WatchOtaku Blog from July, 2010

Had to update Theme Builder, and the flexi-blog-posts macro seems to be broken, sorry...

Dating site OK Cupid has a blog, where they often discuss interesting results from their subscribers. I saw a post recently that gelled some thoughts I'd been having about watches. How are they related, you ask?

This is no fun to type, but a big part of why people buy watches is to demonstrate their success, and thus their attractiveness as a mate. Economists and evolutionary biologists call it 'signalling' or signalling theory while sociologists call it 'lekking.'

Simply put, that Rolex you bought is a way of saying that you'd make a good mate, because you are accomplished and high-status. Pure and simple. (See 'dishonest signals'. Or honest ones.)

But why do men do this, you ask? As OK Cupid explained, because it works:

We did a little investigating as to whether a person's stated income had any real effect on his or her online dating experience. Unsurprisingly, we found that it matters a lot, particularly for men. This is a by-age messaging distribution:
...
These bold colors contain a subtle message: if you're a young guy and don't make much money, cool. If you're 23 or older and don't make much money, go die in a fire. It's not hard to see where the incentive to exaggerate comes from.

Simply put, rich men get the dates, end of story. Given that motivation, an expensive watch is probably somewhat effective, as long as the brand is recognizable as such. Heavily marketed and advertised brands no doubt figured this out ages ago.

The story gets more complicated. A post today points out that signals often have an audience, in that more wealthy consumers pick subtler signals, as they really don't care if the poorer notice them; the audience is their peers. Makes sense.

Rather than rely on obvious logos, expensive products use more discreet markers, such as distinctive design or detailing. High-end consumers prefer markers of status that are not decipherable by the mainstream. These signal group identity only to others with the connoisseurship to recognize their insider standing.

As wikipedia puts it:

Females come to these arenas to choose mates when the males' hierarchy has become established, and preferentially mate with the dominants in the centre.

Before this, I used to convince myself that less-common watches like my Stowa weren't signalling; my ego loses that battle and I probably have to concede that I'm just signalling to a very small audience of other otakus.

Sigh.

Watch is the Seiko SBDX001 'Marinemaster', charge from the UV lamp. Data looks freakin' fantastic:

In other news, I'm taking data as I type with the MicroSet.. Slow progress, but still moving forward.

P.S. What does the lume data mean? Ahh, I'll get back to you on that. The analytical framework needs some more effort on my part.

New and notable from the watch world -

• Chicago School of Watchmaking Home Course is being posted online. Free!
• Killer thread/database of 42mm and smaller dive watches. I may have to scrape the data and re-post this. Very nice list, quite similar to my grail dimensions.
• A most excellent page on the hard parts of watch photography, namely color matching, monitor calibration and sRGB profiles. The solutions are around $350 and require photoshop plus a camera that shoots RAW.

Stuff worth reading (and hearing):

• How to pronounce those company names (List of audio clips in WAV format)
• A post on WUS links to http://k-straps.com/index.php for carbon fiber and other straps. Worth a look, as genuine CF (not just CF-textured leather) is hard to make, hard to find and expensive to boot.
• The KPM watch company looks quite interesting - high-grade artisanal stuff, reminds me of RGM.
• A post on PMWF links to $29 watch demagnetizers - might be a useful thing to have in the repair toolbox.

This Rolex SeaDweller homage on WUS caught my eye:

(Image credit: hughwright@COX.NET)
Original posting is here

Good price (175), Ceramic bezel bezel, ETA 2836 movement, sapphire crystal with AR coatings. A quick search led me to Helenarou site which has lots of interesting stuff for watch otakus:

• Complete Rolex homages with ETA movements
• Complete case kits minus movements
• Movements and parts
• Panerai homages

I looked up the SD page and found it here

Alas, it's huge - 44mm by 18.7mm! Otherwise a nice watch with good specs, but that's just too thick for me to be interested.

Along with Getat and Parnis, Helenarou is worth checking out as a source of parts and kits.

Found this last night on my RSS feed:

(Image credit: Kello)

Looks like a nine-dollar approximation of my MicroSet, and I've bought my copy to try. Amazing times we live in!

This uses the microphone on your ipod, ipad or iphone to implement a watch timing machine, with the drawback that the room must be nearly silent for it to be able to hear the ticks well enough. I am wondering if the MicroSet contact microphones would work, since they use the same 1/8th jack and work fine in my laptops' mic jack. Hmm.

Anyway, take a look, might be of interest.

This weekend I had time to make the custom serial cable required to connect my Microset to my computer. The idea is that

• Microset sells software, but its windows-only and $300
• More fun to roll your own!
• Need a computer connection so that I can post and analyze movement data here

So off I went. The parts and work setup:

Start with an old DB9 -> IDC from some old PC build, lop off the end and solder on an eight-inch stereo headphone jack.

Cable pinout is Pin 2 to tip Pin 3 to ring Pin 5 to sleeve

Simplest-possible 3-wire serial, and Bryan Mumford of Microset kindly gave me the pinout beforehand.

Cable on my work surface. However, once I looked more closely (d'oh!), I realized that the USB-serial adapter was also male, so I needed a female DB9! Damn. Lop it off, hit the parts box:

Good, I have a couple DB9 shells and pins left, solder and insert.

Ugly but functional.

Amazingly, it worked on first try!

Data! That's beat error on my Stowa, in I think milliseconds. Data is in the screen program:

screen /dev/tty.USA19H41P1.1 9600

Yep, 9600N81, the gold standard of RS232!

Next steps

• Setup a github project
• Start writing code to parse, save and plot the data