A JavaScript Doomsday Counter...

Fire and Ice: David Pallmann's Web and Cloud Blog - Adventures in HTML5: A JavaScript Doomsday Counter

"Part of mastering HTML5 is mastering JavaScript, a big focus for me and 120 colleagues this month. The best way to go deep on anything in the software world is to be constantly building stuff with it, so here’s something I developed over the last few days: an animated odometer-style counter control suitable for counting down to a deadline.

DEVELOPING THE CONTROL

I didn’t start out intending to write a counter control at all, I was trying to find one to use in a dashboard. I want to be building some cool HTML5 business dashboards in the months to come, and a counter is one of the many widgets I’ll need. I started out looking for one, and sure enough there are a number of free JavaScript counters with source to be found online. Unfortunately, after some evaluation I found issues with each of the ones I tried and I wasn’t able to control appearance or behavior to my satisfaction. Ultimately, I decided to take a shot at creating my own counter control. I wasn’t sure how far I’d get but if nothing else it would be a good learning experience. Rather than writing a simple counter that shows a single value, I chose to create a days-hours-minutes-seconds counter that would count down to a deadline

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I don't know why, but I found this article interesting... Maybe it's all the counters we seem to be seeing. Debt Clock, 2012 Election, end of time, etc. etc... :P