Forebruary, an endless wall calendar

[forinti]

If we had 13 months, all of them would have exactly 28 days. We would need and extra day in order to complete 365 days, but we could make it a special case (the first day of the year, for instance) not belonging to any month or week. Then all months would be alike, every 1st, 8th, 15th, etc, would be a Sunday, and so on. We would never need a calendar again.

[finnh]

And people's birthdays wouldn't rotate around the days of the week, which would be lame for 5/7 of the population.

Edit: back to Forebruary, I think it's quite nice looking. and the timeline at the bottom is awesome. Reminiscent of the timeline in "Rock Me Amadeus". one of these things is not like the others...

[stevejohnson]

If you read the Lord of the Rings appendices, you will find that Shirefolk do something similar: they divide the year into 12 months of 30 days each, with a four-day midsummer holiday called Lithe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-earth_calendar#Hobbit_C...

If we were to adopt a similar scheme outside of Middle Earth, I'd be in favor of borrowing the name.

[rlt3]

I don't really know why, but I like the imperfectness of our calendar system now.

Stupid stuff like February having only 29 days is pretty funny and those 7 days of December 25th to January 1st is perfect because its an exact week.

It would be too boring if every month was the same.

Could we have fun stuff like `April Showers Bring may Flowers' if every month was just the same 28 days? I'm sure we could, but everything would be the same and that's boring.

[untog]

Is the existing system really that broken, though? It's a pain, but it works. People know it.

The pain of moving to a new calendar system would be considerably bigger than the pain of dealing with the current system.

[frogpelt]

Let's make Sept/Oct/Nov/Dec the 7/8/9/10th months again. Jan and Feb can be 11 and 12. Make March the 1st month. I would rather start every new year near spring time anyway.

[dragonwriter]

> If we had 13 months, all of them would have exactly 28 days. We would need and extra day in order to complete 365 days

And sometimes another extra day in order to complete 366 days.

[stevewilhelm]

The National Retail Federation has a different monthly layout that helps solve the year over year retail sales comparison problem.

http://www.nrf.com/modules.php?name=Pages&sp_id=392

[sthommes]

+1 - I've always thought the Gregorian calendar was arcane and awkward, a weird artifact. Is there like an ICANN for the calendar?

[maxerickson]

Or just use 3 digits for the day.

[ToastyMallows]

I actually have a keychain just like this, I was always surprised it never caught on as much as it could have because they're extremely useful.

http://keychainarchives.com/image/56257326138

EDIT: This keychain is also very old, 70s to early 80s

[ineedtosleep]

Glad someone still knows about those things, and they are indeed useful. My parents have a few of these in their house, although there's are bigger and made for desktops. The OP's is basically a paper version of what my parents had for years.

[enc0ded]

Cool, but it seems you need to remember how many days are in the current month yes? It always shows a full 31 days.

[davidcollantes]

Yes. This will make it confusing.

[bergerjac]

Quick trick to remember:

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17mch8wncw9zmpng/original.pn...

[ToastyMallows]

30 days hath September...

[princess3000]

Yeah that's brilliant, and it looks pretty great. This would probably make the whole thing much more complicated but it'd be nice if the "unused" days were invisible, and I agree that the name is a bit awkward. Beyond that though, awesome.

[jamessb]

This could be done by printing the calendar on a strip of paper/fabric, then sticking the ends together to make a continuous loop around two vertical rollers.

This would also have the effect of making the calendar less wide, so that it took us less wall space, at the cost of making it thicker.

[jaysonelliot]

This little bit of snark gave me a laugh: "The red stripe highlights the weekend. For the United States, where week starts on Sunday (but it is anyway considered a part of weekend), alternative frames can be produced."

Can I just say?

Sunday and Saturday are the weekend because they are on each end of the week. If you stack them both up at the back, only Sunday would get to be the weekend. Saturday would just be the day before the end.

A line has got two ends.

[ekianjo]

Erm, the rational usual understanding is that you refer to "weekend" as a period and not "week ends" in two separate words. Weekend = the end of the week, i.e. Saturday and Sunday. Isn't Sunday called the 7th Day of the Week in the religious tradition? Therefore Saturday should be 6th and Saturday and Sunday are both at the same "end".

