

The Colour Clock - huangm
http://thecolourclock.co.uk/

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naz
Awesome idea. I took some time to rewrite in HTML5:
<http://brisy.info/colors/>

Though the colours I'm getting are different. I wonder why.

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bkrausz
Haha, I just did the same thing: <http://nerdlife.net/colorclock.html>

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kaichanvong
Guys, get these on github. That way we can fork it & make it awesome as a team
faster and better.

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naz
Here: <https://github.com/briancollins/color-clock>

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dshankar
Simple & beautiful.

Small criticism: Why Flash?

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kemayo
That "full screen" button in the top-right.

Or, at least, that's the only thing I see there that you can't do with
HTML/JS.

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personalcompute
You can actually, F11

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kemayo
Well, yeah, but you can't have a handy button for it on the page.

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kfogel
Jim Blandy wrote a similar program for X Windows around 1992: a beautiful
color clock that would sit on your desktop's root windown and slowly cycle
through the colors over the course of an hour. It didn't even show digits --
you just had to learn the colors :-). I think it depended on X supporting
writeable color cells, though, so it would need to be rewritten to work on
most modern systems (which generally seem to not be set up that way).

    
    
      http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/circles/trunk/
    

Hmm, but that's after I started making some mods. For best results, try an
earlier rev (this was converted from CVS, hence the weird log message):

    
    
      http://viewvc.red-bean.com/circles/trunk/?pathrev=3

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JonnieCache
The state of the art for custom geek clocks is in hardware AFAIC.

RGB LED color clock:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKT-0qB9l8A&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKT-0qB9l8A&feature=related)

I also enjoy the classic 'pong clocks'
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHxbknBYYAQ&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHxbknBYYAQ&feature=player_embedded)

Clocks are a common beginner project in DIY hardware, they are both simple to
make and have good potential for adding stuff like RSS readers and so on when
you want to branch out.

<http://hackaday.com/?s=clock>

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jablan
It would be nice if the colour was meaningful, i.e. if one could, at least
roughly, guess the time based on the colour. Say, that the brightness would
reflect time of day (brightest at noon, darkest at midnight) and the hue the
time within the hour.

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Semiapies
HSL might work better for that, though I'd cycle it around the spectrum, with
the seconds value being the saturation percentage.

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mikeknoop
I feel like this would make an awesome desk or wall clock.

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kadavy
Maybe load it up on a Chumby? <http://chumby.com>

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cormullion
It's also on the iPhone app store (for £0.59), but it might be a different
author.

Associating time with colour has been tried many times - eg the Chromachron
watch was briefly famous:

[http://www.ubergizmo.com/2006/11/chromachron-too-advanced-
fo...](http://www.ubergizmo.com/2006/11/chromachron-too-advanced-for-70s/)

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crassauto
I had done something similar around 2000 though I wasn't very sophisticated at
programming so I think it's off...

<http://minus20.e-2.org/artists_projects_chriso.html>

Last year I re-made it as a free iOS app which takes the time and converts it
using a RGB>HEX function I found that I think is correct:

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-
color/id335133255?mt=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-
color/id335133255?mt=8&ls=1)

I also made one that sets Hour, Minute to latitude,longitude in Google maps
which I like looking at: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-
place/id336539483?mt=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-
place/id336539483?mt=8&ls=1)

(edited second link)

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jefe78
This is pretty impressive. Would you consider porting to other OS'? I.e.,
Linux.

I know I'd be happy to run this on my monitors!

Regardless, great job!

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george_morgan
Very similar to the Chromo <http://prote.in/chromo> colour clock, which has
been around for a few years.

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callumjones
This is cool, but does the screensaver also have to be in Flash? I'd prefer my
fans to not spin up when my screensaver kicks in.

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regularfry
A shame that the fastest-moving value is placed in the portion of the spectrum
where we have the least colour sensitivity. I'd have put hours in blue,
myself. If I'd thought of it.

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kemayo
<http://davidlynch.org/toys/colorclock/#hms>
<http://davidlynch.org/toys/colorclock/#smh>
<http://davidlynch.org/toys/colorclock/#mhs>

Or any other order, really.

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Someone
Any order, yes, but things like <http://davidlynch.org/toys/colorclock/#hsh>
do not work yet.

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kemayo
Yeah, okay, they'll work now.

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joshes
I wonder how well the color blind can detect second to second changes in hue?
Not a complaint, just a genuine curiosity.

Any color blind out there care to comment?

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RossM
I'm red-green colour blind but have difficulty in describing colours in
general (I see them and know what they are but sometimes (and especially if
they're under a coloured light) I can't specifically say what colour a wall
is, for example).

This is quite interesting as I can't really see second-by-second changes; at
most I can see small jumps (not the radically large ones) you get every few
seconds.

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SoftwareMaven
I'm not color blind, yet that is what I see, too. Makes me wonder about the
brain's color-processing. My guess is small variations are ignored by the
brain because slightly changing light conditions can cause all colors to vary
slightly over time. Your brain filters them out so you can only tell when
something really is changing.

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kevinburke
I still like the Polar Clock best... <http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock>

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pharrington
My favorite clock remains the Uniqlock: <http://www.uniqlo.jp/uniqlock/>

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OstiaAntica
That's hilarious!

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rottencupcakes
The switch from 22:59 to 23:00 was stunning.

I can't wait for the switch at midnight (#FFFFFF -> #000000).

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madcaptenor
I missed it. It basically goes from white (well, very pale cyan) to bright
red, right?

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oldstrangers
#FFFFFF to #000000 would be white to black.

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madcaptenor
I made my comment at about 23:05 last night, my local time; I was talking
about 22:59:59 to 23:00:00, or (approximately) #F5FFFF to #FF0000.

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madcaptenor
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the colors were given by
following a space-filling curve in three dimensions, like the last figure at
<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertCurve.html>

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th
The hex clock seems to jump every once in a while, probably compensating for
the large difference in the number of hexadecimal color values and seconds in
a 24 hour day.

How are the color values related to the seconds here?

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wladimir
As I understand: hours are red, minutes are green, seconds are blue. Simply
formulated as HTML color #HHMMSS (and with each component scaled appropriately
to 00..FF so that 00:00:00 is #000000, 23:59:59 is #FFFFFF)

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wladimir
I'd like one that doesn't show the seconds (but does change the color every
second). This is too distracting for me to really use.

Funny and original idea though!

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grigy
Nice job, but why screensaver only for MacOS?

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chrischen
I've turned off sleep mode so I can actually see this as my screensaver now.

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edge17
that's quite beautiful

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JoeAltmaier
iPhone app?

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tr
done

