Binary Clock Code

This repository includes various bits of code for binary and hex clocks. It started out in Python but spread to other languages as convenient. The ideas behind it are described at http://x31eq.com/clock.html

Python Clocks

binarytime.py is a Python module for showing the current time in a binary or hex format. Run python binarytime.py --help for options. Should be compatible with at least python 2.7 and 3.6 upwards.

Some highlights:

6 bit clock with 4 hour range in Unicode: python binarytime.py -6

Unicode with 4 hour range and 1 second precision: python binarytime.py -4xs

Hex clock with 4 hour range: python binarytime.py -4x --digital

binaryclock.py takes the same options as binarytime.py but prints out new times as at the time changes. It also has options for setting the title of a shell terminal and placing the time on every window's title bar using wmctrl.

C and X Window System Clocks

Type make to build clocks from C code. Marvel at unresolved dependencies like the gcc compiler and libx11-dev.

domino is a simple 4 hour 6 bit clock using UTF-8.

xminuto is an X application to show an 8 bit clock with a 4 hour range and 1 minute precision. It has options for convenient foreground or background operation and you can choose the size and position. You can also set these options retrospectively with your window manager or wmctrl. It uses Xlib, and should work with any window manger, but I'm not sure about big endian systems.

xdomino is a variation of xminuto for a 6 bit clock. It is built from the same source code (xminuto.c).

The intention of these C programs is to be small and simple, and so require minimal resources when they run. The "on" bits are black and the "off" bits are white. The clock has a 1 pixel white border, and some small black lines are used to make the edges clear when there's a lot of white. I use them on my desktop and they are attractive, readable and reliable.

Hexadecimal Time and Date

I also added a couple of shell scripts for showing a time stamp in a hexadecimal format. These are examples of simple scripting and don't include UTF-8 tricks. Like the binary clocks, they're mostly useless, but might come in handy for IPv6 addresses or other cases where you want a simple time stamp in hex with more readability than a simple count of seconds since the epoc.

hexstamp shows the current date and time with 1 second precision in ten hex digits. The format is:

1. Four digits counting quarter-years since the calendar epoch. This corresponds to 14 bits for the year and 4 bits for the quarter. (This is not fixed at four digits and can be shorter for historical dates.)
2. Two digits counting the month (7 bits counting January as 0) and an AM/PM bit.
3. A colon to separate time from date.
4. One digit for the hour of the 12 hour clock counting noon and midnight as 0 (really base 12).
5. Three digits with the time in minutes and seconds of the "skip time" I use in binary clocks.

feestamp has a few differences:

1. The first two digits count quarter-years over a range of 64 years.
2. The next digit is strange and you'll have to work it out from the source code.
3. The last digit of the date part counts half-days of the week week with Sunday morning as 0.
4. The last two digits of the time part count seconds in base 15. (Hence the name: the last second of a minute is "fee" (barring leap seconds.))

The scripts require a shell such as ksh, bash or zsh but otherwise should be POSIX-compatible for showing the current time and date, but haven't been tested outside Linux. For showing arbitrary dates, they require GNU date and wrap GNU date's time format.

There's also a script called feedate that takes the output of feestamp and turns it into a conventional datetime string. It requires GNU date. Note that this script isn't a clock, doesn't involve binary, and isn't written in Python. So it represents huge feature creep. Usage:

1. First argument matches the output of feestamp.
2. Optional second argument is a format string that gets passed to GNU date.
3. Environment variable HEXEPOCH is the first year of the 64 that dates will be decoded to. The default is 1984 for the epoch ending with 2047. Anything other than a multiple of 64 will break. This is a good way of testing the tests.

There are some other shell scripts to work with these:

test checks that hexstamp and feestamp are correct for some known times and dates, and work with whatever of ksh, bash, and zsh are installed.

longtest is a zsh-specific test script that ensures round-trip consistency for every time of day and every date of the epoch.

tick prints a counter updating every second on the second. It can be used with the time stamp scripts to give similar usage to binaryclock.py:

./tick | while read; do ./feestamp; done

updateline keeps changing the output line instead of printing a new one. For example:

./tick | while read; do ./feestamp; done | ./updateline

python binaryclock.py -6 | ./updateline

Licensing Details

This code and the ideas behind it are so simple that claiming any intellectual property protection for it would, as far as I understand these things, be completely unenforceable. So I haven't attached a license, but feel free to do what you like with them and use this statement to say that I told you so.

In a strange parallel universe, somebody might market a clock using ideas from this project. They might attempt to claim intellectual property protection for such ideas in a destructive manner, claiming all the profits for sensible binary clocks for their expanding binary clock empire. Should this unlikely situation occur in your universe, you can use this repository as evidence of prior art.

Finally, the disclaimer of liabilities: if use of the code or ideas in this project causes any harm to you, your business, or innocent third parties, it's your own stupid fault.