I may be a total geekazoid, but does anyone else think this one-handed watch is cool? (1 Viewer)

[BrianW]

Yes, it has only one hand with a 24-hour dial. At a glance, it reveals sunrise and sunset times and moon phase.
Here’s the link:
www.yeswatch.com
I’ve never been “into” jewelry, and I wear a watch grudgingly only so that I can tell time. However, I’m totally enamored by this watch. I want one like I wanted my Pronto remote! No watch has ever done this to me.
Yes, I’m a total geek. I’ve always had more than just a passing interest in all things meteorological. I’m also an amateur astronomer, and I actually plan activities based on sunrise/sunset times, so this watch would actually come in handy. Plus, being a total geek, I just like the idea of the single hand tracking the sun in the ecliptic plane. What could be cooler, or more, well, “natural”?
I don’t understand what’s come over me. Yesterday, I would have laughed at the notion of paying $300 for a watch. Just give me a seven-dollar Timex, and I’m happy. Expensive watches are for – well, they’re certainly not for me. Until now, that is. I’m actually trying to think of ways I can afford to get this thing by cutting discretionary spending in other areas. I’ve gone daft! Mind you, I may be a propeller head, but I’m not a useless gadget freak. I’ve automated my house and zoned my A/C, but I don’t own a laptop, PDA, game console, or even a cellular phone. I don’t feel at all compelled to “have the latest thing.” If I don’t have a life-enhancing legitimate use for a gadget, I don’t have any desire to own it. So what is it about this watch that makes my eyes glaze over?
I’m hoping this disease is temporary and will go away before I can afford to get this watch. I’m hoping some day I’ll wake up and think, “What was I thinking! I hate expensive watches! Good thing I couldn’t get on the Internet yesterday to buy the darn thing.”
Oh, well. We all have our crosses to bear.

 

[Julie K]

That's really cool. Their website seems stuck for now on the intro page (too many of us geeks trying to see the cool new gadget?) but it looks pretty fine. The only drawbacks I see now are (1) 500 cities - call me obsessive but I'd really want to be able to enter lat/long myself (2) size. I get really frustrated by all the cool gadgets designed for men and nothing similar for women. A lot of nifty big watches, like this one looks to be, simply do not fit on my wrist. I don't mind wearing an oversized, "unfasionable" (to most other women, that is) watch, but the damnable fact is that these things are usually wider than my wrist is. I also have a hard enough time getting the bands on women's watches small enough, I can't image getting the band on this monster to fit.
I'm real pissed as hell that this ultra cool watch probably won't fit me.

quote:
I just like the idea of the single hand tracking the sun in the ecliptic plane
[/quote]
Well, it's not you know

Tracking motion in the ecliptic plane will give you local true time, while most of the world relies on mean zone time. I'm betting that this watch only shows the latter.
EDIT: Finally got onto the website. I was disappointed at their new-agey gimicky outer bezel with "your special times" - a little squiggle showing me the best time to dance? Please.

It also doesn't look like it will calculate moon rise/set, altough you can get a rough estimate knowing sun rise/set and lunar phase.
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My DVDs
"Some people think I'm over-prepared, paranoid...maybe even a little crazy. But they never met any pre-Cambrian life forms, did they?"
[Edited last by Julie K on September 06, 2001 at 12:48 PM]
[Edited last by Julie K on September 06, 2001 at 01:03 PM]

 

[BrianW]

Julie, since you can’t get see it, I’ll try to shed a little light.

Tracking motion in the ecliptic plane will give you local true time, while most of the world relies on mean zone time. I'm betting that this watch only shows the latter.

Actually, it will do both. Indeed, the digital time shown is mean zone time, which is as it should be. But the rotating bezel can be used to track solar time. By rotating the bezel so that it bisects the daytime/nighttime hours evenly, the orange dot on the bezel will indicate the time at which the sun is highest in the sky for your lat/long position. Other markings on the bezel indicate “solar midnight” and other useful (and a few whimsical) solar times. So you get mean zone time on the digital readout, so you don’t miss that episode of Babylon 5. And you also get analog solar time to indicate when the best time is to do your gardening.
But you’re right about the size. This alone may keep me from purchasing it myself.
Also, it figures that someone who drives a Fiero would like this watch. Thanks for letting me know that I’m in good company.

