The Colour Clock

Awesome idea. I took some time to rewrite in HTML5: <a href="http://brisy.info/colors/" rel="nofollow">http://brisy.info/colors/</a><p>Though the colours I'm getting are different. I wonder why.

Simple &#38; beautiful.<p>Small criticism: Why Flash?

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).<p><pre><code> http://svn.red-bean.com/repos/circles/trunk/ </code></pre> 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):<p><pre><code> http://viewvc.red-bean.com/circles/trunk/?pathrev=3</code></pre>

The state of the art for custom geek clocks is in hardware AFAIC.<p>RGB LED color clock: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKT-0qB9l8A&#38;feature=related" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKT-0qB9l8A&#38;feature=relat...</a><p>I also enjoy the classic 'pong clocks' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHxbknBYYAQ&#38;feature=player_embedded" rel="nofollow">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHxbknBYYAQ&#38;feature=playe...</a><p>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.<p><a href="http://hackaday.com/?s=clock" rel="nofollow">http://hackaday.com/?s=clock</a>

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.

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

It's also on the iPhone app store (for £0.59), but it might be a different author.<p>Associating time with colour has been tried many times - eg the Chromachron watch was briefly famous:<p><a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/2006/11/chromachron-too-advanced-for-70s/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ubergizmo.com/2006/11/chromachron-too-advanced-fo...</a>

I had done something similar around 2000 though I wasn't very sophisticated at programming so I think it's off...<p><a href="http://minus20.e-2.org/artists_projects_chriso.html" rel="nofollow">http://minus20.e-2.org/artists_projects_chriso.html</a><p>Last year I re-made it as a free iOS app which takes the time and converts it using a RGB&#62;HEX function I found that I think is correct:<p><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-color/id335133255?mt=8&#38;ls=1" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-color/id335133255?mt=...</a><p>I also made one that sets Hour, Minute to latitude,longitude in Google maps which I like looking at: <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-place/id336539483?mt=8&#38;ls=1" rel="nofollow">http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/time-as-place/id336539483?mt=...</a><p>(edited second link)

This is pretty impressive. Would you consider porting to other OS'? I.e., Linux.<p>I know I'd be happy to run this on my monitors!<p>Regardless, great job!

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

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.

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.

I wonder how well the color blind can detect second to second changes in hue? Not a complaint, just a genuine curiosity.<p>Any color blind out there care to comment?

I still like the Polar Clock best... <a href="http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock" rel="nofollow">http://blog.pixelbreaker.com/polarclock</a>

The switch from 22:59 to 23:00 was stunning.<p>I can't wait for the switch at midnight (#FFFFFF -&#62; #000000).

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 <a href="http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertCurve.html" rel="nofollow">http://mathworld.wolfram.com/HilbertCurve.html</a>

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.<p>How are the color values related to the seconds here?

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.<p>Funny and original idea though!

Nice job, but why screensaver only for MacOS?

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

that's quite beautiful

iPhone app?