An improved version of our free online Astronomical Calendar 2019 is now available to you if you click the “Astronomical Calendar Any-Year” tab at the top.
It is, as before, a PDF, which is searchable. 621 events are listed, rather more than before, because “trios” – tight gatherings of three bodies such as the Moon, bright planets, bright stars, and the Pleiades, Beehive, and M35 clusters – are now included.
And I decided not to blank out the month and day names when they are repeated. I consult the list myself, and it’s annoying to find, say, a Full Moon and then have to scroll upward to see what month it’s in!
Hikâyat, “Story,” as the Persians say. I had a lot to do, so I came down in the middle of the night and worked at this computer. Suddenly, the screen, the whole monitor display, turned upside down. I had hit some accidental combination of keys. I tried combinations it might have been, of Shift and Alt and Tab and N and M… The screen remained upside down. Not good for the dizzy state of my head. Surely, like many quirks, it would be cured by booting the computer off and then on again. Oh no, screen still upside down! Nothing for it but to wait for day and call a tech adviser. Or was it too difficult to try to google “Windows how to turn display upside down”? It was difficult – the mouse had to be moved left for right and down for up. But I found it: Control Alt Up-Arrow!
Okay. But why should anybody want to turn the screen upside down?
When my sister Jenny worked in Uganda, taking teaching materials over rough roads to schools in remote villages, she found that some schools had only one copy of the book they were studying. And so the children sat in a ring around the book, and some learned to read upside down. Maybe Control Alt Up-Arrow was made for Ugandan children.
Funny you should mention the “what the heck happened” screen rotation. I work in a disability agency with a young man who uses a head pointer to manipulate his computer touch screen. He has the habit of “going exploring” without having the least idea (or concern) what the result of his actions will be. One of the things he occasionally does is turn his screen upside down. He is unable to use keyboard shortcuts since the pointer only allows him to perform one action at a time.
The first time he called for me to “fix” it, I googled upside down to get the answer because I had no clue. In that case, the first answer that popped up was how he actually accomplished it. Right click on the screen (the starter screen, not a web page) and choose “graphic options”. Screen rotation is one of them. But now I know the keyboard shortcut!
That’s a funny story considering your current condition. If there was room on your desk you could have laid the monitor flat and rotate it 180 degrees
Thanks for the great update. I believe the monitor flip is for installations in the old days of CRTs that were mounted to the ceiling. I have worked on some of those systems back in the early days of Windows 3.2 and before. I have unfortunately forgotten most of the goofy keystroke combinations to manipulate all that archaic code.
Wonderful work of Astronomical Calendar. As per Control+Alt+ Up Arrow Hikayat, I am reminded of my attempt to learn Oriya (India) language script sitting opposite my Oriya friend.. After a few lessions and getting a hang, one day I tried to read a few lines on my own, but nothing.I was unable to read. I realised and turned the book otherway round and lo and behold…I could read the lines easily.That was,during 1970s..but I still recall and enjoy… .. All about familiarity and orientation…important while looking at the sky too…..!!!!!! Quite interesting…
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Satyendra, this is a lovely comment! I have made a note of it because I think it is relevant to my topic of “Taurus and the Alphabet”, if I ever get around to working up again my theory about that.
PS: You might tell us what your native language and alphabet are.