use Perl

I find it very hard to get out of bed in the morning (and I do mean "morning", that thing that ends sometime around the middle of the day). This hasn't been made any easier by the recent death of my alarm clock.

Now, being a practical sort of person, I set off in search of a new one. Before I headed off into town I decided what I wanted from my clock:

• Big numbers - I wear glasses during the day, but clearly cannot when I'm in bed, or just as I get out of the shower.
• Loud noises - In the past I've sometimes woken up when my alarm stopped ringing, rather than when it started, two hours too late.
• A minimum of buttons, no switches - Solid state electronics won't break, switches wear out after a year or so and push buttons don't like me spilling coffee on them (as witnessed by far too many keyboards). Avoiding things which might break is good.
• No clutter - I want to know what time it is, I don't want to know about the weather (I have a window to show me that) or the time in New York (I'm not a journalist, international crisis mediator or stock trader). I don't want to hold down three buttons all at once to enter alarm setting mode. I'm easy to confuse, and an alarm clock should make life easy, surely.
• Cheap - No more than the cost of the night before which caused the hangover I need to escape the morning after.

But could I find such a thing? No. In the end I settled for an old fashioned, quartz-movement beeping job with a little dial to set the hands of the clock and a big button to press to switch off the buzzer. Technology may have moved on in the last fifty years, but the lowly alarm clock has only gained bloat, time zones and wall projection.