Pong Clock
Key topics
The Pong Clock, a nostalgic time-telling twist on the classic arcade game, has brought a dash of joy to many, with commenters praising its charm and creativity. As users shared their delight, the creator, bigjobby, engaged with the feedback, revealing they've made improvements based on user input. Some commenters got sidetracked by the creator's domain name, sparking a lighthearted discussion about its Scottish connotations, which bigjobby good-naturedly acknowledged being aware of. One user even offered a constructive suggestion to enhance the gameplay experience, highlighting the community's enthusiasm for refining this delightful throwback.
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Day 4
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- 01Story posted
Aug 28, 2025 at 12:29 PM EDT
4 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Aug 31, 2025 at 7:16 PM EDT
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32 comments in Day 4
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Sep 8, 2025 at 10:42 AM EDT
4 months ago
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It would be just a little bit better though if the paddles just missed the ball when the time changes rather than entirely stepping aside.
But still wonderful, nevertheless.
I wonder how difficult it would be to code it so the miss was more convincing.
I've thought about mounting it to a wall plugging in a Raspberry Pi and have it constantly rotate fun different types of clocks. Something like this seems like it could be a fit.
The TV I was referring to was extremely cheap even in 2015. It's not even 1080p, and I'm not even 100% convinced it's even 720p, despite what it says. It served us well enough when I was broke working for academia, but I upgraded everything when I was able to afford it.
Still, this TV is relatively small and could still be kind of fun for a virtual clock, so it might be nice to get a bit more life out of it.
(for the sake of non-native English readers)
(Maybe "a tad"?)
https://www.sandermulder.com/pong_clock.html
You can still get the screensaver.
I might make one using Arduino at some point
They seem to play with a made-up rule set with a handicap: every time the left guy lands a goal, the other guy's score is reset... So left usually starts in the lead, but then quickly loses out again.
I estimate he's behind roughly 89% of the time.
(For a fun exercise, ask Google for that percentage. It's astonishing how wrong the AI answers can get.)
> Hour 12: The hour (12) is never greater than the minute (0–59), so the time is 0.
Misunderstanding how human clocks work, but right for this clock.
It then doubled that, because there's two 12-hour periods in a day, which was useless but reasonable, and finally divided by 1440 minutes in a day, and got an answer of 9%
Then I asked again, and while it got the same answer, it used totally different "reasoning" that was wrong in a unique way.
All feedback muchly appreciated and always welcome. Unless too harsh. I'll ask Reddit for more brutal feedback.
https://bigjobby.com/pong/?v=23