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Watches for UberGeeks?
eyefish asks: "My trusty old watch recently gave up on me, and now I want to buy a new one. This time though I want something a bit more functional that my simple analog-digital watch. If you were to buy a new watch, and you are the geek type, which one would you buy? I'm interested in anything from watches with built-in GPS to built-in video or MP3 players and calculators. Or simply anything that looks really cool, or is really light, or syncs with my palm pilot. You get the drift." A watch that could sync via GPS? Never have the wrong time again! But seriously, what nifty new technologies have had the shrinking ray applied to them so that they fit nice and comfy on the wrist?
A watch that is the mark of a true geek should have an anti-static grounding point on the band, so that you don't waste any time hunting for an anti-static wristband when the urge to start taking apart your computers strikes...
Anything else (calculator, GPS, biorhythm display) is just gravy...
I just recently got The Matrix Binary Watch, a great combination of different and inexpensive. This has been mentioned here before here and here.
The ordering process is now pretty normal. The watch itself is a bit chunky, and appears to be well made. The included band is leather, but not quite big enough for me (not unusual). The watch band is a less common size (19mm) so it took several different stores/malls, but eventually I found an extra long band.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
Dirk
I am thinking of buying a yeswatch myself - see www.yeswatch.com
It features a single hand plate (hand does one round in 24 hours); shows you day/night time where ever you are on this planet; moon phase and some more.
"We'll reach that bridge when we find it" - Suzy Romer, prime minister Netherlands Antilles '98-'99
try this watch/cell phone combo here
I was brought up on a digital clock (real old (atleast 30 years) but it did 24 hours military time).
:-) .
I've always been more comfortable with a digital clock. It takes more time to understand where I am in the day on an analogue clock face.
So digital is easier for me.
There are smaller digital watches these days (tissot had nice ones with both faces, and I always looked at the digital part).
it fits in with unix being digital
It all depends on personal preference and what you're used to
Timex Ironman. Heavy-duty. It's cheap(~40USD). It's tough. It's waterproof. It tells time, has a timer, and the backlite rules.
If you want an MP3 player, buy one. Get the right tool for the right job.
"If you were to buy a new watch, and you are the geek type, which one would you buy?"
I'd buy a decent $20 watch, and donate the other $100-200 to some worthy charity. If donating to mundane run of the mill "feed-the-starving-cure-the-sick" charities is too pedestrian for you, you could always donate to the EFF.
The conspicuous consumption of the geek crowd is amazing.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Personally, I find bulky watches with millions of features and complex digital displays cumbersome and outright dorky. Yes, we are nerds here, but we can have a LITTLE style, right?
.
:)
The perfect watch, as far as I'm concerned, is the Junghans Atomic Solar line. The styling speaks for itself, and technically they're a marvel. Since they're solar powered and sync to the NIST WWVB radio station, all you have to do set your time zone once - and never do anything ever again. No batteries to change, no daylight saving to worry about, no time drifting ever. Junghans, being a German company, also makes watches that can sync to European time standard stations.
Check 'em out here and here. Unfortunately, at just under $1000, they certainly aren't for everyone.
I certainly can't afford one (yet), so I have to be content with my trusty Timex for now.
Ian
I agree - my wife and I bought each other the Seiko Kinetics for our wedding, and they are great! The titanium one I got is light, and looks really cool, plus they wind themselves with a pendulum inside as you walk, move, type, etc. Definitely has geek appeal there!!
Makes people think you are rough outdoorishy type :)
And they look cool (Execpt that GPS type, looks like a piece of dung on your wrist). Mine is the first watch I am really happy with. Analog, with clever in-glass LCD.
I agree. I didn't get a Seiko, but I did get this watch. I like not having to buy batteries or remember to wind it up. I've had a few people comment that it was a cool watch because one can watch the gears and pendulum move.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
It is a watch from Timex that receives pages (and Yahoo! instant messages). Works via skytel. My main problem is that I hate carrying around my pager, and I don't necessarily have it with me when it goes off. If I had a pager that was a wrist-watch, it would have that problem.
See this picture and this list of features.
The best geek watch, in my opinion, is the Hamilton Ventura - sported by two of the masters of Science Fiction, Rod Serling and JMS.
I know I'd go nuts if I got one.
I add my vote to a plain analogue watch. Not geeky, but elegant. My Citizen Eco-Drive is solar powered and made of titanium; that does for me.
t ml
But, if you must have geeky, ThinkGeek has lots of intersting watches. http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/watches.sh
The alien one is nifty.
The one with a built in laser is scary.
The 24hr one will prevent other people reading your watch over your shoulder.
The Junghans ones that listen for the Atomic Clock radio signals so they set themselves to the correct time every night is superb engineering.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
One my Breitling 1812 chronometer - The Jupiter Pilot. Breitling makes fantasticly beautiful watches. www.breitling.com
... nice
also see: http://www.cns.com.jo/jaffar/jupiter.htm
for all its cool ubergeek features.
and my second the carbon watch from thinkgeek, it syncs to atomic time. http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/gadgets/5807.shtml
in kevlar too
I agree, the Seiko Kinetic watches are a nice concept, though I wish they weren't so *thick*, as the current fashion is for bulky, ironman, scuba diver watches with enough hardware on them to run a vacuum chamber.
