Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with time

Dave Brubeck and Daft Punk walk into a bar

msittig — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 01:00:01 -0800

It seems 4/4 is the universal time signature for electronic music / techno / EDM. Is there a song or artist that uses any other time signature in a consistent way? As in not just a bridge or for special effect.

Use of The City as a metaphor for the Internet/Web

0bvious — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 09:19:31 -0800

I am looking for examinations of the Internet and World Wide Web that use the structure and/or history of the city as a metaphor. I'm afraid I have no original example of this phenomenon to kick things off. I have this image in my head of 'the city' that always goes back to Plato and his Republic. Plato's city was a physical, social construction, as well as a philosophical metaphor, at one and the same time. It feels that many have talked about the Internet in similar, overlapping, terms.

(It need not be 'the city as metaphor', rather any social, physical space that humans build and live in will suffice. Also, metonymy rather than metaphor would be great.)

Writings that explore the political history of the city, it's technological expansion, that consider the city as a nexus for theories of human civilisation, of emergence perhaps, of structure, social and political control and, perhaps most importantly, of space vs place - all as a way to think about similar phenomena taking place online. The Internet as emerging network with similarities to the city; the World Wide Web considered as spatio-social metaphor?

etc. etc.

Any ideas?

Online Days Since counter for many recurring tasks?

Gordafarin — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:53:20 -0800

Before iGoogle disappears, I need to replace my 'Days Since' counter widget. Can you help me find one? For my work, I have a number of recurring tasks that I need to check on every so often (approximately once a week, approximately once a month, et cetera).

The perfect solution to this has been the Days Since widget on my iGoogle. It let me quickly and easily add/update/delete tasks, tracked the average length of time between each reset, and it even auto-sorted them by priority (how 'late' they were according to the average).

Of course, iGoogle will be gone before the end of the year, so I need to find a new solution. It's easy to find replacements for all my other widgets, but this one has been trickier. I do also use Calendar reminders, but this widget has been ideal for my workflow - being able to just click and tick something off my list for the day, or to look and see that I haven't done job X in Y days and that I should find some time for it.

I need something for my computer, not a phone or tablet app, and ideally something online rather than software, because it's a hassle to install programs on my work PC and I sometimes work from home.

Even better if it can plug into an online homepage/dashboard service - I've checked NetVibes and Protopage, and neither of them had a suitable widget that I could find.

Mac shows Time Maching but not External HD

chicaboom — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 11:16:55 -0800

Reinstalled Snow Leopard but ejected my external drive before this. Then, when done, plugged back in via USB as my usual custom....and Time Machine still shows up, but the External Seagate drive does not. I made sure that in Finder/Preferences that the external disc box as others was checked. I tried a different cord, and different port. I opened up Disc Utility and the External HD's partioned Time Machine is available but the other part, now renamed something else (a default name from manufacturer?) is greyed out and I cannot touch it. Any thoughts? Should i now go to the boot disc of Snow Leopard? Not sure why TM shows but the rest does not.

Not just get things done, but find out what I did...

Brockles — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 09:41:39 -0800

In short: I need to track a couple of hundred tasks over 10-15 projects (in any of 7 areas) on the go at any one time. In a month, when I am asked, I currently have only a vague notion which project took up the most time. Currently using Things for Mac and iphone, but am open to moving if it is for a better solution (i integrated time tracking with no loss of functionality). Am ok with paying for it. I use Things (Cultured Code) pretty heavily for my various work projects. Unfortunately, when I look back to see where all my time went, there is no information at all other than what tasks were completed on which day. I can't see if they took me thirty seconds or thirty days. How do I add that option? How do I track my time in Things or, alternatively, how do I replicate the ease of use of Things and track time too?See my previous comment here for some more information:

http://ask.metafilter.com/228072/Whats-a-good-todo-app-for-Mac-and-iOS-that-syncs-with-iCalGoogle-Calendar#3300409

Things used to talk to Minco and it was actually good enough that I could have made it work. Unfortunately Things has now stopped exporting to reminders on the mac (only importing from) so this is not a viable work around as far as I can tell unless I do everything in Reminders (which sucks in comparison to Things). I don't really need it to sync with Calendars, but it'd be nice to be able to see what I was working on on a certain day. And how much of my day they took up. A spreadsheet result would also work. Or even some other reporting - I don't have preconceived ideas of what I want other than 'an easy way to report what I have been spending my time on').

So I want to track projects, project tasks, due dates and have a daily job list with visibility of when I need to do them. Things currently gives me this, with the mobile interaction (iphone app) that works for me so I can add jobs and tick them off as I am out and about. It's great. But I have no reporting after the fact and I need to add that.

