Hmm my battery alarm clock is a radio (rugby time signal) controlled one so once power is restored it sets the time in about 5 minutes. However resetting the alarms is another matter.
Press the middle button until the alarm is shown, then hold the middle button to engage setting modes, use the 1st (up) and 2nd (down) arrows to set the hours, then press the middle button again to select the minutes, and again to set the time, the 4th button will then turn the alarm on. If you want to set the second button press it all again.
However if the display is the date then holding the middle button will change it to 24 hour clock instead of AM or PM
No I don’t know what the 5th button does and I have had the thing for about 15 years…..
Mind you the number of times I have gone to program the end time on the cooker and changed the clock are too many to mention….
I have a mains powered alarm clock radio which more or less sets the time after a repower. The only problem is it then free runs and drifts quite a lot - 3 mins in a few weeks. I had hoped that the clock setting would be more frequent and keep 'locked' to whatever it uses to set the clock - I suspect 'Rugby' but maybe something in RDS...
Oven? There's your problem Mr Dabbs. All the hip kids are airfrying. And with those you just sync the clock with the one on your phone over WiFi/Bluetooth/semaphore.
'70s power cuts: Shopping in Woolies by torchlight. Happy days!
I bought an air fryer when the fad began but eventually bequeathed it to one of my offspring. An air fryer's core limitations are that you can only bake one thing at a time and it has to be arranged in a lump. In a fan oven, I can bake veg, cook a big pie and reheat a pizza simultaneously. It's quicker and cheaper.
I remember a special operation aorund late 1986, when I spent a king's ransom (well, maybe only a wacky social media startup CEO's ransom) on a so called "real time clock" for the Atari ST. it was battery buffered so it would not forget the time each time the computer was switched off... Of course, in these enlightened times such silly features are no longer required. BTW I have a Daewoo-microwave too, but here we only have power cuts when it is warm in the summer or cold in the winter, so most of the time the clock shows more or less the right time, as long as the power grid frequency stays more or less around the expected 60Hz...
I have exactly the same experience with the oven and microwave here - just takes a slight dip of the mains and we are into the territory of worn buttons and much beeping. Maybe the hardware is attempting to auto-censor the words I am muttering under my breath? And I have a Maplins Weather Station. Now I feel old.
Aug 25, 2023·edited Aug 25, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
Why do ovens even have clocks? Do they have to wake up on time? Make sure they are not late for work? A totally pointless addition to a perfectly functional piece of equipment. I gave the little blinking buggers the cruellest cut on day one.
Also, forgive me for being Mr. Smug as I sit here in my off-grid solar powered house where power-cuts, voltage spikes and electricity bills are things of distant memory; as is, fortunately, Angel Delight.
Aug 25, 2023·edited Aug 25, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
But you don't need a clock for that, just a timer
My breadmaker (of course I have one) has this wonderful feature ' Be done in x hours' so I wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread, no clock required
If you get the dumbest possible, on/off slow cooker with absolutely no extra smart functions, you can get a thermostat power control that power cycles the cooker to maintain a very precise arbitrary temperature. Bam, now you got a sous vide machine, or egg incubator, or thermostatically controlled chamber for whatever thing you dreamed up.
I wasn’t aware you could by a smart slow cooker, mine has one control a switch which has off, low, and high as the positions. What else does it need to do?
Aug 25, 2023·edited Aug 25, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
I don't know when it started that digital clocks were added to every piece of electrical apparatus you bought (perhaps Alistair can enlighten us), I suspect sometime in the '90's but unnecessary clocks have become the bane of many peoples lives.
It accelerated in the 70s when monochrome LCD and green/red led multi-segment displays flooded the planet and blinked their way into the human heart by way of their living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens.
The goal at the time was to make one's home look like the bridge on Star Trek ... or Blakes 7 for those from across the pond.
You mean it wasn't just a not very subtle marketing ploy to make us think we had bought space age kit when it was just the same old dross with a funny light attached?
I recall the experiment of continuous GMT in the 1960's (I can recall what happened sixty odd years ago; last week is a bit hazy...). It always seemed to be perpetually dark over winter.
I delight in the 'extra hour in bed' although that's not really an issue these days. Having to get up earlier in spring is a price worth paying.
Aug 25, 2023·edited Aug 25, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
I was so pleased that our new microwave allows one to dismiss the blinking 12:00 after a power cut with a quick press of the Clear/Cancel button, erm pad. The useless clock function just goes away, with no loss of other functionality. Wanted to get another just to encourage this sort of behavior, but the Mrs said no.
