Sundial ☉/☾

A simple CLI program to print the percent through the day or night. Goes well in a *line (tmuxline, airline, powerline, etc).

☿ sundial --city Denver
35% ☉

Installation

With go install:

☿ go install github.com/riley-martine/sundial@latest

With brew:

☿ brew tap riley-martine/sundial https://github.com/riley-martine/sundial
☿ brew install riley-martine/sundial/sundial

For pre-built-binaries, see releases.

Manual Installation

Requirements for building:

Python 3
bash
wget
unzip
make
go 1.19

☿ git clone https://github.com/riley-martine/sundial
☿ make
☿ make install
☿ sundial --version

Usage

☿ sundial --city Denver
38% ☉

# International support:
# (supports all cities worldwide with population >= 15,000)
☿ sundial --city Jakarta
34% ☾

# Progressive narrowing:
☿ ./sundial --city Washington
Error: could not narrow between cities
Name        Country Code  FIPS Code
Washington  GB            ENG
Washington  US            DC
Washington  US            IL
Washington  US            UT
You may need to be more specific about which city you're in. Try specifying a country code and a fips code.
    e.g. sundial --city Washington --country GB --fipscode ENG

☿ ./sundial --city Washington --country US
Error: could not narrow between cities
Name        Country Code  FIPS Code
Washington  US            DC
Washington  US            IL
Washington  US            UT
You may need to be more specific about which city you're in. Try specifying a country code and a fips code.
    e.g. sundial --city Washington --country US --fipscode DC

☿ sundial --city Washington --country US --fipscode IL
48% ☉

# Arbitrary times (below using GNU date):
☿ ./sundial --city Denver --time "$(date --date '7:30pm')"
14% ☾

# Help text:
☿ sundial --help
Sundial is a program to print the percent through the day or night.
https://github.com/riley-martine/sundial

Usage:
  sundial --city CITY [flags]

Flags:
      --city string       Name of city you're in. Required.
      --country string    Two-letter country code, e.g. 'US'. Not required if only one city with name.
      --debug             Print debug logging. Default: false
      --fipscode string   FIPS code of region you're in. In the US, this is the two-letter state abbreviation.
                          Otherwise, search http://download.geonames.org/export/dump/admin1CodesASCII.txt
                          for '$countryCode.' and select the value after the period for the region you're in.
                          Not required if only one city in country with name.
  -h, --help              help for sundial
      --time string       Time to convert, in time.UnixDate format. Defaults to now.
  -v, --version           version for sundial

Motivation

I think that we're too rigid in the ways we measure and think about time. This is an experiment with a different, older way: by the passage of the sun across the sky.

"We're halfway to sunrise" means something very important to me that I'm not able to easily express with the standard 12-hour clock.
"The days are shorter in the winter" actually means that the unit "day" is shorter.
The measure of time is aligned to the location. It is important to me to be linked to the cycles of the world, rather than linked to abstractions of them. (Yes, this is still an abstraction. No, you did not understand or make a good point.)
It is not very good for precise coordination of meetings across timezones (for that, you would want something like "at exactly 2:15pm EST"). That is the point.

This is all an experiment. How does it feel to keep time this way? What other ways could we keep time, if we wanted? Do the ways we use fit us well, as embodied beings? If not, what can we do about it? The full force of your creativity is behind you!

To me, 5 months into trying this, it has been very worthwhile. It feels similar to keeping time by the moon phase, in that there is a real thing that time is in reference to. Standard clock time reminds me of alarms that go off at exactly the same time, while this method feels like waking up with the body's own rhythm. It feels good to work until sunset, and I feel better about putting down the computer, compared to if I'm thinking in terms of hours.

riley-martine/sundial

Sundial ☉/☾

Installation

Manual Installation

Usage

Motivation

Developing

Set up auto-generating completions

Releasing