Our hacker [glgorman] sent in their submission for the One Hertz Challenge: an analog software clock for Microsoft Windows.

I guess we’d have to say that this particular project is a work-in-progress. There is no final clock, yet. But a number of yak’s have been shaved. For instance, we have code for computing geometric objects without using branch instructions, including points and lines and circles and such.

The notes dive deep into various rabbit holes. At one point we find ourselves computing the angle to the sun in the sky, that we may be able to cast the shadow of the clock hands on our clock face. The notes include miscellaneous source code snippets and various screenshots of geometric renderings which have been achieved so far.

We thought it was fun that the geometric software references Euclid’s Elements, which, as you probably know, is the famous geometry book from Ancient Greece, the second most published book of all time, second only to the Bible.

If you’re interested in analog clocks you might like this one which displays the date, not the time or this one which uses colors instead of hands.