Our new washing machine has WiFi, so you can program it from somewhere else in the house. Perhaps you can get your manservant to actually load the clothes into it. But surely it should have a real time clock and NTP? No such luck.
Unfortunately my Samsung washing machine does but I have never been remotely tempted to turn the feature on or download the app.
What is the point of turning it on remotely as it doesn’t come with a robot to search for clothes or sort coloured from white or can it empty itself and put the washing on the line.
It is as pointless as the karcher app controlled pressure washer. Personally if I using a pressure washer I don’t want a phone anywhere near it…
Oh yes, it does. But it needs the app and will pair with only one phone. I think it must be an attempt at usage tracking. It’s useless otherwise. OTOH my smart speakers sent me a Critical Alert the other day when wife severely cremated some bacon and set off the smoke alarms. That is Zanussi-ness (the appliance of science). The washing machine with WiFi? <Eurovision> Null points </Eurovision>!
Does no one do the obvious and keep their candles in a specific, established place? I have mine in the kitchen drawer, and always in the kitchen drawer, the one with the rubber bands, bottle tops and knotted bag seal wires in. Easy.
Of course, where the fucking matches are is another matter altogether...
Yes, that's the place where we keep them too. Except when there is a power cut, the candles are no longer there. I suspect they get wind of a power cut before it happens, like starlings before an earthquake, and run away to live a peaceful candle existence in a Candle Dimension, Douglas Adams-style.,
No non, under the sink is where you keep the yoghurt maker and other such useless gadgets. Candles should always be kept in a kitchen drawer, alongside an nempty space that ought to be occupied by the matches you forgot to buy.
I came home from an overseas trip four days ago and my bedside alarm clock, which was unplugged while I was away, is still blinking an incorrect time. I now know what the time is by subtracting 5:45 from the blinking display. I will correct things eventually...
Just wait until midnight and turn it off and on again.
As for the oven, well since I never actually use the clock on it for anything it's always wrong. By whatever offset there was last time we had a minor power interruption. Fortunately it's easy enough to stop the flash flash flash - unlike setting the time correctly...
I have two, the radio one, set by satellites I think (got satnav and a 20 year old disc), and the in dask one which requires shoving a pen in a pair of holes.
Comes down to how much work you can do without disconnecting the battery.
Funny how annoying beeps and flashing lights can be.
Some microwaves you can press “display” and TURN OFF!!!! the clock entirely!
Others, you can press Mute or (press and hold for 1 second) 0 or 1 or Stop or Cancel, and no more Beeping!
Mine is too old for those improvements, but it does still let me cook tea water for 99 seconds (rather than forcing me to enter 1:39, with one extra BEEP for the third numeral.)
I used to think I was tech savvy and friends and family would come to me for help with setting things up but I did lose it last power cut when I literally punched the microwave. I hope its replacement will be easier to reset!!!
I do hate stroppy white goods. My Mum and Aunt have the same microwave made by Baumatic and it beeps constantly, even if it's done it beeps to remind you that there's something in there to be removed.
My appliances are all made by Hoover, which is very odd. I can Hoover my dinner, which doesn't just mean that I'm a messy eater. However the microwave and the oven don't keep time the same way, so whilst the oven is usually right the microwave runs fast and is within a few weeks 5-10 minutes ahead.
All this talk of microwave ovens is also making me think of Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.
My parents had a Hoover toaster, so wondered my people toasted their carpets.
Always used Vaccummed except when washing them when it is Vaxed, and yes that was confusing because why was a washing vacuum cleaner named after a mini computer.
Oven clocks used to be the second most hated timer in my life (I'll come to the first in a moment), but around five or six years ago, for no reason I can think of, I got "the knack". I told people I had "the knack", and became a minor celebrity, invited to houses far and wide following any power outage, with regular bookings twice a year in March and October! Tea, biscuits - sometimes even ones I like - were mine for the taking (though, of course, no home-baked cakes because the oven wouldn't work until the clock was set...) Unfortunately, having moved eight hours south, and still getting to know people in the new town, my skills are currently unused, and there are people in a Scottish village who haven't had a Yorkshire pudding for months!
My most hated timer still remains, though - those for central heating. No two seem to have the same interface, and the timer is always situated somewhere that requires at least two extra joints in the neck and micro-manipulators for fingers, or at exactly the wrong height to sit or stand comfortably whilst wrangling with an interface designed by extra-dimensional demons whose very concepts of existence cannot be understood by mere humans. I find myself longing for the old rotary dial with blue and red circumferential sliders that allowed for fifteen-minute intervals to be set. The entire process took five minutes from scratch, and the bi-annual clock twiddling took but a moment. The only "smart" device I occasionally (n=twice a year+other outages) consider is a CH timer, since I've seen that some have fairly sensible interfaces for - you know, actually changing the time!
