User talk:Grr

This is the talk page for Greg Reddick.

My main interests are revolve around history, particularly Mesoamerican. I am an expert on the Maya Calendar, having written the calendar program that many prominent Maya scholars such as Michael Coe use. I have attended the Maya Meetings in Austin every year since 1994. I have also done considerable research on the Dresden Codex Venus Pages.

What program is it? Where can I get it? What OS does it run on? Have you seen this: http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25773/chac I use a Mac at home so I use it. I've checked it by doing the calculations manually with a calculator and checked it against astronomy programs and other maya calendar programs. It does the calculations correctly as far as I can tell. Where have you published your research about the Venus almanacs?23:08, 5 June 2008 (UTC)Senor Cuete —Preceding unsigned comment added by Senor Cuete (talk • contribs)

A Mac application has a help menu with documentation about the program. In the help file the author of this one really blasts the proleptic Gregorian calendar and refuses to support it. He also comes down on the Thompson, astronomical, Lounsbury correlation. He allows the user to use any correlation but says not to. He does provide good arguments for both of these positions. I see from your posts on the talk pages about the calendars that you might have an opinion about this.Senor Cuete (talk) 00:23, 6 June 2008 (UTC)Senor Cuete[reply]

Well, it's now six years later. I'm still interested in your opinion. The guy that wrote Chac has made a lot of changes to it. Recently he added the ability to calculate the heliacal and cosmical risings and settings of Venus. Your site shows that you are interested in the Venus almanac in the Dresden Codex. This program could be used to study this. Senor Cuete (talk) 16:16, 11 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My Maya Calendar program is available from https://mayacalendar.xoc.net. I do feel strongly about proleptic calendars. My calendar program does not prefer Julian or Gregorian. All Maya dates are shown in both. Dates before 45 BCE are in the proleptic Julian calendar. Does he use the Roman Republic calendar for dates before that? I doubt it; he probably just uses proleptic Julian dates. How is that any better than proleptic Gregorian dates? As far as I am concerned, as long as you are clear on specifying what calendar system you are using, I don't really care whether you use Julian or Gregorian dates. I can easily convert one to the other. What's bad is when it isn't clear which is being used.

As far as the Maya correlation, I am absolutely certain it is within a few days of 584283. I am less sure about the exact correlation. I use 584283 in my publications, but again don't care too strongly as long as you specify what correlation constant you are using. My program allows configuring any correlation you like, and has several preconfigured. Martin and Skidmore use 584286.