Re: CHAT: The Elven (or Techian) calendar

All this chat about Calendars has inspired me to put up a page (or
rather two pages) on the Kélen calendar:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/KCAL/
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/KCAL/calendar.html
Warning: the first page was more of an experiment in frames &
javascript & may not render well on your computer. The second page is
frames & javascript free, but it is only a copy of the calendar, with
no explanation added. I've tested the frames on Windows & Linux, and
it works best on Windows 1024x768 using Opera 6. IE & Mozilla look
fine, too. On Linux, Opera 5 gives me a javascript error & doesn't
fill one of the frames. Konqueror looks, um, interesting. Mozilla
looks fine, so use that if you have linux. Sorry, no Mac at home, so
I couldn't test it.

Anyway, on to the fun stuff:
The Kélen year or jílxién is 813 Kélen days long. This was determined
by going to the Alien Planet Designer site and playing with criteria.
Their sun is hotter and younger than ours, and so their planet has to
be further out to be earth-like. This made a 600-something earth days
year. Rotational period is arbitrary, but since I wanted more weather
& storms, I made it shorter than ours, at approx 20 hours. Then,
since there are no moons and also little axial tilt, months and
seasons weren't really all that important.

So, I decided to start the year with the rising of a certain nebula,
called malúáne jamólemae or Lúáne's Womb. After that I just used
sacred numbers and did math. 16, 64, 96, and 144 are the important
demarcations. The first "month" (I never really came up with a
collective name for these), is the first 16 days of the year. The
next month is the first 64 days minus the first 16. Counting 96 days
from the first day makes the third month, etc. The diagram at
calendar.html helps immensely. In sum, there is a calendar division
every 64 days. There are also calendar divisions every 96 and 144
days, culminating in a day called jalónaña. Thereafter are 237 days,
divided into three increments, which mark the "dark" time of year
when the nebula is not in the sky. This gives me divisions of 16
days, 48 days, 32 days, 32 days, 16 days, 48 days, 64 days, 32 days,
32 days, 64 days, 48 days, 16 days, 32 days, 32 days, 64 days, and
then (in the dark time) 144 days, 48 days, and 45 days. Why should
all divisions be the same length! I didn't, however, go into leap
days or hours or anything.

As to the ~20 earth-hour day. I arbitrarily declared a
second-equivalent of ~1.5 earth-seconds. These are called jílíñi. 64
of them make up a júsíñ, which is therefore ~1 1/2 earth-minutes. 12
of these make up a júsren, which is ~19 earth-minutes. and 8 júsreni
make a jahóLa, ~2 1/2 earth-hours. There are 4 jahóLi each day and
another 4 each night. The day-night cycle begins at sunrise. So the
first day of the New Year starts on sunrise after the nebula is first
spotted on the horizon.




--
Sylvia Sotomayor
sylvia1@ix.netcom.com

The Kélen language can be found at:
http://home.netcom.com/~sylvia1/Kelen/kelen.html

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