Aug 27, 2023·edited Aug 27, 2023Liked by Alistair Dabbs
Ooh I've just moved into a place that doesn't have a French "Economy7" box. But instead the water heater is hooked up to an inch-high 24hr timer in the consumer unit.
Took a week for me to realise the blue "line" around the side of the timer dial was in fact a set of micro sliders. One for every 15 minutes in the day.
I have a (small) collection of analog phones (rotary and touch dial), and a UPS which supports a minimal set of network access devices (ONT, NAT, WIFI and VOIP). I have learned that the fiber connection is backed up (for how long I have no idea), and that my UPS is good for 2-3 hours. Beyond that, I'm isolated. The analog phones will work for those 2-3 hours, and it's long enough to put a charge on my cellular phones (which can also be charged in my car).
You’re doing it wrong. Set phone alarm to 11:55pm. Grab wife, wine, popcorn, choc., whatever… watch movie, canoodle. On alarm, retreat to kitchen to get more wine. At 11:59pm casually approach microwave and turn it off and on again at the wall. Wonder at the universality of this solution.
Hmm my battery alarm clock is a radio (rugby time signal) controlled one so once power is restored it sets the time in about 5 minutes. However resetting the alarms is another matter.
Press the middle button until the alarm is shown, then hold the middle button to engage setting modes, use the 1st (up) and 2nd (down) arrows to set the hours, then press the middle button again to select the minutes, and again to set the time, the 4th button will then turn the alarm on. If you want to set the second button press it all again.
However if the display is the date then holding the middle button will change it to 24 hour clock instead of AM or PM
No I don’t know what the 5th button does and I have had the thing for about 15 years…..
Mind you the number of times I have gone to program the end time on the cooker and changed the clock are too many to mention….
I have a mains powered alarm clock radio which more or less sets the time after a repower. The only problem is it then free runs and drifts quite a lot - 3 mins in a few weeks. I had hoped that the clock setting would be more frequent and keep 'locked' to whatever it uses to set the clock - I suspect 'Rugby' but maybe something in RDS...
Oven? There's your problem Mr Dabbs. All the hip kids are airfrying. And with those you just sync the clock with the one on your phone over WiFi/Bluetooth/semaphore.
'70s power cuts: Shopping in Woolies by torchlight. Happy days!
I always liked Mr. Carrots description of Woolies. '2 grands worth of cameras to protect 20 quids worth of smarties'
I bought an air fryer when the fad began but eventually bequeathed it to one of my offspring. An air fryer's core limitations are that you can only bake one thing at a time and it has to be arranged in a lump. In a fan oven, I can bake veg, cook a big pie and reheat a pizza simultaneously. It's quicker and cheaper.
I remember a special operation aorund late 1986, when I spent a king's ransom (well, maybe only a wacky social media startup CEO's ransom) on a so called "real time clock" for the Atari ST. it was battery buffered so it would not forget the time each time the computer was switched off... Of course, in these enlightened times such silly features are no longer required. BTW I have a Daewoo-microwave too, but here we only have power cuts when it is warm in the summer or cold in the winter, so most of the time the clock shows more or less the right time, as long as the power grid frequency stays more or less around the expected 60Hz...
I have exactly the same experience with the oven and microwave here - just takes a slight dip of the mains and we are into the territory of worn buttons and much beeping. Maybe the hardware is attempting to auto-censor the words I am muttering under my breath? And I have a Maplins Weather Station. Now I feel old.
Why do ovens even have clocks? Do they have to wake up on time? Make sure they are not late for work? A totally pointless addition to a perfectly functional piece of equipment. I gave the little blinking buggers the cruellest cut on day one.
Also, forgive me for being Mr. Smug as I sit here in my off-grid solar powered house where power-cuts, voltage spikes and electricity bills are things of distant memory; as is, fortunately, Angel Delight.
Mine has a useful feature when I go out for the day (and know when I will be back) I can tell it to start cooking and be done by xxx.
Only works if you know when you are going to be home though - I suppose someone will tell me to get a smart oven, nope….
Mind you I usually use a slow cooker if I am going to be out all day, slow cooked beef or lamb is hard to beat.
