OK, let’s get the facts straight: you came to Quenya101 Language Institute to learn more about Elvish culture. You saw a link up there labeled “Calendar“; clicked and  started reading: so far so good! You read about yéni, loar, months, special days, and thought: “Damn, how cool! Tolkien was a genius!”. And he was indeed. Then came the week days, leap years and numerals: a bit harder, but nothing to worry about. And THEN came Anno Domini Synchronization: maybe you understood it, maybe not, but in any case wondering: “how the hell am I gonna use this?”.

Well, to save you (part of) the hard work, I proudly present you this child of mine: NOTIË IMBERISSËO, or “Reckoning of Imladris” in the language of men.

Characteristics

Basically, its a desktop application that gives you:

• the current date according to the Elvish calendar
• the ability to see the date in any other Timezone of Arda
• a converter for any date you want to and from that Reckoning

The application is multi-language, currently available in Spanish, English, Deutsch and, of course, Quenya; Português is on the way and the Tengwar version of the Quenya translation is almost ready.

Usage

I guess its pretty straightforward to use. It does not need any installation or configuration: just download and run! What you should do is set your city and country in the Settings tab. Why? Because the app uses them and your timezone to calculate today’s sunset, using an Internet connection (as you should know, an Elvish day starts when the Sun sets).

To be aware of

First of all, its completely free, and you will NEVER get charged for it. But of course, as you can imagine, I couldn’t dedicate the amount of time I would’ve wanted (I sleep, study and work for a living, you know). What does this mean? Nothing bad; its just that you may find some small bugs in the application. NOT in the date conversion, ‘cos it was thoroughly tested with Erunno; but maybe in the interface, or some functionality.

Furthermore, I’m no User Interface (UI) or User Experience (UX) designer: I’m just a programmer wanna-be-engineer doing its best to help people and spread Tolkien’s work. Therefore, I’m sure its not the best interface you have seen on a software, but its functional and works.

ToDo list

Here are some improvements I intend to add in the (short) future:

• Tengwar version
• Português
• Mobile version (Android first)
• Revamped User Interface

License & sharing

As I said, this app is 100% free; and I release this app under the GNU General Public License v3. And what the hell is that? Well, to sum up, you are legally encouraged to use, distribute and/or modify this software, while asserting copyright over it. For that reason, I uploaded ALL the source code to a repository on GitHub: https://github.com/joaquingatica/Notie-Imberisseo.

Likewise every piece of content in Quenya101, we charge no fee, but nevertheless demand some credit for it. So please, add some if you’re honest enough.

Feedback

Well, about this: please give me feedback! Specially about errors, corrections and improvements to the application. If you’re an advanced user, you can also fork the repo on GitHub, and  help me on its development.

But, the easiest thing, use the comments below to praise, criticise or ask questions about the software. I’ll make my best to answer ANY kind of question that arises.

Download

Great, I love all you said, but gimme that app! Well, here it is:

Download here

Specifications

This piece of software is written in Java programming language, and its 100% multi-platform (a.k.a: the same file runs smoothly in GNU/Linux, Windows & Mac). You only need to have Java installed (and most people do). I deliver it in the form of an executable JAR, so its just a matter of double-click to run.*

* Linux users (as myself) will know that, as the file is downloaded from the Internet, it must be set as executable. It’s done by running the following command in the terminal:

chmod +x <filename>.jar

For programmers only

If you’re a programmer, and wish to use some of this code/libraries, you can get everything from the aforementioned repository.

I also developed a class called ImladrisCalendar.java, that emulates GregorianCalendar.java, but for the Reckoning of Imladris (of course!). Its the one I used to do the conversions. You can see it here: https://github.com/joaquingatica/Imladris-Calendar. If you prefer, you can get the JAR library directly from this link.

Conclusion

I’d like to thank my friend Gonzalo for the translation to Deutsch; Ondo for the upcoming Português one; and Erunno for the help in testing, and the great article/page  he wrote about the Elvish Calendar.

I really, really hope you like the app. But above all I hope its useful, and that you show it to as many people you can. Stay tuned for updates, ‘cos they’ll be coming, and you wont wanna miss them!

And now, there’s no excuse to keep using Gregorian Calendar:

Elves of the world unite! Lets all switch back to Notië Imberissëo!

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