wmfuzzy is a clock dockapp by Ian Glover with one unique distinction: it displays a textual approximation of the time. (Note: actually, the original idea came from KDE's fuzzy clock, which can apparently be as vague as "middle of the week" - thanks generic-man) For example, rather than "13:37:18", wmfuzzy might display a more aesthetic "Half Past One". Or it might tell you it's "Twenty Five To Two"; it depends on how you set the granularity.
See, wmfuzzy, in providing a useful program beyond the initial hilarity of the concept, gives different increments by which to approximate the time, specifically 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 60 minutes (there are now larger units; see 'Update' below). The actual fuzzing, ironically, is very straightforward: wmfuzzy takes the increment's multiple that the time is closest to, gets a textual representation of the number ("five", "ten", etc.), and then adds "Past hour" if the number is less than or equal to 30 or "To hour + 1" otherwise. The hour, of course, is also text ("one", "two", so on).
I use wmfuzzy as my only clock because I find that keeping the size of the increment directly proportional to how stressed I feel relaxes me somewhat. When there isn't enough information to know exactly how long I've got to I have to go somewhere or do something or stop and go to sleep, my brain says fuck it, and it becomes a non-issue. There's enough there that I don't panic, like I would with no clock at all, but still enough leeway that I don't feel so constrained. Plus, if you really need it, clicking on wmfuzzy with change the display to show the exact time, date, and year for a few seconds.
Also, as a personal anecdote, I made a simple source mod to added increments of six hours and twelve hours. It was kind of funny at first, what with its very non descriptive "Day" and "Night", but really, it's just stupid. I mean, I don't think anyone that's so inebriated as to be unable to discern between different extremes of light would be able to read small text on a glowing monitor and then apply in some useful manner.
Update: I've since expanded the the mod to support increments of a day ("Monday", etc.), a third of a week ("start of week", "middle ...", etc.), a third of a month, a month, a season ("summer", etc.), a year, and a century, and it's now in the official release (version 0.5). I'm only mentioning it down here because a) the new modes are funny but entirely useless and b) they're handled as special cases and would make explaining wmfuzzy awkward. Regardless, my clock currently reads "21th Century", and that just makes me feel good inside.
Anyway, wmfuzzy can currently be found at http://www.manicai.net/comp/wmfuzzy/
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