During winter I have a tendancy towards the blues. It's not full-blown SAD, I just get a bit down when every day starts by waking up in darkness with an alarm blaring.
So... I bought myself a sunrise light (link) which comes on gradually over the course of half an hour before sounding its nasty alarm. I usually set the volume of the alarm to zero anyway, as I'm already awake by then and don't require an irritating bleep in my earhole.
I can't help thinking how much nicer it would be if instead of a bleepy alarm, the simulated sunrise finished with the sound of a tent zip opening - that's probably my favourite sound to hear first thing in the morning.
Maybe it could also play birdsong and the sound of distant cattle lowing.-- wagster, Sep 27 2009 Sunrise Systems Alarm http://www.amazon.c...100US/dp/B000GG327G [wagster, Sep 27 2009] Sunrise Nature Sounds Alarm Clock http://www.hktdc.co.../Sunrise_Clock.html"Soothing Nature Sound Machine: 10 Sounds: Birds, Brooks, Nightingale, Waves in Beach, Brooks & birds, Rain, Hear Beating, Digital Alarm, Bell Alarm Sound, Telephone ring!" I take it "hear beating" is more of an urban inner-city themed soundscape? [jutta, Sep 27 2009] Sunrise Nature Sounds Alarm Clock (II) http://www.amazon.c...Clock/dp/B001KW8BK8Read the reviews before ordering - it's a piece of crap. [jutta, Sep 27 2009] Natural light alarm clocks http://www.gadgetsh...un-alarm-clock.html [RayfordSteele, Sep 29 2009] I'm sorry, but the sound of a zipper and a cow has all sorts of wrong connotations.
I get it though [+]-- BunsenHoneydew, Sep 27 2009 Most cities have a public park; all you need is a tent, and a cow sound alarm clock.-- pocmloc, Sep 27 2009 I've got one of those sunrise alarms and MINE plays sounds!! You can choose Birds (quite good) Rain (sounds like a chip-pot boiling) and another one, that I've forgotten! (jutta beat me to the links, but I'm in full flight now, so I'll continue.
You could of course extend your tent effects notion to include the sound of tearing fabric as a meandering cow interacts with the canvas - OR if you just knew you HAD to get up - an angry farmer's voice bellowing: "Who the bloody hell do you think you are? - just you wait till I load up this shot-gun with rock-salt" Anyway - it's a nice thought +-- xenzag, Sep 27 2009 The future's not what it could be any more.-- xenzag, Sep 27 2009 The 90's would have been a much different era had we all been 'Sorted for Nature Sound Alarm Clocks'! Perhaps if everyone was woken up to that, they wouldn't feel like taking mind altering substances!-- MikeOliver, Sep 28 2009 Now I'm hoping that story would be a setting on the WUIaF clock.-- notmarkflynn, Sep 28 2009 I like to hear my tent zip open in the morning when I fall asleep with my jeans on.-- rcarty, Sep 28 2009 "It was daylight when you woke up in your ditch. You looked up at your sky, then that made blue be your color. You had your knife there with you too. when you stood up there was goo all over your clothes. Your hands were sticky. You wiped them on your grass, so now your color was green. Oh Lord, why did everything always have to keep changing like this. You were already getting nervous again. Your head hurt and it rang when you stood up. Your head was almost empty. It always hurt when you woke up like this. You crawled out of your ditch onto your gravel road and began to walk, waiting for the rest of your mind to come back to you. You can see the car parked far down the road and you walked towards it. "If god is our father," you thought, then Satan must be our cousin." Why didn't anyone else understand these important things? You got to your car and tried all the doors. They were locked. It was a red car and it was new. There was an expensive leather camera case laying on the seat. Out across your field, you could see two tiny people walking by your woods. You began to walk towards them. Now red was your color and, of course, those little people were yours too."
Also, cell phones fucking suck. Why does everyone find them to be the solution to all of our problems? Oh wait, not everyone.-- daseva, Sep 28 2009 You talk about this like I was just thawed out yesterday. My point is that they fucking suck.-- daseva, Sep 28 2009 everything electronic sucks es-- wjt, Sep 28 2009 There are alarm clocks that are designed to wake you up with 'natural light.' You might look into one of these.-- RayfordSteele, Sep 29 2009 Um, Wagster mentioned the light alarm in the body of the idea, unless you mean one that wakes you with just light and no alarm.-- notmarkflynn, Sep 29 2009 (marked-for-tagline)
" You talk about this like I was just thawed out yesterday "
I'm going through all the alarm clock threads looking for links to my next alarm clock. My Zen Alarm, which chimes a little chime, continues to display erratic behaviour, which is apparently common for these things.
The simulated sunrise clocks apparently suck as well. If I could find a music player that brought it in soft and gradually raised it that would be cool, but everything is so on/off.-- normzone, Feb 05 2014 Is there such a thing as a Baconsmade?-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 05 2014 In bucolic mode, the simulated sunrise greets the sleeper with sounds of birdsong and distant cattle lowing.
In stampede mode, the distant lowing gradually grows louder and more feverish, and the sound of hoof beats increases from a spattering to a thunderous roar. Rather than ending with a bleepy alarm, the clock spews trail dust into the air and actuates pneumatic pumps in your bed frame that shake it violently.
A properly programmed Roomba could periodically refill the "traildust" without user interaction.-- swimswim, Feb 05 2014 I find that whatever I wake up to, I come to associate with waking up for work after not enough sleep. The reason the sound of a tent/cattle whatever is appealing is because its a holiday sound. Play the same sound associated with dragging yourself out of bed in the dark and you'll ruin it. This has happened with a couple of favorite songs/sounds.-- bs0u0155, Feb 05 2014 // Is there such a thing as a Baconsmade? //
Initial experiments with a pig, a hundred kilos of salt/sodium nitrite mix, and an array of George Foreman grills attached to a timeswitch yield the answer "Not quite yet, no."-- 8th of 7, Feb 06 2014 random, halfbakery