What's that hanging so threateningly on the wall there? Why, of course: it's just a Killer Cuckoo Clock!

Most of the people who use Online Clock probably don’t know this, but we’re actually located in Berlin, Germany.

My name’s Tom, and I’m the creator of the original online alarm clock website, and I’m an American guy who moved to Berlin from San Francisco, California about ten years or so ago.

Berlin is a great city. It’s big, it’s pretty cheap (at least by American standards) and it has a lot happening culturally. It’s a city still the process of inventing itself and creating itself…so there’s always something new here. And Germany’s also not a bad place to live, though of course there’s no place like home.

I was doing some research for a blog post about Cuckoo Clocks and I discovered these really great modern Cuckoo Clocks from an artist who apparently goes by the name of Deine Heimat, which means “your country” or “your homeland” translated from the German.

Here we see a Killer Cuckoo Clock with some beautiful blue background lighting.

So obviously, these clocks are made by a German artist.

Doing a little more research, I discovered that this seems to be the handle used by an artist named Stefan Strumbel.

Whatever the case, the unusual and thoroughly modern Killer Cuckoo Clocks of Mr. Strumbel speak for themselves.

Normal Cuckoo Clocks make me chuckle because I actually no of no Germans who purchase or use these clocks in their homes. Instead, Cuckoo Clocks here in Germany seem to be a sort of cottage industry aimed at American tourists.  I’m sorry if I’m spilling some German state secrets here, but this really does seem to be the case. Just about every German national that I’ve come to know in this country thinks that traditional Cuckoo Clocks are pretty hideous, even the older generation!

Or, maybe you prefer a Killer Cuckoo Clock for your home in luxurious white with orange day-glo accents?

So, when you take a look at the Killer Cuckoo Clocks of Deine Heimat, a.k.a. Stefan Strumbel, you’ll see images of:

1. Skulls
2. Machine Guns
3. Wings
4. Bones
5. Hand Grenades
6. Hearts
7. Dead Deer
8. Wild Game
9. Blood

There’s likely a lot of irony intended in the name “Deine Heimat”, because, as I mentioned, I really don’t know any Germany who actually use Cuckoo Clocks at all. I think that Mr. Stumbel is perhaps playing around with the typical stereotypes floating around about Germans here, or perhaps simply making fun of them.

Whatever the case, the clocks are just cool, and kind of throw the typical stereotypes of what German culture is all about on its head, forcing us (and Germans, certainly) to reevaluate them.

You can find out more about the Killer Cuckoo Clocks from Deine Heimat at the Galerie Springmann in Freiburg, Germany.

The artist himself also has a blog online (”Deine Heimat”) on Blogspot here.

For the record, Stefan Strumbel also creates a lot of other great art that has nothing at all to do with Cuckoo Clocks.

But we’re an Alarm Clock Blog, so the clocks are obviously what we’ve chosen to write about.

Tags: clocks, Crazy Clocks, cuckoo, cuckoo clock, cuckoo clock history, cuckoo clocks, deine heimat, german artist, killer cuckoo clocks, killer cuckoos, stefan strumbel, strumbel

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Industrial Designer Dave Rollins from San Jose, California has created a line of offline digital clocks that resemble Online Clock…in a good way.

These clocks come in various styles and colors but all boast a digital numeral display that needs to be assembled by hand, just like puzzles.

In this way, these aren’t really clocks at all, but instead they’re signs and learning aids.

The clock of this kind that most strikingly resembles our online alarm clock is the Digits Clock:

The Digits Clock from Designer Dave Rollins bears a striking resemblance to Online Clock. Well, at least someone has good taste!

The Digits Clock is 19 inches wide and 7 inches high, so it’s actually pretty large in size.

In this next photo you can see what the Digits Clock has apparently been designed for: it’s supposed to be a teaching aid to help youngsters learn about clocks, time and how to tell the time using digital clocks. They learn about these subjects by recreating the time of the day themselves by putting together the pieces that make up the digital numerals of the clock.

By putting together the bits and pieces that construct the digital clock display, they learn how to tell the time from a digital clock:

Junior here is trying to put together his own version of online clock.

Did you know that OnlineClock.net is also frequently used in classrooms around the world as a teaching aid?

We often get emails from teachers who tell us that they use our online alarm clocks in their classrooms to teach youngsters about the subjects of clocks and time. Teachers and college professors also tell us that they like to project our clocks onto their classroom walls, using them to time tests and exams.

