 means it's forgiving, anything even close is going to work. Sometimes I even have to open the aperture up a little to keep it in the one to two second range. For those shots I just open the shutter, count "one thousand, two thousand' and close the shutter. The shots I took at the marsh were just before, during, and after sunset. I started shooting when my SLR gave me reading of "4" which is 1/4 of a second, even though I knew my fastest hand movement without violent shaking was 1/3 of a second. They came out fine.
If you have a Digital SLR then life is really good, you can do an actual test shot for every shot, and under or over expose to get the shot (exposure) you want. This is extra handy when you go for time lapse stuff where you're going into speeds most cameras don't support, such as longer that 30 seconds. You can use "Bulb" mode and test your shot digitally, once you know how many seconds it takes to get the exposure your after, you take your Box Camera shot knowing it's going to come out.
Unless you can design a faster shutter, any kind of hand held photography is probably out of the question, and you'll probably have to take most pictures in low light, but trust me, it's a lot of fun and well worth the limitations. Now turn off your computer, go make a camera, and go shoot some film flying entirely by the seat of your pants.
Have fun and keep shooting film, Rick