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Thirty-One Satellites and a Greek Islander: How GPS Actually Works

· 12 min read
Héliodore Kairós
Reluctant Meteorologist

There are, at this very moment, thirty-one satellites circling the Earth at an altitude of 20,200 kilometres. They do nothing but broadcast the time. This is, by any reasonable standard, an extravagant use of orbital real estate, and yet I must concede (while relighting my pipe, which tends to go out during moments of intellectual generosity) that without them, your hiking watch would be little more than an expensive bracelet with aspirations.

What to Look for in a Garmin Calendar Watch Face

· 3 min read
David Marmont
Developer

You bought a Garmin for its precision. So why is your wrist still blank when your next meeting starts in 10 minutes? Most Garmin watch faces that claim "calendar support" are showing you static data from a manually exported file — not your actual Google Calendar.

Here's what separates a genuine calendar watch face from a marketing claim.

Twelve Degrees of Wind: The Beaufort Scale and the Art of Reading Air

· 13 min read
Héliodore Kairós
Reluctant Meteorologist

There is a particular silence that precedes wind. Not the absence of sound, exactly, but a quality of waiting, as if the atmosphere itself is holding its breath before deciding what sort of day it intends to inflict upon you. I have spent forty years on this island cataloguing such silences, and I can tell you with absolute certainty that no barometric sensor, no algorithmic forecast, no grinning television personality has ever captured this phenomenon with any accuracy whatsoever.

I will not name names. Nikolas Faros.

Hibernation and the Body That Slows Down

· 11 min read
Héliodore Kairós
Reluctant Meteorologist

There is, I have long maintained, a profound dignity in doing absolutely nothing. The olive tree outside my window understands this. It has not produced a single fruit since November, and I respect it enormously for that decision. But the olive tree is merely dormant. It has not, as far as I can tell, reduced its heart rate to four beats per minute, dropped its body temperature to near freezing, or gone several months without eating, drinking, or visiting the bathroom. For that level of commitment to inactivity, one must look to the hibernators.

Custom WebService Support

· 2 min read
David Marmont
Developer
KairosEye v1 only

Custom WebService support was available in v1 and has been removed in v2. This post is kept for reference.

KairosEye now lets you connect your watchface to your own webservice — any URL that returns a JSON response becomes a data source for your wrist.

The Moon Has No Light of Its Own

· 10 min read
Héliodore Kairós
Reluctant Meteorologist

I feel compelled to begin with an admission. The moon, that serene disc I have watched from my terrace for more decades than I care to count, produces absolutely nothing. No light. No warmth. No original thought. In this respect, it shares a surprising amount with Nikolas Faros, though the moon is considerably more reliable.

The Annual Absurdity: Why We Still Move the Clocks

· 12 min read
Héliodore Kairós
Reluctant Meteorologist

Twice a year, a substantial portion of humanity participates in a collective ritual so bizarre that if you described it to someone who had never heard of it, they would assume you were joking. We move every clock in the house forward one hour in spring, then backward one hour in autumn, and we do this because a New Zealand entomologist wanted more daylight to collect insects.

I am not making this up. I wish I were.