But you don't need a clock for that, just a timer
My breadmaker (of course I have one) has this wonderful feature ' Be done in x hours' so I wake up to the smell of freshly baked bread, no clock required
If you get the dumbest possible, on/off slow cooker with absolutely no extra smart functions, you can get a thermostat power control that power cycles the cooker to maintain a very precise arbitrary temperature. Bam, now you got a sous vide machine, or egg incubator, or thermostatically controlled chamber for whatever thing you dreamed up.
I wasn’t aware you could by a smart slow cooker, mine has one control a switch which has off, low, and high as the positions. What else does it need to do?
I think you very much need your slow cooker to pass your slow cooking history to an advertiser. What else did you think 'smart' devices are for?
Big Clock strikes again!
I don't know when it started that digital clocks were added to every piece of electrical apparatus you bought (perhaps Alistair can enlighten us), I suspect sometime in the '90's but unnecessary clocks have become the bane of many peoples lives.
Roll on the scrapping of Daylight Saving
The clockening began in the 50's
It accelerated in the 70s when monochrome LCD and green/red led multi-segment displays flooded the planet and blinked their way into the human heart by way of their living rooms, bedrooms and kitchens.
The goal at the time was to make one's home look like the bridge on Star Trek ... or Blakes 7 for those from across the pond.
You mean it wasn't just a not very subtle marketing ploy to make us think we had bought space age kit when it was just the same old dross with a funny light attached?
I recall the experiment of continuous GMT in the 1960's (I can recall what happened sixty odd years ago; last week is a bit hazy...). It always seemed to be perpetually dark over winter.
I delight in the 'extra hour in bed' although that's not really an issue these days. Having to get up earlier in spring is a price worth paying.
Power outage blues.
On one hand there are always a few devices that have to be set manually with arcane twiddling of only 2 available buttons.
One the other hand I am reminded of all the other devices I don't have to twiddle because they are connected to the net and spying on me.
So it goes ...
I was so pleased that our new microwave allows one to dismiss the blinking 12:00 after a power cut with a quick press of the Clear/Cancel button, erm pad. The useless clock function just goes away, with no loss of other functionality. Wanted to get another just to encourage this sort of behavior, but the Mrs said no.
Keep the microwave, ditch the Mrs.
More likely get ditched by the wife and told to take the microwave with you.
Our new washing machine has WiFi, so you can program it from somewhere else in the house. Perhaps you can get your manservant to actually load the clothes into it. But surely it should have a real time clock and NTP? No such luck.
So now you have to deal with multiple recalcitrant pieces of equipment which won't do what you tell them to instead of just 1, progress indeed.
Your washing machine has WiFi? No, really, your washing machine has WiFi? Your washing machine?
Unfortunately my Samsung washing machine does but I have never been remotely tempted to turn the feature on or download the app.
What is the point of turning it on remotely as it doesn’t come with a robot to search for clothes or sort coloured from white or can it empty itself and put the washing on the line.
It is as pointless as the karcher app controlled pressure washer. Personally if I using a pressure washer I don’t want a phone anywhere near it…
My Rice cooker has wifi. As does my fan.
The kettle however merely has Bluetooth.
Oh yes, it does. But it needs the app and will pair with only one phone. I think it must be an attempt at usage tracking. It’s useless otherwise. OTOH my smart speakers sent me a Critical Alert the other day when wife severely cremated some bacon and set off the smoke alarms. That is Zanussi-ness (the appliance of science). The washing machine with WiFi? <Eurovision> Null points </Eurovision>!
Does no one do the obvious and keep their candles in a specific, established place? I have mine in the kitchen drawer, and always in the kitchen drawer, the one with the rubber bands, bottle tops and knotted bag seal wires in. Easy.
Of course, where the fucking matches are is another matter altogether...
Yes, that's the place where we keep them too. Except when there is a power cut, the candles are no longer there. I suspect they get wind of a power cut before it happens, like starlings before an earthquake, and run away to live a peaceful candle existence in a Candle Dimension, Douglas Adams-style.,
It is a rule, as old as time itself, that candles are kept under the sink.
This is so that no matter where you are, you know where to find the candles.
You can guess where our candles are not....
No non, under the sink is where you keep the yoghurt maker and other such useless gadgets. Candles should always be kept in a kitchen drawer, alongside an nempty space that ought to be occupied by the matches you forgot to buy.
As long as you're not telling me you spent a few years driving around a family of red sandalwood scenteds...
Citronella tealights: emergency candles. There's always plenty around! No one uses them as anti-mosquito candles because THEY DON'T BLOODY WORK.
I came home from an overseas trip four days ago and my bedside alarm clock, which was unplugged while I was away, is still blinking an incorrect time. I now know what the time is by subtracting 5:45 from the blinking display. I will correct things eventually...
