
Here is today - spindritf
http://hereistoday.com/
======
rlu
Like others, I liked the loop-back to today. I think it would be nice to
include decade before century. Also, more or less at/after "period" I started
to get a little bored (see the discussion in these comments about losing
perspective) UNTIL you added the second dimension about life itself and then
it got interesting again because we think of dinosaurs and such to be so, so,
so long ago and yet this animation shows that in the grand scheme of things,
it's as if it had been last week.

~~~
rquantz
Including those additional segments helped maintain perspective for me --
seeing each one shrink incrementally gave a better sense than one animation
from Holocene to all of Earth's history.

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baby
I've always wanted to do something like that! It's brilliant. You should add
"here is your grand-grand mother, what's her name?" and "here will be your
potential grand grand son, do you think they'll remember your name?"

~~~
joshschreuder
Out of interest, what country are you from? I'm curious at the fact you called
it 'grand-grand'. Here in Australia we use 'great grand(mother etc.)'. Must be
a cultural thing.

~~~
baby
I just guessed, I'm french :)

~~~
joshschreuder
Ah makes sense! Well I knew what you meant, I was just wondering whether other
countries had this 'great-grand' thing or just Australia.

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hkmurakami
This is the first time I've seen something online that really made me go "Wow!
I want to make something like this too!"

And since I felt so strongly about this reaction, I messaged the guy behind
the site (Luke Twyman) saying "Thanks for the inspiration!"

It's quite a feeling being (a) inspired by something that you just bump into
one day, and (b) being able to shoot the guy/gal behind it telling him/her how
much you enjoyed their stuff. It's always a great feeling getting positive
feedback for some of my blog articles, and I'm strangely feeling perhaps just
as positive and cheery for _giving_ such a thumbs up to someone!

<http://whitevinyldesign.com/about/>

~~~
uppe
THE Haruki? If so, I read your book on running yesterday! What a wonderful
coincidence. I was also very inspired (inspirational ripple going on here..)
and decided to run every day instead of just every other day. Great read!

Edit: went to your website and found out, no, you're not Haruki Murakami.
Sorry for confusing you with him!

~~~
hkmurakami
no worries I get that all the time. apparently my Japanese writing has a
strong resemblance to his style though.

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ISL
Logarithmic map of the universe:

<http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/>

TL;DR:

<http://www.astro.princeton.edu/universe/all100.gif>

~~~
PetitPrince
Obligatory XKCD reference:

<http://xkcd.com/482/>

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chestnut-tree
This reminded me of something I saw at the Science Museum in London a few
years ago.

A round clock face is used to represent the history of the earth and a
narrator tells us the geological events that happen as the clock hands travels
around the clock face. At a few seconds to midnight, we're told this is when
humans appear.

I thought it was a clever way of illustrating how human history occupies such
a tiny segment in the overall scale of the earth's history. (I don't know if
the exhibit is still there)

~~~
SageRaven
One of the first couple of episodes of Cosmos (maybe the first?) has a similar
thing to convey the scale of time in our existence in the universe. Pretty
cool.

~~~
epsylon
Yep that's in the first episode.

<http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBA8DC67D52968201>

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Schlaefer
Suggestion: change the URL so one is able to bookmark a particular
perspective.

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tzaman
Nice, although not very informative, since you somewhat loose perspective with
each step.

~~~
PetitPrince
Isn't that (loosing yourself in the grand scheme of things) the whole point of
the animation ? A bit like Power of Ten [1] and Scale of the Universe [2] but
with time instead of space.

[1] <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0> [2]
<http://www.htwins.net/scale2/>

~~~
dvanduzer
The problem with this one is that you actually _don't_ lose yourself. Today
remains highlighted and continues to occupy a pixel or two. Even the
millennium vanishes next to epochs to preserve our bookmark on today. It's
jarring, and completely ruined the effect for me.

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apunic
I always wonder how scientists do know that something was 25, 540 million or
2.560 billion years ago.

