Vetinari Clock Simulator

programmed by Rory O’Kane

Play a distractingly irregular tick-tock sound that mimics Vetinari’s clock from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

You can read more about this project and see its source code on GitHub.

Warning: ticking may sound excessively irregular on slow devices.

The clock in Lord Vetinari’s anteroom didn’t tick right. Sometimes the tick was just a fraction late, sometimes the tock was early. Occasionally, one or the other didn’t happen at all. This wasn’t really noticeable until you’d been in there for five minutes, by which time small but significant parts of the brain were going crazy.

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett, page 321

Someone very clever—certainly someone much cleverer than whoever had trained that imp—must have made the clock for the Patrician’s waiting room. It went tick-tock like any other clock. But somehow, and against all usual horological practice, the tick and the tock were irregular. Tick tock tick…and then the merest fraction of a second longer before…tock tick tock…and then a tick a fraction of a second earlier than the mind’s ear was now prepared for. The effect was enough, after ten minutes, to reduce the thinking processes of even the best-prepared to a sort of porridge. The Patrician must have paid the clockmaker quite highly.

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett, page 91