That is a lot of if statements just to get some directly adjacent unicode characters, which can easily be generated with some simple math.
This solution may be a little terse (96 bytes; I wrote it for the 140bytes golfing challenge), but it should help explain how to get the current time's clock character: https://gist.github.com/eligrey/985721#file-annotated-js
No idea really. I made it quickly this morning, and I'm trying it out today. It does make it easier to see whether a bunch of commands were performed at roughly the same time than a digital display.
Your advantage unfortunately obscures other useful information.
My [zsh] prompt displays the exact time down to the second on its own line. I just scan up looking at the time to see if the hours match or minutes... But I still have the ability to know if one was 3 minutes 33 seconds or one was 27 minutes 10 seconds within that hour/half hour.
Is there a particular font that works better than others for this? I've tried all my fixed width fonts and the clock is barely readable in any of them.
This solution may be a little terse (96 bytes; I wrote it for the 140bytes golfing challenge), but it should help explain how to get the current time's clock character: https://gist.github.com/eligrey/985721#file-annotated-js