Doh! I can't believe I forgot the original game clearly listed the months in character creation! I guess the blonde roots of my red hair are getting into my brain. j/k Thanks for that Gamerescape link, it's answered most of my questions.

Moose, thanks for the info about 'sennights' and 'fortnights' - I don't remember ever hearing those terms listed in 1.0 so that's very interesting (especially as here in Australia we use the term 'fortnight' to mean a period of two weeks, or fourteen days, so yeah, a week of eight days wouldn't really be appropriate then if describing a two week period of sixteen days!

As for building a machine to measure longitude, Myranda, hehe, my father's legacy is me having a reasonable knowledge of horology so I'd say you're referring to a chronograph. I never could grasp the skill needed to take up the trade myself though (plus I'm not really that good at maths ).

Anyway, thanks for that!