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I had to invent it to imagine some (however far-fetched) conditions under which it would be usable. But it isn't, because these conditions are not practically p
by krick 4y ago
I had to invent it to imagine some (however far-fetched) conditions under which it would be usable. But it isn't, because these conditions are not practically possible. It's just stupid (as it often happens to be with sci-fi). It is just living without the calendar, that's all that it is. And calendar is a useful invention, basically a necessity for any society out of stone age.
Sure, you can just set up a timer which would alert you at some arbitrary moment in the future that it is time to do something. It's how computers do it (if we forget about leap seconds and such). But the point of the calendar and the clock with sane time units (like a minute and an hour) is to keep the frequency and time of your dentist appointments, train schedules and vacations somewhat workable in your head. Which would be much less fun to do in Unix-time.
- db48x 4y agoI don’t find it hard to imagine living without a calendar, or with an arbitrary calendar whose divisions are entirely within my control. In fact, while it might be a strain to keep everything straight in my head without a traditional calendar, it wouldn’t be difficult using pen and paper. One use for a paper calendar is to record distant future events such as dentist appointments, and I don’t see how that would be harder on a linear timeline instead of a grid of days. Naturally I have used scheduling software to arrange meetings, and I can imagine how it would work when you don’t have a fixed calendar. But perhaps I have an unfair advantage. Due to a minor sleep disorder, I have a 25–hour day; I sleep for 8 hours and remain awake for 17. This means that my sleep cycle is never in sync with anyone else, and the limitations of our calendaring software have always been pretty obvious to me. You can imagine the annoyance that dentist appointments cause me, since I never know if I’ll be awake during the day when I am scheduling one. Paper calendars have very limited utility for me.
- Bakary 4y agoWhat about adding a recurring 8 hour calendar block that comes every 17 hours? Then you have a graphical representation of your sleep across time that allows you to fit appointments in. If you can't program it, and the software makes this hard to do, you can use Amazon Turk or something.
- db48x 4y agoWow, that would be a depressing job to get on Amazon Turk :) I’m sure there is an API that I could use to add appointments, or I suppose could make an ical file and import it. I don’t quite have enough dentist appointments to make it worth while though. I did however spend an hour to make a spreadsheet. It only predicts my schedule for the next couple of weeks, but historically that’s been good enough for my colleagues.