The WTF Alphabetic Days correspond to the astronomical Julian Day, which is used in many computer databases to store date and time information. The first Julian Day (the year AAAAA:) was some day in 4713 BC, which apparenently is the first day in recorded history, or perhaps the earliest recorded astronomical event. There have been more than 2.4 million days since then. Every new day begins at Noon on the Greenwich Meridian, so it is twelve hours off from the legal calendar day and Universal Time or GMT, but, like UTC, the WTF time is the same all over the world (hence, “World Time Format”). The time is represented by a decimal fraction, the portion of the day elapsed. This way, every event in history can be represented by the number of days since that first day. Today's Julian Day is 2455227, and it is now a little less than half way through the day (in the Greenwich time zone), so it is now (well, just was) exactly 2455227.3934798613. Expressed in Alphabetic Time, which is simply Base 26 rather than Base 10, it is now FJRZV:KVEXW. Halfway through the day is Midnight in Greenwich and 7PM here, and is :NAA (or just :N), since N is the thirteenth letter of the 26 Alphabetic hours in a day.
So join us at the Diesel at FJRZZ:ZW (Thu Feb 04 2010 06:51:28 GMT-0500 (EST)), to count down the last few Alphabetic minutes of the Alphabetic Year R and usher in the new Alphabetic Year S! Remember to designate a driver as there probably will be roadblocks set up for the morning commute.
kbusch says
dcsurfer says
And there will be an evening celebration at :N
<
p>See how easy it is to tweet a date and time? You can just say A:N and people will know you mean this coming A, which is Thursday, at :N, which is 7PM. (The converters need to be improved, right now they will tell you the previous A: (1/9/10) rather than the upcoming A:) Here is a calendar that helps convert going forward.
hlpeary says
when I saw this post I thought the “WTF” stood for something else…”WTF” New Year sounded like a great idea…considering how “WTF” this 2010 has been rolling out so far, it would be a great idea to start over in lieu of the ability to get a do-over.
dcsurfer says
It is now RZZ:QZV, about to be SAA:A at 7AM Tomorrow morning, the first day of the year S in the World Time Format!
<
p>All over the world, it will be the New WTF Year at :A, in just a few hours! It is already :RCK and soon (in about 45 regular minutes, at 11:36:55, or 22 WTF minutes from now) it will be :S, then :T, then UVWXY and Z and then A and it’s the New Year!
<
p>This way of giving dates should be really good for text messages, if you want to make a date for Saturday around 8, you just say B:O
<
p>