13 ms·

Need The Lord Of The Rings Timeline? It's On Your Mac

93 points by davethenerd 14y ago

spatten 14y ago
If you need something a bit more detailed, then Randall Munroe has you covered: http://xkcd.com/657/ http://xkcd.com/657/
GalacticDomin8r 14y ago
The source for this easter egg is from BSD, not Mac. Likely the import came from FreeBSD, but the LOTR calendar long predates FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=57623 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=57623
cyphersanctus 14y ago
Interesting, but the timeline seems to be inaccurate.
- isleyaardvark 14y ago
  It's a list of calendar dates, not an actual timeline.
  - ksmiley 14y ago
    That explains it. I was confused when I read "Destruction of the Ring" a third of the way through, and "Fellowship begins Quest" at the very end. I wonder whether the developers _could_ have put them in chronological order, ex. 12/13/3019 appearing before 03/18/3021; or if the format requires the ordering it has now.
    - vec 14y ago
      It's probably out of order on purpose. I'm betting this was some of the test data that the developers used, and they just left it in when they finished.
      - xyzzyb 14y ago
        No, the calendar files are anniversaries not timelines. Have some fun: alias anniversaries="ack -a -h `date +"%m/%d"` /usr/share/calendar | sort"
    - graywh 14y ago
      My system has calendar.ubuntu with dates ordered by version number and calendar.debian with multiple groups of dates ordered by year.
- davidw 14y ago
  It's because after the destruction of the ring, everyone switched to the Gregorian calendar and added a leap day.
Aardwolf 14y ago
It's also on my Linux. So this is not an "Apple" article at all despite the "Mac" in the name. It's a FreeBSD article. How did FreeBSD stuff get into Linux though?
- hodgesmr 14y ago
  That's the magic of open source.
- w0utert 14y ago
  >> So this is not an "Apple" article at all despite the "Mac" in the name. It's a FreeBSD article. The article is hosted on macobserver.com, which explains why it has 'Mac' in the title. Also, looking at the article itself it is clearly intended for casual/non-geek computer users. Seeing that OS X + Windows probably cover ~99% of this group, and the calender is not on windows (I suppose), it's not that strange that the article refers to Macs either.
  - davethenerd 14y ago
    Indeed. I realize this likely predates OS X entirely, but... you're right: casual audience and.. TMO's Mac focus. But yep, as many here have pointed out, it's certainly not limited to the Mac.
- irahul 14y ago
  It's provided by bsdmailutils. $ dpkg -S /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr bsdmainutils: /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/i386/bsdmainutils https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/i386/bsdmainutils
williamjackson 14y ago
Use `man calendar` for details on the file format. It's more of an "on this day in history" type list than actual timeline. The data itself (LOTR dates) first appeared in 4.4BSD (though it was part of the file `calendar.history` [ http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/2.0.5/usr.bin/calendar/calendars/calendar.history?revision=1590&view=markup http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/2.0.5/usr.bin/calendar... ]), and has since passed to FreeBSD (where the LOTR dates were split off into a separate file [ http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=110933 http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=11... ]) and subsequently Mac OS X.
- 6ren 14y ago
  man calendar says its month/day... http://www-sbras.nsc.ru/cgi-bin/www/unix_help/man-cgi?calendar+1 http://www-sbras.nsc.ru/cgi-bin/www/unix_help/man-cgi?calend... oh, you mean the adventure took place over more than one calendar year, and so without the years, the high bit of the ordering is lost, and the dates wrap around.
  - graywh 14y ago
    About the format it says "Other lines should begin with a month and day. They may be entered in almost any format, either numeric or as character strings." So "month/day" isn't a requirement. And there's no reason the dates can't be placed in their true order--calendar.ubuntu is ordered by version number and calendar.debian has multiple groups of dates ordered by year.
NatW 14y ago
Where do I file a bug report? The date of "Frodo & Bilbo's birthday" was actually given in the book as September 22nd. In my file it's 09/14.
- bo1024 14y ago
  I also recall seeing the date of the destruction of the ring given as 3/25, not 3/18.
  - lukeschlather 14y ago
    http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=bsdmainutils;dist=unstable http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=bsdmainutil...
