OK, I admit it, this posting has nothing to do with the “book-burning issue” of the day. It’s really about the “Guinness Clock”, or at least what I think of as “the Guinness Clock effect”. (If you want to read about the “book-burning issue” try this).

Unbeknownst to many of you, Guinness once commissioned London Clockmakers, Baume and Co. (or to be precise, two Polish craftsmen, Jan Lewitt and George Him, who worked for Baume & Co) to build a marvelous animated clock – a strange Heath Robinson device that looked a little like a surreal helicopter. Actually they built several versions. One was located at the entrance to Belle Vue in Manchester, while another graced Battersea Pleasure Gardens in London.

These enchanted devices drew crowds of onlookers and, particularly, crowds of children. Every 15 minutes the clock would do something or other – a propeller would spin and there would be music and maybe a head would stick out from somewhere. And on the hour, the clock put on a show, with a whole series of mechanical animations.

As a child I saw the clock, just once, on a visit with my uncle’s family in Manchester. A child standing next to me at Belle Vue told me that the show was different every hour, although I don’t think it was. Still, I was watching an elaborate machine that incorporated nine reversible electric motors and three synchronous clocks.

Actually, it was a clock and it told the time. Everything else was eye-candy.

In Search of the Lost Eye Candy

When PCs first started to proliferate, I was astonished how much time people spent with wallpaper and screen savers. I’m permanently astonished how people seem to care about ring tones for their mobile phones. But that’s people I guess. Most of us like it. Most of us do it. So let’s not bitch about it.

But why do so few web sites exploit colour and images and other varieties of “rewards for the senses”? I don’t know the answer to this question, but I’ve decided to try to find out by building a web site that includes “rewards for the senses”. Will this feature of the site generate traffic? I have no idea.

I began this by putting up a new banner photo every day. It’s not Ansel Adams, I know, but it is a daily change. And at the weekends I post more images and I even include images in postings, if I can think of any. Well to usher in the new year (2008) I’ve now implemented a daily change of skin.

The web site is recognizable by its structure and title, so colour changes are not likely to confuse. As time passes I will implement other changes and I’ll let you know what they are as they happen. If you have any feedback, just post it.

As for myself, I’m still trying to work out whether this change to the blog site is just a random evolution or whether it corresponds to intelligent design.