The Daily Ping

The 10,000th Ping will be published on May 24, 2027. Paul will be just about 50 years old.

May 16th, 2000

I hereby declare a new unit of measurement.

Several years ago, I started describing the load time of some web sites in "forevers". For instance, my old personal site had a front page that would take "1.4 forevers to load".

I’d now like to establish a standard for the unit of measurement forever.

1 forever = 2.0 minutes

Think about it. Two minutes of loading graphics, code, or whathaveyou on a web site is a long time. How long? Forever. If it takes any longer, you might be waiting longer than forever – say, 1.8 forevers. I do think that, for most people, 0.6 forevers is going to be the maximum waiting limit.

Of course, forevers vary depending on net connection, phase of the moon, etc. For some people, The Daily Ping may take 0.2 forevers to load; for some, 0.9. That’s how the net is. But now we have a way of describing how long things take to load. Forever forever! -pm

Posted in Miscellaneous

What is this then?

The Daily Ping is the web's finest compendium of toilet information and Oreo™® research. Too much? Okay, okay, it's a daily opinion column written by two friends. Did we mention we've been doing this for over ten years? Tell me more!

Most Popular Pings