Thank you, teachers everywhere, for using our online alarm clocks – we’re very proud that you find our clocks useful in this way!

Surprisingly, while researching this subject and these great-looking clocks from Dave Rollins, we’ve found quite a few negative reviews of the Digits Clock. True, it has a price tag of about $100, and several reviewers have mentioned that this seems to be a steep price tag for something that doesn’t even tell the time.

But they seem to be missing the point about these clocks. These are obviously meant to be art works and teaching aids and not actual working clocks, and if $100 can be used to help several classes of kids better learn how to tell the time, then I think these products are very valuable.

One also has to keep in mind the fact that these digital clock products are probably being produced in very limited quantities, which unfortunately always serves to increase production costs.

Other clocks in the line of digital clock products from Dave Rollins serve other purposes.

These include the following:

1. Striking desk calendars showing the month of the year and day of the month
2. Digital clock signs designed for shop windows showing ‘Be Back at xx:xx’ Time, for when a shop is temporarily closed
3. Teaching aids, as previously mentioned
4. They’re all available in different color combinations and they look so great that they’d conceivably just look cool sitting on one of your shelves simply as works of art or as conversation pieces

More information on these interesting non-online clocks can be found on Mr. Rollins’ own website UseYourDigits.com.

All of Mr. Rollins’ digital clock products may be purchased online from Ponoko.com.

Tags: clock design, clock designer, clock designs, clock puzzles, clock teaching aids, clocks, dave rollins, digit clock, digital clock products, digital clock puzzle, digital clock puzzles

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Why is this man laughing? It's because he's just read this blog post about the all-time top Wake Up Gags!

People just don’t like waking up.

Today we curse our alarm clock. But back in the days of dinosaurs and cavemen, we probably cursed out the sun when it woke us up from a sound night’s sleep early in the dawn hours.

The reason why is that, it’s just so nice to sleep…to relax and to rejuvenate ourselves. Being awakened again into consciousness is a jarring experience, kind of like a slap in the face or a blast of cold water.

This all means there are a lot of possibilities for pranks when it comes to waking people up.

It’s difficult enough not to be startled by the sound of your normal alarm clock going off, so we can easily imagine how startling it is to be awakened by even more jarring noises and events!

Let’s take an alarm clock that gives you an electric shock when you turn it off as an example, just to get us warmed up:

But enough with the flowery preamble folks…let’s cut to the action, our raison d’etre for this blog post, which is to list the Top 10 Wake Up Gags!

And here we mean the funniest, best, meanest, cruelest, most diabolical wake up gags of all time, of course.

You’ve seen ‘em. You’ve chuckled at ‘em. And for you, dear Clock Fans, we’ve assembled the best of them together in one big succulent Alarm Clock Blog Post (what you’re reading now). Yes, we’re talking about those funny pranks you can play on loved ones, friends and even perhaps perfect strangers in which someone gets a very rude awakening.

So here is Online Clock’s official list of the Top Ten Wake Up Gags, in order of hilarity.

By that we mean that the best/funniest of these gags can be found right at the start of this list:

1. The Military Coup in Your Bedroom Wake Up Gag * – in which an unsuspecting sleeper is awakened by anti aircraft artillery going off in his bedroom.
2. The Send Them Down the Water Slide Wake Up Gag * – in which unwitting sleepers are sent sliding down a water slide while still sleeping.
3. The Wake Up To Being Hit By the Mob Wake Up Gag * – a sleeper is awakened to experience his very own “death” by a mob hit man squad.
4. The Wake Up to Being Dragged by a Horse Wake Up Gag * – a very startled sleeper wakes up to being dragged through the mud by a horse.
5. The Firecracker On The Ass Wake Up Gag * – self-explanatory. Another example can be found here.
6. The Dozen of Hidden Alarm Clocks Wake Up Gag – a sleeper wakes up to dozens of different alarms peeping around him, and must find where the various alarm clocks have all been hidden. Can be viewed as a video here.
7. The Fart In His Face Wake Up Gag – a hideous but true gag in which you wake up to a black cloud surrounding your face. View at your own discretion (not for the squeamish) here.
8. The Blue Man Group Guy Wake Up Gag – a creative brainstorm that shows the Blue Men are in real life scary as hell. Watch it here.
9. The Shocking Alarm Clock Wake Up Gag – displayed in the first video above, a timeless classic of the Wake Up Gag genre! (See video at the top of this post.)
10. The Set the Clock Two Hours Later and Make him Think he’s Late For Work Wake Up Gag – so simple, yet so deviously effective…

* – All Gags marked with an asterisk above (all of which made the Top Five, coincidentally) can be viewed in the video below. We highly recommend you watch this one, it’s absolutely hilarious!

