PLAYING WITH TIME

Of all the endearingly silly ways to watch yourself waste time, Daniel Craig Giffen's Human Clock is by far the most of both - endearing and silly.

Everything on Giffen's site shows an almost maniacal dedication to human-scale whimsy. There are three clocks: digital, analog and text. Each mode is sillier than you'd expect it to be. To change between clocks, you go to an equally silly, but fully functional control panel that looks like something drawn by a fifth grader, and acts like a grown-up web interface. Try all three.

Then there's artist Yugo Nakamura's Industrious Clock. Not as human, perhaps, but it definitely conveys a certain "hand-made" humor. Nakamura's art, and playfulness, are even better represented by his "Surface" collection. Click on the small circles on the bottom of the page to explore.