    - benregenspan 14y ago
      It would appear this was fixed upstream and OSX just hasn't pulled in the latest. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=224407 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=224407
      - graywh 14y ago
        The updated version listed there isn't present in the current version for Debian or Ubuntu.
- Steuard 14y ago
  Technically, that's not a bug: Tolkien gave instructions for converting "Shire Calendar" dates to modern calendar dates in one of the appendices. (All hobbit months had 30 days, with some extra "holiday" dates stuck in between months at midsummer and midwinter. Leap days were added in midsummer, too.) One source for more information is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_calendar#Hobbit_Calendar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_calendar#Hobbit_Ca... (Personally, I celebrate on Sept. 22 and Mar. 25 just for simplicity. I'm not sure what I'd do if an important event had fallen on Mid-year's day.)
rjv 14y ago
Possibly some spoilers if you haven't read the books and/or seen the movies.
msarnoff 14y ago
Since it includes what seems to be a full Emacs distribution, Mac OS X also contains a few "easter eggs" in /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc:[1] - What is claimed to be the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe - How to say hello in many languages - An interview with Richard Stallman from 1986 - Several adult-themed man pages [1] 22.1 is the appropriate directory on 10.8.2, it may be different on older versions of OS X.
- tankbot 14y ago
  NAME sex - have sex SYNOPSIS sex [ options ] ... [ username ] ... DESCRIPTION sex allows the invoker to have sex with the user(s) speci- fied in the command line. If no users are specified, they are taken from the LOVERS environment variable. Options to make things more interesting are as follows: -F nasal sex with plants Wut?
  - terhechte 14y ago
    Stallman enjoys Rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants: " Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants)." http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    Likely a geektastic way of suggesting he likes to snort weed. Marijuana comes from the buds of female cannabis plants.
    - tankbot 14y ago
      Maybe cocaine? Who snorts weed?
      - 14y ago
BklynJay 14y ago
cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music also gives some notable dates in music-history.
- zavulon 14y ago
  Seems like biased towards some bands, while omitting some arguably greater or at least equally important bands of the same era. Not that there's anything wrong with Yes or Jethro Tull being mentioned, but if they are, seems like Genesis and King Crimson should be mentioned as well. $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep Genesis $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep "King Crimson" $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep Yes 02/20 Yes sells out Madison Square Garden...without advertising, 1974 04/18 Yes breaks up after 13 years, 1981 10/25 Jon Anderson (Yes) is born in Lancashire, England, 1944 $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep "Jethro Tull" 08/10 Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) is born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1947
  - RexRollman 14y ago
    I'm sure that you could contribute to the project, if it really bothers you.
  - X6MW3aQrZU5VKkz 14y ago
    Please remember that every time you cat a file and pipe it to grep an innocent process dies. Have you no compassion?
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Its OK, an innocent process is born too. And the address space gets recycled.
sneak 14y ago
Do people really still use "cat" for viewing files at the commandline?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- RexRollman 14y ago
  Yes. Of course.
- samspot 14y ago
  I use cat when I want it to still be there for use with another command (I have more aliased to less).
- anonymouz 14y ago
  This is a prime example that once again shows old != bad.
- glhaynes 14y ago
  You expect me to go to all the extra trouble of typing a 4-letter command instead of a 3-letter command? This is Unix!
  - X6MW3aQrZU5VKkz 14y ago
    Compromise: Vim!
    - Evbn 14y ago
      Vi
- davethenerd 14y ago
  Probably not... but I figured that was the easiest way to ensure those unfamiliar with the commandline wouldn't wind up in the middle of a 'less' pager and not know how to get out. ;)

93 points by davethenerd 14y ago

If you need something a bit more detailed, then Randall Munroe has you covered: http://xkcd.com/657/ http://xkcd.com/657/

