The goal of Many Moons is to expand the user's consciousness by making her aware of the many different ways it is possible to measure time. It was originally inspired by Robert Anton Wilson's article "How to Live Eleven Days in Twenty-Four Hours."
Since it is easy to find software that shows the date in historical calendars (especially after the publication of Dershowitz and Reingold's Calendrical Calculations), I have initially focussed on unusual, offbeat (if you will) clocks and calendars such as Swatchbeats (Swatch Internet Time), Stardates, and Tolkien calendars. Historical calendars will likely be added later. For more information on the timekeeping systems in Many Moons, and possible future additions, see the included document MM Clocks and Calendars.
User Interface Quick Reference:
File menu:
Preferences: Displays the Preferences window (which see).
Quit: Quits Many Moons.
Calendars menu:
See a date…: Displays the Many Moons window (which see).
Clocks menu:
Stardate: Displays the current stardate, constantly updated in real time. (See the Clocks and Calendars document for more information on stardates.)
Swatch Internet Time: Displays the current Swatchbeat, constantly updated in real time. (See the MM Clocks and Calendars document for more information on Swatch Internet Time.)
Preferences window:
Use these systems: Here you can select which timekeeping systems to display in the Many Moons window. Simply uncheck the systems you don't want displayed and check the ones you do. The default is that all systems are used.
Timezone: Enter your timezone into this text field. For example, -8 is the timezone for Pacific Time, the timezone of the West Coast of the United States, and -5 is the timezone for the East Coast.
DST: If you are presently using Daylight Savings time (or the equivalent time during the summer where you live), click this checkbox. Otherwise, uncheck it. Many Moons may not work properly if you do not set this correctly. If you are unsure whether Daylight Savings Time is in effect, open your Mac's Date and Time control panel.
Many Moons window:
Many Moons automatically inserts the current date in the Gregorian calendar into the text fields at the top of this window when the window is opened. The Now button is the default button when you open this window, and will respond to the Return or Enter keys, but if you change any of the numbers in the date fields, the Convert button will become the default for as long as the window is open.
Convert: Converts the date in the text fields at the top of the window into both astronomical time measures and the timekeeping systems you have selected in the Preferences window. (Swatch Internet Time is not currently supported for the Convert feature.)
Note that you can enter zero or negative Gregorian years into the years field. Year 0 means 1 BCE, Year -1 means 2 BCE, Year -2 means 3 BCE, and so on. (There was no Year 0 on the Gregorian calendar, but a year 0 makes calendrical calculations very convenient. Future versions of Many Moons will likely feature a CE/BCE checkbox.)
Now: Places a timestamp with the current date and time, using the clocks and calendars you have selected in the Preferences window, into the large text field on this window. It also copies the same text to the Clipboard automatically, so that you can paste the timestamp into email or other documents.
Technical Notes:
Many Moons was programmed in REALBasic on an iMac and a Performa 6320CD. It has not been tested extensively on other machines, but should run on any 68020 Mac or higher, running System 8 or higher (or System 7.5 with the Thread Manager).
Future versions of Many Moons will likely run on Windows machines and under Java, when the REALbasic cross-compiler is released (expected first quarter 1999).
License:
This version of Many Moons is freeware. You may copy it as widely as you like, provided all documentation that came with it goes with it wherever you copy it.
Future versions of Many Moons MAY be released under the GNU Public License.
Version History:
1.0.0:
Gregorian: Monday, January 25, 1999, 12:05:48 AM (UTC -08)
World Calendar: Wednesday, January 25, 1999 C.E.
Swatch Internet Time: @379 (1999-01-25 BMT)
Shire Reckoning: Mersday, Solmath 3, 1999 S.R.
Eldarin: Valanya, 65 Hrívë, 1998, Calendar of Imladris (after sundown)
Stardate: [-30]2431.69
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Initial release. Supports the Gregorian calendar, the World Calendar, Swatch Internet Time, Shire Reckoning, the Eldarin Calendar of Imladris, and Stardates.
Credits:
The code in Many Moons is mostly original, but thanks must go to:
• The book Calendrical Calculations by Nachum Dershowitz and Edward Reingold, for the formula for calculating the Gregorian year from a Julian Day Number.
• The Calendar FAQ (see the document MM Clocks and Calendars for the URL), for the formula for calculating the Julian Day Number from a Gregorian date.
• My wife Marty Hale-Evans, for the extremely groovy, hippified, Art Nouveau icon, her graphic and user interface design sense, and testing.
• Andrew Main for devising a consistent system for stardates, and for providing stardate calculation code as a reference point (mostly useful in Many Moons for epochs and other constants).
• J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate for Middle-earth, Shire Reckoning and the Calendar of Imladris.
• Gene Roddenberry and Paramount Pictures for Star Trek and stardates.
• Swatch for Swatch Internet Time.
• The World Calendar Association for the World Calendar.
• Pope Gregory XIII, Aloysius Lilius, Christopher Clavius, and a cast of teeming millions, for the Gregorian calendar, implemented across most of Europe in the late 16th century, and still in use today.
Contact:
For bugs, comments, questions, suggestions, or simple support, email the author, Ron Hale-Evans, at rwhe@apocalypse.org, or see his website at <http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe>.
