Ladies and gentlemen of the Fnord,


Hail Eris! All hail Discordia! Percolate!

Erisian Klock ver 5:23 beta, a fine byproduct from Erisian Warez Corporation, is now ticking the hours, minutes and seconds of elastic length and width! I'm sure you have no idea what I'm talking about, which is good, so let me just say that I never understood why Discordians had their own calendar, incarnated in plenty executable/performable forms, but no Klock of their own time. Now they have both.

The Klock version 5:23 beta is yours to get right from this place (20 kb zip file). It is still in development, so if anyone out there would like to give it a test-tickin', please do so and let me know (a) if it bombs (it shouldn't) and (b) if you'd like any features added (it has quite a few already). If you'd like any features removed, I guess you're outta luck.

The Klock is a mess-dos executable; once I'm sure it does do what I think I was gonna try to sort of get it to be mostly able to maybe do sometimes, I'll translate it into JavaScript and Perl to spread the Klock more evenly than its current unportable form allows... Or maybe someone else will help me do the JavaScript thing, I can do Perl allright, but I do get sick of Java... Then maybe we should write an RFC for it ("C" for confusion here), you'll see for yourselves...


Update... The CGI version is ready! Get The Klock inside your browser!

Now, here's HOW IT WORKS.


ERISIAN TIME MEASUREMENT
PRELIMINARY SPECIFICATION 5.23.01 BETA

DO NOT POLLINATE, DEFOLIATE, AND ESPECIALLY
DO NOT CONCILIATE.
MULTIPLICATE AT OR AGAINST WILL.

THIS DOCUMENT IS SUBJECT TO ARBITRARY SUBJECTIVITY.
FAILURE TO COMPLY WILL RESULT.

Danger: do not read below this line.


Erisian Time Measurement (ETM) was designed with two badly misaligned purposes in mind:

  1. To enable all Discordians to stick apart better; this by ensuring that Erisian Time Value (ETV) remains constant throughout the Earth globe, regardless of geographical misplacement. (Specifically, ETM is meant to aid the members of Sector6 Cabal in joining the IRC sessions all at the same ETV, or moment, or, if at all possible, simultaneously and concurrently.) The Erisian Klock (henceforth, "the Klock") will display the same exact time wherever on Earth its Discordian owner dwells. If its Discordian owner dwells outside of the Earth's stratospheric perimeter, he is then badly framed and better advised to fall back soon; currently there are no plans to extend the Klock's portability throughout known universe, although the next release may surprise you. In this respect, ETM is somewhat similar to other, already existing time measurements, such as GMT, UTC, or EEG. These, however, were never meant to be used by Discordians and are thus too boring to merit any further consideration.

  2. To be the Discordian Time Measure, seeing as Discordians did not have one. The Discordian Time Measure (DTM) is the subject proper of this here specification I think I said this before so never mind.

DTM was designed with much carelessness, cracking of teeth and confusion first about a year ago and then redesigned over the last two nights, so as to resemble no other time measure known to human beings dead or undead, except maybe cabbages, and to be as Discordian as possible if I may say so myself don't go yet you've gotta read this through and do you believe this?

Now.

Before I unload the principles of DTM on you, a brief word about Naming Conventions. So far, only one Erisian Time Unit (ETU) has been uniquely named (you'll see). All other ETUs inherit the commonly known, aneristic names of time units, being HOUR, MINUTE and SECOND. Sector6 and RAINBO Cabal members and affiliates are hereby kindly asked to invent some names for these three categories, or else we will stick to the aneristic names which is going to be even more confusing, since some Discordian HOURS are longer than normal hours, and some are shorter; same goes for other ETUs.

For the purpose of this document, when referring to ANERISTIC TIME UNITS, the following unit names will be used, now get this:

When referring to ERISTIC TIME UNITS, the same names will be used, except they will be put in quotes, thusly:

Allright. So if I say that an "hour" has 5 minutes, or else that a "second" is 12 seconds long, you'll know what I'm talking about, OK.


- ERISIAN TIME UNITS SPECIFICATION REALLY BEGINS HERE, FINALLY -

  1. Discordian day BEGINS at what is aneristically known as 5:23 am, i.e. 05:23:00, or twenty-three minutes past five in the morning.

