Burning Man is coming up, and unfortunately I wont be attending this year. However, over the past few years I have found that part of what I enjoy about Burning Man is being free of schedules. I have also found, however, that I occasionally want to go to a scheduled event, party, or get some food which is only available at a specific time during the event.
In an effort to avoid using a timepiece of any kind, but still occasionally make to an event on time, I started using the sky as a large, ubiquitous clock of fuzzy precision. I found the experience of using the Sun, Moon, Planets, and stars to be a very satisfying way of marking time on the playa.
In order to help others do the same, I have use the Playa Event API to construct an event guide which strips out the times and instead provides a description of the positions of key objects in the sky for the start and end times of the event. This guide is usable during the day and night in Black Rock City.
The guide is split into several parts so you can print only the parts you want, or you can download the entire zip file. It is organized by category, then by day. The introductory section tells you how to use the guide. All the parts are available below:
- Introduction
- Uncategorized Events
- Parades
- Adult-Oriented Events
- Food
- Fire
- Kid-friendly Events
- Classes and Workshops
- Care and Support
- Gatherings and Parties
- Games
- Performances
- Rituals and Ceremonies
Or get the whole thing as a zip file.
If you find the guide helpful or amuzing, please consider tweeting the International Telecommunications Union asking them to keep the leap second in UTC. This is what keeps our measurement of the length of the day tied to the rotation of the Earth. You can send the tweet by clicking this link.
To learn more about the leap second, please visit wikipedia.