GalacticDomin8r 14y ago

The source for this easter egg is from BSD, not Mac. Likely the import came from FreeBSD, but the LOTR calendar long predates FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=57623 http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=57623

cyphersanctus 14y ago

Interesting, but the timeline seems to be inaccurate.

isleyaardvark 14y ago
It's a list of calendar dates, not an actual timeline.
- ksmiley 14y ago
  That explains it. I was confused when I read "Destruction of the Ring" a third of the way through, and "Fellowship begins Quest" at the very end. I wonder whether the developers _could_ have put them in chronological order, ex. 12/13/3019 appearing before 03/18/3021; or if the format requires the ordering it has now.
  - vec 14y ago
    It's probably out of order on purpose. I'm betting this was some of the test data that the developers used, and they just left it in when they finished.
    - xyzzyb 14y ago
      No, the calendar files are anniversaries not timelines. Have some fun: alias anniversaries="ack -a -h `date +"%m/%d"` /usr/share/calendar | sort"
  - graywh 14y ago
    My system has calendar.ubuntu with dates ordered by version number and calendar.debian with multiple groups of dates ordered by year.
davidw 14y ago
It's because after the destruction of the ring, everyone switched to the Gregorian calendar and added a leap day.

Aardwolf 14y ago

It's also on my Linux. So this is not an "Apple" article at all despite the "Mac" in the name. It's a FreeBSD article. How did FreeBSD stuff get into Linux though?

hodgesmr 14y ago
That's the magic of open source.
w0utert 14y ago
>> So this is not an "Apple" article at all despite the "Mac" in the name. It's a FreeBSD article. The article is hosted on macobserver.com, which explains why it has 'Mac' in the title. Also, looking at the article itself it is clearly intended for casual/non-geek computer users. Seeing that OS X + Windows probably cover ~99% of this group, and the calender is not on windows (I suppose), it's not that strange that the article refers to Macs either.
- davethenerd 14y ago
  Indeed. I realize this likely predates OS X entirely, but... you're right: casual audience and.. TMO's Mac focus. But yep, as many here have pointed out, it's certainly not limited to the Mac.
irahul 14y ago
It's provided by bsdmailutils. $ dpkg -S /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr bsdmainutils: /usr/share/calendar/calendar.lotr https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/i386/bsdmainutils https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/quantal/i386/bsdmainutils

williamjackson 14y ago

Use `man calendar` for details on the file format. It's more of an "on this day in history" type list than actual timeline. The data itself (LOTR dates) first appeared in 4.4BSD (though it was part of the file `calendar.history` [ http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/2.0.5/usr.bin/calendar/calendars/calendar.history?revision=1590&view=markup http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/2.0.5/usr.bin/calendar... ]), and has since passed to FreeBSD (where the LOTR dates were split off into a separate file [ http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=110933 http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=11... ]) and subsequently Mac OS X.

6ren 14y ago
man calendar says its month/day... http://www-sbras.nsc.ru/cgi-bin/www/unix_help/man-cgi?calendar+1 http://www-sbras.nsc.ru/cgi-bin/www/unix_help/man-cgi?calend... oh, you mean the adventure took place over more than one calendar year, and so without the years, the high bit of the ordering is lost, and the dates wrap around.
- graywh 14y ago
  About the format it says "Other lines should begin with a month and day. They may be entered in almost any format, either numeric or as character strings." So "month/day" isn't a requirement. And there's no reason the dates can't be placed in their true order--calendar.ubuntu is ordered by version number and calendar.debian has multiple groups of dates ordered by year.

