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Human Clock (humanclock.com)
214 points by cookingoils on Dec 14, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 55 comments



The Atari Web Server he's using is one of my favorite pages on the internet. https://humanclock.com/atariserver.php

For real, I traded Atari games with Craig, the author of this site, in the late 1990's. He is an amazing dude. He also rode his bike around Australia and did a website about it: https://lunky.com/.


Oh, literally around! As in circumnavigate.

(I once circumnavigated a country on foot but it was merely the Vatican.)

Years ago there was a beautiful book published called From Alice to Ocean about a woman who walked across the Western deserts of Australia:

https://www.amazon.com/Alice-Ocean-Alone-Across-Outback/dp/0...

It was notable at the time also because it was one of the early uses of CD-ROM to add a multimedia component.

http://besser.tsoa.nyu.edu/impact/s94/students/nataliez/nata...


Reminds me of the brilliant The Clock (2010 film)

> a 24-hour video supercut (montage of scenes from film and television) that feature clocks or timepieces.

It's played synchronized with the actual time of day. I got to see it in a museum in London. It was awesome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clock_(2010_film)


Fantastic video! I got to see it in São Paulo and went there three times in different hours of the day... mesmerising.


And me of Pharrell Williams' Happy - 24 hours version: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsH19NHPTD44m-5CCyx5j...



That‘s great!


I'm reminded of a video installation somewhere of a clock where ever minute a guy repaints the minute line, but I don't remember where or what it was...does this ring a bell with anyone?



Norway likes slow TV, and did this for a whole day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6urNqR7x1kE I checked in for all the big transitions where multiple panels had to be changed at the same time.


Is this what you're thinking of?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88dflh7Dko4

There is also now a version at Amsterdam Schipol airport.


Reminds me of the pointerpointer.com


Hahaha that's great! I wonder if it is just a static catalog of images, or uses all that fancy machine vision to find new images...


This is gold.


The author seems to be soliciting artwork submissions for a "Pobox clock" as well so perhaps we could use this opportunity to help out!

https://humanclock.com/poboxclock.php


Another fun project by the same person. https://deee-lights.com/


What is that site supposed to do? The embedded video says it's private.


The video was a livestream of the house as multiple people changed colors / settings of the lights. Maybe HN broke the Atari server though.

Here’s what it looked like: https://twitter.com/humanclock/status/1337926809166331905


This reminds me of Pharrell Williams' 24 Hours of Happy [1] which was a website that you could visit and it would show a music video timed to that minute. On the hour, ever hour, there would be a special music video with the Pharrell instead.

The song was a real earworm and I'm sure people got sick of it but I really loved that website. Even though the song became a bit too much at times, it was a brilliant thing to watch.

[1]: The website is down now but the videos are all here on his Youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKPi39tTpkdpjBVQZo5oF...


Cool, a web toy like they used to make 'em, back when the web was fun and the possibilities seemed endless.


Yup, this immediately screamed "old web" to me.

Now I just refresh reddit and HN :-\


Woah. I open it up at 08:44 and the picture is from less than fifty miles away from me. Small world. (I live in Maine.)


Thanks for posting. In the early 2000's me, my brothers, and my dad spent several months taking pictures and submitting each sequential minute between 8-9. Looking back probably 20 years later now it is quite amusing to still see the pictures there! It has been a long time since I heard about the human clock.


I want an API to this so I can use it for desktop background images.


This is the brother of a former housemate of mine, from almost 20 years ago. I emailed him back then to tell him I saw the site and thought it was cool. He told me I should check out his other site: humancock.com.

When I clicked that, the page loaded and read something like, "Shame on you!"

Wise guy, that guy ;-)


Interestingly the town of Fucking just voted to legally change its name.


Fantastic and quite fun! This has been around for quite a while. I remember being obsessed with contributing to the Human Clock back in the day. I might go and search for my contributions over the holidays.


Also by the author https://humancalendar.com/ (very interesting)


I happen to click at exactly 4:50 and it was a photo of the cover of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 450. Well played.


Is that a prequel to Fahrenheit 451? What burns at 450°?


Oh haha... I misread it. It was 4:51. I've never actually read the book, so I just had a brain fart on the title.


Heh. I sorta assumed...


I love it. Back then when internet used to be weird and fun, and not all about profit or fame...


Nice, but not perfect, at 6:05am I was shown an image of 16:05, so it was off by 10 hours.


Wow it took me a bit to figure out what was happening. How neat


About one minute or less?


Haha yeah, it was just so random like I saw a photo of a table with a drawing of 9:25 or whatever... didn't get it at first, came back new photo with a number on it like oh...


We need this, but with livestreamed cameras found on Shodan.


[flagged]


Is this HN satire?


I choose to believe it is.

Then again I can name at least one person who would unironically agree with what the GP has written.


I can no longer tell the difference. 2020 has ruined me...


Well, I also feel that this year HN discussions are seeing more bickering and more endless discussions where we have seen each side’s arguments a thousand times. The discussions feel a little bit more predictable than pre COVID. Or maybe I just spend more time in the comments...


I don't think it's just you. It does feel like the comment section quality has dropped since the lockdown began.


I still can’t think of any forum with a higher discussion quality, but people seem less friendly.


Must be!


You’re trying to make a joke, but the website could definitely be looked at again with modern expectations. It’s unusable on my iPhone. Even trying to pinch zoom somehow interacts with it. I couldn’t figure out its purpose before I lost interest and closed the tab.

The sarcastic attempt to say “look how amazing this without any modern tools” is out of place when the website isn’t very usable.


What bs! The author has no obligation to provide mobile web services ಠ_ಠ.


I honestly can't tell whether this comment is a joke or not. If so, it's not a great one.


The reloading I see on this site is actually super annoying since it resets my zoom level every time, so I, for one, fully agree.


As a postmodern front-end developer, it is appalling that you attempted to pawn off a classical framework like React to the programmertariat. View frameworks like React and Vue are a waste of CPU cycles and network bandwidth. Not only are they packaged with the application itself, but they also proxy objects (`reactive`) so they can do their hooking. The new way is to compile one's app into an artifact that uses something along the lines of Apple's Clang Automatic Reference Counting to insert re-rendering statements in appropriate areas of the code.

[1] https://svelte.dev/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_Reference_Counting


This is a great copypasta.


Mother of God.


A few more points: - Lacking web assembly - Doesn't make use of the new browser-USB spec - No usage of web sockets

I'd agree that this backwards technology stack about invalidates the project? \s


Plus there’s no monetisation strategy. Where’s the hustle? I don’t get it.

I’m 19 and get paid 600k (graduated from a boot camp last month), I could build this in a weekend too.


Nah




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