The classiest little Casio, AQ230
Somewhat annoying to set, but probably the most elegant little Casio watch you could have.
I just did a battery change in my silver Casio AQ230. It's been a while since I've said anything about this model.
For those who own this watch, the battery type is SR920W, also known as a 370 or 371.
Both my silver and gold AQ230's were bought in 2019 and I still have them, but the silver one gets more wrist time because the digital panel is easier to read.
The AQ230 is the smallest watch I own. The lug-to-lug is 38.8mm, the case diameter is 29.8mm and thickness is 8.1mm. I actually do own the Casio A700 which is just 6mm thick. Too thin. The AQ230 gets it just right. And for a 100% digital, the tried-and-true Casio F-91W also gets it right at just being 8.5mm thick.
How to set the time and date on the AQ230
This is very atypical compared to most Casio watches.
My recommendation for setting this thing is digital first, analog second.
Digital set
- Press/hold the bottom left button until it beeps, then release. Seconds are blinking.
- Press top left button to reset seconds to 0.
- Press bottom left button.
- Press top left bottom to set the hour.
- Press bottom left button.
- Press top left button to set the minute.
- Press bottom left button.
- Press top left button to choose 12 or 24-hour time.
- Press bottom left button to exit.
Analog set
Before explaining how to set this, I have to describe how it works. This will sound complicated, but trust me, it's not.
The AQ230 does not have a seconds hand. For every 20 seconds of digital time, the minute hand ticks forward. For example, the minute hand will advance at 12:00:00, 12:00:20 and 12:00:40. After that, it will advance at 12:01:00, 12:01:20 and 12:01:40. Every time the digital time reaches 00 seconds, 20 seconds and 40 seconds, the minute hand advances.
On the right side of the watch is one button, and its sole function is to adjust the analog time. Pressing it once will advance the minute hand one tick, which is 20 seconds. Pressing and holding the minute hand will fast-scroll advance the analog clock.
The easiest way to set the analog clock is to synchronize it at a 15-minute mark, as in minute 0, 15, 30 or 45. You do this because those lines on the clock face are easiest to read and straight (meaning not on an angle.)
For example, if the digital time reads 12:29, advance the analog clock close to 12:29. When the digital clock reads 12:30, press the right side button a few times until the minute hand reaches the 30 minute marker. Because the AQ230's minute hand moves in 20 second increments, as long as you advance the minute hand to 12:30 within the first 20 seconds after the minute, the digital and analog clocks will be synchronized perfectly.
Again, I know this sounds complicated but it really isn't.
Why is the AQ230 so elegant and classy?
A few reasons.
First is the lack of a seconds hand. For some reason, when the seconds hand isn't present, that makes a square/rectangle watch look better. The classic Cartier Tank does not have a seconds hand, and neither does the Seiko SUP880. But the Casio is obviously much more affordable.
Second, the AQ230 is an atypical Casio design where the appearance is very toned down, even for the gold version. Nothing about the watch is "loud" at all.
Third is the appearance of minimalism. I say appearance because the watch does have an alarm feature, month/date/weekday calendar, hourly signal feature, a stopwatch and dual-time. Actually, it's triple-time. The analog clock, main digital time and secondary digital time can all be set differently, so technically, yes it is triple-time capable. But you'd never know that by looking at it. All you see is a classy little timepiece.
In the way Casio designed the AQ230, it does sometimes reflect light playfully on the outer corners, and the 12-hour marker is raised and reflects too.
On the gold version, the face is not white but rather linen colored. You can even see a vertical pattern when you angle it right and look close.
I sold off a bunch of Casios a while back...
...but not my AQ230's. I kept those because they're just good. Small and classy, and the silver one is surprisingly very legible.
The only thing I've had to do for maintenance, other than change the battery, is take some minor scratches off the crystal with Polywatch. Worked like a charm.
Is the Casio AQ230 the classiest little watch? No, that would be the Cartier Tank. But it is the classiest little ana-digi watch that I know of.
Where can a middle aged guy get plain sneakers these days?
Nowhere, that's where.
Remember Payless ShoeSource? The last one I ever visited was in 2019. This was right before they closed up shop.
When I say "closed up shop", that doesn't mean out-of-business. Payless ShoeSource still exists as an online retailer, although they just go by Payless now.
I am a Gen-X, born in the 1970s. The sneakers we wore back in the day were plain, but good. They all looked decent, didn't have any wild styles and were made for sport. As a daily wearer shoe, these were great.
One of the few plain sneakers left that's still like this is the New Balance 608; this is what I wear currently.
The 608 is one of the very few sneakers you can get in plain white or plain black. In fact, New Balance even offers this model in 100% white or 100% black. It's also one of the few sneakers you can get in a proper plain style that is wide, and I have wide feet. Not clown-shoes big, but wide.
