A clock that corrects your computer clock and tells the time in a more natural manner. Takes up hardly any space or resources, installs nothing on your PC, when you close it down it is gone. Can sit on top of all other windows. Syncs your computer clock (now including the date) from this web page : http://nist.time.gov/timezone.cgi?UTC/s/0

Double-Clicking the clock will open a web-site of your choice - a very useful feature. The clock can speak the time, and has 2 alarms (a 60 minute timer and an alarm clock) which can beep from the internal PC-Speaker and/or speak a message of your choice from the external speakers.

Save it onto your PC to run when you want, or save it in your STARTUP folder so that it runs every time your machine starts up.

This is the recommended version of VagueClock....

DOWNLOAD VAGUECLOCK.EXE(0.9943)

This is an older version of VagueClock with the Speech removed. Use this if you want the clock but do not wish to install the Speech drivers....

DOWNLOAD VC NO SPEECH.EXE(0.9933)

If you have problems with Vagueclock then read on.........

VB Runtime library.

If you have never installed a Visual Basic program before then you may be missing the runtime-libraries. If VagueClock fails to run then you need to click here to download the VB Runtime.

Speech

The speech is great and I recommend that you set it to speaking the time every quarter hour, especially when you are working to a deadline or waiting for something.

If you install it and you get "unable to create active-x object" or "XVOICE.DLL is not installed" or the speech just does not work, then your machine is missing microsoft's text-speech so you need to install a speech engine.....

Here is a solution

1. Download Microsoft Speech API 4 (848KB). Save spchapi.exe to your Desktop. Double-click spchapi.exe to install Microsoft Speech API.
2. If step 1 has not fixed the problem then download the Microsoft Text-to-Speech installer. Scroll down the page and download msttss22L.exe (2MB). If the file has moved then just search microsoft.com for Speech SDK.

Time is wrong:

If the clock is running ok but it is setting your PC clock wrong, for example perhaps out by exactly 8 hours, then it is a problem with your PC settings, you need to ensure you are set to your correct timezone, ie GMT for the UK. You can access the timezone by double-clicking on the clock in the bottom-right of screen.

Error message when VagueClock tries to opens a webpage.

If you get the following error message

"There was a problem sending the command to the program"

then open up your firewall and set the program "RUNDLL" or “Run a DLL as An App” to have access to the net.

This will allow VagueClock to open a webpage.

Known Problems :

• In Windows ME (and 98 perhaps?) it is spelling the time rather than saying the words. FIXED - It turned out that in Windows ME for some reason it spells words when they are in upper case. Perhaps this was a setting, but the simple solution is to use proper case.

If you find a bug and it is not in the known list of problems then please email me a description of the problem.

To Do and Ideas:

Please contact me if you have any problems running the program.

Also contact me if you have any ideas to add....

1. Add a timer where you can put in a date and time, specifically to be used for eBay so that it will warn you when it gets close to the auction deadline.
2. Add a TV alert where you can add a TV series and it will alert you for each episode.
3. If the time-server goes down, then VagueClock will obviosuly not be able to update the time, so it would be a good idea to have a secondary website to get the time from.

Email me if you want to see the source code. There are a few clever things in the code such as

1. Reading text from a webpage (for getting the time, as well as the version number from this page for the updates).
2. Putting the name "VagueClock" in the taskbar even though the clock form has no caption. (No longer uses toolbar).
3. Keeping the form on top of all other forms.
4. Calculating Local time using Universal time, so the code should(!) work anywhere in the world and also accounts for BST.
5. Making the PC emit a Ring-tone rather than just the standard beep.
6. making the PC speak.
7. A text box that is limited to 40 characters
8. A function to find the selected buton in any group of option buttons.
9. The form can be moved around by clicking on it and dragging (done because there is no caption bar to drag).