Category: Clocks

I’m not sure what this exactly means for most of my readers, but I thought it was interesting:

I read somewhere that when asked to count in their minds, people count in one of two ways. It’s my understanding that the majority do so verbally, sounding out the words in their minds. But some people count visually, by visualising the numbers, picturing them scroll past on a tape, for example.

Those that verbalise couldn’t simultaneously do another verbal task, while the visualisers couldn’t do another visual task, suggesting that separate parts of the brain were involved, and occupied by counting.

From a discussion on Hacker News, here.

There are a lot of options for business use of time tracking, but an interesting one is the employee punch clock.

Many businesses rely on the old fashioned stamp based time punch clock. Moving to a newer tablet based system that is mounted to the wall in your lobby has several benefits, including:

1. Automated calculations of clock in, and clock out times in a spreadsheet
2. Detailed reporting
3. Tablet can take photo of user during interaction points
4. Save a lot of time during payroll processing
5. No need to purchase time slips
6. Thumbprint reader

There are software solutions for both Android and Apple tablets. This is a fairly new market, and lots of options exist.

 

I don’t quite understand this entirely, but it appears a company has set up a bunch of legos that can be imported as calendar entries in Google Calendar. Quite interesting!

The system works by taking a picture with your smart phone, and then loading it into some software they custom coded that reads the grid and colors to create a calendar matrix. Then, they upload that to Google Calendar for you. The company has plans to make the code public.

The software is custom code written using openFrameworks and openCV to read contours of the Legos. The code looks for the three long boards, for each month, and then splits the entire image into little blocks for each day. The actual calendar was designed to be as machine readable as possible (hence the wee white strips between each day). The software then uses a known pattern on the left side of each month row to calibrate for each colour, that was so they can get around different cameras, white balances and light conditions.

Click here to read more.

Great idea!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/658677510/aboutfaceclock-hangs-on-a-wall-corner-or-ceiling

This beautiful walnut clock is made from a solid piece of Walnut which is then fitted with a solid American Made mechanism and brass accents. The three brass “O”s live in the three position. This clock wants to be in your living room, whether your style is vintage modern, mid-century, or soho chic.

Via: Customatic

Now:

TIME IN WORDS

features a uniform grid of 110 letters, which it uses to display phrases like “It is half past nine” whenever you press the side-mounted stainless steel button. Other features include a square brushed stainless steel casing in natural or black, the ability to show the calendar day or seconds — with two and three presses of the single button, respectively — and a rubber or leather strap.

Video: How To Use Your Knuckles To Remember the Number Of Days in Each Month

If you don’t have a calendar on hand, here’s an easy way to figure out which months have 31 days and which have 30:

• Count the months on your knuckles and the grooves between your knuckles. Leave out your thumb knuckle.
• Every month that lands on a knuckle is 31 days, every month that lands on a groove between knuckles is 30 days (or 28 for February).

Starting with your forefinger’s knuckle:
1st knuckle: Jan (31 days)
Groove: Feb (28 or 30 days)
2nd knuckle: March (31 days)
Groove: April (30 days)
3rd Knuckle: May (31 days)
Groove: June (30 days)
4th Knuckle: July (31 days)

Returning to first knuckle (the forefinger, remember–skip the thumb knuckle)

1st Knuckle: August (31 days)
Groove: September (30 days)
2nd Knuckle: October (31 days)
Groove: November (30 days)
3rd Knuckle: December (31 days)

Instead of moving right to left by starting with your forefinger, you could also start with your pinkie’s knuckle and move left to right. Still works out the same.

Very clever calendar! Saw this on Reddit.

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Save February alone, with twenty-eight days clear,
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

This video answers the question: What is a leap year?

Check out this simple gear clock. Made from bicycle parts. Too bad it is so expensive.

Check out this awesome math quiz clock, I just love the design and idea. They have several designs, and they’re only $28. MATH pop QUIZ Clock

Represents time as a hexadecimal colour value. From our friends across the pond.

thecolourclock.co.uk

And here’s a whole discussion about how it could have been built in HTML5.

Crazy cool clock to bring to meetings to show everybody how much time and money they are wasting (potentially) by being in that meeting.

I’d wager that meetings ARE necessary to get business done. Not all of them are critical. In my honest opinion, I feel like most of the ones I partake in are needed, and worth the time.

Just had lunch with Sunny Thaper and noticed he had a cool looking watch. Turns out it’s a Nooka watch. He has the one pictured below (only in white). They do some neat stuff with visualizations of time… as you can see in this picture. Each row represents 30 minutes of the day.

My friend Greg just sent me this cool hourglass timer set, for only $9.95 you get three timers which all run at different intervals.

Brian Shaler pointed me to this sweet video which he dubbed the Grandfather Grandfather Clock.

Here’s how Brian describes it: “You put your grandfather IN the grandfather clock!”

A web based clock made from scroll bars.

This clock is made from a bicycle wheel. Very clever idea, and nice execution! It was sold on Etsy and was a one-of-a-kind. Fortunately, the designer has other clocks available.

A sweet looking clock that displays the current day and time in written form.