Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

Before I get into what this entry is really about, I wanted to share a scary piece of JavaScript with you — here’s some code that checks what other websites you’ve visited (in all browsers that I tested). The idea and implementation isn’t mine, and it’s done quite simply — by examining the link color. If it’s visited, it’s got the “visited” color. If not, it’s got the “not visited” color. So it can’t actually read your browsing history, but it could certainly check if you’ve visited competitors and so on, and of course it can do it all in the background, for thousands of sites, without you even knowing it. Scary stuff… I’m sure that many advertising networks do it.

Anyway…

In the theme of funky Japanese watches (and continuing JavaScript experiments), I read somewhere about the idea of using RGB 7-segment LEDs to display the time by writing hours, minutes, and seconds to R, G, and B separately — overlaying them in different colors in the same space. On one hand I thought, that’s a neat idea that might work, but on the other hand, I thought, that’s going to be very hard to train your brain to see on something as low resolution as a 7-segment display. So I wrote a quick set of Javascript functions for controlling virtual 7-segment LEDs and tested the idea.

And yeah, very hard to read! That said, after having to look at it a bunch (tested it in Chrome, IE, and Firefox), maybe it would be a fun watch to build. Either way, maybe the Javascript is useful to someone.

Oh! And… check out the blurry version. In a lot of ways it’s much cooler. It’s exactly the same code, just using different images (well, actually, the same images, just blurred in a photo editor!).