Swatch Internet Time

Swatch Internet Time (or beat time) is a decimal time concept introduced in 1998 by the Swatch corporation as part of their marketing campaign for their line of "Beat" watches.

Instead of hours and minutes, the mean solar day is divided up into 1000 parts called ".beats". Each .beat is equal to one decimal minute in the French Revolutionary decimal time system and lasts 1 minute and 26.4 seconds (86.4 seconds) in standard time. Times are notated as a 3-digit number out of 1000 after midnight. So, @248 would indicate a time 248 .beats after midnight representing 248/1000 of a day, just over 5 hours and 57 minutes.

There are no time zones in Swatch Internet Time; instead, the new time scale of Biel Meantime (BMT) is used, based on Swatch's headquarters in Biel, Switzerland and equivalent to Central European Time, West Africa Time, and UTC+01. Unlike civil time in Switzerland and many other countries, Swatch Internet Time does not observe daylight saving time.

History

Swatch Internet Time was announced on October 23, 1998, in a ceremony at the Junior Summit '98, attended by Nicolas G. Hayek, President and CEO of the Swatch Group, G.N. Hayek, President of Swatch Ltd., and Nicholas Negroponte, founder and then-director of the MIT Media Lab. During the Summit, Swatch Internet Time became the official time system for Nation1, an online country (supposedly) created and run by children.

Beat (police)

In police terminology, a beat is the territory and time that a police officer patrols. Beat policing is based on traditional policing (late 19th century) and utilises the close relationship with the community members within the assigned beat to strengthen police effectiveness and encourage cooperative efforts to make a safer community. Beat police typically patrol on foot or bicycle which provides more interaction between police and community members.

Before the advent of personal radio communications, beats were organised in towns and cities to cover specific areas, usually shown on a map in the police station and given some sort of name or number. Officers reporting on duty would be allocated a beat by their sergeant and sometimes given a card indicating that the officer should be at a particular point at set times, usually half an hour, or forty-five minutes apart. The points would usually be telephone kiosks, police pillars or boxes, or perhaps public houses where it would be possible to phone the officer should he be needed to respond to an incident. The officer would remain at the point for five minutes and then patrol the area gradually making his way to the next point.

Beat (band)

Beat were a Finnish band who represented their country in Eurovision Song Contest 1990. The group performed the song Fri? (Free?) in Swedish and finished 21st out of 22 countries, scoring 8 points. The group was composed of members Janne Engblom, Kim Engblom, Tina Krausen and Tina Petersson.

The song was also recorded in Finnish and English.

Discography

Bibliography

Main (ship)

The Main was a 1691-ton, iron sailing ship built by Russel & Company for the Nourse Line and launched in August 1884. She is recorded as having completed the journey from Sharpness to Calcutta on 20 July 1900 in 100 days but was mainly used to transport Indian indentured labourers to the colonies. Details of some of these are shown below:

The Main was sold to Norwegian owners in 1910-11 and renamed Vansa.

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References

Set (music)

A set (pitch set, pitch-class set, set class, set form, set genus, pitch collection) in music theory, as in mathematics and general parlance, is a collection of objects. In musical contexts the term is traditionally applied most often to collections of pitches or pitch-classes, but theorists have extended its use to other types of musical entities, so that one may speak of sets of durations or timbres, for example.

A set by itself does not necessarily possess any additional structure, such as an ordering. Nevertheless, it is often musically important to consider sets that are equipped with an order relation (called segments); in such contexts, bare sets are often referred to as "unordered", for the sake of emphasis.

Two-element sets are called dyads, three-element sets trichords (occasionally "triads", though this is easily confused with the traditional meaning of the word triad). Sets of higher cardinalities are called tetrachords (or tetrads), pentachords (or pentads), hexachords (or hexads), heptachords (heptads or, sometimes, mixing Latin and Greek roots, "septachords"—e.g.,), octachords (octads), nonachords (nonads), decachords (decads), undecachords, and, finally, the dodecachord.

Set (darts)

A set in darts consists of a sequence of legs (games) played, ending when the count of legs won meets certain criteria. Throwing first is considered an advantage in a leg, so players alternate who throws first in each leg during the set.

Generally, a set will consist of the best of five legs (first player to win three) - although there are some exceptions. The most notable being the Winmau World Masters, where a set is the best of three legs (first to two).

Example

During the final of the 2007 PDC World Darts Championship, Raymond van Barneveld defeated Phil Taylor by seven sets to six in one of the most dramatic darts matches of all-time. The breakdown of how each set went is shown here.

Taylor won the first two sets by three legs to nil, then added the third set before van Barneveld took the next two. The match continued and went to six sets all. Neither player managed to gain a two-leg advantage in the final set "tiebreak" so the deciding leg was played when the score reached 5-5. Before the final leg, the players threw for the bullseye with the nearest given the advantage of throwing first.

Set construction

Set construction is the process by which a construction manager undertakes to build full scale scenery suitable for viewing by camera, as specified by a production designer or art director working in collaboration with the director of a production to create a set for a theatrical, film or television production. The set designer produces a scale model, scale drawings, paint elevations (a scale painting supplied to the scenic painter of each element that requires painting), and research about props, textures, and so on. Scale drawings typically include a groundplan, elevation, and section of the complete set, as well as more detailed drawings of individual scenic elements which, in theatrical productions, may be static, flown, or built onto scenery wagons. Models and paint elevations are frequently hand-produced, though in recent years, many Production Designers and most commercial theatres have begun producing scale drawings with the aid of computer drafting programs such as AutoCAD or Vectorworks.