# Timed screen shot of a clock: How? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 5, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020 "2009-07-05T23:21:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2009, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/1 "2009-07-05T23:21:30Z")
My son’s 14th birthday is this Wednesday, and I have the very geeky desire to: A) Find a web site that displays the time and date (the bigger the better). [This](http://www.timeticker.com/) is close, but I’d prefer one that displayed just the two final digits on the year. A Dashboard or Yahoo! widget is also an option. (FWIW, I’m a Mac user. Leopard on a MacBook Pro.) B) Take a timed screen shot of the above at five minutes, six seconds past 4 a.m. on Wednesday, because, at that moment, it will be… 04:05:06 07/08/09 😃 I could do it at 4 p.m, but that’s really 16:05:06. I also could get up at 4:00 a.m. and do it myself, but it would be kinda cool if there’s a way to set up Grab on a timer or something. Any ideas??? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/2 "2009-07-06T00:10:32Z")
Alternately, you could do it at 11:00 PM the night before, but set the clock to Greenwich time first. Or midnight, if you want to use GMT rather than British Summer Time. ---
**Author:** ![freckafree](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/freckafree/32/3050_2.png) [@freckafree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/freckafree)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/3 "2009-07-06T00:11:39Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Alternately, you could do it at 11:00 PM the night before, but set the clock to Greenwich time first. Or midnight, if you want to use GMT rather than British Summer Time. BRILLIANT! I will keep that in mind as an option. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/4 "2009-07-06T01:19:53Z")
How about using [The Industrious Clock?](http://yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html). Bonus! This, like many other flash clocks, uses your system time to display the time and date. You can set your system clock to whatever time you want and still get a picture. If you miss, reset the clock and try again. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/5 "2009-07-06T01:27:12Z")
I’m not very familiar with macs but since they have UNIX guts, if you are comfortable with the command line, you may look into the “at” command. I’m not sure it handles seconds though. There’s always the sleep command. On Linux, you could use “import -window root BIRTHDAY.jpg” for the screenshot command, maybe that, or something close, would work on a mac too. The problem is, a lot of screenshot programs take a second or two to actually take the shot. I’d put faith in running the program at the correct time, but little faith in it actually getting the correct second. ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/6 "2009-07-06T01:34:44Z")
Why not just make an automator action, and then set iCal to run it at the desired time? ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_Seltzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ee7513/32.png) [@Randy\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Randy_Seltzer)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/7 "2009-07-06T01:42:06Z")
Missed the edit window. On further investigation, iCal does not let you set events to the precision of seconds. You’d have to do something tricky, like set iCal to start your action at 4:05, and then program a 6-second pause into the action. ---
**Author:** ![Hunter\_Hawk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/50afbb/32.png) [@Hunter\_Hawk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hunter_Hawk)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/8 "2009-07-06T04:03:20Z")
> [@freckafree](#): > > I have the very geeky desire to: > > A) Find a web site that displays the time and date (the bigger the better). [This](http://www.timeticker.com/) is close, but I’d prefer one that displayed just the two final digits on the year. A Dashboard or Yahoo! widget is also an option. Do you specifically want a web site? Because my first inclination would be to just slap something together in Visual Basic (since I’m a PC; I dunno what the Mac equivalent would be). That way, you could also put in control labels with your kid’s name or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/9 "2009-07-06T05:11:39Z")
You really don’t need to do anything this complicated. It would be trivial to photoshop an image of a clock displaying that specific time, and you can do it at your leisure. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/10 "2009-07-06T05:17:10Z")
Use one of these Screen video capture utilities, and just take the desired frame out of the video: [http://www.freemacblog.com/mac-options-for-capturing-a-video-of-your-screen/](http://www.freemacblog.com/mac-options-for-capturing-a-video-of-your-screen/) Even the demo versions will allow you to capture 15 seconds, which should be plenty. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2009, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/timed-screen-shot-of-a-clock-how/502020/11 "2009-07-06T05:33:45Z")
I was bored so I whipped up an [example](http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/36/clocka.jpg) - is this what you are looking for? Feel free to use it if so.