At 4:59 PM +0100 25/05/03, Nigel Garvey wrote:
>Anyone who was familiar enough with
>French Vanilla to be able to reconstruct it from memory using '(28 *
>days)' would find that '2500000' came to mind just as easily.

I vote for that as our next OT subject. Is "2500000" as easy to remember as "28 * days"?.

(For me obviously the answer is "no" since I don't know how many zeros I had to append. I had to copy-paste.)

>I must say I'm a little disappointed at the muted reaction to my
>revelation of "English Fudge".

(OK. Let's see if we can do better.)

>  (b - (28 * days) - theDate) div (-28 * days)

WAOW!!! What a tremendous breakthrough!!! That's quite an achievement. I could not breathe for one minute or two. Totally impressive. Undoubtedly the best algorighm I saw since long. Cheers, Nigel. Really. Thanks much for sharing that gem with us.

(So?)

>The advantage is more apparent when using Richard's divisor, where the
>whole process is either:
>
>  copy theDate to b
>  set b's month to January
>  (b - 2500000 - theDate) div -2500000

Yes but we've still got to find some mnemonics for the cryptic integer.

>(But in Mac OS 9, stay away from
>January 1st in the 101st year of any Gregorian cycle.)

Ah. Do you mean that I'd rather wait 2102 before I upgrade from 8.6 to 9?

Cool week to all,
Emmanuel