ClockInfo.com

Thanks to Bryan Smith on the Clocksmiths group for sharing the following links to classic out of print clock and watch books that Google has digitized. They may be viewed for free!

On the Construction and Theory of Dead Escapement Clocks, B. L. Vuliamy,

New and Complete Clock and Watchmakers’ Manaul, Mary L. Booth, 1863

Treatise on Clock and Watch Making, Thomas Reid, 1826

Treatise on Clock and Watch Making, Thomas Reid, 1832

Lessons in Horology, Jules and Hermann Grossman, translation, 1905

Horlogical Journal, 1860

A Portion of the Papers Relating to the Great Clock for the New Palace at Westminster, 1848

The Tower Clock Designed and Made for the University of Chicago, 1903

The Clock Jobbers Handybook, A Practical Manual on Cleaning, Repairing and Adjusting, Paul Hasluck, 1889

A Treatise on the Teeth of Wheels, M. Camus, Trans by Hawkins, 1868

A Rudimentary Treatise on Clock and Watch Making with a Chapter on Church Clocks and an Account of the Proceedings Respecting the Great Westminster Clock, Edmund Beckett Dennison, 1850

Watch and Clock Making, David Glascow, 1885

Former Clock and Watchmakers and Their Work, F. J. Britten, 1894

The Watch & Clockmakers Handbook, Dictionary and Guide, F. J. Britten, 1896

Clock and Watch Work (by E. Beckett), from the 8th Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,

Time Telling Through the Ages, Brearly, 1919

A Treatise on Watch-Work, Past and Present, Rev. H. L. Nelthropp, 1873

Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements, Henry T. Brown, 1881

I am creating a web site for my church, Flora First Christian Church, and am using WordPress as a CMS (Content Management System). WordPress’s excellent administration interface will make it straightforward for church members to update the content on an ongoing basis.

Here are some things I am doing to make the web site appear less “bloggy” and more like a real web site:

Remove links on the home page that link to itself. It is described in this post.

Remove links to the current page on posts pages (a page should not link to itself).

Remove any mention of “comments” on posts unless comments are open for that topic. Here is an example from single.php:

<?php if (comments_open()) {
comments_template();
} ?>

Use the plugin My Category Order to display the categories and subcategories in the desired order:

In the sidebar I am intermixing pages and categories, as suggested by Lorelle on Wordpress.

Here is a sample from my sidebar.php:

<h2 class=”title”>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php
wp_list_pages(’include=6&title_li=’);
wp_list_categories(’orderby=order&hierarchical=1&title_li=’); wp_list_pages(’sort_column=menu_order&include=13,14&title_li=’); ?>
</ul>

This puts page 6 first, followed by the categories as sequenced by the My Category Order plugin, followed by pages 13 and 14 (the numbers are the page’s ID).

My next challenge was harder: Do not display a link to the “Page” that you are currently on. (For example, when you are on the “About” page, do not display a link to the “About” page (”About” may still be in the menu, but in a different color and not as a link).

For the menu of pages across the top of the header, it was easy to remove the link to the current page. The menu link for the current page has a css style of current_page_item. Therefore all that is needed is to add the following lines to style.css:

#header .current_page_item {
display: none;
}

For my sidebar menus of pages and categories, I created a plugin that filters out the link to the current page. It keeps the menu item for the current page, without a link. You may see the code here.

Other plugins I am using:

WP-Sticky: To select a post to always be the first post in a category. I was having a problem with this, only the announcement posts were showing up in my RSS feed. To make the RSS feed be correct, the wp-sticky option “Categories Only” must be set to “Yes”.

Search-pages: Allows pages as well as posts to be included in search ressults

NextGen Gallery: Photo gallery system that includes slideshows. I looked for days at creating slideshows, and finally found this wonderful plugin. Caveat: the slideshow sends full size images over the internet, and the client needs to reduce the images to the display size. This was causing HUGE bandwidth reqirements and slow loading times for viewers, so I had to scale the images before uploading them. This is not a good solution if you want to have a gallery view of the slideshow images.

Different Posts Per Page: Allows different number of posts per page in different categories.

My Category Order: Allows you to set display order of post categories. Note: When upgrading wordPress to a new version, remember to put the provided taxonomy.php file in the wp-includes folder. (Version 2-3-2 of this plugin has a problem in the administration interface - subcategories cannot be ordered)

Bread Crumb Navigation XT: Breadcrumb navigation system.

Filosofo Hide Email Addresses: Hides email addresses within posts and pages from spambots, using JavaScript.

WP-PageNavi: Adds more advanced paging navigation your WordPress blog or web site. I modified it slightly to put the current page number above the previous - next navigation links and to center the navigation links.

Google XML Sitemaps: To generate Google (and other) sitemaps.

Note: Breadcrumb Navigation XT: Dreamweaver MX could not upload the file breadcrumb-navigation-xt-admin.php because the name is too long! I renamed it, uploaded it, and then logged in to the server by SSH to rename the file to the proper name.

