Bloke with hammer fixes London's Olympic clock

Let's Snuff The Olympic Flame

How is it we can't even get a digital clock to work these days? How much of our money was spent on something that most people could build themselves with bits from Maplin?

Why are they using Apache/SQL when all they needed was a £1.99 digital watch?

Just another bit of the rather expensive white elephant that is the Olympic Games. If people want to watch some people running round a track then fine. But please make the ticket price reflect the true cost of organising the whole thing.

Haven't we got better things to spend our tax money on?

Only in Britain

Would we win the bid to host the Olympics, right in the middle of a global financial meltdown, host it in the shit-hole of London where everywhere is still being built and the place is already full and over-priced, and then have a clock to countdown break day 1.

Welcome to the arsehole of the world.

A frank admission, straight from the horse's mouth

I admit I was bored yesterday, and wrote to Swatch Group asking why their clock was crap.

Dear Mr. Goodwin,

Thank you for your message of yesterday evening.

Yes, it is embarrassing, especially as we are the timekeeper of almost all the Olympic Games since 1936 and have proven time after time how accurate we are. But mistakes happen.

The important thing is that we fixed it.

Best wishes from Switzerland,

Béatrice Howald

Head of Media Relations, Spokesperson

The Swatch Group Ltd.

Seevorstadt 6

CH-2501 Biel/Bienne

re: overcomplicated?

I still don't understand this - and I reckon we should demand a detailed technical explanation as to what exactly happened we did after all pay for the bloody thing / will pay for the bloody thing.

As a programmer I can only see 2 things that could of gone wrong.

1) it crashed.... Christ knows why it would - but it could of.

2) the function that stops the clock from counting down when it reaches 0 so we don't see negative numbers has a glitch / misplaced comma / alcohol induced lazy arsed coding error.

I would however like to know WHY the clock stopped and what they have done to stop it from doing so in future.

I'd also quite like to know what the point of it is in the first place too - but I guess we won't get a satisfactory answer to that one. They will probably say something like "it is to remind you" yeah - because with the amount of news it will be taking up in the coming months - it will be SO easy to forget.

Omega service .................

must be provided by the manufacturer. Hope they did that one under warranty!

Swatched?

I thought it said Snatched....as in victory from the jaws of de feet. Although I didn't know de feet had jaws. I'll go have a lie-down now.

While we're at it

Can they add a counter for counting up the cock-ups 'til opening day? I think 5 digits should suffice...

Shouldn't it be flashing "12:00"?

It would be so fitting....

Press the Reset!

Plenty of opportunity to comment here:

"next year's celebration of performance-enhancing drugs sporting excellence." Yeh. That's what the clock needs: enhanced performance. Hur. Hur.

"developed by our experts and fully tested", as a Swatch spokesman put it. But will you ever get it on your wrist?

2012 logo

Why does it have a stylised australia in the top right corner? The blob with the rings on it sure looks like to me. Tassie's a bit of a worry though.

A man with a hammer and his youthful sidekick?

BOFH and PFY? Surely not!