  2. This is when Discordian day begins.

  3. No, really.

  4. All aneristic time references such as the 5:23 above refer to UTC time (Universaile Temps du Coordinaire, someone correct my French whydontcha, or Universal Coordinate[-d] Time), which is the same as GMT time, the time of Greenwich near London (longitude 0 degrees, time zone +/-0). It may or may not be the same as your local time, most likely it isn't. (And that, to be sure, is the very problem Erisian Time Measurement solves!!)

  5. Observation:

    A day (here understood as 1 day and 1 night together consecutively, i.e. 24 real hours) has 1440 minutes (24*60).

  6. Further observation:

    If we divide the above number of minutes by 5, we get 1440 DIV 5 = 288. This number, 288, is more or less the number of Discordian "hours" in a day, but this is only the first approximation.

  7. We have 288 units of time, tentatively called "hours", each of them 5 minutes long. We take the first 23 of those units, that is 115 minutes (23*5=115) and call it The THUD. The THUD is henceforth taken to represent a single and unique Discordian "hour". The THUD lasts for 115 real (aneristic) minutes. The THUD is the zero'th "hour" (just like the hour 0:00 and the next 59 minutes in real world).

  8. "Discordianism is not just a religion; it is a mental illness."
    Lord Omar Ravenhurst

  9. All Erisian "hours" are divided into "minutes" and these are, in turn, divided into "seconds". (Name them, please, someone!) However, the length of Discordian "hours", "minutes" and "seconds" does NOT remain in any necessary, constant, or equivalent relationship to real-life, aneristic hours, minutes, and seconds. Any relationship is purely coincidental, arbitrary, and subject to disinfection.

  10. What is even more interesting is that, within the Erisian Time Measurement, "hours", "minutes" and "seconds" ARE NOT ALL OF THE SAME LENGTH respectively! The THUD (which is a single "hour") is divided into "minutes" and "seconds" in a different way than other Discordian "hours". The respective units are LONGER during THUD than they are past THUD.

  11. The "hour" of THUD is divided into 5 "minutes". Because the THUD lasts for 115 real minutes, each Discordian "minute" during THUD lasts 23 real minutes (115 DIV 5=23)

  12. This paragraph is not part of the Specification.

  13. Each "minute" of THUD is divided into 23 "seconds" of THUD. Since a THUD "minute" lasts 23 real minutes, it follows that every "second" of THUD lasts a full one minute of aneristic time. (23 DIV 23=1, see 1+1=2, et al.)

  14. ReCaPiTuLaTiOn:
    A Discordian day begins with a single "hour" of unique length, called THUD. This "hour" lasts for 115 real minutes, and is divided into 5 "minutes". These "minutes" are further divided into 23 "seconds" each.

  15. The Thud is a lingering time.

  16. AFTER THE HOUR OF THUD.

    Remember that we started with 288 5-minute units. Of those, we subtracted 23 to make THUD. We are then left with 265 units to go.

  17. These 265 units are Discordian "hours". Each Discordian "hour" ("non-Thud hour" to be exact) lasts 5 real minutes. And, surprisingly enough, this is how Discordian "hours" are divided: each "hour" has 5 "minutes". Purely by coincidence, these "minutes" are equal to real, aneristic minutes.

  18. We have 5 "minutes" per "hour". Now we need to divide the "minutes" as well. No problem: an Erisian "minute" is divided into 5 "seconds". Remember that Erisian "minute" lasts 1 real minute, thus 60 real seconds. Therefore, Erisian "second" (of which there are 5 in an Erisian "minute") lasts 12 real seconds (60 DIV 5=12).

  19. That's about it.

  20. SUMMARY

    Erisian day consists of:

    1. 1 "hour", called THUD
      • THUD = 5 "minutes"
      • 1 "minute" = 23 "seconds"

      ...followed by:

    2. 265 "hours"
      • 1 "hour" = 5 "minutes"
      • 1 "minute" = 5 "seconds"

  21. Executive summary

    You are not supposed to understand this.

  22. PROOF AND SEAL OF ILLUMINATED SAINTHOOD

    If you are not yet convinced that the above MEASUREMENT contains HOLY PROPERTIES OF ERIS within, ponder upon the following:

    We have THUD + 265 hours, that is 266 hours.

