Results matching “winter solstice” from Ye Olde Rad Blog III

First day of winter, otherwise known as the » winter solstice. The word solstice means 'sun stopping,' because the sun appears to cease its southerly trek for a few days around this time each year, before heading back north.

The exact time when the sun reaches its southern-most point = 10:47 AM PDT. Interesting how they can pinpoint the exact moment.

Today is the longest night of the year (most hours of darkness). Starting tomorrow, the days begin to lengthen. The seasons are caused by a tilt (23-degrees) in the earth's axis .. as we make our annual trip around the sun.

Of course, if you live down in the southern hemisphere, everything is reversed. Today is your first day of summer, with the longest day of the year. Summer solstice.

Consider this » the earth is 92 million miles from the sun (give or take a few mil). Let's call that distance » the 'radius'. We can calculate the distance of our annual orbit by using the formula for the circumference of a circle » pi x diameter .. which = 3.14 x 184 million, which means we travel » 578 million miles every year (around the sun) ..

.. at a speed of 578-MM / 365 days per year = 1.58 million miles per day, which = .066 million miles/hour, which equals » 66,000 mph (if my math is correct). That's almost 100 times faster than the speed of sound. We're bookin'. Better fasten your seatbelt. Imagine hitting something at that speed. Ouch.

The seasons remind us of the cycle of life .. rebirth, renewal .. that no matter how dark things might get, brighter days are coming. And that dark days come to us all.

Winter solstice today (here in the Northern hemisphere, anyway) .. at 3:04 AM Pacific Daylight Time (if my calculations are correct), heralding the first day of winter. Interesting how they're able to pinpoint the exact moment .. to within one second.

The seasons are caused by the earth tilting on its axis (23.5 degrees). Today, the sun reaches its furthest-most point of travel in the southern direction, and begins heading back north (or so it appears).

Today is also the shortest day with the longest night. Beginning today, the days get longer .. until the summer solstice, on (or about) June 21st.

First day of summer. The exact time when the sun reaches its northern-most point (stops moving north), and begins heading back south is » 23:59 UTC (Greenwich Mean).

If you live here on the Left coast (like me) that would put the beginning of summer at (-7 hours) 4:59 PM .. if my math is correct.

For our friends who live south of the equator, today's the first day of winter. Don't worry .. we'll send the sun back your way (after we're done playing at the beach for a few months).

Today is the longest day of the year. Starting today, the days begin to shorten .. a few minutes every day. The word solstice means "sun stoppage," cuz it appears as if the sun stops moving for a few days. From InfoPlease:

For several days before and after each solstice the sun appears to stand still in the sky, i.e., its noontime elevation does not seem to change from day to day.

Note: today's entry applies to the site home page (not this blog entry page).

Notice anything different? The old/previous design was based on pre-XHTML standards mark-up .. which I had *converted* to XHTML-valid (using Dreamweaver). But the guts still contained a table-based layout (kludge).

The layout of this page however, is not based on tables (rather » on CSS). My new CSS page (if you're interested) is aqui » radified_xhtml2.css.

Been meaning to start over from scratch and layout this page based on CSS .. ever since I started upgrading my web design skills.

Now that the site is busy enough to require a VPS, I figure we probably oughta have a homepage laid-out with CSS. (Modern.)

So I finally just put my head down and went for it. Spur-of-the-moment decision. More involved than I expected. A million little details required attention .. in order to massage current content (you see here) into the new layout. And once I start a project like this, I don't like to stop until it's done. (Worked 'til 1AM.)

This CSS-based layout will let me tweak the design more easily as my CSS skills (continue to) develop.

I chose that bluish-green color (sidebars) cuz I was searching for a link-color that doesn't distract from reading this normal gray text.

The old light-blue links I was using before were so bright (on a black background) they jumped out .. which I found distracting, since I tend to use copious linkage. (Design should complement content .. not overpower it, right?) But sometimes we don't notice things, until we're looking for them. My design-aim was/is to present a content-focused website.