Top Ten Most Annoying Alarm Clocks. My favorites:
"The Puzzle Alarm wakes you up by firing four puzzle pieces up in the air, then it is your mission to get the pieces and put them back in the alarm clock or it won't turn off until then." 
"Anemone Clock rumbles when the alarm goes off, eventually shaking its way all across your room, forcing you to get up to stop it. It keeps shaking when you pick it up, shaking you awake and making it a hard to find the off button."
"The Blowfly alarm clock escapes from a cage in your room, moves and produces sound around you when the alarm goes off. To turn it off you have to catch it and put it back in its home."
"When you hit Clocky's snooze button, he will roll off of the nightstand, fall to the floor, and run around the room, searching for a place to hide."
I saw that, but went into a sputtering rage. At least one of them seems ridiculously vulnerable to the single-use problem.
I would SO break every one of those alarms the first time I tried to use 'em.
*shudder*
Puzzle alarm would be the first to go, for me - at least the others can attempt a getaway.
yeah. path of least resistance would likely lead to wall damage where they were thrown until they stopped squawking.
holy shit. Any of those would go off exactly *once* in my household, and after that be just so much colorful debris.
Exactly. One review states
That's not so at all - I know exactly where the hammer is.
I think the business world should just start keeping more reasonable hours and then we wouldn't need stuff like this.
How about waking up to Flava Flav every morning?
Well, my cats would love the Anemone Clock.
I switched my clock to play the radio. This doesn't work well when the KFJC morning DJ decides to go on an ambient kick. You can sleep through an hour or so of that.
This is why I have my radio go off, then about 20 minutes later my "normal" beepy alarm clock.
This means I don't wake up and feel immediately like shit in the mornings as it's a much more gradual wake up.
The other advantage is that the (battery powered) beepy alarm will at least usually wake me up should the power go out and the radio not go off...
What sort of sick bastard would play ambient in the morning?
Those can all be silenced by a suitable removal of batteries. Unfortuantly, that requires remember ing to put the batteries in later.
I've heard about a bunch of these before from Gizmodo/Engadget before. From what I recall most of the more unusual ones aren't yet available, but are basically just concepts.
As an incredibly deep sleeper whose various sleep problems have caused incredibly odd hours (e.g. woke up at 5pm Wed, in bed at 2pm on Thurs, awake at 12 am Friday, in bed at 11pm Friday... and now awake at 5:30 am on Monday) the idea of an alarm that actually wakes me up (albeit in a sane and sensible fashion) would be quite useful. Of these the one on a string that slowly rises up actually seems to be the most practical and least intrusive.
Then again it's fighting against someone who can easily sleep for 14 hours in one go without noticing it.
Same... I totally need 30-hour days :(
simple way that i found gets me to sleep:
clean up the kitchen,
then make
half mug of boiled water
dried mint in a "tea egg" for a minute or two
1/3 of a lemon squeezed
two teaspoons of honey
chat on the phone while drinking it
*snore*
All these people bitching about alarms...
I just go to bed around when it gets dark out and I wake up naturally when it gets light out. Always on time, no alarm necessary.
This plan gets more and more unfeasible the further you travel from the equator. For example, during the winter where i live, i would end up going to bed at 16:00, and waking up at 08:00 - likewise, in the summer, i wouldn't get to bed until 23:00, and i'd be waking up at 05:00.
I once lived close to the arctic circle as well. In middle of winter, there's only about 30 minutes of sunlight a day - and in the middle of summer, 30 minutes of darkness...
Those SO rock!
I wish I had them ten years ago. I used to keep my alarm clock on the other side of the room because I was notorious for turning it off (read: pulling it out of the wall and throwing it) in my sleep.
Blowfly is d00med. A nice concept, but that design won't fly. Really, it'd have to be powered by a quantum black hole to spin that tiny prop fast enough to take off.
Puzzle alarm is a good idea - I've wished for such a thing for a few years, but the puzzle is something I could do in my sleep. I require a real, randomized challenge in order to ensure that I'm awake enough not to just go back to sleep.
Anemone and clocky look quite promising, though. Clocky has the virtue of moving towards actual production. Now all it needs is a needle that jabs you with a shot of epinephrine before you can turn it off.
> Now all it needs is a needle that jabs you with a shot of epinephrine
> before you can turn it off.
I think it would be more effective if it started chasing you while brandishing a needle.
I think it's just the propeller that shoots off; the rest of the clock stays where it is.
These are much more fun than the alarm clocks reviewed on Slate last week.
I once had a roommate who would wake up at 5AM with one of those 95 decibal models, and he would actually sleep through it. Of course, I was in the next room and would hit the ceiling. I was tempted to find out how much his colon and body fat would muffle the sound of that damn infernal machine.
Roomie? Is that you ? ;-)
Seriously though, I've had the same problem.. I used to sleep through my alarm, and yes, it was very, very loud. I'd be woken up by the neighbors banging on my door asking me to turn off my alarm, before the alarm itself would disturb me.
I had no idea you were a fan...
That first one isn't merely annoying, it's sadistic.