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The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

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Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#61

Post by nvarsj »

saagarjha wrote: post #39

Apple certainly can make very pretty watchfaces. Especially in the areas where it seems that they are inspired by physical, classical watches: there’s a bunch there that you can basically see as very attractive to traditional watch people. But the other faces? Eh, they’re kind of mediocre. I never really understood why Apple is so dead set on shipping watch faces that aren’t very good while also denying people the ab…

Take a look at some of the android watch faces people have made. They make Apple Watch faces look amateur in comparison. I also don’t understand why Apple has closed that ecosystem. It means I’m stuck with the mediocre watch faces of the 3 series forever.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#62

Post by noir_lord »

remarkEon wrote: post #57
anonu wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one might be cooler: https://plus.maths.org/issue11/features/sundials/eqtime.gif Time adjustment you need to make to a sundial by month

One of these days I’m going to sit down and find the time to build an alarm clock app based on these charts. One that lets you sleep longer in the winter, and less in the summer. I’ve spent time up in Alaska and that was the first time I altered my sleep schedule based on daylight hours. I’ve always believed there was something to that.

> I’ve always believed there was something to that.

Wouldn't surprise me, Humans don't have (by the standards of many mammals we share the surface with) particularly great night vision and prior to fire we'd have had no source of illumination but the moon/stars at night.

Basically stay in your cave/shelter til you can see whatever you are stalking/been stalked by.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#63

Post by zokier »

anonu wrote: post #56
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a super cool chart, thanks for sharing. Never saw that before.

This one might be cooler: https://plus.maths.org/issue11/features/sundials/eqtime.gif Time adjustment you need to make to a sundial by month

And then going one step further and visualizing the change over time https://cdn1.bbcode0.com/uploads/2021/1/3/dbeeb7e12e2eec7bb8...

Source: https://equation-of-time.info/work

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#64

Post by zokier »

noir_lord wrote: post #62
remarkEon wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of these days I’m going to sit down and find the time to build an alarm clock app based on these charts. One that lets you sleep longer in the winter, and less in the summer. I’ve spent time up in Alaska and that was the first time I altered my sleep schedule based on daylight hours. I’ve always believed there was something to that.

> I’ve always believed there was something to that. Wouldn't surprise me, Humans don't have (by the standards of many mammals we share the surface with) particularly great night vision and prior to fire we'd have had no source of illumination but the moon/stars at night. Basically stay in your cave/shelter til you can see whatever you are stalking/been stalked by.

The connection between available sunlight and human circadian rhythm is pretty well established, or more precisely how the lack of sunlight can lead to all sort of disorders, most obviously sleep and mood disorders.

More open question is how to counteract such negative effects. Supplementing daylight with high-power artificial light seems to be one of the most promising approaches. Simply sleeping more during shorter days is fairly speculative suggestion, at least as a "silver bullet".

That being said, simply based on personal experience I would expect that slight changes of sleep length could be possible. But the effect would be more like ±30mins to sleep length, when e.g. where I live currently daylight length varies from about 6 to 18 hours. Trying to match sleep to such a big swing seems pretty unlikely to succeed.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#65

Post by bhickey »

> One wonders what the rationale for this might be. Certainly, the distinction is unlikely to matter to the victim of a burglary – perhaps the view is that in operating at night, the criminal is somehow cheating, or demonstrating a lack of nerve, and therefore more morally culpable?

A burglar robbing a house at night is more likely to encounter occupants. The law is such to discourage home invasions, accidental or not.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#66

Post by twic »

bhickey wrote: post #65

> One wonders what the rationale for this might be. Certainly, the distinction is unlikely to matter to the victim of a burglary – perhaps the view is that in operating at night, the criminal is somehow cheating, or demonstrating a lack of nerve, and therefore more morally culpable? A burglar robbing a house at night is more likely to encounter occupants. The law is such to discourage home invasions, accidental or no…

A criminal operating at night is less likely to get caught. Making their punishment more severe means the overall risk they face, the product of probability of getting caught and sentence if they do, constant over the whole day.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#67

Post by vatican_banker »

WClayFerguson wrote: post #41

There's two kinds of watches: 1) Mechanical Watches 2) G-Shocks If you're putting something other than those on your wrist, that's fine, and you can dork out all you want, but just please don't call it a "watch". The Apple Watch is an insult to every horologist and a disgrace to everyone with an ounce of class. :) Yes I jest, but actually not all that much.

Nah, real horologists appreciate the apple watch as much as a mechanical watch.

There are so many technologies to tell time. Most horologists appreciate the evolution of these technologies: manual, automatic, quartz, solar, eco-drive, spring-drive, and smart watches.

All of them amazing and equally intriguing and loveable.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#68

Post by sinuhe69 »

Yeah, the Solar Dial is beautiful. But I‘ve a weird problem with it. As you can see from this screen shot: https://ibb.co/ZBKC0xg

The horizon is not horizontal at all. Even weirder, the watch shows „Nautical Dawn“ at 9:21 PM and sunrise around 10:20 PM! I‘m currently in GMT+7 time zone and my iPhone is set accordingly (automatically) so no way the sun will rise in the middle of the night!

The App doesn’t offer much setting thus it‘s still a mystery for me.

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#69

Post by throw0101a »

chrisseaton wrote: post #10

Wow this makes me want to buy an Apple Watch! In the military knowing first-light and last-light, down to within a few minutes, is essential daily. I have an app on my phone that tells me sunrise and sunset, but as the article describes these aren't the same thing. I also have a very expensive top-of-the-range Garmin watch and even that just tells me the less useful sunrise and sunset, which makes me suspicious it's…

> In the military knowing first-light and last-light, down to within a few minutes, is essential daily.

Why is that?

Re: The Eerie Beauty of the Apple Watch Solar Face, and the Anatomy of Nightfall

#70

Post by mncharity »

Yay, their Sun is white. Way to go Apple. Though the adjacent yellow line and fuzz may still reinforce the pervasively common 'Sun is yellow' misconception. But that's still better than the yellow and orange disks of other apps people have linked to. Including Google's android and web search weather widgets. :/

Therein lie my hopes and fears for AR's educational impact. Things done well with care, becoming ambient informal education. Here twilights, day lengths, Sun color, cause of night. Versus ambient cognitive pollution, as collateral damage from design choices, and from the usual carelessly wretched education content.

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