[Design] Alarm Clocks

{rant}

The sheer lack of good sense of the human race can be summed up with the alarm clock. Here is a modern device which is practically neccesary for a rigid time schedule of work and life (and bane to sane and relaxed existance), and yet in shopping for a replacement clock, I cannot find anything that gets more than in the vicinity of what an alarm clock should be. Here are a few suggestions.

* The top casing should be like Nerf foam. The top of the clock should have only one thing only: a Snooze button the size of my fist. Combined with a structual rigidity and soft top, I should be able to, upon hearing the alarm go off in the morning, hurl my fist atop it with sufficient force to cave it in (and the table it sits on) and yet it should continue to function. The first thing a lot of people think about in those bleary few seconds after the alarm goes off is how to shut the damn thing up for 10-30 minutes so we can go back to sleep. Alarm clocks are an obscenity, but a neccesary evil sometimes. Snooze alarms are for when you realzise that getting up at that appointed time was a dreadful, unneccesary mistake.

* The snooze button should allow for multiple taps (fist pounds) so that if I hit it three times in succession, it shuts up for a half hour, and so forth.

* It should wake me up ~gradually~. Anything that wakes me up instantly better be a burglar alarm or the smoke detector. Gently rising volume of alarm buzzer, radio, chime, or whathaveyou, is a good way to do it. Same deal with gently brightening lights, although I've taken to wearing a sleep mask, so I won't see a damn thing.

* It should have a display with numbers about two inches high. When I'm bleary and half-asleep and my contact lenses are out and my glasses off and I'm generally blind, I'd like to be able to read the time without them.

* Just as importantly, the display should be fairly DIM, or at elast especially dimable. I have seen alarm clocks you could use as backup stadium lighting, or with bright green or blue LEDs that are like slivers of sunlight they are so damn bright. Vampires shrink away from them as if burned. The mark of any good sleeping area is that it is "cool, dark, and quiet" (and with adequate ventilation). Blazing LEDs destroy the 'dark' portion of those criterion.

* It should have two, if not three, seperate alarms.

* It should have a battery backup that lasts at least two days. Hello, Sony? 60 seconds is not a battery backup: It is slow bleed capacitors.

* I should be able to choose between loud klaxon, soft klaxon, radio, and maybe a gentle sound like birds chirping or a waterfall or something. Or maybe The Ramones. "Good morning, sexy" wouldn't hurt either.

* It should have a radio link to the atomic clock frequency to auto reset itself.

* A temperature function would be nice.

* It should not be very high. A lot of alarms are like towers. Sleek and low is good.

* It should have a 99.99% reliability. Missing your wakeup isn't much of an option nowadays.

* It should not have a THX certified amplifier and speaker system. For goodness sakes, this is an alarm clock, not an audiophile rig.

* It should not have anything even approaching simulated woodgrain. Plain blacks, whites, and silvers are good.

* I should be able to change what color the display is.

* It should have a nightlight button on the side. Low intensity.

* 24 hour format as an option.

* It should be compliant with whatever new daylight saving time changes we decide to make.

* It should be able to detect my brainwave patterns from a short distance away with no sensors attached to my head or anything, and determine the best possible time to rouse me from sleep and not interfere with my natural REM cycle and lead to a jarring awakening, based on a predetermined window of time (wake me between 730 and 820, whenever I'll be least annoyed)

* It should cost less than $100.

* It should bring me breakfast in bed including hot coffee when I wake up. (would be nice, eh?)

* Mostly, I'd like to have a job where I didn't ever have to deal with alarm clocks ever again or even better have a gf that likes to gently wake me up by 'getting amorous' in the morning.

{/rant}