A binary clock for the Windows system tray.
After getting used to using a binary clock in KDE, I was unable to find a good one for Windows – so here’s my attempt at writing one.
It appears to work on Windows 98, 2K and XP, as demonstrated by these screenshots:
The time is displayed in BCD format, with each digit represented by a column of four “bits”.
Right click on the icon to bring up a menu, which allows you to set the “on” and “off” colours. (These values are saved in the registry).
Hovering the mouse over the icon will display the current date, just like the regular Windows clock. Similarly, double-clicking will take you to the control panel date/time page. This allows it to be used as a total replacement for the normal Windows clock, which can be disabled from the taskbar preferences menu.
To install, simply download the binary package, unzip to a suitable location and double-click “binclock.exe” to run. To have it run every time you start Windows, copy “binclock.exe” (or a shortcut to it) to the Start Menu | Startup folder.
Since I wrote the first version of the binary clock app, I’ve taken to drinking a lot of tea. The trouble is that I often leave my tea brewing and go back to work, then forget about it. By the time I remember its usually stone cold.
I decided that adding a countdown function to the binary clock would help me to remember my cup of tea. I was thinking of the best way to extend the code to do this, and came up with a new improved object-orientated design, which allows multiple “views”, each defined by a polymorphic class. This makes it easier to extend in the future if required.
As well as the new countdown view, I’ve also added a date and stopwatch view – a bit like a digital watch.
This is free software and is released under the GNU General Public Licence.