Comments on: idea of the day for the freelance market – daylight schmavings time http://kynthiabru.net/blog/archives/459 Fri, 09 Jul 2010 05:41:38 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.2 By: Joe Blaylock http://kynthiabru.net/blog/archives/459#comment-40005 Joe Blaylock Thu, 08 Nov 2007 14:11:30 +0000 http://kynthiabru.net/blog/archives/459#comment-40005 I guess you really only need to calculate sunrise and sunset times. This looks easy: http://users.electromagnetic.net/bu/astro/sunrise-set.php I guess you really only need to calculate sunrise and sunset times. This looks easy:
http://users.electromagnetic.net/bu/astro/sunrise-set.php

]]> By: Joe Blaylock http://kynthiabru.net/blog/archives/459#comment-40002 Joe Blaylock Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:59:09 +0000 http://kynthiabru.net/blog/archives/459#comment-40002 Hey, I really like both of these ideas. I was thinking, though, that you shouldn't have to put in the sunrise time. I mean, ephemeris are hard to calculate, but computers are good at calculating things, and nowadays, clocks are very stupid computers. Since the most natural way to implement this (without selling a special-purpose device) is as a Java applet on a web phone, you can have your phone ask its cell tower for its latitude and longitude (best not to assume people have GPS, and the nearest cell tower is almost certainly 'close enough') and then just calculate the ephemeris information. I would love to have this. Actually, to get really good ephemeris info, you usually want to do multibody calculations - the more the better. You could have options to set alarms based on sunset, moonrise, moonset, the presence of Jupiter aligned with Mars, or whatever. But maybe that would be overly complicated. Hey, I really like both of these ideas. I was thinking, though, that you shouldn’t have to put in the sunrise time. I mean, ephemeris are hard to calculate, but computers are good at calculating things, and nowadays, clocks are very stupid computers.

Since the most natural way to implement this (without selling a special-purpose device) is as a Java applet on a web phone, you can have your phone ask its cell tower for its latitude and longitude (best not to assume people have GPS, and the nearest cell tower is almost certainly ‘close enough’) and then just calculate the ephemeris information.

I would love to have this.

Actually, to get really good ephemeris info, you usually want to do multibody calculations – the more the better. You could have options to set alarms based on sunset, moonrise, moonset, the presence of Jupiter aligned with Mars, or whatever. But maybe that would be overly complicated.

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