Caching

To have images be cached by the user’s browser for a month, yet allow the text to be updated often, I put the following in the .htaccess file:

ExpiresActive On
### Expire everything 1 hour from when accessed
ExpiresDefault “access plus 1 hour”
### Expire style sheet after 1 week
ExpiresByType text/css “access plus 1 week”
### Expire images after one month
ExpiresByType image/jpeg “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/png “access plus 1 month”
ExpiresByType image/gif “access plus 1 month”
### Expire Javascript after 1 week
ExpiresByType application/x-javascript “access plus 1 week”

One of the fundamental usability guidelines is: never have a link that points to the current page - this confuses the user. (See Jakob Neilsen’s The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines, guideline no. 10.) The WordPress blogs and websites that I have seen (including this blog!) violate this guideline in several ways. It would be nice if a future version of WordPress would give these functions an option to not link to the current page or category. In the meantime, I have written a plugin that strips the link to the current page. It is used on the web site for my church which is under development.

Here is the code for the plugin, I named the file rm_cur_menu_link.php. It is installed in the wp-content/plugins directory, then it may be activated in the plugin administration screen. This plugin will rermove self links in menus that are generated by the wp_list_pages() and wp_list_categories() functions.

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Remove Current Menu Link
Plugin URI: Does not exist yet
Description: Removes link to the current item from a menu generated by wp_list_pages and wp_list_categories. This makes a Wordpress website or blog comply with the usability guidelines that a web page should not have a link to itself.
Version: 1.0
Author: Bill Stoddard
Author URI: http://clockinfo.com/
*/

/* Copyright 2007 Bill Stoddard (email : bill@billsclockworks.com)

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin St, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA
*/

/**************************************

Hooks and configuration

***************************************/
add_filter(’wp_list_pages’,'list_pages_filter’);
add_action(’wp_list_categories’, ‘list_categories_filter’);

function list_pages_filter($content) {
/* for some reason it would not work with [:blank:]* after the m in current_page_item */
return eregi_replace(’(current_page_item “><a [^<]*href=["|\']?([^ "\']*)["|\']?[^>]*>([^<]*)</a>)’,'current_page_item”>\\3′, $content);
}

function list_categories_filter($content) {
return eregi_replace(’(current-cat[:blank:]*”><a [^<]*href=["|\']?([^ "\']*)["|\']?[^>]*>([^<]*)</a>)’,'”>\\3′, $content);
}

?>

I still consider this plugin to be experimental, although it works fine in my application (WordPress version 2.3.1), so I have not released it as a downloadable plugin yet. You can see it in action on the Flora First Christian Church website.

I thank silisoftware.com and xce.de for their helpful comments on the eregi_replace manual page.

I had a brand new Hermle clock (model 22835-002114) come back because the customer said it would not chime. He sent the batteries with it, and when I installed them, the clock would not chime or keep time. The batteries checked good on the tester, but would not make the clock work. As an experiment, I installed two brand new Duracell C batteries. The clock worked perfectly.

Examining several brands of battery, one can see that the bottom (negative) contacts are made differently.

AA cells: On some brands, the contact extends downward from the surrounding plastic covering, and these work fine. On some brands, the contact is flush with the covering, and these may not work reliably or at all in some clocks. Two brands of AA Cell that work well are Duracell and Rayovac.

C cells: Testing has shown that Duracell batteries work very reliably in clocks. Their negative contact extends further past the plastic covering then on some other brands, ensuring that it touches the clock’s contact.

I did not repair this clock, just oiled the bearings and regulated it. It has the model name “Sparta” and a date code on the bottom.

The date code is 1901

This movement with the escapement at the back was used until about 1901 in Adamantine mantel clocks. It was superceded by the no. 89 movement. Note: the brass j-shaped turnback lever is not in the correct position because the previous repairer assembled it incorrectly. The long part should be on the left (time train side) and should have free movement toward the time train. See this post for how it should be.

I repaired this Schatz standard 400 day clock recently. I like the Roman numeral dial so much that I decided to illustrate the clock here.

It has back plate number 1281. Date code 4 53 (April 1953). My job no. 4497.

This is a good looking Seth Thomas oak kitchen clock.

Date stamp on the back reads 7981 which translates to the year 1897.

Movement Before Repair

Front of movement showing two crudely soldered on “Rathbun” bushings (on pivots T3F and T5F). This type of work is done by someone who does not like to take the movement apart.

The “Rathbun” bushing on the back of the movement (on pivot T4B).

Movement After Repair

The movement after repair. The previous repairer had gouged the brass very deeply. I didn’t want to remove too much material, so the gouges are still visible.

Movement Assembly

Showing the relationship of the lift/warning lever to the j shaped turnback lever. The turnback lever is riveted to the back plate. Its function is to hold the warning lever in the correct resting position so that the minute hand may be turned back past the numeral “12″ without damaging the movement.

Partially assembled movement showing the gears and levers.

This great looking clock has the original time and strike mainsprings, and only a small amount of mainwheel tooth wear (about 5%).

T: 3/4 wide x .0172 inch thick

S: 3/4 wide x .0172 inch thick

Label on back of case

The 8 day time and strike movement

Back of movement

My job no. 4501