I love to imagine this kind of thing dug up by an alien civilization. That it displays the moons of Jupiter will be a fun puzzle and a source of wonder. “Obviously”, they will say, “these people must have worshipped Jupiter as a god and used the position of its moons to keep time.” But the pieces of the puzzle will never quite fit. Who knows, maybe the Antikythera mechanism or the pyramids were a similarly ludicrous…
1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
41–50 of 79 posts
Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#42I love to imagine this kind of thing dug up by an alien civilization. That it displays the moons of Jupiter will be a fun puzzle and a source of wonder. “Obviously”, they will say, “these people must have worshipped Jupiter as a god and used the position of its moons to keep time.” But the pieces of the puzzle will never quite fit. Who knows, maybe the Antikythera mechanism or the pyramids were a similarly ludicrous…
"Some people (X'Grn'k et al) say it was a device used for humorous purposes. However, we consider that the presence of sacred etched silicon devices rules this hypothethis out. While crudely worked in that time, and despite the abundance of raw material on the planet, such silicon was in short supply and was central to the nascent Guptian Church movement. In addition, records suggest that the "geo"politics of the tim…
Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#43> The display shows a free-running simulation of Jupiter and 63 of its moons. For convenience, I just plot the X/Y coordinates of each moon in the ecliptic plane. The ephemerides come from the HORIZONS server that NASA operates, at a specified date and time. The J90 just dumps a new frame whenever the Teensy has pulled the previous one, so with a teensy (ha!) bit of calibration on the micro controller side, it would…
[dead]
> ....
> Without getting into the weeds too much, the watch harvests electricity from said battery; deploys that electricity through currents; then the currents are switched off-and-on at exact times via a circuit board—which governs the electrical currents.
While this certainly isn't "in the weeds", it does rather feel that this is not even within visual range of any plant at all.
At the risk of eating the Onion, though it's not inaccurate, it doesn't seem like a very useful description, to anyone, even if the reader has never encountered electricity. The juxtaposition of that sentence with the earlier airily unelaborated-upon "a Nixie tube is a cold cathode tube" is pure art.
Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#44Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#45Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#46The round displays are so cool Uses an FPGA lol damn that's hardcore
Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#47liquid cooled ?
Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#48Re: 1/25-scale Cray C90 wristwatch
#49This would be a great prop for time travel scifi movie. Protagonist travels to 1991 and tries to convince scientist to help him. When asked for a proof, shows Gray C90 Wristwatch. "Our real computers are different, but I show you this because it does not pollute the timeline."
1. Buy a book on probability. Work through the practice exercises.
2. Time travel back to a time before the laws of probability were invented or taken seriously. Pre-1600's would be a good guess.
3. Become a gambler.
4. With the riches that will soon be pouring into your pockets, acquire resources and transform history.