Miss Information

One factor that determines our level of alertness from moment to moment is the number of safe assumptions that we can make about our environment. The more secure and stable your environment, the less you need to attend to it. The more unpredictable your environment, the more alert you have to be. There is no right or wrong level of alertness. In fact, you can change the level of uncertainty in your environment to match the level of alertness you would like to maintain. The Lil' Miss Information Clock provides a time that is incorrect, but within 10 minutes (by default) of being correct. It is sometimes fast and sometimes slow, so you'll just have to rely on yourself.

#!/usr/local/ruby

#Lil' Miss Information Clock
#because whoever missed just a *lil'* information?
#Seth Frey 
#enfascination.blogspot.com
#2007/03/02

$Offseth = 10                           #time is wrong by up to +/-
$Offseth seconds

while true
 time = Time.now
 mins = (time.min + (rand * 2 * $Offseth).round -
$Offseth).modulo(60)    #make minutes plus or minus actual time within Offseth
                        #modulo 60 accounts for roll over to next minute
 hours = time.hour
 if time.min - mins > 60 - $Offseth   #this if and elsif account for minutes rolling over (or back)
   hours = hours + 1
 elsif mins - time.min > 60 - $Offseth
   hours = hours - 1
 end
 hours = hours % 12                    #no military time
 hours = 12 if hours == 0              #side effect of eliminating
military time with mod
 puts hours.to_s + ":" + (mins < 10 ? '0' : '') + mins.to_s
# the if statement is for single digit minutes.  4:02 instead of 4:2
 Kernel.sleep(50)                      #wait just less than a minute before refreshing (one less safe assumption)
end