Turning aged hard drives into clocks has been a common occurrence for years now , but there’s still something magical about this rendition. Designed and crafted by Svofski, the Strobeshnik relies on the stroboscopic effect to create the illusion of a persistent numeric display. The HDD platter itself has ten digits, colon and dash marks cut all the way through it, and by carefully timing the light strobes, the illusion is perfected. Check out a video of the startup just below the break — and be patient, the payoff is spectacularly sweet. Continue reading Strobeshnik: probably the most awesome hard drive clock of all time Strobeshnik: probably the most awesome hard drive clock of all time originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 07 Mar 2010 22:48:00 EST

Rejoice: PS3s across the land are now once again playable. That’s the word according to our friends at Joystiq , who say that the clock issue affecting “fat” PS3s has been somehow resolved and games are once again working correctly. We’re not sure if this means Sony’s fixed something on the network side or if the internal clock just ran past a certain time, but at least our long nightmare is seemingly over. Hit up Joy for a quick Q/A on the whole situation, including a way to potentially save lost trophy data. PS3 issues apparently resolved, game on originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:03:00 EST

Adafruit’s Monochron kit lets you build custom clocks. You can use and abuse its animated display for whatever evil setups you can imagine, but my favorite is the retro arcade game based animation in this video. Wonder what happens if that clock ever gets better at playing the game though. Will time freeze? [ Adafruit ]

You might have the vaguest of memories seeing this piece before — it made a cameo in an Engadget Show segment — but here we are with a much clearer picture of Adafruit Industries’ Monochron clock, now also on sale! As is its modus operandi, the timepiece is open source… but should you plan on sticking to default, you’ll be gifted with a great retro-style Table Tennis for two. The best part? The time changes whenever the clock “loses” — something tells us that gives one side at least a 59-to-1 advantage.

It’s an iBook G4 case recycled into a clock, with an Apple mouse for the working pendulum. Some nerd’s heart just exploded. And it’s surprisingly cheap, at $75. [ Etsy via The Daily What ]

It’s probably not the clock you need to build if being punctual is your modus operandi, but it’s sufficiently nerdy nonetheless. One Nirav Patel — which may or may not be related to our own Mr. Patel — decided to hand craft his own “sleep remaining indicator,” which utilizes a slowly rotating servo, a laser beam and a timer in order to work its magic. Put simply, the beam gets shorter and shorter as one’s wake-up time draws near, but oddly enough, you’ll never be able to see its awesomeness if you’re actually sleeping. Quite the conundrum, no?

We’re fans of the crazy other-wordly clocks from Jaeager-LeCoultre, and this latest model doesn’t fail in raising beads of sweat on my forehead. Seemingly powered by magic (or any change of temperature), there’s only 76 of the Atmos 566s available. Designed by Marc Newson, it’s made from clear or blue Baccarat crystal and as well as telling the time it also displays a current sky map. Ranging in price between $2,600 - $70,600, the closest we’ll probably get to owning one is setting it as our desktop wallpaper. But we’re not that obsessed.

A cuckoo on a wristwatch—this concept design pleases me. Although, without a working cuckoo bird, this watch would be nothing. NOTHING! [ Designboom ]

Here’s an idea: make a 40-foot tall digital clock display out of wood, then get 70 friends to change the slats 1,611 times so that it keeps accurate time for 24 hours. Wait, someone did that already? “Standard Time” is the work of artist Mark Formanek, who filmed the whole thing as a documentary. I’m sure there’s some deeper point about the indefatigable march of time and mankind’s role in a digital age, but I mostly like it for the time-lapse footage. [ Standard Time via Infosthetics ]

There are 1440 minutes in the day and the AV-Tokei online clock has cute gals in various states of undress holding up a sign with the current time for every single one of those minutes. Yes, it’s a lovely time-waster. Honestly, I don’t even know why this caught my attention, but somehow curiosity had me refreshing the site every few minutes just so see what happens. Will that girl strip? Will the next minute bring a different lady