G-Shock Gulfman

Recently got me-self a new gadget, actually it's an early birthday gift from both my brother and sister, thanks to both of them :) . I have always been a sucker for products where featuring high tech elements both in the design of the product itself or during the course of producing it. Amongst the items that I have fallen "prey" to include phones, gadgets, or even clothing items like Columbia's Bamboo Nano-Charcoal Fiber tights, and their Omni-Tech jackets. Usually these products come with cool names like Omni, Techno, i-something and comes with a description like these on the boxes:

"As bamboo charcoal with innumerable holes structure, can absorb and decompose benzene, phenol, methanol, sulfide, nitrides etc, it can reduce harmful matters and odors, such as a  53%  deduction in odor from  NH3gas. It also can adjust the moisture, release anions, restrain microbe... etc.  The major function of our products is Warming. According to ITRI test result, with 500W halogen lightshone on the bamboo charcoal yarn for 10 minutes, the yarn emits  far infrared rays for  87% ~ 92%,and warm up the temperature 10 ^oC, which is much higher than for instance wool's with 5 ^oC.The bamboo charcoal powder is equally diffused in to the fiber structure and not a coating on the surface, therefore any method of washing will not influence its function. It has an excellent water-resistance,  natural no irradiation, the best choice of warm textiles."

Doesn't makes much sense to when I read it, but I suddenly feel much "cooler" wearing it. Smart underwear anyone?

This time around my latest gadget is a G-Shock watch. I have always wanted to get a G-Shock after seeing my friends wearing them. I wanted to have a watch for weekend use where I don't have have to worry about scratching it or suffering any "abuse" during the course of outdoor activities. Now as most of you know G-Shock watches are synonymous with toughness and more recently trendiness as well judging from the new colors and design available in their line-up. So there you go, a G-Shock is something that fits my needs pretty well and the great thing is it's not too expensive as well.

G-Shock was created as part of  "Project Tough" by Casio engineers way back in 1981 with the sole aim of creating an "unbreakable watch". Over 2 years numerous prototypes has been created and finally in 1983 the first G-Shock was born - the DW-5000C. Here's what the makers have to say on the technology that is involved in making a G-Shock:

And here are the tests the watches are subjected to: gravitational shock resistance, dropping sock resistance, hammer shock resistance, water pressure, electrical current, low temperature resistance and vibration resistance. Here's a video showing the various tests. Kinda "shocking" how they test their watches, sorry pun intended.

The model that I recently acquired is a G9100-2, where the postfixed number 2 denotes that it is in color blue. Nicknamed "Gulfman", the watch is part of the Master of G collection, others being the Frogman, the Mudman, and the Riseman. Each series represents unique features that the namesake suggests - Frogman has very high resistance to underwater pressure, features a dive timer, tide data and so forth, Mudman features dust and mud resistance design, a rally mode, a highly accurate stopwatch mode and the Riseman has twin sensors featuring an altimeter and a barometer (in which you can use it to gauge whether it will rain or not, by the means of atmosphere pressure around you).

Here's how my Gulfman looks like:

 

Besides the usual shock resistant feature the Gulfman is the only watch in the Master of G series that features a rust resistant structure by using titanium in it's case back cover, button shafts and buckle. So the watch feels really light weighing at 53 grams. Each Master of G features a unique logo at it's back. Here's how mine looks like:

And with the electro-luminescent  (EL) back light synonymous with most G-Shock watches - the Gulfman features dual illumination back lights built into the LCD and the dial for better visibility (for those who work at night at the seas, I am not one of them), and has a feature that can turn on the back light automatically with just a tilt of their wrist - although I have to say that I have turned off this feature as it would probably drain the battery faster. The manual states that the battery can last for around 7 years.

On the watch face you can see the tide graph and the moon phase indicator (with moon age and moon phase) , of which you have to set your coordinates and the lunitidal interval of your locality in order for the watch to display the info correctly. The watch is also water resistant up to 200m.

Another feature that I like is that it stores world time for 48 cities in 29 time zones, with daylight saving mode. Good to know what time it is before calling that cousin at London eh? Although I have to say one thing that I don't like is the abbreviations that they use for the city names some of which are pretty straightforward to guess like LON, but what's MLE?

The watch has 3 alarm modes - 2 normal alarms, 1 with snooze feature of which can be set to go off at daily, monthly, or on a certain date. It also has an hourly time signal.

The 1/100 second stopwatch feature allows you to measure elapsed time, split times and able to time up to  finishes. A 1/100 second is also known as a centisecond, or 10 milliseconds which is 0.01 seconds. So how fast is a 1/100 second? Well it's probably somewhere as fast as a typical camera shutter speed. The stopwatch can display up to 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59.99 seconds.

Next feature on the watch is the countdown mode which allows you to set a time between 1 minute to 24 hours before the alarm sounds when the timer reaches 0. It also has a auto repeat feature which allows the watch to restart the timer after reaching zero and as well as a progress beeper which sounds at specific intervals before the end of the countdown. The above said stopwatch, countdown alarm, alarms and hourly time signal have a Flash Alert feature which enable the watch to flash with buzzer when ever the alarm / timer goes off.

The watch  has an accuracy of  plus / minus 15 seconds for every month of operation - for those of you who wonder what this means, man made watches inherently inaccurate due to many reasons some of which are due to the mechanism, quality of craftsmanship etc. etc. So if we say a watch is %99.9 accurate for example, it will still be out by a minute and a half in 24 hours! Some watches like mechanical ones (think Rolex, Omega etc.) are less accurate not by design but by nature - imagine all those tiny gears and screws in the watches are constantly affected by the gravitational forces, so they are quite inaccurate if you compare to a say, a much cheaper Casio quartz watch. Of course there are certain exceptions which features very very high workmanship and which are a Certified Chronometer where each watch has to be certified individually by COSC in Swiss where the watch movement has to achieve somewhere in the region of %99.994 accuracy which means -4 to +6 seconds accuracy. All certified watches are then allowed to feature the designation "Chronometer" which is a mark of distinction for a high quality and exclusive watch. However it is interesting to note that a normal quartz watch is %99.9998 accurate which only leaves room a loss of accuracy of between -2 and +2 seconds per day. Why is this so? Because a quartz watch uses a crystal oscillator to create electrical signals which is very precise. It is also interesting to note that some G-Shocks features self-calibrating features which the watch receives signals from calibration stations which is based on, wait for it ... atomic timekeeping! Whaaaattt?

Wheeeewww, that's a lot for a watch nowadays isn't it? But it's so cool to know that the stuffs that you are wearing has so many technology in it. Makes it sound like something from a James Bond movie. Well who knows, probably James Bond would be proud owner of a G-Shock someday ;)