Little Use For Faulty 2023-2024 Calendar

Ever run across a faulty calendar? How about the following items, all in one unit, which my video shows?? Duplicated months, missing months, one duplicated month where the date starts on the wrong day of the week, another month where all the dates and Saturday/Sunday sequencing dates don't align.

How faulty was the calendar? How little use did I have with it? What did I do about the calendar after I scanned the parts and turned it into a blog topic?

How Faulty was the Calendar?

The calendar was so faulty ...

The second instance of Feb 2023 showed the first date off by a day.

What? A second instance of Feb 2023? Yes! Furthermore, three more months for 2023 had two instances each. On the good side, the days of the weeks were accurate. Low bar here.

Oct 2024 was a beaut—my poster month and video title page image. For starters, it didn't show the first date, the 1st. Every WEEK was inaccurate. None of the dates was accurate for actual October 2024 dates, and the poster month Sunday dates didn't follow their respective Saturday dates.

There's more! Another set of months, February through May 2024 were duplicated in the calendar. Months were missing. I wouldn't have cared too much about Oct through Dec 2022, but Jan 2023 omission was weird. The rest of the missing months were Jun through Sep 2024.

I gotta give props to the calendar implementer for having shown both instances of Feb 2024 having 29 days (Leap Year month).

How little use did I have with it?

For accuracy, almost no use. It was useful for creating my blog topic for video and article. The initial perusing nudged my inclination to fact-check. I have NEVER, EVER had a calendar that was inaccurate. And this one was inaccurate in SPADES!

What did I do about the calendar after I scanned the parts and turned it into a blog topic?

I returned to the shop and exchanged it for an accurate one. No problems with the exchange. I did give the newer one a quick visual scan to ensure no missing months, no duplicated months, and correct-order months.

April Fooling Easter Halloween and More

This year's hoppening day was the convergence of April Fool's Day and Easter Sunday, very rare. How rare? From "Easter falls on April Fools Day in 2018: How often does that happen? …":

For the first time since 1956, Easter Sunday falls on April 1 - or April Fool's Day. Since 1900, Easter has fallen on April Fool's Day only four times - 1923, 1934, 1945 and 1956. It won't happen again until 2029. … Easter generally falls between March 22 and April 25 each year. … egg hunts, family gatherings and visits from the Easter Bunny, who leaves treats in children's Easter baskets.

Were-Rabbit for April Fool's Day/Easter Sunday and Halloween

A weirdly appropriate item to use this year was the Burger King Curse of the Were-Rabbit basket, which came out around Halloween 2005. This basket promoted "Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)".

From "Clay Time: Wallace & Gromit's U.S. Romp" (publish date October 2, 2005):

Wallace and Gromit are asked to protect a small town from night-raiding rabbits who chomp people's prized vegetables…. Prepare for Halloween buckets, ….

Thoughts back in 2005 about the were-rabbit might not have extended to 2018 and Easter. Think rabbits and Easter baskets. And having Easter and April Fool's Day made that Sunday even more cutesy, imho. The basket did double duty this year. (I gave a friend my basket so her grandchild could tote it for this year's Easter/April Fool's Day and Halloween. If I'd only had the foresight to stash away some 2017 Halloween candy, …)

What Else Hoppened?

During a walk in the neighborhood last week, I spotted symbols of differing occasions at one house. Christmas-themed, to be sure, but a rabbit (Easter symbol) and winged dragon (Halloween symbol) are unusual. If the homeowner also laid out some hearts, shamrocks, and American flags, the display could cover six holiday seasons.

Speaking of shamrocks, during yesterday evening's walk, I spotted a snowman balloon that made me think of St. Patrick's Day. The hatband has a sprig of hollies and berries, but could probably look appropriate with a shamrock or leprechaun around March 17 in cold areas.

Circling back to an offbeat symbol, how about a fangy snowman, or two? Spotted them during yesterday's walk. Imho, their faces look more Halloweeny scary than Frosty friendly.

