Bored at work

[yaksha42]

So, like I said earlier, I no longer have a laptop at work. This gives me lots of time to do homework and lots of other useless tasks.

Tonight’s useless task: The Shire Calendar.

In Appendix D of Return of the King, it gives a description of the Shire Calendar, how the dates worked, month names, day names, and the "rules" it follow. For example, every year starts on what would be our equivalent Saturday and every year ends on our equivalent Friday. Each month has 30 days. Etc. Lots of rules like that. So I decided to make a conversion so I could find out which of our dates corresponds to on the Shire Calendar.

After familiarizing myself with the rules, I started writing down some of the dates on paper. Usually doing the first and last days of our months and where they were at on the Shire calendar. I finally got the idea of how to do it and went over to one of the normal computers and opened Excel.

From there, I made a list of every day in the year (this was easy in excel using the fill handle and copy/paste). Then I made a list of all the Shire calendar dates, added in a column for the days of the week they use and voila, I had my conversion.

The End Result

Yes, I know, this is ABSOLUTELY USELESS!

But it was fun to do!


I'll probably use this to make some kind of code where you can enter the date and it will give the Shire Calendar date. Or maybe put it into a JavaScript so it takes the date from your computer and tells you the date on the Shire Calendar somewhere on a webpage. Who knows? Like I said, I was bored.

Anyone have any other suggestions of things for me to do???

Comments

[azurelunatic]

Um. Besides coming over and giving me a good shagging?

[frameacloud]

Printing out pretty Shire wall calendars.
Like... the numbers and stuff in a font that actually /does/ look like it was written with a quill pen, and with some artwork up on the top. There's a bunch of small-time artists who do good LotR art on Deviantart and the Fanart gallery on Elfwood; they'd probably be happy to participate. If it was the kind that just has /one/ picture for the whole thing, on the cardboard it's mounted on, with the actual calendar stuff below it, that's easy. I bet you could find a painting appropriate for each month... like, a picture of the snowy mountains for whichever month is in fact winter, or a picture of the peaceful Hobbiton for summer, and Lothlorien for either spring or autumn. (Naturally gold leaves could suggest either...) Heck, it could even have some bits in tengwar or cirth runes as appropriate, but with an English translation either as a footnote or beside it. :D I'd want one, man.

However, that wouldn't allow for fun date-conversion like on the computer... :/

[yaksha42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, an actualy Shire Calender would be pretty cool. Appendix D has a pretty simple one on the first page. Rather than the day of the week being written across the top horizontally, they're written vertically.

Also, a fun thing, Friday never appears on the first of any month. So you can tell someone you'll doo something on Friday the first (more or less saying when pigs fly. Maybe you could do it during the month of Summerfilth :P

I do write in tengwar and cirth also (something else I learned at work pre-laptop days), though my penmenship isn't exactly high quality.

When I write people I know online letters, I usually include some stuff written in one just to annoy them ;)

[frameacloud]

Ohyeah- and what about leap years? That'd tweak the code by a tiny bit, wouldn't it?

[yaksha42.livejournal.com]

Yeah, for leap year, you add February 29 and then add "Overlithe" the day after Midyear's Day. It also has no Day Name or number assignment.

So the dates from Feb 29 to like July 3rd or thereabouts get shifted by 1.

[nilmandra.livejournal.com]

/me swoons for geeky Yakky

[azurelunatic]

Um.

Was wondering if you could pull babysitting duty in about an hour?