Episode: 1470
Title: HPR1470: Learn to read time with ccClock
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1470/hpr1470.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 03:43:04

---

Music
Hi everybody, my name is Cam von and for those of you who can't seem to think of a topic
to discuss, this is one of the examples where just something occurred in my life, I came
up with a technical solution for it and I wanted to share that here with people on the
network. I guess lots of people here are parents or have, you know, have some people of the
smaller persuasion around and I was asked by my daughter to correct some of her homework
which was the analogue clock and there were something like 10 different analogue clocks
with 10 different digital clock times in the 24 hour clock military time. So for example,
there was a clock with, you know, 5 to 11 on it and on the, so the two minutes and our
hand were pointing at 11 and then on the clock below it was 11 colon 11. So that brought
up some interesting questions actually so I took down the big glass clock that we have in the house
which has the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and big letters around it, it's got a big hand
and small hand, people are aware of and then the problem started and I realized during the course
of this thing how funny and actress they sketched that another more literate and more entertaining,
obviously fellow Irishman Dave Allen did where he did a comedy routine about, you know, teaching
his son the time, links will be in the show notes for this episode but as I was looking at it I
realized okay obviously there was one thing they came out, which way does the clock hands go
around, does it go around clockwise or counterclockwise, that's so ingrained into us that even
the word clockwise is used to describe the direction. So here you have a child who doesn't know what
clock wise is because they don't know that the clock could equally have gone the other way in,
you know, in many countries that drive on the other side of the road and many languages that
write the other way around even up and down, it's just an arbitrary way that people picked,
well actually it wasn't that arbitrary because the whole history of the clock was originally there
was only the hour numbers and of those hour numbers there were the only the numbers that
you know with a sundial you put a stake in the ground and the sun, the line of the stake went
around to the different numbers that were marked out and from that they added the remainder of
the clock and then but even things like that the hands go around twice a day so a hand pointing
11 means 11 o'clock in the morning or it can rain 11 o'clock at night or the fact that
why does it go from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 and then suddenly go back to 1.
So it was yeah and why is the minute hand pointing at the hour numbers? It makes no sense,
all the clocks that you see just have a look around the house, all the minute hands are on the
big numbers so you say okay it's 5 to 5 to 5 to the hour that means the big hand is going to be
pointing at the 11 okay that makes no sense whatsoever so actually watch that develop and videos
it's it's quite funny however so I realized that we have extracted people are so familiar with
the analog clock that we've completely abstracted out to the point of the instant tracking
mission of what a clock is you assume it's a clock if you see a dot in a four in a north-south
east-west direction with some hands you assume that that's a clock in fact at the Amsterdam
central rail station they have a on one of the walls they have a wind you know a wind
chime which is a face of a clock north-south east-west or another and there's only one hand
but oftentimes I just look up there expecting to tell the time and you think that it's like you
know if the wind is blown west you think it's quarter to nine and you go oh that's hot
caution nine because you know the two hands are covering each other it must be caution tonight
so that whole thing is ingrained even to a point where you see that the Roman numeral numerals are
used you know people will post just dots in there's no numbers at all so there's so many assumptions
about what a clock is that people have abstracted the art of it out so what I wanted to do was bring
the clock back to basics and I wanted to do a clock face for a clock that would be useful for
people that will tell the time so essentially putting back all the information into the clock
that we already know is there and has been there all along but you've just learned it in school
and that's pretty much it now bringing it back to basics what it is what a clock is is just
a way of measuring time so it's like you count two fingers on your one hand and then you
clamp the fingers on the other hand so you got ten and then you make a notch and then you start
again so it's essentially as one hand goes round a certain a single time something else moves
forward an increment as that other something else moves forward a single revolution something else
moves forward an increment so it is like the odometer in your car the old time odometer is
it goes one two three four five six seven eight nine and then a little hand will pull up the next
digit and you have got you've passed the mile on to the next mile so that's what it is so actually
your clock that you're looking at right now especially if it's got a second hand
the second hand or indeed a third hand if it's got an hour hand a minute hand and the second hand
as in if it's got three hands on it it's actually showing you three different clocks three
different dials that should be displayed you should have the hour dial you should have the minute
dial and you should have the second dial and what you should be able to see for a child is you
should go down to the shop and purchase four clocks I got four clocks for under tenor that's in
euros and these are your standard run-of-the-mill quartz clock that has got like a little square thing at
the back takes one AA battery and just sits in it's got a glass cover pictures in the show notes and
with all these clocks you can just simply pop them pop off the cover take off pull off the hands
and then print off something cut it out nice and round and then put it into the clock I've been
doing this for years for them to you know to cheer up the bedroom and when when they've got
say you know they're into thumbs the train you know print off a poster for thumbs the train and
stick it onto the wall clock and bin and boom you've got a personalized clock in the room very nice
but so what I've done is there's a unified clock one central one that contains all the other three
clocks together and then you can print off the three different dials but what I want to describe
you to you is the is the single clock so first of all on the unified one which will be in the show
