
Need The Lord Of The Rings Timeline? It's On Your Mac - davethenerd
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/need-the-lord-of-the-rings-timeline-its-on-your-mac
======
williamjackson
Use `man calendar` for details on the file format. It's more of an "on this
day in history" type list than actual timeline.

The data itself (LOTR dates) first appeared in 4.4BSD (though it was part of
the file `calendar.history` [
[http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/2.0.5/usr.bin/calendar...](http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/2.0.5/usr.bin/calendar/calendars/calendar.history?revision=1590&view=markup)
]), and has since passed to FreeBSD (where the LOTR dates were split off into
a separate file [
[http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=11...](http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=110933)
]) and subsequently Mac OS X.

~~~
6ren
man calendar says its month/day... [http://www-sbras.nsc.ru/cgi-
bin/www/unix_help/man-cgi?calend...](http://www-sbras.nsc.ru/cgi-
bin/www/unix_help/man-cgi?calendar+1) oh, you mean the adventure took place
over _more_ than one calendar year, and so without the years, the high bit of
the ordering is lost, and the dates wrap around.

~~~
graywh
About the format it says "Other lines should begin with a month and day. They
may be entered in almost any format, either numeric or as character strings."
So "month/day" isn't a requirement.

And there's no reason the dates can't be placed in their true order--
calendar.ubuntu is ordered by version number and calendar.debian has multiple
groups of dates ordered by year.

------
msarnoff
Since it includes what seems to be a full Emacs distribution, Mac OS X also
contains a few "easter eggs" in /usr/share/emacs/22.1/etc:[1]

\- What is claimed to be the Mrs. Fields cookie recipe

\- How to say hello in many languages

\- An interview with Richard Stallman from 1986

\- Several adult-themed man pages

[1] 22.1 is the appropriate directory on 10.8.2, it may be different on older
versions of OS X.

~~~
tankbot

      NAME
         sex - have sex
    
      SYNOPSIS
         sex [ options ] ...  [ username ] ...
    
      DESCRIPTION
         sex allows the invoker to have sex with the user(s) speci-
         fied in the command line.  If no users are specified, they
         are taken from the LOVERS environment variable.  Options to
         make things more interesting are as follows:
    
         -F   nasal sex with plants
    

Wut?

~~~
anigbrowl
Likely a geektastic way of suggesting he likes to snort weed. Marijuana comes
from the buds of female cannabis plants.

~~~
tankbot
Maybe cocaine? Who snorts weed?

~~~
anigbrowl
While it is meant to be humor. Might be cocaine too, but coca is extracted
from leaves rather than flowers, and that didn't seem a good fit. On a more
innocuous note, he might just as easily have meant tobacco snuff. Or nothing
at all. With RMS, all things are possible.

~~~
Evbn
Or smelling dead/died flowers.

------
Aardwolf
It's also on my Linux.

So this is not an "Apple" article at all despite the "Mac" in the name. It's a
FreeBSD article.

How did FreeBSD stuff get into Linux though?

~~~
w0utert
>> _So this is not an "Apple" article at all despite the "Mac" in the name.
It's a FreeBSD article._

The article is hosted on macobserver.com, which explains why it has 'Mac' in
the title. Also, looking at the article itself it is clearly intended for
casual/non-geek computer users. Seeing that OS X + Windows probably cover ~99%
of this group, and the calender is not on windows (I suppose), it's not that
strange that the article refers to Macs either.

~~~
davethenerd
Indeed. I realize this likely predates OS X entirely, but... you're right:
casual audience and.. TMO's Mac focus. But yep, as many here have pointed out,
it's certainly not limited to the Mac.

------
NatW
Where do I file a bug report? The date of "Frodo & Bilbo's birthday" was
actually given in the book as September 22nd. In my file it's 09/14.

~~~
bo1024
I also recall seeing the date of the destruction of the ring given as 3/25,
not 3/18.

~~~
lukeschlather
[http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=bsdmainutil...](http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/pkgreport.cgi?pkg=bsdmainutils;dist=unstable)

~~~
benregenspan
It would appear this was fixed upstream and OSX just hasn't pulled in the
latest. <http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=224407>

~~~
graywh
The updated version listed there isn't present in the current version for
Debian or Ubuntu.

------
cyphersanctus
Interesting, but the timeline seems to be inaccurate.

~~~
isleyaardvark
It's a list of calendar dates, not an actual timeline.

~~~
ksmiley
That explains it. I was confused when I read "Destruction of the Ring" a third
of the way through, and "Fellowship begins Quest" at the very end.

I wonder whether the developers _could_ have put them in chronological order,
ex. 12/13/3019 appearing before 03/18/3021; or if the format requires the
ordering it has now.

~~~
vec
It's probably out of order on purpose. I'm betting this was some of the test
data that the developers used, and they just left it in when they finished.

~~~
xyzzyb
No, the calendar files are anniversaries not timelines.

Have some fun:

    
    
        alias anniversaries="ack -a -h `date +"%m/%d"` /usr/share/calendar | sort"

------
GalacticDomin8r
The source for this easter egg is from BSD, not Mac. Likely the import came
from FreeBSD, but the LOTR calendar long predates FreeBSD:

<http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=57623>

------
spatten
If you need something a bit more detailed, then Randall Munroe has you
covered: <http://xkcd.com/657/>

------
rjv
Possibly some spoilers if you haven't read the books and/or seen the movies.

------
sneak
Do people really still use "cat" for viewing files at the commandline?

~~~
glhaynes
You expect me to go to all the extra trouble of typing a 4-letter command
instead of a 3-letter command? This is Unix!

~~~
X6MW3aQrZU5VKkz
Compromise: Vim!

~~~
Evbn
Vi

------
BklynJay
cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music also gives some notable dates in music-
history.

~~~
zavulon
Seems like biased towards some bands, while omitting some arguably greater or
at least equally important bands of the same era. Not that there's anything
wrong with Yes or Jethro Tull being mentioned, but if they are, seems like
Genesis and King Crimson should be mentioned as well.

$ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep Genesis

$ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep "King Crimson"

$ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep Yes

02/20 Yes sells out Madison Square Garden...without advertising, 1974

04/18 Yes breaks up after 13 years, 1981

10/25 Jon Anderson (Yes) is born in Lancashire, England, 1944

$ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep "Jethro Tull"

08/10 Ian Anderson (Jethro Tull) is born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 1947

~~~
X6MW3aQrZU5VKkz
Please remember that every time you cat a file and pipe it to grep an innocent
process dies. Have you no compassion?

~~~
Evbn
Its OK, an innocent process is born too.

And the address space gets recycled.

