or something. (Not
sure how to spell the stupid kind of om, only the
measurement of resistance ohm) |
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[doctorremulac3] You think it's a coincidence that "Ohm"
and
"Om" differ by only one letter? The ancient mystics
understood the Oneness of All. Definitely an opportunity
there, for a best-selling self-help book by an engineer
type.
Would talk about harmonic convergence, etc., but with
diagrams of phase space and the complex plane. The
readers' level of
incomprehension would be the same as with all the other
books but people would be sooo impressed with the
(suitably
watered-down) math. Go for it! |
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I've always known I could make a lot of money as a charlaton, but not sure how I'd sleep at night. I went to Catholic school and the only part that stuck was that morality stuff. |
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I'd probably blow it anyway. Some old lady would hand me her welfare check to align her shakras and I'd break down and say "Look hon, this is all bullshit. Go buy yourself some food." |
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Back to the topic of number sequences, I'd like to tell a riddle I made up. |
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What's the one number in this sequence that's different from the others? (Hint: Numerically they're all different so that's not it.) |
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8's the only one with 2 enclosures. |
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I may need to work on the hint so it's not too annoying. |
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Seven is the only number with two syllables. |
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I should probably have the hint eliminate all the other answers like that one. Unfortunately then the hint might read like a 3 page legal disclaimer which might tend to bore. |
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Incidently, I haven't found anybody who likes this riddle yet. In fact it seems to piss people off. |
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1 It's the only repeated one. |
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edit: //it seems to piss people of/ Well, sure. It's an ill-
posed question. For *each* number in the sequence,
there's
an infinite
number of reasons why that one is the correct answer. |
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edit2: Telephone operators used to be taught to
pronounce digits so that they were distinct from each
other even over a noisy transmission line; the
pronunciation for "nine" was two syllables ("ni-yen") <link>. |
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I thought it was "nine-ah." |
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No kidding? I always thought that was just a comedy affectation for comedians imitating operators, usually while holding their nose to sound all nasally for some reason. You learn things from this site. |
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How about: "When you read this sequence of numbers, 9 of them share one thing in common. Which one doesn't? (Hint, the answer has nothing to do with math)" |
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The hint would be in the reading. A numeric answer wouldn't have anything to do with reading. For instance, ten is a two digit number whether you read it or not. |
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Maybe I'll try that one next. A physics/math major buddy of mine hates the thing and can write about why it's a sucky riddle to the 35th decimal point. But I think he was just pissed because he came up with an array of about 20 answers, all having to do with math. |
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[d3] I found a cite for you, since you did me the honor of
taking
me seriously <link>. |
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Yup, from that link: "The word please was supposed to be pronounced "pleeyazz", the number nine was to be pronounced "niyun", and the word line was "liyun". |
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Yea, that makes sense. I wonder how much of the reason they only hired women for these jobs was because the higher frequency of a woman's voice was easier to hear over these early comm lines? |
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I'm only 9:10 10/10 still. You guys are all crazy, and still
crazy. |
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//You guys are all crazy, and still crazy.// |
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What is your point, exactly, [bliss]? |
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I'm surprised no one mentioned that the military and
commercial aviation crowds (ICAO) pronounce many
digits and letters differently than they are spelled.
[link] |
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[doc] //I wonder how much of the reason they only
hired women for these jobs was because the higher
frequency of a woman's voice was easier to hear
over these early comm lines?// |
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Probably plenty of the reason...that and women
just like to talk on the phone more, of course.
(JOKE!!!..you learn, eventually.) |
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<rant>While we are on the subject(?), has it
occurred to anyone just how much actual audio
quality we lost with the invention of cell/mobile
phones? |
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Just before cell phones really took over the market
(and our lives), major improvements in audio BW
and signal-to-noise ratios were implemented
(remember Sprint's "hear the sound of a pin
dropping" ads?). We traded most of that for
portability. And, for someone who mostly uses a
land line (me), it was a BIG loss. About 1/4 of the
calls I get drop out sometime in the conversation.
About 1/4 of the conversations themselves are
about the quality (or lack of it) of the audio. I
usually can't remember what the rest is
about.</rant> |
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Why were women hired as telephone operators?
Engineer: because their higher-pitched voices were easier
to
understand
[Boomershine] imitating troll: because they like to
talk
MBA: because they'll work for lower wages
Feminist: because they'll work for lower wages |
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So, "because they'll work for lower wages" gets a plurality
of
votes. Since truth is chimerical, defined only by
consensus,
that is, therefore, the true reason. QED |
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Re sound quality, here's another half-remembered telco
history fact: in the early days, Bell Telephone did a lot of
what we would now call basic research in psychophysics, to
work out just how narrow the bandwidth could get, while
preserving intelligibility of human voices. The fidelity of
analog, wirefull telephony wasn't all that good -- but the
developers knew how good it needed to be, and kept it
inside those specs. |
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[doc]//harmonic convergence// |
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!!! I always thought that was 'harmonica virgins'!
