Will of the People

yields

code

yields

(with povray +W640 +H480 +Q11 +FN16 +A -d +k80000)

yields

Basic idea: a 24-hour circular clock with only one "hand", a dot that zigzags between an inner and outer ring of numbers. Its angle gives the time roughly like any clock (although mine loops once a day), its radial distance from the nearby hours helps indicate sub-hour precision. This needs more work, but all the hard part is done - by specifying the seconds past midnight as povray's "k" parameter, it gives an appropriate image for that time (as in my notes, prerendering all the images at whatever precision is desired would be the smartest way to do this). Todo and ideas for improvement:

• Colour the numbers so night is blue, dawn and dusk look like a sunrise/sunset, and day looks like day
• Provide circles for hour and half-hour marks to make sub-hour time easier to see at a glance
• Consider changing the camera angle to make it look more 3d-interesting
• Decide if a ball is the best pointer. If we keep a ball, consider using an earth texture
• If we're prerendering everything, decide if there's anything else worth prerendering into it
• Consider moving the light source around too

I suspect that one of the basic features of a clock is that people learn its interface, and there's a certain dependence on that interface being largely static over a day - it would make a clock much harder to use if its "camera angle" changed and it still had indicators to read.

Today was another lonely day - the only person I know whom I saw was a chrisamaphone, whom I failed to say hi to because I found the lain-esque cords my laptop has when set up were too tangled around me to permit leaving the coffeeshop. Lain ... is a good "metaphorical well" for many things.