wake up & say hello to Clocky.

in the ever-amazing world of gadgets, wired and wireless (for which i am a sucker, though my wallet and costly penchant for comics thankfully keeps me from making TOO many purchases here), it's often the simplest things that make me smile.

meet Clocky. basically a "smart" alarm clock (with a personality). you hit snooze one too many times (like i am notorious for, much to Kat's chagrin), and Clocky wheels away on his own, rolling around the room, making annoying droid-like sounds all along the way, which ultimately gets you up and about for whatever it is you have to get up and about for in the morning (or night, or early morning @ stupid-o-clock where it is so dark out).

i've tried everything. at first there was simply putting my alarm clock on the other side of the room, but the semi-conscious "sleepy monster" that is sleepy-Raman is too smart for this. he gets up, hits snooze, and curls back into bed. sometimes he even performs complex arithmetic to push out the alarm time to allow for the EXACT time needed to get ready in the morning. over time, i've squeezed every extra minute out of the morning. but then wakey-Raman decided to mess with the less-aware sleepy-Raman, and start resetting the clock to the "oh-shit" time (which is 30 mins fast). that had the desired effect for awhile, as silly sleepy-Raman is slow to learn. but then sleepy-Raman subversively decided to convince gadgety-Raman to buy an i-Home (seen here to the right). wakey-Raman thought this was cool, as he loves choosing what new music he can wake up into the morning. what wakey-Raman did not realize, was that sleepy-Raman could now use a remote control to snooze the alarm. in a war-like, counter-measure, wakey-Raman decided to stop programming music, but rather leaving a raucous drum-opening punk song, to play (which Kat hates). now we're back to the simple buzzer on the iHome, with the occasional remote-control snooze. nothing has been solved.

but i digress.

Clocky was invented by a an MIT Media Lab student (where so many cool things come from), and is a great example of where a simple consumer need drives the design, VS so many other things out there that are focused on loading up on features (which are great, don't get me wrong i LOVE features) rather doing the one thing they are supposed to do amazingly well.

without further adieu, let me properly introduce you to Clocky:

i hope it will be the best $40-60 someone spends on me (hint hint, nudge nudge, wink wink). OR maybe i should just draw a picture and see what happens...

hotel truths

as i'm BACK on the road (and spending my first night in a hotel in awhile, incidentally, i thought i'd share what i've observed to be some universal truths of hotel life for the lonely traveller:

it's not home: no matter how nice your heavenly bed/shower/ironing board are, it just doesn't matter. it's a lonely hotel room you likely wouldn't pay for out of pocket if the company wasn't footing the bill. nothing beats sitting around + watching TV with a loved one, or sleeping on a friend's lumpy couch. it's not a cheapness thing, it's comfort (warmth) thing.

room number: i am HORRIBLE with keeping random numbers in my head. but for some reason, for the duration of my stay, the hotel room # is BURNED in my memory. i guess it's so when you come back from the hotel dinner after having imbibed a BIT too much, you know where to go.

the darkness: NOTHING beats this. hotel rooms always have those drapes that can COMPLETLEY block out a supernova (or more simply, all outside light). it's a brilliant thing to fall asleep to, a disturbing thing to wake up in the middle of the night ("where am i?" i have teetered on the brink of insanity some mornings when my eyes open and there is completely dark, "oh no! i've gone blind!"), and makes it extremely hard to WANT to get up in the morning. which leads me the last "hotel truth"...

the wake up call: this is BRILLIANT. i, like 93% of the human population, am a perpetual (and habitual) snoozer, no matter where the alarm clock is strategically positioned (i have yet to test my waking mettle against clocky...birthday present hint hint). but for some reason, a wake up call signals the immediate expectations of others, even though it is probably an (automated) stranger, which you HAVE to get up for. to make it worse, i usually wake up about 6 minutes before the wake up call + stare at the phone in trepidation.

and those are my hotel truths. did i miss anything?