Living

I suppose it’s not too often that I’m going to link something as banal as a screen saver. But this screen saver is special. You see, I’ve got a predisposition to this particular style of graph, data visualization, or whatever technical or mathematical moniker you want to give it. And it’s cool enough to support dual monitors and draw two instances. Rock on!

I give you The Polar Clock

But what’s this? You want to hear about the preexisting fetish? Perhaps you expect to see llamas stacked in outlandish geometric fashion, each one wielding an exquisitely decorated placard bearing similar data to the above clock? You’ll have to keep reading to find out.

Nexxo’s Metaversa Project has served as a source of inspiration and a source of comfort. He’s the only one whose project has been dormant as long as my Goliath. His LCD screen setup (seriously, click and look at the pics) inspired me to no end. When I got Goliath’s VFD, I wanted a similar design and feel. With the help of Henri at lcdinfo and his custom VFD driver board, a bit of electronic tinkering, and LCD Studio I was able to make it happen.

Of course none of it is labelled, but I know what it means. The outermost ring on the left is CPU use %, the middle ring is coolant flow rate (it’s pretty much constant) and the inner most ring on the left is CPU core temperature. The history graph in the middle is CPU usage% history. In the upper right is chipset temperature, lower right is the % of maximum speed for the radiator fans (watercooled PC) and lower middle is video card GPU and video card RAM temperature. The big # that comes up in the middle of the GPU temp graph is the frame rate, as reported by FRAPS. I think I was sitting at the load screen for Counter Strike: Source when I shot this video. There’s also a break at about 1:00 where only one ring shows up - that’s the indicator for master volume and it only shows up for about 10 seconds after the master volume is adjusted, and I happen to have buttons on my mouse for doing exactly that!

So there you have it, influences and the interwoven nature of my tastes for data visualization. Even if none of this makes sense, or you didn’t “get it”, you can at least appreciate the opportunity you had to download an amazing and innovative screen saver.