Heck, why not just have Halloween inflatables and lights up starting in September? F'rinstance, "Christmas Disney Inflatable 5.5 Santa Jack Skellington The Nightmare Before Christmas Airblown Decoration" is available at Amazon. Another inflatable, fangy like my finds, is "Gemmy Bumble Christmas Inflatable Fabric 1 Multicolored".

April Fool's Day and Sunday, no Hoppening Easter Bunny)

My tshirt's design shows a footrace for April 1, 1990. That day was a Sunday ("Sunday 1 April 1990"). It was not, however, Easter Sunday. "When Was Easter Sunday in 1990?" shows that date was April 15. This site provides dates for Easter Sundays that you can click for links up through 2047 and also use the calculator for an unlisted year.

Want another calendar source? Astronomical Society of South Australia's "Calculate the Date of Easter Sunday" includes links to Easter Sunday dates that span six centuries (18th through 23rd). Speaking of astronomy, the following is my 2018 April Fool's story, which I sent out to a select audience March 31.

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March Madness Under a Full Moon (Awoooo!)
 
The March astronomy meeting triggered a melee during a speaker's Raspberry Pi Astrophotography: LinGuider presentation. A precocious youth blew a raspberry during the discussion about the Raspberry Pi, then exclaimed, "Where's the pie!" The youth's father, embarrassed and angry at his son's outburst, went full Homer and started to throttle the boy's throat, growling, "Why you little …!"
 
Another audience member, shocked at the physical interaction, threw his pocket pen protector (PPP) at the dueling pair. The plastic envelope started to float harmlessly towards earth, but somehow picked up an air pocket, then veered and jabbed someone nearer the PPP thrower. The unintended target, enraged at the jab, shaped a hardcopy celestial-events handout into a paper plane, then hurled it toward the PPP thrower. It missed, and instead pricked yet another audience member.
 
Within minutes, handouts, spectacles, smartphones, laptops, and soda cans ranging in fluid capacity from empty to full flew everywhere. Police were summoned. Dozens were arrested and escorted into a paddy wagon under the full-moon evening, presumably arraigned and released in time to attend the next month's meeting.

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APRIL FOOL'S DAY! Actually, the speaker's March 1 presentation was very well-received. Lots of questions, answers, comments, suggestions.

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This article brings me to the end of 2018, having hopped from and to a few special occasions this year. Happy Holidays!

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For more articles about Halloween, enter "Halloween" in the search box at the upper left of this window. Or find and click "Halloween" link at Partial Index of Keywords section (just below Popular Posts section).

52-week Year As 13 Months

Instead of the current calendar that has the inconsistent spread over 28, 29, 30, and 31 days—depending on leap year, leap century, or regular year numbers, it'd be dandy to divvy up the 52 weeks differently. How about 13 months of four weeks each, with the leftover one or two days as bonus day(s) for the 13th month of the year? A year has 365 days in a normal year. Using 13 as the divisor, the quotient winds up as 28 (four exact weeks), with one day left over—two if 366-day year. (Par-TAY! Par-TAY!)

With twelve of the thirteen months having exactly 28 days, all the months could start on the normal first day of the week. As everything would be multiples of seven, there could be huge reduction in confusion over non-synchronization between current calendar day numbering and weekly day numbering. Payroll, scheduling, and programming could be greatly simplified, imo. There'd be fewer calendars to have to buy year to year. (An example of 13-month year advocacy site is 13moon.com.)

Just think! No more "September hath 30 days, ...". In my case, I could never get past the September rule comfortably. A newer ditty completely destroyed any possibility of my memorizing it. And it expresses my sentiment: "Thirty days hath September. The rest I don't remember."

