
The “Black Standard” for binary clocks (2007) - tzs
http://www.romanblack.com/binclk.htm
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yanowitz
A web page devoted to the usability of an object whose main reason for
existence was its uber-nerd signaling via poor UX. There's something both
amazingly abstruse and disarmingly charming about the whole endeavor.

~~~
digi_owl
After having had to deal with designer page after designer page that tries to
emulate a physical document using JS, this was a breath of fresh air.

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Animats
Could be worse. Swatch tried "Swatch beats" in 1999.[1] A day is divided into
1000 parts. There are no time zones. The zero meridian is at Swatch HQ in
Switzerland. (They could have used UTC, but no. "Beats" are UTC+1.)

Swatch sold watches with this, but not very many of them.[2]

[1] [http://www.swatch.com/en_us/internet-
time](http://www.swatch.com/en_us/internet-time) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time)

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panic
The Dreamcast game Phantasy Star Online kept time using Swatch beats! I think
the idea was to help players around the world synchronize their gaming.

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colejohnson66
Is that what that "Online Time" in the corner of the menu was? I would see it
counting at roughly every minute and a half, but never realized it was Swatch
Time!

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theophrastus
I remain unconvinced that a bleary single-eyed glimpse of this display while
on one's side in the dark wee-hours would inform me of the current time better
than " 3:14"

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digi_owl
As with everything, it would be about habits.

While you would not get the exact number as quickly, you would soon learn that
having a bunch of lights on the right side of the display is "late" given
darkness.

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colejohnson66
But I can already tell it's "late" just by looking out my window

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legulere
I always wonder why no binary clock works with fractions. So the first minute
pixel would show you in which half of the hour you are, the second in which of
the both quarters of the hour. The rest 4 would show you which of the fifteen
minutes in the quarter it is. That way you can see pretty fast around what
time it is.

~~~
gefh
The top two lights in this system are 30 and 15 minutes. Still I think you
could make it more intuitive still by just breaking up the 30 minute light
into two smaller ones for each 15 minute increment. Maybe add another for the
45 and 60 case. You could sub divide these almost infinitely, maybe arrange
them in a circle to make it easily readable.

In fact, as the lit region would anyways be contiguous, all that's really
needed is to show the leading edge of the region which I guess you could do
with some kind of needle or rotating pointer, and you'd always know the time
past the hour at a glance.

Something similar could be done for the hour with a little thought, I believe.
Maybe as a proportion of the day, or you could again increase readability by
limiting to proportion of a half day, as I think people can instinctively tell
whether it's +/\- 12 hours of any given hour.

~~~
JoshTriplett
Not a bad idea; with practice, that representation could provide approximate
time at a glance.

However, the on-off indicators shown here seem more precise, if less readable
at a glance. With a bit of additional logic, a clock could translate the
current time into a set of lights that could form rudimentary digit
representations, providing an instantly readable time. Some rough sketches
suggest that around 7 oblong lights or "segments" per digit could form
readable, unambiguous decimal digits; the leftmost digit of the hour would
only need two of those, making a total of 23 "segments", or more if showing
seconds. Somewhat more than the binary version, but far more usable.

~~~
50CNT
Using a series of these digit representations, we could display arbitrary
numbers. One envisions a device that has a number of tactile buttons that
correspond to numbers or mathematical functions, and by actuating these
buttons, one may have the device perform operations that are laborious for
human minds, but simple when expressed in digital logic.

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grimoald
Out of curiosity: is anybody here using a binary clock (or another rather
exotic clock design) on a daily basis and is able to read the time as fluent
as with a normal clock?

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Avshalom
I feel like for the sake of standardization we should start with a more easily
constructed shape like an equilateral or reuleaux triangle. Otherwise I like
the cut of his jib.

~~~
userbinator
The shape reminds me of Darth Vader's head. Perhaps that was intentional.

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GundersenM
No support for a 24 hour clock?

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imglorp
That would only need one extra LED, to show which half of the day.

~~~
kazagistar
I would prefer a 16 hour led, to keep things properly binary, instead of silly
AM PM stuff.

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amelius
Why not add a rule that says that only one led may change upon the change of a
digit. See e.g. gray codes.

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cormullion
The Berlin Set Theory clock is a similar idea. It still exists, somewhere.

[http://www.3quarks.com/en/BerlinClock/](http://www.3quarks.com/en/BerlinClock/)

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sbierwagen
Yeah, but has anyone actually built the shaped-segment one?

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devishard
This made me laugh. We definitely don't need a standard for this, but at least
it's harmlessly useless. :)

