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Comment by johannes_ne | Hacker News Reader

I actually adapted Jaaps work to a web version of the clock yesterday.

That's great! As a web app, if you have a Kindle Fire you can do the following:

1. Go to the SETTINGS area 2. Click on DEVICE OPTIONS 3. Triple-tap the SERIAL NUMBER option, towards the bottom of the screen. 4. The DEVELOPER OPTIONS will now be accessible. 5. Find the option labeled STAY AWAKE. Click on it to ENABLE.

The Kindle will now remain on while charging (a "clock" mode). Load the page in Silk - kindle browser and you're set.

This would probably be more work than it is worth, but it would be neat to have an option to take into account time differences between the location in the quoted story and the user's location.

For example, this quote is used for 8:19:

> I had arranged to meet the Occupational Health Officer at 10:30. I took the train from Watford Junction at 8.19 and arrived at London Euston seven minutes late, at 8.49.|The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim|Jonathan Coe

If the location aware option were enabled, it would give that to me at 1:19, not 8:19, because I'm in PDT (UTC-0700).

(Well, 1:19 if London is not also on daylight savings time. If they are, then I'd get it at 0:19. This is one of the reasons it is probably more work than it is worth. You'd not only have to have the location information for the quotes, you'd also have to deal with the rules for daylight savings time in multiple locations. This would be a pain in the ass).

Why would you do that? you want to see the quote for 8:19 at your 8:19 local time, otherwise it's not a very good clock.

I think it is meant to be an interesting clock, not a good clock in the timekeeping sense. There are many times that do not have an associated quote, so the time it shows if often off by several minutes.

If you just need a good clock, https://time.is/ is hard to beat.

I think it would be interesting to, say, look at the clock just before 5 PM, as I'm getting ready to knock off work and find something fun to do, to be told that it is five minutes to midnight at Hogwarts and Dumbledore is advising Hermione that three turns should do it.

I think it still wants to be a useful clock, i.e., you want to be able to see at a glance how late it is where you are now. That's actually why the current time is highlighted.

Although your idea also has some merit.

Thanks, used the JSON files to quickly script a console version. Now I have a kitty giving me a nice quote with the time every time I open a new terminal :)

Care to share?

Sorry, missed your reply.

Here you go: https://github.com/jimbauwens/literature-clock-console .

It's a very simple node.js application. If you don't like node.js the logic can be easily ported to any other language. I just didn't feel like parsing the data files with a shell script.

This could also make for a really cool chrome extension.

Very cool! Are there more than 2 quotes for each time? E.g., will tomorrow's 10:17AM quote be different to this morning's 10:17AM quote?

Some times have a lot of quotes (e.g. midnight and noon). In these cases the quote is selected at random. About a third of the minutes have no quote. The author of the Kindle project (Jaap) has fixed some of these by using a close vague quote (like 'around noon' for 11.57). The remaining missing minutes just use the closest earlier quote.

This is awesome.

For those of you that hobby with this stuff, what would be the most stone cold simple cheap way to get a machine that would output this page into a monitor continuously?

Like if I had an extra display lying around and wanted to make a little wall installation, what’s the most direct path, something like a raspberry pi?

You could send it the page via Chromecast.

Looks awesome!

The difference between the "time" and "non-time" font styling is more subtle here - when I changed #main_text to have color: gray, it became a bit easier for me to see the time.

You're right. It's better with a bit more contrast. I've lightend the main_text a bit.

Does this work on iPhone?

It only changed once for me.

Would be cool to fade between times so I can use an old iPhone as a clock.

Should work fine on iPhone. Maybe you were unlucky to visit it at a point with no quote for the following minute or two, causing the same quote to be repeated.

Ah, understood.

How many minutes don't have a quote?

536, so a bit more than a third.

Oh wow; that is significant.

It might be fun to make a Twitter version of this. Ie, select a random tweet that references the time (vs. a book quote).

Cool.

I might use this for my smartwatch.

You should. Some of the paragraphs are quite long for a watch, though ;)

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