These THICK watches are always catching onto things - you'd think they had built-in grappling hooks and caribiners for climbing sheer walls.
A few years back my ultra-thin Casio LCD watch gave out and I'm making due with a grocery store cheapie until I can find a suitable replacement that provides great functionality in a case that is less than 2 mm thick.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Go get yourself a hunter case Waltham, Hamilton, or similar. You can generally get a pretty pristine early 20th century gold filled pocket watch and a decent pocket chain for under a couple hundred bucks..
Myself, if I were just starting in them, I'd get what they called $10 watches; A sturdy, plain watch they mass produced for the common fellow..
I started instead with a expensive open-face in solid gold, and I cursed myself everythime I cracked a $120 crystal.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Yea, but you have to type 'date' each time you want the time...
*rimshot*
(old joke shamelessly stolen from the article in that IEEE magazine that did a story on the Linux watch that runs X)
All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
2mm? Not sure if you meant 2cm (as a rightful exaggeration), but I've never seen anything (except for those trendy credit-card clocks you can get with a mag subscription) that's so thin - espescially in a watch...
Regarding the thickness of the Seiko Kinetic, the titanium model (no model number on the case, just "Kinetic Titanium") is a bit less than 1cm thick, so it's not obtrusive at all...
I've got a Casio PC Unite HBX 100. It's essentially a data bank with an IrDA port to allow syncing with your PC. It's a little on the chunky side, but still within acceptable limits for me, which most of the geeky watches aren't.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
as the only person who would be playing with hardware there would be the IT guy. I was pretty dissapointed
really, oh I could feel the relief the day I could phone the IT dept. and just say:
"My PC isn't working."
and they come out, replace my workstation with another one and I carry on working.
Only happened once while I was there (hd failure) but it was certainly appreciated.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
If you can afford them I've always thought Breitling watches were the ultimate in geek appeal. I mean Astronauts wore them to the moon. It doesn't get any geekier.
When I am out and about, finally away from those stupid timepieces everywhere telling me to rush to and from here and there, the last thing I need to know is how many minutes have gone by since the last time I looked at my watch.
People seem to be in too much of a hurry these days. If you are going someplace, remember that you will get there when you get there, no matter how many times you look at your watch, and often hurrying will only slow you down (a car accident is much more time-consuming than stopping at a yellow light). Also, hurrying is no fun. You don't enjoy yourself along the way (mmm, stress), and you fail to pay attention to all of the neat stuff you would otherwise notice - you can really enjoy yourself on the train ride to work if you are not stressing about whether the boss will notice that you came in 5 min. late.
In other news, it seems to me that a 'geek' would spend more time thinking about what he or she needs, and buy it when it is really time. The true geeks run their old computer untill there is a real need to upgrade, thereby saving LOTS of money without taking a performance hit.
You seem to just want a really expensive watch with a bunch of useless crap on it. You don't seem to care which features it has - it is not like you have identified some vacancy in your life which needs to be fulfilled with device X or Y (except maybe, "I don't feel smart enough - I need a watch that makes me look like a geek"). To me, that is not geeky, it is just wastefull and vain. In fact, given that you will probably end up wasting a whole bunch of money that you could use to get some usefull technology for which you have actually identified a need (or at least a more substantial desire), it is downright anti-geeky.
There is a constant stream of input/stimulus coming in from the outside world. I think that a lot of these devices are just there to keep us entertained because we have forgotten how to look out the window without getting bored. Do we really need to be constantly entertained by our mp3 player (ever hear a bird singing?), or always in touch with our social circle (maybe we could make new friends if we weren't always on the cell phone) or in touch with our job which is so much more important than our sanity or health.
For me, objects which are only usefull if you carry them around constantly (like PDA's, beepers, etc.) are not worth it. My wallet is already enough crap for me to carry around. If I want to remember someone's phone number, I write it on a paper phone list I keep in my wallet. When I get home, I enter it into a text file and re-print it when I need to (no issues of compatibility - I don't ever have to re-type my address book into another program).
And in the meantime, I can walk around relatively unencumbered. I never have to worry about breaking my PDA by sitting on it, or dropping my cell phone into a toilet. I don't even have to make sure I have battery power before I leave the house.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
catapult watch !!
Well, 2 mm may be hard to find these days.
But evidently in the 1940's the Swiss were trying to make very thin watches with mechanical movements, such as the Audemars Piguet, coming in with a movement that was 1.64 mm thick.
IIRC, the Casio I had was probably about 3-4 mm thick.
The watch I wear now doesn't advertise thinness as a virtue and it is probably almost 1 cm thick.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Casio has a whole catalog section for geek watches. My brother got the Wrist Camera and I have to admit it's pretty neat.
