So, how are you going to celebrate this occasion? Personally, I think I'll sleep through it (yes, I'm a heathen) as I have to take the airport bus at four, but do include me in your toasting/posting if you feel like it. :-)

Well, so far, I've managed to forget about all interesting dates & times as they happened, so I reckon I'll do the same again :-)

How about a bit of advance firework iconery?

Lovely! Stealing this :-)

Mine! Give it back!

</share mode="off">

Yes, davig666, I know that's not valid xml.

Gesnorten! It was a valid closing tag for an XML element. But that's not what my pedantic friend here (he's called George. Say hi to George!) came to say. He wanted to say:

---

On Thursday May 4th, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 am, the time and date will be:
-05-04T01:02:03Z

---

davidg666: eh? an attribute in a closing tag?

George: eh? What happened the year?

Good point; you could have written '<share mode="off"/>' to make an XML element with no content. Then an attribute would have been valid. <g/>

George says ISO 8601 lets you drop leading elements if they can be implied from context, but you must still leave in the punctuation, so '2006-05-04' is the fourth day of May in the year 2006, '-05-04' is the fourth day of May in any year or one implied (from context) and '--04' is the fourth day of any month, any year, or a year and/or month implied from context. So tomorrow is trimultaneously 2006-04-12, -04-12 and --12. Eek, that means it's also somebody's birthday.

(there's also lots of obscure stuff in ISO 8601 for week numbers and stuff like that, but the great thing about it is that it's totally culture-neutral and totally unambiguous. And it's legally valid just about everywhere, even the USA. I usually use that form when writing the date on cheques and official forms of any kind, and none has ever been returned.)

Oh look, a pendant. I'll hug him and squeeze him and call him George.

I couldn't do an empty element - I'd lose the sense that I was in non-sharing mode when I wrote the previous sentence. And I can't do an open tag above, cos that would just be weird.

But if you leave out the year, you lose both a number in the sequence and the once in a lifetime aspect. I think we're stumped with the year - it doesn't look to me like you can say 06 instead of 2006. I think we've missed 07060504T030201 by quite a while, unfortunately.

<dangle/> <dangle/> :)

How many of your readers accept your curious syntax for sharing mode changing?

I agree, leaving out the year only makes sense within context, but it's allowed for that kind of situation.

We haven't missed 2007-06-05T04:03:02Z yet, mind you. Two digit years, well...

[actually, some of the people on the ISO 8601 mailing lists (I hear these exist...) who have even less of a life than the rest of them periodically go "but what happens after year 9999?". We'll worry about that then. Maybe in 9998...] [2038 will be a bigger problem, methinks]

Well, I don't think I've ever seen </share mode="off"> before, but I've seen </rant> quite a bit. And I think gothwalk has used the dangling close tabs with attributes before.

Funny, I probably wouldn't have waded in (on the XML side) if you hadn't provoked me :)

Suitably geeky types usually use <rant> elements correctly. Mind you, now you've fingered gothwalk maybe I'll grind my other axe. Although you're one of very few people who tolerate my, er, pendantery. (all this dangling makes me dizzey sometimes...)

I've seen rant elements all right, but I've also seen closing rant tags without opening ones. I take that to mean "I didn't mean to start ranting, but I did and now I'm stopping", whereas, when you use the opening tag too, you know that you've started ranting.

My end share=off tag mean "I'm stopping being selfish now". But I wasn't marking when I started being selfish (I keep wanting to type shellfish).

Yea, only some people know (or care) about opening and closing some things correctly - including elements, parentheses, doors, gates and toilet seats :) I think many <rant>ers just use the angle brackets (not seabirds!) almost for emphasis. Only those with a geek (geeks are good, btw) tendency realise they're actually writing some kind of proto-XML.

BTW, I took your original tag to mean "I'm stopping sharing now; entering shellfish mode"

(aside: I bet you have a proclivity for spoonerisms too!)

I like good natured pedantry.

And just to screw with your mind:

(((({{{[[[[{(((((<<<<<<

Oh dear; you got there ahead of me! Having said that, some background process in my mind just has to close all those parentheses:

>>>>>>)))))}]]]]}}}))))

[aside: what do you edit your posts and comments with? My fingers get tired sometimes when they have to type ampersand-lt-semicolon-elementname-slash-ampersand-gt-semicolon a lot]

Just the web interface. My fingers appear to be used to it. It does get confusing when I'm typing &lt;something&gt; though.

Found someone using / without the seabirds: http://syndicated.livejournal.com/dictionary_wotd/326500.html?thread=4085092#t4085092

Yea, sometimes I wish the LJ editor/post-processor would auto convert every character into the appropriate HTML entity. I guess it gets a little confused between allowing some HTML and not, so it's easier to leave anything within angle brackets unescaped.

BTW, the seabirds are guillemots — one glyph that looks like double angle-brackets.

I think maybe people who use MUDs and so on are maybe more likely to use / sortof-tags. I've seen "/me goes 'eek!'". Reminds me of a MUD/MOO years ago where you could go ":walks away" (I think; it might have been ":me") and other players would see "Thepersonsusername walks away"

Er... without half seabirds.

Haha, too late. *runs away waving the interesting post*

*fumes in impotent rage*