27 July 2026
Black Page Variations
A famous musician and composer Frank Zappa wrote some musical pieces that had so many notes the sheet was almost black. These musical pieces are therefore named Black Page #1 and Black Page #2.
While reading some articles on the Internet I was struck by another black page in an article that was confronting and inspiring at the same time. Suppose you could picture your life in a single A4-page. It is a wakeup call. It makes you realize that:
“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back.”
Think about it!
Note: A sci-fi movie called In Time with Justin Timberlake also took time as a valuable commodity.
My Black Page
What is the black page I’m referring to. The concept is simple, use a square to represent a week in a life. Have one year per row with 52 blocks. Paint all square black that have since passed. Then realize this is your life.
At first I took a sheet of paper and draw it full of squares (as in the article), 52 in a row representing a year and say 90-95 down for the total lifetime (expectancy). Then start crossing off the weeks you already on this earth. Whoah, that takes a lot of time :-)
Of course in order to save time, it should be automated. This time is well spent as it will save others time to fill it out.
So what to do. At first I sat down and wrote a piece of Python code to draw up the squares, using a fixed life expectancy, and a way to fill in my birthday. The output on the command line was fine. But I was not happy yet. I wanted to be something that could be printed like a PDF, furthermore the life expectancy should be realistic. Well, that hits a nerve. I use a source on the internet that hold statistic information, so when the program is started, it asks for the country you live in and get the life expectance information from a database. So realisticly: male, Netherlands becomes 80.6 instead of 90-95. However, my odds may be a bit better as my mother is 91 and still in good shape.
I asked Claude for some help to speed thing up.
LIFE IN WEEKS OF A FEMALE BORN IN THE NETHERLANDS ON 25 April 1968.
A visualization to reflect on the passage of time.
Enter a country (e.g. Netherlands): Netherlands
Matched country:
Name : Netherlands
Code : NLD (ISO2: NL)
Capital : Amsterdam
Region : Europe & Central Asia
Income level: High income
Is this the right country? (Y/n): y
Enter gender (male/female, blank = total): female
Enter your date of birth (YYYY-MM-DD): 1968-04-25
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LIFE IN WEEKS
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Life expectancy used: 83.4 years
Source: World Bank Netherlands (female), 2024
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Weeks lived : 3,039
Weeks remaining : 1,298
Total weeks : 4,337
Percentage lived : 70%
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That's 21,277 days and about 58 trips around the Sun.
Your heart has beaten roughly 2,144,721,600 times.
You've taken around 490,222,080 breaths and slept about 170,216 hours.
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Saved: life_in_weeks.png
Saved: life_in_weeks.pdf
Code
To get the program and make your own “life in weeks” one pager you can find it on github
Übersicht
Interestingly enough I have installed a widget on my Mac called Übersicht. Absolutely beautiful. It allows you to show all kind of things on the Desktop. You can add a script that gets your IP number, interesting process information or diskspace or anything else. In the collection of scripts already created there is a RemainingDays script that shows you “Days you have left”.