Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Shower Splash Clock

"Take my watch into the shower? Not me. Now I just wash and know..."
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I love showers. They're great. Trouble is, they're so good that I often lose track of time when I'm standing under that invigourating blast. And, apparently, being very very clean (and slightly pruned) is just not a valid excuse for turning up late for work.

If you look at your showerhead (when it's turned off, of course. Unless your eyeballs are particularly dirty), you'll notice that it's a series of pinholes, arranged in a pattern of concentric circles. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to imagine those holes as LEDs. Similarly, you can imagine how easy it would be to use those LEDs to represent a clock. You can see how they'd light up in a line to represent the hour hand, light up to make the minute hand - you can even envisage a fast-moving second-hand that would sweep across the circumferance of the showerhead once a minute.

So - instead of LEDs, imagine tiny valves that open and close. When the imaginary LED is off, the hole doesn't spray water. When the LED should shine, the hole opens. Obviously, the showerhead clock should be reversed, mirror-imaged, so that it's not the showerhead that you look at but rather the splashes that it makes that tell the time. Step outside of the flow of water, and it's the splash flow on the shower floor that will tell you that you're late already. Pick up the shower-head, point it at the wall, and you've got a drippy clock telling you to dry yourself off and get to work. After a couple of months of using this shower, you may even be able to judge the time without even looking. "The minute hand has just started tickling my left nipple - time to go."

lostdog, Feb 19 2004

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       Cute. +
sartep, Apr 06 2006
  
      
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