I’m someone who categorically is not a morning person. Left alone, I’ll happily sleep through till the early afternoon no matter what I’ve been up to the day before. This is just part of a larger problem I have with sleep – I can fall asleep far too easily in the day, and struggle to get to sleep at night. Leads to all kinds of fun situations surrounding this, and it’s something I have to plan around.

Obviously, getting up in the morning is something that is pretty necessary to hold down a job. Turning up is a pretty basic requirement of staying in employment. Bearing the problems I’ve got with sleeping pattern and the like, I’ve got a pretty large array of stuff dedicated to waking me up in the morning. Here’s the current count of what I use, and some positives negatives of each.

T-Mobile G1

Standard phone alarm, which I guess everybody who has a mobile uses. Couple of things I like about the G1’s alarm – it’s easy to set different alarm repeat patterns for different alarms. Got to get up earlier on Mondays than other weekdays, so this is useful.

Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock

This was the first of my more advanced alarm clock purchases. Volume wise this clock goes off at about 113 decibels. A jackhammer is around 100 decibels, a jet at 100m or a chainsaw are around 110-140. It’s also got flashing lights on the front as well. These aren’t its real party pieces though, that belongs to the little round bit over to the left of the picture. That is the bed shaker. When the alarm goes off, it makes the bed start to vibrate. Company who make these normally make alarm clocks for the deaf, so you can see where the inspiration comes from. You can buy this from Blue Unplugged here.

Laser Alarm Clock

Possibly the worst actual alarm clock I’ve brought. Aim is that you’ve got to use the pointer to hit the target across the room to stop the alarm going off. Problem is that it isn’t a ‘shot’ beam, it’s a pointer continuous beam, so it’s quite easy to just slowly sweep it around the target till you hit it. Really not worth getting if you want to get up.

Rising Alarm Clock

Another alarm clock, another gimmick, but this time one that works well. As you can see from the picture, the alarm clock’s actually a ball hanging from a string. When the alarm goes off, it starts to rise up the string. Smacking the clock snoozes it for a bit, but the only way to actually turn it off is to hit the button on the front. Works damn well. You can but it from Pressies Plus here.

Electric Shock Alarm Clock

I had great hopes for this clock, great hopes. I hoped the shock would be on a level with the one you get from joke lighters, or those games where the last one to press a button momentarily loses all feeling in their hand. I’d seen brief comments referring to it in different places, and finally managed to track one down, placed an order and waited with bated breath. To be honest, I’m underwhelmed by it. It’s not an inherently poor clock like the laser one, but it could be so much better. The construction’s pretty tacky, it’s difficult to judge the exact time of the alarm, and the shock just isn’t strong enough. It’s tempting to try and bastardise it so I can get more power out of it… You can buy it from here.

At the moment, I’ve got the shocking alarm clock and the bed shaker both locked in a combination box with holes drilled in the back for the battery wires to come out of. That was my latest attempt at getting to a stage where I actually have to wake up to turn my alarms off, but it’s back to square one again. I can put the combination in, unlock the box, get a shock and turn that alarm off, turn the bed shaker off, knock the hanging alarm clock to snooze and off, and turn my phone alarm off all without properly waking up (I’ve written the laser alarm off as pointless – it’s not even that loud). Right now I’m waiting for delivery of an alarm clock that’ll go running off around my room when it goes off… Let’s see how long it takes me to sleep through that.

Oh, and this post was inspired by finding a post called 10 Geeky Tricks for Getting Out of Bed in the Morning at Wired.