{"id":249,"date":"2025-05-10T18:06:41","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T18:06:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/?p=249"},"modified":"2025-07-28T18:13:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T18:13:13","slug":"vague-clock-screensaver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/vague-clock-screensaver\/","title":{"rendered":"Vague Clock Screensaver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I get it, it’s 2025 and nobody uses a screensaver anymore, we quite rightly prefer to put monitors to sleep with power management options when locking them – and we absolutely should <\/strong>be locking monitors when not in use. But…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve had this idea for a vague clock for some time; I’m sure I saw something similar once, working mechanically, and it stuck with me. I can’t help but feel it was a remnant of late 20th century Berlin, but I’m probably bombarding my head with the Mengenlehreuhr<\/a>, Clock of Flowing Time<\/a> or the Urania World Clock<\/a> – what’s the deal with Berlin and weird timepieces<\/a>? As per usual, I digress; suffice it to say that I have an interest in odd ways of representing the time – I’d adore a genuine Nixie Tube<\/a> clock, and am tempted by one of the more artistic text-based wall clocks<\/a> if I find one at a sensible size, or if the Vestabord<\/a> were to be released in a more home-oriented size, I’d totally take a look. It’s this odd mixture of old and (at the time) new, analogue and digital, a modernity that has passed – I find it very intriguing alongside movements such as Googie<\/a> and Moderne<\/a>, a desire for a nostalgia that isn’t even mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there’s that digression again. Clocks, I guess people usually strive towards precision, whether it be the movements within watches or the calculated measurements used within an atomic clock – but I’ve deliberately gone vague. Does it matter to me what the exact time is, or do I just want to know the time of day? My grandfather, being a watchmaker and member of the British Horological Institute<\/a>, would be spinning in his grave<\/a>, but I have gone for the latter. I’ve implemented this a few times previously, as web app, a JavaScript desktop widget, but the latest incarnation is as a Windows screensaver.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Brannigans\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

An odd throwback to one of my first commercial apps from 1998: a Visual Basic<\/a> (a language I had to support until 2021) countdown screensaver for opening times for a bar in Crawley (now a Chiquito “restaurant”<\/a>) – a project that was in a time before commercial Internet, so distributed on 1.44MB floppy disk<\/a>, required graphics that were using a lot of the space, an installer, etc – really gave me some interesting challenges around optimisation and support. It also came with a voucher for a free drink (worth up to \u00a33.50) – which I shall assume is no longer valid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in 2025, those challenges don’t really exist, but I still am aware of the lessons they provided and am mindful of optimisation and distribution – funny how old technology problems still hold value. Anyhow, it seems seems that the prevailing method for creating a screensaver in Visual Studio is a C#<\/a> WinForms exe, renamed to scr. – I remembered much of the process but leant pretty hard on this reference<\/a>. I have deliberately targeted Windows 10 and upwards (on an x64 platform) for distribution, because, again it’s 2025, but I believe that the code would hold true on lower versions and other platforms; I see nothing specific to my targeting within the code – just the compilation and packaging. I have added a settings screen allowing the user to configure typefaces, colours, update frequency and movement frequency (a still screensaver is not a screensaver, quite the opposite). It runs happily on multiple monitors and any resolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The installer was a bit of a chore; Visual Studio<\/a> outputs a WinForms executable naturally as an exe file, but screensavers are scr files – sure they are the same thing but with an extension change, but to automatically package this up, a post-built action was needed to facilitate the renaming. I had previously built an installer that set the screensaver as the active screensaver, as this is outside the scope of the stock Visual Studio method – but I figured that anyone installing a screensaver will know how to accomplish this, so was able to simplify the product. So I reverted back to a stock installer with the output scr file dropped into C:\\Windows\\SysWOW64 (as is necessary for the screensaver to be registered).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tip: <\/strong>If you don’t know – just press [START]<\/em> and type Change screen saver<\/em> to get the required dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ll probably tinker with this more as time goes by, an am considering code re-use and refactoring the actual text calculation aspect into an API that could be used by other projects. But for now, the code is up at Github.com\/NLouch\/Vague-Clock-Screensaver<\/a> and the compiled installer is available below:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/path><\/svg><\/span> Vague.Clock.Screensaver.Installer.msi<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who needs a screensaver in 2025? Nobody. But that didn’t stop me from creating one that is somewhere between nearly useful and kinda pointless!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":250,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[39,40,42,12,14,37,41,38],"class_list":["post-249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-development","tag-c","tag-clock","tag-code","tag-github","tag-pc","tag-screensaver","tag-vague-clock","tag-visual-studio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":311,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249\/revisions\/311"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/niklouch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}