Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2017 January 2

= January 2 =

Richard Helm birth date
What is the birth date and location of Richard Helm (author/computer scientist/IT professional who wrote Design Patterns...)? I've looked all over but can't seem to find it anywhere. A good source for this would also be appreciated. --Nerd1a4i (talk) 16:24, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Added a title and a link. Rojomoke (talk) 21:24, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Bad phone calls
Tevildo (talk) 12:00, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This is really a question about how to handle alleged inappropriate behavior by a Wikipedia editor, so it seems to me that we should refer the requester to the appropriate part of Wikipedia. However, I'm not sure what that would be.  John M Baker (talk) 21:46, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The post was pure trolling, by a banned user. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 21:57, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * For the record, WP:OWH is the appropriate link. Tevildo (talk) 23:22, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It would be, if the complaint was legitimate, which it wasn't. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 23:39, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well then, what's the appropriate place for illegitimate complaints? (Asking for a friend.) —Tamfang (talk) 01:56, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The circular file. μηδείς (talk) 02:37, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Or better yet, "where the moon don't shine" (to quote Dick Cavett). ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 05:19, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Rose Parade on Monday, January 2
Since January 1 this year is a Sunday, the Rose Parade is held on Monday, January 2, instead. How often does January 1 fall on a Sunday? How many times does January 1 fall on a Sunday in 400 Gregorian years? What about the 6-year difference between 1899 and 1905 due to 1900 not being a leap year, between 2096 and 2102 due to 2100 not being a leap year, and the 7-year difference between 2197 and 2204 due to 2200 not being a leap year? GeoffreyT2000 ( talk,  contribs ) 16:37, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Perpetual calendar might be a good place to start. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:18, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * One that I use is this: In recent years, January 1 fell on a Sunday in 2012, 2006, 1995, 1989, 1984, 1978, 1967 and 1961. That's 8 times in 56 years (starting 1962), or average once every 7 years, which is not too surprising. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 17:20, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * If you have a program "count" that will produce a list of consecutive numbers (I think this is built-in on some systems, but I use my own that I wrote, so I don't know about that), all you need to do is:

for year in `count 2000 2399` do        cal 1 $year done | grep ' 1 ' | sort -r | uniq -c
 * The output is:

58 1  2  3  4  5  6  7      56     1  2  3  4  5  6      58        1  2  3  4  5      57           1  2  3  4      57              1  2  3      58                 1  2      56                    1
 * So in the 400-year Gregorian cycle, January 1 is on Sunday 58 times, Monday 56 times, and so on.
 * (If you don't have a "count" program, you could insert some awk or perl instead, e.g.:
 * --69.159.60.210 (talk) 19:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)


 * When I try it on MacBSD, the last line is missing, because cal doesn't do trailing spaces. —Tamfang (talk) 01:53, 5 January 2017 (UTC)