Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by willholloway | Hacker News Reader

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I edited post to include link.

The count starts at 1095, because there are 1095 eight hour blocks of time in a normal year, there are 1098 in a leap year.

The idea is to destroy the calendar, and destroy the clock! Replace them with a slow gentle reminder of the passage of time, instead of this fine-grained instrument we use now.

I find that the main thing exact time keeping does in my life is to create scheduled events that I don't want to go to! Meetings and pointless social events, I would rather be hacking or building in a zen like flow state.

Of course to really achieve that dream I would have to be single and shun my family, and then I would get lonely :)

But I still like Maker Time. It is a comfort.

It all started as an exercise in exploring Decimal Time. But Decimal time has all kinds of problems and all implementations are really clunky. And the reason is that the solar and lunar calendars don't sync nicely. I found what I think is a pretty elegant compromise, by breaking the day into 8 hour time periods.

Decimal time was attempted in the early Americas and most famously during the French Revolution. A form of Decimal time was at one point the official calendar of France.

You'd also have to shun dentist appointments.

It's an interesting idea, but I think it's impractical for 99.999% of people.

In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous.

Until then, Maker Time will have to live in peaceful coexistence with the Gregorian Calendar.

Edit:

I think it's important to point out that not all cultures share the same sense of time. While my ideas here are heretical in America, or Germany, the spirit of what I am getting at would be very familiar to a Spaniard, an Italian or a Jamaican.

Here is an interesting article on it:

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-different-cultures-unders...

> In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous.

I have no idea what this means.

I would guess: Every non-appointed visit is successful.

What is an asynchronous dental visit?

Think NYC Subway vs Amtrak. For Amtrak ( and dentist) you need a reservation.

For Subways we just let queues fill up and then empty them.

I believe that dental cleanings could work like this as well. People who are around the 6 month mark for cleaning could be notified when wait times are low and could just come in.

I know its quixotic.

> In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous

How does this look from the perspective of a dentist?

If a dentist could balance the load reasonably well, it would look very good.

Missed appointments are a big problem for dentists and doctors. A missed appointment means paying staff and not receiving income.

I always end up waiting at the doctor or dentist anyway, even if I show up on time for an appointment. I would rather there were no appointments for routine things, and that we just found some reasonable way to balance load.

I get what you are saying.

1. Time should decrease to indicate the importance of it.

2. One should sync with attention span rather than something arbitrary like hour.

The idea is that, the number should not be so large (like min) that it becomes a spam. It should not be so low either that you lose track of time. Sync-ing is expensive.

I like this clock: (D, W, M, Y) measures 3hr chunck left in the (Day, Week, Month, Year).

> In my ideal world things like dentist visits would be completely asynchronous.

For stuff like this there is no need to keep track of time at all. Just set a reminder.

> You'd also have to shun dentist appointments.

Or maybe consider going to the dentist, the physician and the priest all on the same day, and treat it as an event?

Sounds like a pretty pleasant way to live to me.

If a pleasant day involves my doc, a dentists and a priest I'll take a bad day instead please.

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