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The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock
- gnabgib 6mo agoAs a Show HN (40 points, 15 days ago, 27 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571401
- mnvsbl 6mo ago[dead]
- gorgoiler 6mo agoWhat a ridiculous idea. As hard to read as it is dumb! For a senior engineer like myself with decades of experience it is trivial to see how to fix this to make it much more readable. 1/ pick a sunny day 2/ at each hour, measure the bearing to the sun 3/ encode as a dict[str, float] e.g. {“twelve”:180.00} 4/ sort the hours by dict.get Voila. As an added bonus, for some reason this ends up sorting the minutes and seconds too. (“# wtf?!”) For now, I was only able to fix the hours when I could see the sun (eleven, twelve, and two to eight — I don’t get up very early and I like lunch). Patches form the arctic circle welcome :P I also need to tilt my head a bit as eleven is at the top instead of twelve. Other than that I would say it’s a considerable improvement on the OP’s rather naïve implementation! Scoff!
- eru 6mo agoHere in Singapore on many sunny days, the bearing is largely the same hour after hour. The sun just changes apparent altitude.
- fellerts 6mo agoJam a stick in the ground aligned with the earth's axis and take your bearing from the shadow's direction. Then follow GP's instructions. Never mind that we've reinvented the sundial...
- eru 6mo ago> Jam a stick in the ground aligned with the earth's axis [...] You mean place a stick flat on the ground? (Singapore is pretty much on the equator.)
- marginalia_nu 6mo agoThe closer you are to the equator, the taller the stick needs to be. If you're really close, the height requirements diverge, and the stick is at this point technically more of a space elevator[1] than a stick. But don't lose hope, just tell Bezos that Musk wants to fund your space elevator, and vice versa, to goad one of them into funding your $10tn near-equatorial sundial boondoggle. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator
- eru 6mo agoA space elevator is not aligned with the axis of earth's rotation. It sounds like what you are describing is a different device?
- marginalia_nu 6mo agoWhy would a sun dial need to point in the north/south direction? It just needs to point up along the normal axis of the ground (assuming flat ground).
- eru 6mo agoFrom the original comment I replied to: > Jam a stick in the ground aligned with the earth's axis and take your bearing from the shadow's direction.
- marginalia_nu 6mo agoAh, that comment would be incorrect.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 6mo agoYou could make either method more secure by hashing the encoded time and displaying that. Make sure to use a cryprographically-secure hash function and a strong salt.
- alfanick 6mo agoImagine the mechanical gears behind this if it was an analogue watch. So many funky curved gears in there.
- throwway262515 6mo agoSyntax is wildly continuous with semantics, what’s the problem?
- unholiness 6mo agoI love the fractal nature of this, where the big shape of one two three four... is then roughly repeated both on a slower scale (twenty thirty forty...) and on a narrower scale (twenty-one twenty-two twenty-three twenty-four...). I'm now wondering the hausdorf dimension of the graph of alphabetical numbers <n, and how other languages might compare.
- cbdevidal 6mo agoCould someone please explain the minute hand? It says it’s Nine : Twenty-nine but the minute hand is pointing at the word Twelve.
- nDRDY 6mo agoI think the labels are pointlessly confusing.
- secretdark 6mo agoI mean to be fair the entire thing is pointlessly confusing.
- nDRDY 6mo agoMaybe, but the labels and hour markers that contradict the meaning of the hand positions is just perverse :-)
- secretdark 6mo agoI have changed it now (see another comment above.) But now it is less accursèd! Ah well.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- nDRDY 6mo agoHmm. I wonder what it would look like if you added the corresponding "minute" labels (eight, five, four, etc) at the appropriate places. It might make it at least a little feasible to read the time! For inspiration: https://www.alamy.com/clock-face-hour-dial-with-numbers-dashes-mark-minutes-and-hours-simple-flat-vector-illustration-image361331492.html https://www.alamy.com/clock-face-hour-dial-with-numbers-dash...
- 6mo ago
- pimlottc 6mo ago> Accursèd For those who don’t know, the accent indicates that the -ed ending is pronounced as a separate syllable, I.e. “a-curse-ed”. For that extra mysterious, old-timey feel!
- 4sak3n 6mo agoJust like beloved is supposed to be pronounced (don't @ me Descriptivists).