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25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

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Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#21
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have on your Shelf Of Interesting items? I’m slowly building up mine, with an eye to “things that will spark creative thoughts”

Every item has a story attached. Like a badge from when I spent two weeks at a certain factory in Fremont or a calculator from the 1970s when my parents met in math class in university. Dozens more.

I totally know what you mean. I have a couple of boxes of stuff like this, where everything has a meaning. I try to cycle my shelf with the random things.

(I thought I was the only person who did this :) )

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#22

Were you considering radio before you decided on NTP?

In my experience, the WWVB signal can be hard to get, especially inside of buildings. Its going to depend on where you live though. However, if you have Internet access then NTP is going to be very reliable. I'd go with NTP over WWVB for reliability.

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea. I liked Myst, but Riven is where I gave up on the series. I did complete it, but it was a long time ago and I remember giving up on puzzles and looking up a lot of hints. Also the font for the books in Riven were terrible. I could read all the Myst books. They were relatively short and it was a neat device to learn the story. In Riven, they were painful to read and there were so many books everywhere. I even bou…

Well by the time of riven you could look up the puzzle solutions on the internet, which is what I did when I got stuck one of the problem that turned out to be audio (and silly me I though they were just playing sound effects). Anyway, I really view those games as the last of the nearly impossible games that were everywhere in the 1980s. And not just adventure games, a lot of arcade games were the same way, I played…

Riven was among the last games in a category where I included its official strategy guide in the base cost of the game. I had a bad habit of reading the "novelization" part of the official strategy guides as a book in school before I could actually play the game. The only game I recall that this sort of spoiler "ruined" the experience was the original Myst when the problem solving part of my brain untangled the dependency map of the game and arrived at the "ten minute solution" speed run of the game, which was my first playthrough because I couldn't believe it would work.

(It's possibly something that helped my love of Myst itself long term for me, though, in that I really struggled with the tone puzzles in later playthroughs, and it was good knowing they didn't keep me from the end of the game. Relatedly, that a tone puzzle is the reason I recall having never yet finished Myst IV.)

The official strategy guide as a book that a kid could read in school, with a full first person retelling of the narrative, was such an interesting artifact of a past age. I believe I've kept a bunch in a box somewhere as interesting tokens.

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#24
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every item has a story attached. Like a badge from when I spent two weeks at a certain factory in Fremont or a calculator from the 1970s when my parents met in math class in university. Dozens more.

I totally know what you mean. I have a couple of boxes of stuff like this, where everything has a meaning. I try to cycle my shelf with the random things. (I thought I was the only person who did this :) )

(You aren’t )

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#25
post #19

Sort of related question. I have an old clock with a 3 inch clock face that I want to change to be digital. Does anyone know where to get a 3 inch round led/lcd display (ideally that can be attached to a Raspberry Pi)? I've looked online and they are either crazy expensive, a round display on a square back, or I have to buy 1000 of them. I assume I'm just not googling right.

hmm, you're right 3" is hard. I find a number of relatively expensive 3.4" ones on aliexpress, but nothing 3". All sorts of cheap 1-2" ones.

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#26
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you have on your Shelf Of Interesting items? I’m slowly building up mine, with an eye to “things that will spark creative thoughts”

Every item has a story attached. Like a badge from when I spent two weeks at a certain factory in Fremont or a calculator from the 1970s when my parents met in math class in university. Dozens more.

I have some carbon fiber rope used by a space elevator startup I kickstarted, prototype devices in the development of the Kinect or 360 Camera (mounted in a Tupperware box with the camera poking through a carved out hole, no less), a Benham's Wheel and Euler's disk, and lots of Halo ephemera collected over the years (like an extremely rare Halo-3 branded gum handed out at PAX early in Bungie's life), a Dragon Illusion by James Dean, and Xbox 360 processor chip, a copy of and a lot of knick nacks with personal stories. :)

Then people started gifting me things like a cherished slide rules and the like. I love my wunderkammer!

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every item has a story attached. Like a badge from when I spent two weeks at a certain factory in Fremont or a calculator from the 1970s when my parents met in math class in university. Dozens more.

I have some carbon fiber rope used by a space elevator startup I kickstarted, prototype devices in the development of the Kinect or 360 Camera (mounted in a Tupperware box with the camera poking through a carved out hole, no less), a Benham's Wheel and Euler's disk, and lots of Halo ephemera collected over the years (like an extremely rare Halo-3 branded gum handed out at PAX early in Bungie's life), a Dragon Illusio…

Didn't realise until now how interested I am in hearing about other people's shelf.

Maybe this is a quaint, fun website idea.

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#28
As an aside, this is the best explanation I've seen for what numbering systems are:

> First up, a little primer – the digits used in the Myst games, aka D’ni digits, are a base-25 numbering system. This means they count up using symbols like [1], [2], [3], [4] … [22], [23], [24], [1][0]. That is, what they call “10”, we call “25”

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every item has a story attached. Like a badge from when I spent two weeks at a certain factory in Fremont or a calculator from the 1970s when my parents met in math class in university. Dozens more.

I have some carbon fiber rope used by a space elevator startup I kickstarted, prototype devices in the development of the Kinect or 360 Camera (mounted in a Tupperware box with the camera poking through a carved out hole, no less), a Benham's Wheel and Euler's disk, and lots of Halo ephemera collected over the years (like an extremely rare Halo-3 branded gum handed out at PAX early in Bungie's life), a Dragon Illusio…

I absolutely love HN, what a small world. I worked on the 360 software and thru the Kinect days! I'd love to hear more about this space elevator, feel free to email me.

Re: 25-Hour Digital Myst Clock/Chronometer

#30
post #2

RIVEN SPOILERS I actually didn't play Riven until about 5 years ago, when it came out on iOS (I played Myst on CD as a kid). Learning the game's number system was a fascinating exercise that I don't think I've ever had in any other game. Basically, in your explorations you eventually happen upon a small empty one-room building, which (if you look at the arrangement of desks) you can deduce is some sort of schoolhouse…

One of their newer games, Obduction, also has an alien number system. Each number is represented as paths on a 3x3 grid, and you're given access to what's essentially an oracle for the system in order to learn it. Throughout the game, the numbering system is used to control alien machinery to solve various puzzles.

Deciphering it made for a reasonably fun exercise, and I wish more games had puzzles like that.

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