[HN Gopher] Show HN: Visualize your day as 144 rectangles
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       Show HN: Visualize your day as 144 rectangles
        
       Author : jmstfv
       Score  : 65 points
       Date   : 2022-04-01 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (rectangles.app)
 (TXT) w3m dump (rectangles.app)
        
       | victor22 wrote:
       | This is how bitcoin works, 144 blocks every day, 10mins each on
       | average!
        
       | _def wrote:
       | Neat. Would make a cool clock on the wall!
        
       | lkbm wrote:
       | Those perspective items don't really provide perspective. I don't
       | hate them, but a Jupiter day means nothing to me. The "average
       | workday" is good and meaningful.
       | 
       | Some thoughts on good "perspective" items:
       | 
       | * Average runtime of a film
       | 
       | * Average commuting time (US, presumably)
       | 
       | * 15-minute standup
        
       | lfkdev wrote:
       | "Average psilocybin mushroom trip" nice
        
         | victor22 wrote:
         | Weird you're being downvoted... Looking forward to the day SV
         | finds out about psylocibin!
        
           | akavi wrote:
           | Is that an april fool's joke?
        
         | TOGoS wrote:
         | Jama knows what's important.
        
       | aplc0r wrote:
       | It is a good idea, but the layout hurts my eyes due to the
       | Hermann grid illusion.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_illusion
        
         | jmstfv wrote:
         | It wasn't intentional!
         | 
         | I experimented with different colors, but seems like all of
         | them produce this illusion :/
         | 
         | I'll see what I can do.
        
           | onychomys wrote:
           | You might have to do 144 circles instead, I think that would
           | have enough whitespace around each one to stop the illusion.
        
           | pan69 wrote:
           | Reduce the contrast, i.e. make the black less black.
        
           | cyberge99 wrote:
           | Try hexagons, they're equidistant between centers.
        
           | smoe wrote:
           | Fiddled around with it a bit and if you reduce the spacing
           | between the boxes to a few pixels the illusion goes away for
           | me or is barely noticeable. But, the aesthetics of the whole
           | thing are quite different then.
        
           | randyrand wrote:
           | Or add the circles intentionally? At least they wont pop in
           | and out then.
        
       | pmarreck wrote:
       | And yet the vast majority of these rectangles will be spent JUST
       | on maintaining you so you can spend a minority of them on either
       | work or things you actually want to do.
       | 
       | Sleep, eat, exercise, shower, dress, undress, shop, drive (often
       | in traffic), errands, poop, pee, fap (or sex if you are so
       | positioned), then theoretically get a few hours of work done
       | (hopefully productive and fulfilling but often filled with
       | meetings and other drudgery), then babytime if you have one, and
       | THEN there's maybe 1 row of rectangles left for you to spend how
       | you actually please!
        
         | browningstreet wrote:
         | It's why I follow the "wake up early, work-out, get something
         | done" organizing principle for my day. My day is usually in
         | pretty good shape by 9am, even if nothing else happens.
        
       | setr wrote:
       | I am grossly offended by this                   .grid-item {
       | ...           height: 4.5rem;           width: 4.5rem;         }
       | 
       | That's a square.
       | 
       | Fine, a square is a rectangle. But that's a square.
       | 
       | There's no media queries to eliminate the square. There's no JS
       | that affects the square-ness. It's all squares.
       | 
       | 144 squares.
        
         | jzer0cool wrote:
         | Can someone clarify?
        
           | bombcar wrote:
           | It's tongue in cheek - the original site had squares not the
           | advertised "rectangles" - even though a square is a type of
           | rectangle most people consider rectangles to be the non-
           | squares.
        
         | jmstfv wrote:
         | Yikes, I haven't thought anyone would venture there and see
         | that monstrosity...
         | 
         | Well, now they're rectangles!
        
           | setr wrote:
           | height: 4.5rem;         - width: 4.5rem;         + width:
           | 4.6rem;
           | 
           | consider my offense revoked
        
       | kipple wrote:
       | It would be fun to see this with local daylight hours mapped to
       | the squares, so I could get a feel for where my consumption is at
       | within "daylight" vs the whole "day"
       | 
       | SunCalc is a good tool for this, if you're interested:
       | https://github.com/mourner/suncalc
       | 
       | (I've used it on a personal project, and the API was a little
       | awkward but the results are good: https://daylight.website/)
        
         | jmstfv wrote:
         | That's interesting - didn't cross my mind! Thanks for the
         | pointer.
         | 
         | Btw, the website you linked doesn't work for me. I get the
         | "Uncaught (in promise) TypeError: navigator.geolocation is
         | undefined" on Firefox 98.0.2 on macOS 12.3.1
        
       | erenst wrote:
       | I see that I'm not the only one inspired by this blog post [1]. I
       | did a similar visualization with blocks to display my working
       | hours [2].
       | 
       | [1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/10/100-blocks-day.html [2]
       | https://github.com/am-on/work-timer
        
         | jmstfv wrote:
         | Looks pretty neat!
        
         | rahidz wrote:
         | Reminded me of https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
         | from the same website. One of the few things on the Internet
         | that changed my entire outlook on life.
        
         | leobg wrote:
         | I did the same thing when my grandfather died: A grid with each
         | square representing a week of his life, and each row
         | representing one year. Then, we mapped as many events from his
         | life as possible.
        
           | davchana wrote:
           | I am doing an excel sheet, 52 boxes per row, one row per
           | year. Inspired by waitbutwhy article.
        
       | klyrs wrote:
       | That is far too many rectangles. My cortisol spiked just reading
       | the headline. Please turn it down to a more manageable number,
       | like 3.
        
         | nkozyra wrote:
         | Or twelve. And make each a segment of a circle. And put the
         | respective number 1-12 next to it.
        
       | smallerfish wrote:
       | It's perhaps a neat UI for a day planner. Being able to drag to
       | select a block of squares and then attach a color/label to them
       | would be a nice next step. Could work entirely client side.
        
         | jmstfv wrote:
         | Interesting. Thanks for the idea!
        
           | faffernot wrote:
           | Sounds like a good use case for the browser's localeStorage
           | API
        
             | dboreham wrote:
             | Storage for each locale the application supports.
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-01 23:00 UTC)