When I Was Buying You A Drink Where Were You?

[BFD Calendar]

Amidst all the fireworks, celebrations and yesterday's parties around the globe, I silently launched my Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar to the world.

Although to most programming gurus on this forum it will probably not be a real 'showcase' to eat your heart out. As mentioned before, I'm not a PHP Grandmaster and I'm not a CSS wizard but just a simple creative artist doing what the uncontrollable urges make me do.

Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar is a now 29-year-old project that has lived several lives, re-birthing from simple written notebooks to Commodore 64 cassette storage, several database systems and finally the World Wide Web.

When a Zen Buddhist friend hinted me to ProcessWire and I saw the Architects demo I thought "Yeah, this is it!" But soon enough I hit the limits of my programming skills and gave up. I even admit that at a certain moment I thought Drupal was a better option. However, after a while I had the impression I was building a five storey garage building with a ton of complex tools and facilities while basically all I wanted to do was change the oil in the gearbox, grease some joints and keep up with routine repairs on an old LandRover. Things you usually do with a piece of wire, silicone and rock'n'roll tape.

Last summer I encountered the unfortunate meeting of my left leg with a yellow car while driving my bicycle in Antwerp, leaving me captured to a couch in the living room and short walks on crutches to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Although thoughts and creativity were also somewhat crippled by the situation I knew I was going to have time on my hands for several weeks and months to say the least. So I went back to ProcessWire and thought "This must be it, get on DDV!"

Now I know that this is it. Thank you Ryan for making something 'simple' that even I can manage to do what I've been dreaming to do for quite some time. Thank you also, along with all other hardcoders here to help me get over my beginners' mistakes and help me along the path to coding Nirvana where everything just simply works like simple earthlings want it to.

I am sure most of you will either pull some hairs, burst out laughing or just stare with an open mouth at some of my coding solutions. But remember, I'm a mash-up, collage, cut-up, ex-cook, carpenter, welder, painter, teacher, bus driver, manager of a tattooed pig farm in China, visual artist doing my stuff with what I can find, and doing it LandRover owner style.

Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar is also a work in progress. It grows day by day and I'm sure many new features will be added along the way. Right now my concern is to have the basic framework functioning from day to day.

That's what Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar is about. Serving you a fine selection of events to inspire your day. Check Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar every morning for tips on which book to read, what movie to watch, where to go, maybe what to eat or drink, all based on events for the day. Today (2 January) you could perhaps read 'Suicides' by Guy de Maupassant, take a walk along Rue Le Sueur in Paris, listen to 'She was a Visitor' by Minimal Man, watch the fantastic movie '10 Rillington Place' with a stunning Richard Attenborough or just let your heart skip a beat for Philip Blaiberg.

Check for events on your favourite day in the 'events' section. I'm filling in some events for most days of the year, but my collection of events is beyond 10.000, bear patience because I probably have a long way to go.

If you like what you see and have suggestions to add new features, new paths, new possibilities, new abilities, better performance, better interfaces, cooler scripts, gadgets, etc,.... please tell me. And even better, also show me the 'how to' as well.

The title for this post? It refers to a 1978 song by the Mekons, 'Where Were You?', and it was also the title of a blog I kept about my Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar for several years. Apart from collecting events I also archived where I was in pictures since 1999. Before on another blog The Eyes Have It, but now also integrated into Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar.

And finally, post your requests for favourite days here! I have about 25 to 40 events for every day of the year. Any request posted here will be added in the next couple of days. And now.... enjoy Birth(+)Fact(x)Death(-)Calendar!

DDV

[MarcC]

I like it, DDV! It's great to see the photographs of the individuals along with the information. It's strange but you don't always see photos in "this day in history"-type websites.

I took a similar approach with a genealogical site I'm working on--it shows which ancestors were born in the current month, died in the current month, etc. It's just in the sidebar but I think it makes the site more fun to use.

I laughed at your description of yourself bolting this all together. I've felt that way before...in the very recent past...and hopefully will feel that way again soon. Thanks for sharing.

[BFD Calendar]

Thank you Marc. It's amazing to find that many pictures, not only of people but even of events. 25 years ago all my information came from books, magazines or newspapers. I still have a huge collection of shabby black & white pictures enlarged by use of photocopying to bloating A4 images. I still need to scan those to add them as another bonus. And the pictures do stir some additional imagination. In 2012 my BFD blog even had a daily video about some event, also kind of crazy to see what's available on YouTube. I'll add some of those sometime too....

Regarding genealogy I guess you'll encounter some date problems too. I wonder how much these calculations are reliable to be sure that 17th of March 0763 was a monday. And it gets worse when you're going bc.

I was born on the day Brion Gysin 'invented' the cut-up technique, so I guess that was my lucky star in heaven to gift me with a creative 'bolting' style....