The current version of the post for season two of the Diary Game says:
A diary game that lasts 1000 days sounds a lot more challenging. I wonder how many, if any, bloggers could make the full thousand days.
I am sure a robot could. Robots Rule!
SteemItBlog started their uptime counter for #the1000DaysofSteem on July 12.
Personally, I think they should use a count down time followed by a day counter.
Something strange happens with such counter. In this structure July 20th should be Day Minus 12 (as it is 12 days to the start of the event.)
So lets look at a count down timer followed by an up timer:
- July 26 - Day Minus 6
- July 27 - Day Minus 5
- July 28 - Day Minus 4
- July 29 - Day Minus 3
- July 30 - Day Minus 2
- July 31 - Day Minus 1
- August 1 - Day 1
- August 2 - Day 2
- August 2 - Day 2
Something really strange happens above.
There is no Day 0!
The moment the race starts is moment zero. But there is no day zero.
You could't call the day before the event Day 0, because the event hasn't started. Calling the first day of the event Day 0 makes no sense either.
That leaves us with a puzzling version of the Integers that lacks a zero.
SteemIt is not the first platform to face the problem of zeros. There is no year zero in either the Julian or Gregorian calendars. The zero refers to a singular moment.
Programmers routinely face problems with position zero. Some programs, like basic, start arrays with position 1. Other programs like C and Java use an offset instead of a counter for the elements in an array. The first element of the array is position zero.
Anyway, I am happy that SteemItBlog clarified that the start of the Blogging Game is on August 1. So, today is Day Negative 12.
I am sad that they shortened the game from 1000 days to 50 days.
(Of course, @SteemItBlog could declare the day before the event to be day zero or they could declare the first day of the event to be day 0. In that case this post would sound ridiculous.)