 

[BrianW]

Sorry, Julie. I didn't see your edit until just now. Yeah, the description is New-Agey, but the bezel markings can be used for whatever you want. For instance, the squiggle will be my bed time. (Again, seriously!) Besides, I always do my dancing at solar midnight, on a full moon, so this watch will really come in handy. (Okay, I'm kidding, now. It doesn't have to be a full moon. )
[Edited last by BrianW on September 06, 2001 at 01:17 PM]

 

[DaveF]

While the watch is my thing, I was amused by this "feature"

You can tell when to stay out of the high noon sun to protect your skin, or to catch a tan.

Silly me; I had been relying all these years on the innacurate 12:00pm time on my watch

 

[Julie K]

quote:
had been relying all these years on the innacurate 12:00pm time on my watch
[/quote]
Well, there's zone time, local mean time, and local true solar time - the 12pm on your watch just isn't accurate enough for us true geeks who want to know exactly when the sun is at its zenith.
Brian,
Let us know if you get it (and if it really helps you improve your moonlit dancing

) and whether or not you think it works better as a wristwatch or a pocket watch. I'm really thinking I need this as I tool around in my Fiero...
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My DVDs
"Some people think I'm over-prepared, paranoid...maybe even a little crazy. But they never met any pre-Cambrian life forms, did they?"
[Edited last by Julie K on September 06, 2001 at 02:56 PM]
[Edited last by Julie K on September 06, 2001 at 03:13 PM]

 

[BrianW]

Using the measurements given on the web site, I drew the watch on a piece of paper. (Well, I drew a circle, anyway.) I also drew a rectangle to represent the profile view so I could see its thickness.
This thing is a brick! It's over half an inch thick, and very nearly one and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. The outer dimensions are actually big enough to house one AAA battery!
I don't think I could wear something that big on my arm. It must weigh a ton. I hope nobody wearing this thing falls in a lake, or something.
That aside, I still think it's neat. It's definitely pocket watch material, however.

Well, there's zone time, local mean time, and local true solar time…

I always thought that zone time and local mean time were the same thing. Thanks for teaching me something new.
Happy tooling!

 

[CharlesD]

That watch is neat. Great idea, I love the idea of it showing local solar time as well as Zone time in the digital readout. It does seem way to big though. I would buy one if it were re-packaged as a pocket watch.
The electrically displayed portions would only need to be active when the cover was raised as an added bonus!
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-- Will Work for Five Million Dollars

 

[Henry Carmona]

I know of some HT equiptment id rather buy for $300.00!
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"Charlie don't surf."

 

[brentl]

Damn I just want to be able to tell the time. I couldn't care less about the moon faze in my city, or the time anywhere else.
Besides that it took me 33 years to figure out how to read my watch.
Brent L

 

[Ryan Wright]

MMmmmmm..... Fieros....

I'm not into the watch, but I just had to respond to a thread with this many occurances of the word "Fiero". Myself, I've got a real geek watch. Casio Databank. Stores phone numbers, has a scheduler, calculator, world time, alarm, timer, & stopwatch. All in one compact, geeky looking device that fits on my (also small) wrist.
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-Ryan (http://www.ryanwright.com )
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him to use the HTF and keep him occupied for life.

 

[BrianW]

I couldn't care less about the moon faze in my city

Wow! If the moon looks different in your city than it does in mine, then I’d like to know what planet your city is on!

Ryan, your new ride looks really nice. I can’t believe the previous owner didn’t have an alarm system installed. As for your watch, I considered the Casio Databank and other similar watches. But, like Brent, I just want to be able to tell the time. And the time, when you get right down to it, is all the Yes watch delivers, albeit in a solar-/lunar-cycle sort of way.

 

[Ryan Wright]

Ryan, your new ride looks really nice. I can’t believe the previous owner didn’t have an alarm system installed. As for your watch, I considered the Casio Databank and other similar watches.

