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Two questions, Dev:
(1) Why did you reset the numbering to 1, when the previous photo was #363. You were just two days away from the one-year anniversary of this series! I expected you’d finish out with a #365, then reset or start a new series. (But I’m confident there’s an underlying method here that I just don’t yet get.)
(2) That shadow in the photo — is that a shadow-image of you taking the picture? Whether it is or not, it adds a delightfully recursive touch to the image.
(3) Also, no poem this time: Is this a sign of your new policy (which I think you mentioned before) of dropping, or at least scaling back, the poetry, as it’s hard to come up with fresh snippets every day?
All right, that was three questions, after I promised only two. My mistake!
Hi Gary! Thanks for stopping by. I see it is bothering several people that I didn’t go all the way to 365. My wife, somebody on Twitter and you are three who have asked. There are probably others who haven’t said anything.
Okay, so my reasoning is two fold: I don’t like the number 365.. it is 5×73. which is just, well, odd. 363, on the other hand, is 3×121 and 121 is 11×11.. it is more symmetrical. Otherwise I would have had to go to 366 but it’s not a leap year and then the question would be why did I do one extra. The second reason is, I always intended to start on Feb 20 or 21 last year. Feb 20 is my birthday, so it is my personal new year’s day, well Feb 21 is. Mentally, I reset a lot of things on Feb 20. Last year when I started this project I was 2 days late. Late to start, but can’t be late to finish as well, can I? So I had to close it out on time yesterday in order to reset and start anew.
I actually had a tweet thread explaining all this…
Yes, that is my shadow. I am glad you like it. I didn’t intend it that way at first, but when I stood there I couldn’t frame in any way to keep the shadow out. I would have had to move much further back and it would have been a different photo altogether. So eventually I decided to frame it with the shadow. Call it a selfie… of sorts.
Yes, the no poem, or poem when I feel like it, or not poem but prose, poem or prose from someone well known, or random thought from my own mind… those were all the options you and I discussed a while back. I decided to relax the rules (that I imposed on myself) and have a bit of leeway. Besides, I am embarking on another project that will take up some time so I wanted to make it a little easy.
Okay, well done! Sorry I missed the tweet thread. But your “reset” explanation makes sense.
BTW, in my earlier comment, I failed to adequately emphasize my main emotion, which is a mixture of awe and admiration for your accomplishment: You’ve gone a whole year, posting blog entries every single day, without a single misstep. That is monumental. Very few people do it. I certainly haven’t, despite having intended, at some point, to get started on such a pattern. It’s much harder than it looks, and takes discipline you are entitled to feel proud of.
There’s more fuzzy math than most people realize, when it comes to calculating year lengths. For example, a lunar year is 354 days, 8 hours, and pocket change. Most “lunar calendars” try to reconcile this with the solar year by adding some “intercalary” days, resulting in a “lunisolar” calendar. In the case of our currently fashionable Gregorian calendar, the periodic “leap years” aren’t really enough to keep things in sync with actual solar orbits. Every century or so, there are other micro-adjustments that I can’t keep track of. As a result, every so often, an expected leap year is canceled. And even then, things get gradually out of whack. Maybe this partially justifies your intuitive dislike for the number 365! ≧◔◡◔≦
Until recently, I was only dimly aware (if even that much) of these issues. But last year they suddenly became personal for me as a Baha’i. Turns out, there are several Baha’i sacred festivals that for the past 179 years or so have been celebrated in the West according to the solar calendar, and in the East according to the lunar calendar customary there at the time of the Faith’s founding. So these celebrations have been getting more and more out of step. The Baha’i Faith’s central governing body acted, last year, to standardize these observances. As a result, several Baha’i holy days to which I’ve always been accustomed suddenly changed dates. One of these was the birthday of our Faith’s founder, Baha’u’llah, which shifted from November 12 to October 23. At first I was like, “How is it possible to change somebody’s birthday? But after looking closely at the underlying calculations, I found it actually made sense. The new commemoration actually is closer to the way it’s always been observed in Baha’u’llah’s homeland, Persia.
Having just jumped through these calendric hoops, I find nothing disconcerting about your wanting to restart your year after 363 days. I say, “Bravo!”
When I tweeted about it I actually thought about saying how arbitrary the 365 is… well it is not completely arbitrary, but largely so. Then decided against when I realized that a lot of people wouldn’t know or care and I will needlessly complicate the whole matter… ?
There are several calendars in use in India, as you can probably imagine, some solar, some lunar, some lunisolar &etc. In fact, the official Indian calendar is not Gregorian and is called the Saka calendar which may correspond to something started by a king/emperor named Kanishka. There is another calendar which people of West Bengal use which is called the Bengali calendar and somewhat corresponds to the Saka. It used a different starting point, named Vikram Sambat after another king/emperor Vikramaditya but was later modified by yet another king. This Bengali calendar is used as the religious calendar by most of northern India… well to be precise there are various other calendars which are similar or identical to the Bengali calendar but I simply refer to it as Bengali since it’s what I am used to. Some of the others were developed or modified from the Bengali… anyways… point being I agree with what you said and many events have two dates in my head. In other words, the Gregorian calendar is simply a human artifact and needn’t be considered sacrosanct.
Thank you again. As I have said many times, the whole “make your own website” was pretty much your prompt which I followed. And I am glad I did. It is no longer just a website where I post my photos, it actually acts as a hub for various things and a trial board for ideas I have. Although WordPress is still a bit of a pain. We’ll see how things shake out over the next year.