Happy Septuple-Zero (Hex) Odometer Day

[beamjockey]

Everybody seems to be talking about the moment, this coming Friday the Thirteenth, when the Unix epoch rolls over to 1234567890. (This represents, more or less, the number of seconds elapsed since the beginning of 1 January 1970. If you are a nitpicker, you may want to read up on this.)

I found this faintly disturbing. Seems like Unix is a creature of the binary world, so shouldn't we be looking at the epoch in binary, or octal, or hexadecimal?

I asked Google to calculate: "1,234,567,890 in hexadecimal"

The reply:

1 234 567 890 = 0x499602D2

If you prefer, in binary:

1 234 567 890 = 0b1001001100101100000001011010010

Okay, so is there any upcoming moment that makes an interesting-looking hexadecimal number?

One leaps out: As many zeroes as possible in the near future. Namely, 0x50000000. If you really
love zeroes, you'll want to express this as 0b1010000000000000000000000000000.

What's the decimal equivalent of this?

0x50000000 = 1 342 177 280

This is 107,609,390 seconds after next Friday. There are thirty-some million seconds in a year, so the date is about three years away.

A helpful conversion site informs me that this is:

GMT: Fri, 13 Jul 2012 11:01:20 GMT

(Nitpickers will want to adjust for leap seconds.)

It turns out to be ANOTHER Friday the Thirteenth. Spooky, no?

So after you've enjoyed seeing 1234567890 come up on the decimal epoch clock this Friday, start planning your Septuple-Zero (Hex) parties for the eve of Bastille Day, 2012.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Hey! That'll be my 58th birthday!

[whl.livejournal.com]

If you had a mac handy (I know, you're at work), that's:
date -r 1342177280
or
date -r 0x50000000

I refuse to look for interesting dates in Octal; I didn't spend much time on (n * 12) bit architectures, where n ≠ 5.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

I thought that the unix apocalypse was going to be the year 2038. What? Those machines won't be around by then?

[archiver-tim.livejournal.com]

Oh my! I turn 21,000 days old on the 26th of this month. Should I have a party?

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

By all means!

[acmespaceship.livejournal.com]

Good, we needed a holiday to get us through the long cold months between Mole Day (10/23) and Pi Day (3/14). And what's this about 3/3/09 being a square root day?

I know what to serve on the buffet for Pi Day, and I know what small furry animals to use for decorating on Mole Day, but what do you serve on Unix Apocalypse Day?

Root vegetables?

Popcorn kernels?

I should stop now, right?

[(Anonymous)]

Sadly 0xDEADBEEF was Mon Apr 14 15:27:43 1952

[jon787.livejournal.com]

I hate it when I forget to login

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Two bass players and a football manager have DEADBEEF birthdays:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_O%27Sullivan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenny_Aaronson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Knight

[scarfman]

7/6/09 is 40000 in Excel/Lotus dates.

[dftscript.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

"There are thirty-some million seconds in a year," or, "pi seconds is a nanocentury."