How the calendar works:
You can use this tool to display a calendar for any year from 1 to 9999*. In addition, it serves as a "calculator" for finding the year in which a given National Skirmish was/will be held.
To display a year, enter the number in the text field, ensure that the "Year" radio button is selected, and either press the "Enter" key on your keyboard or click the "Submit" button.
To locate the year for a given National Skirmish, enter the National Number, ensure the "National" radio button is selected, and either press the "Enter" key on your keyboard or click the "Submit" button.
Point to the name of a month once a calendar is loaded and you'll find links to all the months of the year. Simply click on one of the three-letter abbreviations and you'll be taken to that month without having to scroll up and down the page.
The Back and Forward links on the left-hand side of the top pane will step you backwards and forwards through the various calendar views you have browsed to in a given visit. On this page, the "wreath" doesn't serve as a "back button", it takes you directly back to our home page.
The Calendar Page always loads by default to the current month and year, with today's date highlited in dark green. --Geeks Note: the time-of-day information to accomplish this is taken from the website's server, which very very loosely usually sometimes corresponds to Pacific Time, so the current day won't change until about 3am Eastern Time.
*It's important to remember that the Gregorian calendar generated here was actually conceived in 1582, and wide adoption by countries around the world didn't happen for, in some instances, 200 years! So... years displayed prior to 1583 certainly are more for "novelty" than accurate information. The actual calendar engine doesn't really have an upward bound, but I say '9999' because there are no established authorities for verifying dates above that.
The holidays displayed for each year are those which frequently trick people because of their tendancy to "move" from week to week as the years progress. Thanksgiving, for example, is always the 4th Thursday in November, but sometimes it falls in the last week of November, sometimes in the next-to-last week. The rules for most of these holidays are pretty simple, but I saw a need to graphically remind people of their positioning when making plans for a given year.
The trickiest of these, and the one around which so many vacations and family events get planned, is Easter Sunday. I "borrowed" some code from the U.S. Naval Observatory's Astronomical Applications department, adapted it for the language that generates the calendar, and, "poof", you too can now find out when Easter Sunday will fall in the year 2033. (April 17th, or about 4 1/2 weeks prior to the 167th National!)
The National Skirmishes will not display before the year 1950 because there weren't any, and all of the Nationals are "standardized" to the current scheduling rules which, loosely paraphrased, state that the team matches will begin on the 3rd Friday in May and the 1st Friday in October. As time passes, sufficient research could be done to make the historical dates for the earlier Nationals reflect reality, but if I were you, I wouldn't hold my breath.
The "static" events for each year (i.e. regional skirmishes, team practices, etc) are generated from a mySQL database, which stores various information about each event, including hyperlinks to schedules, display color for the calendar, etc. There are two distinct advantages to using this method of event management: (1) it makes it possible for me to edit the calendar from any PC in the world that has internet access, and (2) there is never any need to "refresh" your display of the calendar. Everytime a given year is displayed, the events for that year are retrieved from the database as the page gets generated, so the user always gets the updated information.
The Buncombe Rifles Perpetual Calendar, brought to you as a collaborative
effort by
Rollin and Geoffrey Tompkins.
