shopify analytics ecommerce
tracking

LunaSolCal

One of my favorite iOS apps is LunaSolCal from Volker Voecking Software Engineering. There's also an Android app.

As a pagan, I use it to give audio alarms for sunrise, solar noon, sunset, the bright Moon, the dark Moon, the solstices and the equinoxes. It's useful and does exactly what it says.

There is one glitch. Although I use it all the time, it's an audio cue and I don't take it out to swipe it every time. After a few days of not swiping, the alarms quit going off. The solution is to open the app, go into alarms, select an alarm, and then reselect the sound.

There is a problem, although I doubt that it affects most of the rest of the World.

Time in northern Arizona is
complicated. Technically Arizona does not do Daylight Savings Time. But the Navajo Reservation does, mainly because it spans four states. The Hopi Reservation does not do Daylight Savings Time, but it's surrounded by the Navajo Reservation.

Now to make things even more interesting, the Arizona Strip in northwestern Arizona is cut off from the rest of the state. The only way to reach it is to drive into Utah (which does do Daylight Savings Time) and drop back into Arizona. Across the western border of the Arizona Strip is Nevada, which also does Daylight Savings Time.

Complicated.

None of this would matter except the time that LunaSolCal
displays is not necessarily my local time. So I set it to use GMT and use it mainly as an audio cue. This isn't an issue that VVSE could be reasonably expected to anticipate. I expect it might take some unusual juggling of the code to make it work and it would only benefit a small portion of the planet. So I can live with the problem and my workaround.

VVSE isn't the only one who didn't anticipate the problem. You should see what happens to cell phones depending on if the cell tower is located in Arizona, the Navajo Reservation, the Hopi Reservation, Utah, or Nevada.

There are a couple of wishes I have.

It would be nice to recognize the cross-quarter days too, those days midway between the solstice and equinox or the equinox and the solstice.

And it would be nice if I could use some of my installed ringtones as sound effects.

All in all a good product and worth the money.
blog comments powered by Disqus