notes and I am I have on the outside a green circle and that green circle is divided into increments
of 60 60 increments thanks to inkscape for giving me the the tutorial for doing that and
those then I have painted the big hand the points to the minutes it extends it's exactly the same
size as the big hand and I've colored the big hand green so that you can see that the green points
to the green and that's the minutes and they 60 the five 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 are slightly
larger numbers than the other ones but it was important to put the other numbers in because
the first thing I've seen my children do is I can count to a hundred I can count to a hundred they
can all count to a hundred and recognize the numbers but what they can't do at that age is or
at least they're not confident in is the five times tables which is essentially what you do and if
you put in those digits and if you're doing the if you're only putting in four digits for north
south east to west you're actually doing the 15 times tables which is very complicated for a child
who's just learning the clock so the five times tables five 10 15 20 25 30 35 45 55 55 and 60 of course
but just having it there on the table and the whole point of this clock is it's not put on the wall
it's on the table they can pick it up they can walk over I give it to them I say what time is it
and they tell me what the time is and they it's there to be picked up it's they fonts are pretty small
so you know they have to read it and stuff but they can count they can see that there is a series
of numbers going the whole way around so that they know in the heart of hearts that there are 60
seconds 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in one hour so that is the you know fundamental key
this is one thing that they probably told my daughter in school but she had kind of forgotten
but it's kind of important so there that's what you need in the clock put the information back in
and the first thing we put back in was they was they minute hands now before we leave the minutes
another thing that I did was you might write the minutes as 12 colon zero five but you never say that
what you actually say is five past or 10 past or quarter past or 20 past or 25 past or half past
or 25 to or in the Netherlands five over half past five past half past which gets a bit weird
which of course is to the next hour as opposed back from the next hour that's not going to fix
nothing in the clock is going to be able to fix that that's just something we have to learn but
what I've done on the outside of the minute hand is I put a little speech balloon that you get
in the in the comics and cartoons and stuff so that the kids are familiar with that sort of
concept that this is a narrative that you speak so everything that's written down for so the numbers
for the hours and the numbers for the minutes are the things that you write down and the things
with the speech balloons are the way you say that so for example you would write on 10 and then you
would say 10 past okay so that's pretty much the outside of the minutes very nice so now what
we wanted to do for the hours is make it very clear that there's another black clock
another clock big black circle and a smaller first smaller clock and it is exactly the same
diameter as the small hand and the small hand I also just would come with a marker and made it
black although they say it's purple but fine I say the darker color and what I did with that was
I first of all have a narrow pointing leading from the 11 to the 12 pointing over to the very top
of the 12 and then and so that tells them all the time that that's the way the
minutes are so that's the way the hands go round and I have also that I forgot to mention I've
got an arrow up at the minute hand as well just pointing around this is the way the clock goes
around now what I was struggling with was how to explain the concept that okay the minute hand
only goes around once and the second handle goes around once for an increment but the but the hour
hand goes around twice in a day that's a that's a very strange concept for a child to do so what I
did was I in this clock I have of course divided it into 12 slices of a pie that you might expect a
cake cut into 12 different slices and what I did was put a a spiral in that goes around twice
so I have a spiral starting at the very top of the 12 hand where it reaches the other side
perimeter of the outside diameter of the clock and then it spirals around the one the two the
three before getting slightly closer and closer and closer and closer to the center then when
it comes to 12 it continues on 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 and then it stops so it spirals one
time and two times and just to make it clear that it's the same time I put in I got some clip art
from a brilliant site open clip art dot org open clip art dot org links for this of course will
be in the show notes as well and between the 12 and the one I put a moon and between the one
and the two I put a moon and the whole way the moon between the five and the six the whole
way around to the five and six and then between the six and the seven I have the sun coming out
from behind the mountain seven and eight the sun comes out a little bit more the eight and a nine
the sun is out the sun continues to be out right past noon 13 to the whole way around until six
a clock and then it's the sun starts going down again and then the moon comes out and I give
this to my six five-year-old daughter and said yeah tell me what's happening here and she says oh
this is the song comes out and I said okay so what time is it now it is 11 o'clock why isn't it oh
while she says it's one one one one o'clock which is kind of cute why isn't it two three and she
says because the sun is out well that was obvious wasn't it so it's very very clear to children
what's going on this is the sun this is the course of the day it goes around twice I also have a
little arrow coming around after the after the midnight it extends out as a tiny little arrow
showing again this is the rotation of of the thing and I have the letter for the word hour starting
at the center the capital H starting at the center and then rotating around in a circle
everything saying that this is the way the clock goes around it goes around this way
clockwise essentially so that's pretty much it now with the hours as well what I've done is
in the Netherlands what you always do is you write the time in military time always so there's
no discussions there's no AM or PM but for the so I've got a Dutch version of this clock on
on the website www.saise-clock.nl and that's cckl.nl and the English version of this will be on
the website ccclock.com ccclock.com that's three cc's and what I've done so there's two different
versions on the English version it goes 1 a.m. 2 a.m. 3 a.m. blah blah blah. I'm around to 12 a.m.
