BEST OF MY STUFF - Valentin Hristov

(old and new)

(under construction)

If you need some help, please, send me a message.

E-mail: valhrist@bas.bg

Some of the items are taken from my old web page (2002), University of Zimbabwe in Harare.

Perpetual Calendars

My paper for the ZIMaths magazine (with easy explanations) (HTML format)
A calendar table (DOS text format)
Calendar formulae (DOS text format) (or a PDF suitable for printing)
Whole year face (compact) or zip (Excel format) *
 (A Swedish firm used this construction for advertisment - see this picture)
Whole year face (all months fully shown) or zip (see a picture) (Excel format) *
One month face or zip (Excel format) *
 * - These three calendar constructions are with internal sliding part and you will have to print, cut, and glue their two parts.
Table 1 (73 KB) or zip (13 KB) (Excel format)
Table 2 (28 KB) or zip (7 KB) (Excel format)
Table 3 - Excel or Plain TEX format
caltex.zip (Plain TEX format) - unzip in a separate directory. You can run two .bat files and view other two .dvi files.
Other calendar variants and experiments (in bulk - zip) (DOS, Excel, Basic)

There are many web pages related to calendars, but I decided to give here only one link as a suitable starting point for calendars:
CalendarHome

New Calendar Stuff (2008)

All possible year tables on one folded sheet for your pocket (PDF-A4 variant as PocketMod design). The week in it starts on Monday and each row contains 3 months. There is also a PDF-Letter variant. The Excel source contains all four variants without PocketMod on one sheet - 1) the week could start on Sunday or Monday and 2) the rows could have 3 or 4 months. If you want to make a PocketMod booklet, you have to prepare first a pre-PocketMod worksheet with 8 pages as the second worksheet in the .xls file. Then use printing with some kind of PDF creator to have a file like this one. The final step is to use the PDF to PocketMod convertor to produce only one A4 or Letter format sheet for cutting and folding. (Note that to be able to run "PDFtoPocketMod.exe" you need to download Microsoft Net Framework !!!)

Using "division by 5.6" with a calculator:
Here some modifications of Al Stanger's algorithms for finding the DayOfWeek are presented. You can see his first message in the archive of a Calendar Mailing List. The algorithms use only the decimal part of "division by 5.6".
Explanations can be found in my messages to the same list: 1, 2, 3, 4.
My favorite files for downloading: DAY ( DDAYYYY/5.6, see some explanations and an easy way to memorize the key values), also a variant as DAY-Box for pens.

Sundials

You can subscribe to the Sundial Mailig List or at least to visit its archive with messages.

Quadrant sundial (PostScript format)
Analemma - Equation of Time vs. Declination of the Sun (PostScript format) - renewed version of my old file with average data for 2000-2047 (due to Gianni Ferrari).
(2009) You can print this data as month tables and also as approximation formulae in PocketMod variant (explaned in the calendar section above) in two formats: A4 and Letter.

The files to the end of this section are written as macro files for DeltaCad (CAD extension of BASIC). You have to download the program from www.deltacad.com. There is a DEMO version on it.

One of the active members of the Sundial Mailing List - Carl Sabanski - put in November 2007 on his web site a few pages with existing DeltaCad macro files related to sundials written by different people and, in particular, MY MACRO FILES from this page. You will find screen shots, instructions, comments and other useful information on these pages and therefore I highly recommend visiting them !!! I am very grateful to Carl for our fruitful joint work and for popularizing DeltaCad as a suitable drawing tool for sundials !!! (Below "CS" indicates links to pages on Carl Sabanski's site.)

Spider Polar Sundial (details CS). My friends Todor and Daniela helped me to convert this macro to a real dial. A better view of the dial face is included in this zip file.
Spider Sundial with perpendicular gnomon (details CS). In particular it can be Azimuthal Dial (if the plane is horizontal).
Spider Sundial with arbitrary plane and arbitrary gnomon - shows local, civil and daylite savings time. Contains also the previous two types as options. (details CS)
Spider Polar Square Sundial (details CS)

Foster-Lambert Sundial (details CS)

Box Folding Sundials

Some of my Box Sundials can be downloaded also from the DeltaCad web page of The North American Sundial Society.

