OT: Danger! Time warp!

[James Wilkinson Sword]

I want one of their million acre farms.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

What happens if you press "start" while it's running? Mine adds 30 seconds to the cooking time. What happens if you press "start" before anything else? Mine starts cooking on full power for 30 seconds.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

The stone is more versatile:

Gary's weather forecasting stone: Stone is wet Rain Stone is dry Not raining Shadow on ground Sunny White on top Snowing Can't see stone Foggy Swinging stone Windy Stone jumping up and down Earthquake Stone gone Tornado

[Steve Walker]

Or being a little more creative a sundial with a spotlamp that rotates once every 24 hours. Or a fixed spotlamp and a rotating gnomen.

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

amount

As you said earlier time is just numbers, move the numbers or use them differently.

It doesn't tick, it counts. It counts the frequency of the emission from a specific transistion of a specific ceasium isotope.

The important thing to remember is that time is not a constant but a variable. Indeed have two identical atomic clocks that are showing an identical count of time and keep perfect sync with each other essentially forever when close together. Move one to the top of a moutain for a while and bring it back. The count of time displayed by each clock will no longer be identical.

That's the problem, a "day" is defined as the period of time from say noon to noon, trouble is that is anything but constant.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

I wish it would, but in both cases it does nothing. A new ROM might fix that, but probably does not exist.

There's also a couple of blank buttons (on either side of '0'), which also do nothing.

[Vir Campestris]

I hope you test Kiribati :)

Andy

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Funny, any microwave as old as yours I would have broken by now. They usually die when the water condensing on the bottom shorts something out inside the workings. Maybe I should dry them out after cooking?

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Energy inefficient and against EU regulations.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Indeed, alcohol solves all.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

It changes a lot slower than you climb a mountain (unless it's Everest and you're taking a day or three to climb it).

[James Wilkinson Sword]

I'd put them in a sewage plant.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

Seconds on a time of day clock are not needed, which is why they were only used for a basic stopwatch.

[James Wilkinson Sword]

But you don't often need absolute. You just want to know what sort of time it is. I often glance at an analogue clock on the wall of my living room to see I have about 3 hours before bedtime. I don't care if it's 3 hours 20 or 2 hours 40, just somewhere around 3 hours. In fact I usually just look at the hour hand.

[rbowman]

Are you familiar with the concept of a high or low pressure front moving in rapidly? If you're just walking up one mountain you're generally correct. If you're off on a multi-day hike good luck.

A lot of it is handled by GPS now but airports have their elevation prominently displayed. You twiddle the aneroid barometer in your Cessna to match the known elevation. I would do the same with the watch since knowing the altitude of a trailhead was usually easier than getting accurate barometer info.

[rbowman]

Around here the EPA gets all worked up about biohazards in the waste water.

[rbowman]

Apropos, one of our programmers hung a clock on the cubicle wall a couple of months ago. It's colorful, sort of a satellite photo of the earth with the hours in Roman numerals.

Today one of our QA people noticed IX was repeated twice instead of XI after X. Testers are like that, always finding fault.

[Mark Lloyd]

Yes, there's 3 timezones in Kiribati:

Pacific/Enderbury (UTC+13:00) Pacific/Kiritimati (UTC+14:00) Pacific/Tarawa (UTC+12:00)

None of these have DST.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

You probably don't have an absolute bedtime, but you do have appointments.

Rounding shouldn't be that hard, both 2:40 and 3:20 (to the nearest hour) are 3. I find it much easier to discard unnecessary information (as in rounding) that trying to figure out what those hands mean.

I grew up with analog clocks. Then I found something better.

BTW, I mostly missed LED watches (where you had to push a button to tell time).

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

Apropos, one of our programmers hung a clock on the cubicle wall a

And I seem to have heard that 4 is supposed to be written IIII (they Romans had something against IV).

BTW, there's also a story about empty cages someone keeps lions in in months with an X. After being told that no months have X in them, he said "don't forget about IX, X, XI, and XII".