Now that you know some fun feats with calendars, how about taking some fun approaches to calendars themselves?

The human calendar, as you can see to your left, is a unique online calendar. It features pictures of people holding cards with various information, such as the date, month and day of the week. The current date is the only one where the person is looking forward. That person is very easy to spot, since every other person in the calendar is looking towards them. While I like the full version on their front page, they also have options for adding a smaller version to your website, blog or social network page, and it's as easy as posting your favorite video!

Of course, I can never spend more than a few paragraphs away from anything dealing with math or memory, so I'll now turn to Werner Randelshofer's Rubik's Cube page. What does this have to do with calendars? Go to the Virtual Cube page, scroll down the Virtual Cube menu, and select Calendar Cubes. When you do that, a menu of languages will appear below. Select your preferred language, and a virtual Rubik's Calendar Cube will appear. Instead of trying to solve the entire cube, as you normally would, the idea of a calendar cube is just to get the current day month and date on one face, perfect for people who can only solve one side of the cube anyway.

Would you prefer to try a calendar cube in real life? While they don't sell them ready-made, it is possible to make one. First, you need the pattern for the cube design, which is provided at the bottom of the text next to each virtual calendar cube. You'll also need a blank Rubik's Cube, and some customizable sticker sheets. Print out the designs from the calendar cube page on the sheets, and apply them to the blank cube, and you're set to go!

About 2 years ago, I mentioned the idea of having yourself blindfolded, with a calendar cube in hand. Someone gives you a date, including the year, and you solve one face of the cube to show the proper date, including the day of the week! You know the day of the week for the date before you even start working the cube, of course. As long as you have a perpetual calendar so that they can verify the date, you could turn this into quite a feat!

How about some different approaches to real-world calendars? At Marlie's Creative Universe, she includes a wide variety of calendars that you can make. There are simple paper calendars for a table or your computer monitor, and even calendars made from more unusual materials, like 3.5" floppy disks or CD cases.

My favorite of all of them, however, would have to be Marlie's designs for dodecahedron calendar. What better use for a 12-sided object than a calendar? She includes designs for 2008, but it is possible to make this calendar for any year you want. As Marlie mentions, she was originally inspired by Ole Arntzen's 12-Sided Calendar page. This page will generate a PDF or Postscript file for you in many languages, and almost any year. If you don't care for all the cutting and gluing that the dodecahedron requires, you can also make it in the form of a rhombic dodecahedron, which is made only by folding!

Speaking of generating calendars online, there are numerous sites where you can create customizable calendars, and download them as PDFs. Two of the best I've found are the Somacon Calendar Generator and PDFCalendar.com. Both of these give you more control over the design of the calendar than most other online calendar generators that I've seen.

Given all these unusual shapes and materials, you might think the simple business card calendar, such as you might get for free from your bank, can't offer much in the way of novelty or originality. However, you would be wrong. A Mexican blogger by the name of Eliazar Cardenas noticed that his mother was having trouble reading those small business card year calendars. His solution? Host an infodesign challenge to find better ways to fit an entire year on a business card. Just keep scrolling down to see the amazing variety of ideas and designs that resulted! If you enjoyed design #16, you can find out more about it at thumbcalendar.com.

That's all for now. I'll post again on Thursday, the . . . uh . . . darn. Does anybody have a calendar handy?