Human Clock (Complete with Hands!)

soulsteal writes: "Some people with too much time on their hands have decided to make a clock of, for, and by the people! Humanclock allows for anyone anywhere to set their time zone and view over 1100 pictures of people posing with one of the 1440 minutes available each day. On the geek side, their server is a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable running a port of Aache and PHP." Something seems extremely suspicious about that server ...

Comments

Source Code Joker

[BandWagon]

Has anyone besides me looked at the source code for the page to find the image names..? Quote:

Welcome to the source code for this page. Not much here.
The picture filenames all took a one-way trip to MD5 city to mask their true identity (if that is what you were looking for).

Since you are here though, we might as well tell you a joke since you took the time to look at the source code and you shouldn't have to close this window empty-handed.

q: How can you get four suits for a dollar?
a: Buy a deck of cards.

Re:Apache ported to Tandy BASIC?

[sharkey]

Read the post. They are running the Aache server, not Apache.

Re:Nice

[Fjord]

Stupid people talking on their mobile phones about things like "honey I left the office and I will be home in half an hour"

Spoken like an unmarried man.

Apache ported to Tandy BASIC?

[ibirman]

Now that is a feat! > We hired a crack team of crafty crack monkeys > that were able to modify the Apache source code > and reduce it down to a 25k text file that runs > under the BASIC interpreter native to the Tandy > TRS-80 Model 100. Those were some smart monkeys. I would love to see that code.

Re:Apache ported to Tandy BASIC?

[__aaahtg7394]

Smart had nothing to do with it--there were just an infinite number of them with teletypes. duh.

Re:If it's really true....

[Alan]

It's dead jim!

Yegods, the poor thing never had a chance...

hey ....

[ReidMaynard]

I bet we could overclock the cassette tape recorder .... get higher thruput ....

Re:If it's really true....

[garcia]

well at least we don't have to worry about it spreading the worm ;)

looks like...

[ocie]

it went down with all hands :)

They are leasing the rights to 4:20!!!

[pgpckt]

I don't believe this. For those of you who can't access the page because the poor TRS-80 couldn't handle it, these guys are leasing the rights to 4:20 am/pm! For the current bid price of $66, you can have your picture come up when it turns 4:20. See the auction at ebay

Re:They are leasing the rights to 4:20!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

by obscure do you mean "I'm calling attention to the fact that I listen to a bad band"?

Re:congealed geek froth

[AugstWest]

oh god, thinkgeek is going to pack it into corn syrup and add caffeine by the end of the week....

OK, I'll bite...

[Ctrl-Alt-Del]

> i have two if they need a spare!

Cool, we could set up a Beowulf cluster...

I think my human clock is broken...

[plexxer]

All I get is a picture of a guy holding up a sign that says 12:00, then he takes it away, then he holds it back up again, then he takes it away again, then he...

Bill's Last Fling

[Ambient Sheep]

I wonder if it's significant to the joke in some way that the ROM of the Tandy Model 100 is reputed to be the last code that Bill Gates actually wrote himself?

Martianclock.com coming REAL SOON

[mfarah]

Mr. Xxxx, the famous martian, tells me to relay this bit of information:

We are inspired by this human clock thing, and will implement a clone ourselves.

Look for martianclock.com, featuring pictures for all 24 hours and 37 minutes using photographs of live martians.

Unlike humanclock.com, and due to the long distances involved, we'll be using a cluster of Commodore 64 and Atari 800XL machines to handle the web server(s).

Re:Martianclock.com coming REAL SOON

[tbone1]

Unlike humanclock.com, and due to the long distances involved, we'll be using a cluster of Commodore 64 and Atari 800XL machines to handle the web server(s).

Too bad; I know where you can get a Beowulf cluster of Timex Sinclairs dirt cheap ...

Do I want to see this?

[Tim Macinta]

It's Slashdotted right now, so I guess I'll have to check back later... I'm just hoping they didn't get creative in using certain appendages for the second hand.

god bless the rts-80 m100!!!

[jpellino]

i have two if they need a spare!

I don't believe it!!!

[Anonu]

WOW, can you really do that?!?! How many users can it support during a certain time frame?
I gotta make myself one of those!
Wonder if anybody has any links about incredible web servers like this one?!?

Re:That Poor Poor Box

[Anonymous Coward]

And now, instead of:
/.'ed

it will forever be known as:
/!'ed

Re:It's a JOKE! Yeesh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Worst... Time... Ever!

