On my flight back from Seattle I started sketching my first idea for a Silverlight project. I had two objectives. The first was to test out the new C# and Silverlight goodness I learned on Friday and the second was to make the project somewhat useful. So I decided I would make a clock.
This clock doesn’t represent time using dials or numbers, it conveys it through words and blocks. Instead of showing time as 3:45 and 11:58, it is ”a quarter past three“ and “almost twelve“. Just like the way we talk. It is human time.
There are also blocks that light up to represent the hours and minutes of the day. The 24 blocks on the left are hours and the 60 smaller ones on the right are minutes.
Please tell me what you think and also leave suggestion on how to make this clock even better. I will write another post later this week which will include the source code for the project.
This clock was made in Silverlight a Microsoft technology that enables rich interactive experiences online. It is like Flash, but re-architected from the ground up. Remember the Olympics…that was streamed online using Silverlight. If you are a developer, I encourage you to check out Silverlight.net to learn more about creating your own projects.
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Projects, Silverlight. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Wow that’s really cool – nicely done! Since you asked, I think it would be neat to divide the minute blocks into 60 blocks to represent seconds and have it fill up as well. It would be like watching grains of sand filling up a digital hourglass.
And with your inspiration I could also think of all sorts of other variations on displaying the time. One might be a sundial, for example. Another could be a digital photo of somebody wearing a watch and the watch hands move in isolation from the rest of the picture to show the actual time (e.g. thinking of one of those old school Mickey Mouse watches). Or you could do the same thing with a picture of famous clocks like the Big Ben tower, or the building from Back to the Future.
Anyway, now I’m getting carried away… and just sitting here thinking of ideas my human clock has filled up 7 minute blocks already. Yikes.
Hi,
Interesting concept. I encourage you to take a look at another implementation of a human clock. It is based on the ChromaChron concept that was developed by Swiss architect Tian Harlan. I used this in a contest based on a maximum code size, so the code is not the cleanest
but I intend to create a cleaner version when I have a little more time.
http://blog.galasoft.ch/archive/2009/01/06/my-mix-10k-entry.aspx
Cheers,
Laurent
@Brian – Thanks for the feedback! I really want to add representation for seconds next. I’m thinking of the ways to do it. I’m also looking for a way to represent the time of the day using colors. I might be inspired by Virgin America – http://www.virginamerica.com/va/vaDifference.do
@Laurent – I think the concept is great. After I downloaded your app, I started searching around on the internet about Chromachron and didn’t realize there was actually a REAL watch like that. Do you know if there were any high-quality ones made? Also – Have fun at Mixx!
that’s funky! never thought to think about the different ways to express time
hey..
I don’t mean to be a jerk but I have a registered trademark on “humanclock” (registered under timekeeping,etc) that has been in use since 2001. Can you possibly change the name to something else? The humanclock.com website is somewhat like Brian’s comment above, but rather than having the “arms” dynamically change, there is just a photo for every minute of the day. (in both analog/digital versions)
Thanks!
Craig Giffen
Portland, Oregon
Hey Criag,
Not a problem. I went ahead and removed the button that said “Human Clock” and changed the title of the post. Hope that works.
Best,
Ryan
Hey – you still haven’t told me whether you want to make a wallclock outta this thing.