The things you find

When I got up today, I certainly wasn’t thinking about the Internet, nor wishing somebody was showing something really cool about washing machines. But that’s what happened.

Someone I know (what's the term? Cousin-in-law?) posted the above video to Facebook, and I watched. Personally, I think this lies somewhere between “WTF?!” and “Whoa!”, but your results many vary.

The woman is demonstrating this on an Elba washing machine, which is a version of the Fisher & Paykel machines. We don’t have such a machine, so I can’t test it.

A YouTube user called ReefusNZ provided longer, detailed instructions (which I can’t link to):

Once you enter the mode by pressing "Power" and "Advance" simultaneously, you can also change between the NZ, Australia and US anthem by pressing and holding the "Water Level Up" button until you hear a beep. The beep signals that the anthem has cycled to the next. (It will also stop the current anthem playing) So, when you then press and hold "Wash Temp Up" it will play the anthem it cycled too. Repeat as often until you cycle through them all. It resets when powered off at the wall.

Part of me thinks this is an unexpectedly cool thing for a washing machine to do, especially because it makes no difference to anything. I suppose I could wonder what other capabilities this machine is hiding—and do other washing machines have hidden abilities? I could wonder about all that, but, quite frankly, I just don’t think about washing machines that much.

I did think one other YouTube comment was quite funny: “Looks like I've reached the end of the internet. Time to turn around and go home.”

Indeed.

Oh! One more thing: Yesterday I saw a mainstream media journalist Tweet something that I think is good advice. Paraphrasing, he said that if you take video on your smart phone, turn the phone sideways! Thank you.

Now, I think it’s time to put another load of washing on.