Just wait until midnight and turn it off and on again.
As for the oven, well since I never actually use the clock on it for anything it's always wrong. By whatever offset there was last time we had a minor power interruption. Fortunately it's easy enough to stop the flash flash flash - unlike setting the time correctly...
The digital clock in my car doesn't auto-update and I can't alter the time without making a real hash of other settings.
This corrective operation has now become one of the benefits of having children..... er, grandchildren.
I have two, the radio one, set by satellites I think (got satnav and a 20 year old disc), and the in dask one which requires shoving a pen in a pair of holes.
Comes down to how much work you can do without disconnecting the battery.
Funny how annoying beeps and flashing lights can be.
Some microwaves you can press “display” and TURN OFF!!!! the clock entirely!
Others, you can press Mute or (press and hold for 1 second) 0 or 1 or Stop or Cancel, and no more Beeping!
Mine is too old for those improvements, but it does still let me cook tea water for 99 seconds (rather than forcing me to enter 1:39, with one extra BEEP for the third numeral.)
I used to think I was tech savvy and friends and family would come to me for help with setting things up but I did lose it last power cut when I literally punched the microwave. I hope its replacement will be easier to reset!!!
Punching it! AKA a Soft Reset (and possible visit to A&E).
For a Hard Reset one would of course use a hammer, possibly a sledge hammer...
Defenestration springs to mind, I wonder why?
I do hate stroppy white goods. My Mum and Aunt have the same microwave made by Baumatic and it beeps constantly, even if it's done it beeps to remind you that there's something in there to be removed.
My appliances are all made by Hoover, which is very odd. I can Hoover my dinner, which doesn't just mean that I'm a messy eater. However the microwave and the oven don't keep time the same way, so whilst the oven is usually right the microwave runs fast and is within a few weeks 5-10 minutes ahead.
All this talk of microwave ovens is also making me think of Money for Nothing by Dire Straits.
My parents had a Hoover toaster, so wondered my people toasted their carpets.
Always used Vaccummed except when washing them when it is Vaxed, and yes that was confusing because why was a washing vacuum cleaner named after a mini computer.
Oven clocks used to be the second most hated timer in my life (I'll come to the first in a moment), but around five or six years ago, for no reason I can think of, I got "the knack". I told people I had "the knack", and became a minor celebrity, invited to houses far and wide following any power outage, with regular bookings twice a year in March and October! Tea, biscuits - sometimes even ones I like - were mine for the taking (though, of course, no home-baked cakes because the oven wouldn't work until the clock was set...) Unfortunately, having moved eight hours south, and still getting to know people in the new town, my skills are currently unused, and there are people in a Scottish village who haven't had a Yorkshire pudding for months!
My most hated timer still remains, though - those for central heating. No two seem to have the same interface, and the timer is always situated somewhere that requires at least two extra joints in the neck and micro-manipulators for fingers, or at exactly the wrong height to sit or stand comfortably whilst wrangling with an interface designed by extra-dimensional demons whose very concepts of existence cannot be understood by mere humans. I find myself longing for the old rotary dial with blue and red circumferential sliders that allowed for fifteen-minute intervals to be set. The entire process took five minutes from scratch, and the bi-annual clock twiddling took but a moment. The only "smart" device I occasionally (n=twice a year+other outages) consider is a CH timer, since I've seen that some have fairly sensible interfaces for - you know, actually changing the time!
Ooh I've just moved into a place that doesn't have a French "Economy7" box. But instead the water heater is hooked up to an inch-high 24hr timer in the consumer unit.
Took a week for me to realise the blue "line" around the side of the timer dial was in fact a set of micro sliders. One for every 15 minutes in the day.
Left: On Right: Off.
Again, reminds me of the 1970s.
Once again, the French lead the way! 😁 😁
I have a (small) collection of analog phones (rotary and touch dial), and a UPS which supports a minimal set of network access devices (ONT, NAT, WIFI and VOIP). I have learned that the fiber connection is backed up (for how long I have no idea), and that my UPS is good for 2-3 hours. Beyond that, I'm isolated. The analog phones will work for those 2-3 hours, and it's long enough to put a charge on my cellular phones (which can also be charged in my car).
The appliances can fend for themselves.
You’re doing it wrong. Set phone alarm to 11:55pm. Grab wife, wine, popcorn, choc., whatever… watch movie, canoodle. On alarm, retreat to kitchen to get more wine. At 11:59pm casually approach microwave and turn it off and on again at the wall. Wonder at the universality of this solution.