NatW 14y ago

Where do I file a bug report? The date of "Frodo & Bilbo's birthday" was actually given in the book as September 22nd. In my file it's 09/14.

bo1024 14y ago
I also recall seeing the date of the destruction of the ring given as 3/25, not 3/18.
- lukeschlather 14y ago
  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=bsdmainutils;dist=unstable http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=bsdmainutil...
  - benregenspan 14y ago
    It would appear this was fixed upstream and OSX just hasn't pulled in the latest. http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=224407 http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=224407
    - graywh 14y ago
      The updated version listed there isn't present in the current version for Debian or Ubuntu.
Steuard 14y ago
Technically, that's not a bug: Tolkien gave instructions for converting "Shire Calendar" dates to modern calendar dates in one of the appendices. (All hobbit months had 30 days, with some extra "holiday" dates stuck in between months at midsummer and midwinter. Leap days were added in midsummer, too.) One source for more information is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_calendar#Hobbit_Calendar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_calendar#Hobbit_Ca... (Personally, I celebrate on Sept. 22 and Mar. 25 just for simplicity. I'm not sure what I'd do if an important event had fallen on Mid-year's day.)

rjv 14y ago

Possibly some spoilers if you haven't read the books and/or seen the movies.

msarnoff 14y ago

Since it includes what seems to be a full Emacs distribution, Mac OS X also contains a few "easter eggs" in /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc:[1] - What is claimed to be the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe - How to say hello in many languages - An interview with Richard Stallman from 1986 - Several adult-themed man pages [1] 22.1 is the appropriate directory on 10.8.2, it may be different on older versions of OS X.

tankbot 14y ago
NAME sex - have sex SYNOPSIS sex [ options ] ... [ username ] ... DESCRIPTION sex allows the invoker to have sex with the user(s) speci- fied in the command line. If no users are specified, they are taken from the LOVERS environment variable. Options to make things more interesting are as follows: -F nasal sex with plants Wut?
- terhechte 14y ago
  Stallman enjoys Rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants: " Necrophilia would be my second choice for what should be done with my corpse, the first being scientific or medical use. Once my dead body is no longer of any use to me, it may as well be of some use to someone. Besides, I often enjoy rhinophytonecrophilia (nasal sex with dead plants)." http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html http://stallman.org/articles/texas.html http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html http://stallman.org/archives/2003-may-aug.html
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Likely a geektastic way of suggesting he likes to snort weed. Marijuana comes from the buds of female cannabis plants.
  - tankbot 14y ago
    Maybe cocaine? Who snorts weed?
    - 14y ago

BklynJay 14y ago

cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music also gives some notable dates in music-history.

zavulon 14y ago
Seems like biased towards some bands, while omitting some arguably greater or at least equally important bands of the same era. Not that there's anything wrong with Yes or Jethro Tull being mentioned, but if they are, seems like Genesis and King Crimson should be mentioned as well. $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep Genesis $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep "King Crimson" $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep Yes 02/20 Yes sells out Madison Square Garden...without advertising, 1974 04/18 Yes breaks up after 13 years, 1981 10/25 Jon Anderson (Yes) is born in Lancashire, England, 1944 $ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep "Jethro Tull" 08/10 Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) is born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1947
- RexRollman 14y ago
  I'm sure that you could contribute to the project, if it really bothers you.
- X6MW3aQrZU5VKkz 14y ago
  Please remember that every time you cat a file and pipe it to grep an innocent process dies. Have you no compassion?
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Its OK, an innocent process is born too. And the address space gets recycled.

sneak 14y ago

Do people really still use "cat" for viewing files at the commandline?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
RexRollman 14y ago
Yes. Of course.
samspot 14y ago
I use cat when I want it to still be there for use with another command (I have more aliased to less).
anonymouz 14y ago
This is a prime example that once again shows old != bad.
glhaynes 14y ago
You expect me to go to all the extra trouble of typing a 4-letter command instead of a 3-letter command? This is Unix!
- X6MW3aQrZU5VKkz 14y ago
  Compromise: Vim!
  - Evbn 14y ago
    Vi
davethenerd 14y ago
Probably not... but I figured that was the easiest way to ensure those unfamiliar with the commandline wouldn't wind up in the middle of a 'less' pager and not know how to get out. ;)