I have used Timetracker (which is a teeny app and clunky and means double entering) but it's not working very well for me. I end up with knowing which projects my time is split between but tracking any finer than that is clunky and too time consuming. If that added time stamps/totals to Things, however, I'd be all over it like a rash.

Mac OS X Mountain Lion and iPhone 4S (if its relevant).

Help? Any super ideas out there?

Does Minco actually still work with Things (it doesn't look like it does)?

I'd even be ok with a non-real time tracking GTD app that I add chunks of time to somehow. LIke adding 5 minute blocks to projects so they just show a total of time spent (rather than clicking a timer on and off while working, which with my fragmented working style doesn't always work).

Depression and Skewed Perception of Time

Cybria — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 04:22:37 -0800

I have clinical depression and I have a skewed perception of time, which I hear is common in depressed people. I will wake up and want to do something productive, but instead if I can't find the energy or will power I will busy myself with unimportant things and watch the hours fly by. Hours turn to days, days to weeks, etc. One day I look up and it's March 8, 2013. On the flip side, on the days I do manage to do something productive time drags by at an agonizingly slow pace. Actually being productive exhausts me most days, and this dragging of time doesn't help at at all. I'm on an antidepressant and seeing a therapist, but I was hoping to find some way to better keep perspective of time? Instead of having all my days morph together. Also looking for ways to better cope with working since I work from home.

The dawn of time, parking version.

jennstra — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 21:02:26 -0800

I am parked on a city side street that is marked 2 hour parking only from 7:00 am to 6:00 pm. It is now after 8 and I will be parked in this spot overnight. My question is, does my two hour parking start at 7:00? I have to move my car before 9:00? Overnight parking is allowed, lots of cars are there with mine. Thank you!

Does anyone have this car radio, and know how to set it to 24-hour time?

herzogbr — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 05:33:57 -0800

I figured out years ago how to change my Jeep's clock to 24-hour/military time. Recently the battery was disconnected and the clock reverted back to regular time, and I cannot figure out how to switch it back to 24-hour time. Does anyone know how to do this? This is the factory radio in a 2000 Jeep Cherokee - see photo at http://www.flickr.com/photos/herzogbr/8472509974

I don't remember how I did this the first time, but I do remember it wasn't intuitive and took some experimenting. Here's what I've tried so far this time:

every button combination I can think of

read the Jeep's manual, which pictures two different radio options, but neither are the one I have

The clock works, so it's not the end of the world if this can't be figured out, but I do prefer seeing the 24-hour time, so I appreciate any helpful suggestions. Thanks.

Should I get a part time job?

Cybria — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 07:30:12 -0800

Before I start, I'd like to point out that I'm not spoiled or lazy. I've been dealing with the very real problems of depression and anxiety for most of my life, and for the past five years I've been working from home. I could make just as much working from home as I could working part time. However I realize that having employment outside the home would boost my self esteem, get me socializing with other humans again, and give me a healthy routine to follow. I feel like I would be well enough to do this.

However I'm afraid that if it's the wrong job for me it could make things worse. I've heard enough tales of nightmare supervisors, difficult coworkers, etc. Those types of things could send me over the edge if they got bad enough.

I'm weighing the pros and cons but it would be nice to get some input from people who've been in or witnessed a similar situation. My other alternative is to volunteer somewhere and continue to work from home. Overall my goal is to get myself out of the house and doing something productive on a regular basis. Thanks guys.

Name for the phenomenon when all the numbers on a clock are identical?

smoochbelly — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 08:03:46 -0800

Often I look at the clock when all the digits are the same, such as, 11:11 or 4:44. Is there a name for this? Do you have your own name for this?

How do I start giving 150% at work?

anotheraccount — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 09:51:53 -0800

I recently started at a new job that's going very well, and there is tremendous room for growth here in the next year or two. In order to get where I want to be, I need to start working a lot more and a lot harder. Difficulty level: I'm in grad school part-time and have an active social life. I've been at my job since November and I love it - the people are great, the work is challenging, and there is tons of room for growth. My boss' position is probably going to be open in the next two years, and I want that job.

Today I made a stupid misstep in asking for some time off, and the head of the organization (my boss' boss) pulled me aside and said that he thought I was doing a good job, but I need to do more in order to prove to him that I would be able to take on this higher position. Specifically: working 50 hours a week or more, working harder, and taking more of a leadership role in the agency. He said he was understanding that I had a lot to juggle with school, but I need to find a way to do more.