    2+6+6=14

    1+4=5

  23. So there.


APPENDAGE: OPERATION OF THE KLOCK:

When you get the Klock, the only thing you need to do is to tell it what time zone you are in, relative to Greenwich Mean Time a.k.a. UTC.

If you are not sure (no need to be) just go to either Greenwich observatory, or US NAVY site. These pages display the UTC measurement. The minutes and seconds should be the same on your local clock and the UTC; it's only hours that matter. If it's 07:00 by your watch, and the UTC says 12:00, then your time zone is -5, so set the Klock to that.

A freshly compiled Klock, when you download it, will ask you to set the time zone. If it does not, or if you need to change the time zone, run it as

klock.exe -set

to force setting. A screen will pop up to let you set your time zone in the range from -12 to +12. If you think your time zone extends beyond that range, please consult the nearest fnord. (The last statement does not apply to anyone residing outside of Earth.)

NOTE: the Klock in the current version does not support automatic DST (daylight saving time) adjustment. The reason is that I have no idea if all countries enable/disable DST on the same date, or even if all of them do use it (I think not). MIDDLE-OF-NOTE. Windows 95 seems to know when DST comes into effect in my time zone, but I don't, so neither does the Klock. When your country adds or subtracts an hour twice a year, you need to -SET the Klock manually. END-OF-NOTE.

The Klock's primary display uses ugly pseudo-graphics. I'll work on them, but Windows redefines my VGA charset and takes away some of the ASCII chars I would need to use; at this point I don't feel like reprogramming those characters back into the VGA, plus it might or might not work for other graphics cards... So they look ugly for now, sorry about that. Normally the Klock displays the current time in Discordian Time Units as defined above; hit TAB or BACKSPACE to flip between Erisian and UTC time display.

Above all, run
KLOCK -?
to see the possibilities, or consult the following chart.

If you don't like the big ugly pseudo-graphics display, run
KLOCK -SMALL
for a plain text-mode display.

If you like -SMALL even less, run
KLOCK -BIG
to get the fancy digits back.

Use
-MONO
and
-COLOR
to force alternate color sets.

These options, when changed, are written directly to the EXE file (I hate INI files) so do not set klock.exe to read-only and do not lzexe it or such, it will complain.

Update: Two new switches added to facilitate conversion from aneristic to Erisian time and back. See docs.

BTW. Source code is kind of available, if anyone wants it, though not included. Conversely, if someone has got (has heard of, has lost, has been seen accompanied by, has never had anything to do with) a graphics package I could slap on Klock to make it look neater, I'll appreciate the misassistance. And what about this JavaScript coding, anyone?

I didn't think so.

At any rate, here are the details of the Klock operation.


ADDITIONAL APPENDAGE:

The Klock makes mention of a feature/option called FLAVOR. Well, the point is, that the Erisian Time Measures as outlined above are arbitrary enough and nothing stops them from multiplying. I have already devised two other Erisian Time Measurement Systems (ETMS, also called Flavors) and will incorporate them into the Klock next thing in the morning. Then I'll add two more. Additions, revisions, suggestions are welcome, unless they are to reduce the number of Flavors or otherwise cripple the new Erisian Time Measurement SYSTEM, in which case they will be unread and forwarded to Boris Yeltsin in triplicate. The Klock supports up to FIVE different time measurement systems (none of which is the aneristic 24x60x60 system, of course), all mutually incompatible. This spells confusion and I like it. In this release only Flavor 1 is implemented. When all five are ready, the proper way of referring to Erisian Time Measurement (PWoRtETM) is going to be:
"hour":"minute":"second"(flavor),
e.g.
017:04:04(1)
(17 hours, 4 minutes, 4 seconds, Flavor 1)

Another note: the space before Flavor is optional.
Everything else is even more optional.

So everyone will understand and everyone will have 017:04:04(1) on their screens at the same precise moment. Well.


See also:


APPENDAGES END. DOCUMENT ENDS. ENDING ENDS. END.

(This document is effective IMMEDIATELY.)

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooh.

Thank you for your inattention.


sd./
m'Eniac, Lord Fuddlemeister of the Cloned Synapse,
Episkopos, Church of the Whole Shebang & Vapor
General Frenetics, Discorporated, FNORD.

Sweetmorn, Day 29 of Confusion, 3163,
at 000:03:06(1) KET (Klockable Erisian Time)


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