I developed this thingamajig because I couldnât buy an off-the-shelf date display (whether electronic or not) that used my date format.
I had a Scrabble set lying around from my childhood days that I never actually played and probably lost many tiles, so I repurposed it by painting numbers on the blank backsides of tiles in order to display dates. Since around 2007, I used Scrabble tiles to display the date in my preferred format (yyyy-mm-dd-ddd), and I had to change them manually once per day. The reason I have it is because my mother worked in a biology lab, where this timer is standard equipment for technicians running unattended timed experiments. Itâs not a well-known piece of equipment for average people. It has desirable features like displaying seconds, 24-hour notation, and 4 timer channels that can each be used as a count-up stopwatch or a count-down timer. Since around year 2000, I used a lab timer with a decent-sized LCD as a desk clock. Note that the code is published for reference only â it is not open-source, and you wonât be able to use it directly without customizing numerous behaviors to suit your preferences (such as date and time format, fonts and colors, city for weather, etc.). This page provides detailed documentation of my tablet desk clock project, including pictures, discussion of considerations and features and limitations, and source code. Although using a real computer as a clock might seem like an expensive overkill, I had lots of fun writing the software and it provided a number of features that are unavailable on non-computer clocks. I bought a 7-inch tablet PC ($69 USD) to solely serve as a stationary clock, then developed a web app according to my demands. In May 2015 I seized an opportunity to overhaul my desk clock system â to make it prettier, more functional, and easier to manage.
I had also used Scrabble tiles to show the date, changed by hand every night. So for over a decade I have always put an independent, easy-to-read clock below my computer monitors.
Although modern operating systems show the time on the top/bottom system bar, I find those to be too small and limited. Sitting at my computer desk, I like knowing what time it is.