The problem is that I am currently in the second year of a three-year part-time grad program. Two days a week, I work eight hours and then go to class for three. This semester, I've had tons of homework and I spend all day Sunday doing that. My boyfriend and I just moved in together and I have friends who I already don't see enough. I asked for the time off today because I ended the weekend feeling just as exhausted as I did on Friday afternoon.

But that's not really a luxury I can afford anymore. I want this higher-level job badly. This is a golden opportunity and it will not come again. But I just don't know how I can do more than I'm doing without completing collapsing under the weight of work, school, and social life.

How do I do this? Should I consider taking a leave of absence from my grad program? How do I steel myself for working extra hours when I end most days exhausted now?

What are the best resources/explanations of why "Time is an Illusion"?

Lipstick Thespian — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 06:49:49 -0800

I'm interested in doing some research about the idea that "time is an illusion" - i.e. there is no past, present or future and everything is happening in one, gigantic Now. Definitely looking for scientific resources as well as spiritual/religious/etc.

Perception Problems

Angel of Khaos — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 20:36:40 -0800

How can I improve my perception of distance and time? I have problems estimating time and length. I can't estimate time accurately (e.g. the time it takes to do something) because I am always experiencing different "speeds" at which I am perceiving time, and I have problems with depth perception and can't accurately gauge distance or length. Though this isn't a real problem for me, I would like to be able to accurately guess time and distance.

I also would like know if this is just a common thing amongst people. Google has failed me either due to the lack of content or my terrible searching skills, and I'm now requesting help from the hivemind.

Thank you in advance.

Replace the motion of my Pop-pop's pocketwatch

runcibleshaw — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:43:31 -0800

So I have my father's father's retirement pocketwatch. My father gave it to me almost twenty years ago and it has never worked. Recently I pulled it out of the china cabinet and tried to fix it myself following some youtube tutorials. Unfortunately I forgot that I am clumsy and bad at not losing small things. Long story slightly longer, I lost/broke a couple pieces. At that point I took it to a jeweler/watchmaker and he could not fix my mistake. Now I'm wondering if I can just replace the entire internal mechanism of the watch while keeping the part that has my Grandpa's name on it. I'm having no luck finding anything online. The watch itself says "F.C. Caravelle Watch Division, Bulova Watch Co, Swiss, 890" On the actual mechanism (which I'm told is called "the motion") it says "Caravelle Watch 16 0A" and "Seventeen, 17 Jewels". Pictures here and here. I'm willing to spend under $500 to get this done. Bonus points if you can point me to a nice matching chain (like the one Lincoln had in 'Lincoln').

Opposites have attracted. Now what?

Anonymous — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 18:54:55 -0800

How do I reconcile a basic difference between my live-in-partner and myself about recreation? One enjoys something active now and again, the other always wants something passive. What is a happy compromise? My partner and I have lived together for several years. I work from home; she works in an office. Our work schedules pretty much match up in the standard fashion - for eight hours a day we are sleeping, for eight we are working, and the last eight hours we have free. It is the third eight hours that is tricky.

During her work day, she is talking to customers and colleagues, doing site visits, making orders, and do on. I am reviewing code, writing reports, answering e-mails and occasionally getting in touch with a colleague or customer by phone.

After work, she wants nothing more (essentially every night) than to eat dinner, watch TV for six or seven hours, then perhaps read for twenty minutes before going to sleep. Maybe one evening a month we will go out for dinner and/or to see a movie, or visit a store or library or something. After eight hours of sitting staring at a screen, eight more hours of sitting staring at a screen is not appealing.

Complications: we live in a somewhat remote area, poorly served by public transportation. She drives, but due to a disability, I do not. To go to a relatively nearby movie theater is a twenty-minute trip each way by car, so to see a two-hour movie there would take up maybe 2:45. On my own, it is about a seven-hour round trip.

Also, she has a bad back and always pleads that she needs to rest. On top of that, she is on medication for bipolar disorder and says she has to do "something to turn her mind off," otherwise she says "my thoughts just go around and around."

I want to support her in being comfortable, and she tells me if I do not want to watch whatever marathon of TV is currently coming through NetFlix I do not have to, but any attempt to make any baby step as meager as maybe playing cards is met with complaints and a long face. I an go out on my own, of course, but it is a considerable time investment and it drops our waking hours together considerably.

Also: I moved from the core of a large city to a remote town to be with her, and where I used to be out three or four or five nights a week (not clubbing or anything, but to see a movie or have coffee with a friend or to go to the gym), now I am a total couch potato, watching my waistline grow by the month.

