A whimsical fuzzy clock

I'm sure I remembered there once being a clock app for Linux which was deliberately vague.

It would declare the time as "Nearly tea-time" or "A little after elevenses" or "Quite late" or "Gosh, that's early".

But I can find no evidence that it ever existed and am beginning to wonder if I dreamt it.

So I built it⁰.

First thing's first - there are a lot of existing fuzzy clocks. But they mostly say things like "afternoon" or "nearly 3 o'clock". There's even a Hobbit Time for Watchy. However, I wanted something a bit more vague and human than those.

Here's an example of what I mean:

 C    if (hour >= 5 && hour < 7) {

        printf("Blimey! That's early.\n");

    } else if (hour >= 7 && hour < 11) {

        printf("Good morning! Rise and shine!\n");

    } else if (hour >= 11 && hour < 13) {

        printf("Goodness me! Elevenses!\n");

    } else if (hour >= 13 && hour < 17) {

        printf("Afternoon tea time! Care for a cuppa?\n");

    } else if (hour >= 17 && hour < 20) {

        printf("Evening is upon us. Time to unwind.\n");

    } else if (hour >= 20 && hour < 23) {

        printf("Nighttime adventures await! Off we go!\n");

    } else {

        printf("Bedtime beckons. Rest well, my friend.\n");

    }

And here they are rewritten as Shakespearean-style timestamps:

 C   if (hour >= 5 && hour < 7) {

        printf("Good morrow! 'Tis the break of day.\n");

    } else if (hour >= 7 && hour < 11) {

        printf("Hail, fair morn! Arise and be joyful.\n");

    } else if (hour >= 11 && hour < 13) {

        printf("Goodness me! 'Tis the hour of elevenses!\n");

    } else if (hour >= 13 && hour < 17) {

        printf("Afternoon doth approach! Wouldst thou like some tea?\n");

    } else if (hour >= 17 && hour < 20) {

        printf("Evening doth draw nigh. 'Tis time to unwind.\n");

    } else if (hour >= 20 && hour < 23) {

        printf("Nightfall is upon us. Adventure beckons!\n");

    } else {

        printf("Bedtime doth approach. Rest well, good sir/madam.\n");

    }

And here we come to a central problem with any fuzzy system - repetitiveness. How to make it say something new every time it is called? I guess there are three main approaches:

1. An exhaustive list of every possible saying.
2. A computable way of saying "[Gosh|Blimey|Wow] it's [almost|nearly|just gone] [morning|lunchtime|snooze o'clock]"
3. Use an LLM every time to generate something new.

I had some success with 1. I got the AI to spit out dozens of responses.

But they either need manually fitting into appropriate timeslots, or a bit more prompt-work to get the LLM to spit them out in the right order. Even with a few hundred, it's likely to get repetitive quickly. And, on an embedded system, are liable to take up a lot of memory.

Option 2 also has similar drawbacks. Even with a large amount of stock phrases, the structure and permutations will start to become noticeable. It's possible to reduce that with an enhanced semantic structure - but it becomes quite complex to automate.

Finally Option 3. Ah... It is computationally expensive (not to mention financially prohibitive) to call a network API every time we want to know the time. And on a battery-powered system, every time the WiFi has to wake is a dent in the longevity of the device.

My ultimate goal is to have this as a fuzzy-watchface for the Watchy eInk device.

At the moment, my plan is to use a mixture of 2 and 3.

If you've done something like this before, please let me know 😊