So there you have it, Clock Fans: those are our tips as the Top Ten Wake Up Gags.

But please, don’t try these stunts at home.

We wouldn’t like anyone to get hurt.

After all, we want all of you to continue being our customers

Tags: alarm clock, alarm clock blog, gags, humor, pranks, top ten wake up gags, wake up, wake up gags, wake up pranks, wake up stunts, waking up

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You know how hard it is to wake up in the morning, especially when you’ve slept late.

Naturally, alarm clocks are made for those who cannot wake up by themselves. If you’re one of these persons, you know what we’re talking about all too well, and this blog post will be just the right thing for you. Because here we’re going to give you some simple Waking Up Strategies.

Some just neglect the jarring sound coming from their alarm clock while others hit the evil snooze button. Once they hear the alarm clock ringing again, however, they have to go through the process all over again, because they know that it’s still time for them to wake up.

Some persons wake up immediately, as soon as they hear the alarm sound of their alarm clock. There is no denying that there are mornings when you find it easy to wake up with the help of an alarm clock and there are other mornings when you don’t even care how many times your alarm clock rings: you just don’t want to get up, out of bed!

In order to find it easy to get up, out of bed in the morning, it is very important for you to go to sleep the night before at a reasonable hour.

Yes, it sounds like the obvious answer to your problems, and it probably is, but it still should not be overlooked: if you find it difficult waking up each morning, then perhaps you’re simply not getting enough sleep. To correct this, try going to bed earlier.

If you do go to bed earlier, you’ll sleep longer and will wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and energized.

Another tip in order for you to wake up easily is this: every time you wake up in the morning, think of the things you need to accomplish on that day.

It seems funny, but it’s a fact that working persons, usually wake up earlier on pay day.

The message here is clear: if you have something to look forward to every day, you’ll have ample reason to jump out of your bed in the morning and get going.

Finally, here is a simple check list of Waking Up Strategies or tips that might help you wake up more easily:

1. Go to bed earlier.
2. Be sure that you’re getting enough sleep in general.
3. Watch your stress levels:  have you been able to actually relax during your sleep, or are you suffering from too much stress? If the latter is the case, take measures to relieve your stress levels.
4. Place your alarm clock farther away from your bed. If it rings, you’ll then have to get up out of bed to turn it off.
5. Have something to look forward to the next day, so that you’ll be motivated to get up.
6. Try changing the temperature in your bedroom. For some people, cold temperatures makes them want to hibernate. For others, warm temperatures makes them lazy. Try to find the idea bedroom temperature so that you’ll wake up easier and feeling more refreshed.
7. Try leaving your window blinds partially open so that sunlight will come in through the windows of your bedroom once the day begins. Almost everyone finds it easier to wake up when there’s a bit of natural sunlight in the room.

So there you have some very simple strategies to help you wake up easier in the morning. Although they’re basically just common sense principles, we believe that they might be helpful. At any rate, we certainly hope so!

Alarm clocks are very useful but you must also remember that you should develop your own self-discipline to make your body ready for each day.

Always believe that you have something especially significant worth waking up for, even if it’s just enjoying the day at hand.

In this manner, you’ll be motivated to wake up and getting up out of bed will be easier.

Tags: alarm clock, alarm clocks, online clock tips, sleep, sleep problems, wake up, wake up strategies, waking up, waking up strategies, waking up tips

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Alarm Clocks have been developed to help people wake up, especially early in the morning. But you should understand that this is not the only use for alarm clocks. You can also use an alarm clock as a reminder for things that you don’t want to forget.

A very good example of this is when you are very busy at a certain time, but also need to do something else later on. Often, when you have a very tight schedule on a certain day, it’s hard to avoid forgetting other things that also need your attention.

This is true especially when you apply your entire attention and concentration to performing a particular task. As a result, you’ll surely be disappointed if you haven’t finished one of the important tasks that you’d set out to accomplish.

