Ever wonder about some of the month names,

for instance, why those from Sep-ember to Dec-ember denote the seventh (Sept) through tenth (Dec) months? Well, they used to was just those, back when March first was New Year's day. Hey, it got changed. Just like Christmas which was once in March (shepherds were out watching their flocks--springtime, eh?). The apocryphal reason was to hide the quiet Christian celebration among the much...louder?...goings on at Saturnalia so as fly under the radar, so to speak, though they didn’t actually have radar to fly under, nor flying either in those days, dont'chya know?

Speaking of change, Julius Caesar, likely via his dalliance with one Cleo, via which he no doubt connected with the top-drawer Egyptian astronomers, and using their data, reformed the calendar to use leap years and took the opportunity to name a month after himself. He was followed by Augustus who not only did likewise, but also stole a day from February (shortest and most mispronounced month) dropping it to 28 in non-leap years, so that his month would have no fewer days than that of his predecessor, who of course was assassinated on the ides of that then first month. (Wayne and Shuster version in the famous comic skit "Rinse the Blood off my Toga": "Big Julie got bumped off.")

Oh, and that self-same Big Julie was also a little "off" in his computation of leap years for what is still called the Julian calendar. To do it right there should only have been leap years on the 400th centuries (400, 800,1200,1600,2000) and not the others. Since his calendar was not "locked in" by the Church until 325, the fix became to advance the date by 10 days so that Thursday 1582 10 4 was followed by Friday 1582 10 15, thus making the spring solstice close to the classic March 21 once again, for what is now called the Gregorian calendar after the Pope who drove the reform. Essentially the extra February 29th days were properly accounted for by shifting the numbering going forward, though to keep historians happy not renumbering the prior dates. However, for political and religious reasons, many countries declined to adopt the new calendar immediately, and by the time they all did (as late as the 20th century), eleven to thirteen days had to be skipped to achieve synchronization.

Other interesting calendar issues include the fact that the monk who calculated the year of Christ's birth as 1 A.D. got it a little off, for on the calendar we now use, it was likely four years earlier in 4 B.C. Even modern Bible translations usually render Luke 2:2 as "This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria," when it probably should be: "This was the registration when Quirinius was first governor of Syria." His first term included 4 B.C.

By the way, did you notice the Spy write there were only four years from 4 B.C. to 1 A.D. and chuckle to yourself "Aha! the mathematician got it wrong because one subtract negative four yields a difference of five." True in the "real" number system, (are they really real?) but not in calendar mathematics, for there is/was no year numbered zero, meaning that 1 B.C immediately preceded 1 A.D. so his contextual mathematics is correct.

The bottom lines: (a) So, you thought you knew how to count. (b) Isn't mathematics wonderful? (c) When policy is made from a mix of religion, science, and politics, rather strange things can happen Have you bought your Mom's, Dad's, son's, daughter's grandchild's present yet? (d) It is the tenth month, you know, the month of modern Christmas, and it is far more better gooder to give than to receive, especially in a timely way. A day to honour the time that Goddess stepped into his creation to redeem it is, after all, one to celebrate, even if we have no idea what the actual calendar birthday was.

Is the net working?

The short answer is "yes". For those who weren't tuned in recently, the Spy first replaced his old router's routing functions with a bigger, better box running OPNSense but left the old junior beast doing the WI-FI while he awaited the arrival on the market of WI-FI-7 products. Cautious, he initially purchased only one of the new Ubiquiti U7 Pro access points (cost: CDN $239 from the Ubiquiti Canada store, a more expensive $US199 down south, and more still on Amazon). Once he had that installed, tested, and running well, he visited the local Memory Express store (which had them listed at $269.99 CDN, but were willing to price match the Ubiquity store), and he purchased a second one that he could take home immediately rather than wait for a delivery service to truck it from Ontario.

As previously noted, he did not go for the MAX version that offers wider coverage with some compromises elsewhere because, with APs, more units spread out works better than a single superharged one. With one unit upstairs outside the bedrooms and the other downstairs near the office at the opposite end of the house, all his security devices have connected, about evenly distributed between the two strong signals, and nothing drops out when multiple visitors come over and their phones connect. And, BTW, using one of Ubiquity's expensive boxes to manage the net is unnecessary for such small installations, as each unit can be configured and queried quite easily via their simple apps. You only need a big-time management appliance for large-scale installs in industrial or academic settings, where indirect info from professionals who do these things has it that in such cases, the Cisco management system is superior. Whether that is true or mere brand snobbery, the Spy does not need to know at the moment. Oh, yes, and this is not a mesh system either, nor need it be. All devices but phones connect statically so optimizing for roaming is scarcely an issue in a medium sized house.

