So, I got this idea to make a Chinese Zodiac calendar focused on 1975. I’ve always been kind of fascinated by the zodiac, and 1975 is the Year of the Rabbit, which is my birth year, so that’s cool. It’s something I thought would be interesting to mess around with, figuring out how to display all that info.
First, I dug around online to get a solid grasp of the whole Chinese Zodiac thing. I needed the basics: the animals, the elements, all that good stuff. It’s surprisingly complicated when you start getting into the stems and branches.
Getting the Data
- I spent a good chunk of time just reading about how the calendar cycles work. It’s not as simple as just “Year of the Rabbit.”
- Then I found some websites that listed out the animal signs for each year. I needed something to check my work against later, you know?
- I even jotted down notes about the characteristics associated with each sign – Rabbit is supposed to be gentle and all that. Might be fun to include that somehow.
Making the Calendar
Okay, so I didn’t actually build a physical calendar. More like, I started sketching out how I’d organize the information if I were to make one. Maybe in a program, or on a website, someday.
I figured out the start date of the 1975 lunar year. It wasn’t January 1st, you know, It’s in February. Gotta get that right!
I made a simple table, just on paper, to map out the months. I wrote down the corresponding animal and element for 1975 (Wood Rabbit, by the way!).
Thinking It Through
It was more of a thought experiment, really. I was thinking about how to display all this visually. Would I use colors? Little animal icons? Maybe I will learn how to use some desgin tools.
In the end, I have a pretty clear idea of how a 1975 Chinese Zodiac calendar should look and what information it should have. It was a fun little exercise! I still need practice, but it’s a start!