Thanks - I love it. Almost caught it on fire last weekend, though. I was installing my alarm system and mis-read the schematics. I hit the unlock button and the door lock relay sent +12V right from the battery over an 18 gauge wire 10+ feet long into the door lock circuit. Would have been fine except that part of the circuit went straight to ground. Whoops. I sat there for a minute trying to figure out what I did wrong when I noticed white smoke pouring out of the front compartment where I'd installed the alarm system. I yanked the power and fanned the smoke away thinking I was done. When I turned around about 10x more smoke was pouring out of the interior of my car. (The wire was run in a bundle with about 10 others, taped up with electrical tape and underneath the carpet) I yelled for my wife and she brought me a fire extinguisher while I prepared to push the car out of the garage to keep my house from burning down. Luckily, the extinguisher wasn't needed and no damage was done to the car. Didn't even burn the carpet backing - The electrical tape wrapping saved my butt. I did destroy a nice harness I'd spent no less than 8 hours making, though. Reduced it to little more than a melted, stinking mess. Had to buy more wire and redo the whole thing. But everything works now.
As for the watch, I've had this Casio Databank for 4 years now. Before that, I had an earlier version of the same watch for 5 years. I love it; helps a lot when I'm cooking, as I have the nice little timer right there on my wrist, without which I would forget all about my food and probably burn my house down. The only thing I think I'd like more is a touchscreen watch also made by Casio. No buttons at all. Looks real sweet, but I've never seen one in person, only in their catalogs. I think it's also a fairly spendy watch costing a few hundred $$.
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-Ryan (http://www.ryanwright.com )
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him to use the HTF and keep him occupied for life.

 

[Thom B]

Here's a place that has a few different band options at lower prices.
http://www.exptech.com/?http://www.e.../yes/Bands.htm
T

 

[MikeH1]

If your into this lunar watch thing then you will LOVE this. Check out the Vector at http://www.suunto.com.
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[Edited last by Michael Hein on September 07, 2001 at 01:16 PM]
[Edited last by Michael Hein on September 07, 2001 at 01:21 PM]

 

[Scott H]

But Michael, Suunto makes serious stuff!
We have long relied on a Suunto Tandem (clinometer/compass) mated with a software program to precisely place the sun in the sky (and in relation to terrestrial objects), anywhere in the world, at any time (now/future), for filming purposes. Example, when exactly will the shadow from St. Louis Gateway Arch fall on a particular roadsign on 11/28/2002?
Btw, here's the Suunto watch product page: Link Removed
Suunto Tandem is near bottom of this page: [url=http://www.suuntousa.com/products_comp.htm
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[Wayne Murphy]

Coolest watch I've seen lately was a binary watch. It had green and red LED's and you could tell the time by counting how many of each there were. It takes a couple of minutes to get the hang of it but I thought it was cool.

 

[Wayne Murphy]

re reading my post I should not have said counting the LED's you have to add them..... 1 2 4 8 16 you know.

 

[Craig Chatterton]

Ah, the Casio Databank. I have a great story about owning one of those. I used to own a bunch of them and I was always shopping at "Best", a local jewelry/office supply store.
One day I saw the best one yet - it was a Databank flip-top. It had a gorgeous gold colored "hour hands" watch, but the top flipped up and underneath was a databank keyboard and a little LCD display for your phone information. It cost about $150 which was a lot for me back then (I was about 15 at the time). But I scraped the money together.
I wore it for about six months when the battery started showing signs of wearing down. I took it back to Best to have them replace it. I handed it to the lady behind the counter and she went off to their little work station to do the work. She must have been there for a half hour or more, and enlisted the help of everyone else working in the store. Finally she came back to me and said "We can't figure out how to replace the battery so we're just going to give you a new watch." So they gave me a new Flip Top databank and I went on my way.
Six months later, you guessed it, this (new) watch started showing signs of a low battery too! So I took it back again. This time I expected to wait so I gave myself an extra half hour to get the battery replaced. The same thing happened: I gave my watch to the clerk, she went back and eventually called in everyone's help to try to figure out how to replace the battery. She finally came back to me and said "We can't figure out how to replace the battery. Normally we'd replace your watch, but Casio stopped making these and we don't have any left in stock, so we're willing to give you a refund." They gave me my $150 back.
So that's how I got to wear a Casio Databank for a year, for free.

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