On a similar note,

The Spy sprang for the more skookum HomeKit managing software from acasa Software GmbH on the Black Friday deal that discounted the lifetime purchase of their Controller v7.4 to half price. Configuration efforts are yet to start in earnest (or in his castle) but it appears to have some robust features and be able to handle matter-enabled devices from other manufacturers in the same app. We'll see. Apparently one of the first steps is to map the house using one of the iPhone's LIDAR-like cameras. Makes sense. If the app knows the house geometry, and what devices are in each room (whether fixed or moving about) it ought to be able to manage them more efficiently. The Spy doubts it could build a fire in his basement wood stove or prepare his famous homemade mince tarts, though. The first step on the MacOS version of the app is to grant access to the Apple Home app's data, which gives it immediate camera reporting and room contents by name--an impressive start with no work at all, except what he'd already done for the Apple product. He'll report further in a later month.

Meanwhile, back at the editor's desk

The Spy last week gave final approval to the typesetter's pages for the fifth edition of his book on ethical issues in technology adoption--this after hundreds of hours' work. The fourth pass of volume 2 (each volume made it under the five hundred page limit) saw him tone down his concluding optimism about the soon advent of a robust information age a little more in view of the presidential election in a certain Western world country that gave the disinformation candidate a razor-thin plurality on the weakness of the other side in getting its sometimes but disillusioned supporters to cast ballots. As the Spy well knows, it's tough to vote when you cannot support any of the parties and there is no "none of the above" protest box to check.

Anyway, the fifth edition of his book will soon be available from Wipf and Stock publishers, so all four of you readers can rush out and buy it. FWIW, some at least of the Spy's columns are reflected in the book, and one on AI was added to bulk up that chapter with a new section on Chat-type AI apps' shortcomings, but otherwise despite thousands of edits and alterations (including changing to the difficult to read--for him--American spelling and punctuation), the chapters and subheadings (though not always the contents thereof) are the same as in the 1987 first edition.

Well, QES and QED

Quite enough said and quite enough done for 2024. See you next year.

--The Northern Spy

Opinions expressed here are entirely the author's own, and no endorsement is implied by any community or organization to which he may be attached. Rick Sutcliffe, (a.k.a. The Northern Spy) is Professor of Computing Science and Mathematics and Assistant Dean of Science at Canada's Trinity Western University. He completed his fifty-fourth year as a high school and university teacher in 2024. He has been involved as a member of or consultant with the boards of several organizations and participated in developing industry standards both nationally and internationally. He is a long-time technology author and has written two textbooks and ten alternate history SF novels, one named best ePublished SF novel for 2003. His various columns have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers (both dead tree and online formats) since the early 1980s, and he's been a regular participant and speaker at churches, schools, and academic meetings and conferences. He and his wife Joyce celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2019 and lived in the Langley/Aldergrove/Bradner area of B.C. from 1969 to 2021 and cancer happened, so he latterly continues alone, depending heavily on family and friends to manage.

URL s for Rick Sutcliffe's Arjay Enterprises:

The Northern Spy Home Page: https://www.TheNorthernSpy.com

opundo : https://opundo.com

Sheaves Christian Resources : https://sheaves.org

WebNameHost : https://www.WebNameHost.net

WebNameSource : https://www.WebNameSource.net

nameman : https://nameman.net

General URLs for Rick Sutcliffe's Books:

Author Site: https://www.arjay.ca

TechEthics Site (Fourth edition of text; the fifth is in preparation) : httpss://www.arjaybooks.com/EthTech/index.htm

Publisher's Site: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Richard-Sutcliffe.html

URL s for products mentioned this month:

Ubiquity Wi-Fi devices Canadian store: https://ca.store.ui.com/ca/en?category=wifi-flagship

Memory Express: https://www.memoryexpress.com/Category/WirelessAccessPoints