(What the hell is a harmonic convergence, anyway?
Catholic school didn't teach us THAT...just blessed
virgins, not the harmonica kind. Have you recovered,
btw?) |
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[mouse]QED, maybe, except for //Feminist: because
they'll work for lower wages// |
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Make that "because men get higher wages." Subtle
difference to some, but not to the feminist. |
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Yea, I noticed that. (The loss of sound quality when cellphones pretty much replaced analog phones) |
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Another thing that's not talked about much is how much quality was lost in the digitization of music especially when the entire signal path from instrument to listener's ear is digital. |
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Compared to digital, analog recording was a very inefficient method of transferring sound information which has worked to it's benefit. You have to tweak, squeeze, expand, roll off, gate and do so many other tricks to get the sound from a to b but along the way the tape, tubes, discrete electronics along the signal path would make for a very pleasant sound at the finished product. |
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Case in point: stand in a room with a drummer playing a set complete with cymbals. It's a painful experience that hurts your ears. Analog recording has such a hard time getting all those transient peaks that hurt the ear that you'd really have to try to get them through to the listener. With digital it's all right there in all it's painful, un-listenable glory. In fact with analog the trick is to get the signal to the listener, with digital it's more about holding back everything that doesn't sound good. |
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That's why you can listen to old music for much longer without getting ear fatigue. Not to mention the fact that songwriting and talented preformance are artforms that are pretty much dead. Not sure what the smart kids are doing these days but they're certainly not getting into music. |
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[Boomershine] Economists' simplifying assumptions are a pet
peeve of mine, & I think you just neatly encapsulated one,
there. I may have a use for that example. |
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[mouse] Not sure why they are a pet peeve to you,
but I would consider "they'll work for lower wages"
the simpler assumption...and the right one. Mine was
the 'cover-your-ass PC' version. |
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[mouse]//The fidelity of analog, wirefull telephony
wasn't all that good -- but the developers knew how
good it needed to be, and kept it inside those
specs.// |
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They had to make compromises with the
technology/bw available. |
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The same thing occurred in the development of
radio, and especially television, which required a
huge BW for the times. Analog color TV systems
were a nightmare of technology, in part because
broadcast standards required them to accommodate
the previous B & W system. |
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Talking about clocks making a special chime for interesting date / time combinations. |
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British Army Infantry Doctrine: "Hold until Relieved". |
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//Talking about clocks making a special chime for
interesting date / time combinations.// |
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Really? Where the heck do you see that? I can't
scroll up past the harmonica virgins stuff. I run out of
scrollum. |
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You can get tablets for that, now. |
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//You can get tablets for that, now.// |
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Really? Some kind of pills? Where do I get them? |
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...<searching> [link] "Scrollum Wormius"? |
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You can get them from loads of places. They're no good bcause they don't work; but you can get them non the less. Like Ginseng, or Royal Jelly, or Ginko Biloba ... |
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Ginseng, Royal Jelly, or Ginko Biloba all work great. Just not for the person buying it. |
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This got gross. Now it's almost 10:10 10/10 agin...go
figure. |
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"4" 'cuz it's the only one where the number of letters in the word equals the number: ... f o u r . |
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It'll be ten past eight here later tonight. |
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As I was sending txt messages to my friends at 20:10, 20/10/2010 last night, I realised I should have done it earlier in the day, at
10:20:10, 20/10/2010; although getting that level of prescision from the phone company probably wouldn't have worked... |
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Hey, it's 11/02/2011!
Later, it will be 20:11, 11/02/2011. (Yes, I'm a geek...)
I'll see you all again at 11:11:11, 11/11/11. (And maybe at 20:11, 20/11/2011.) It all depends on which date format you choose - I prefer dd/mm/yyyy (always 8 digits). |
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"1", because it's //the one number//. |
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Argh! I missed 6:07:08 9/10/11 yesterday! |
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Well pay attention tomorrow at 11:10:11, 11/10/11 |
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I'm a bit slow...
20:11, 20/11/2011 was yesterday (for me, here at the beginning of the earth...). Some of the rest of you can still catch it. |
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I've got the time written on this piece of paper /eccles |
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Class quotation Mr Honeydew! |
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I missed 16:15:14 13/12/11 yesterday. Really, this needs to be a phone app, with different chimes for sequences of numbers, repeated numbers, palindromes etc. Then, this concept could be expanded with additional special chimes for lunar eclipses,
Earth-Sun-Moon syzygy, etc. |
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This has evolved into a collection of special times
missed by [hippo]. |
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It's an arbitrary designation but if it was a free app I'd
probably install it. |
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I'm waiting for later this evening: 21:02:20.12 21/02/2012 |
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//this needs to be a phone app// I like that idea, you should be able to create some relatively simple regex string that you could apply to date/time strings set to various locale defaults, that would output a positive when matched with some numerically auspicious values. |
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07:08:09 10/11/12 this morning... |
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just think... somewhere within the infinite sequence of the digits of pi are the exact time, day, and year of any permutation that anyone can outline. True, false or unprovable? (where's that damned Gödel when I need him?) |
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[xenzag] good question. I don't know the answer, but have added some links. |
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I will be at the roulette wheel on my birthday.
