I gather that increasing numbers of people these days use their cell phone to tell the time, and don’t bother with a watch. However, the watch is fighting back. Behold, the quad band GSM phone in a wristwatch, with Bluetooth (so you can pair it with a headset for phone use) and OLED display showing analog hands. Plus 1.3MP camera, kinetic battery recharge, and MP3 player. At 13mm thick it’s still pretty bulky, but not much worse than my Casio G-Shock.
I’m too mathematically minded to gamble in Vegas, but I still find myself thinking that I’ve been unlucky when it comes to winning contests and prize draws. Rudyard Kipling would say that I won God’s lottery, but somehow that’s small consolation. The feeling of unluckiness started in childhood. My cousin managed to win money on the Premium Bonds several times (as I recall), but I never did. I continued to enter pretty much any free contest I encountered, year after year, even if it meant actually reading the junk mail sent to me by Reader’s Digest.
My new watch arrived. Casio G-Shock. I’ve never had a Casio last less than five years, which is two more than the expensive Seiko managed. Reading the web, it seems that Seiko Kinetics are quite notorious for breaking. It probably doesn’t help that I tend to occasionally walk into walls, doors, and other solid objects, but still… Essential features of the new watch: time, date, day of week, 24 hour format, waterproof (to 200m), solar powered.