~~~
maresca
Carbon Dating

~~~
courtewing
Carbon dating is actually only effective up to about 50,000 years, so its
really only ideal for tracking human history after we started migrating out of
Africa. This is because the unstable carbon-14 isotope only has a half-life of
about 5700 years.

There are many other forms of radiometric dating, though. Uranium-lead dating
has proven relatively accurate for periods of time between 1 million to 4.5
billion years ago.

Note: I'm not a geologist. I remembered that carbon was only effective for a
few thousand years from a geology course I had in college, but all of this
information is actually taken from articles on wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiometric_dating>

~~~
mcrittenden
I'm curious how it could prove accurate for that time frame? How could
something like that be verified or proven?

~~~
evan_
It's all theoretical, in the same way that our understanding of gravity or
radiation itself is theoretical.

~~~
teeja
It's more like a , you might get killed by a car if you step into the street
kind of theoretical. Or the drip of a water clock will fill the container in 8
hours kind of theoretical. Or a don't plant too early or your people will
starve kind of theoretical.

A theory in science is a model backed by the huge majority of observational
evidence and the collective experience of the model's community. There are no
other equivalent human institutions for reliability. None.

So saying "it's just a theory" in the case of uranium-dating is a fairly
unreasoned attitude.

~~~
evan_
I'm not saying it dismissively. "It's a theory" is not a negative thing to
say. It does not mean that I doubt it in any way.

------
Kiro
How do you learn to make these things?

~~~
killahpriest
This actually isn't made with D3. If you look at
<http://hereistoday.com/today.js>, it is all done in Canvas. Their code is
fairly well commented, so start by reading through that. At the same time,
Google around how to use Canvas for animation.

How it works: they bind the getPosition function the mousedown event, which in
turn starts the appropriate draw function. They have 19 frames, each of which
has its own draw function that draws rectangles. Every 1000/FPS seconds, the
the update and beginDraw functions are called, which are responsible for tween
effect.

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hcarvalhoalves
Amazed how old Earth actually is compared to the estimated age of the
universe. Also, about how old is primitive cellular life.

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esamek
What I find funny, is how the visualization of scale on a pixel based screen
is inherently limiting.

At a certain point, you want to represent today as a scale of everything
else...but at certain point, the line for today would definitely be smaller
than a single pixel.

Just a thought, obviously this is not practical by any measure.

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jcfrei
very nice, however "today" always remains one pixel in width, which kinda
breaks the comparison on larger time frames. I would also maybe add another
step, like this decade. still really nice!

~~~
jonny_eh
Was he supposed to use half a pixel?

~~~
dvanduzer
The appropriate trick here would be to change the point of reference each time
you zoom out. At the millennium scale, the point of reference might become
this year. At the epoch scale, the point of reference might become the
millennium.

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brianberns
This is great. My only suggestion is to increase the font size on the timeline
labels. They were too small for me to read, even with my eyes right up to the
monitor.

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kevinSuttle
Is it odd that I don't see the point of this? Don't get me wrong, this is
skillfully crafted, and kudos to the developer, but I'm missing the 'why?'.

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denzil_correa
It does not work on Safari Version 6.0.4 (8536.29.13)

~~~
djbender
Works for me. Same browser.

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jeromesalimao
This reminds me of a song by Xavier Rudd (great aussie artist).

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0E1bNmyPWww>

"Many moons have risen and fallen long, long before you came. So which way is
the wind blowin', and what does your heart say? So follow, follow the sun, and
which way the wind blows when this day is done."

------
bennyg
Beautiful and simple visualization. The meteors/comets shooting by were a
great touch. Did you make this spindritf?

~~~
jere
<http://whitevinyldesign.com/about/>

------
acerock
Yeah, I like this, but it becomes less effective as the scale increases. At
"Here is the Earth", the line for Today should be invisible (certainly not the
same width as in "Here is this century"). It demonstrates the limits of this
kind of explicitly visual approach.