[Shish2k]

> A line has got two ends.

A counterpoint of equal snark and uselessness: No, it has one "start" and one "end", especially if it's a one-way line.

[afterburner]

I seriously doubt most people think of it like that.

[anonymous]

For the life of me, I could never understand what compelled americans to switch from monday first to sunday first.

[hk__2]

This is not a line, it’s a time period.

[schtev]

Okaaaaaaaaaaaay. What about February, which ends on day 28 or 29?

[ahmetaltay]

My Casio Twincept had the same calendar on its LCD. It applied backlight on a selected frame depending on the month. It was possible to see full set of numbers if you look closely.

It was something like this:

http://www.pmwf.com/Watches/Casio/FirstTwinceptCalendarTwinc...

[kgermino]

Wait, I can't buy this from him?!

Anyone know of a place that I can get something similar? Or recommendations on the best was to make one?

[Casseres]

It seems like this would be a great Kickstarter item. If I wasn't at sea, I would jump on this. It seems like an easy product to get one's feet wet with some manufacturing experience.

[kps]

Search for a "perpetual calendar" or "eternal calendar". They used to be reasonably common as desk accessories and are still made as promotional items.

[snowfox]

It is cool. But is it useful? The only information it gives is day of week, assuming you already know where to position your slider. It doesn't have holidays and number of days in a month. So if you don't already have a calendar with all the information, you can't use this calendar.

[siglesias]

Cool! 2 thoughts:

1) Would be cool if it were a dry erase surface, both for writing the month on it and circling important dates, etc. 2) Many have mentioned the 31 days problem, but that's solved with a magnet of some kind to cover the 31 on months where that day doesn't exist.

[grecy]

This looks fantastic, but it doesn't give me any reference as to which month I'm actually looking at.... i.e. I drag the frame so that the 1st is a Saturday, but what month in what year am I looking at? Will the 1st of July 2015 be a Saturday, I have no idea from this.

[nicolethenerd]

It's a wall calendar - it only shows one month at a time - presumably, the current month.

[ultramundane828]

I have this problem too. Am I supposed to be able to derive a date from the calendar? Am I missing some element on the page?

I generally don't have a lot of interest in time, so I don't have whatever relevant knowledge this might require (if any).

[keerthiko]

The comment at the bottom about the US weekend tickled me. I never really thought about it, but holy guacamole, is it weird that Americans have the week starting on a Sunday, and consider it part of the weekend. Why the HECK are calendars printed with Sunday at the front? This doesn't even need any kind of "restructuring of the Gregorian Calendar or adopting a new more sensible one" (as the rest of this thread seems to be all about), just stop printing/displaying calendars in a disjointed, retarded fashion...

I'm sure it had some meaningful significance in the past, but really, I doubt anyone will get mad if you started printing the calendar from the Monday on the left, in America too.

[lmm]

Sunday has always (FSVO) been the start of the week - it's not an American thing at all (indeed I've found Europeans get more confused when you don't start a week on Sunday). The Sabbath - the seventh day of the week referred to in Genesis - was Saturday, and Jews still celebrate it as such - Christians moved a lot of the way it's treated to Sunday.

"Weekend" is just a catchy name; "weekboundary" would be much more cumbersome.

[sarreph]

Delightful concept. However, perhaps you should reconsider the name? Its spelling/pronunciation may be a bit of an anti-hype barrier.

[mayoff]

I think “Forevruary” would be a little better.

[joelanman]

Very nice. I had a go at designing some calendars a while back, only they were all pocket-sized:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelanman/sets/7215759450272255...

[sturmeh]

It always shows 31 days, you can't write on it without carrying events onto the next months and the weekend can NOT be adjusted with this design.

Also I've seen this concept before many times, it certainly isn't a unique one.

[vashishthajogi]

I would add small labels for Mon, Tue, ... Sun on the movable frame.

[bitwize]

This would be cool as a whiteboard with a sliding frame on it.

[jpttsn]

> United States, where week starts on Sunday

> Yury Gagarin goes to the space

Gotta love Russian-flavour English.