The Accursèd Alphabetical Clock

(boat.horse)

60 pontos | por ohjeez 16 dias atrás

8 comentários

  • pimlottc
    15 dias atrás
    > 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
      14 dias atrás
      Just like beloved is supposed to be pronounced (don't @ me Descriptivists).
  • gnabgib
    16 dias atrás
    As a Show HN (40 points, 15 days ago, 27 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47571401
  • gorgoiler
    15 dias atrás
    What 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
      15 dias atrás
      Here in Singapore on many sunny days, the bearing is largely the same hour after hour. The sun just changes apparent altitude.
      • fellerts
        15 dias atrás
        Jam 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
          15 dias atrás
          > 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
            15 dias atrás
            The 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

            • eru
              14 dias atrás
              A 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
                14 dias atrás
                Why 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
                  14 dias atrás
                  From 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.

    • rich_sasha
      15 dias atrás
      You 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.

  • cbdevidal
    15 dias atrás
    Could someone please explain the minute hand? It says it’s Nine : Twenty-nine but the minute hand is pointing at the word Twelve.
    • AnotherGoodName
      14 dias atrás
      Arrange all sixty minutes alphabetically around the clock. Same for seconds. Twenty-nine is near the end of the alphabet.

      The labels only relevant to the hours. For some reason the hour labels don’t align well to where the hour hand is.

      • cbdevidal
        14 dias atrás
        THAT explains it, thank you.
        • secretdark
          14 dias atrás
          I tweaked the labels when I was working on the combined mode, where I figured they make more sense as indicative of the general, combined alphabetical area. I hadn't considered they'd be confusing in the 3-hand mode. I've split the positioning of them between the two now. Appreciate the feedback! It does make it _less_ accursèd now, which I feel could be either an improvement or a regression. I leave it to weigh on your consciences.
    • nDRDY
      15 dias atrás
      I think the labels are pointlessly confusing.
      • secretdark
        15 dias atrás
        I mean to be fair the entire thing is pointlessly confusing.
        • nDRDY
          15 dias atrás
          Maybe, but the labels and hour markers that contradict the meaning of the hand positions is just perverse :-)
          • secretdark
            14 dias atrás
            I have changed it now (see another comment above.) But now it is less accursèd! Ah well.
  • unholiness
    15 dias atrás
    I 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.

  • alfanick
    15 dias atrás
    Imagine the mechanical gears behind this if it was an analogue watch. So many funky curved gears in there.
  • throwway262515
    15 dias atrás
    Syntax is wildly continuous with semantics, what’s the problem?
  • mnvsbl
    15 dias atrás
    [dead]