In order for you to avoid such problems, you should set an online alarm before you start working; this is a case where our online alarm clocks can come in very handy.

If you have an important meeting, you can set an online alarm for the time of your meeting.  When you hear our alarm, you’ll be reminded that it’s time to stop working for the time being and proceed on to your meeting.

But using Online Clock’s alarms for reminders is also useful and effective even when you’re not at work. The weekend is the perfect time for you to take a rest for a long time and engage your favorite hobbies, such as reading, watching TV, cooking or whatever it is that you’re interested in. If you’re prone to spending much of your time in front of your TV or your computer, but also have some important paperwork to do, for example, set our online alarm clocks to help remind you of how much time you’ve spent in front of the television or computer and of the work that you need to get done. In this manner, you’ll know when it’s time to have fun and when it’s time to work again.

Using online alarm clocks as reminders is also useful, even if your problem is that you work too much. In this case you can set the time of your alarm to remind you that’s it time to take a break, or to stop working entirely. By setting online alarms in this way you can manage your time much more effectively.   Reminding yourself when it’s time to stop working is just as important as reminding yourself of upcoming business appointments or tasks that you have to accomplish!

In addition, many users set the alarms on Online Clock to remind them when it’s time to go home from work.

Those of you who are workaholics likely spend more time than they should working. An online alarm clock can be a very helpful reminder for such overachievers, reminding them to stop working and take a much-needed break. After all: your body and mind need a good rest after working hard. And by getting enough rest, you’ll be far more productive the next day.

Indeed, alarms have a whole lot of benefits, in addition to simply waking you up in the morning.

We hope you’ll consider OnlineClock.net both as a tool to help you achieve all of your goals, as well as a way of reminding yourself when it’s time to turn off your computers and go have some (offline) fun.

We thought you knew this already, but just wanted to remind you…

And now, if you’ll excuse us, our alarm is telling us it’s time to stop writing and go for a jog around the block.

Tags: alarm, alarm clock, alarm clocks, alarms, online alarm, online alarm clock, online alarm clocks, online alarms, online clock, onlineclock.net, reminders

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The Alarm Clock Blog teaches you how to sync your computer's clock to an internet Time Server.

Hey, did you know that Online Clock can show the correct time up to the nearest second?

This is because our clocks are all set to show you the time based on your computer’s own time settings. Since all modern computers give you the option of syncing your computer’s time settings with a time server over the internet, this also enables us to show you truly accurate time on OnlineClock.net!

To start with, you might not yet know what a Time Server is.

A Time Server is a computer with access to a highly accurate clock that it reads the time from. After getting the accurate time, this computer called a Time Server then then distributes the current time to all kinds of computers over a network. Time servers can be set up to communicate the time to all kinds of different computers over the internet; but some of them instead serve just the computers found in their own local networks.

The most common protocol, or formatting rules, used to transmit time information to and from Time Servers is called NTP, which is an abbreviation for Network Time Protocol.

But you don’t have to geek out with all of this information in order to get truly accurate time displayed on your computer and on our Online Clocks.

All you need to do is follow our instructions below.

For our demonstration purposes we’ll be using the Windows Operating System, but similar procedures are also available if you use a Mac or some kind of Linux Operating System (even Clockux, haha!). The screenshots below are from various flavors of Windows (i.e., Windows XP and Windows Vista). Although the individual dialog boxes may look a tiny bit different from one version of Windows to the next, they all look quite similar.

So, how do you sync your computer’s time settings with the very accurate time of an internet Time Server? Just follow these simple steps.

Step One: Locate the small digital time display on the bottom right of your Windows Task Bar.

Step Two: Right-click on the clock and choose “Adjust Date/Time“.

(Alternately, you can simply double-click on the small digital clock in your Task Bar.)

The Date & Time Properties dialog box pops up:

Step Three: Click on the tab at the top labeled “Internet Time“.

(Note:  in some special cases, if your computer has been set up in a particular kind of network, this tab will not be visible for you. If this is the case, contact your computer administrator for assistance.)

Step Four: You have to then choose an Internet Time Server. It seems that time.windows.com and time.nist.gov are listed by default. We highly recommend selecting time.nist.gov, because nist.gov are truly the experts when it comes to keeping accurate time!

Step Five: Finally, make sure the checkbox next to “Automatically synchronize with an Internet time server” is checked. This is necessary in order for your computer’s clock to sync to the Time Server’s time:

That’s it – you can close all the dialog boxes and be assured that your computer will sync it’s time regularly in the future with the Time Server you’ve chosen. Just be sure that you computer continues to have regular internet access.