Polar Box Sundial (details CS)
Box Sundial with arbitrary orientation (read some instructions) (details CS)
Polar Nodus Box Sundial - you have to print two dials (one for 21Dec-21Jun and another for 21Jun-21Dec) (details CS)
Polar Box Sundial with gnomon - based on the previous dial, but the gnomon allows to use it during the whole year (one of the ends is used as nodus for 21Dec-21Jun and the other for 21Jun-21Dec, i.e. the analemma is splitted) (details CS)

In this picture the time is approximately 14:30 Daylight Savings Time (DST) on 8 May in the upper part. In the lower part you can see that the position of the sun will be the same at approximately 14:40 DST on 5 August.
The size of the box is 66 x 81 x 16 mm when printed landscape on A4 paper. After folding it becomes a rectangle with dimensions only 33 x 81 mm.

Horizontal Box Altitude Sundial which uses the height (altitude, elevation) of the Sun to show the time (details CS)
Modification of the Horizontal Box Altitude Sundial (January 2008) which shows only one month for better reading (details CS)
(February 2009) Double Box Altitude Sundial Another modification of the Horizontal Box Altitude Sundial (January 2008) with the edge of the middle wall between two adjacent boxes as a gnomon.

Wee-Meng Lee from Singapore pointed out to an existing origami box construction which is applicable also to my box sundials. He also put on his page some of my sundials.

More Sundials

In the end of 2006 I made a DeltaCad macro with improvement of a design made by Wee-Meng Lee of a
Universal Ring Dial (details CS)
Now the hour scale can be adjusted for the Longitude and the Equation of Time.

Polar Cross Sundial (test variant - April 2007) (details CS)

Sundial with Parallel Gnomon and arbitrary position (test variant - May 2007) (details CS)

Classical Bifilar Sundial with two perpendicular gnomons parallel to the dial plate and with arbitrary position (test variant - December 2007) (details CS)

Bifilar Sundial WITH ARBITRARY STRAIGHT GNOMONS AND DIAL PLANE (test variant - December 2007) (details CS). THIS IS MY NEW YEAR PRESENT TO THE SUNDIAL COMMUNITY !!!

Cylinder Sundial (Type 1) with arbitrary position. A beam of light through a hole at its surface gives the time inside the cylinder (January 2008) (details CS)
Cylinder Sundial (Type 2) with arbitrary position. A beam of light through a concentric hole or a nodus point at its base gives the time. It can be read from inside the cylinder or from outside (if the cylinder is transparent). (September 2008) (details CS)
(2009) Flag Combo: Sun Compass and Sundial Allows to find first the North-South direction and then to read the Local Time. Longitude and EoT corrections are printed on it. You can download directly a PDF file with instructions.
(2009) Polar Half-Cylinder The Light-Shadow boundary indicates the Civil Time and DST.
(June 2009) Sun Position - Represents hour and date lines vs. the azimuth and the height of the sun.
(August 2009) Star and Sun Clock for the Northern Hemisphere - An essential extension of my Star Clock (below) with the pozition of the sun among the stars (the ecliptic).
(August 2009) StarSun.zip contains the previous "Star and Sun Clock" and also a file StarSunZ.bas with added drawings of the zodiacal constellations ("Z" for Zodiac). The drawing resembles an astrolabe with "overhead" view which is a standard for the star maps. Unzip all files in one directory. Read the instruction for use and printing in the beginning of the file.
(September 2009) Sundial correction is a modification a Fer de Vries' macro. It shows the total correction, i.e. the Equation of Time + the Longitude correction in both Civil and Daylight Savings Time.

Miscellanious

Perpetual Calendar with Moon Phases (read some instructions in this zip file and see a picture.)
Moon Phases Calendar (nomograph) (See the variant as a picture)
Star Clock for the Northern Hemisphere


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