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Wobbly clock

somethingorotherwhatever.com

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Re: Wobbly clock

#81

Post by jedberg »

agys wrote: post #39

Made me think about the Swiss Railways clock that has the second hand completing the circle in 58.5 seconds; all the clocks on the network then wait for the sync signal from the “master clock". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_railway_clock

The clocks in my elementary, middle, and high schools would do something similar. Not every minute, but every hour. At the top of the hour, when there was 15 seconds left, the second hand would make 3 second jumps until it hit the top, and then hold until the next hour started.

I always thought that was a brilliant way to keep mechanical clocks in sync. And the system had been there since the 1970s, so it was well before digital clocks were feasible for a school.

Re: Wobbly clock

#82

Post by ColinWright »

ColinEberhardt wrote: post #54
ColinWright wrote: post #7

Now found a new home that should better cope with the load: https://somethingorotherwhatever.com/wobble-clock/

I just had to check whether you were 'the' Colin Wright, and looking at your profile I think you are. Small world! I am a fellow juggler, and used to run the Internet Juggling Database. We also very briefly bumped into each other in a corridor at Leeds Uni Physics department about 25 years ago ;-)

It's me ... hi!

You don't have contact details in your profile, but feel free to email me. I travel a lot and can put you in my geographical address book so that if I come within reach we can get a coffee.

Cheers!

Re: Wobbly clock

#83

Post by jedberg »

This clock is great for teaching kids how to tell time! When learning to read a "circle clock", they have a heck of a time understanding what it means when the hour hand is almost but not quite pointing at a number. So when it's 3:45 they will say 4:45 because they know the big hand on 9 means "45" but they get confused because the little hand is almost pointing at 4.

This clock solves that problem.

Anyone know if I can get this as an Apple Watch face?

Re: Wobbly clock

#85

Post by kragen »

cori wrote: post #57
kragen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay but this was maybe a few hundred thousand requests over about an hour for 536 bytes of html and two js files of respectively 2232 bytes and 2667 bytes like, an old netbook could serve up all those requests in 100 milliseconds with apache on a 9600 baud modem (5 kilobytes 300_000 times an hour is under 4 kilobits per second) are you hosting glitch.me on an amiga 500 on dialup in zimbabwe or something

I won't go into a ton of specifics, but we talk about the general limitations for projects here: https://help.glitch.com/kb/article/17-technical-restrictions...

it sounds like you accidentally set your request rate limit about four orders of magnitude lower than the other limits, because you set them to 4000 requests per hour, which is about a ten-millionth of a laptop

by contrast the 512 megabytes of ram is about a 64th of a laptop and the 712 megabytes of disk is about a thousandth of a laptop

this results in absurd situations like this one, where a purely static web app collapsed under a load you could literally handle on a commodore 64 on dialup

well, i guess with tls you might need a 25-MHz 386 on dialup

Re: Wobbly clock

#87

Post by Kaibeezy »

shagie wrote: post #45
quietbritishjim wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how a real life one could be made to look exactly the same (but I could be missing something). The seems to have something that stops the end of it moving on until enough tension has built up to side underneath it. That much is fair enough. But then that same thing stopping the end would also prevent the same satisfying wiggle when it gets to the next position because it overshoots immediately. The only t…

A physical implementation could use magnets to hold to the specific spots. Once enough torque is built on trying to move the hand, it would snap out of place and would then find the next magnet and 'hold' onto that spot. As an aside, I'm not sure that doing this for the hour hand is a "good" idea. The difference between 10:00 am and 11:00 am is significant and needing to check how much the bend is doesn't "feel" righ…

See also: It Shall All Be Mine, Gregory Bae, 2016. "Atomic clocks that are magnetized to tick in place." https://www.gregorybae.com/It-Shall-All-Be-Mine

Currently on exhibit at Chicago MCA - https://visit.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/gregory-bae/

Re: Wobbly clock

#89

Post by justincredible »

jedberg wrote: post #83

This clock is great for teaching kids how to tell time! When learning to read a "circle clock", they have a heck of a time understanding what it means when the hour hand is almost but not quite pointing at a number. So when it's 3:45 they will say 4:45 because they know the big hand on 9 means "45" but they get confused because the little hand is almost pointing at 4. This clock solves that problem. Anyone know if I…

It solves the problem of the child getting the wrong answer until they have to read a real mechanical clock.
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