To test it, you can click on “Update Now” Button and your computer’s time will begin to sync with your chosen Time Server.

If your computer had been showing the incorrect time previously, it should now be corrected.

Also, the next time you access one of our Online Clocks, it will also instantly show the correct time.

Online Clock updates itself simultaneously with each correction to your computer’s clock settings – feel free to test this and watch it in action!

Is anyone else interested in summing up how you sync a computer to an internet time server when using Linux or Mac? If so, we’d be thrilled if you’d share your tips via the comment form below.

Until next time…the Online Alarm Clock wishes all of you a very accurately good time!

Tags: alarm clock blog, Network Time Protocol, ntp clock, NTP Servers, ntp time server, ntp time servers, online clocks, synchronize clocks, time server, time server sync, time servers, time synchronization

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Do you own a website, or do you perhaps work as the webmaster of a website?

If your website becomes popular, you’re going to eventually need a web server alarm. What’s a web server alarm, you ask? A web server alarm, (not be confused with our alarm website) is perhaps better known as a host monitor. A host monitor is an application, a piece of software or an online service that automatically monitors the uptime on your webserver and notifies you with some kind of an alarm if the web server ever goes offline.

When we’d originally created Online Clock back in March of 2006, we knew we’d had a great idea: the world’s first Online Alarm Clock – an alarm clock you use directly in your web browser. Nothing to download. Nothing to install. What could be easier?

Perhaps it was due to the fact that this idea was so great, combined with the fact that we stubbornly refuse to make our alarm clock more complicated by adding extra features that aren’t necessary, that has resulted in our site’s success.

Whatever the case, with well over a million unique visitors to our online alarm clock website each month, we feel a strong responsibility to make sure that our servers have an incredibly high amount of uptime.

In the course of being online now for over three and a half years, Online Clock has gone through at least a half a dozen webhosters!

Many of them simply couldn’t handle the traffic. And, as soon as we discovered this, we simply said goodbye and went in search of a better webhoster, a company who could guarantee us an extraordinary percentage of uptime. (And yes, without naming names, we are very happy with our current hoster.)

So, for those of you reading this who might also work in the internet business – how do you go about setting up a web server alarm, a service that alarms you if your website happens to go down for any reason?

Well, the first thing you can do is search Google for something like “web host monitor“. You’re sure to find a lot of valuable results.

But, perhaps even more helpful, here are some of the web server alarms we’ve personally tested:

1. Host-Tracker.com : they apparently have a free version that you can use, but for us this site was a bit confusing. It was also difficult, at least as of the time we used it, to set it up to send text messages to our mobile phone number in Germany. Still, perhaps the service has improved since then. Especially if they still offer a free version, you might want to give them a try.
2. Next up is Mon.itor.us : they seem to have a free version, and then a paid version located here. Definitely sign up for the free version. This is a nice service to use to augment an even more professional host monitoring service. It could be that the paid version is also excellent – we’ve never tested it.
3. Pingdom.com : as far as we’re concerned, this is the big daddy of web server alarms. This is currently the main host monitoring service we used to monitor OnlineClock.net’s servers.
   

Out of all the various website monitoring alarm services out there, why did we settle for Pingdom.com?

Well, it has a lot of useful features.

Out of all the services of this kind that we’ve tested, it’s the one that makes it easiest to get text messages sent to your mobile phone if your server goes offline for any reason. And this is true even if your cell phone’s network is located far away from North America.

Pingdom also has a vast network of hosts located all across the globe that ping your servers at your desired interval, in order to check to see if your site is online. This is important, because sometimes there are network problems on the internet that may make a website unreachable from a certain location, and such network problems often have absolutely nothing to do with your own web server! Since Pingdom pings from a huge variety of geographical regions across the globe, you can easily differentiate between local network problems and potential problems with your web server. (In truth, however, this is a feature that all serious host monitoring services offer.)

One other important reason why Pingdom is a good service: it enables you to monitor for the existence of a given text string on your website. This is important because, depending on your setup, it could be that your web server is actually still running, even though your website is no longer accessible. A simple ping test might return that your server’s still up, even though your website is down. Pingdom can alarm you per email and/or text message whenever a certain text string (let’s say your copyright notice or something which should always be online) can no longer be found.