I don't know 12 a.m. 12 p.m. then you have 1 p.m. 2 p.m. 3 p.m. 4 p.m. and around so what's on the dial
is what you write down and then what's in the speech bubbles is what you say so for example here
besides the 13 and the 1 which on the English version will be 1 p.m. I have written
1 o'clock on the English version and a.n. ear on the Dutch at 2 a.m. 3 a.m. 3 a.m.
so the text bubble tells you what the time is what's funny is that my son who's really learning
to read and write at the moment will tell me the time based on the words so he will go it is
quarter past 2 o'clock and it's half past 3 o'clock or whatever it is and my daughter who's learning
the digital time will say it's 23 42 or whatever the time happens to be at that particular time.
The only other thing of course is just a QR code to get to the website name of the website
and the most important button which is the CC by SSO Creative Commons by share like which means
you just need to give credit and you need to contribute your changes back which they will be
considerable because my talent as such is very very limited to an engineering application and
I'm sure somebody else could do a really nice job bringing out the ideas of that these are two
separate clocks two separate measuring devices within the one thing. So I'm interested to
hear what your feedback and anyone's feedback especially if you're parent what what they'll
think of this of course ways that it can be improved of course the whole idea is to take this
thing and at minimum do the translations that would be necessary to convert it to the different
languages I don't know if that's probably not there's so much things that so many so many things
that has to change in order to change all the speed bubbles and all the digits from you know
one language to the next it's probably just simpler taking the scalable vector graphic file SVG file
and just making a copy of it and subinting it back in your own language but I really would like
to see other people's interpretations of this as far as it goes I have sample tested and marvelous
number of total number of three different kids because that's all I have available to me the
all seem to like it they seem to understand it the adults kind of freak out a little bit first
seeing us because it's what the hell is going on here and then you kind of more or less have to
tell them how it's going on but that's it that's the creator comes clock incredibly boring and
sad name but to be honest I couldn't think of anything else and all the other good names are gone
and it was short enough to type and made a nice relatively small QR code that can be scanned
so I'm probably going to whenever I'm allowed out at the house again be taking this down to the
photo the local photo print shop and getting a Ford on you know a nicer version and give it to
one of my kids teachers and see what they think of it see if it's useful in their class
and yeah hopefully loads of people will take this idea and use it as a simple learning tool it's
it's it's quite nice I imagine that you could you know take take the a four letter page or whatever
whatever format you choose printed off I have it in an stv and also as a PDF file so you can print
it off and laminated perhaps and just you know put a put two sticks on the nail and in the center of
it and you know just use put it on a piece of board or whatever and just have the kids
users a training tool that their hands don't actually go around but what I found quite
useful was to put the second hand back in even though I haven't explicitly put anything about
the seconds it is useful because the second hand does give that motion that this is the direction
you go round in and also you can say now well look at the second hand and once it goes 60 seconds
around you see that this green hand here moves one slot over there and then they do and they watch
it so you've got their attention for a whole two minutes and then you go well you see that when
that one moves they when the big green hand moves the little black hand it moves up here so once
that green hand goes the whole way around here one time then that black hand moves from that slice
of the pie to that slice of the pie and then ah now I understand it's not that complicated so I
have done nothing special here all I've tried to do is put back all the information that has been
you know artistically removed over the years and hopefully people will find it useful and my
real joy would be to see you know a production run of this and you know this in kids books or
people take the idea and you know completely altered owners and do it better that would be fantastic
to me and something like telling the times complicated enough so that was it um thank you very
much for listening to this show and if this is proof that a proof positive that you can take
any old crappy subject and talk about it for a considerable amount of time and submit that show
to here at Hacker Public Radio June and tomorrow for another exciting episode thank you
you have been listening to Hacker Public Radio or Hacker Public Radio does our
we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday
today's show like all our shows was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself if you ever
consider recording a podcast then visit our website to find out how easy it really is Hacker Public
Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomicum computer club HBR is funded by
the binary revolution at binref.com all binref projects are crowd sponsored by lunar pages
from shared hosting to custom private clouds go to lunar pages.com for all your hosting needs
unless otherwise stasis today's show is released under a creative commons
attribution share a life lead us our lives