Xeni Jardin at 1:20 pm • 
• 
You can tell by the pixels: The Russian Orthodox Church is accused of Photoshopping a photo on their website of Patriarch Kirill I to "disappear" a $30,000 watch. The church leader has previously said that the watch does not exist.
Read the rest
Cory Doctorow at 1:50 pm • •
Watchismo's badass new multicolored Keypad watches are the followup to the equally badass (and be-dipswitched) Click Watches. Animated blinkenlights on each of the chunky keypad buttons tell the time in a fashion that is delightfully impractical.
Click Keypad
Cory Doctorow at 6:41 pm • •
Watchismo's acquired distribution rights for Click Watches, mouth-wateringly dorky watches that you set with dip-switches and mechanical dial-selectors.
These new watches are reaching back into the glory days of electronics for their inaugural Dip Switch and Turn Switch timepiece collections. If you look at the circuit boards of any 80's arcade game or electronic device, you'd find these switches. Designed to be used on a printed circuit board along with other electronic components and are commonly used to customize the behavior of an electronic device for specific situations.
Click Watches have ingeniously re-appropriated these 'retro-tronics' into an entirely new way to show digital watch functions. Each switch activates a different function of the watch as seen in the diagram below. Functions ranging from bar graph metered time display, 12 hour and 24 hour digital time display, month, date, day of week and backlight. Stainless steel casing 42mm x 35mm.
Click Watches - The Coolest Watches from Watchismo.com
Cory Doctorow at 10:24 am • •
After a season of intensive, public experimentation and iteration, Thinigverse user Syvwlch has completed and uploaded a design for a working, 3D-printable clock that can be output from a cupcake Makerbot printer (these being DIY, open source 3D printers that can output things about the size of a cupcake or smaller).
Syvwlch's work on a printable clock has been one of the most exciting ongoing projects on Thingiverse. He's just upload what might be a final version of his work. This version includes the escapement, pendulum, gears for the seconds, minutes, and hours, and a set of nested concentric gears to provide the corresponding second, minute, and hour movement. And, let's not forget he's made this entire clock parametric in OpenSCAD - in case you need to print up a grandfather clock or a teeny-tiny watch.
Syvwlch's Printable Clock - ready for printing!
Cory Doctorow at 2:41 am • •
Cory Doctorow at 6:43 am • •
DeviantArt's Dkart71 makes beautiful, detailed motorcycles out of watch parts.
Motorcycles out of watch parts
(via Neatorama)
Cory Doctorow at 2:42 pm • •
This concept design for a Cheshire Cat pocket watch tells the time by the disappearing bits of the mad kitty.
The hours are affixed around the outside of the case in normal clockwise fashion. The cat himself is segmented into 5 minute intervals, the grin, appearing first, is 5 minutes, his head is the 10 minute mark, and each stripe is five minutes. The singular minutes are four dots affixed just below and between the 12 and 1 hour markers.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
Cheshire Cat Pocket Watch Design
(
Thanks,
Paul!)
Cory Doctorow at 10:48 am • •
It's the kind of watch that Nigel Tufnel would doubtless describe as none-more-black. $595 from Watchismo -- part of their larger
Tsovet collection.
TSOVET AT76 All Black
Cool Tools at 12:51 pm • •
This $11 watch is the simplest and most utilitarian timepiece I have ever worn. It is easy to read, has an adequate (not blinding) illumination, is small, light and comfortable but also tough, and has a battery that will last up to 8 years (with many other reviewers noting that it lasts even longer).
The F91W is a distillation of a digital watch. It has three features: tells date and time, has an alarm clock, and works as a stop watch (only up to an hour before it turns over). The functions are easy to use, and aren't distracting.
I originally purchased this watch to use while running, but found that I liked it so much that I now wear it all the time. It has replaced my larger, more expensive
Citizen Eco-Drive which is now reserved for dressier occasions. After swimming and showering while wearing the watch I trust its "water resistance" and am impressed with its durability. It's also cheap enough that I don't worry about it breaking or getting stolen.
If you are looking for a simple, capable digital watch that will last for years, this is the one to get.
-- Oliver Hulland
Casio F91W Digital Watch
$11
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Cory Doctorow at 9:47 pm • •
Manufacture Royale's Opera $1.2 million tourbillon watch accordions open to create a resonating chamber for its little repeaters -- the minute hand is in C#, the hour is in A: "The watch case itself is 50mm wide done in 18k rose and gray gold. It has three sapphire crystals and 60 pieces in its construction. Everything about this watch is crazy. It is weird and wonderful. Ugly and beautiful. A novelty for true collectors, only 12 of these watches will be made - making way for other future Manufacture Royal watches. I really do appreciate the audacity of the men behind this watch and brand. There is a hefty amount of silliness here. They make little attempt to hide the fact that this is one eternally ostentatious toy. The watch comes in a veneered wooden box that is said to be a reproduction of the Bastille Opera House in Paris. In case you didn't detect it yet, the French are behind this timepiece."
Manufacture Royale Opera Time-Piece Watch
(Thanks, Ariel!)
Cory Doctorow at 10:20 am • •
The latest gloriously impractical Kisai watch from TokyoFlash is the Traffic, a watch that displays the time as an animated traffic map -- the $170 LED-watch recharges with USB.
Kisai Traffic
Cory Doctorow at 2:58 am • •
The TokyoFlash folks have a new crazy-ass watch out, the
Broke, which tells time by displaying an animation of a shattered piece of stained glass. The bright screen must be pretty battery-intensive because they've added USB recharging, which is pretty nifty.
Reading the time couldn't be easier. Touch the button and a shattering animation will light up the display. The outer ring of blocks represent hours in the same position as hours on a clock face. The inner ring of blocks represents five minute intervals in the same position as minutes on a clock face. Four single minutes are shown in the center.
Kisai Broke USB charging LED watch
Cory Doctorow at 10:27 pm • •
Yvan Arpa's coprolite watch is a US$11,290 timepiece with a face made from fossil dinosaur turds and a band made from black cane-toad skin (normally poisonous, rendered inert through processing).
The thing is, coprolites just aren't that valuable. Dinosaurs left behind a lot of crap. This site sells coprolite at $8 per pound (it makes a wicked gift!).
Swiss luxury watch made of fossilized dinosaur feces, toad skin costs $11,290 (Photo)
(Thanks, Jonathan!)
Cory Doctorow at 12:37 pm • •
Watch designer Thomas Prescher has worked out how to make every hair on my neck stand up in eerie synchrony with this Flying Double-Axis Tourbillion, a transparent, self-winding watch with integrated calendar that I will never, ever be able to afford. All the gubbins are tucked away in the sides of the watch, leaving just the instrumentation parts on display, in a kind of flippant "screw-you-I-am-miniature-FEAR" gesture to every other watch's workings. Watches like this are what I dream about when I am dreaming about watches.
Man, I can't wait until I can print one of these on my desktop.
Thomas Prescher's Mysterious Automatic Double Axis Tourbillon
Cory Doctorow at 1:12 pm • •
Mitch at Watchismo writes in with news of the new honkin'-huge Diesel Super Bad Ass watches: "These monstrous timepieces epitomize this series with many functions in one big old timepiece. A chronograph, a second timezone and a compass all piled into this 55.5mm long block of metal!"
$250 isn't insane for a really nice watch, and this is, indeed, a really nice watch. If I hadn't just filled my second watch-box (to the horror of my wife), I'd be seriously tempted.
DZ1318 Bad Ass Gunmetal Compass -Diesel
(Thanks, Mitch!)