Re:That's what the internet is all about!

[SilentChris]

"Reminds me of the good old days, when people had way too much time on their hands and creativity was rampant."

Well, when everyone's been fired... :)

Re:Putting the "BS" in "BSD"

[Barlo_Mung_42]

"Barnum was wrong - it's more like every 30 seconds"

-Somebody

Now we just need the naked clock...

[Uttles]

Imagine, playboy-esque models posing to the time of day, ticking along on your desktop...
It'd be almost like the Naked News

My port of Linux for older machines

[idistrust]

10 PRINT "LINUX 2.4.7-OLD"
20 PRINT "LOGIN: "
30 INPUT LOGIN$
40 PRINT "PASSWORD: "
50 INPUT PASSWORD$
60 GOTO 10

You don't notice this until you actually try: after a few years of Perl programming, it's hard to put those dollar signs at the end, and even harder to leave off the semi-colons. :-(

Mike

Re:My port of Linux for older machines

[Anonymous Coward]

youre absolutely right
punctuation has no place in programming
all those semicolons just get in the way
stupid delineation of logical thought
while were at it we shouldnt end sentences with periods
just use a linebreak its easier to type that way
heres a section of my up and coming scripting language called fucktradition
ft for short

print please log in
print username
get username
print password
get password
crypt is encrypt password
realpasswd is getpasswd username
if crypt is realpasswd
jump success
else
jump failure
endif

see its a lot easier to understand that way
none of that pesky punctuation getting in the way
its going to be the next big thing

If it's really true....

[DESADE]

I wonder how a TRS-80 is going to handle the Slashdot effect...

Re:If it's really true....

[austad]

Hrm, I think the tape player ate the PHP tape. The site seems to be down.

Time to pull it out and wind it with a pencil.

Re:If it's really true....

[PaxTech]

Answer : Not well.

Re:If it's really true....

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer : Not well.

The blind and stupid must be out today, how the hell did this get +1 informative?

That Poor Poor Box

[jgaynor]

From the site:

On Tuesday the server went down for about 12 hours because the AA batteries in it died and I had to go out and buy new ones.

And you think this thing can stand up to the usual slashdot-gangbang? Novel idea but you'd better invest in some real hardware if you're gonna put up Geeky cool content like this!

Re:It has to be a TRS-80

[LocalYokel]

Unless they were overclocking it, the TRS-80 isn't fast enough to crash in anything less than seven seconds. =)

How they made it...

[Anonu]

For people who came after the /. effect, here is the text of how they made their server:

With names like Western Family, Realistic, Tandy and TDK; humanclock.com's middle-management attempts to cut every corner possible when it comes to industrial-strength webhosting. Many web hosting companies use expensive servers with complex software for their web operations. Our engineering staff rewrote the popular Apache webserver software to run on an 18 year-old portable computer with 32k of memory.

Humanclock.com runs on a Radio Shack 2.4mhz TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer, using a stripped-down version of the Apache webserver software (version 100-BASIC.12 beta). The graphic files are stored on magnetic tape accessed via a modified Radio Shack personal cassette player (CAT NO. 14-1215). The webserver is powered by a 6 volt TRS-80 AC Adaptor (CAT NO. 26-3804). We take our web hosting very seriously at humanclock.com, therefore we have installed 4 "AA" batteries in the webserver in case of power failure. Whereas some battery backup systems last for only 20 minutes and cost hundreds of dollars, our power backup solution lasts for 20 hours and costs $2.49, (due to it being double coupon Tuesday). In the case of power outage however, it takes our webserver about one second to come back online, something that would take a common UNIX/NT system over two minutes.

Apache software in action We hired a crack team of crafty crack monkeys that were able to modify the Apache source code and reduce it down to a 25k text file that runs under the BASIC interpreter native to the Tandy TRS-80 Model 100. Those were some smart monkeys. Our engineering department was able to rewire this ordinary personal cassette player (not to be confused with a "walkman"), to handle the vast storage needs that humanclock.com requires.

All I/O is performed through the headphone jack. The storage media consists of a single TDK type I cassette tape. The "Rigid-Construction cassette mechanism" gave our IT deparment an overwhelming sense that it was 65 cents well spent. We estimate that roughtly 4 gigabytes of data can be stored before we have to turn over the cassette and record over the side labeled "Kick ass Toto mix tape".