Almost two years ago I built a web-based QlockTwo after a trip to Münster. It told the time in German words, ran on plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and I loved it. But it only spoke one language, and the German layout I copied from the original was the only thing it knew how to say.
That bugged me. So I fixed it.
Four new languages
TEQlockTwo now speaks five languages: German, English, Dutch, Turkish, and Japanese.
German was the original. English and Dutch were the obvious next steps. Turkish I added because I’m learning it, and there’s something satisfying about reading “saat on bir” light up on a clock I built myself. Japanese was the fun one, a completely different writing system on the same grid, and it just works.
Each language has its own letter matrix and its own rules for how time gets spelled out. Swapping between them is the kind of thing that looks small from the outside and is surprisingly fiddly underneath.
The part you won’t notice (but I will)
There’s also a big rendering change. You almost certainly won’t see it, and that’s the point.
The old version refreshed the whole page to update the clock. It worked, but it was crude. The new version only touches the letters that actually change, and it checks the time on an interval 10x faster than before. The result: accurate to the seccond. No flicker, no full reload, just letters quietly lighting up.
Nobody’s going to notice their word clock is now accurate to the second it should change. But I know. And it makes me happy.
Try it
It’s live at qlocktwo.teqcloud.net, and the source is on GitHub. Pick a language and watch it spell out the time.
Some screenshots from the update:
