The Christmas tree and Snowman have been put away on the shelf to wait for the next holiday season. But thanks to my brother, I now have this sweet binary clock sitting on my computer.
Although I’d seen the action shots posted at ThinkGeek, I was still surprised at how small the clock was. For some reason I was thinking it was a little bit bigger. But it’s a decently readable size at about 9.5×9 cm. Some rubber feet would have been nice to keep it from sliding around, but those are easy enough to find and put on yourself.
Setting the time is easy enough with the two buttons on the back for setting the hour and minute. Just press the buttons to increment the counter by one until you get the correct time. And if you’re a real geek, you’ve already got at least one clock that syncs with a stratum 1 or 2 NTP server somewhere. Pressing both buttons at the same time will reset the seconds counter so you can get the clock synced to NIST time.
The LEDs are surprisingly bright and easy to read even in a brightly lit office. Instructions on the box and in the manual show you how to read the digits. Easily visible from almost any angle too (except from behind). Doesn’t take too long before you’re able to decipher the lights into numbers. All it takes is a little bit of practice. Keep the box around for a quick reference while you’re learning.
It will be fun watching my colleagues stare at it trying to figure it out.