By contrast, language, which leverages the imagination, can be even more
effective at revealing how insignificant we are:

"...stretch your arms to their fullest extent and imagine that width as the
entire [4.5 Billion year] history of the Earth. On this scale...the distance
from the fingertips of one hand to the wrist of the other is Precambrian. All
of complex life is in one hand, 'and in a single stroke with a medium-grained
nail file you could eradicate human history.' " (from Bill Bryson's A Short
History of Nearly Everything)

Another example of language illustrating an abstract concept better than
visual/graphic design: If you filmed or animated the following thought-
experiment, would it render it any more effective?

"Imagine people's height being proportional to their income, so that someone
with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult
population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order
of income.

The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible:
their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who
are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since
America's median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes
before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants
thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest
earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall."

------
dsrguru
What I find most interesting is that the dawn of anatomically modern humans is
actually visible on the 4.54 billion year timeline of the Earth. 200,000 years
out of 4.54 billion might only be about 1/23000 of our planet's history, but
that's also a whole 1/23000!

~~~
bmunro
If the period of time that humans have been around was drawn to scale, it
wouldn't really be visible.

If we assume that the width of the bar for the life of the earth is 1500
pixels (the width changes depending on the window size), then the period we
have been around will be around 0.06 pixels wide (1500/23000 = 0.065). Much
closer to zero pixels than one pixel.

~~~
dsrguru
Good point.

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e3pi
...and 'hereis':

Service Temporarily Unavailable

The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to maintenance
downtime or capacity problems. Please try again later. Apache Server at
hereistoday.com Port 80

I hope you resolve this downtime as comments are favorable, and it appears
interesting.

------
paulwithap
Why would you disable zoom? How am I supposed to enjoy your site while
pooping?

~~~
johnwards
Take your laptop in with you? Come on, I bet you have...

------
zozu
I love these reminders that we are so very small and fairly new to this place!

~~~
CervezaPorFavor
And yet we seem to have accomplished so much, both in advancing humanity as
well as in doing damage to nature.

~~~
baby
We're just damaging the earth. Which is nothing.

We have a vision of the past, of the future, of a huge portion of the
universe. And that's not nothing.

------
dutchbrit
Beautiful to see how earth has evolved. Wonder what the next few million years
has to bring.. Will we be looked upon as primitive Neanderthals?

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jschuur
I expected to see some kind of reminder to put your life (or our society) into
perspective, based on the vast cosmological timeframes).

~~~
TheBoff
I think it's nice that it leaves you to draw your own conclusion, and doesn't
preach or talk down to you, one way or the other.

~~~
josephagoss
Thanks! I like these scales, how small the Earth is, how young humanity is.

But once someone starts preaching about how this means we are insignificant I
lose interest quickly.

If we are the only sentient life in the universe, then we are extremely
significant in the grand scheme of things. If there was/is a god or another
alien civilization from another universe, they would certainly conclude that
the evolution of sentient life is one of the top ten wonders of this universe.

I get tired of all this "insignificant" talk, its simply not true. Our minds
are perhaps behind the wonder of life in the first place, but not that far
behind, and life is one of the greatest things about our universe. How
inanimate material started to think and move and do things. I think that is in
no way insignificant, even if life only exists for a fraction of the time the
universe will exist.

~~~
jessedhillon
You should stop and count the assumptions in your statement there.

~~~
josephagoss
Haha I count at least 7!

I guess what I wrote is entirely subjective, I wonder how many people would
agree or disagree with my statement, or at least my feeling towards how others
would view our sentience and life in general?

I really don't think humanity and life is insignificant even when we are small
in comparison to giant stars and distances and short-lived in comparison to
the age of the universe.

~~~
jessedhillon
I think the main assumption you're making is that we represent the pinnacle of
anything. Whether or not it's true, I think the exercise of seeing how small
today is vis-a-vis how large it feels contains an analogous insight: the
vastness of what was and what will be is so incomprehensible that it would be
shortsighted to ascribe any kind of superlative significance to what's here
now.

People who say humanity is the summit of some mountain might as well be saying
"we are living in the newest day to ever have happened." Technically true, but
far from certain that it means anything. Personally, I think it behooves the
character of humanity to sit quietly in humility.