But the final argument for choosing Pingdom is the stunning list of references they have on their website:  if Alexa, Last.fm, TechCrunch, CNET, the Washington Post, Mashable and even Twitter are all using this server alarm service, this company must be doing something right! …and it might even be good enough for OnlineClock.net

Well, we hope you’ve enjoyed our little geek-fest on the subject of web server alarm systems.

Such a service is highly recommended for webmasters of popular websites.

Sleep well, knowing that OnlineClock.net is monitored for uptime, 24/7!

Tags: alarm, host monitor alarm, host monitor alarms, host monitoring systems, online alarm clock, onlineclock.net, server alarm systems, website alarm, website alarms

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Hey, it must be strange, being hearing-impaired.

I think I know because it increasingly seems as if the long years of listening to loud rock music are really beginning to leave their toll. Sometimes I have to ask people to repeat themselves, because I just can’t quite hear what they’re saying the first time around…so in this respect I guess I’m beginning to remind myself of my Grandfather.

But of course being truly hearing impaired is something which can’t be compared to that, and this is no laughing matter. I’ve been wondering lately: how do persons who are hard of hearing wake themselves up?

Then I did a bit of research and discovered that there are indeed a lot of different kinds of alarm clocks designed especially for the hard of hearing.  Most of them seem to involve the use of three different types of alarms:

1. alarms which alarm you by calling a certain telephone number
2. alarms which alarm you by flashing some kind of light (such as a strobe light)
3. alarms which alarm you through some kind of vibration alarm

At first thought you might think that a telephone call as an alarm clock might not be the right kind of thing for someone who’s hearing impaired, but think again. Every mobile phone these days has a vibration alarm. So, just by putting a mobile phone under your pillow is certainly enough to wake you up, even if you have trouble hearing. (Of course, the thought of all the electric waves from your mobile phone right next to your head just doesn’t sound all that healthy…)

Once we begin to look at alarm clocks for the hard of hearing, we find that most of these seem to be specialized alarm clocks containing output jacks for optional bed vibrators. Solutions using flashing lights or strobes seem to be less common than bed vibrators. And with good reason! Think about what your neighbors might think of your flashing red strobe light, the next time you wake up at 4:30 a.m. to go fishing!

So here is a brief selection of some of the different alarm clocks for the hard of hearing that I’ve found, just to give you an idea of what’s available.

The Super Bed Shaker Alarm: This is actually an optional plugin or extension that you can add to other alarm clocks that have the right kind of output jack. You insert it somewhere in your bed or under your pillow and it shakes you awake like a big bowl of jello on a hot summer day as the train goes by (huh? excuse me, that was a strange comparison there).

The Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock with Vibrating Alarm Clock: This is similar to the above device, with the actual alarm clock built-in. Despite claiming to be extraordinarily loud, the Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock offers alarms via flashing lights and/or via its bed vibrator unit. We just like the chic black and red digital clock face, which reminds us of some other fine clocks we know of

The Braille Alarm Clock with Vibration Alarm: This amazing clock is useful for the hard of hearing and for persons with vision problems, too, because the numbers on the clock face are additionally written on the clock in Braille. The alarm clock comes with a separate vibrating alarm module.

Not listed above, but also discovered in our research, were several alarm systems that alert you via telephone when it’s time for you to wake up. Not only that, but we also found one product that alerts you via the alarm clock whenever you receive an incoming call.

So what have we learned about alarm clocks for the hard of hearing?

Well, for one thing, such clocks are relatively easy to find these days on the internet and there is a surprisingly large variety of different devices to choose from. Most of them operate using vibration alarms, though there are also devices available that use flashing lights to wake you up, and even some systems that will call you on the telephone when it’s time for you to get up out of bed.

Even if you’re not hard of hearing now…you may be at some point in the future, so file this post in the “good to know” category.

And hey, if you share a bed with your partner, he or she might also benefit from the absence of an alarm sound, if you have different wake-up times.

So, if you can still hear me – pleasant dreams, and turn down that music so I can get some sleep!

Tags: alarm clocks, alarm clocks for the deaf, bed shaker alarm, deaf alarm clocks, flashing alarm clocks, hearing impaired alarm clocks, strobe alarms, vibrating alarm clocks, vibration alarm clocks

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The Clockmaster is here to remind you...

The Clockmaster lives a solitary life tending to a large clock.