Awhile back, I had learned a handy physical helper until repetition facilitated the memorization. With the hand in a fist, I used the finger-knuckle method to note the 31-day months. The path starts with the index-finger knuckle (January), advances to the pinky-knuckle (double tap to accommodate July and August), and returns to the middle-finger knuckle (December), as shown in the illustration. Tap a few times till you get used to the knuckles representing 31-day months. (The valleys represent the not-30-day months.)

Anyway, as the world is unlikely to change the calendar any time soon, the poem, knuckles, and various paper/online calendars can continue to be the mainstay of day/date consultations. In case you're curious how we got to the messy distribution of days and months, wisegeek has explanations.

Excerpt of interest, when the calendar had only 10 months—

The calendar had only ten months, and the number of days in a month were as follows: 31 days in Martius, 30 days in Aprilis, 31 days in Maius, 30 days in Iunius, 31 days in Quintilis, 30 days in Sextilis, 30 days in September, 31 days in October, 30 days in November, and 30 days in December.

Note that the first syllables for 7th (Sept), 8th (Oct), 9th (Nov), and 10th (Dec) months are Latin terms for the ordinal positions. Now, we associate the positions of September as the ninth month, October as the tenth month, November as the eleventh month, and December as the twelfth month. More detailed explanation about these months and the others are at 13moon.com's "WHAT'S IN A NAME?" page.

While I'm on the subject of calendars, the names of the days of the week have long histories and also associations across regions in Europe. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday retain much of their phonetic and name ties to Norse gods. Encyclopedia Mythica's "Origin of the names of the days" has explanations and also other-language information.

If you need to create your own calendar, my other calendar article will help, but only if you don't try to create a 13-month one.

Create Monthly Calendars for the Year

Did you get a 2010 calendar recently? Get one for a Christmas gift? Buy one for yourself? Bank give you one? Some other business give you one? Calendars used to be assumed freebies, which seemed to be in short supply this season. The other day, I asked a bank teller about calendars. She pointed out a small stack of pocketbook-sized ones. Well, it’s adequate for viewing month to month, but the cells measure only 1.2" wide by 1" high.

I decided to visit an online calendar utility for viewing and creating custom calendars. I wound up creating and printing out all 12 months for the year in landscape orientation, double-side printing them onto six sheets. This type of calendar is good for scribbling short notes on a month-to-month basis. I myself like the days-of-week column arrangement to reinforce weekly occurrences.

For making the calendar, I used a Firefox browser with PaintShopPro7 (PSP) graphics editor, and selected options at http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar. (The default view shows a 3-row by 4-column setup for an entire year, tweakable for preferences.) I experimented with the browser screen sizes for graphics capture, then previewed and tweaked the page setup in PSP for printing maximum cell sizes.

If you want to make your own monthly calendar, start at http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar and click Advanced customization. At the new screen, the critical selections are as follows:

• Calendar period=1 month
• Format=[your preference]
• Add space for notes=[some vertical spacing per cell]
• Main template=[your preference]

When done with selections, click Show calendar. For the rest of the procedure to set up and print the first month, YMMV. To prepare the browser to capture screens, I set my browser for maximum size; i.e., clicked the Maximize button (restored to full screen). To obtain more vertical viewing space, I turned off the navigation and status bars (browser view menu), and pulled down the task windowshade to close it.

To set my graphics editor to capture screens, I opened PSP and set it to use a cursor for dragging and defining a capture window.

An alternative to setting the browser for maximum and setting the graphics editor for windowing the area: Resize the browser so only the calendar appears, then set the graphics editor for Object capture. This setting enables capturing only the object inside the window.

To prepare the application to print, I set up page settings to Landscape and Fit to page. I then tweaked settings by unchecking Fit to page, and accepting the new default margins.

I created the rest of the months for the year by doing the following:

1. Scrolled the browser upward until I saw the links for previous/next month.
2. Clicked the next month.
3. Scrolled the browser downward until I got the full view of the month.
4. Captured and printed the months as I did for January.

Yup, I'm set up for the rest of the year now.