Ask a policeman
How the hell am I supposed to get the right time?
Once again, I’m caught up in this twice yearly farce of fiddling around with clocks, watches and all the fucking paraphernalia around the house that insists on telling the time.
In some ways, things are a little easier because half the crap in the house seems to be connected to the Interweb these days, so whether I like it or not, my laptop, the television and a load of other things switched their hour automatically. Even my mobile phone is showing the new time.
But how do I know it’s right?
How do I know where the Interweb gets its time from and if it’s right? For all I know, Interweb time could be adjusted by some twelve year old snot gobbler in his back bedroom who relies on his Micky Mouse alarm clock.
In the good old days, all I would have to do is switch on the television during the daytime, and there would be the station clock in all its technicolour glory.
I knew that clock was bang on because it was tuned to Rugby in the UK which in turn got its time from the atomic clock in Greenwich. Once you allowed a couple of microseconds for transmission time, that clock was bang on the nail.
So where is my central timepiece that I can rely on?
Where is that definitive clock that I can use to set my watch?
Has anyone got the right time, please?
http://www.nist.gov/calibrations/broadcast.cfm#76110S
That's no good. They admit themselves that their time can be off by up to ten nanoseconds. I want something accurate.
What you need is a sundial. Dead accurate.
And some sun might help, too.
Hah! I have one. Unfortunately the woods have grown up around it so even on the one day in the year when the sun shines, it remains in shadow,
I believe that question is answered here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tjHlFPTwVk
The good old days of real comedy! I used to love that show. So it's 8 o'clock then?
I have one of those radio-synchronised clock thingies that hangs on my kitchen wall… So long as the batteries are OK, it adjusts automagically whenever Rugby tells it to. But then I have to go round the house adjusting all the bloody digital clocks in everything electronic that doesn't connect to the Web. Totally pisses me off, the clock only cost a tenner when new, so the cost of the tiny radio chip has to be next to fuck-all. Why can't these chips be built into anything with a digital display showing the time?
Looks like you may have discovered a niche in the market? Time to make your fortune?
A friend of mine bought one of those soon after they first came out. He stood it on the window ledge next to his PC monitor. It was always wrong, sometimes it didn't even know what day it was – they don't like electrical interference.
How can you measure something that doesn't exist ?
God knows. Heh!
Looking at the weather outside my window now, the right time is "Septober"
If you've got to use a torch to get to the outside bog then it's nightime. That is all we need to know about time.
GD
It's
19.44 exactly…. Well it was when I wrote this….
Always happy to help
Maybe it is in order to campaign for return of the talking clock.
Imagine that any new listeners to Bob Dylan will not understand the reference in Talkin' World War III Blues:
I was feelin’ kinda lonesome and blue
I needed somebody to talk to
So I called up the operator of time
Just to hear a voice of some kind
“When you hear the beep it will be three o’clock”
She said that for over an hour
And I hung up
Maybe it is time for a campaign. Possibly letters to Pat Rabbitte, ComReg, Eircom are called for…..
time? TIME?!? can't friggin' remember the day most weeks and you are worried about time?? foolishness