He began one day by creating the clock as a hobby. It was a labor of love.

The Clockmaster had always been fascinated by clocks of all shapes and sizes. Big clocks. Small clocks. Battery-powered clocks and solar energy clocks. Clocks with alarms and clocks without alarms. Clock collecting was the way it began. It started as a hobby born out of obsession.

What is the fascination with clocks?

Their ticking is like the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the shore. There is something reassuring in it, in the fact that it is continuous, that it just keeps going on.

But there is also something vaguely threatening in the sound of a clock ticking, or in the continous motion of a clock movement. It is a reminder of our own mortality.

How much time is left?

The continuous movement of a clock is a nudge on our shoulders, reminding us that the time we have here is short. It is an hourglass running out of sand. And we’d better be aware of this, so that we’re sure not to miss out on something, before our time runs out.

The Clockmaster has as his burden the task of reminding us that we will all die one day, when our time runs out. It is sometimes an unpleasant task, reminding people of this, because none of us wants to die. But then there is the sound of the ocean’s waves, infinite waves crashing again and again against the rocks.

Are you a clock lover or a clock hater?

Do you know how much time you have left?

What are you going to do with it?

Do you know what it is you’re doing here, and have you set your house in order?

The Clockmaster would like to know…

Tags: clock ticking, clockmaster, clockmaster reminds you, clocks, fascination with clocks, hourglass, mortality, the clockmaster, Time, time left

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The Clock: Created in 1936, He was the first masked Superhero in Comics!

Are you a big fan of comics?

We are…we were raised on comics. As a reward for going to church every Sunday, we each got to go to the drugstore with our parents afterward and pick out one comic. As you can imagine, after several years and with two older brothers, we had quite a collection. Spoiled? You bet. But we loved it.

As a web developer, there are a lot of similarities between websites and comics: the combination of text and visuals to convey a message. Truly, to understand websites, it doesn’t hurt to have an upbringing full of comics under your belt.

Faster than a Speeding Bullet, it's...The Clock !

When we moved to Europe, it was amazing (and disappointing) to discover that the culture of comics we took for granted in the U.S.A. doesn’t really exist over here. Sure, there are comics available to purchase over here. But the focus of the kind of comics we find for sale at newsstands here in Europe is more little kids’ stuff, and not the adolescent or adult themes of the more popular American comics. (Oh well, thank God for Amazon – just about everything that’s published can at least be ordered and delivered to you, just about wherever you live!)

So what does all this talk about comics have to do with clocks?

Well, did you know that one of the first-ever comic superheroes was called The Clock?

Quote from Wikipedia:

The Clock is a fictional masked crime-fighter published during the Golden Age of Comic Books. According to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide, the Clock was the first masked hero to appear in American comic books.

Dating back to 1936, not only was The Clock one of the very first comic superheroes, but, according to many, he was indeed the very first masked superhero to appear in comics.

So, now that you’ve had a brief introduction to The Clock, how about a little trivia?

Top Trivia Facts about the world’s first masked Superhero – The Clock!

• The Clock’s costume consisted of: a 3-piece suit, a fedora hat, and a black, full-faced mask
• The Clock’s real name was Brian O’Brien (heck of a name, huh?)
• Brian O’Brien was a former district attorney who later turned into a playboy & society maven
• The Clock was originally created, drawn & written by cartoonist George Brenner
• At least in the issue I read, The Clock had a sidekick named Butch (no comment!)
• The Clock first appeared in a comic called Funny Picture Stories
• With his first appearance in 1936, The Clock appeared just two years after the very first ‘modern comic book’ was published (the world’s first comic published in a format similar to what we’re familiar with today)

The Clock strikes 12 for Bad Guys everywhere!

Shouts go out to Caffeinated Joe for making me first aware of The Clock.

More great information on The Clock can be found on Toonpedia (a great site for comics fans!) and Aneris Press.

Also, you can read an entire issue of The Clock online here (but don’t expect too much – it’s a little simple, compared to the comics we’re familiar with today)!

One last piece of trivia about The Clock:  after he’d cleaned up a scene of the crime, The Clock liked to leave a calling card behind with a picture of a clock’s face on it. Written on this calling card were the words,

The Clock Has Struck !

Tags: alarm clock blog, clock comics, clock superhero, clocks, comic clock, comics, the clock, the clock comics, the clock superhero

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