[time-nuts] 20th year of time nuts mailing list

[Tom Van Baak]

Hello time nuts,

Ah, it is 2021-01-01 (JD 2459215.5, MJD 59215) which is nice because 
that means it's not 2020 anymore.

One reason I've been looking forward to 2021 is that it's now officially 
the 20th year of the time nuts mailing list. So this is a note to say 
*thank you* to everyone for making it so amazing over the years. I get 
comments all the time about this mailing list; its depth, its high SNR, 
its focus, its vast archive of quality postings, and especially, the 
community that evolved around the list.

On the web the phrase "time nut" is now a proper noun, sometimes an 
adjective, or occasionally a diagnosis or disease. Never in my wildest 
dreams did I think any of this would happen. I thought my early interest 
in nixie tubes, clocks, electronics, and precise timing might be a 
passing phase, and that the frequency of eBay purchases would fade. But 
no. This turns out to be an incredibly wide, deep, interesting, and 
rewarding hobby. The mailing list started with 6 people (half of whom 
are still active) and we now have 1850 members. [1]

Speaking of history, and also to put time-nuts into perspective, I'd 
like to mention that leapsecond.com (tvb) and febo.com (jra) predate Y2K 
(2000), wikipedia (2001), facebook (2004), youtube (2005), twitter 
(2006), reddit (2006), iPhone (2007), duckduckgo (2008), gmail (2004, 
2009), eevblog (2009), instagram (2010), snapchat (2011), outlook 
(2012), and literally millions of other web sites and mailing lists.

When this all started for us it was WWV on short-wave, ACTS by phone, 
Loran-C, GOES, WWVB, GPS, Win98, dial-up, and my search engine was 
altavista.dec.com. It's scary to think how much has changed in 20 years. 
Fun fact: I started leapsecond.com so I could post the results of a Y2K 
Colorado visit to NIST. If the world was going to crash I was going to 
be at ground zero, with a camera. [2]

Anyway, stay safe, stay healthy, stay timely. Here's to a new decade and 
a happy new year to all of us.

/tvb

[1] http://leapsecond.com/time-nuts.htm#history

[2] http://leapsecond.com/y2k/