I used to go to Payless ShoeSource to get plain sneakers, but after their stores shuttered, finding something plain in my size required me to buy it online.
Oh, I've tried other stores. Cheap places, upscale and even a few high-end ones. All they had were just a scant few plain sneaker offerings, and when they did have them, they were never in my size.
Should I just go sandal?
I'm considering it.
A sandal type I like is the fisherman sandal with a closed toe. Most of these are brown and look traditional with very little goofy style stuff going on.
With sandals I actually have more choice than I do with sneakers, so that might be the way to go.
An HSS guitar I can actually recommend
This is something I never thought would happen.
Take an EART CP.1. This is one of the few lower priced guitars you can get which is in no-mods-required territory.
Let's get the specs out of the way first: Mahogany body, rosewood fingerboard, compound 9.5" to 14" fretboard radius, Canadian maple neck, 22 frets, "cheese wheel" truss rod adjustment location at the butt of the neck (very convenient), hex screws holding in the bridge instead of the stupid flathead style, full block saddles, deep cutaway cut on the rear for easy high fret access, sculpted heel also for very easy high fret access...
...yeah, this thing is loaded.
On its own, the guitar needs nothing. However, for those that absolutely want the best of the best for as cheap as possible, two things of note:
It appears that dropping in a set of locking tuners would be stupidly easy to do, and it doesn't look like any new holes would need to be drilled to do so.
As for the electronics, they might in fact be good enough on their own because the electronics do feature a 223J capacitor, which are known to be very reliable. People who build up their Ibanez guitars sometimes use these, so yes, it's a good cap. How do the pickups sound? I have no idea, but if dropping in a replacement set was needed, it would be a fairly easy process.
Yes, I can actually recommend this HSS guitar. The good stuff is there and the price is certainly right for what you get.
The 1,000 year disc, M-DISC
This disc will supposedly last 1,000 years.
For a long time I've been saying that optical media is awful. This one isn't.
Years ago before anybody was even thinking of archiving anything, I was backing things up. Emails, photos, videos, account info and such. The current way I do it is with 7-Zip archives supplemented by PAR recovery files just in case the archive gets corrupted. The reason I do this is because I've lost data before, and it hurts every time it happens, because I've lost stuff that I'll never get back. And once you lose data enough times, you learn to back up routinely, which I do.
M-DISC a.k.a. Millennial Disc is optical media that can basically withstand any punishment you can throw at it. Heat, moisture, dirt, whatever. This is the disc that will outlive anybody.
I only see one problem with this disc. It has nothing to do with the media itself but rather concerning this simple question: Will there be any hardware that can play an M-DISC in 100 years, never mind 1,000?
Before answering that question, the 50-year question has already been answered with a yes. There is 50-year-old data that has been recovered from the technology of the time back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And for slightly younger data, there have been tech hobbyists who have recovered data from 40-year-old media.
Tech hobbyists are a crazy bunch, because as of recent (as in the last 5 years or so) there have been more than a few who have recreated ancient antiquated hardware interfaces from scratch using 3-D printers just to get at that old data.
And that brings me to the hardware question. Yeah, you can get 1,000-year discs, but will there will be any new optical players at all even just 10 years from now? That's an unknown.
Sure, there will be giant piles of used optical players that can play the discs, but new ones? I doubt it.
Then again, given the fact insane tech hobbyists (repeat: hobbyists) have been able to save data over 40 years old, somebody will be able to read M-DISCs made today in another 40 years.
Verbatim is confident enough in the M-DISC they make that they offer a 10-year limited warranty on it even though the disc will survive far beyond that. When you see the price of these things, you'll get sticker shock for sure, but there is arguably nothing available that's tougher that will last longer than M-DISC.
The watch you buy when your smartwatch breaks
Anybody who wears a smartwatch eventually ends up wearing something like this instead.
On more than one occasion, I've seen people talking about watches like the Casio W218 where something is said along the lines of, "Yeah, well, I have a smartwatch and bought one of these cheap Casios as a backup. I liked it so much that I now wear it all the time."
I think what actually happened is a little different.
When somebody buys a smartwatch, they quickly grow to like having something on the wrist that tells the time and date at a glance. Very useful.
The decision is made at that point to buy a plain digital watch as a backup timepiece. It needs to be something square or rectangle because that's what the smartwatch shape is. They find the Casio W218. It's reasonably sized, lightweight, fits the wrist great and does the job just fine.
After that, the discovery is made that the smartwatch was never needed in the first place. What was needed was just a timepiece, and for anything else that requires mobile computing power, that's what the phone is for. This is when decision is made to just wear the Casio all the time.
Get a Casio wet and it will still work. It doesn't need charging and has a battery that lasts 5 to 7 years. Ding it up, scratch it up, whatever, it can handle it.
A plain digital Casio watch is just better at handling life, and that's why people buy these things.