I am not interested in DTMFA advice: we get along quite well, are very sympatico, have a fairly awesome sex life, like each other's friends and family and all. However, looking ahead to the 361 evenings left in this year and thinking 340 of them will be spent watching marathons of TV shows is making me crazy.

Suggestions? Should I readjust my conception of leisure time to being essentially just sitting on my ass watching TV? Or do I ignore her and do what I want?

Memory isn't what it used to be

nidora — Sat, 29 Dec 2012 00:32:48 -0800

Has anyone any experience with having distorted time periods or even days. What I mean by distorted is that my concept of time is really off and if I didn't have a watch on I don't think that I could accurately guestimate ten minutes, let alone hours of time. When I think back during the week, I can't really remember the days and the events that occurred in them, but if someone reminds me that we did something, it's there. It's kind of like multiple choice tests in that I can't recall a particular memory but I know that they are there if someone reminds me or if I were to write down what I am doing and saying throughout the day. I can already imagine myself compulsively writing down everything I do and making my life pretty miserable if I am trying to record everything that I do in a particular day. The worst part of this is that I am very tangential in my thinking. I could start off on a particular topic and easily forget what were originally talking about. Sometimes, it feels like I am losing more of myself on a daily basis if there is such a thing. Yes, I do take medications for anxiety,but this time problem has been going on for quite a while. I'm afraid I'm going to end up like some sort of bad neuroscience project gone bad. Somewhere between the character in Memento and the short stories by Oliver Sacks.

Please help me remember a short story!

pentagoet — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 07:47:31 -0800

Short story help, please. I remember this... In the mid 1970s, I read a long scifi short story. It was published in an anthology(maybe Alfred Hitchcock?). It was about a man discovering a group of time travelers in San Francisco. They are from our not too distant future and are tourists. I think the theme of the time travel is to experience a perfect season throughout history. Some of them are humming or singing tunes from Chaucerian England as that was their last stop on the tour. The man has a brief affair with one of the women from the future. There is a musician from the future who is here to gather material for his next opus.The man learns that there is a big disaster imminent (earthquake?). I don't quite remember the next bits, but the story ends with him dying in an explosion in an effort to stop the plague.
It is not Jack London's Red Plague and my googling only shows modern stories.

Merging iTunes across Time Machine images

blueshammer — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:02:22 -0800

Once I had backed my iTunes up using Time Machine, I deleted some music on my computer to free up space. I've since added new music, which Time Machine has also backed up, but in discrete images. Is there a way to create a "master" library with exactly one copy of every song across all my Time Machine images? In case you need a longer example, let's say I never listened to Murmur so I deleted it from my "live" iTunes. Since that happened, I acquired Life's Rich Pageant. No one Time Machine backup has both Murmur and Life's Rich Pageant in it, but I want to ("effortlessly") create a new repository of music that contains both albums.

I can't seem to come up with the right combination of keywords to find the answer to this on Google or AskMe, so apologies in advance if this turns out to be a redundant question.

(NB: I actually listen to Murmur all the time.)

Time Traveling Submarine?

lstanley — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 12:11:19 -0800

Does anyone remember a short sci-fi story about a time traveling submarine? I read a story many years ago and I’ve always remembered a few main points:

*There is a time traveling submarine.
*It wasn't a military submarine, but a bathysphere or a submersible like Alvin.
*Inside the submarine were a few scientists, perhaps only two.
*There was as least one other person who stayed behind to witness the time travel.
*The submarine traveled back in time, but instantly reappeared.
*When the person witnessing the event opened the submarine door, the two scientists were long dead.
*The scientists used a welding touch to burn a message into the metal of the submarine to make sure it didn’t disintegrate.

Does this sound familiar? Can anyone point me to this story?

Any one know of a one handed book stand?

SoltanG — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 14:30:44 -0800

So, I would like to start reading some books lying down in my bed at night. The biggest problem I have with it is holding the book properly. I usually hold it in one hand using my fingers to constantly to hold the pages from collapsing or applying pressure to sides of the book to keep it open. It is super annoying as some of you traditional book readers must have faced. I am not sure if this is a problem for e-book readers but I can imagine it to be lot more convenient. So I am looking for a small light weight book stand that is operated with ONE HAND. Please suggest any. Thanks!

