Using Foundation-style Time 💫

197; 12020 H.E.

Just recently, I’ve finally finished the original Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. I’ve probably read the first book about three times in the last four years but I could never get my hands on the remaining two (Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation). Not going too deep into the series, I just want to say they are life-changing, in a good way.

During my read, I saw an interesting date format used by Galactic Empire and Foundation in the form of DAY OF THE YEAR; YEAR ERA TIME. Something about it gave me an idea of switching my timestamps from traditional Wednesday, July 15th 2020 09:09 PM to 197; 12020 H.E 2109. I wrote a quick webpage that shows your current local time in this format. Why year 12020? I have a post on that.

This is it. Something about this way of stamping time motivates me and inspires me. So much for me being a sci-fi romantic 🤷🏻‍♀️

Also, if you use XFCE, here is a clock format you can use: %j; 1%Y H.E. %H%M or %j; 1%Y H.E. %H%M.%S to also show dot-separated seconds counter ◼︎