An eon from now, when the technological lifeforms which have succeeded recall
instantly this thread from their archive, and witness how you once crowed
about the grandness of humanity, they may experience an emotion which you
might call humor -- only with a dimension and richness that your mind cannot
possibly fathom. Or they may experience disdain, contempt, and ridicule at the
thought that you had anything to do with them or their existence. Do you
credit the millionth timid mammal, your potential forebear, for surviving the
Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction? Of course not -- not unduly at least -- it
was only doing what was assigned to it, a biological directive.

And you consider the mind so great, which we scarcely understand -- to direct
your own mind toward the contemplation of its grandness seems, at least,
arrogant. If you should live so long, in your own lifetime it will not only
decay, but before that it will trick you, deceive you and trap you. And soon,
it will also be made obsolete. What did it do in between that was so great?
Gamify some social metrics to increase ROI and user engagement? Contemplate
and slightly reduce the runtime complexity of an algorithm whose need will be
eliminated within a decade? Eat, sleep, shit and fuck?

So I'm not sure what exactly you mean by calling us significant, you don't
know that at all. The statement means less than calling today the youngest day
to ever have happened, because at least that is true.

In sum: all that you consider to be esteemable and worthy of elevation will be
reduced with time. Whatever significance you imagine it holds is a function of
another observer who -- if it exists -- is driven by motives and a character
you don't understand.

Or in other words, just live today; it won't matter in the grand scheme of
things. And likely, neither will humanity.

------
thegyppo
Found it difficult to follow once "today" got down to 1px in size. Shows us
just how insignificant we are compared to time itself.

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wes-k
Love the loop back to here is today. Powerful.

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christiangenco
I'd love to have the day/month and day/month/year views as a calendar. Some
kind of Geek Tool thing, perhaps?

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rodrigoavie
Nice visualization. Gives me the impression (a good impression) that so much
can be done.

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frogpelt
What was before the universe?

~~~
wtetzner
Well, if time is part of the universe, does it make sense to ask if something
was before it?

~~~
aroberge
No, because the very concept of "before" requires time to exist for it to make
sense.

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zobzu
today is always "1px wide" so it doesnt give a good sense of proportions ...

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jaebrown
I love it, puts things in great perspective.

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dkural
.. and here is us, destroying millions of years life, in what is a split of a
second in comparison. We are undertaking the greatest mass extinction of all
times.

~~~
Pwnguinz
99.99%+ of all life form that have ever existed on Earth are extinct. And it
isn't because of Humans.

Think about that for a second: The universe is-- _gasp_ \--actively trying to
'kill' life.

For us to undertake the greatest mass extinction of all times (that is to say,
rival or exceed mass extinction caused by natural causes itself on Earth),
we'd have to destroy at least-- _at least_ \--another 10,000 Earth-like
planets, each one replete with life as Earth is currently.

I would love to see Humans possess such amazing technological prowess one
day[0], but alas, that will not be today, tomorrow, nor even this century.

[0] Wanting to see possession of technological capabilities does not imply I
want to see future Humans use it to destroy extra-terrestrial planetary life.

~~~
dkural
They are indeed extinct, but spread over that time span. The "mass" in "mass
extinction" come from the fact that a much greater # than usual are going
extinct at the same time. Which is the case today. You may eat one burger a
day for a long time. Which adds to a lot of burgers. In fact, 99.99% of all
burgers you ate. But if you ate 100 burgers in one single day, I'd say
something is wrong with you. Similarly, in a mass extinction, we are killing a
great number of species, in a short amount of time, by completely altering the
habitat/ecology of entire regions of Earth. Darwinian extinction on the other
hand is driven by being out-competed by other species exploring the problem
space, and long-term geological change.

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pit
That was just what I needed to hear.

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sidcool
Simply brilliant. Very innovative.

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D9u
What, no Unix Epoch?

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malign
Very impressive.

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johny154
very nice work bro... thumbs up

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keekdown
It is cool made