Examples of timelines in movies and other pop culture?

oulipian — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 13:13:01 -0800

I'm looking for examples of visual timelines in movies, video games, or fiction. Scenes where a span of time is represented metaphorically, preferably as a physical object, diagram, or action. A good example is this scene from Me and You and Everyone We Know in which two characters use a street as a visual metaphor for their potential relationship. My meager collection of examples:
- The scene in Vertigo where Madeleine uses the cut tree cross-section to show her past life (this scene is referenced in La Jette and 12 Monkeys, as shown here).
- Picnicface's Growing Boy skit.
- Jason Rohrer's game Passage (walking represents the passage of time).

How long should this translation have taken me?

Sakura3210 — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 08:51:09 -0800

I recently finished my first ever translation assignment, a play from Spanish to English. When I first began, my employer asked how long I thought it would take. I grossly underestimated the time. What should I do now? I estimated that it would take me 8-10 hours (it was taking about 20 minutes to do a rough translation of each page, and there were 44 pages). I failed to take into account how long it would take me to look up words I didn't know, to rework sentences so they are grammatically correct in English but still retain the drama of the Spanish, editing, etc.

I also failed to keep an accurate count of how much time I spent doing the translation (I know, bad me...), primarily because I've been doing the work in short snippets (i.e. whenever I had free time from school, work, etc.).

So now I don't know how much time to say it took. My completed translation is about 6,200 words, and Word says the total editing time was 100 hours, which sounds ridiculous to me. I was thinking saying the translation took 30-36 hours. I feel like it took longer, but that's already 3 times as long as I initially said (plus I feel bad claiming longer due to my failure to keep time).

What does the hivemind think? How much time should I be saying the translation took me?

Airline shifting departure time unilaterally

Mapes — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:11:19 -0800

Is there any recourse when an airline moves your flight earlier and earlier, eventually adding a new flight at the original time that costs much more? My wife and I are flying Delta to Tokyo: originally a 9am flight to Detroit followed by a 12:30pm flight to Narita. Delta has twice shifted our first flight earlier, once to 8am and again to 5:40am. Now I see that the flight at 9am has reappeared with a slightly different flight number. When I try to change to this flight via their website, the additional cost is >$3K.

Is this common? Would I get anywhere by calling them? Any recommendations on what angle to take, other than "Waaaahh, this seems unfair!" I'd just like to avoid getting up at 2am only to sit for a subsequent 4-hour layover. Thanks!

in search of lost time book

canoehead — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 09:34:46 -0800

What was this book I read? Published in last 10 years, it had something like an explanation in layman's terms of the physics of time & why time is perceived by our consciousness as a flow. Can't recall much more than that I'm afraid.

Am I passive aggressive?

maxwelton — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 03:00:59 -0800

Am I passive-aggressive? I've always felt that I am not, but more than one person recently has accused me of it, and where there's smoke there might be fire... I suspect most of this might be around the fact that time and I have never had a very good relationship, which is obviously within my powers to fix but I never get around to it (zing). So I'm almost always a bit late to things like meetings, I tend to wildly underestimate how long things will take (and therefore miss deadlines I set myself) and I frequently take a lot longer to get around to doing things than I expect I will.

Some of this is I've always procrastinated, and feel some of my best work comes under intense time pressure. (I can see the other side, that this is, at best, an excuse.)

I also do that thing where you keep saying to yourself "well, five more minutes of [answering email, talking on the phone, soaking in the shower, whatever], and then I'll go" and before you know it, it's meeting time and you're fifteen minutes from being there.

Sometimes it's because I allow absolutely no margin for error and, of course, error happens. You leave the house on time if the roads are empty and you catch the light, but the county has trucks out to repair the roads and then you hit the five-minute traffic light just as it's turning red, etc., etc.

Other times it's because I genuinely lose track of things. I know something is due on Wednesday, but it doesn't occur to me that today is Wednesday, as moronic as that sounds. On something like a chore, I might think "well, I just did that x days ago, it can wait another day" when x is actually several weeks ago.

And I've always been awful at estimating how long things should take. If I say an hour, it's guaranteed to take two, and if I pad it and say a day it will take two days.

I know this is one of the most annoying things about me (and that's saying something), but I've never made much progress in battling this tendency of mine, annoying the ever-lasting crap out of a lot of people in my life. But it never occurred to me that I might be doing this from passive-aggressive motives. I definitely don't think of these time issues in terms of "your project is so special, eh? Let's see what a slipped deadline looks like" or "yeah, I said I'd do that, maybe I just won't get to it."

Are they right? Am I being passive-aggressive? I've read lists of what constitutes p-a behavior, and this is the only thing that seems to mesh well with what I do. It seems like true p-a behavior requires motive; if I have one it must be pretty deeply buried, and that's something I should probably see someone about if indeed this likely stems from that.

(It's also entirely possible I'm just a complete flake.)