12/12/12, at 12:12:12, I place a $12 bet on number
12. Wish me luck. |
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I like the idea of an app for palindromic/series dates. |
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Aaand, it's just gone 12:12, 12/12/12 here at the start of the world. It's the last time for a long time a date/time line-up like this can happen. |
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Only 5 hours to go here! (I'm temporarily in
Canada) |
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Only just over 88 years, [neutrinos_shadow] (01:01 01/01/01). Some ’baker who is here today may live to see it. Do you think they will post on this thread when they do? |
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So, yes, today is my birthday. The plan was to head
out to Spirit Mountain Casino and place a $12 bet on
number 12 at the roulette table at 12:12. |
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I bought $15 in chips and placed my $12 bet at 12:11
(thinking the spin would end at 12:12. It didn't and I
lost. |
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Well, the "spinner lady" (no idea what the correct
term is) said, "I can get another spin in by 12:12." |
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So, another $12 and the $3 let over from the first
spin. |
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I figure she's pulling my leg. She isn't! I walk out with
over $500 more than I came in with...even with a
hefty tip! |
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//What ARE the odds?!?!?// - 37 to 1? |
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Does that mean that this is actually the first money-making halfbakery idea ever? |
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There's still the twenty-four hour clock and the colonisation of Mars. It's a good enough reason to get there in the next dozen years. |
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<waits patiently for 08:09:10 11/12/13 - only a year
to go...> |
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It was on the news this morning (BBC R4 "Today") - today
(9/11/13) is the last time for nearly a century that the date
consists of three consecutive odd numbers. The next time
this will happen is 1st March 2105. |
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and then
11/12/13 14:15:16
//nanoseconds since
the big bang//
Assuming every
nanosecond is a pixel Acording to Wikipedia the
big bang happened 13.798 ± 0.037 billion years ago.
Multiplying that by the number of nanoseconds in
an average year we get 4.3542211e+26
That's
435,433,110,000, 000,000,000,000,000
or 435 zettabits without compression. Larger
modern data centers are about are an exabyte in
size so it would take 54,000 of them to store the
picture. They would be the size of the built-up
part of Los
Angeles and use as much power as California, and
all of its rivers or half of its coast
line for cooling (presuming you don't want to boil
off any rivers)
If you take a minute to fully
appreciate a high definition picture (about ten
megabytes) this one would take
6,122,080,700,000,000 minutes, or 11,640,100,000
years. quod Google
There are about 136
million non-farm workers in the US, each working
35 hours in an average week. If they all worked
together and if they could appreciate the picture
at a rate of one minute per ten megabytes of it
they could appreciate it fully in only 17000 years.
Of course technology will let us create a machine
that can process it in real time the size and power
requirements of a single modern data center in
only about fifty years if Moore's Law holds
(just keep dividing the work by 2 every year and a
half to two years until it fits)
edit: fixed
bytes to bits and redid the math
edit: fixed
more math
edit: fixed even more
math
edit: I just realized you meant a clock to
display the number of nanoseconds, and using its
digits as pixels. It won't be enough to arrange into
anything pretty. |
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And it's just gone 09:10, 11/12/13 here.
Happy Sequence Day, everybody! (Any excuse for a Happy ___ Day.) |
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08:09:10 11/12/13 coming soon |
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followed by 11:12:13 11/12/13 |
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I won't know what to do with myself. |
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ALERT! Tomorrow morning, it will be 3/14/15, 9.26:53am, describing Pi to 9 decimal places (see link) |
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//Tomorrow morning, it will be 3/14/15, 9.26:53am//
Not in the UK it won't! It will be 14/3/15 etc.
<looks at clock>
Ah! Not in the UK it wasn't! It was 14/3/15 etc. |
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We could always revert to the Hebrew calendar. In three
years it'll be 78. |
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And then there's the Amharic calendar which is several
years behind. |
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In the Welsh calendar there's still time to celebrate
12:34.56 7/8/9 |
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Thanks to [voice] for reminding us that today is 2/2/22 |
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Actually I was going to wait for 02:20 22/02/2022 and then two minutes later another chime at 2:22:22 22/2/22 |
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And later, 22:22:22 22/2/22 |
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If you use the "official" year-month-date style, it happened on
Sunday evening: 2022-02-20 22:02:20, but that's just being
pedantic... |
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Has anyone predicted the apocalypse yet? If not I'm calling dibs. It starts at 22:22:22 in your time zone. Don't be late! |
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[pocmloc]; see linky for ISO8601. |
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Thank you [ns]. Almost 12 years of EVERYONE DOING IT COMPLETELY WRONG HOW EMBAREARSEING |
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It'll soon be 22:11:22 22/11/22 |
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