I found this interesting. For more mechanical watch reference - https://www.timezone.com/2003/10/04/mechanical-watch-faq/
Mechanical Watch
211–220 of 425 posts
Re: Mechanical Watch
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mostly agree with you, but I don’t mind minification when appropriate, as it can serve a functional purpose with tangible end-user-friendly benefits (less downloaded over the network = faster response times). But if you want to be friendly to the tinkerers, you could always host both the *.js and *.min.js versions, and have the webpage just pull the latter - anyone who wants the unminified source can remove the “mi…
That's simply not a very well followed (and thus discoverable) standard. Especially for hand crafted code, minifying functions and variable names only obfuscates what is written and minifying whitespace often only has minimal benifits. In practice this seems to be a lost cause, and links to alternatively hosted source code is more common. Sadly this makes is simple to introduce subtle, harmful differences between the…
The pattern is extremely common on CDNs that serve JS.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#213Wow very comprehensive & well done. If mechanical watches tickle your fancy, there is a ton of watch repair video on YT. I particularly enjoy wristwatch revival ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD80T1s2Za4K682CQDGwEKQ ). A warning though, if you consider to get into that hobby. I tried, it's really hard, expensive (I spend close to €1k and that is with b-quality stuff. Good stuff is 5-10x more expensive.) and can b…
I was able to get into this with a $60 set of screwdrivers, a $20 crappy movement from eBay, and another $20 toolkit of random watch repair stuff that wasn't really necessary. And maybe like $20 of lube. I would never attempt to service something I wear/use, but for the $20 crap movement off eBay there's no harm no foul.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#214There's something magical about mechanical watches. Maybe it's just knowing that you have this perpetually winding machine on your hand (in the case of "automatic" mechanical watches). Also knowing that the thing will last forever, take care of it and it will probably outlive you. Can't say that about an Apple Watch. If you want a good mechanical watch that won't break the bank I suggest picking up a Seiko SKX (thoug…
I keep considering a mechanical watch, but I think I'd find the accuracy a bit tedious - having to continually adjust it every week so that I didn't arrive late to appointments. I like a watch that gets out of the way - it just works. I've got a Citizen watch a little like this: https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html It's a quartz watch, powered by solar power through the face. It has 'just worked' f…
You can always get a spring drive from grand seiko - it's mechanical (with an "brake" driven by an integrated circuit, but still no battery) but basically only gets a few seconds off per year. Lowest price point for those is like $5k though.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
I keep considering a mechanical watch, but I think I'd find the accuracy a bit tedious - having to continually adjust it every week so that I didn't arrive late to appointments. I like a watch that gets out of the way - it just works. I've got a Citizen watch a little like this: https://www.citizenwatch.co.uk/stiletto-ar1130-81a.html It's a quartz watch, powered by solar power through the face. It has 'just worked' f…
You can always get a spring drive from grand seiko - it's mechanical (with an "brake" driven by an integrated circuit, but still no battery) but basically only gets a few seconds off per year. Lowest price point for those is like $5k though.
I do love Seiko watches. That's probably a little steep for me but I'll have a look!
Re: Mechanical Watch
#216I was curious how he did those visualizations so I looked at the source code. Turns out he codes everything by hand in WebGL [1]. Absolutely impressive stuff. Source code is non-minified so you can have a look and understand everything as well. [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js
He does it "the right way™". Use the platform. Don't use any framework or generic library. Go straight to the point and code what you need, when you need it. Don't minify or bundle anything, and let the people who are learning and courious a straightforward way to connect the dots, without forcing them into a github repository with 90% of the code unrelated to the thing and existing just to glue 1000 pieces written b…
> He does it "the right way™". Use the platform. Don't use any framework or generic library.
Hard disagree. "Use What's Right For You™".
Of course there is value in understanding the platform beneath your framework or generic library, but that's just an extension of "understand what you're using and why".
Re: Mechanical Watch
#217Mechanical watch nerd here. This describe an ETA (swiss) movement, I really prefer the Japanese movement (I know mostly seikos). The mechanism are more simple and more robust.
For instance, on ETA the crown mechanism is really sensitive, a lot of tiny fragile parts with a lot of tension in them, it go wrong easily.
Also, seeing this web page I got frustrated by the fact it doesn't tackle what got me the hardest time: how can the crown move the hands without any clutch mechanism (some have) ? It's a matter of friction and torque, so it's hard to get while reasoning on a "perfect" mechanism.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#218I was curious how he did those visualizations so I looked at the source code. Turns out he codes everything by hand in WebGL [1]. Absolutely impressive stuff. Source code is non-minified so you can have a look and understand everything as well. [1]: https://ciechanow.ski/js/watch.js
He does it "the right way™". Use the platform. Don't use any framework or generic library. Go straight to the point and code what you need, when you need it. Don't minify or bundle anything, and let the people who are learning and courious a straightforward way to connect the dots, without forcing them into a github repository with 90% of the code unrelated to the thing and existing just to glue 1000 pieces written b…
I strongly disagree that this is "the right way". I think that the platform provides low level primitives that are _designed_ to have abstractions built upon them.
Doing it like this has the potential to be the most performant, but it does so in the same way as writing your programs directly in assembly is potentially performant.
I also don't think that the source code is particularly readable for me, and contains lots of magic numbers and very imperative code. I would personally find it a lot more readable if it was written in some sort of declarative way using a library, even if I have to look at a GitHub repo instead of view source.
Re: Mechanical Watch
#219Re: Mechanical Watch
#220The canvases occupy so much of the screen (on small phones) that it is sometimes difficult to scroll the page. Otherwise, amazing article.