As a minor eco-freak, I prefer the Seiko Kinetic. No more watch batteries for me.
I haven't had any problems with it over-winding, but it will wind down and stop if it hasn't been worn for a couple days. That's fine with me as long as it runs and keeps accurate time after I take it off before going to bed. Since I can see the spring, I know if I need to do some extra fidgeting during the course of the day.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Also, Fossil used to make a replica of the original LED watch. Looked terrible, with those blocky red calculator numbers. I loved it. I wonder if they still make it. Anyone have a link?
Got Rhinos?
This watch was designed for the military. It has markers for the numbers and minute/hour hands that are made of glass tubes that contain radioactive tritium gas and a phosphorescent material. It has a quartz movement and an analog display. It is very easy to read in the dark. You can find these watches at some military surplus stores.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I faced the same dilemma a few months ago, when my casio databank broke (the damn thing was chromed but made of plastic so it broke).
I realised that most of the databank's functionality was already duplicated in my Palm V, and since the Palm is much more comfortable, I didn't use the watch for data keeping anymore.
So I figured I'd get a "unix philosophy" watch. That is, a watch that does one thing, and does it well.
Since what a watch does is tell time, I got a simple, analog, automatic watch (that's mechanical, not a single electronic component inside). This baby tells the time with acceptable accuracy (+15 seconds a day, which sounds pathetic, but I still need to have it adjusted), doesn't need to be wound (hence the "automatic"), and, unlike quartz watches, will withstand an EMP blast, will keep working on extremely cold weather, and will never need a battery. Additionally, this one is made of steel (i made sure of that after the fiasco with the casio) so chances of me breaking it are pretty slim. And hey, it only cost 100 bucks!
Seriously, the thrill of having more functionality on your wrist than on your desktop computer will probably fade with age. *i'm getting old*
How about hands that glow brightly enough to actually be useful, and a calendar that's perpetual, and also visible from some angle besides 19 degrees to the right. Oh well.
But wait! The Eco-Drive starts at over $200. Isn't that expensive?
No, it's not. Consider the cost of buying a new battery every couple years. Yeah, the battery itself is just a few buck. But unless you have the tools and the touch, there's also the hassle of finding somebody to change the battery for you, plus the risk that doing so will damage the watch. (Actually, it always destroys the water-resistence of the watch, unless you go to a special jeweler who will charge more than the watch is worth.) A lot of hassle. I suspect most people just buy a new watch when their battery dies.
But if the Eco-Drive lasts you ten years, you more or less break even, and save yourself some hassle.
Also, if you're a tree-hugger -- or just think toxic metals in the groundwater is uncool -- you should consider what happens to all those used batteries.
recently on the History channel's "Boy's toys" week they talked about a >1lb. pocket watch that not only contained a face that told time in like 3 timezones, the opposite side contained a siderial time ([time around the sun]/365.25.... as opposed to rotation of the earth) clock with integrated realtime nighttime sky cart. It went for > $5e6 at auction recently. personally I would love some company to make a 'clone' of the watch. like quartz/electronics based , still with analog faces, tho' it would be hella cool!
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Funny thing is, I don't wear a watch anymore, not since I got my first mobile phone. Most of my friends are the same. (Actually, come to think of it, if you're after something funky and you don't need it on your wrist, the re-released Nintendo MiniClassics -- Game & Watch -- clip on a belt loop nicely. Try www.gameandwatch.com for some info.)
I second the recommendation for a mid-price ($200-$400) titanium-cased watch with a kinetic, solar, or other self-powered mechanism.
I want a good-looking watch that would hold up to abuse, not too heavy, and nothing as flashy and expensive as a Rolex or Omega. I considered both Seiko and Citizen, they each produce quality watches in titanium, with a variety of features and appearances.
My only regret is not upgrading to a model with the 'automatic calendar' feature, that automatically sets the day-of-month correctly.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
"Hey, what time is it? I know! I'll just look at this HUGE FUCKING BRICK ON MY ARM!" *chix0r swoons at ultra-phat geekiness of Brickwatch-Man*
Seriously, that watch is way too damned big.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
One of the links you provide is to radiocontrolledclock.com. They actually cater to all price ranges. However, caveat emptor. You can certainly find an "atomic" clock on this site in your price range. But no guarantee that it will actually work!
It would have to be the Ruputer. If only I could read Japanese and could operate one...
As far as your question goes, although I do not feel that it is my business to tell others what to do, I reserve the right to comment on it when it affects me.
There are a few ways in which it affects me.
There is the obvious point about emissions and overconsumption of resources. But also, when money is needlessly spent on an overly expensive car, it empowers the auto industry, whose vision of the future is contrary to mine. When people run out and buy the latest version of MS's entire line of vomitware, that empowers MS to even more effectively hold back the entire computer industry.
I really wish that all of the MS-haters out there would boycott the XBox. The only way to defend ourselves is to make their revenue stream dependant on their behavior.
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?